Long Bright River(88)

—He told you, she said.

I said nothing in response. I wasn’t certain, yet, what she meant.

She sat up and lowered her head into her hands. Her roommate shifted slightly in my peripheral vision.

—I’m so sorry, Mickey, Kacey was saying, over and over again. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.





I sensed even in that moment that the two of us were at a crossroads. The map of our lives stretched out before us, and I could see, quite clearly, the various paths I might choose to take, and the ways in which this choice might affect my sister.

In retrospect, of course, the path I chose was wrong.

Dishonorable, even.

—I’m pregnant, said Kacey.

—It’s Simon’s, said Kacey.

—It was during a bad streak for me, said Kacey. I didn’t know what I was doing. He took advantage of me.

—I’ve been trying to get clean ever since, said Kacey.

And I said, No.

That’s the first word that came out of me. I felt in my body the same lightheadedness that sometimes felled me as a child, and I wanted to stop it, and so I said, again, No.

As I said the word, I sensed that some decision had been made for me. It was difficult to turn back. If I could have, I would have put my hands over my ears.

I should have left. I should have taken more time to think.

—Mickey, said Kacey.

I turned my face away sharply.

—Mick, I’m so sorry, Kacey said. I’m sorry. I’d take it back if I could.



* * *



—

    Today, when I consider the list of the worst things I’ve ever done and said to Kacey, at the top of it is the lie I once told her, in anger, about our mother: that she once said to me that she loved me more than Kacey. It was a child’s fantasy, the sharpest knife I could wield, a moment of real cruelty in the middle of an otherwise ordinary spat between siblings. Kacey’s reaction, the horrible wail that came out of her, made me remorseful enough to swear to myself I’d never say anything so unkind again.

And yet I did, that night.

—You’re lying, I said, calmly.

She looked briefly confused.

—I’m not, she said.

—Anyway, I said. How would you even know.

—I don’t understand, said Kacey.

—Who the father is, I said. How would you even know?

She looked, for a moment, as if she might hit me. I recognized the tightened fist, the tightened arm, from her childhood, when she regularly brawled. Instead she absorbed the shock of my words in silence, and looked away from me.

—Leave, she said.

Her roommate—a woman I had never before met—echoed the word to me, pointing at the door. It occurs to me now that her loyalty to my sister—this relative stranger, this person I did not know—was greater, that day, than mine was.





I made it so easy for Simon. I did not even require him to issue a denial to me. Instead, when he came to see me the following day, I told him that I agreed with his assessment, and that it was imperative that we find help for Kacey.

—She told me that she was pregnant, I said, and that it was yours.

He was silent.

—Can you believe that? I said.

—I told you, he said.

—Is she really pregnant? I said.

—She may be, said Simon. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.



* * *



—

That spring and summer, I did see her, more and more. She returned to the street, with vigor. I saw her working, on my shifts.

And I saw that, sooner or later, she was beginning to show.

If she’d been clean when I found her at the house with the geraniums outside it, she was very clearly using, now. Her eyes were glazed and bloodshot. Her skin bore red marks on it. Her stomach was the only thing protruding from her body, which otherwise was gaunt. I am sad to say that this did not seem to deter her clients. Very often, I saw them stop for her. Sometimes doubling back to do so.

—I can’t watch this, I said once or twice to Simon.

I was thinking of the baby, and the baby’s welfare, and I was thinking of our own mother, and the choices that she made.



* * *



—

I began to research lawyers.





The first of them told me that third-party custody was not out of the question. It happened frequently in cases where one or both parents were addicted. She had personally handled several cases just this year. But even if custody is wrested from the mother, she said, the mother would have to testify that she did not know who the father was. If she named a father, then he would have to sign paperwork agreeing to give over the child, as well.

—What if, I said, the mother is delusional? What if she falsely names a father, but it isn’t true?

—Well, said the attorney—Sara Jimenez was her name—then a paternity test would be recommended by most judges.

I told this to Simon, who went silent.

In fact, that whole year, he had been suspiciously silent every time the subject of Kacey came up. He stopped seeing her, stopped trying to help her. When I brought her up he changed the subject.

But when I told him, at last, that a paternity test would be necessary to disprove Kacey’s assertion—and when his only response was further silence—then I began, finally, to acknowledge aloud what I suppose I had known all along.