Long Bright River(91)

To this day, I sometimes have nightmares about Kacey returning to claim Thomas.

In these dreams, Kacey is well, a vision of health, and her demeanor is exuberant and jolly, just as she was as a child, and she looks very beautiful, and Thomas runs to her across a crowded place—a store, usually, or a school, or sometimes a church, and he says to her, I’ve missed you, or sometimes, I’ve been waiting, or sometimes just Mother. Very simply. Claiming her too. Naming an object, stating a fact. Mother.





NOW





There’s your baby, says Gee, in the kitchen. And in her voice I hear a hint of a reproof.

—You’ve got him already, says Gee. Don’t need to worry about another.

—Stop talking, I say.

Behind me I hear the faintest gasp from Thomas, who has never heard me say such an impolite thing in his life.

I look at my surroundings, and I have difficulty believing, suddenly, that this is where I spent the first twenty-one years of my life. This cold and unwelcoming house. This house that is no place for children. Every part of me begins, then, to send a simultaneous signal: get out, get out, get out. Get Thomas out. Don’t ever come back to this house, to this woman.



* * *



—

Wordlessly, I touch Thomas on the shoulder and signal to him that we have to leave. He picks up the Super Soaker, and I almost tell him to leave it, but at the last minute I change my mind.

As we walk out the door, Gee’s words echo in my head. The world is a hard place. The world is a hard place. She said that to us all the time when we were children. And I realize, suddenly, that these are the words I use with Thomas, too, when explaining all the difficulties he has faced this year.



* * *



—

Behind us, Gee is calling down the block.

—You’ll leave her alone, she says, one final time. You’ll leave her alone if you know what’s good for you.





Thomas and I sit for a while in the car. He is pensive and worried. He knows enough to know that something strange is happening.

In my right hand is one of the birthday cards our father sent us. I snatched it up before I left. This one is to Kacey. In the upper left-hand corner of the envelope is an address in Wilmington, Delaware.



* * *



—

I need to get someone to watch Thomas for a while. At the moment, the person it feels safest to leave him with is Mrs. Mahon.

Once I’m in the car, I call her landline, and pray she will be back from her sister’s house.

Mrs. Mahon answers quickly, as if she had been waiting by the phone.

—It’s Mickey, I say.

And I ask her whether I might take her up on her offer to help, and I promise to explain everything tonight. Of course, says Mrs. Mahon. Knock when you’re home.

I notice, when I hang up, that Thomas has gone silent. When I look into the backseat, I see that he’s started to cry.

—What’s wrong? I say. Thomas, what’s wrong?

—Are you leaving me with Mrs. Mahon again, he says.

—Just for a little, I say.

I turn in the front seat and regard him. He looks very old and very young at once. He has seen too much lately.

—But it’s Christmas, he says. I want you to help me play with my new toys.

—Mrs. Mahon can help you do that, I say, and he says, No. I want you.

From the front seat, I reach my arm into the back, put a hand on his sneaker, and squeeze it. Beneath my grip, it lights up. Briefly, he smiles.

—Thomas, I say. I promise I’ll be around tomorrow, and every day after. Okay? I know it’s been a difficult winter. I promise things will be better soon.

He won’t look at me.

—Let’s do something fun with Lila soon, I say. Would that be nice? I can talk to Lila’s mom.

He smiles at last. Wipes a tear from his cheek.

—Okay, he says.

—Would that be nice? I say again.

He nods bravely.





The length of time it’s been since I’ve seen my father is greater than the length of time I knew him. I was ten years old when he disappeared from our lives. Kacey was eight.



* * *



—

After dropping Thomas off at Mrs. Mahon’s, I enter into my GPS the address I have for my father, in Wilmington, and begin to drive.

The envelope on the passenger’s seat is over a decade old. It is possible, I realize, that my father no longer lives at the return address. But with no other leads, this is the one I have to follow.



* * *



—

In my memory, he is tall and skinny, like me. He has a low, slow voice and is wearing baggy jeans and an Allen Iverson jersey and a backward baseball cap. At that time he would have been twenty-nine years old—younger, in this memory, than I am now.

Because I was fiercely loyal to my mother, and because Gee always implied that my father was to blame for her death, I hated him. I didn’t hug him. I didn’t trust him.

Kacey did. Kacey never wanted to believe what people said about him, including me. She took it much harder than I did when our father didn’t come around. When he did make an appearance, she hung on him, followed him from room to room, never more than a foot from him, talking in her breathless, gulping, unstoppable way, demanding his attention. I was quieter. I watched.