Long Bright River(94)

He goes on.

—So I think I’m striking out, he says. I tried. With both of my daughters. I tell myself I’ll try you again soon, but life got in the way, you know. Somehow, a month passes.

—Then, he says, out of the blue, Kacey shows up at my door. She won’t tell me where she was or how she got there. She’s got a broken wrist, he says, but she won’t tell me how it happened.

—And, he says, she tells me she’s pregnant. That she wants to keep the baby. That she wants to get clean.



* * *



—

    I’m driving aimlessly, taking arbitrary rights and lefts, not sure where I’m headed. If you paid me, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to the house.

My father clears his throat.

—As you can imagine, he says, this was a lot to process. But I figured, This is my chance to make up for what I did wrong in the past. Besides, I’ve been through it, he says. I know what it’s like to get sober. I know what it’s like to try to stay clean. I still go to meetings two or three times a week, he says. I figure I can take her with me. Get her a sponsor and everything. Be there for her, I guess.

—I have a good job now, too, he says. Got my diploma from ITT Tech a while ago. I do IT now. I make pretty good money. I can help get health care for her and the baby.

In my peripheral vision, I see him glance at me, gauging my reaction. Does he want me to be proud of him? I’m not, yet.

—Anyway, he says. Kacey says she’s already started to taper off. She says she’s been using Suboxone when she can get it. I take her to the doctor, who says the recommendation is, if you’re pregnant and using, you need to get on to methadone and stay on it. So the doctor helps get her into a methadone maintenance program. She’s been going ever since.



* * *



—

—So she’s with you, I say at last.

—She’s with me, my father says. She’s right back there in that house.

—She’s alive, I say.

—She’s alive.



* * *



—

I pause for a long time.

—Can I see her? I say, finally.



* * *



—

    Now it’s his turn to go silent.

—Thing is, he says, I’m not sure she wants to see you.

—She told me about her son, he says, and I flinch.

My son, I think. My son.

—As soon as she got to my house, she told me about that, and she told me she didn’t want anything to do with you, he says.

—But it’s funny, he says. The longer she’s been sober, the more she’s been talking about you.

—Doesn’t sound sober to me, I say.

It’s a bitter thing to say.

He nods. I see his face, silhouetted against the dim light outside the window of the car. Behind him, streetlights tick by.

—I hear you, he says mildly. A lot of people don’t think being on methadone is the same thing as being sober.

He doesn’t say anything else.

—But you do, I say at last.

He shrugs. I don’t know, he says. I don’t know what I think. I’ve been off methadone a while now. But I know I needed it at the start. Would never have stayed in recovery without it.

Neither of us speaks after that.



* * *



—

I keep driving. I’m on a larger road now, driving straight. Not turning. And suddenly, ahead of me, I see a glint of water, and realize I’ve found the Delaware again. The same dark river that has followed me since birth.

—Might want to turn right here, says my father. Or you’ll end up underwater.

Instead, I pull over and stop the car. Its headlights shine out into the blackness. I turn them off.



* * *



—

    —She’s been talking about you more and more, says my father. She misses you. She needs her family.

—Hah, I say.

It’s the noise, I realize, that I make whenever I’m uncomfortable. Making a joke out of something serious.

—After Kacey showed up, I went a second time to try to find you in Bensalem, he says. But that time, the same lady told me that you’d moved.

I nod.

—I thought I’d lost you again, says my father.

—I told her to say that, I say. I thought you were someone else.



* * *



—

I turn on the dome light, abruptly, and look at him.

—What’s up? he says. He looks back at me, blinking in the sudden brightness.

I’m inspecting him, trying to make out the tattoo beneath his ear.

L.O.F., it says, in curlicued script.

It takes me a second to understand. They are our mother’s initials.

He sees where I’m looking and puts a finger to it, presses on it tenderly, as if it were a bruise. Then he turns away.

—I bet you miss her, he says. I do too.





It’s nine o’clock when I finally drop my father back at his house. We have made no plan. He has my phone number now, and I have his. That will suffice until Kacey and I both determine our feelings on a potential reunion with one another.