Long Bright River

by Liz Moore

  * * *

  —

  It is for this reason that, today, Thomas believes me to be his biological mother.

  I thought that Kacey would return to the street and forget.

  I thought she’d be angry with me but quickly move on: the routine of seeking and finding and seeking a fix is immersive and hypnotic, and it’s difficult to emerge from that cloud for long enough to care.

  And yet, several times during my maternity leave, I peered out my upstairs window to see Kacey outside, sitting on the stoop of the house across the street, or on the curb, her legs stretched out before her, dejected. She turned her face up, squinting toward the house, her gaze darting rapidly over its facade, from window to window, seeking a glimpse of her son, I imagine. My son.

  Once or twice, she even went so far as to ring the doorbell.

  I never answered.

  On these occasions I made sure the rooms inside the house were darkened, and I gave Thomas a bottle so he wouldn’t cry, and I stayed far away from the door as she pounded on it, as she rang the bell, over and over again, wailing for the baby.

  Once, toward the end of those months, I walked outside with Thomas in a carrier I used to wear strapped to my body. I intended to walk to the corner store. As always, I had checked out the window before walking outside, ensuring that my sister was not present.

  But ten yards from the front of my house, I heard the footsteps of someone quickly approaching, and I turned, shielding Thomas’s head protectively, and there was Kacey, wild-eyed, her hair a mess, an angry ghost. She had been hiding, I suppose.

  —Please, Mick, she was saying. Please let me see him. I just want to see he’s okay. I’ll never ask again.

  I don’t know what came over me. I should have said no.

  Instead, after hesitating, I turned wordlessly in her direction, allowing her to gaze upon Thomas’s small face. He was sleeping. His cheek was pressed into my sternum. He was—is—a beautiful child.

  Kacey smiled, just a little. She began crying, which made her look even wilder. She swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. A neighbor passed and looked at us both, goggle-eyed. Then she tried to catch my eye to ensure I was all right, presuming, I’m certain, that I was in the midst of being harassed by a crazed stranger. I didn’t look back at her.

  Tentatively, Kacey stretched out one hand, as if to put it on Thomas’s forehead—a benediction—but I jerked away, instinctively.

  —Please, she said again.

  It was the last word she would speak to me for the next five years, aside from our occasional encounters on the job.

  I shook my head. I walked away. She stood in place behind me, as still and as sorry as an abandoned house.

  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 fat
her 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.

  The last time we saw him, he took us to the Philadelphia Zoo. It was supposed to be a treat for us; we’d never been. We knew for weeks ahead of time that he was taking us there. I told Kacey not to get her hopes up.

  He did show up, but what I mainly remember about the day is that he wore a pager that kept going off, and that he looked nervous every time it did. We saw some giraffes and then we saw some gorillas and then he said we had to leave.

  —But we just got here, Kacey said, furious. We haven’t even seen the turtles.

  Our father looked confused.

  I knew why Kacey wanted to see the turtles: it was because our neighbor, Jimmy Donaghy, had made fun of her once for never having seen one. An arbitrary thing, casual cruelty, just an easy way to tease Kacey. I don’t remember now how it came up between them, but there it was: Kacey wanted to see a turtle so she could tell Jimmy Donaghy she’d seen one.

  —Aw, Kace, said our father. I don’t even know if they have turtles here.

  —They do, said Kacey, emphatically. They definitely do.

  Our father glanced around. Well, I have no idea where they are, he said, and we have to leave.

  His pager was buzzing and buzzing. He looked at it.

  The drive home was silent. I let Kacey ride up front, for once. Our father dropped us at Gee’s house and she opened the door for us, her mouth set, as if she’d been expecting this.

  —That was fast, she said, smugly.

  * * *

  —

  A week later a package arrived at the doorstep. In it were two stuffed animals: a turtle for Kacey, a gorilla for me. I was careless with mine, and lost it almost immediately. Kacey kept hers, carried it with her everywhere, even to school. She might still have it, for all I know.

  We never again heard from him, after that. Gee made it seem as if she didn’t, either. She told us with frequency that she should really take him to court for child support, but she didn’t have the time or money for a thing like that. She was too busy trying to keep a roof over our heads, she said, to go after our good-for-nothing father for the pennies he could afford to pay her.

  After he disappeared, we spent our teenage years avoiding discussion of him. We never wanted to get Gee started on him. We’d never hear the end of it. Once or twice, I heard rumors from neighbors or relatives regarding his whereabouts: Wilmington, Delaware, was the consensus. He’d gotten another girl pregnant there. Two more. He had six other kids, I heard once. He was in jail, I heard a lot.

  He was dead, I heard later.

  When I heard that one, I searched for him online. There it was: a death record for a Daniel Fitzpatrick from Philadelphia, born the same year as our father. But I did not know the day of his birth, and I didn’t ask Gee, who probably wouldn’t have known it herself.

  Still, I assumed it was him.

  I never told Kacey. I started to, many times, but I couldn’t bear to break the news to her. I suppose I believed, on some level, that our father was one of the few glowing embers of goodness that existed in Kacey’s life, a perennial secret hope, just out of sight. Something to live for, in other words. Someone to make proud. I didn’t want to take that from her. I didn’t want that small light to go out.

  My GPS brings me to a small house: the right side of a brick duplex across from the Riverview Cemetery. It’s a decent-looking structure, in good shape. Both halves are decorated for Christmas. The right half has electric candles in the windows and a plastic Christmas tree on the front porch. It’s seven at night now, and it’s been dark for hours.

  I park on the street, fifty feet away, and turn off my car. As soon as I kill my headlights, the road becomes impossible to see. The only light comes from the windows of the houses, the Christmas decorations they bear.

  I sit for a while. I turn back to look at the house in question. Face front. Turn back.

  Could my father live inside that house? It’s hard for me to reconcile my last memory of him with my ideas about the resident of 1025B Riverview Drive.

  After five minutes, I get out of my car and close the door, careful not to slam it. I walk over the ice patches that dot the road, slipping once. Then the darkness becomes overwhelming, and I feel the presence of the graveyard behind me, and I quicken my pace.

  I walk up the four front steps of the house. I ring the bell and then take several steps back, waiting on the porch. I think of all the other times in my life, in my career, that I’ve knocked at houses whose residents weren’t expecting me. Out of habit, I keep my hands by my sides, in sight of whomever opens the door.

  There is a faint rustle at the window to my right: a curtain being pushed aside and then dropped back into place.

  A moment later, a girl answers, a young teenager. She’s skinny, with black curly hair and glasses. My immediate impression of her is that she is shy and studious, perhaps somewhat nervous around strangers. She looks me over.

  She says nothing. Waits for me to speak.

  Suddenly it feels absurd to assume that my father still lives at an address that was his so long ago. In my experience, it’s Gee’s generation that has stayed rooted in place, still living in the homes they grew up in. Our parents’ generation is transient.

  So it is with a certain amount of embarrassment that I begin.

  —Hello there, I say to the girl. I’m sorry to disturb you. I was wondering if Daniel Fitzpatrick lived here.

  The girl frowns slightly. She hesitates. Looks worried.

  —It’s all right, I say.

  The girl is maybe thirteen or fourteen years old.

  —It’s nothing urgent, I say. I was just hoping to speak with him, briefly. If he lives here.

  If he’s alive, I think. I don’t say it.

  —Hang on one sec, says the girl. She retreats into the house, but leaves the front door open.

  Is it possible, I wonder, that that was my father’s daughter? My half sister? There’s something about her mouth that reminds me, the slightest bit, of Kacey’s mouth.

  I lean forward a little, peering into the house, looking around. Everything looks tidy. There’s a staircase in front of me and a living room to my right. The furniture is old but well cared for. A little dog, some kind of terrier, comes over and sniffs at my feet, ruffs once or twice. I give him a nudge with my foot, make sure he doesn’t attempt to escape. A radio is on in another room. On it, pop songs about Christmas play quietly.

  * * *

  —

  The girl is gone a long time, long enough so I wonder if I was supposed to have followed her. Cold air is still rushing into the house. I begin blowing into my hands to keep warm when I see someone descending the stairs right in front of me. Bare feet, and then legs, hidden by gray sweatpants.

  It’s a man, someplace around fifty, dark-haired.

  It’s my father.

  —Michaela? he says. Is that you?

  I nod.

  —I’m so glad you found me, he says. I’ve been looking for you.

  He glances behind him, slides his feet into shoes, and then palms some keys on a table beside the front door. He steps onto the porch and closes the door behind him.

  —Let’s go for a drive, he says.

  I hesitate for a moment. He’s been redeemed in my mind, in a way, by what I discovered at Gee’s. And yet I still don’t know his motives. And I still don’t know where my sister is.

  He registers my hesitation, perhaps.

  He says, Or you can drive. Up to you. You have a car with you?

  —I do, I say.

  * * *

  —

  We get in.

  —I thought you were dead, I say, befor
e he has even fastened his seat belt.

  At this, he laughs a little. I don’t think I am, he says. He puts one finger to the back of the other hand. Nope, he says. Not dead yet.

  I feel self-conscious around him for reasons I can’t explain. Suddenly I wonder what I must look like to him after this many years of absence. I want him to think well of me, and just as quickly I’m angry with myself for caring.

  I tell myself that I won’t talk until he does.

  Finally, he begins.

  My father tells me that he’s been looking for both of us, me and Kacey, for a long time.

  He got sober, he says, in 2005.

  At that point we were both adults, and he assumed, he said, that we hated him, because we never responded to any of his letters or cards.

  For years, he let this be his excuse for not seeking us out.

  —Then my daughter Jessie, he says, but he stops.

  —That was my other daughter, he says. Jessie. She’s twelve. This year she starts asking me about you guys, why I don’t see you. Wanting to meet her half sisters, I guess. And I realize, maybe enough time has gone by so you all are ready to talk to me again. I know I messed up in a lot of ways, he says. I know that’s on me. But I’m sober now, so I figure, it’s worth a shot. I’ve always felt badly about the way things went down with you girls. But at this point I have no idea where I’d even find you, and I know your grandmother isn’t gonna help me out. So I hire a guy I know, ex-cop, now does private work. Mostly gets hired by people looking to catch their husband or wife in the act, but, you know. Gets the job done.