The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

  Gabe looked at him and then at us. “Or what,” he yelled.

  Manny flung out his arm and walked toward the lot.

  We stood there, so awkward. Everybody noticing and staring. It was bright and Gabe squinted as he said, “Want to go for a walk?”

  I fought her, but she nodded. “I live about twenty minutes away.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “My dad repaired some of the stone on your house. I worked with him a little.”

  Our mind reeled back two winters to when a car slid off the road into the wall surrounding our yard. That spring, two men had worked out there for a week—the scrape of chinking off a board, the high ring of chisel against stone. We’d never noticed a boy with them. We hadn’t given those laborers a second thought.

  We strolled along the recreation path that led past town and eventually near our house, moving aside for bikers, walkers, joggers, or roller bladers. We talked about our summer plans. Right after school let out, we would vacation in New York. In July, we were going to a month-long sailing camp in St. Lucia. Gabe planned to work full-time laying stone for his uncle. We kept seeing Gabe’s hands, the beautiful pink crescents beneath his fingernails, and wishing they would reach out and draw us close. Not for romance, but for that sense of rightness we’d found nowhere else.

  About halfway home, in a spot where the path bent around a huge spruce tree with Crystal Creek beside it, crashing and frothy with snowmelt, he stopped and turned to us. “How’s things?” he said. His thumb was hitched in his backpack’s strap to keep it tight on his shoulder.

  Our eyes slid off him to the water. It eddied in little splashes under the spruce’s exposed roots. We looked to the far bank. On the road a hundred yards behind us, a car rolled slowly past. Our cheeks drew tight, our brows pinched close.

  “That bad,” he said. “Man!”

  We started walking again. After a minute, he took our hand. We sighed and he glanced at us. Though I squirmed, we leaned our head against his shoulder for a few steps, and he glanced down again, this time with a sad smile.

  At our house, we crossed the street and stopped at the wall, near where it had been repaired. Gabe studied our clasped hands. Down the street the sounds of hammers pounding on a remodel grew suddenly loud. Every summer, our street endured the leveling of at least one perfectly good mansion and the construction of a new monstrosity in its place. Gabe eyed the wall’s stonework, scanned Chateau Antunes with its curving drive and greening lawn.

  “I should go home,” he said.

  Our phone issued a muffled beep from inside our backpack. We rolled our eyes.

  “That’s Ash,” we said. “She freaks when she’s not in control of my life.”

  We let go of his hand reluctantly and grew aware that from the chateau our heads would be visible above the shoulder-high wall. Mom would flip, see him as one more rebellion, but she couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  “That must suck,” he said, and it felt so good to be around someone who wasn’t Ash’s slave. He traced his fingers along his father’s work, following a line we couldn’t discern, one shoulder cocked back, holding his backpack in place. We noticed a white sock peeking out of a hole in the side of his sneaker. “Not bad,” he said. “See you.”

  “Bye,” we said, crossing our arms, hunching a little.

  He nodded and started back along the more direct road. We wondered if he’d take the bus when he reached town. We’d never seen him in a car of his own. When he was at the end of our wall, I tried to stop her, but we still said, “Gabe?”

  He turned.

  Our heartbeat drowned out the hammers. “Would you like my phone number?”

  He glanced at the chateau. “You sure?”

  We felt his lingering warmth in our palm, pressed it tighter against our ribs.

  Six

  From Oona’s journal:

  When water’s temperature drops to 0°C, each hydrogen molecule locks to a maximum of four others. The hydrogen creates elongated bonds in a lattice that has 10% less density than water at 4°C.

  —Biology: Life’s Course

  Mom flung back the curtains in our room, and blinding sunlight screamed in. Corpse blocked it with her palm, squinting.

  “Up!” Mom said. “Up. Life goes on.”

  She took the glass from Corpse’s nightstand, walked to the bathroom, and filled it. Corpse sat up.

  “Gabe’s coming in a bit.” Mom set the glass back on the nightstand.

  “Mom—”

  She held up her hand like a traffic cop. “I saw him in City Market yesterday, and … ” She dropped her arm and took a breath that used half the room’s air. “I told him to come by.” She glanced at our alarm clock. “He’ll be here in half an hour.”

  Corpse looked at the clock: 9:32.

  Sugeidi did the grocery shopping, so I wondered why Mom had even been in City Market.

  “Since when are you a Gabe fan?” Corpse said.

  Mom studied the three soccer trophies on our dresser, the tournament medals hanging from a hook above, the two framed pictures on the wall beside them, portraits we’d drawn in kindergarten. One was of just us, a big-headed stick figure with hands the same size as the head, sunrays for fingers. A pink triangle for a dress. The other drawing was of our family, standing, not touching, kid in the middle. Dad’s head was as big as ours, but square. His hands were tiny. Mom was mostly big yellow hair. Big red lips. Her hands were tiny too. Behind us beamed the sun, yet a spray of stars arced above Dad. We had no feet because we stood in blue, knee-high grass.

  “He’s a nice boy,” Mom said, and her gaze glued to Corpse. One of her eyes squinted, so slight I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t studying her.

  “Gabe loves you,” she said as if hypnotized, looking right through Corpse. “If you’re lucky enough to have someone actually love you, cherish it.”

  “Mom?” Corpse said.

  She resumed the bearing of a marble statue. “Get dressed.” She left.

  Corpse’s sigh replaced the air Mom had taken. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Gabe, she just couldn’t face what we’d done to him.

  She threw back the blankets and limped to the bathroom sink. You wouldn’t think pinkie toes would make much difference, but her balance was all wrong. Walking hurt, and she could still feel those missing digits. She hunched over from the hollow space I’d left.

  In the mirror, a monster stared back. Gauze hid her nose and cheek. The rest of her face was as splotched as a fetid pool. I wondered what Mom had told Gabe, what the rumor mill had spread about us at school. The winter formal had happened over two weeks ago, and I pictured Ash, furious that we hadn’t talked to her yet, gushing the details Dad must have told her and Gabe in the hospital. Embellishing them in her frustration.

  One morning, chin lifted against humiliation, Mom had announced there was an article about us in The Daily Crystal that had caused quite a stir. Since we were eighteen, they’d mentioned our name. I pictured the headline: DEAD GIRL LIVES. The following week, there’d been a string of articles on avoiding not only teen suicide but depression too. Apparently, one suicide can trigger an epidemic.

  Corpse ran water in the sink and dropped in a yellow washcloth. She spread her newly important left hand on the washcloth, watched the warm water move in rivulets along its bones. Gingerly and awkwardly, using that hand, she cleaned the unbandaged parts of her face and neck. That screeching, so long present when we braved mirrors, was a distant echo. She applied a special cream the doctors had sent home with us and, halfway to her bed, decided to change out of pajamas for the first time since leaving the hospital. She slid into her favorite jeans, watching her feet disappear into the legs and then poke out the ends.

  “The last time I wore these, I was whole,” she said. She tugged her favorite forest-green sweater over her head. At the mirror, she brushed her hai
r and studied its lustrous waves. This, at least, was unchanged. I saw a wig on carrion.

  Corpse made her bed, planning to sit there, but found herself hobbling beneath the hall’s arched timbers to the kitchen, hand pressed against the wall for balance. Our first journey from our room. She felt her skin pass through the warm air.

  Sugeidi was running water in the sink. Corpse wobbled across open space to a bar that stretched beneath a big rock arch. On the bar’s other side was countertop and the stove. When designing Chateau Antunes, Dad had insisted the stove be right there, so he could flip pancakes from the pan onto our plates, but he’d never actually done it. Never even cooked pancakes. He’d never once kicked the soccer ball with us either, though he watched games most Saturday evenings in the theater, and I played my heart out, hoping one day he’d watch me. Sometimes we’d join him in the theater, but he’d just become angles and stare at the game like we were invisible. Usually, we went out with Ash.

  Sugeidi shut off the water, looked out the window over the sink, and turned. Her hand flew to her heart. “Dios mio! ”

  “You really should turn down the heat.”

  “No sneak!” she said.

  They stared at each other, and Sugeidi burst into a smile.

  “What I make for you?” She always asked this way about what she could cook for our breakfast, lunch, or dinner if Mom and Dad were gone, which was mostly.

  We’d always loved the rock arch over the bar, one of the few cozy places in Chateau Antunes. Now it blocked my view, from either side. I decided to roam around the kitchen’s plaster ceiling.

  “Gabe’s coming,” Corpse said.

  “Sí,” she said. “Esta bien.”

  “That’s good ? Since when?”

  Sugeidi had flipped out the first time Gabe showed up at the house, had given us a month-long silent lecture. Mom and Dad were right there with her. I’d hurled silence back. We’d waged a silent war over prejudice.

  “Omelet?” Sugeidi said. Gabe’s favorite.

  “Sure,” Corpse said.

  It was trippy, seeing the kitchen from up there. The chandelier, the tops of the cupboards, were spotless.

  Sugeidi opened the elevator-sized, stainless steel fridge, plucked out eggs and cheese, and ferried them to the counter. She took down her favorite frying pan from its hook and set it on the burner, lit the gas. As she cracked eggs into a bowl and started to whisk them, Corpse said, “What do I say? I’m hideous.” She cupped her face in her hands. I had to agree.

  The doorbell rang. Sugeidi started toward it, but Mom answered. Sugeidi and Corpse looked at each other in surprise. Voices carried down the hall, Mom’s formal yet laced with that scratch, Gabe’s low but strong. Corpse turned shivery, listened for but could not hear their steps on the strip of carpet that ran down the hardwood, so she imagined them moving along, the last seconds of the old Oona still alive in Gabe’s mind. I drifted to the ceiling’s farthest corner. They entered the kitchen.

  Corpse braced for his revulsion and turned on her stool toward him.

  Gabe took in her nose and cheek, moved down her body, pausing at her hand, and on to her bandaged feet before returning to her face, his own face so tense. Corpse looked at the floor’s wide stones.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. That little-girl voice. She didn’t move, but she heard Sugeidi flip the sizzling omelet in the pan, smelled melting cheese. Gabe’s sneaker appeared in Corpse’s view of the floor, and she looked up as he climbed onto the stool beside her.

  “Orange juice, Gabe?” Mom said.

  “Yes, please,” he said, and as she opened the fridge, a look passed between Sugeidi, Gabe, and Corpse because Mom never waited on anyone, especially not Gabe. Mom poured two tall glasses and set them on the counter before them.

  Dad entered the kitchen, in chinos and a cardigan sweater, coffee cup in hand. We all tensed. Especially him.

  “Well, look at this,” he said. “Oona, you’re up. And hello, Gabe.”

  “Mr. Antunes,” Gabe said. Brave, considering how Dad had treated him in the past, despite our defending him, telling Dad he might even be valedictorian and how much courage that took because all his friends made fun of him. What happened in that hospital waiting room the night I died?

  Dad dumped his cup in the sink and filled it with fresh coffee at the machine. He took a sip and surveyed us over the rim. His eyes lingered on Mom, and her chin lifted like a challenge.

  “Well.” Dad nodded. Nodded like he didn’t realize he was doing it as he looked at each of us in turn except Sugeidi, whose back was to him. His phone rang. He answered it like a lifeline, and left. Mom stared after him, her face a stone. We all listened to his voice move down the hall.

  That nodding was new. That nodding was weird. It conjured that day at the ocean.

  Sugeidi cut the omelet with a spatula and put the halves on separate plates. Usually Gabe and Corpse shared a whole omelet on one plate. Sugeidi looked straight at Gabe as she set his half before him, and they had an entire conversation with their eyes that went like this:

  Sugeidi: I’ve never liked you, but I accept you now.

  Gabe: It’s about time.

  Sugeidi: I feel bad for you, but don’t you hurt her.

  Gabe: Who do you think I am?

  Sugeidi: Sorry.

  Gabe: No problem.

  Mom watched too, with an expression like she’d tasted something delicious but didn’t want to like it. Sugeidi put the egg bowl in the sink and the cheese back in the fridge.

  Mom said, “Sugeidi, I need you to help me with those boxes in the library. I’m sure these two have plenty to talk about.”

  Corpse practically fell off her stool. Gabe froze with a bite poised on his fork, cheese strings hanging long.

  Alone, they just ate. Corpse had hardly eaten anything since we’d come home, but right then, there was nothing else but to eat. Gabe finished, laid his fork on his plate and scooted it forward, then turned and pushed everything but Corpse out of focus. I slunk from my corner to the chandelier.

  “Remember that day in the hall, when we first met for real?” he said.

  Corpse nodded but could not meet his gaze. She thought how he must be seeing the gauze on her cheek, her right hand.

  “I knew what I was getting into, and I watched you sink, deeper and deeper. It sucked. You know this.”

  She nodded, felt like she’d swallowed sand.

  “Oona,” he said, “I never cared how you looked. Sure, it helped, I’m not going to lie. But in the beginning, you being so popular, so pretty—it was something I had to overcome. I got a lot of shit about it. You know that.”

  She nodded and thought of Tanesha’s gang and Manny.

  Quiet settled over them.

  “My mom was white. And very pretty. I never told you. But even Dad gave me a hard time about you.”

  I slunk closer to them.

  Corpse rolled her lips tight and stared at the fraying on the knees of Gabe’s jeans. He wore the sneakers she’d given him for his eighteenth birthday, only a week after our own birthday.

  “I love you,” he said. “Do you get that?”

  Corpse’s bandaged hand drifted to her heart necklace, pressed it hard against her skin.

  “I walked away from you in the hall that first time,” Gabe said, “and I could hardly see straight, I was so in love with you already. I can handle all the crap from my family, my friends.” He looked down the hall. “Your family. I could handle you being so sad over whatever was eating you.”

  Corpse couldn’t nod, couldn’t fathom how someone could love a person who was so screwed up.

  “What I don’t know if I can handle is how you looked me right in the eye and walked away to kill yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” Corpse said, little voice. I felt about that small too.

  “I don’t kn
ow if I can handle it. Do you get it?” Gabe said.

  She nodded. I wished we could explain why we’d done it. Yet even if I was in there helping, giving her that hard edge, there are some things without words. Our actions would have to talk now.

  Gabe wiped his cheek, and that just about killed us. Corpse imagined a tear pooling in his dimple. She swallowed against the hollowness inside her. She straightened.

  “I know now,” she said.

  “Know what?”

  I sensed what was coming and braced. We weren’t qualified for love.

  “That I … ” She looked down.

  Gabe slumped back on his stool, and his hands fell to his lap. Corpse studied the pink crescents beneath his fingernails. After a minute, he reached out and turned her to him fully, a gentle motion. At her collarbone, he traced the necklace’s imprint. He put his other hand on her other leg.

  “Does this hurt?” he said.

  Corpse shook her head. I realized she was lifting her chin just like Mom. Understood, then, that it was love’s plea.

  Corpse and Gabe leaned forward, pressed their foreheads together, and that did hurt, but Corpse didn’t care. I couldn’t stop myself. I curled into the arch of their bodies.

  Seven

  From Oona’s journal:

  As two substances with different temperatures are put together, the cooler substance increases the kinetic energy of the warmer one. This makes heat move from the warmer to the cooler substance until the substances are the same temperature. An ice cube, for example, absorbs a drink’s heat rather than cools it.

  —Biology: Life’s Course

  Gabe, Ash, and Corpse played LIFE in Chateau Antunes’s museum living room—the board laid out, the money and cards in neat piles on the coffee table next to a beach-ball-sized silver saucer mounded with pistachios. Two Christmases ago we’d asked for the game, picturing us and Mom and Dad seated around it, actually laughing like the family in the commercial. After unwrapping it, we’d set the game on this coffee table, in plain sight for the whole day.