The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

“That’s pretty much what Gabe said.”

  Mom’s eyes twinkled. “I like that boy more and more. Young man, I should say. Given your doctor visit … ”

  “Mom!”

  She leaned forward and gripped both Corpse’s hands. “Oona, I’m happy for you. And a little jealous, honestly.”

  I remembered how in the recliner with Dad, I’d thought how everyone was just a kid.

  “Thanks,” Corpse said. “You could come with Dad and me.”

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t think your father or I are ready for that. Even if he gets better, it’s going to take some time for me. A lot of years will need undoing. It’s funny. How a person can try and try for so long, and then one day—”

  “You’ve got to try.”

  Mom looked like she might throw up.

  “Promise?” Corpse said.

  Corpse listened to three heartbeats before Mom said, “Promise.”

  Twenty-Eight

  From Oona’s journal:

  Blood and water fulfill the same function. These abilities are temperature dependent. At 4 degrees, water is able to shift material, remove and transport sediment. Blood must also move waste away. Oxygen is present in both and can promote growth and decay.

  —Viktor Schauberger

  Sugeidi set a stack of clean clothes next to the suitcase on our bed. She rested her knuckles on her hips and studied Corpse’s black eye. It had swollen shut for two days, which made Brandy smirk. The yellow and purple had long since faded though, and just a faint purple crescent remained on her lid. Tanesha hadn’t returned to school.

  “It’s fine,” Corpse said.

  Sugeidi continued to stand with her hands on her hips.

  “What?” Corpse said. “You told me to heal them.”

  “Sí,” she said, “but I no like.”

  Corpse wished everyone would stop worrying about this trip. What did they all see that she didn’t? She considered how each of us knows a person in our own way. There was Mom’s Oona, Sugeidi’s Oona, Gabe’s Oona, Ash’s Oona, Tanesha’s Oona, Mr. Handler’s Oona, Angel’s Oona, Dr. Yazzie’s Oona. With literally hundreds of Oonas out there, no wonder we were struggling to understand ourself. Plus, the Tony Antunes we knew was different from Sugeidi’s Tony, or Gabe’s Tony, or Mom’s. Or from the Tony the voice on his phone knew, the voice Corpse had hung up on. Or the one Dad had laughed with. I wondered if he was having an affair, and Corpse swallowed it back. He was returning to Lisbon for her, and she was the only one that could get him there. She thought of those chocolate eyes. He’d said he loved her. That counted for something. Didn’t it?

  “Sugeidi,” she said, “we have to do this.”

  “You call me?”

  Mom had taken our phone to the store, gotten it programmed so it would work in Portugal, and Sugeidi knew this. They must have talked. Planned even.

  Corpse grinned. “I call you.”

  “Bueno,” she said and trod from the room.

  “Where are you going to dinner?” Mom said.

  “Le Ménage,” Gabe said.

  “That should be yummy,” she said. “Think I’ll go there soon myself. Do you have a reservation?” In Crystal Village, spring break crowds started the first week in March, moving west across America and then south into Mexico until the mountain closed in mid-April.

  Gabe nodded.

  “Have fun. And good luck in your tournament. Where is it again?” Mom said.

  “San Diego,” he said.

  “Well, safe travels,” she said.

  “For all of us,” he said.

  They looked at Corpse, who rolled her eyes.

  Corpse led him through the mudroom into the garage. She got as far as our white Range Rover’s back bumper. She still hadn’t driven since we’d died. She worried now that if she climbed into its driver’s seat, she’d descend toward that suicide self. I worried about that too, but something else had always troubled us about driving, a strange, gnawing uneasiness.

  “Could we walk to town?” she said.

  “Sure.” Gabe closed the passenger door.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  “Walking’s good,” he said.

  Corpse closed the garage door at the keypad outside. They strolled down the driveway, and as they passed through the opening in the wall, she turned and studied the place Gabe’s dad had repaired.

  “What’s up?” Gabe said.

  “Just thinking.” She took his hand and laid her head against his arm. “It’s funny how the world works, isn’t it? If I hadn’t forgotten my Chemistry book that day, I wouldn’t have been there in the hall. If you hadn’t gone to the bathroom, you wouldn’t have been there either.”

  “Fate.”

  “This wall would be just a wall. Tanesha would still be in school.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for her dropping out.”

  “And Ash might still be alive.”

  “Oona. Stop!”

  “Don’t you ever wonder? What if I’d died?”

  He pulled her against him. “I wonder about other things.”

  His determination and love when he’d passed through me were right there.

  They kissed. I drew close. The sound of the bus accelerating from the stop down the road made them pull apart.

  “Hey, let’s take the bus,” Corpse said. She jogged to the stop, tugging Gabe by the hand. The bus pulled up, and the owl-eyed driver assessed them as they climbed on. They found a seat near the back.

  “That driver sure finds us interesting,” Gabe whispered.

  I drifted to the ceiling. A few of the ads had changed since the night we’d killed ourself. That night, I’d felt so vibrant, so … cocky.

  “He’s the one who called in my location the night of the suicide.”

  Gabe studied the back of the driver’s thinning hair. “Well, I need to thank him then.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  When the bus pulled into the Transportation Center, Corpse and Gabe waited until all of the passengers disembarked. The driver eyed them in the mirror. He rose and lifted a backpack from behind his seat.

  Hurry! I said. Corpse strode to him. “Sir?”

  His eyes widened.

  “Thank you for calling me in that night.”

  The driver smiled shyly. “You’re welcome.” His voice sounded like it came from one of those old black-and-white movies.

  Corpse didn’t know what else to say, so she nodded, and he nodded back. She descended the two stairs off the bus.

  “Thanks, man,” Gabe said and followed her.

  Corpse looked back over her shoulder, and the driver still stood there, smiling.

  “What time’s our reservation?”

  “Seven.”

  Corpse read the clock tower at Crystal Village’s center: only ten minutes. They paused at the heated fountain and watched the shooting arcs of water. I felt like one of those momentary arcs, drawn forever back to Corpse.

  “Doesn’t that water seem alive?” Corpse said.

  “It does,” Gabe said.

  “Isn’t it amazing how it can be separate like that, yet moments later disappear, part of the whole pool?”

  “Hmm,” Gabe said.

  “Did you know water has three phases?” she said.

  “Phases?”

  “States: solid, liquid, gas. Right now, all three surround us. It’s everywhere.”

  “I knew that, I guess. Doesn’t everyone?” Gabe said.

  “Yes, but they forget. And water moves between those states and we never notice.”

  “I didn’t know you were so into water.”

  “Did you know it’s healthiest at 4 degrees Celsius?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a narrow margin.”

  Gabe
didn’t say anything, but he studied her as she watched the fountain.

  “Our bodies are 57 percent water.”

  “Yes.”

  “Over half.” She sighed deeply. “Maybe our spirits are gas while our bodies are liquid. I turned solid when I died.”

  Gabe looked worried, so she kissed his cheek.

  “After dinner could we swing by the hospital?” she said. “There are some other people I need to thank.”

  At the hospital, Copse started toward the main entrance but stopped. “I want to see where my ambulance arrived,” she said. “I want to go in that way.”

  They followed a sidewalk around the red brick building to a portico that said Ambulance Entrance in big letters across the top. One ambulance was parked under it. Corpse paused and imagined paramedics pulling her stretcher from the rectangle of light cast by the ambulance’s rear door. She pictured the stretcher rolling across the short patch of asphalt, her head bobbing from the jostling, that crown glinting in the lights.

  “I was dead right here,” she said.

  Pain took over Gabe’s face.

  She strode to the electronic glass doors and they whooshed open. She strode into the warm air and looked left, right. She approached the reception counter in three strides. Gabe followed a few steps behind, hands in his letter jacket pockets.

  “My name is Oona Antunes,” Corpse said.

  The receptionist behind the desk had spiky purple hair and a diamond stud through one nostril. “Yes, I know,” she said.

  A nurse in green scrubs stepped to the desk, bent over a list, and ran his finger down it. His ponytail reminded Corpse of Dr. Benson, and she remembered his flute’s sustaining notes. Inhaled them.

  “I wonder if you could direct me to who was working the night I was here.”

  “I was.” The nurse straightened and stood eye-level with Corpse.

  “So was I,” the receptionist said.

  “Who was the doctor?”

  The nurse’s eyebrows lifted. “Dr. Hanson. Another nurse was called down from Intensive Care, but he’s on vacation.”

  From the corner of her eye, Corpse saw a white doctor’s coat move behind a curtained-off bed. “Could I talk to him?”

  “Sure.” The nurse walked to the bed and ducked behind the curtain. After a minute he returned with the doctor, who looked more like a professional basketball player as he assessed Corpse with a glowing grin. His shaved head and stature were so far from what Corpse had expected that the words she’d been rehearsing on the walk over evaporated.

  “I know this seems weird. But … I just want to …

  well … thank you.”

  The nurse and Dr. Hanson beamed at each other. Dr. Hanson reached out a big hand and put it on her shoulder. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Moments like this make our job worthwhile.”

  Corpse looked down and said, “It’s so embarrassing.”

  Dr. Hanson hugged her then. “We all make mistakes.”

  Before I knew it, I’d joined her in that doctor’s arms. That glow I felt: another hue of love.

  Corpse stepped back, wiping her eyes. “Was I wearing a crown?”

  Gabe tensed at her elbow.

  The doctor’s eyebrows pressed down, but the nurse’s rose. They looked at each other and shook their heads. “No crown,” the nurse said.

  “Okay. I’ve been wondering. Are the paramedics from that night here too?”

  “They’re right outside,” the receptionist said, blotting under her eyes with a tissue. She pointed toward the electric doors and blew her nose.

  “Thanks again,” Corpse said.

  Corpse strode to the ambulance parked under the portico, Gabe still trailing. He’d grown pensive. The vehicle’s back door stood open now and a guy leaned against its frame, holding a clipboard and talking to someone inside.

  “Excuse me,” Corpse said.

  The guy turned and she could see his partner, seated on a bench within the ambulance. They wore short-sleeved uniform shirts, and she studied the muscles of the arms that had ferried the dead her from that trail.

  “My name is Oona Antunes,” she said. “A couple months ago, you saved my life.”

  “Not something I’d forget,” said the guy in the ambulance.

  The guy outside snorted.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Both the guys straightened and seemed to take in her live version.

  “You’re welcome,” said the one with the clipboard.

  The one inside nodded. “It’s what we do. Glad to see you’re all right.”

  She shrugged and glanced at Gabe. “I’m working at it. Anyway, thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “Um, when you found me, was I wearing a crown?”

  The paramedics looked at each other. They looked at Corpse and shook their heads. The one outside said, “No crown.”

  Gabe and Corpse walked back to Chateau Antunes on the recreation path, not talking. But for Crystal Village’s distant glow, the moonless night left them in darkness. Gabe put on a headlamp and they followed its beam.

  “You’re prepared,” Corpse said.

  “Yep,” Gabe said.

  I remembered following Angel’s flashlight down to the fire.

  They neared the place where they’d had the snowball fight. Their path to the spruce was gone, covered by a foot of snow, but someone had made a new one. Gabe took Corpse’s hand, led her up the bank, and lowered her by the waist on its far side. He turned off the headlamp and stowed it in his pocket. She followed him down the path.

  They came to the river, and it was very dark beneath the spruce. Gabe pulled two blankets down from its branches and spread one on the ground. He sat on the blanket and patted the spot next to him. She joined him, and he wrapped the other blanket around them so their heads were hooded.

  “That was intense,” he said. “Back there. At the hospital.”

  “I’m glad I did it.”

  “You might be the bravest person I know.”

  “Right.” Corpse said, like you’re kidding.

  The river gurgled beneath ice. A little farther down, it rushed softly in a gap.

  “That crown?” Gabe said.

  “It’s hard to explain. I just kept picturing myself being rescued in it and looking so dumb. You know? I just wondered how stuck-up, how stupid, I looked.”

  “You looked beautiful.” Gabe spoke like he was in a trance. Corpse could barely see his profile. “Your mom called and told me where you were. I sprinted along this path, found your heel marks on that trail. I was the first one to arrive. You lay on your side. It was freezing. You were in that dress with no sleeves. I had on just that tuxedo shirt and was so cold, yet you looked comfortable, content. I was afraid to touch you, but I did. You were like ice. I cried so hard.” He looked down, between his knees. “I was sure you were dead.” His fingers traced his lips. “So cold. I heard people approaching on the path, so I took that crown. I wanted one thing to remember you. A goodbye, I guess.”

  “You have the crown?”

  “Had. After you lived, after that first time I visited you at your house. Remember?”

  She nodded.

  “I had it in my coat pocket. I walked back on the path and came out here. I threw it there.” He gestured toward the river with his chin.

  Corpse shot up, peering at the ice.

  “You can’t get it now.” He drew her back down. “It’s long gone.” He rewrapped the blanket around them. “Are you pissed at me?”

  “I kept going on about it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I just … it’s embarrassing. I mean, you’re not even the crown type. Don’t be pissed.”

  “Pissed? No. I should thank you, I guess. Nobody else saw me in it. Oh, Gabe, how awful. I just lef
t you at the dance. Finding me must have been so—”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’ve hurt so many people.”

  “Don’t do that to yourself.”

  Silence settled between them.

  “What kind of girl am I? I can’t seem to figure it out,” Corpse said.

  He held up a little velvet box. “My kind.”

  Corpse took it and opened it. Gabe turned on the headlamp, set it in his lap. She tilted the box and saw a heart pendant that matched the one on her necklace.

  “That one heart was mine,” Gabe said. “Now that you’ve said you love me, well, I thought our hearts should be together.” He felt around the back of her neck and unclasped her necklace. She lifted the tiny heart from its box and slid it onto the chain as Gabe held it open. He returned it to her neck.

  I lurked outside that blanket. It hung down so only their illuminated cheeks and chins showed.

  “There,” he said, turning off the headlamp and stowing it in his pocket. “Now we’re together.” He pressed his forehead to hers. Corpse took his hands, ran her thumbs over his fingernails, and imagined their pink crescents. She kissed him.

  He unzipped her parka. She unsnapped his leather jacket and unzipped his jeans. The blanked writhed, and I imagined he toed off his sneakers and pulled off her snow boots. They wriggled out of their pants and looked at one another.

  Corpse could barely discern Gabe’s face, yet she understood him clearly, knew he understood her too. They slid off their underwear. I remembered Gabe’s love. It wasn’t fair. I funneled into that blanket and layered myself over her skin.

  Darkness ruled. There was only touch and sound and taste. Corpse lay back, pulling Gabe’s furnace-warmth onto her, onto me. Gabe’s breaths turned heavy. Corpse pressed her mouth to his so she breathed his air. Their chests pressed against one another, and I felt their skin’s introductions. He pulled back, put his mouth on her nipple, his lips through me. He moved to the other as his hand traced down. His saliva on her vacant nipple turned cool as it evaporated. She gasped when his fingers arrived where only ours had ever been.

  “Prince Charming,” Corpse said against his cheek and felt her breath eddy back onto her. He laughed and she pulled him down, felt him slide between her legs and into her. It hurt. She caught her breath.