The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

  She said something ending in bonita as she passed.

  Corpse smiled, recognizing “pretty,” and watched the woman enter the restaurant. When she turned back, Dad was standing, eyes on the door. He yanked out his wallet, set fifty euro on the table, and bolted down the street.

  “But—” Corpse said.

  He didn’t even look back.

  Corpse stood and peered into the restaurant. The old woman lifted rolls from her bags and set them on the counter of the kitchen. A cook clunked a plate of halibut on the counter next to the rolls. Corpse’s stomach grumbled. She considered sitting right back down. I seconded that, but she took off after Dad, forgetting the cobbles’ slickness and practically killing herself on the first sloping step.

  At the bottom of the hill, Corpse still hadn’t caught up with Dad. He took a ninety-degree right turn and marched into that church.

  Corpse eyed the cracked pillars on either side of the door. I thought of the last church we’d been in, at Ash’s memorial service. Crystal Village Community Church was built a year ago. We’d never actually been in a Catholic church. Hadn’t even realized how, on family vacations in the past, Dad had avoided churches, even the famous ones.

  Inside, people were scattered in pews down the immense, high-ceilinged space. Many kneeled, heads bowed, clasped hands resting on the backs of the wooden pews before them. The front of the church was painted blood red, and there were statues in a gothic Biblical scene. Down the middle and side aisles, tourists strolled, whispered, and took photos. Near the front branched perpendicular areas, also filled with pews. I rose halfway to the ceiling and saw that the inside was shaped like a big cross. Tourists milled around and took pictures of whatever was at the end of each arm.

  I drifted up, up, toward that ceiling, but the higher I went, the closer the air became. It felt crowded, though I couldn’t see anything. I shot down to Corpse.

  She’d found Dad.

  He kneeled in the sixth pew from the back, forehead pressed against his clasped hands, his body shaking. When she touched his shoulder, he looked up with flinching eyes. His sagging face was a labyrinth of tears.

  “Dad?”

  Something seeped from between his brow and chin that did not belong in a church. His phone rang. He put his forehead back on his hands and shuddered.

  Corpse retreated three steps. The church smelled faintly of smoke. And ruin. She felt she was choking. We fled to the sun.

  Tilting her face to its rays, she held out her open palms. I was right there with her.

  Thirty-Three

  From Oona’s journal:

  I breathe water, smell water, hear water, walk with its rushing companionship. My body: a sea. Water the key.

  —Oona

  “Dad?” Corpse rubbed her eyes and squinted into the shafting sunlight. It felt like the middle of the night again. She knew that wasn’t true, though, because last night, she’d seen the digital clock announce 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, and finally 3:00. She’d pretended to sleep but watched Dad as he sat in his chair and stared out the window, that eerie expression ruling his face.

  Corpse threw back the covers and walked to the bathroom. “Dad?” She opened the balcony door and stepped into morning. At eight o’clock, Rossio Square was already bustling. She didn’t see Dad anywhere below, so she washed her face and tugged on shorts and a blouse, scuffed on her flip-flops.

  Dad wasn’t in the hotel restaurant either. Corpse returned to the room, cursing herself. Yesterday afternoon, we’d been scared enough to consider getting a room of our own. Yet we’d been afraid of what Dad might do to himself, so we’d stayed. Now he’d snuck off, right under our nose. Who knew what he might be doing? Corpse realized her phone was still off from the night. She turned it on and texted him: Where r u?

  It beeped with a new text.

  “Yes,” she said. But it was Gabe: Third in the tourney. Love u. Sent two hours earlier. Before he’d gone to bed, probably. Now that he was home and didn’t need to focus on soccer, she wanted to spill her guts to him the way she had to Mom last night, but he’d flip out.

  As she’d told Mom about their day and Dad’s steady decline, Mom had turned quieter and quieter. “Oona, be careful,” she’d said and hung up. Now Corpse found another text that must have arrived in the night. Mom: I’m in Newark. B there soon. It was followed by a text from Carol, our pilot: How r things? Carol’s text sounded casual, but Mom must have called her, because Carol would never have our phone number.

  I suddenly felt sorry for Dad, for the humiliation of this situation we’d caused. Corpse texted Carol: Fine.

  Though she was standing, Corpse rocked back and forth, rubbing her thumbs over the phone. Our world seemed about to implode. I thought of Sugeidi. Mom would have told her everything. Sugeidi would be sick with worry. Corpse lunged onto the bed, sat cross-legged, started to dial home. I realized it was one thirty in the morning there. Sugeidi would still be at her son’s trailer, lying awake with concern. Corpse buried her face in her hands.

  All those texts from Ash. If we’d just answered them, would Ash be alive today? We couldn’t let Dad do anything stupid. Corpse remembered him saying, I love you. Okay? He’d been the first—not her, not Mom—to say it. We wished she could call Sugeidi. Sugeidi would know what to do.

  Yesterday’s old woman rose in Corpse’s memory. I remembered how the woman appeared from Beco da Rosas, the alley Corpse and Dad had walked down after leaving his house. I remembered the unanswered ring of his phone. I thought how Dad had freaked when he saw the woman. Suddenly, we knew where he was.

  At the shiny desk, Corpse found a little pad of paper. On it, in case she was wrong, she wrote Gone for a walk. She tore off the note and set it on the table next to Dad’s chair.

  Corpse stared at the twilight door with the blue-fist knocker. She ran her fingers over its knuckles. What had gone on behind this door? What had Dad hidden for so long?

  She marched to the neighboring door, the red one, and traced the letters on the bronze plaque beside it. Antunes. She tried to sense family.

  On the door’s left edge were three different locks and a gold handle like from a kitchen drawer. In the top half, a raised rectangle framed a curtained window. A click sounded from inside, and the window swung inward. Corpse flinched back. So did yesterday’s old woman, hand over her heart like Sugeidi.

  “I’m sorry,” Corpse said. “Do you speak English?”

  The woman seemed to recognize her. “A little.” Her voice moved slowly.

  “Is your name Antunes?”

  “Yes,” she said suspiciously.

  “Are you the aunt of Tony Antunes?”

  The woman peered at her.

  “He is my father.”

  The woman’s hand flew to her heart, and she said something ending with a word sounding like dios. I realized she’d said “Dear God!” The woman’s eyes shot left, then right. “He is here?”

  She said “is” so like Sugeidi it almost made Corpse cry. She took a deep breath. “He’s not with you?”

  “No!”

  Their eyes had a conversation:

  The woman: You’re afraid.

  Corpse: Yes!

  Corpse smelled baking bread. “Can you tell me about him?” she said slowly.

  The old woman wore the same black dress with the pink apron. As she leaned on the window’s opening, the skin of her thick arms folded over the edge like fabric. On her left hand glinted a silver wedding band. That hand reached out and rubbed a lock of Oona’s hair between two fingers.

  She smiled and said something ending in bonita. She stepped back, closed the window, and opened the door. “Come.” She gestured inside.

  A plate with a roll, hot from the oven, and some cherries sat before Corpse on the square white table in Dad’s aunt’s kitchen. It was a spare kitchen, without even a microwave, and dazzlingly cle
an, but I could tell it produced tons of food. Corpse wondered what this woman would think of Chateau Antunes’s kitchen.

  Out a back window, an orange tree spilled over the fence from the yard next door. I tried to picture the kid-Dad in its top branches, peering down, but I kept seeing his grown self there, in his Oxford shirt and chinos. Corpse inhaled the yeasty air. Dad’s aunt. His people. His home.

  The woman sat down across from Corpse and smiled. “You resemble he.”

  Corpse nodded.

  “You have brother? Sister?”

  Corpse shook her head.

  “You live in America?”

  “Crystal Village, Colorado.”

  “Ah, Colorado.” She said a word sounding like montañas.

  “Mountains, yes. It’s very pretty.” Corpse tasted homesickness for Crystal Village’s ridgelines, its rushing creek, its pines and aspens. She longed to plant her butt on that suicide rock and let it anchor her world.

  Instead she felt Dad’s shallow breaths as she’d sat with all her weight on his belly, forcing him to return home. I love you. Okay? She took a bite of the roll. It was airy and delicious. A fat silence settled on the table. Corpse chewed, touched her heart necklace, and gathered courage.

  “Dad’s family. What happened?” she finally said, flicking a bread crumb from her shorts.

  The woman’s eyes snagged on Corpse’s missing fingers.

  “It’s nothing.” Corpse dropped that hand to her lap.

  Nothing? I couldn’t believe she’d said that. Yet it was true. No-thing. No-where. No words meant everything lately.

  The woman put her palms on the table and studied the backs of her own age-spotted hands. “You no know?”

  Corpse straightened.

  The woman looked at Corpse through a face hung with such sadness that Corpse turned shivery.

  “Ah,” the woman said, like a thing had been confirmed. “My brother, he die. His wife, she die. And his son.”

  Through numb lips, Corpse said, “Son? But Dad lived.”

  “No. What word … he … Ana.”

  “Dad had a sister? A sister?”

  The woman’s head tilted. “He no tell?”

  No tell. No know.

  The woman eyed Corpse. “You have trouble?”

  “What happened to his family?”

  The woman sat back and studied her lap. “We never …

  how you say?” She took a huge breath. “I know he kill them.”

  The woman’s mouth moved, but Corpse strained to hear through the blood rushing in her ears. The woman struggled, gave up on English, and spilled words. I heard something like “accidente de carro.” Corpse felt like she was drowning, but I heard “cayu no mar.” Did that mean “no more?” Wait! Mar in Spanish meant “sea.”

  “I don’t understand,” Corpse said. “A car accident? Dad said they drowned.”

  The woman nodded, but as her mouth parted to speak again, our phone chimed with a text. Dad: At hotel. Rented a car.

  Corpse stood so fast, her chair back clapped the floor behind her. She looked from our phone to the woman. “How did the crash happen?”

  The woman pressed her lips. “I speak too much.”

  “Please.”

  She pressed her lips harder and shook her head.

  “Please! I have to go now!”

  Dad’s aunt smiled, that dark tooth showing. “What is you name?”

  Corpse blew out her breath. “Oona.” She gathered herself. “What’s your name?”

  “Call me Tia Célia. You come again?”

  Corpse forced herself to speak slowly. “What was Dad’s family like?”

  His aunt smiled sadly, and her eyes blurred with tears. “You resemble Ana. They call he princesa.”

  Corpse stepped back, bumping the wall. “They called Ana princess?”

  Dad’s aunt nodded.

  Corpse realized her hand was pressing her heart and straightened. “I have to go. Dad’s waiting.” She spoke through numb lips.

  From her red doorway, Tia Célia waved, and Corpse waved back. As soon as she’d walked down the hill, far enough that she was out of sight, Corpse paused and pulled up Google Translate on her phone. She typed in “cayu no mar.”

  It responded: Did you mean caiu no mar?

  She clicked on that.

  The translation read: Fell into the sea.

  Thirty-Four

  From Oona’s journal:

  Because I could not stop for Death,

  He kindly stopped for me;

  The carriage held but just ourselves

  And Immortality.

  —Emily Dickinson, “The Chariot,” lines 1-4

  “Where have you been?” Dad said.

  The whole way down the hill from his aunt’s home, Corpse had said, “Dad loves me. Dad loves me. Dad loves me.” Tia Célia’s words couldn’t be true. But I’d felt that inky surge, and now the skewed way his mouth lined up with his eyes made sense.

  Corpse worked to steady her voice. “Breakfast.”

  Dad studied her like he knew everything.

  She swallowed, and it was loud in her ears. “You rented a car?”

  “We’re going to Cascais. To the beach. Pack your things.”

  Corpse saw his phone, resting atop her note on the table next to his chair. It looked turned off.

  “The beach?” she said.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Is it far?” Mom would be so worried.

  “Half an hour.”

  Corpse couldn’t hold Dad’s gaze. Its flicker terrified us. I thought how he’d meekly played LIFE with Corpse in his office, the way she’d talked to him that day. She’d been toying with fire. Now only his silhouette was familiar.

  Corpse stepped back and focused on his outlines against the light streaming through the balcony doors. Our whole life we’d had only one arms-length day a week with him, and we’d resented it. But maybe his absence wasn’t selfishness after all. Maybe he’d been protecting us. And Mom. Corpse almost choked on tears. What had we done? She turned to pack her things.

  She put her bikini, sunscreen, Kindle, journal with Angel’s feather, a pencil, and a hotel towel into a beach bag. Just three days ago, she’d set that bag in her suitcase so naively. Dad sat in his chair, nodding as he watched her every move.

  She went into the bathroom, shut the door, and pulled her phone from her shorts pocket. Mom was still an hour from landing, but Corpse texted: Gone to Cascais. Dad rented car. She texted Gabe: Decided on Yale. Love you big. She needed to make that promise, to believe in the future. To give him at least that. Then I realized that attending Yale actually was our decision, finally made at such a ridiculous time. A sad laugh bubbled out of Corpse. She rose and gazed at her reflection in the mirror over the sink.

  She pressed her five-fingered hand over her heart and traced her reflection with her three-fingered one. “Courage,” she whispered.

  “Let’s go, princess.” Without seeing his face, she thought Dad’s voice was a boy’s. As Corpse stepped out of the bathroom, Dad moved to the door. His phone remained on her note.

  The hotel’s valet pulled up in a midnight blue convertible, top down. Dad gave him two euro and climbed in behind the wheel. Our phone vibrated in our pocket. Mom, I was sure. But Corpse didn’t dare take it out. She knew what it would say: Don’t go! But we had to go. A third suicide would kill us: DEAD GIRL MURDERS FATHER.

  “Well?” Dad said.

  Corpse squinted to transform him to outlines. She tossed her bag in the backseat and climbed into the passenger one. Dad turned onto a street heading toward the river, the convertible’s tires thunking along the cobbles. Traffic clogged the road, and they stopped three times. Corpse had to f
orce herself not to bolt to the sidewalk.

  Finally he turned onto the busy asphalt road that ribboned along the Tagus. As the wind whipped back her hair, she took in the wide river dotted with sailboats, and I thought how Dad drove the direction the water flowed. Corpse saw many fishing boats in docks. Across the river, container ships.

  Dad took it all in with flinching eyes. He chuckled at a docked cruise ship. “How things change.”

  They came to a humongous concrete monument on the river’s bank. It resembled the prow of a ship, with statues of people dressed like Christopher Columbus standing along its edges. Across from it, on the road’s other side, were beautiful gardens and what looked like a huge church. They drove past a castle tower in the river. To enter it would be to stroll through hundreds of years. After all the happiness and tragedy its stones must have witnessed, our life was just a blip on its timeline.

  Corpse studied Dad’s white knuckles on the steering wheel. I thought of the blood pumping through them. Mom’s hands had gripped her Range Rover steering wheel like that, snow all around us as surface tension corralled her tears.

  Corpse blinked back the vision of Dad in that church. She sprayed out her hand on her shorts and studied her missing fingers, then her toes. Had her blood felt these digits’ absence? Had it panicked when her freezing heart stopped? Dad glanced at her with flickering eyes. She found her reflection in the side mirror.

  They drove beyond Lisbon into Portugal’s version of suburbs. White walls mostly. Red roofs, but more spread out. A beach lined with green umbrellas appeared on their left and the Tagus’s banks scrolled back, away from each other. Now the water was constant on that side. Corpse peered across it and thought how the fresh water must bash the salty waves. I considered their churning battle, how neither could ever win.

  Dad exited the road. He negotiated a roundabout, drove toward the sea, and there was another Moorish castle on a promontory. He steered onto a side street and parallel parked. Corpse finger-combed her hair. Maybe they really were just going to the beach.