The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

  What had we been thinking? That in thirty minutes the climate would evolve to the tropics? It was only 60 degrees. Of course she wasn’t putting on a bikini, even though the sky was cloudless. The beach was coarse golden sand. The water beyond, steely blue. This was the Atlantic, not the Caribbean. Dad must have known this as he’d watched her pack. It seemed a cruelty.

  Corpse walked barefoot down the hundred yards to where gentle waves rolled up the shore. She dipped her toe in the icy water. She turned.

  Dad leaned, arms and legs crossed, against the rock retaining wall below the cobbled sidewalk. Above him, cars and busses flowed past and people moved along, some strolling, some striding. An impressive six-story hotel stood at the street’s far side.

  From here, tall as her thumb, Dad seemed normal. A businessman in a yellow shirt and chinos. Maybe the hotel’s manager, contemplating a problem over his lunch hour. Corpse sighed. Yet as she got closer, his body’s rigidness indicated it would have had to be a really bad problem.

  She reached Dad, saw him looking intently at things on the beach. She looked where he looked. Nothing was there. She looked back at him, and he seemed an exile from even the air.

  She could bolt up the stairs leading to this beach, hop on a train to Lisbon, find Mom, and be safe. I pictured her settling into the train seat, leaning her head against the window as it pulled from the station. And then what? What might Dad do to himself?

  Seagulls took to squawking flight and hovered above. Birds do not fly, they are flown. Did the air really fly them? Corpse took a long sip of air, realized she now stood where he’d gazed all those years ago from that Bahamas beach.

  “Remember when I was nine, and we were on that beach in the Bahamas?” She braced for his biting response.

  Nothing.

  “You told me how the sky was like one big ocean? How the air moved in waves that transferred the sun’s energy to the oceans? How that energy ended on beaches in waves? Remember?”

  Nothing.

  “Dad, what’s going on? We didn’t come here to swim.”

  He blinked. “We had a picnic here.”

  “We?”

  “We drove Tia Célia’s truck. It was so loud, and the gears scraped every time Pai shifted. He was a pathetic driver. Dom, Mãe called him. Dom? He was no king. Mãe spread a worn blanket on that sand. My life was a prison of worn things. I refused to sit on it. My old pants, cut off at the knees, infuriated me.” His hands formed fists.

  “The water was frigid, even in July. I refused to swim. Mãe, Pai, and Ana splashed and laughed. Mãe laid out cod sandwiches on rolls, the same old sandwiches from our restaurant where I worked every single day, even after school. Couldn’t she have brought something different on this rare day? I wanted to spit at her, at Pai, at the patheticness of it all. Ana watched me. Sweet Ana, always adoring. She took my hand and said, ‘Smile, Tony.’”

  Dad wiped his right hand on his pants without seeming to notice, and Corpse’s mouth went dry.

  “She was always saying that. I turned, and there was that hotel: so grand and elegant. I wanted to escape with her there, order lunch. Just another thing I could only dream of. Portuguese families have a way of trapping you. Did you know? Forever. I looked from that hotel to my parents and realized I’d never, ever, be free.”

  Corpse felt the rock wall at her back. Finally, the truth was pouring out.

  Dad barked a laugh. “I never did get free of them.” He looked at her with those puddle eyes.

  Corpse reached out and took his hand. “Dad? Everything’s okay.”

  His head cocked right as if she’d slapped him. He pulled his hand loose and wiped it on his chinos. He nodded for a minute and rolled his head to crack his neck. He stared at that beach and said, “I’m going to drive up the coast. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “I’m going with you.” Corpse scuffed on her flip-flops.

  He wouldn’t look at her. “Stay here!”

  “No!”

  “Go to that hotel.” He gestured behind us with his chin and chuckled. “Use your credit card. Book a room so you can lounge by the pool. Spend a lot of money.”

  “No!”

  “Maybe I should drive. You could enjoy the scenery,” Corpse said as they approached the convertible.

  “Stay here!” Dad climbed in.

  Corpse strapped on her seat belt, listening for the buckle’s click. She hugged her beach bag in her lap.

  “Oona, stay!” He would not look at her.

  “So this would have been where the tidal wave started up the river?” she said.

  His chin dropped.

  “Dad, what’s going on?”

  He slumped. Didn’t move. Finally, he nodded in that unknowing way. He whimpered. Corpse reached toward his hand on his thigh, but stopped. He straightened, cracked his neck, and rubbed it like it ached.

  “Dad?”

  He looked directly at Corpse. A stranger. He started the convertible, pulled out, and turned onto the main road.

  Two lanes. The road curved along the coast, past the town, that castle, and a botanical park. He drove out of Cascais proper, along neighborhoods stretching up a gradual hill. On the left, the steely sea rolled against volcanic cliffs.

  Corpse was thankful for the traffic. Other cars might keep them safe. Tourists strolled or rode bikes along a paved path between the road and the cliffs. Dad cracked his neck again.

  He started spewing Portuguese. I couldn’t get his meaning, but I heard Pai and Mãe. And Ana. His voice turned high and trailed off. And then he said, “Princesa.” He shuddered. His eyes darted all over, but they didn’t seem to see Corpse. I pressed against her, felt her terror as she realized that the flicker in his eyes was suffocating grief.

  “Dad?” Corpse said. “You’re grown up now. You’re rich. You have me.”

  Nothing.

  “Tell me. What happened?”

  Nothing.

  “Dad, remember your promise? Things would be different?”

  His face softened. “Promesa.”

  “Yes! Yes! Remember? You love me!”

  He gazed down the road. “Love.” He moaned like a hurt animal. Then he pointed with his chin. “Just up there, I yelled, ‘I hate you! I wish you were dead!’ I hit Pai.”

  Dad lifted his right hand and studied its palm. “Pai’s eyes seemed to bleed when he looked at me. Those words killed him. And then we were flying.” Dad’s body sagged. “I killed them all!”

  “No! No, you didn’t! I was the same way with you and Mom. We all make mistakes!”

  He shook his head. “I’m evil.”

  A strange pile of lava rock on the roadside snagged his eye. His head swiveled, watched till he was looking over his shoulder, and the car swerved. His head snapped back. He straightened and flung Corpse a grin. “Princesa.” A single tear, pushed by the wind, traversed his temple.

  Corpse could not look away from that tear. It disappeared into his hair. She knew that expression ruling his face. He was no longer in the same place as her.

  Dad floored the gas. Corpse was flung against the seat. They approached a curve, and I sensed what he was planning. Corpse unbuckled her seat belt.

  “Dad, don’t! Please! Don’t!”

  He jerked the steering wheel left. She lunged and grabbed it. A woman screamed, an arm’s length away, as the convertible zoomed across the recreation path.

  It soared across air. Flew far out over the sea. Flown. Corpse noticed that a crescent moon and the sun inhabited opposite horizons. She seemed halfway to heaven.

  The convertible dove, tossing Corpse above it. She floated for an instant, watching the car plummet, and remembered those gossamer fruit fly wings. She became mass, and gravity grabbed her. The air’s velocity pressed her skin.

  “Dad!” she screamed. But he stared ahead as the converti
ble’s nose hit the water and his hands steered toward its depths. Caiu no mar. Dad was driving to his people. Reunion after all.

  Corpse’s fingertips touched the surface. Her body splashed, and she remembered that video’s drop of water: coalescence cascade. Then bone-numbing wet erased thought. Darkness consumed her.

  Arms out, palms up, hair fanned, she undulated on waves. She looked like she did sleeping on that suicide rock in that silly crown. Fifty yards away, Dad surfaced on a circle of steam and bubbles. Limp, eyes closed. His forehead pink shreds. Drowsiness seeped through me.

  Wake up! I yelled. Wake up! You’ll die!

  Corpse was two hundred yards from the lava rocks lining the cliff’s base.

  Wake up!

  She slept.

  Could I survive if she died? Alone? A ghost? And Dad. He could be alive.

  As Corpse rocked on the waves’ rise and fall, she resembled a mermaid offering. One foot had lost its flip-flop. I slunk close and tried to hear her breaths. Heard instead the frothy water churning Dad.

  She’d taught me that touching was more than skin. I now liked touching people. Even loving them. I even loved her.

  And then there it was. The answer. The key: me. I was what drove us to suicide. I was the bullshit. Not Ash. Not Mom. Not Dad. Me. Reasoning, doubting, judging me.

  I longed to evaporate. To rise to the clouds. Become indiscernible, even to myself. But then Corpse would die. Dad too. I had to wake her. To return. But not to exist as two selves. I wished for one Oona, only. Now or never. I funneled between her parted lips.

  Her cough rolled me through her echo-y body. Her eyes shot open. My world grew confined to her vision. She remembered cold’s deadliness.

  “No!” she said.

  I coursed into her limbs as she rolled onto her belly. Ahead, waves foamed over the black rocks at the cliff’s base. She swam toward shore.

  Dad! I yelled.

  She paused, turned, and trod water hard so she bobbed up and saw the yellow and tan blur of his body. She swam toward him, furiously at first, but the current wore her out. He was inching toward her, but it was so cold.

  She started again, ignoring her numb fingers. She neared him and tasted his blood on the water. She shook him. He didn’t wake. She tried to shout, but her numb lips wouldn’t form words. A distant siren wailed.

  Hurry! I said, weak with dilution.

  She wrapped her arm across his chest, his head lolled back against her shoulder, and she swam with one arm, kicking hard. Her strokes turned clumsy. Sleep was like a drug, but she forced it back and found efficiency if she floated right at the water’s surface.

  Fish do not swim, they are swum. Sugeidi’s image, hand over her heart, rose before Corpse. She sobbed, but found strength. She listened to her heart, blew out stronger breaths to its rhythm.

  She neared the rocks, but could not feel her body. Her eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. She lay her cheek on the water.

  Swim! I shouted.

  She closed her eyes.

  DEAD GIRL DROWNS!

  She started a dim crawl, kept it up. Lava rock rose beneath her, ripping her numb skin. The waves rolled them, like driftwood, till they flopped on their backs.

  Shouts fell from the cliff top. Corpse squinted at their tiny figures. Within her, our confluence. No feeling now. No pain. She groped for Dad’s hand. Gripped it.

  A thwapping consumed the air. A shadow passed across her. A rectangular silhouette lowered down. It got close and became an orange stretcher with a man astride, dangling from a cable to a helicopter. Just as he knelt beside us, Dad squeezed her hand.

  “Dad!” she croaked through wet hair wrapping her face.

  “Pai?” the man said.

  She barely nodded.

  Like a comet across that sleepy veil, I realize this had been our life’s map. Now, dwindling, our entire journey has played out before me. That suicide, one swaying step. We and she become I.

  Epilogue

  From Oona’s journal:

  The majority believes that everything hard to comprehend must be very profound. This is incorrect. What is hard to understand is what is immature, unclear and often false. The highest wisdom is simple and passes through the brain directly to the heart.

  —Viktor Schauberger

  What do you suppose evil is? Does it exist? Or is it just the way some people juggle terror, or guilt? I’ve thought about that a lot since Portugal. Especially when Ash’s ghost whispers User.

  I have to believe Dad was trying to kill only himself. No doubt I pushed him there. I’ve also thought a lot about love. How before we can expect it from others, we have to be willing to give it to ourselves. We are all so fragile. Such precarious concoctions.

  One thing’s for sure: the ability to live when our spirits are dead runs in both Dad’s and my veins. He stayed in Portugal to heal, Tia Célia nursing him. He had broken limbs, a broken heart, all resistance gone. Yet he’d held my gaze with a new, ragged hope. I’ll visit him this summer, but I miss him with an ache cradled in that suffering voice of Amália. I have a word for it: saudade. Saudade is about enduring.

  Dad’s absence yawns at Mom, Sugeidi, and me. Even after moving into this condo. A For Sale sign stands in front of Chateau Antunes now. It’s a hard property to sell. No local wants a house so laden with tragedy. A rich tourist will probably own it someday.

  Sugeidi, after being so busy during and after the move, mills about now. “You no need me,” she said one day.

  “We’ll always need you, Sugeidi,” Mom said through a sad smile. “You’re part of our family.” Her eyes shot to mine, because our family’s new definition includes divorce.

  “Besides,” I said, taking a huge breath, “Mom needs someone to keep track of her next year, with me gone and her starting college herself. Someone has to make sure she does her homework.”

  Sugeidi still wears that maid dress. I’ve come to love it. Today, though, she wears a belted dress the color of sky. I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s the exact color I soared through in that convertible.

  Mom wears a clingy designer dress, but she hasn’t gotten the pearl buttons near the top right. “Here,” I say, and I fix them for her.

  I step back. Her eyes travel over my lavender dress, the shiny new scars on my arms and shins. She studies my face, swathed and saved by all that hair. She smiles and shakes her head.

  “Survivors,” she says.

  We three look at each other, Dad in our gaze.

  “Let’s survive our way to graduation,” Mom says. She grabs her purse, and Sugeidi grabs her purse, and we head out the condo’s front door.

  Graduation is at the town’s amphitheater, so we walk. This late-May afternoon whispers summer. We follow the bike path Gabe and I first strolled along, tentatively holding hands, almost exactly a year ago. Crystal Creek churns with runoff. Always when I look at rivers now, I see the Tagus, and they all seem the linked veins of one omniscient body.

  We don’t walk fast. They know I’m dreading all those eyes. When we turn off the bike path, I look down it and wish I could escape with Gabe to our spot beneath the spruce.

  Our car crash made the newspaper: DEAD GIRL SURVIVES AGAIN. Flowers from Dad’s financial world laced Chateau Antunes with a melancholy perfume that suspended that crash in present tense. I tried to imagine those suited, groomed strangers, wondering if any of them really knew one another. All the while, Crystal Village’s eyes watched me. I’m looking forward to Yale. I’ll be anonymous there. Just a girl with four missing digits and a constellation of scars. No, not a girl. A woman.

  The river is so loud, I can’t hear the music in the amphitheater till we enter its gates. Gabe and his father stand just inside, each holding a program. Gabe holds out my cap and gown. Mr. Handler has arranged for my late arrival. Like I said, he’s smart as a fox. I can feel Mom and
Gabe’s dad looking at each other, then working not to look at each other.

  Mom admitted that while I was in Portugal, it was Mr. Hernandez she’d dined with. After what happened to Dad, they haven’t gone out again, but I hear Mom talking with Gabe’s dad on the phone sometimes. Her voice sounds younger, lighter, brighter, when he’s on the line. It makes me miss Dad so much I choke. Standing between these two, here, feels like standing between the north and the south halves of a magnet.

  Gabe and I glance at each other and he raises his eyebrows. I kid Gabe that maybe Hernandez men love twice, yet we’ve talked about how our parents seemed destined for each other. We’ve decided this attraction’s in our genes, but still, it’s weird.

  Sugeidi turns me to her. She hands Mom her purse, takes bobby pins from her breast pocket, and secures my mortar board. She straightens its gold tassel and pulls a lock of my hair forward over each shoulder. She kisses my forehead. “Querida.”

  My eyes brim, and I’m thankful for surface tension. Querida. That’s what Tia Célia called me in that Lisbon hospital. She has my address. She said she’ll write.

  Gabe takes my hand and we walk behind the stage to where the other 113 seniors are milling around. Brandy, with Tanesha gone, only frowns at us.

  We find our alphabetical places in line, me near the front, like always. The processional starts and we file onto the stage. I follow Todd Adams, Brian Alonzo, and Norma Alvarez down the aisle between two banks of chairs to the far side of the first row on our right. Following me is Nick Bowlton, who’s suffered a crush on me since second grade. Not anymore.

  I sit and look up at the audience, half in the sheltered seating, the rest on blankets patchworking the bowled lawn. I picture the worn blanket Dad hated so much, see him refusing to sit down, and I blink.

  I do the math and figure that easily eight hundred eyes are on me. I take a long sip of air and find Mom, Sugeidi, and Mr. Hernandez in the seats halfway back. Mom and Sugeidi dab their eyes with tissues. I have to look away but mentally thank Mom again for telling her bullying parents not to come. It’s the first time she’s ever stood up to them.