The View From Who I Was (19 page)

Corpse smiled, careful not to overwhelm Dad by looking at him. She kept walking, watching the river. “That wave must have been humongous to make it this far up from the ocean.”

“Never underestimate water.”

Corpse halted, looked at him now. He paused and looked back at her, puzzled. She caught her breath and turned away.

They thought they'd be safe.
What happened to all those screams? Those final breaths? Corpse looked from the river back to the square, so idyllic. She looked at the sky's puffy clouds. Might those clouds contain the Indian school fire? Could they harbor the hungry breaths of those men who'd watched Roberta dance? Ash's final exhalation? All the world's sighs pressed around Corpse, and she didn't want to breathe.

“Dad?” she said. “Do you think the air gets cleaned?”

“Pardon?”

“Like, washed from the people that used it before?” She needed him to say yes.

“Well, I guess … maybe it … ” He looked toward the Atlantic and his face turned hard. “I don't know, Oona. What a question.”

When they got back to the hotel, Dad made some calls,
so Corpse settled in a metal chair on the balcony, feet propped on the railing, and opened her journal. Her feather from Angel marked the page she was on. She ran her finger up one side of it and down the other. For a while, she sketched the closest fountain. Under that she wrote:

Never underestimate water.

—Dad

Thirty-One

From Oona's journal:

I fumbled at my nerve,

I scanned the windows near;

The silence like an ocean rolled,

And broke against my ear.

—Emily Dickinson, “Returning,” lines 9-12

At nine o'clock, we left for fado. Corpse was wide awake since it was only two p.m. back home. She wondered what Mom was doing. It was Saturday, so Sugeidi was with her son, and Corpse worried Mom would be lonely, but when she'd called earlier, Mom had sounded happy. In fact, her words were airy, like she was thinking of something else.

“What are you doing tonight?” she'd said.

“I'm making Dad go to a fado club. That's Portuguese music.”

“I'm impressed.”

“So what are you doing?” Corpse said.

“I'm going to
Le Ménage
for dinner later. With a friend.”

“Who?”

“How's your father?” Mom said.

As Corpse and Dad skirted the hill toward the castle, I wished Corpse had told Mom more. They walked through an area that seemed less touristy. Corpse counted six more Amália posters. All of the shops were closed for the night, but the restaurants were brimming.

They ascended a hill, and Dad stopped an old man ambling down to ask him something. Directions to a fado club, Corpse guessed. The man wore a red vest and a black cap, like a tugboat driver, and he pointed up the hill and gestured right.

“
Obrigado
,” Dad said.

Corpse gaped at the decorative flags or strings of lights or laundry that hung over the narrow streets. I drifted up and weaved between them. After a while I got tired of that and just followed.

Finally they came to an open door with music and people spilling out. As Dad peered in, Corpse watched two smokers blow rings that rose against the dark. Why was smoke white at night and gray during the day?

The music stopped. “Oona.” Dad gestured for Corpse to follow him.

The club was tiny but packed with people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at long benches on either side of ten tables along a wall that ended at a bar. Against the opposite wall stood two men in their thirties. Between them sat two guys with guitars. Dad and Corpse squeezed onto the end of a bench.

Dad leaned to her. “Drinking age for beer and wine is sixteen. Eighteen for spirits. You're eighteen now. I'm ordering you sangria.”

Corpse started to protest, but
sangria
sounded like
sangre
, “blood” in Spanish. Besides, she'd forced him to come, so she could do this in return.

Moments later a portly, balding guy Corpse guessed was the owner banged down a glass and a carafe before her, a little of the red liquid sluicing over its rim. He set two highball glasses with amber liquid in front of Dad. Dad chugged one, then poured the sangria for Corpse. The carafe's orange slices and grapes kept the same relative position though their container tilted. Dad's eyes, a slanting glint, clashed against the carafe's glass. A discord that creeped me out. It was too crowded down there anyway, so I rose to the smoke-clogged ceiling.

The last time we'd drunk alcohol, we'd tried to kill ourself.

As Dad watched, Corpse blushed and took a sip. It was fizzy and sweet and fruity. The lights dimmed and the guitars sounded. Dad turned toward the music. One of the men stepped forward, put his hand on his stomach, and sang a word that sank to the floor. His words stayed low. Then they rose to bench height and filled with such longing and honesty they yanked up goose bumps on Corpse's arms though the room was steamy.

She couldn't take her eyes off that singer, wondered what he'd been through, because sadness poured out his mouth. His voice turned high and shot to the ceiling with grief. Corpse hunched forward to shield her listening heart. Dad looked at her with glassy eyes.

This was nothing like she'd planned. This music was like a conversation with every wrong thing she'd ever done. She'd thought they'd appreciate fado like looking at a painting, not be thrown into its spin cycle. She gulped sangria to handle it.

In the third song, Corpse poured another glass. The second guy joined in a call-and-response that made her skin crawl. She fingered the two hearts on her necklace and squinted up at me.

At the break, Dad ordered two more glasses of amber liquid, and during the next set his body began to sag, sagged more with each song. At the next break, he put his arm around Corpse, mouth near her ear.

“I thought I'd made a new start.” His words, spilled against her cheek, made her flinch. “I guess I'm just no good at family. I wanted things to be so much better for you than they were for me.” Eyes like melted chocolate, he shuddered, reminding me of the hospital, except this time it was like a goodbye. Then Dad gazed ahead, toward the bar, ghosts all over his face.

Corpse and I saw, at exactly the same moment, that forcing Dad to come to fado, to his people, to Lisbon at all, was destroying him. She covered her mouth, rocked to keep from cracking, and watched him. Dad, yet not Dad. She tugged his sleeve. “Let's go.”

He just stared ahead, jaw slack. She tugged harder. He turned his head slowly and looked at her from a vast distance. She felt that if she moved, his eyes would skid off her to the wall.

“Dad, I'm tired.”

Her words registered in his face. He wobbled to his feet and lunged through the door.

Even though it was almost midnight, people still milled around outside. Two guys gawked at Dad and stepped back. His wide-eyed gaze seemed to behold things no one else saw.

Corpse sensed touching him wasn't safe. She kept two-step's distance between them, even though he weaved on his feet.

They came to the restaurants they'd passed on the walk over, still brimming with diners. Dad didn't seem to notice. Back in the hotel room, he crumpled into his chair and conked out. Corpse watched him for a long time. When she finally lay down, her bed spun.

Late that night she woke to Dad whimpering. It was louder than when she'd heard it in the observatory. She sat up and watched his head lash side-to-side.

On the bedside table lay our journal. Corpse pulled her feather from it and drew her knees to her chest. She fingered her heart necklace as I blanketed her shoulders and tried to emit the good determination Gabe had left in me.

“Courage,” she whispered.

She'd never be able to wake in time to greet the sun. It would be awkward with Dad there anyway, so she opened her journal and found this page:

You're a good person. You're going to be okay.

—Dr. Yazzie's rock

Thirty-Two

From Oona's journal:

Aquifers exist underground. Oceans on it. Dad says the sky is an ocean. The universe beyond too. Ocean on ocean on ocean on ocean.

—Oona

“Dad,” Corpse said, “honestly. We don't need to do this.”

He kept striding across Rossio Square, through its border of scraggy trees, across the busy street, and past two shoe-shine boys. Corpse hustled along at his elbow. Dad's chinos and short-sleeved Oxford shirt were a lot like what other men wore, yet the fineness and cut of Dad's clothes oozed wealth. He ignored street traders holding out sunglasses and a woman selling cherries and peaches from a cart. The woman stood below a red umbrella that blocked the late-morning sun.

That sun felt wrong. Like it was shining in the night. Which it was, in Crystal Village. Corpse rubbed her pulsing forehead and tried to look past the outstretched male hand of a beggar. Dark crescents hung beneath Dad's eyes. Like he'd gone a few rounds with Tanesha. Corpse knew he'd slept more than she had, though, because she'd watched him till dawn. His sharp edges had returned, and that, at least, was comforting.

“Dad,” she said, “Listen, I was wrong. Let's just go to the beach, or sightseeing or something.”

Dad shook his head.

Corpse wanted to reach out, take his arm, make him stop. But he seemed on the margins of sanity. What damage had we done, making him come here?

Dad turned right and stopped. His mouth sagged open, cocked a little left. He stared at a church.

Like most of the buildings in Lisbon, this church was part of a block-long structure. Its front was Roman columns and regal doors. Somewhere back in history, other buildings had been built right against it. On the ground level next door was a shoe store.

“Did you used to go to that church?” Corpse's words seemed to skitter on ice.

Dad took a few zombie steps. He craned up at the iron cross atop the church's white front. Corpse studied his rigid shoulders. His phone rang.

“Aren't you going to answer your phone?” she said.

He walked past the church, not even looking at it now, and started up a steep road. Toward the castle. The sidewalk's cobbles had been worn to a sheen, and Corpse's flip-flops slipped a bit with each step. A breeze lifted her skirt. She gathered it into a knot in her hand.

Laundry snapped above them. They passed narrow streets, narrower walkways.

After fifteen minutes Dad stopped at a door the color of twilight. On it was a knocker: a blue-painted fist holding a big ring. Below, a mail slot read
Cartas
on its top edge
.
Dad ran his fingers over the fist's knuckles.

“Was this your house?” Corpse stepped back, shielded her eyes from the sun, and peered at two open second-story windows. Lemon yellow curtains billowed out. “Do you want to knock?”

Dad stepped back and looked up. “Our curtains were white.” He seemed to be talking to himself. “Out back was a garden. An orange tree. I'd climb that tree. And escape.”

His gaze fell on a red door on the right. He leaned toward it, peering. He straightened. He turned on his heel and strode off down the street. His phone rang. He didn't answer it.

Corpse stepped to that door. Beside it, a bronze plaque read
Antunes.
Her heart slammed against her chest. She jogged in careful steps to catch up with Dad.

He turned left into an alley marked with a wall plaque:
Beco da Rosas.
The alley traversed the hillside and came out on another narrow street. Dad stopped again, just as Corpse reached him, and she almost plowed into his back.

Ahead, three tables filled a spit of sidewalk where two rising streets met in a triangle like a ship's prow, the building filling it with a matching shape. Diners sat at two of the tables: a young couple at one, three reclining, smoking men at the other. Dad strode toward the restaurant like he was being reeled in. He pulled out a plastic chair at the empty table and sat down.

“Lunch?” The other chair screeched against the cobbles as Corpse pulled it back.

“This was my parents' restaurant.” The flatness of Dad's words made her heart bang harder. He took it all in, nodding.

A waiter came out carrying a tray. Dad froze. The waiter set a plate of cheeses and rolls and two glasses of red wine on the table between the couple.

“You will like this port.” The waiter's accent was thick, and he looked about Dad's age.

One side of Dad's mouth went up like he'd heard a joke.

The waiter turned to our table and set one menu in its center. “
Ol
á.
”

“Two glasses of port. Any kind. Surprise us.” Dad spoke in precise English.

Corpse wondered why he hadn't spoken Portuguese. I wondered why he kept buying her liquor.

The waiter left, and Dad took his phone from his breast pocket, eyed it, and put it back. His face seemed to unravel. “I'm going to wash my hands.” He disappeared through the door at the apex of the restaurant's triangle.

Corpse read the menu and decided on halibut and potatoes. The waiter brought out two tumblers half-full of brownish liquid. She lifted the glass and sniffed. She hated wine, but this smelled sweet. She took a sip. Sweet, yes, but the alcohol stung her tongue. Maybe, she reasoned, alcohol anchored Dad in his adult self. She considered how crazy that sounded and banished it. It stuck with me though. Liquor might relieve the press of that inky yawn.

One building across the street had doorways and windows lined with yellow and green Moorish tiles. This part of the city had survived the earthquake, Dad said. Might those tiles date back to actual Moors? She peeked over her shoulder at the young couple. They held hands and half their cheese plate was gone. She took out her phone and texted Gabe:
Miss you.
She rubbed the two hearts on her necklace and remembered the sense of his calming arms. She rose and entered the restaurant.

Five tables: two on each side of the triangular room, and one in the middle. Diners sat at the tables on the sides. A kitchen filled the back. On the left was a door with the word
Banheiro
painted above. Corpse knocked on the door.

“Dad?”

The waiter glanced at her as he hurried past with two plates of fish. It took Dad a while to open the door. When he did, pout ruled his features, and she stepped back.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Fine.” He started back outside.

“I'm going to wash my hands.”

In the bathroom, Corpse kept her elbows close to her sides to keep from hitting the walls. I squished next to a bare light bulb on the ceiling. What had Dad been doing in here?

When we returned to the table, he was holding his port to the sun, eyeing it. The waiter showed up. Dad was careful not to look at him.

“Oona?” he said.

“The halibut.”

“I'll have the
lingui
ça
.”

I found it on the menu: sausage. He'd seemed to purposely stumble over the word.

The waiter nodded, took the menu. Dad watched him walk through the door. His eyes shot to the cobbles at our feet.

“The hours I spent scrubbing this sidewalk,” he said. “This sidewalk and that bathroom.”

“At least that bathroom's little,” Corpse said.

“So was I!”

Dad's words were so sharp, she leaned back in her chair.

Over his shoulder, from up the street, came a stout woman with swaying steps that reminded Corpse of Sugeidi. The woman's hair was grayer, though, and chin-length, but pushed back as if by a hand accompanying years of sighs. She had on a black dress and a pink smock with white polka dots and two front pockets.

An apron, Corpse decided. Was this the uniform of the Portuguese maid? Longing for Sugeidi filled Corpse. The woman wore a permanent smile that dimpled her cheeks and flashed a yellow front tooth. Each hand carried a laden bag that moved up on each side as she stepped. Like scales in the balance. She walked straight toward Corpse, looking at her all the while.

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.