The View From Who I Was (20 page)

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 clean, 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 force 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.

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 convertible'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.