The View From Who I Was (6 page)

Nine

From Oona's journal:

Where water and air meet, the hydrogen molecules bond to one another. This makes the water seem to be protected by an invisible film. This is surface tension. It can be observed when water stands just above the rim of an over-full drinking glass or when a raindrop holds its shape.

—Biology: Life's Course

Mom waited in the Range Rover, sparse snow whirling down, the clouds too cold to let loose. Corpse climbed in, settled back against the heated leather seat, closed her eyes, and sighed. Mom pulled out, not saying anything. Not even
Buckle your seat belt
.

When we turned off the short road that led to Crystal High, Corpse said, “You were right: I wasn't ready for a whole day. I'm wiped out.” I hung near the Range Rover's rear window, wiped out too.

“How'd it go?”

Corpse shrugged. “As good as it could, I guess.” She studied the effortless strides of a woman jogging along the plowed sidewalk as they approached her from behind. The woman's ponytail bounced out a hole in the back of her knit hat. She must have been running a while, because the back of her jacket was rimed white with frozen sweat. Corpse tried to imagine the sensation of that woman's strides in her own thighs, in the balls of her feet. “I think everyone's afraid of me,” she said.

Mom snorted.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“How did Ash and I ever become friends?”

Mom ran her fingers through her hair, seeming to gather her words with the action. “Back then, Cheryl and I were best friends. We were both new in town. Enchanted with being moms in Crystal Village.” She glanced at Corpse. “We've drifted apart over the years. People change. You know?”

Corpse nodded.

School had been so busy that I hadn't had a chance to recover from Corpse touching me as we'd walked in, and I tried to dispel that jolt of her pain by relaxing and letting it drift away. But no. It clung to me.

Mom followed the frontage road past the ski village. Cars zinged by on the interstate parallel to us. Corpse scanned Crystal Mountain, the colorful specks shushing down its wide white ribbons through the forest.

“I don't know if I'll be able to ski anymore,” she said. “Or play soccer. Or hang with Ash.”

Mom pressed her lips into a line. The same bus we'd taken from the dance pulled out of the Transportation Center, and Mom steered around it. At noon, in the lull between the rush to and from the slopes, it was nearly empty.

“No more family ski days.” Corpse loosed a high-pitched laugh. Like our family had ever skied together in the first place. “I'm sorry,” she said. “You're really trying. I can tell.”

Mom sighed but didn't speak, just drove beyond town. The golf course's white expanse stretched out beside us. I could feel Mom's mind racing. She swerved into a pullout and stopped where people parked to go climb a frozen waterfall that dove off the red cliffs on the golf course's far side. Corpse straightened.

For a minute Mom just looked ahead, but her right eye squinted almost imperceptibly. “Listen,” she said. “I got off track. It started shortly after we moved here, and I could blame your father, but the truth is I have no one to blame but myself. Cheryl fed into it; she's been miserable in her marriage for years. We had this hateful pact of suffering that must have fed into you girls. I'm sorry, Oona. For everything. Especially that you felt desperate enough to try to kill yourself.” She looked at Corpse with eyes bulging water. Surface tension.

Corpse willed that water on Mom's eyes not to give way. Didn't want to find out she, herself, had no more tears left. “It's not your fault.”

The lie seared her tongue. It would burn for Dad too.

A clumsy skate skier glided past, and Mom watched him. Corpse studied the frozen waterfall, and I wondered why frozen water was sometimes white and sometimes translucent as glass, while water suspended in air was invisible.

“No.” Mom said. “I'm sure I had a lot to do with it. I know this is hard to understand, but I was stuck for so long. My parents have always been miserable. It just seemed natural.” She shook her head. “When I think that I pushed you to suicide—you can't have any idea how that feels. There's that saying about how awful it is when parents outlive their kids. But to outlive your kid because you pushed her to suicide? I'll never forgive myself.”

“Mom—”

She held up her hand. “I've thought about this a lot. Any parent of a suicide will forever bear guilt. There's no way around it. It's my penance.” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and peered at the gray sky. “I'm going to be a better mother. I have to hope.”

All those years, Dad had always been away in Chicago. When he'd come home, he'd secluded himself in his office or his observatory. Mom must have been so lonely. Maybe lonelier than us. Except instead of spinning apart, she'd spun inward, churning tighter, tighter, till she'd turned to stone. A wave passed through Corpse, like that buckling chill on the beach.

“Are you going to divorce Dad?” Corpse said. Little voice.

Mom shrugged. “Either way, I'll be a better mom.”

Corpse remembered Sugeidi saying “Heal her,” and one thing finally made sense. One thing was something. Something to hold onto. Mom's hand rested on her thigh. Corpse took it and squeezed.

“Good luck,” Corpse said, just like Mom had said it to her that morning.

Mom barked a laugh and brought the backs of her other fingers to her mouth. Those tears still bulged on her eyes. I had to respect Mom: she didn't blink.

We pulled into the garage alongside Corpse's white Range Rover. Corpse wanted nothing to do with that vehicle, never wanted to drive again. Mom caught her staring at it, and their eyes had a conversation:

Mom: Your father wants you to have that.

Corpse: I know.

Mom's eyes traveled across the garage ceiling and walls as if she could see all of Chateau Antunes, and Corpse understood that this house was Dad's idea too. She thought how he'd been gone for so much of her life, and I saw ourself and Mom as women he'd kept locked away. Like possessions. Corpse blinked.

They trudged from the garage through the mudroom into the kitchen and surprised Dad.

“You're home early,” he said. He looked between Mom's red-rimmed eyes and Corpse. Suspicion took over his face. “How'd it go?”

Sugeidi appeared in the archway from the hall to our room.

“I just got tired is all,” Corpse said.

Dad nodded in that not-knowing way, and we all watched him.

“Sugeidi, will you make Mom and me smoothies for lunch?” Corpse said.

“
Sí
.” She trod toward the fridge.

“Care to join us, Dad?”

Dad backed toward the hall, nodding. He held up his coffee mug like a toast and left.

Mom and Corpse exchanged a glance.

“Give me your coat,” Mom said. She took it and stepped into the mudroom.

“
Bueno
, Oona,” Sugeidi whispered as she poured berries into the blender. “
Bueno
.”

Mom and Corpse sat at the counter, and Sugeidi served them the smoothies. It was awkward, but also just right.

“What else I make for you?” Sugeidi said.

“That's all I need,” Corpse said. “Mom?”

“I'm fine.”

Sugeidi took the blender to the sink, rinsed it, and set it in the drying rack on the counter. She dried her hands and started to walk away.

“Sugeidi,” Corpse said.

“
Sí?
”

“Have you eaten? Would you like to join us?”

Mom stiffened but she said, “Yes. Join us, Sugeidi.”

Sugeidi faltered, a thing I'd never seen, and she walked to us. “I lunch already,” she said, yet she lingered at the counter.

“How many of those dresses do you have?” Corpse said.

Sugeidi looked down at her maid dress. “Three.”

“Don't you have to wash them a lot?”

“
Es
nothing.”

“Mom, could Sugeidi wear regular clothes to work?”

Mom looked hard at Corpse. “You think I make her wear that dress?” Now she did cry.

Sugeidi studied her hands on the counter. Heat rushed through Corpse.

“Oona,” Sugeidi said, “I like wear this.
En
Mexico,
es
uniform of the maid.”

Corpse slumped back. After a minute she said, “I'm sorry.”

“Was I that bad?” Mom studied Sugeidi's immaculately pressed dress and her lower lip trembled.

“Actually,” Corpse said, “maybe I've been worse.” I remembered how making Mom suffer had been one of our last freezing thoughts. The day weighed Corpse down, and she bent till her forehead rested against the counter.

Mom's hand came to Corpse's back and rubbed it in a tentative circle. Corpse heard Mom sigh and felt that circle grow firmer. Corpse watched for tears to rain onto her jeans, but felt only her eyes' dryness.

Ten

From Oona's journal:

Compared to other liquids, water loses a large quantity of heat for each degree of temperature change, though water resists changing its temperature. The measure of how a substance resists changing temperature is called “specific heat
.
”

—Biology: Life's Course

Mr. Bonstuber had written
Genetics of Drosophila
across the white board.
Drosophila
meant fruit flies. Beneath that, he'd written each step of the lab. Corpse finger-combed her hair into a ponytail and maneuvered it awkwardly through a tie she'd pulled from her jeans pocket. When we used to do this before labs, Ash would roll her eyes and say “Dork.” Corpse imagined Ash rolling her eyes at the back of the room.

Clark returned to his seat with the foot-long wooden mount holding four tubes of flies that he'd prepared the week before, while Corpse was still at Chateau Antunes waiting for her face to become socially acceptable. Special blue food filled the bottom of each tube. “Mating pools,” Mr. Bonstuber called them. Over the last two weeks, those pools had laid eggs, hatched larvae, pupated, and were now flies, ready for study to determine how certain genetic traits were passed down. Corpse's left hand rested on a sheet of paper with the heading
Female Wild, Male Vestigial
, brilliantly white against the black lab table. On it were six columns, titled
Eyes—Ee, EE, ee,
and
Wings—Ww, WW, ww
. Below the sheet on top were three other sheets differing only in their headings:
Female Vestigial, Male Wild; Female Wild, Male Wild; Female Vestigial, Male Vestigial
.

Clark read step two on the board. “You want to do this?” he said.

Corpse held out her right hand, just a couple Band-Aids masking the healing gaps now.

“So what?” he said. “It's not rocket science. You just slide this brush with the FlyNap inside the rubber stopper.”

Ash's giggle drifted to them, and then her voice saying “Ew!” Corpse glanced her direction, and their eyes glued. For a second, Ash's expression matched the one when she was six and had fallen from an aspen tree in Chateau Antunes's front yard. Corpse wanted to rush to her, but Ash straightened and turned away.

“How about I do the first one?” Clark said.

“Okay.”

He lifted out a tube and read its label: “Female Wild, Male Vestigial.”

Corpse checked the heading at the top of the paper to make sure it matched. Clark took the Q-tip-like brush and pinched back the stopper at the top of the tube as he slid it in. They leaned close to watch the flies conk out; they were supposed to pull out the brush when 90 percent were asleep.

“Clark,” Corpse whispered, “how did you become my partner?” She could feel him concentrate on the flies to keep from looking at her.

“Bonstuber stopped me after class. Asked if I wanted to switch.”

“You're not afraid of me?”

Clark grinned. “I've never been afraid of you, Oona.” He turned quiet, and she could hear him worrying that he'd insulted her by referring to when she was gorgeous. “I'd have been a fool not to switch. Come May, you're undoubtedly valedictorian.”

Corpse snorted. “
Was
valedictorian.
Was
everything.”

Was
. Our life had become past tense. I hovered just above everyone, had learned where to linger so I'd be nowhere near a touch. It was trippy looking down at all those black tables from above. The tops of all those heads we'd known most of our life but never seen.

Clark shrugged. “Fact is, you're super smart and a whiz at science.”

Corpse grimaced. “I'm not a whiz at anything. Not anymore. Anyway, thanks for doing this.”

“They're ready.” Clark read step three on the board. He pulled out the stopper and inverted the tube onto a petri dish. “Tap that, will you?” He reached for the dissection microscope and a tool like a fine paintbrush.

Corpse tapped the tube with her two fingers.

“Besides,” Clark said, “missing fingers are sexy.”

Corpse laughed.

“Don't tell Gabe I said that. He'd kick my ass, and considering his kicking abilities, well … ” Clark looked into the microscope, craning his neck and tilting his head the funny way people do when they peer into that invisible world. “Wow!”

Corpse noticed Mr. Bonstuber watching them and understood exactly why he'd made Clark her partner. She smiled at Mr. Bonstuber and scooted her stool closer to Clark.

I thought about the smallness of things making them invisible, and I wondered if the bigness of a thing could make it invisible too.

“Okay, ready?” Clark said.

She picked up her pencil, poised over the paper.

“The red eyes are wild, remember?” he said.

“You just said I was smart.”

“Okay, okay. Female wild, female wild, male wild, female wild … ”

Corpse made a hash for each type of eye color and then for each type of wing.

They repeated the process for the second tube. When she faltered before sliding the brush inside the stopper, Clark said, “They're fruit flies,” and her hand steadied.

She looked into the microscope to count, and was stunned. Fruit flies equal annoying black specs, right? Wrong. Their bodies were almost translucent. The males had darker abdomens, the females striped, yet they were still far lighter than she'd expected. Their thoraxes and heads were orange. Most of their eyes were brick red. Their wings were what transfixed her, though. Gossamer, with four curved veins, they reflected rainbows. Fairy or angel wings.

“Oona?” Clark said.

“Sorry. Male wild, male wild, male vestigial, female wild … ”

They compiled their data, determining what was dominant, recessive, sex-linked. Later, Corpse would make two graphs from their data and Clark would make two—graphs that would “predict the passing of traits to future generations,” according to number eight, the last step on the board.

Finished, Corpse opened the “morgue,” a bottle of alcohol clogged with flies. She couldn't move her eyes off all those dead bodies with rainbow wings. Her hands started to shake.

“Can you do this part, Clark?” she said.

When the bell rang, Clark and Corpse gathered their textbooks and folders.

“Yep, missing fingers. Sexy,” he said. “That was good for me. How about you?”

A laugh burst from Corpse, and Ash glared at them from the door as she was leaving. That glare felt good, yet Corpse remembered Ash's injured expression.

Gabe was waiting in the Student Union. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey, Gabe.” Clark mugged a guilty face as he kept walking.

Gabe chuckled. “How was the lab?”

“Really cool. Clark's a great partner.”

“He's a lot brainier than your last one,” Gabe said.

“That's for sure.” Corpse thought how Ash's grade would probably drop now that they weren't paired, thought of how mean she'd been when playing LIFE. That glare as Ash left class started feeling even better.

Gabe assessed Corpse's lingering grin and put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Should I be jealous?” he said.

“Don't be silly. I'm not dating you for your brains.”

“Oh really?” Gabe grinned.

I noticed Tanesha scowling from across the room, and Corpse straightened. “You know,” she said, “I have to make graphs of the lab data, so I'm just going to get it done now. In here.”

“Okay. See you,” he said.

She looked at Gabe's relaxed face and realized how tense it usually was with worry. She touched his dimple.

“Did you get this from your mom or your dad?” she said.

“Neither.”

“Recessive.” She kissed it. “See you.”

The passing bell rang seconds after he left, but all his teachers were being lenient with him in these first days that Corpse was back.

She retrieved her laptop from her locker and settled at a table in the Student Union. The graph was fascinating, and I hovered at her shoulder, watching it take shape.

“Good morning.”

I shot to the ceiling, which was littered with gum wads and pencils from guys having contests to embed them in the Styrofoam tiles. Beside me stretched a brown spray, probably from a can of soda.

Mr. Handler stood at Corpse's elbow. He sipped from his coffee mug. “What are you working on that has you so engrossed?”

“A genetics graph for Bio.”

“You do love science.” He patted Corpse's shoulder. “Have a minute?”

“I need to finish this.”

“It will only take a minute.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll be there in a second.”

He strolled to the Counseling Center and disappeared through the door.

The Counseling Center had a wall made completely of one-way glass that looked out on the Student Union. It made the office feel open, but everyone knew the glass was really for policing activity. I wondered if he'd been watching her.

She finished the graph and closed her laptop. Now that she wasn't focused on the drosophila, she felt eyes assessing her every move and wished she could shrink into that invisible world. She gathered her papers and tried not to limp as she walked.

The reception area in the Counseling Center was hung with posters—some for colleges, most just cheesy inspirational sayings with solitary people strolling down forested paths or on beaches with seagulls winging against sky. One, of a kitten hanging from a tree branch, proclaimed
Hang in there!
Mrs. Peña, the secretary, smiled at Corpse as she passed through.

“Good,” Mr. Handler said as Corpse entered his office. He closed the door but for a crack, and I retreated to a corner near a window. He sat at his desk and crossed his hands. “How are you faring?”

“I'm okay.”

“And your parents? How are they?”

Corpse shrugged. “Mom's okay. Dad?” She looked out the window at bare aspens in a courtyard that nobody ever used because there were no doors to it.
Dad's eerie
, she thought, and pushed it away.

“Are you seeing the prescribed therapist?”

“Therapist?”

“I take that as a no.” Mr. Handler looked at his hands, pressed them flat against his desk, then recrossed them. Corpse saw that he'd already known this. He was building toward something. “You're eighteen, so you can make your own choices, but if you or your family need counseling, let me know.”

Corpse snorted.

Mr. Handler was still for a minute.

“Listen, I know college is probably the farthest thing from your mind right now,” he said, “but have you checked your email lately?”

He was right. College?

Miles from our mind. Corpse turned shivery. She concentrated on Mr. Handler's green golf shirt, couldn't quite read the little logo on its breast. Did he get all those shirts from tournaments? Did he buy them from courses he liked? How many golf shirts did he own?

On his hand was a wedding band, and she heard herself ask Mom, “Are you going to divorce Dad?” I wondered if Mr. Handler was a good husband. What made a good husband anyway?

Corpse noticed a desktop photo of him with his two sons when they were both in high school, each holding a golf club and standing in front of a black-and-white checkered flag on a putting green. Blinding smiles on all three as the younger son, who graduated last year, held up a golf ball. Where had that son gone to college? Where had his older brother gone? I couldn't remember.

“I haven't checked my email,” Corpse said, sensing Mr. Handler was about to rock her world.

He took a deep breath. “I was copied on an email they sent to you. You're accepted to Yale. Hearing from them this soon without requesting Early Action is unusual. Congratulations.”

“Yale,” Corpse said.

“Yes, an accomplishment,” he said.

She laughed, this weird sound, like stumbling over rocks. “Not for me.”

Mr. Handler's brows rose.

“My dad got me in.”

“I see,” he said. “You shouldn't have a decision from Princeton and Cornell for a month or two.”

No decision. More like our life right now.

“I hope this isn't overwhelming, but I thought it might help. Knowing.”

“I'm not sure if I want to go to college anymore,” Corpse said. “I don't know what I want.”

“If you do go, decide what's important to you. Not to anyone else, just to you. You're strong and you're smart, Oona.”

Her eyes shot to him, and I heard Sugeidi telling her a similar thing. What did these two see that I didn't?

Mr. Handler nodded. “I leave in two weeks to be a guest counselor at that Native American school. Remember? The one from the convention last fall?”

Corpse straightened, sensed something like a train chugging toward her. Her heart seemed far away, and she strained to hear its thread of beat.

“I wonder if you'd like to come along.” It sounded like he was speaking underwater.

“Pardon?” she said.

“I've inquired, and you're welcome there. I've also checked with Dr. Bell, and he's granted permission for you to be gone. Your parents would just need to sign a release. I think it could be beneficial for you. You could help the juniors research colleges, attend a few classes if you feel up to it, or just hang out in a different environment.”

“No!” Corpse shot up from her seat. “No way!” She lunged to the door, her head shaking nonstop. “No!” She flung open the door and it banged against the wall. That flute seeped up, making the carpeted floor waver. She felt us imploding in that bathroom stall and swayed. Mr. Handler steadied her by the arm but she yanked it away.

“Just consider it.” His words followed her down the hall.