The View From Who I Was

by Heather Sappenfield

  His head tilted toward her and he almost smiled. “All right.” He slid his hand behind her neck and kissed her forehead. “Be strong.”

  Everywhere: eyes. Judging Corpse’s face, her missing fingers, her limp. As Corpse crossed the Student Union, Ash held court at her usual table near a bank of windows framing Crystal Creek. Two girls flanked her, and popular guys lounged around the rest of the table. One of them leaned on the table and flicked a little triangle of folded paper with his middle finger at a guy who held up his fingers in the shape of a goalpost.

  We’d sat right there day after day, in that glazed place, as Ash flirted and schemed and ordered us around. Had we ever been like her? We searched for but could not find a memory of Ash that didn’t look through that glaze, and it was weird, seeing her now with such clarity.

  “Yes, I’m playing soccer,” Ash said real loud, her glance a knife. We’d played soccer together since kindergarten, moving up through Club to high school, where we’d been a starter, left fullback, and Ash had warmed the bench.

  Corpse entered the hall to AP Bio, our favorite class. But Ash was our lab partner, and as we approached the room, I dreaded how uncomfortable that was going to be. How Ash even got into the class was a mystery; she wasn’t the greatest student. The bell rang as Corpse limped through the door.

  Mr. Bonstuber stood at the lectern. He nodded to her and returned to scanning some papers, but everyone else watched Corpse limp to her seat, watched surprise register as she found Clark Millhouse on the stool next to hers. Corpse set her books on the cool black tabletop and slid onto her metal stool.

  “Hey,” Clark said.

  “Hey,” Corpse said.

  Ash whisked in, giggling, but everyone watched Corpse as Ash rushed to her seat at the back with her new partner.

  Clark glanced at Corpse’s hand. Mr. Bonstuber started explaining Mendelian genetics in his German accent as he drew a diagram on the whiteboard. Corpse pulled out Biology: Life’s Course and a blank sheet of paper, tuned out her screaming digits, and scrawled notes with her left hand.

  Clark grimaced at her scribble. He leaned close and whispered, “You can borrow mine.”

  “Thanks,” Corpse said.

  Mr. Bonstuber might have been the one who switched our partner. Ash was a C student, while Clark was all A’s. I wouldn’t have put it past Mr. Bonstuber to notice Ash gossiping about us or saying something cruel, and moving her for that reason too. He was that way.

  He wore a wrinkled dress shirt, slacks, and some sort of science tie every day, even though most of the faculty was in jeans. Corpse studied the way his shirt, though he was slim, puffed out the back like a water balloon. I noticed a thin gold wedding band on his left hand, couldn’t believe I’d missed it before. What would his wife be like? Were they happy together? I had an image of him cradling a faceless woman in a sheer nightgown. Corpse shook her head to banish the thought. We owed Mr. Bonstuber a lot.

  Last fall, before class had even started, he’d assigned the textbook’s first chapter. About water. Maybe we were bored after a summer of brain atrophy, I’m not sure, but water’s properties fascinated us. Its role in all life. When school started, Mr. Bonstuber showed us this YouTube video of a property called “coalescence cascade.”

  In the video, a drop of water was deposited gently onto the surface of a pool. The drop dipped below the surface, making a ring, and shot back out as two drops. One drop disappeared below the surface. But the smaller, second drop bounced twice and dipped below the surface. We couldn’t see it divide this time, but again two smaller drops popped out, one disappearing below, the other bouncing twice and disappearing, shooting out even smaller.

  It did this four times, until the tiniest drop disappeared and did not shoot back out, and the pool’s surface was eerily still. Mr. Bonstuber explained that as the drop impacted the pool at low speed, a layer of air was trapped beneath it, preventing it from immediately coalescing into the pool. That air layer drained away, and surface tension pulled some of the drop’s mass into the pool, but a smaller drop was spit back out. It bounced off the surface of the pool again, and the process was repeated until the viscous properties of the pool became too strong for the drop to withstand coalescing completely.

  Later, in a lab on surface tension, we deposited water on a quarter with an eyedropper till there was a towering bulge. We couldn’t pull ourself away from the microscope, from how that bulge trembled, and to the beat of Ash popping her gum, we kept seeing that video’s drop being spit back out, bouncing on air, until that eerie stillness.

  During our lab on capillary action, Ash had surreptitiously checked Facebook and whispered gossip, but we couldn’t stop watching how water crawled up the glass tube till it was higher than the beaker’s water it stood in. That afternoon we started seeing water migrating up every plant stem, up every tree trunk. We wondered where they stored water for the winter, imagined their long, cold thirst.

  After we studied evaporation, we’d picture water rising off those plants and trees, off Crystal Creek and the pond behind Chateau Antunes, off the bodies in the golf carts. The clouds seemed comprised of swirling bits of all these things. When it rained, we’d stand in those cool drops and feel everything around us touch our skin. Then we realized that rain held parts of things from far away, maybe even lingering bits from other continents, and we felt touched by the world. We wondered if events were washed from the air, and even felt history’s touch.

  Water murmured an answer. An answer to why we were wheeling apart. Just softly enough that we couldn’t make out its words. It sucked, that whispering. Once you start sensing water, really sensing it, you can’t stop.

  We’d been unable to pull away from our last water lab too, amoebas from Crystal Creek, gathered behind school, wriggling between slides. When the bell had rung, Ash had rolled her eyes, said “You’re such a geek,” and left.

  “It’s my planning period next,” Mr. Bonstuber had said. “Take your time, Oona. I’ll write you a pass to your next class. I hate to hinder a fascinated student.”

  “That’s okay,” we’d said. “I have the next period free.”

  “Then take all the time you like.” He grinned. “You like biology?”

  “I like water. It’s so cool.”

  “Icy, tepid, steaming,” he said, that grin twisting on his pun.

  We talked about water. He seemed as fascinated with it as we were. We started thinking how he probably needed to get work done, so we started cleaning up. Mr. Bonstuber walked to his desk and, from a shelf behind it, pulled out a soft-cover book.

  “You might enjoy this.” He handed it to us. “This author explains the life and work of a scientist named Viktor Schauberger. He was born in the late 1800s, and he was unconventional. He believed that water was best studied outside a lab, in its natural environment. Personally, I think both modes are helpful. He’s still considered unorthodox, yet his insights are brilliant, profound, and gaining more acceptance as they’re being proven true over time. If you like this book, read it and tell me what you think.”

  That night, after we’d finished our homework, we opened the book and didn’t close it till after midnight, copying Schauberger’s ideas and words into our journal. Water must be treated as something alive, we read, and we leaned close to the page, could see the paper’s pores as we said, “Yes.” We traced the edges of Schauberger’s words and ideas, sensing pieces of ourself defined there. All we knew for sure was we understood that bouncing drop’s despair as it diminished, sucked down toward that motionless pool.

  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: L
ife’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.