CARLISLE (Say it ain't so)
It's harder to be a father than it is to be a doctor. Even as an intern, where 48 shifts are the norm, the end of exhaustion was always in sight. The lingering whiny twenty-something who spent countless hours in the psychologist's office pipes up in moments like this to rage against my own father. He came from a long line of hardasses. Men who worked all day exchanging their bodies to feed their rapidly expanding families and had all the humor in them sucked out as soon as their teenage girlfriends tearfully informed them of an impending pregnancy. It cannot be said that they are necessarily bad people. Although, when you have a family of four by age twenty-five, it's not difficult to forget all the good in life. These are generations of men who come home at night to bawl at their wives for not having food ready on time and to beat their sons for ripping a shirt by playing carelessly.
Sons like me.
He never had a kind word or gesture for me. I would tap my fingers on her sofa, momentarily transferring my disappointment and years of fear onto the psychologist. She looked at me straight in the eyes with a mixture of sadness and regret. Two months later, she was lying naked under me. Four months later, I was on one knee.
She fingered the ring. It was a plastic trinket I had just won by knocking over three glass bottles. Of course, I'll get you a better ring as soon as I can, I hastily assured her. I was still in medical school and could hardly afford keeping myself fed.
You know, she began with a faint smile on her face. My mother told me never to be won over so cheaply.
She did not utter what we were both thinking. As a psychologist, especially one who has heard all my neuroses, she should not marry a man who might not break the cycle.
I have faith in you. She began firmly, green eyes filled with certainty. You will prove that saying yes right now is worth it.
So I slipped that ring onto her finger. She soon gave me two beautiful children: twins, a boy and a girl.
When I say that being a father is difficult, I don't mean all of it. The changing diapers, getting up with every cry, hugging them and hearing their little heart beats resound against you are the most beautiful things in the world to me. I bandaged every skinned knee and kissed away their tears over the bogeymen living gratuitously in their closets. It's different when they're older. My daughter still smiles and calls me 'daddy'. Even though she no longer depends on me for everything like she used to, we still talk whenever she faces a crisis and she greets me when I come home from work with her customary hug.
My son is a different story. I spent his childhood ruffling his hair and kissing his cheeks, but you just can't do that to an almost grown man. I reminded myself everyday that there was no way in hell I would ever turn out like my father. Girls are easier. Even my father had never raised a hand to a woman. I could not even imagine hurting one hair on my daughter's head. But I could to the boy I spent hours after his birth just holding and marveling. Through his entire life, I had to refrain myself every time he blatantly disobeys me or responds to a reprimand with a sullen glare. One time, I couldn't. He will eventually forgive me as I did my own father, but there's no way I could ever forgive myself.
It's been one year since that day. My wife's eyes are haunted. I can feel them judging me just as I could feel her judging me since the first day we met. I wonder if she was waiting during our entire marriage for that moment. The moment I would snap. The moment the son embodies the sins of the father. She has her arms wrapped around me now. I breathe in her light floral scent and she tightens her hold.
"When we first met," she whispered behind me, "I told myself that even on the day that you would eventually leave, I would never be able to let you go. I was in love with you even then."
And then she let go.
EMMETT (Love the way you lie)
Sometimes I feel like I'm pretending all the time. In a way, I am. I pretend that it's ok my mom decided to leave when I was seven, taking my older sister away so I only see her on the occasional holiday or summer vacation. I did not cry when Renee kneeled down to my level and told me that it wasn't because she didn't love me anymore, but it was because she just didn't understand boys. I would be happier with Charlie, she promised.
That didn't stop me from chasing after their car, begging her to stop and take me with her to her new life. Please take me, take the house, and take my dad.
If anything, I think she accelerated.
I pretend that it's normal that my dad drinks beer after beer sitting mindlessly in front of the tv watching whatever game is on. He has his moods. He could completely forget to pick up my report card, but still yell at me for failing my classes.
I pretend that my dad doesn't grind his teeth that I spend most of my evenings and weekends in his ex-best friend's house. I act like my dad has let bygones be bygones, but still make excuses whenever Carlisle mentions dropping by to see how he's doing.
Dad's working this weekend. He's fishing down in la push with Billy. He has a life beyond hating his ex-wife and ignoring his son.
Sometimes I think about writing Carlisle a letter. Dear favorite person in the world, my dad hates your guts. Most times, I wish you were my father.
I pretend that I don't notice that his real son wishes I would just stay in my own house. I wish the same thing sometimes. But yet I would take Edward's cold glares if it meant spending time with a man who didn't alternate between hatefully staring at me as a reminder of his wife's betrayal and blatantly ignoring my presence until my stereo's suddenly too loud or I'm too dumb to ever get my head out of my ass.
I pretend that it doesn't feel incestuous when I run my hands up and down the mindless perfection that is Carlisle's daughter. She's practically my sister but I spend nearly every waking moment fantasizing about her perky little breasts and long perfectly blonde hair. I ignore the fact that it is the exact same color as Carlisle's.
When I lay in bed besides Rosalie, I listen to every breath she takes. Sometimes I can't help myself but reach over to touch her. It feels like paradise, every single time.
It is only when I touch her can I fool myself into believing that this is not my fault.
ROSALIE (Hold it against me)
My brother spent our childhood asking 'why'. Why do casts need to be on for so long? Why do birds fly when I can't? Why does Rosalie get the larger slice of pie? Why do I see stars when I press on my eyes?
Of all the girls in this place, man, why are you fucking my sister?
He's my little brother, the one I shared a womb with when our parents' love was new and exciting. My mother used to take us to the nearby park and we would swing with our hands interlocked together. The other boys laughed at Edward for swinging with me instead of playing war with them, but he didn't seem to mind. Not even my mother's pleas that it was dangerous could tear us apart. We didn't have to worry. We were always in sync, finishing each other's sentences, intuitively knowing the other's fears and joys. But on that day, I suppose he was swinging too high and I didn't want to let go. I fell off the swing onto the woodchips. It was my father's off day so he took us to the park instead of our mother. While he examined me for injuries, he lightly scolded Edward for doing something so dangerous.
Edward's face scrunched up and he looked like he was about to cry.
Why do you like Rosalie better than me?
My father's taken back expression was priceless. We were all of eight years old and up until that point, had displayed no signs of sibling rivalry.
"I love both of you equally and very much so." Carlisle's clichéd response did nothing for Edward. He stalked off to sulk underneath a large oak tree. My father is nothing if not a patient man. But when Edward did not show signs of getting over his tantrum after thirty minutes, he motioned for me that it was time to go home. Edward will follow along, he assured me.
We were all the way home and Edward still didn't come running behind us. My father's pace slowed and he kept glancing backwards. I remember the worry clearly written over his face.
When we got back home, it came as a shock to the both of us that Edward was calmly sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a juice box and holding up the spare key in his free hand. Apparently, he knew a shortcut home. Carlisle swept him up in his arm half in relief and half in guilt. He dropped a kiss on Edward's messy auburn head. It was the last time I ever saw him touch my brother so casually again.
And from that moment on, something changed. Edward did not seem interested in playing with me anymore. I could not understand this sudden change. After all, I had done nothing wrong.
As you learn more about me, you may think I'm heartless, but that's where you're wrong. Just remember, it was my brother and his 'whys' that destroyed this family.
ELIZABETH (Smile like you mean it)
I was infertile. That's what the doctor told me after I had a miscarriage sophomore year at Yale. I'm sorry, Ms. Masen. You were hemorrhaging and to save your life, there's now a lot of scarring…
He didn't look sorry at all. Maybe it was because I had the miscarriage during a consultation for an abortion. Maybe I just didn't deserve to have babies.
My mother was a famous feminist thinker. She would scream obscenities at me if she knew. Not about the would-be abortion, but the days I spent afterwards in despair. I felt like I was only half a woman. If my mother knew, she would have disowned me.
"Your life, Beth," She would begin severely, "is not defined by a few squalling brats hanging off your arm."
When I first met Carlisle Cullen, he was twenty-five. I knew all about him. Almost perfect MCAT score, published a paper on Alzheimer's during undergrad at Harvard, the most down-to-earth and friendly third year in his class. What I didn't expect, though, was for him to look like that. I will not deny that my first reaction to him was almost purely physical. As soon as he walked into my office, I felt a connection that I never experienced in my twenty-eight years.
He didn't appear to feel the same way. Carlisle is clearly not a perfect man. From the very first session, I realized that there was a lot of repression of anger and years of self-denial. He didn't look at me with romantic intentions until I stopped him a month after our first session after he told me there was no way I could know how he feels. I showed him something I never showed anyone else. Hundred of pages filled with my handwriting. Covered with the perfect penmanship of a child, thousands of "I will never embarrass my mother like that again" spanned years of my childhood.
He swallowed and lifted up his shirt, thin white scars on his back spanned the years of his childhood.
Almost simultaneously, we lunged at each other.
This is wrong, he whispered in my ear as he ran his fingers through my hair. We shouldn't bond over abusive childhoods.
I stiffened. My childhood was not abusive, Mr. Cullen.
Oh yeah? What do you call these, love notes? He pointed to those pages lying innocently in the corner.
I pushed him off of me. I was just trying to show you I know what it's like to have a critical, hard-to-please parent.
He stared at me with a disgusted expression on his face. If you can't even admit it to yourself, doctor, it's you who needs to see a psychologist.
Leave it to my mother to be able to ruin a relationship when she was more than two thousand miles away.
He came back though. When he asked to me to marry him, I felt guilty for not telling him about my infertility. Part of me though was glad for it. I could say yes without worrying about how we were both going to ruin any future offspring.
Carlisle thought me the most forgiving, wonderful person in the world. My surprise pregnancy with the twins had me terrified. Partly, I was scared I was going to lose them. Partly, because I knew we were going to be awful parents.
Tonight, I'm leaving. I wanted to leave once before, on the day I found out I was pregnant with twins. Apparently Carlisle found out about the pregnancy from the ultrasound technician. When I went home to pick up the suitcase I surreptitiously stowed in the closet, there were nine hundred and ninety-nine roses greeting me. He had the biggest, happiest grin on his face. I could almost feel the babies inside me rejoicing.
It's different today though. Carlisle is at a medical convention. Rosalie is in her room, with Emmett. I saw him sneak in her window hours before. And my boy? I'll never see him again.
When I walk out into the cool August evening, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
The night air smells like roses.
BELLA
I was not even supposed to be in this mess. I guess it all goes back to being too poor to afford a real spring break. Sometimes I think the timing is too strange to be a coincidence. Of all the days it could have happened, it happened at the exact moment I walked into the house. But now that I think about it, it started much earlier. It started when my mother tearfully told my father she could not stay one more minute in this house.
In that moment however, it began when Edward took one look at me and commanded me to drive.