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I had a friend once who had this guinea pig. She took the noisy thing with her everywhere, keeping it stuffed in her pocket, feeding it scraps from her lunch. It eventually grew too big to fit in her pocket, the thing was over a foot long at this point. I hated that beast, but she looked at it like it was the sun and the moon and everything in between. So when it died a few months later, this girl was totally and completely distraught about it. She invited everyone over to have a funeral for the poor thing, where she was going to slowly lower its bloated body into the ground.
There was only one problem, she lived in a luxury apartment in Phoenix, the only soil her family had was a flower pot on the patio. So, naturally, she gathered everyone up to walk to the park at midnight to bury the damn thing. There we stood, freezing our asses off while this girl dug a hole for a dead guinea pig with her mother's tiny flower shovel. She even had a painted headstone for it and everything. When we finally got back to the apartment, I asked her what she wanted to do with the cage and all the junk she bought for it over the years. She only shrugged and dumped it all down the garbage chute in the hall.
So when I stepped into my fathers house for the first time, I was so thankful that guinea pig girl wasn't around when he died. Everything remained entirely untouched, albeit covered in a thick blanket of dust. To my right, there was a small table that people would typically leave mail and keys and things on. On it laid a single key chain with two keys and a worn leather fob. I easily assumed these to be his truck keys, and I pocketed them for later.
I made my way further into the house, disrupting tiny flurries of dust with my fingers. I couldn't stop touching things, like an unsupervised child in a china shop. I traced the walls with my hands, bumping into photos of my smiling mother, and an infant I can only assume to be myself. There were dozens of them, and no pictures of Charlie. Around every corner, I would find another toothless Bella in a cheap convenience store frame.
Since before I can remember, my mother told the same story about how my father left, and she always told it in this exasperated tone.
"Bella," she would say, "You know how it happened." And I did know how it happened, or at least I thought I did.
"When you were just a baby," she began, "you father worked very hard to support us. He worked a lot of hours at the station, but he was just a young cadette." I tried to picture him now, with the slobbery infant in all the photos.
"He was so overworked," she would say, getting emotional here, "He couldn't take it. He came home one night and said he couldn't handle it anymore." I gently fingered one of those cheesy professional baby portraits, where I was asleep on a giant foam letter 'B'.
"I thought maybe he would just be gone for a few hours," Renee always looked down at her hands here, her voice taking on this weird, low quality. "I moved back in with my parents after two weeks, and we've been here ever since." She would pat my knee and tell me to go out and play or something, and I would always sit outside on the side walk, imagining this great muscular man coming home after all those years. He would sweep my mother off of her feet, and I would cling to his legs and we would cry and cry. I would have brothers and sisters, and Renee wouldn't yell so much and it would all be the way it was supposed to be.
And yet, I stood in my father's living room, surrounded by ghosts of some other life I had lived, and I couldn't remember why I had imagined him all those times. My chest began to tighten, and I gripped that stupid department store photo in my sweaty hand. My eyes burned, and the world around me started to blur. I let out a ragged sob, and pressed the photo to my chest, swiping at the tears threatening to fall with the back of my free hand.
It took a few moments, but the tightness in my chest loosened and I returned the photo to its spot beside the couch. I worked my way into the dining room, where I found bits and pieces of decoration that I can only assume to be my mothers. A hand crocheted doily in the center of the breakfast table, flower patterned curtains, and an empty rose vase on the windowsill. The kitchen was fairly clean for a bachelor pad.
I had seen the staircase when I first walked in, but it looked like I had run out of places to explore on the lower level, and would have to venture up the stairs. As I made my way up, I imagined the tiny toddler version of myself attempting to get up and down these wooden steps. I smiled, imagining my already clumsy legs navigating the intricate planks. I pictured what it would be like to have Charlie at the top of the stairs, encouraging the fat little toddler. For a moment, I almost thought I was going to reach the top of the stairs and wrap myself in the arms of a man I never met.
The first door at the top of the stairs was a bathroom, sparse but clean. After that, two closed doors remained, and I knew one of them would be Charlie's room. I didn't want to go inside, but I knew a part of me wouldn't have closure if I didn't at least look. I prayed to whatever benevolent God would allow me to open the door and not find some horrific secret inside.
In the end, I picked the doorway on the right. As I pushed my way into the room, the smell of home that had greeted me when I first entered the house increased tenfold. Suddenly I was swaddled in warmth and comfort and it nearly took me off my feet. The room was simple, a bed, a dresser, a side table, but it was the photo on the side table that caught my eye.
My mother stood beaming into an invisible camera, dressed in a beautiful white gown, with intricately curled hair framing her soft face. The man standing next to her was so familiar that I had to remind myself that the last time I saw him, I was shitting myself and constantly had to have someone clean the drool off my chin. I saw my oblong nose reflected in his face, my deep, brown eyes gazing back at me under thick, bushy eyebrows.
I didn't notice how hard it was becoming to breath until I reached for the photo. My father was standing next to my mother, holding her tightly against his chest so her hair spilled over his chin. He was an attractive young man, and I understood what Renee saw in him. His face was unbelievably kind and trustworthy, and I knew he must have made an excellent cop with a face like that.
Blindly, I groped my way out of the bedroom, pulling the door shut behind me with an echoing slam. I threw open the last door, not exactly knowing what to expect, but needing something other than the comfort I was finding in a dead man's room. I stepped inside, the wedding photo still clutched against my heart, and was on my knees in an instant.
I was in a world of pink, surrounded by lace. A crib remained to my right, overlooking the spacious backyard. There was a changing table covered with boxes of unused diapers, and the floor was scattered with sealed boxes marking "Bella" or "Renee." Tears were falling freely now, leaving dark spots on my pants. Breathing was becoming extraordinarily difficult, and I found myself curled up on the floor, surrounded by things for a baby that had long since grown up.
I heaved loud, shuddering breaths, and soon I was sobbing inconsolably. Simultaneously, I understood everything and did not understand anything. My father had kept everything exactly the way it was when my mother left. My mother was the one who left. My entire life in Phoenix was a lie. She had left him. I was so confused and angry, hot tears soaked the carpet under my temple. The wedding photo was sill clutched in my hand, but the flood of tears kept my vision too obscured to see it. Still, I ran my grubby fingers across the plastic frame, feeling its age with every pass.
It took a long time for me to calm down. I cried like an infant for a long time, loud and unceasing. The exhaustion of the day, the anger I felt for my mother, the grief for a father I never knew, it was enough to drive me into primal state. I left purple crescent moons in my palms where I clutched and pounded my fists against the carpet. When I finally fell asleep, my mouth was gaping open, breathing hard. Snot ran down my face, mixing with tears to cake my skin with salt. My face was so tight and inflamed that I stayed on the carpet just to feel the coolness of the floor. I slept fitfully that night, but unwilling to move myself from this nursery bedroom.
The next morning I felt infinitely better. The tight anxiety that rested in my chest since I had left Phoenix had loosened, and I began to feel slightly more comfortable here in my father's house. My house, I reminded myself.
I stayed in the bedroom for a few minutes after I woke up, laying on the floor. I traced the edges of the room with my eyes, trying to see if I could remember anything about being in this place. I knew I must have laid like this often when I was little, just staring at the ceiling, waiting.
Eventually, my need for caffeine won out, and I slowly stood, stretching my sore back. In retrospect, the floor was not the best place to spend the night on. I padded down the stairs, still wearing the same clothes as the day before, and ventured into the kitchen with the vain hope of finding coffee.
Empty. I supposed that now is no better time than any to head to the grocery store. I remembered that Charlie's keys to his truck were still in my pocket from the night before, I fingered them gently, running my thumb over the worn leather fob. It took a few tries, but the old behemoth eventually started, and I made quick work of finding Fork's only grocery store.
Pulling into the crowded parking lot, it took me a few minutes to realize it was a Saturday. Moms and their kids were pilling into and out of cars, carrying loads of groceries packed into brown bags. I felt like I had stepped into a time machine, looking 40 or 50 years into the past. Everyone was all smiles, despite the gloomy drizzle that seemed ever permanent. To be honest, their easy cheeriness frightened me.
I pulled my hood over my head, and crossed the parking lot quickly. Once inside, I left my hood up, hoping to protect myself against whatever jovial disease these happy townsfolk seemed to have contracted. Finding the coffee was the easy part, but I spent the better part of an hour wandering the food isles, a basket hanging from the crook of my elbow.
I had never really eaten alone before, I was always cooking for Renee and me. I was at a loss for what to buy, eventually settling on a loaf of bread, some peanut butter, and two boxes of frozen waffles, and coffee grounds obviously. I wandered through the produce department, knowing that I needed at least some sort of nutritious addition to my basket.
While I stood dumbly in front of an impossibly large display of different varieties of apples, a woman's arm crossed into my field of vision.
"Oh," I said, backing out of her way immediately, "sorry." The woman turned to look at me, smiling and tucking a lock of hair behind her ears. Her brown eyes were warm and kind, and it made my stomach twinge, thinking of the wedding photo on the floor of the nursery.
"No, no," she said, waving her hand dismissively, clutching an apple. "Its my fault." She gestured towards the apple, "the kids only want Honey-crisps."
There was an awkward moment when I took a step back to let the woman in, the basket on my arm clipped a guacamole display and sent the plastic packages tumbling to the floor. The woman turned around, apple still in her hand. I let out an awkward noise, something like a gasp or a chuckle, and was immediately on the floor trying to rectify the mess. Thankfully none of the packages had opened upon falling, trying to clean up the green goopy mess would be too much for me to attempt in my current state.
I had most of the packages back on the stand when I turned around and found the woman smiling at me kindly.
"Um…have a good day," and I scurried away from her, around the next corner. I nearly broke down in tears again, but held it together long enough to queue up behind another family in line for the checkout. The young man scanning my items tried too hard to make conversation, and I am sure I seemed rude ignoring him.
I was just beginning to pull out of the crowded parking lot when I saw the woman again, accompanied by a girl just a bit younger than me. They were unloading a basket into a ridiculously nice Audi. I must have slowed down visibly because the heart-shaped faced woman glanced up again me again, and half raised her hand. Her smile was enough for me to step on the accelerator a bit too hard, and I jolted out of the parking lot.
Everyone was so nice here.
I swallowed thickly and focused on trying to navigate my way back home. Forks was small enough, but Charlie's house was off an unmarked road, and I was worried I would miss the turn off. I was sitting at a stop sign in downtown, watching a group of teenagers cross in the crosswalk in front of me, when I saw the "help wanted" sign in the window of the Newton's Olympic Outfitters.
A thought ran through me, I could stay here. I hadn't really considered what I was going to do once I got to Forks. Going back to Phoenix didn't seem like much of an option, and I chided myself for not really thinking it through. I glanced at the grocery bag in the seat next to me, I was going to run out of money at some point.
The teenagers had finished crossing the street, so I pulled ahead and found a parking spot along the crowded downtown strip. I looked at my day-old outfit, and wished I had thought to change before I left the house.
I pushed the door open into the outdoors store, the smell of saw dust and age greeting me once I crossed the threshold. A tiny bell rang above me as I let the door close, signaling to an aging man that I had entered.
"Good morning!" He called out to me from the cash register. He leaned on a glass display of knives, his eyes twinkled with a warm smile.
"Hi," I said, realizing I didn't really know how to continue from here. I half-turned around, gesturing to the general direction of the help wanted sign in the front window.
"I saw the sign…" I trailed off, starting to feel like perhaps bolting for the front door was my best option. The older man smiled and nodded, taking the pressure off the awkward exchange.
"You're here for the job." He gave a knowing smile, and I relaxed a fraction. He stood up from his leaning position to cross to the front of the counter. "I need a day manager," he continued.
I nodded, trying not to seem to eager.
"Can you make a schedule?" He asked, and it didn't seem as accusing as I expected it to.
"Yes," I replied, hoping he didn't expect me to elaborate.
"Can you be here at 9 tomorrow?" he asked, leaning back against the counter, crossing his arms. His smile twinkled mischievously.
"Yeah" I said a bit too quickly, too eager. He reached out his hand, gesturing for a handshake.
"Welcome onboard…" he trailed off, waiting for me to supply my name.
"Bella," I answered, pride swelling in my chest. I just got a job. I could make a life here in Forks, I wouldn't have to leave if I didn't want to.
"Bella." He repeated. Recognition flashed in his eyes, but he didn't say any more than that. I was exceedingly grateful, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to hold it together if the circumstances were different.
I turned to leave and he shouted back at me, "Don't be late." I waved and pulled the door shut behind me, the tiny bell tinkling.
Walking back to my truck, I felt good about my decision to leave Phoenix for the first time since saying goodbye to my mother. I felt grown up and real, I had a job and a house and coffee. I drove back home, elation making my arms and legs tingle. I possessed a confidence I hadn't ever had before, I could take care of myself here in this new town. I didn't need anyone's help but my own.
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