A/N I hope that this chapter explains a bit more about Alice's situation and what must happen to get her out. I've tried really hard to delineate her father's motivations well ... let me know if they don't make sense. Oh... and pay attention! There is mention of another character that will make an appearance later. :o)
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.
Chapter Four: That Heaven Finds Means
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Led by the moonlight …
Have all passed away …
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To obey was to get out of this place. But to obey was to lose, to become what he wanted her to become.
"Bend or break, Mary," he said.
But the man with the blond hair and blue eyes was becoming so clear in her mind that she imagined him sitting next to her, holding her hand during the nightly beatings. She imagined him whispering in her ear, "You don't have to bend, Alice. You don't have to break. You can fight."
Oh yes, the beatings were nightly now. She didn't try to fight him off anymore. She knew that the quickest way to get to the blond man with blue eyes was to submit to the pale-eyed man in the white coat. Or pretend to submit ("You can still fight, Alice."). It was an odd way of fighting, but she did it. She was still during the beatings. And said, 'Yes sir." And she got him his iced tea. She was a perfect lady.
But she made sure to spit into every glass of iced tea before she gave it to him.
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He walked into her room that evening, and she knew he wasn't alone. Instead of one short, ordinary, pale-eyed man, she saw two.
"Mary, I … uh … am here to see you," her father said.
She waited.
"I am, uh, arranging a marriage for you. I know that your, uh, therapy has been progressing, uh, well, and, uh, I think it's time for you to marry," he cleared his throat.
She wondered vaguely if her father knew about what exactly her "therapy" entailed. She bet not. Her father might be stupid, but he wasn't heartless.
They had tried different medicines on her at first. Conventional therapy, really. The drugs had made her so sick though that she lost all connection with the world. Her father had put a stop to that therapy. Anyway, she was perfectly normal except for her claim to see the future in her dreams. Surely the doctors could heal her of that.
Besides, he wanted her to get married one day. He only wanted her off his hands, not in some state asylum. That was why he had placed her in a private asylum. So no one would have to know, least of all the great state of Mississippi (or, more importantly, the neighbors). She would get better, be married, and no one would be the wiser. It was becoming too expensive to keep her here now though … So now they were trying "counseling." Cheaper and less hallucination-inducing than the medication … But if that didn't work, then marriage it was. She wondered if he found out what the pale-eyed man was doing if her father would stop that therapy as well.
"Really, uh, Mary, you're saving me now," he laughed weakly. "I've arranged a marriage between you and one of Carlisle Cullen's sons."
She barely remembered Carlisle Cullen. She had never consciously added him to her necklace of memories. But she did remember his warm brown eyes. And she knew which son it was. The blond-haired one with blue eyes. She could see him so clearly in her mind, she almost expected him to sit down next to her. To take her hand and hold it. To save her now.
She wasn't stupid. She remembered Carlisle well enough (she remembered his warm brown eyes) to know that this wasn't an arranged marriage. She knew she could back out. But she wouldn't. Because it brought the blond-haired man with blue eyes to her.
"In return, Carlisle is … um … canceling some debts that I, uh, still owe him," her father shuffled around a bit, and then mumbled, "But perhaps I, uh, shouldn't have told you that, Mary."
She might be crazy, but she wasn't dumb. She knew it made her father sleep at night. It was the perfect excuse. He was honor-bound to pay his debts. He had to. And what better way to do it than through his daughter? Then she would be cared for by someone other than him (which was the principle virtue of the plan). He could go back to his little house with the water oak shading the drive, back to his library with the musty books and papers, back to a way of living where he was so colorless and spineless he bothered no one.
Back to a life where he could disappear. Back to a life where he needn't bother with human interaction.
He was killing two birds with one stone, really.
Besides, most of the debts had probably been incurred by her. Private asylums weren't cheap, after all.
It did make her wonder though … Who was more cruel – the man who hit her, or the man who allowed it?
In a distant sort of way, she pitied her father. She remembered what her first visions were like. They had come in her dreams late at night. She saw the arrowhead, and Cynthia reading A Little Princess under the water oak tree. But then they became serious. No one had believed her the next day when she claimed to see a friend drowning, screaming and crying from the fear and panic of it. She still tried to push the memory away. He was her friend. If only she had been able to speak better. She had only been a little girl, and she couldn't seem to make them understand.
To them it was nonsense. It was a dream. It was a nightmare. Maybe she has a fever. Or indigestion. Perhaps Mary should stay away from the lake for a while.
She always wondered afterward why their reaction to her visions was strictly fear. If they had just listened to her afterwards … then maybe the barn would not have burned. She saw it. She warned them. Maybe the horse would not have become ill either. She saw that too. After the fourth or fifth time though, she stopped warning them. She stopped trying to help.
Instead, she had felt the awful, side-splitting, headache-inducing, train engine-exploding pressure to become Mary. The perfect daughter. The ordinary daughter. The daughter who did not have strange pictures behind her eyes. The daughter who could be given away in marriage. But she wouldn't do it. And it was her resistance that put her here, in this dark room with the pale-eyed man. Sometimes life made her laugh so hard she cried.
Because she wasn't Mary. She was Alice. And she would never be anyone else but Alice.
"So, uh, Mary, you will stay here until, uh, the wedding day has been … ahem … arranged. In the meantime, I will … um … take you to visit Mr. Cullen and his family a few times so that you … may, uh, get acquainted."
To obey was to leave this place. But to obey was to lose.
She couldn't lose. She wouldn't lose.
"And please, uh, Mary," he pleaded. "Please behave yourself."
It was his plea from the beginning. As if the pictures behind her eyes were some kind of rebellion. Well, she had to hand it to her father. In all things but this he was weak, but in this he would see it through. He would see her be normal.
The only problem was that he closed his eyes to anything that might happen on the way to his goal. The end justified the means … So long as he did not have to know the means. Ignorance was bliss. Ignorance was innocence.
He mumbled a bit more, "I, uh … hope that you … are, uh, happy here. I will come, uh, and get you, uh, on Thursday evening."
She was herself. She had a heart. She had a soul. She had a voice, which she would use when and to whom she wanted.
My name is Alice. My name is Alice. My name is Alice. My name is Alice. My name is Alice. My name is Alice.
She would not bend to her father. She would not bend to him.
But she smiled. But she nodded at her father. But she said, "Yes sir."
He awkwardly patted her back and left her. Left her with him.
Goodbye, Father.
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She remembered her mother brushing her hair in the evenings. That was when she had long black hair.
"My mother used to do this with me when I was a girl," her mother whispered.
Alice knew she was lying. Her grandmother had worked the skin off her hands trying to raise her children and keep out of the way of her grandfather's bourbon-induced rages. Her mother had tried, with a pale-skinned, wide-eyed desperation, to create a pink-tinted, lacquered, crisp, pristine childhood for her daughters.
But then her daughter had to ruin everything by being crazy.
"I had hair just like yours, and my mother would brush it until it was soft and shiny. Your hair looks like a piece of polished obsidian," she said.
She could remember laughing when her mother said that. Her child-self knew that she had seen a piece of obsidian once. Well, not actually. Jefferson would show it to her tomorrow after school. It was an arrowhead, and he made her promise not to tell anyone as he worked all afternoon to attach it to a stick with a piece of string to make an arrow. He pulled it with a toy bow that his father had bought at the store. He had accidentally sent the arrow through Mrs. Swan's window. She and Jefferson had scampered away before they got caught. Her mother's every mention of obsidian reminded her of that delicious secret.
Jefferson had been the friend who drowned. He had drowned in a lake and she had known about it. But she hadn't been able to stop it.
After Jefferson drowned, she didn't talk anymore in the evenings when her mother brushed her hair. It was like an invisible wall had been bricked between them. But one evening (after the arrowhead, after Jefferson drowned, after the barn burned down, after the horse got so sick….) her mother's hands were shaking too much to brush Alice's hair to a soft, black shine.
"What's the matter, Mother?" Alice had asked, taking her mother's hand.
Her mother had looked at her for a long moment, and had finally just said, "I want you to be happy, Mary."
But she was lying. Her mother wanted her to be normal.
Goodbye, Mother.
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She heard the halting words coming from Cynthia as they read beneath the water oak along the drive.
"'I suppose soldiers feel like this when they are on a long and weary march,' she often said to herself. She liked the sound of the phrase, 'long and weary march.' It made her feel rather like a soldier. She had also a quaint sense of being a hostess in a castle."
Alice stretched out beside Cynthia under the warmth of the sun, helping her with the hard words every now and again.
"'If I live in a castle,' she argued, 'and Ermengarde was the lady of another castle, and came to see me, with knights and squires and vassals riding with her, and pennons flying, when I heard the sounds of the clar- … clari ---'"
"Clarions, Cynthia," she said.
"… clarions sounding outside the drawbridge I should go down to receive her, and I should spread feasts in the banquet hall and call in minstrels to sing and play and related romances.'"
Beneath the warm sun, she felt such strength of love for her sister that she wanted to reach up and hug her and never let go. But she only closed her eyes and smiled as Cynthia continued with the passage. It was a moment she would preserve between the warmth of her palms.
"'When she comes into the attic, I can't spread feasts, but I can tell stories, and not let her know disagreeable things. I dare say poor chat- … chate—'"
"Chatelaines."
"…chatelaines had to do that in times of famine, when their lands had been pillaged.' She was a proud, brave little chatelaine, and dispensed generously the one hospitality she could offer – the dreams she dreamed – the visions she saw – the imaginings which were her joy and comfort."
At first that was what she had tried to do. She had tried to share the pictures behind her eyes with Cynthia. Her sister was so young… At first, she thought it was a story, or a game. But as she grew up, she too became fearful.
She had walked off the back porch and into the pink sunset when Alice's parents took her away. She never saw Cynthia again.
Goodbye, Cynthia.
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She closed her eyes and held her necklace close to her heart. But she had finished saying goodbye. The less important beads faded away. The little house with the water oak by the drive. The bedroom with the old dollhouse. The paper dolls on the floor. Reading A Little Princess beneath the warm sun under the shade of the water oak. The library with the musty smelling books and papers. The dresser with the perfume bottles and light-reflecting jewels. The silver brush. The back porch. The old creaky swing. The pink sunset. Mother. Father. Cynthia.
No, the central bead was what she held in the palms of her hand, what the warmth of her fingers protected. The central bead, the chief jewel, of her necklace was a face with blond hair and blue eyes.
She smiled softly. She even knew his name.
Jasper.
But she would bend for Jasper. She knew she would meet him soon. And she would do whatever he wished. She knew it was the only way to leave this place of darkness and the pale-eyed man. If she behaved perfectly for Jasper, he could save her.
"You don't have to bend, Alice. You don't have to break. You can fight."
She laughed and laughed. She had to obey Jasper to be free. Once Jasper saved her she was free to be Alice again.
She would fight to be free. She would bend to be free. She would break to be free.
Jasper.
She whispered it to herself until the pale-eyed man came back into her room.
"Bend or break, Mary."
She couldn't see the blows coming in the dark. She wondered vaguely why he still bothered to strike her. He knew she was leaving. He had failed. He wouldn't be able to get her to break before the wedding.
"What is your name, Mary?" he asked fiercely.
There was a new kind of ferocity to his blows and she gasped from the pain. But she didn't cry.
"What is your name, Mary?"
She felt fear for the first time when she realized what that did to him. She had made him fail. It wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot. It was only just beginning.
"Bend or break, Mary."
"You don't have to bend, Mary. You don't have to break. You can fight."
She wouldn't break she wouldn't break she wouldn't break she wouldn't break…
"What is your name, Mary?"
My name is Alice. My name is Alice. My name is Alice. My name is Alice. My name is Alice.
Jasper.
Please save me…
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