Chapter 15 – Mind Over Matter – Part 1
Elizabeth Masen's dresser:
/Victorian/Emmas_Treasures_Large_Bedroom_Vanity_with_Optional_Mirror_and_Chair-girls-teens-vintage_victorian_style_bedroom_
Elizabeth Masen's nightgown (farthest to the left, back row): .?trg=1&strucID=713591&imageID=828301&total=35&num=0&word=lingerie%201910%2D1919&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&imgs=20&pos=4&e=w
song quoted from the 1950s (Mona Lisa, Nat King Cole): .com/n/nat%2Bking%2Bcole/mona%2Blisa_
Last bit of Chapter 14 (Confessions), part 3...
She really doesn't see herself clearly.
I looked at her fondly, hoping I could convey how completely ridiculous she was being as well as how much she meant to me in a single look. I didn't think mere words would reassure her, to convey my feelings, without talking for the rest of the night. Instead, I leaned toward her. Immediately, her heartbeat quickened. I didn't want to risk furthering her intoxication by kissing her again. So, I brushed my icy lips delicately along her jaw. She trembled as I brushed back and forth, raising gooseflesh on her face and neck.
Her scent filled me. My head swam with unspoken reassurances that I knew she would not take sincerely. With desire burning in my eyes, I murmured into her ear, "Regardless, I have better reflexes."
I walked her, my arm still around her waist, to the passenger side of her truck, and opened the door as she slid into the seat. Bella hardly had time to acknowledge the clank of the door closing, before I was sitting in the driver's seat, cranking the rust bucket's engine.
Chapter 15 – Mind Over Matter – Part 1
Driving her truck at a human pace was a true test of my patience. I tried not to show it by putting on my human facade once again. But it wasn't quite as flawless as it had been before all that transpired in the meadow. I blinked, took breaths I didn't need, but I remained too still to be considered normal.
A few miles down the one-ten, the urge to feel the reality of her warmth overcame me and I gently intertwined the fingers of my free hand with hers. The contact felt amazing to me as I let our hands rest on the seat between us. She was my anchor to a reality I never knew existed. A reality that made my existence begin to feel like the life Carlisle had hoped it would be when he turned me.
Since I was holding her hand, it meant I was driving one-handed. As protective as she was of this rust bucket, I expected to see her eyebrows pinch together in worry even though my touch clearly comforted her. However, when I glanced away from the brilliant orange and red hues of the setting sun toward her, I found only serenity and the hint of a contented smile.
Bella remained quiet as I drove. Although she tried to hide it from me, her brown eyes lingered on our tangled hands, and glanced quickly from them to my face. Part of my brain was concentrating on driving Bella's antique truck without pushing the engine too hard. I almost needed the distraction of pretending to be human to focus. My thoughts wanted to linger, dangerously, on the feel of her warm body against mine, her warm lips crushed under my cold ones...
Snap out of it Cullen!
I nearly torqued the steering wheel in surprise at the severe tone of my inner voice. The harshness was warranted and I turned my attention to thoughts that wouldn't incur the wrath of that inner monologue.
At first, I purely admired the beauty of the sunset. The sight was a rare one in this part of the country, so it was meant to be treasured. My eyes could see colors beyond that of Bella's human ones, making it even more extraordinary. Sure, the pinks, red, oranges, and yellows would be beautiful to her, but they lacked the depth with which I could see them.
More times that I'd like to admit, my eyes drifted from the natural beauty of the sunset in front of me to the natural beauty holding my hand. The truck windows were open and a lock of Bella's hair was caught in the breeze, trailing out the window. The sight captivated me, as each individual strand shone a different shade of mahogany. There were even fine shades of brown, red, and orange there.
Suddenly, a human memory surfaced of my mother sitting at her Victorian style dresser. Although the colors of the memory were blurred and faded, like an old photograph, the fact that it surfaced at all was amazing. My mother sat, facing her reflection, in the linen nightgown she always wore. The lace trim at the bottom and on the straps had fascinated me as a child. Mother had told me once that her grandmother had made that lace for her, when she married Father.
Why am I remembering this now? I wondered, almost aloud, but the memory continued to unfold. My vampire mind was able to concentrate on many things at once, so watching this memory and driving, while remaining attentive should Bella begin to speak were easy for me.
She could see my reflection in her dresser mirror, and Mother smiled fondly. Without asking or waiting for permission, I pushed her door open the rest of the way and entered. I sat on a stool off to her left that Father often occupied, when he was home for this nightly routine.
Mother's smile turned down at the edges when my reflection came into focus in the wobbly glass.
"I should never have allowed your father to talk me into letting you play the barbaric game, Edward. The damage to your nose . . ."
My chuckle stopped her mid-sentence, "Mom, I think it gives me character!"
She playfully smacked at me with the bristle side of her hairbrush, and I snatched it away, easily and quickly.
"Besides, if I ever need to wear spectacles like Father, I have the perfect resting place for them!" I teased.
Mother actually laughed at my poor joke, all sadness at my recent injury and 'disfigurement' gone.
"Too bad your reflexes weren't as quick when that ball came at you," she teased, nodding toward the brush in my hand.
I nodded, "Touché," I conceded, "but what's really upsetting you, Mother?"
Her smile turned thoughtful, as I removed the first of many tiny silver combs from her hair and started brushing her long, bronze highlighted hair.
And, as quickly as it came, the memory was gone . . .
As part of my mind had been absorbed with the memory of my mother, another had been humming along with one of the few radio stations that Bella's out-dated stereo system could pick up. Before the middle of the song, I was singing along quietly.
"...many dreams have been brought to your doorstep..." I was singing, when I heard Bella's intake of breath signaling she was going to speak.
"You like fifties music?" she asked.
Coming fully back from my fuzzy memories of Mother, I answered somewhat automatically and without thinking about where my answer might take her thoughts. "Music in the fifties was good. Much better than the sixties, or seventies, ugh!" I actually shuddered a little at the thought of some of the wailing that passed as music then. And then I shrugged, indifferently, "the eighties were bearable."
I glanced back from the sunset, back to Bella, just as she spoke, "Are you ever going to tell me how old you are?" Her voice was tentative and afraid.
I tried to hide the edge of fear that had snuck into me, "Does it matter much?" I smiled at her, hoping she couldn't see how frightened I was that this would be the thing to separate us.
She responded too quickly, "No," she paused slightly, "but I still wonder . . ." She grimaced, but I had no idea why. Her expression changed as she tried to be light-hearted, "There's nothing like an unsolved mystery to keep you up at night."
Almost to myself, I answered, "I wonder if it will upset you." Not sure how to go on, or how she'd react, I looked toward the sun.
I kept my eyes on the sun, being sure not to push her truck any harder in my anxiousness. Several minutes passed, and neither of us spoke. I wanted to tell her the truth if only because she had dealt with all my other confessions so well, but this one seemed so much bigger than the rest.
I heard the leather underneath Bella creak as she straightened her shoulders. "Try me," she said, visibly bracing herself for the answer.
I paused for a moment, blinked twice, and tore my eyes from the sunset to look into her eyes to see if she was sure she was prepared.
I sighed, because Bella's face was tranquil. Her eyes were curious, unafraid. The sight pleased me immensely, but I felt as though I couldn't look into those bottomless eyes when I told my tale. I looked back at the sun as the tree-cover broke. The oranges and reds reflected off my skin, sending tiny refractions of rainbows all over the inside of the truck. I barely noticed as I sighed, resigning myself to telling her my tale.
"I was born in Chicago in 1901," I told her, my eyes darted to their corners to gauge her reaction. Bella's eyes had widened slightly, but there was no shock or fear there. So I continued, "My father, Edward Anthony Masen, was a successful lawyer with a busy practice. My mother was what you would call a homemaker, but she was also much more. Chicago was one of this young country's largest cities then, and our money gave us many privileges."
"What was her name? Your mother, I mean?" Bella asked, sensing my slight hesitation in what I was going to say next.
"Elizabeth Alden Masen," I replied, "she was the youngest daughter of Albert Lasher, head of the Lord and Thomas Advertising Agency. My father courted her for some time, apparently only winning Mr. Lasher's favor when he became a partner of Clarence Darrow's."
"From the moment I was born, my father said she adored me. I lacked nothing. Mother spoiled me, but I don't think it strained their relationship any, because Father had always wanted a son." I smiled, as his fuzzy features appeared in my mind's eye.
"We were alone together a lot because Father was tireless, trying to right all of society's wrongs. But we were never lonely. When left to our devices, and I wasn't in school, we would read plays, enjoy art museums, and attend the top parties. Mother loved the high society parties and the doors that would open when she gave her name, or Father's. Many of my parents' peers chastised Mother for not hiring a nanny or private tutor for me, but both of my parents preferred a more hands-on approach."
"When Father was home, he would enter our tight-knit duo easily; planning little adventures for the three of us. Often we would attend baseball games, and get to meet the players afterward because of Father's connections. Sometimes, we'd travel to a new museum or art gallery opening that would make Mother's eyes twinkle with delight. He loved to surprise us with a short trip to a newly opened National Park, for a picnic. "
"But her high society events or Father's adventures weren't the only things that Mother enjoyed. Her mother had been pregnant with her during the Great Fire of 1871. Nearly losing Elizabeth trying to save her older daughter, my grandmother was forever changed. Mother never knew the older sister that everyone held in such high esteem. And the grief of a loss she never she couldn't relate to stayed with her. Mother always had to live in the shadow of the perfect daughter lost, and she remembered how everyone around her felt after the fire – the loss, the heart break even in those people who hadn't lost anyone, or anything."
"She wanted to help, any way she could. Barely worn clothes of ours would disappear on the same day that Mother would attend a mysterious tea party across town that had escaped mention until the very day of the event. I never found out for sure, but I think she would drop those items off at one of the many local churches or, when I was younger, orphanages."
My smile was one of fond memories when I realized I didn't know what else I wanted to tell Bella.
"It sounds like your mother and Mrs. Cullen have similar characteristics," she observed.
I had to stifle a chuckle, "Only in a town this small would everyone know who the anonymous donor at a hospital miles away is!"
Bella's knowing smile was radiant.
"However, in her penchant for always wanting us to look our best, Alice is more like Mother was," I added, the small smile not leaving my lips.
"So how old were you, when you were changed?" Bella asked, bringing me fully back to the conversation at hand and the entire point of it in the first place.
I sighed, having no idea why answering this question was so hard given everything else we had discussed today. "Carlisle found me in a hospital in the summer of 1918. I was seventeen, and dying of the Spanish influenza."
Oxygen rushed in between pursed lips, the sound just barely registering even to my ears. I looked from the road back to those bottomless orbs of chocolate.
For the first time, the silence between us is not a comfortable one. Neither of us liked the things we were thinking, I supposed. I was the one to break the silence. "I don't remember it well -" I lied "it was a very long time ago, and human memories fade." That part was true. I unlocked my eyes from Bella's and stared out the windshield at nothing in particular. Without being too specific, I felt the need to rectify at least some part of my lie. "I do remember how it felt, when Carlisle saved me. It's not an easy thing, not something you could forget."
Finding her voice and not seeming to notice my apparent contradiction, Bella spoke. "Your parents?"
I decided to spare her the details of seeing my father's strong form deteriorate into not much more than a skin-covered skeleton and mother's lustrous locks go un-cared for and flat. "They had already died from the disease. I was alone. That was why he chose me. In all the chaos of the epidemic, no one would ever realize I was gone."
"How did he . . . save you?" Bella asked.
Her question sent me searching my vocabulary for words; words that wouldn't frighten or make light of Carlisle's decision, or his actions, that night.
After a few seconds, I found the words I needed. "It was difficult. Not many of us have the restraint necessary to accomplish it. But Carlisle has always been the most humane, the most compassionate of us . . . I don't think you could find his equal throughout all of history."
I paused, carefully weighing my next words – tossing them around in my mouth before speaking them. "For me, it was merely very, very painful."
My mind flashed back to that pain, that burning, searing fire that consumed me for days. The memory was quickly followed by a snippet of Alice's unfavorable vision of what today could have been . . . Bella twitching and screaming in the grass. Or the alternative, the one that Jasper had defiantly rallied for; Bella cold, dead on the grass with him standing over her, his military training making it a painless and quick end.
My jaw clamped shut, my lips forming a tight line over whatever I may have said next. I tried not to look over at Bella, because even though her thoughts were stubbornly shielded from me I could almost make them out. I hoped she wouldn't notice the tension in the set of my jaw, or the muscles in the side of my face twitching.
She's wondering just how painful the transformation is to endure. I'd wager she's considering that as a way of staying with me.
I needed to explain, to make her see that that was not an option. But, I didn't know how to say it. And I couldn't believe that, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I was even giving the thought consideration.
Before I let loose the monster to rage at her for thoughts I had no proof that she was having, I whispered, "He acted from loneliness. That's usually the reason behind the choice."
My pause didn't register with Bella, because the monster in me gave me so much more room to think. Glancing at her, I could almost understand the loneliness that had driven him. And I'd never before considered the fact that I was indeed lonely.
"I was the first in Carlisle's family, though he found Esme soon after. She fell from a cliff. They brought her straight to the hospital morgue, though, somehow, her heart was still beating." I stopped there, not wanting to tell a story that wasn't mine to tell.
Whatever she was thinking, she was gnawing on that bottom lip. That small action was enough to stir longing in me, to try kissing her again. My lips twitched with the desire, even though the danger would be increased if her small teeth had broken the skin. Bella's tone was still curious, distracting me from the longing, when she spoke, "So you must be dying, then, to become . . ." But when she trailed off, I knew she still had misgivings about my true nature. She wasn't yet ready to speak the word vampire.
I shook my head slightly, hating not knowing exactly where Bella's thoughts were. "'No, that's just Carlisle. He would never do that to someone who had another choice." I mused over my adopted father for a few moments. The doctor, the philanthropist, the care-giver. The respect I had for Carlisle must have been evident in almost everything I did, and surely in the way I spoke about him. "It is easier he says, though, if the blood is weak."
"And Emmett and Rosalie?" she asked, quietly.
I smirked, "Carlisle brought Rosalie to our family next. I didn't realize until much later that he was hoping she would be to me what Esme was to him – he was careful with his thoughts around me." I actually rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of the notion. Why he even gave that notion a moment's consideration was a mystery to me, even now. "But she was never more than a sister. It was only two years later that she found Emmett."
I remembered Emmett's story well, and could see it in my head as I spoke. "She was hunting – we were in Appalachia at the time – and found a bear about to finish him off. She carried him back to Carlisle, more than a hundred miles, afraid she wouldn't be able to do it herself. I'm only beginning to guess how difficult that journey was for her."
I looked over at her, pointedly, and raised our hand up off of the seat. I brushed the back of my cold hand against the delicate warmth of her cheek.
Looking away from me, she said, "But she made it." Her voice was full of hope, and encouragement, as if that was even an option for us.
Trying not to give in to the anger that bubbled up inside me, when I thought of my Bella being doomed to this awful existence, I took a deep breath of her scent and murmured, "Yes." I had to steady my voice before I continued, "She saw something in his face that made her strong enough. And they've been together ever since. Sometimes they live separately from us, as a married couple. But the younger we pretend to be, the longer we can stay in any given place. Forks seemed perfect, so we all enrolled in high school." I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me as the next thought occurred to me, "I suppose we'll have to go to their wedding in a few years, again."
I had to steer my thoughts away from what I knew would come, eventually . . . leaving her. I would have to. There could be no other way. Carlisle couldn't be Forks' most prominent doctor for years, when he obviously wasn't aging. I had to lock-down another portion of my brain, before I tried to shut down the elation that I was still feeling while holding her little, warm hand in mine.
Bella took only moments to consider Rosalie's story before asking, "Alice and Jasper?"
As long as Bella wasn't asking for more details on how the transformation from human to damned, I would tell her anything at this point. And something in me sensed that she knew that. "Alice and Jasper are two very rare creatures. They both developed a conscience, as we refer to it, with no outside guidance. Jasper belonged to another . . . family, a very different kind of family. He became depressed, and he wandered on his own. Alice found him. Like me, she has certain gifts above and beyond the norm for our kind."
"Really?" Bella interrupted, before I could chastise myself for glossing over Jasper's past, and what little we know of Alice's. "But you said you were the only one who could hear people's thoughts."
She was clearly interested to hear about Alice, and Alice had seen that they were going to be quite friendly . . . I would have to remember to tell my favorite sister this little detail. I could almost hear Alice squealing with delight already.
"That's true," I said, desperately attempting to keep the image of Bella with the blood red eyes of a newborn vampire tucked away in an unused, or more easily ignored, portion of my brain. "She knows other things. She sees things – things that might happen, things that are coming. But it's very subjective. The future isn't set in stone. Things change."
My jaw clenched tightly against the image fighting fiercely to resurface. I had to look over at Bella, quickly, if only to reassure myself that there was still color in her cheeks and her eyes were still that gorgeous brown. The warmth that traveled from her was no longer enough. I needed that visual assurance. I didn't allow my eyes to linger for fear that the humanity I saw there would melt away into the image of the Bella vampire horror.
Bella's voice, once again, saved me from myself. "What kinds of things does she see?"
Visions of you . . . lifeless . . . dead. Visions of you . . . with red eyes, snarling for blood. Visions of you . . . with the golden eyes of my family.
I mentally shook myself, and began to answer her. "She saw Jasper and knew that he was looking for her before he knew it himself. She saw Carlisle and our family, and they came together to find us. She's the most sensitive to non-humans. She always sees, for example, when another group of our kind is coming near. And any threat they may pose."
Why do I always say too much around her?
And, on cue, Bella asked another question I wasn't sure exactly how to answer. "Are there a lot of . . . your kind?"
I struggled to answer, but stuck closer to the truth. "No, not many. But most won't settle in any one place." Because they're too conspicuous, or kill each other too quickly over the blood in the area. "Only those like us, who've given up hunting you people," I pointedly looked over at Bella, "can live together with humans for any length of time. We've only found one other family like ours, in a small village in Alaska. We lived together for a time, but there were so many of us that we became too noticeable. Those of us who live . . . differently tend to band together."
"And the others?" Bella asked.
"Nomads, for the most part." Wandering all over the world, committing random acts of murder. "We've all lived that way at times. It gets tedious, like anything else. But we run across the others now and then, because most of us prefer the North." As I pulled onto Bella's street, I noticed there were no lights on inside her house, indicating the Chief had not yet returned from his fishing trip. The darkness was all-consuming, already.
"Why is that?" Bella asked, obviously not thinking before she asked as I parked her truck in her driveway.
"Did you not have your eyes open this afternoon?" I quipped, hoping she understood that I was only teasing. "Do you think I could walk down the street in the sunlight without causing traffic accidents?" Bella snickered a little. "There's a reason why we chose the Olympic Peninsula, one of the most sunless places in the world. It's nice to be able to go outside in the day. You wouldn't believe how tired you can get of nighttime in eighty-odd years."
A small smile played across Bella's rosy lips. "So that's where the legends come from."
I nod. "Probably."
Without looking at me, she asked, "And Alice came from another family, like Jasper?"
"No, and that is a mystery. Alice doesn't remember her human life at all."
As I spoke about Alice's past, I could see it the way she remembered it . . .
Alice, barely dressed, dirty, and alone . . .
Her voice, barely above a whisper, as she tells me what little she remembers.
"I don't remember the pain of being changed, like everyone else, Edward."
In her mind, she's just opened her eyes, as if there was nothing at all before this moment in her life.
"I just opened my eyes on the sunrise, knowing things were different for me now." She had said, with a kind of child-like wonder that made me want to protect this small, little thing that had just introduced herself into my life, my room.
First, looking at her hands as they sparkled. Then, at her wrists. Her confusion that something that had been there, wasn't, and that emotion overwhelms her for a few minutes. "I'm free," she whispers to no one.
Then, a smell so tantalizing assails her senses. All of a sudden, her mouth filled with saliva.
"Bleck. Tastes funny. Tongue tingles." She says, her voice gaining strength. She sat up, tucked her knees up under her slight form, she twirled her tongue in her mouth.
"The worst part," Alice would tell me all those years later as she sat atop a trunk full of my clothes carefully removed from my closet and put in the garage. "I couldn't hold a thought for more than three seconds."
And then back she goes . . . seeing it again, feeling it all.
After investigating the inside of her mouth with a strangely tingling tongue for several minutes, a thunderous whooshing noise assaults her ears. She slapped her hands over them, but the sound of her hands making contact with her head is not what she expected. Instead of the popping clap, it was more like the sound of two pieces of marble slamming together. And it didn't block out the sound.
In time with the whooshing, her whole body began to burn with what she could only describe as thirst. Or a thirsty hunger. It didn't make sense.
That was when Alice had the first vision she remembers . . . her small form half-riding, half-falling off a twelve-point buck.
The haziness of the vision cleared, just as the whooshing sound grew to an almost unbearable crescendo, and a twelve-point buck entered the clearing a few yards to her left. Within moments, she was on him. Even without time for her newly-distractible brain to register how quickly she traversed the distance or how soft the layer of fur on his hide felt under her fingers, Alice instinctively clamped her mouth over his carotid and drank.
Alice's thoughts and feelings jumble together as she drinks. Only as the sound slowed, and then stopped, did she stop to consider her actions.
"Vampire," the word escaped her lips in another whisper, and she ran toward a small copse of trees, away from the nearby city and whatever she had been before.
While Alice's memories were playing out in my mind, I continued answering Bella's question, knowing that Alice would want to be the one to tell Bella her story, in detail, in the future . . . now that the two seemed destined for friendship.
"And she doesn't know who created her. She awoke alone. Whoever made her walked away, and none of us understand why, or how, he could. If she hadn't had that other sense, if she hadn't seen Jasper and Carlisle and known that she would someday become one of us, she probably would have turned into a total savage." I wanted to chuckle at the mental image of fashion-trailblazer Alice as a hair-matted, mud-smeared savage, but a sound interrupted the though.
Bella's stomach was . . . growling. And that gorgeous blush was rising across her cheeks.
"I'm sorry, I'm keeping you from dinner."
"I'm fine, really," Bella responded, too quickly.
I'm immediately embarrassed that I have neglected her needs so readily. Muttering in disgust with myself, I manage an apology of sorts, "I've never spent much time around anyone who eats food. I forget."
"I want to stay with you," she blurted out, seeming almost stunned that she had voiced what she was feeling. That response was timid and full of an ache I recognized, because I felt it myself; the ache to not be separated from the other.
"Can't I come in?" I asked, surprising myself with my forwardness and trying to convey with words what I couldn't let show in my voice just yet; that I didn't want to leave her warmth.
As my words processed, and perhaps some of the feeling behind them, the small line between Bella's eyebrows formed. She looked as though she was trying to fathom out a riddle. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the crease disappeared back into the smooth, pale skin of her forehead. "Would you like to?" she asked.
"Yes, if it's all right," I responded, truthfully, thinking of the scandal it would have caused back in the era of my youth. And . . . the scandal it may cause if I didn't have the advantages I did and the Chief came home unexpectedly.
I was out of the driver's seat and at her door, holding it open for her in a flash that startled her.
Bella's eyes sparkled in the darkness with something that I couldn't yet identify as well as surprise, as she looked up at me. "Very human," she complimented, nodding toward the truck door.
"It's definitely resurfacing," I smiled.
I walked beside her once she climbed down from the truck. The walk from the drive to the front door wasn't long, but every other second Bella's eyes would dart to their corners, searching me out in the darkness. It was if she expected me to fade into the dark woods nearby, or to turn into a bat and fly away.
As Bella mounted the first step, I snatched the hidden key from under the eave, and unlocked the front door for her, replacing the key before she even realized I had left her side.
She was half inside and half out when my actions got her attention. "The door was unlocked?" she asked, a slight edge of alarm just evident in her tone.
Smiling at my mistake and what it revealed about me, I confess, "No, I used the key from under the eave."
Frustration at not knowing what Bella was thinking and therefore how she would react to this bit of news, started to boil over. But, she doesn't respond by attempting to slam the door in my face. She just stepped the rest of the way inside, and switched on the front porch light.
