In the Debris
Shattered
Edward:
My mother's met Isabella, and she loves her. Why wouldn't she? She's in the kitchen, cooking us dinner - Isabella, Max, me, and she's singing or humming. I don't recognize the tune; I believe she's making it up as she goes, and it's birdlike and perfect. Her hair is long and dark brown, and looking at it, I understand the darkness is also coming; I see it ahead of me. In the dark, everyone's gone, especially my mother, although I can still hear her. She's all I can hear and she's saying, Edward, be careful, and I'm crying. I'm awake now, still hearing my mother's voice and thinking, Were those them? Were those her last words? And I'm becoming aware of Isabella in my bed, and thinking, Not in front of her. But it's happening and she knows. Her lips are on my eyelids.
What's the matter? I hear her say, but I can't answer.
Edward, what is it? And she's kissing other parts of my face. I open my eyes and I decide to tell her the truth. I'm going to be that whiney eighteen year old who cries for mommy.
It's a dream, I say. My mom. And then there's sobbing. I think it could be coming from her because we're so close that she's shaking too, but I know it's me. She pulls me to her chest, and she's still naked, and my tears are on her breasts, and I can feel her heart's rhythm. And I think she's all I have in this world, she and Max. But she's right here, and I'm holding her tight, hugging her, my head moving to her stomach, her soft stomach, and I allow her to comfort me. She's the first person to comfort me since I lost my mother, the first person I let comfort me, and it feels so good. Nothing's felt better. And I think: The only way to feel this good is to have lost your mother and have the person you love comfort you. And I think of how horrible that is, to have to be so low you're almost buried underground yourself in order to feel this good.
I've been kissing her stomach and don't even know it. Her fingers are in my hair, circling my scalp, and it's more comfort. I kiss her again - now aware - and up her body to her breasts. Her breathing shallows, she's enjoying it, and I keep it going.
My mouth is on the slope of her shoulder. I want to be inside of her. Things are going too fast, but I have this need and it's throbbing and she's opened her legs and I can feel her against me and it's almost painful, this need.
She has to remind me to get a condom. My brain is gone. I never would've thought of it.
I reach quickly to my drawer and pull one out, rip it open, roll it on, and I'm ready and I hope she is too, and I'm inside and there's so much relief to just be there.
I don't even have to move; I'm just there.
My head reminds me this is only her second time - her first time being just hours ago, so I have the mind to ask her if it still hurts.
A little, she says, and I wish now that she hadn't been a virgin because I have this sudden urge to just pound into her. But I curse myself for that because it's amazing that she was a virgin with me.
I want her to feel good.
I kiss her. I move slow. I raise her knees, and as I move now, she gasps.
It's a good hurt, she says and her voice sounds too much like a moan, and I love the way she says good and that makes me move faster and deeper, and I know I'm grunting, and she kind of is, too, in her own soft way.
Her hands gripping at my lower back, she raises her legs up on her own and I'm at a new angle, and now I'm deeper inside her than I've ever been, and I'm gone.
I say her name again, and it's a groan. And another groan. And one more.
I know it didn't happen for her, but it will. I'm determined. The condom's off and I'm kissing down her stomach, my fingers making their way between her thighs. I'll work her with my fingers until I know she feels good, and until she comes, and I'll do it as long as it takes, but it doesn't take long before she's biting her lip, and I kiss her so she bites mine instead, and her arms are around me, hugging me close and she's saying, Thank you, which makes me laugh but reassures me that if she's thanking me, she liked it.
Soon, I tell Isabella, you'll feel things you've never felt before. And I want her never to leave my bed. And I want to tell her to let me buy her things, anything, because that might be all I really have to offer her. I know now with a clarity that I can't stand that I can't give her what she gives me.
.
The next time I wake up, Isabella's not in my bed, she's in my shower. I can hear the spray of the water, almost see her under it. I want to join her, but I don't. I let her have her privacy. She's given me more than she may ever know over the past two nights without asking for a thing. No more taking.
She had pushed the covers back when she got out of bed and I can see a little spot of blood. I made her bleed. I drift my hand over it; it's dry.
Her voice floats to me from the bathroom. She's singing. I listen with a smile, and when her voice cracks, I laugh. I cover my face with my pillow and wonder if she knows I can hear her or if she cares. I listen some more. God, I love her.
When she doesn't stop singing, I can no longer stop myself. I go to her.
"Bella?" I say in the bathroom so I don't startle her and also to ask permission.
She peeks her head out of the shower curtain, reaches a hand to me and pulls me in, but I start swearing right away and jump out from under the stream of the water that's burning my skin.
"Shit, you like it hot."
She adjusts the knob. "Sorry, I know." The water cools and I get under it, Isabella wrapping me in her arms, her body all wet and hot against mine.
We wash each other's hair.
"Bend down," she tells me. "You're too tall."
I step forward so I can rinse my hair, and she feels me against her stomach. I catch her glance down. And then she looks back up at me.
"Edward? Again? We just… two times… and I… I'm sore." She actually covers herself as if I might just start jamming it in her or something. I laugh.
"No, this just. This happens. With guys." I shake my head. "We can't help it."
This is what it's like with a virgin. She doesn't even know how guys are. At all. But at the same time, I don't really know what it's like for girls either, especially not virgins. It didn't cross my mind that she might still feel sore. I mean, even with me not being inside her.
I notice her shiver even though the water is nowhere near cold. She really does need it hot. I get out so she can take her scalding shower.
I towel off, brush my teeth, and wait for her in the bed.
It seems too much time passes before she comes out. I expect her to be be wrapped in a towel, but she's not. She's dressed. Her lips are pinker and shinier. She's wearing make up, definitely not coming back to bed.
Her hair's still wet, making damp shadows in her shirt.
Sitting up, my back against the headboard, I double check that I'm hidden by the sheet. She doesn't need to see what's going on with me under here all because of her wet hair and the water stain on her shirt. Witnessing one accidental hard on is enough for one day.
"Why don't guys ever have conditioner?"
"What guys?"
"You."
"I don't use it."
"You should. Don't you know it'll stave off baldness? That's what Alice says, anyway. And it took me forever to get your fine-toothed comb through my hair."
"My what?"
"Never mind." She climbs on the bed, crawling toward me on her knees, and kisses me. I pull her in by the waist.
"What other guys' showers have you been in?" I ask her, nose to nose, grinning.
"What other girls' showers have you been in?" She grins back at me. "I'm not a nun. But-" she sits back on her knees, my hand falling to her elbow "-you're the only person I've shared a shower with. I bet you can't say the same."
"I think we should change the subject."
"I agree." Her hand lands on my chest. "I think we should talk about your mom. I read that article. You know, the clipping I keep for you? Is that okay? I mean, to talk about?"
"Yeah." But my grin disappears. I feel it go fast, it doesn't even fade, it's just gone. And my hands are off her too, and I'm shifting on the bed to get more comfortable, but that doesn't matter because no matter what position I'm in, I won't feel comfortable.
"The article makes it seem like..." she looks down at her hand on my chest - her fingers rake over me a little. "Suicide?" she whispers the word and then meets my eyes like she's scared but determined, like if you're ever going to ask anyone if his mother committed suicide you have to make eye contact when you do it.
I touch her face to try to make her feel better about the whole thing, and I shake my head. "It's false. Everyone believed that, but it isn't true."
"You kept a false article?"
"Not for that. I kept it because it's the only account of me finding her. That part's true. Can you go to my first drawer on the right and hand me some boxers?" If I'm going to talk about my mother, I can't do it naked. She hands them to me, I pull them on and then pat the bed beside me. I'm going to tell her my story. She's next to me and my arm is around her, her hair cool and wet down my chest and torso, soothing.
I tell her what I know is true.
I know, for instance, that silence can be deafening.
One minute she was loud with life, my mother, talking to me, voice coming from her bathroom clear to me in the hallway as I was heading to my room, just home from school.
"Edward," she called. I know this because this much I heard, but after that, what was it? My mind was somewhere else. I was thinking of my night out, a party. "Your father's working late again tonight," maybe, or, "Edward, be a role model for your brother," or, "Edward, I love you."
I'll never know what her last words were, as I only heard her with the ears of a seventeen-year-old planning a night out. I only know whatever her words, they were meant for me, and then, the sound of her falling to the floor. There is no way to describe this sound. Nothing has ever sounded like it before and nothing has ever sounded like it after. I called to her, asking if she was okay. But I couldn't move. I froze where I stood in the hallway between my parents' wedding photo and a photo of Max and me.
No answer came and the silence began. I sprinted to the bathroom.
I wasn't listening when she was talking to me, and now I wanted nothing more than to hear her voice tell me she was okay. It's just a slip. Maybe even a laugh to go along with it. A clumsy slip.
But there was no voice.
On the bathroom floor, looking hurt, she lay there. Still.
She was quiet with death. There's nothing quieter than the silence of your mother's dead body. No sound filled the emptiness - not my shoes on the tile, or the birds out the open window, or the wind, or the drops falling one at a time from the faucet left slightly on. There's no feeling either. I must have swallowed. I fell to my knees, but I felt none of it. I may as well have been floating. The ground was gone. The room was gone, the house, the street, the woods, the town, the state, the country, the world, all gone. My mother, gone.
When all sound leaves the world, once you experience its silence, the kind that rings and resonates through your ears until it hurts and you want to cover them, you discover that the world has a heartbeat. It's the first sound to come back before the rest. It's like the teddy bear I carried around until I was four - the kind that's meant to sound like the inside of the mother's womb. And it's the same sound I heard in the world's heartbeat, soft and tunneled like a womb.
I touched her face. My cheek fell next to her mouth, and there was no breath. I gave my own mother mouth-to-mouth on the cold tile of the bathroom floor. I recalled what my father taught me. I tilted her neck, brought my lips to hers, gave her my breath. And then I pumped her chest. I tried it all over again and again, yelling at her to breathe. Couldn't she hear me? Breathe, goddamnit!
But she wouldn't. She'd never breathe again. I ran to call 9-1-1, and when I was back with my mother I could see the bathroom again.
That was when I noticed the pills, spilled on the floor. My mother wanted this, I thought. She did this. She chose death over life, over me, over Max, and I hated her.
And then I heard Max's voice, and I slammed the door shut. He was banging and yelling, and I turned the lock.
"Why did you do this?" I yelled at my mother, and Max was still yelling, too, and still banging on the door. I couldn't understand his words. He was twelve and sounded like a five year old.
I hated my mother for twenty-four hours, until we learned from the autopsy that she hadn't taken the pills. She was about to take one, but she dropped them first. She'd had a brain aneurysm. She collapsed. But the newspaper, they'd already printed the article about when I'd found her. Her and the pills.
From that day on, when I learned she hadn't left on purpose, hadn't wanted this, I've been racking my brain for what she said to me just before I heard her fall. I'll never know because I wasn't listening in any part of my mind.
I only hope that my subconscious knows, but after all this time, I have too many doubts.
I wasn't listening to my mother. I was too busy thinking of partying.
And that's why I have the dreams. I don't consider them nightmares.
I get to the part that Isabella already knows. Her fingers are in my hair, on the side of my head, and my eyes close. She kisses me. When I look at her she's crying. I cup her cheek, wipe some tears with my thumb and kiss her lips.
She slips her hand in mine and says, "I'm sorry."
"I wish she was here. I wish you could meet her."
"I'd love her." She turns and hugs me up tight.
.
As soon as it enters my mind, I have to do it now. This can't wait. I'm out of bed, pulling on pants, pulling a shirt over my head, pulling on shoes.
"What are you doing?" she asks, still in the same place on my bed, leaning against the headboard. I bend over to kiss her as I button my pants.
"I have to - I have to take care of something. Just-" I kiss her again "-wait here." I kiss her again. "Please, wait here. Don't go anywhere." Squatting down I take her hands in mine. "I wouldn't leave right now. Believe me, I wouldn't leave you right now if it wasn't important. Will you wait here?"
She nods, looking confused. I grab a book off my shelf across from the foot of the bed and toss it to her before I walk out the door. "That's my pick for you. Start it now if you want. I might be a while, but don't go." I poke my head back through the door. "I love you."
She smiles and waves her hand at me. "I love you, too. Go on, you weirdo. I'm not going to break."
I sprint across the yard, dodging or hurdling snow mounds, past the pool, through the house and up to Max's room. He's just climbing out of bed, shocked when I slam into his room.
"Max." I stare at him, panting. I know what I want to say, but suddenly I can't.
"What?"
Where do I start? I go over and sit in his desk chair.
"What?" he asks again, this time sounding more annoyed or impatient.
"What do you miss most about our mother?"
His eyes narrow; he sits back down on his bed. "There's not one thing."
"I know. There isn't, right? But if there was one, what would it be? Is there anything you remember the most? Or that you never want to forget?"
His eyes start to tear up and I don't try to stop it and I force myself not to clam up.
"She used to…" He closes his mouth. He swallows. I'm not breathing. "I remember when she would sometimes come into my room late at night and sit on my bed with me and ask-ask me-" he pauses for a slow blink "-ask me about my day. I liked when she did that. I miss that the most." His voice cracks in several places, through several words. Tears stream. "Just me and her."
I go over to him and pull him roughly into my arms. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I haven't been what you need. I was clueless. I've been trying so hard to be strong and keep you strong. But avoiding... avoiding is wrong. We need to talk about her. Okay? We need to remember her, or we might forget. And, buddy, it's okay to cry."
He is crying. He's holding tight to my arms, and sobbing, his shoulders shaking. He's gasping and choking, and as hard as it is to see him like this, he needs it, and I finally understand that.
"I cry, too. A lot. I have dreams that make me cry. And this morning, too. In front of Isabella. It happens."
I think I'm holding him up. If I let go of him, he might fall to the floor.
"My - my dreams make me cry, too."
I rub on his back, wishing I'd known this before. Why haven't I ever asked when it was happening to me? Why didn't I think it might be happening to him, too?
"We get to - we get to go on," he says in between sobs. "But she doesn't."
"I know. It isn't fair. I love you, man. I love you. Do you know that?" My breath rattles in my chest.
Minutes pass and he's still crying. Somehow he's able to piece the words together. "Love you."
I keep hugging him until he's calm. He pushes away from me, grinding the base of his hands into his eyelids like he used to do when he was little.
He's keeping his head down, eyes on the floor like he's embarrassed. I know this feeling. When you cry in front of someone else, when you're done, you realize how exposed you are. I turn from him, let him gain his composure.
I remind him of when he was about three and I was about eight, just learning to read. How I would hold him hostage in here, reading to him when all he wanted to do was play. He'd squirm and complain, and I'd hold him there, making him listen.
He laughs, not really remembering.
"I could do that again," I tell him. "Hold you hostage in here, but instead of reading to you I could force you to talk about your day. How about that? Just me and you?"
"Whatever, bro," he says, a small smile curving upwards. "I have to take a shower." He looks like he's better now, through crying.
Soccer season's over and after winter break, basketball season will start; that will automatically make him happier, I assure myself.
"I'll be in the pool house. Isabella's there, but you can come with me if you want. You can shower there."
"Naw, I'll use mine."
"Are you okay?"
He nods.
Before I leave his room he calls to me. "I never thought you were doing anything wrong. Just so you know."
"Listen, Max. I'm not going anywhere." I know it's true as I say it. There's no possible way, no other choice for me. "I'm going to college here in Washington. I want to. You're my family. My only family, and I'm not leaving."
"What about Ivy League? What about Dad?"
"You can do Ivy League if you want. You're the smarter one anyway. It's not in the cards for me."
"Dad's gonna kill you."
"He'll have to get over it."
I tell him that anytime he wants to talk about our mother he can talk to me. And when he's ready we can tell Isabella all about our mother, together. The good and the bad. She wants to know her, I say.
Outside his room I stop short. Esme's there, not even shocked that I've found her listening, watching. She doesn't move, except for her eyes blinking. Blinking away tears.
"The door was open," she says, stifled. "I-I - You two are..." She breaks off because she has to. She has no idea what Max and I are.
"We're gonna be fine," I tell her.
She brings a hand to my upper arm and I look at it. I can't remember if she's ever touched me before. "We could get to know each other. It wouldn't be a crime."
Realizing I'm still looking at her hand on my arm, I face her. "Yeah. Sure." I don't know if I mean it or not, and don't really care at this point. I walk away from her like she was never even there.
.
Back in the poolhouse, Isabella drops the book to her lap and looks at me, eyes bright, lips still pink. Since this seems to be the time for getting everything out in the open I go to my top drawer, pull out Jasper's sketch and hand it to her. She unfolds it and then folds it back up, handing it to me.
"Toss it?" I ask.
She nods. "Alice told me what people think it means to be in his book. Thanks for taking it out."
Neither of us say any more about it, and I don't have the energy to talk about what just went down with Max. "Max might be coming over soon," is all I tell her, taking the book from her lap and moving it to the bedside table.
I pull her legs until she's lying on her back and I kiss her lips a few times before I wrap my arms around her middle, laying my head down on her. Exhaustion has taken over me. "Can we sleep?"
"Mm-hmm." Her fingers comb my hair.
I don't even remove my shoes.