23.
There is a red-breasted robin perched on the eave of our house. He spends the spring scouting, throwing himself against reflective objects, fighting himself, thinking another bird so similar looking to him is encroaching on his territory when it is actually only him in reverse. A trick of the light, a fool's errand. A stoic, relentless version of him, taunting, that appears only when the bird least expects it, exerts dominance and will not submit. A will to match wills. When the spring turns summer he deems himself triumphant, deems our eave the perfect landmark for him and his mate to produce offspring. He works hard, gathering sticks and mud, building, crafting, creating his nest. It takes weeks if not months. To find the perfect materials, the perfect wife. The birds–now two, impossible to tell apart–dance around in the grass near our home, dig up worms with their beaks, flit and chirp and fly.
The nest dangles precariously from the eave, twigs falling off the side, a gust of wind is all it would take. And yet, the birds persist. They fortify and procreate. Lay eggs of the coolest blue, aquamarine, so strange that colors such as these can be found in nature, their vibrancy so potent and unmatched that they look to be mixed by an artist's gentle, practiced hand. Three eggs that rest in the nest, spots of ocean in a field of brown, the mother's nurturing presence, warming and softening, waiting for the newborn beaks to break free of their confines, a knock on the door of life.
Though it is summer, the rains linger late into the year. Normally, by this time, the dirt turns to dust, billows upward like gusts of smoke. Fallen wood turns dry, brittle, baking in the heat. I can lay with my back pressed to the porch and feel the tingle of the hot material on my skin, a finger accidentally brushing the explosive temperature of exposed metal, how it captures the sun and holds it close. But, this year, the rains comes and it stays. Sudden storms, the kind that blow in fast, in the blink of an eye, dropping gallons of water in second, a torrent of rain and roiling clouds and gusts of wind, that arrive then leave with little trace. Only the puddles coagulating in divots, the dirt transformed to mud on its outermost layer, the plop of droplets hitting the bottom of steel containers, the roof of my father's pickup.
It is in one of these storms–so quick, so forgettable–that water rushes through the gutter, overflowing. It tumbles into the eave, a tidal wave of power. It displaces the carefully-built home, a nest in shambles. I come upon it by accident, in exploration, the strategically-placed twigs and sticks and mud turned haphazard, forgotten. Three aquamarine eggs, one cracked, the brittle bones of the now-dead bird, its terrifyingly delicate wings, the thin membrane that encased it now punctured. Two eggs, however, are unharmed. I poke them with a stick, shuffle them around, search the sky for the missing mother and father. Your babies! They're here! I want to cry out to the heavens, only I do not know the language of birds. I cannot speak it and I cannot read it. I stand vigil at the nest, the two eggs waiting, wondering where their mother could be, their father. Two perfectly good siblings, entirely dependent, desperate for care.
I wait until the sun drops down, until the night grows dark around me, until the crickets emerge, the stars shining bright in the clear sky overhead, the moon cresting the horizon. And still, no birds. The robins have fled, mourning their lost child. They do not return home, despite the other children waiting. It is simply too much to face: the loss. The inability to give life after seasons of preparation, of building a home, of laying offspring, of nurturing and hoping and waiting. The failure of it, the grief, it cannot be borne with grace. It must be acknowledged, despite the casualties of the siblings. The temperature drops at night, the eggs grow cold. I take them inside, but I already know the truth of things, the callous cruelty of nature. The storm has come. The child has died. The mother is gone. The eggs will not hatch.
"Bella, crank that window down. Let some air in." My father's voice in the driver's seat, his eyes glancing to me and away. The tires beneath the truck unearth a trail of dust behind us, leading to the next car, then the next. I don't own black clothes, only jeans of dark blue and a shirt I borrow from Jacob. It is a size too large, the neck hole a cowl. My father wears an overcoat that I've never seen, a deep gray. A button-up shirt. Jeans. His best boots. Not the kind he wears to work, but the ones he wears to town. The buckle in the back, the stitching, hand-done, woven through the ankle and the shin.
Warm wind. The buzz of a bee. The insect flies into the cabin and away. The storm has come. My mother is gone. The child did not live. My brother, or lack thereof. Not a sibling, never a sibling. The funeral is small, only half of our community comes. The weather wreaked havoc on houses and barns, stables and yards. Rebuilding simply could not be halted. I don't know who dug the hole, one large and another small. Who chiseled the graves, simple and clear. Bella Swan. Beloved mother, wife. It is strange, to see my own name there, carved into the stone, one with the earth, the earth one with me. Already dead, already entombed. My life, written out before me. My birth and my death. My beginning, middle, and end. Jacob's arm around my shoulder during the small service, my father off to the side. He does not cry but there is grief there. I can see it in the way he holds his shoulder, tight and stiff, his hands interlocking, the slightest downturn of his lips.
Even Jacob's grandmother makes the trip. Her stern countenance, her face looking down into the open grave as if she, too, is witnessing a future memory. Then she turns. Meets my eye. Looks at me, appraising. There it is again. That judgement, that challenge. That empathy of shared experience. What happened to you that has not already happened to me? Even this, I have experienced. Even this adds only a singular tally mark to the life I have already lived. I know this pain because I, too, have felt it. You are not alone here.
We drive home together, me and my father. For once, he plays the radio. Music. It's a song I've never heard, lyrics I do not know. Something upbeat and biblical. Raise your hands up to the sky. The glory of the Lord. Amen. We pull up to our house. Unlike the rest of the town, it is remarkably untouched. It is as though the storm has passed us by, carved out a hole that we could skirt through. Mother Nature knowing that she has already taken too much. Still, there are improvements to make. My father flits about wildly, stalking. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, he doesn't know who to challenge. I look in the glass and see myself in reverse. He sees the same and grimaces at the man there, his foreign countenance, his territorial bent. In his grief, my father ducks his head and sets to work. He rebuilds his nest.
"How old were you when she died?" Edward asks. He holds the mug of coffee to his chin as though he intended to take a sip only to forget he had the drink at all. The shop is closed. It is nearing dinner time. Edward lingered through the rest of my shift, reading from a paperback curved in his large fist, a quiet presence in the corner. I caught Angela shooting glances his way, stopping by every hour or so to check in. I stayed behind the counter, plotting what I would say and how. What he should know and to what detail. I have known a singular, interconnected group of people for my entire life. I did not have to tell them anything. They knew me from birth and they would know me until death, my beginning and my middle and my end.
I've never had to tell my story.
I decide on my mother's death on that stormy night, her final attempt to grow our family from three to four.
"Eleven or twelve, I think," I reply, taking a long drink of my own tea. It has grown cold, tepid. A crumbled up pastry sits on a plate between us. The Muzak has stopped and we are left in silence. Outside, a light rain falls, visible but soundless, gray skies and gray streets.
"Why didn't you go to the hospital?" I can tell he's holding something beneath the surface, some type of anger. Not at me, but at everything and everyone. His lips are white, pressed tight.
"We never took anyone to the hospital, not then. I only went once. My mother took me when I got bit by a snake. She didn't ask permission." I saw the news for the first time. War and violence and traffic and red arrow going down, green going up. The woman's face and voice as she spoke. Serious and stern, like it was the most important information in the world.
"Permission," Edward repeats, placing down his coffee without ever drinking it. He contemplates something, looks out the window, doesn't speak. He wants to say more. I can see it, trembling on his lips. But he doesn't. The pressure of holding back.
"We weren't anywhere near a hospital, anyway. Even if we did, we probably wouldn't have made it in time," I say quickly, making excuses for decisions I never made. Edward lets out a quick exhale, a scoff of disbelief. "And we couldn't afford it. Of anyone, you should understand that."
Edward looks properly chastened. He sits back in his chair.
"I'm sorry," he says. "For you and for your mom. I wish things were different."
"They are different. They're different now."
"But what about your father? Your… husband?" He forces the last word out, almost like it's foreign and he's working on the pronunciation. Like it burns a little on the way out. He grimaces, picks up his coffee again, takes an actual sip this time before placing it back down on the table.
"My father's still back home. My husband isn't." I don't want to get into it, don't want to incriminate myself. It is easier to be seen as a lost girl, thrust into the world by forces out of her control, than it is to be seen as a manipulator, as a mastermind, as someone who ran, who abandoned her family and her community. As a collaborator in my own escape. I don't want him to see me that way, beneath all the aged varnish.
"Your husband left you?" He says the word more confidently this time, like he's getting used to it. His hands clench again, knuckles white. Anger.
"It's not like that."
"Then what was it like?" he challenges, leaning forward.
I grimace, knowing I need to distract him somehow, before things go too far and he understands that not all stories are simple, that there isn't just black and white, that there is gray. That my father is still back home and I am not. That I have calculated my abandonment, that I am not a victim to my story, that I have deviated from the narrative on purpose, taken the pen and slashed the draft, diverting the plot right at its most comfortable and obvious point. I reach my hand out, press my fingers into his knuckles. Relaxing them as he did to me earlier at the sandwich shop with Angela. Massaging the tight tendons, trailing up then down then back again. He sighs, forearms on the table. His hair is messy and though his eyes are tired, they are still so impenetrably green. A forest in spring. Shafts of light. Wildflowers.
I picture him standing in the road, the silhouette of him, the beauty cloaked in shadow. His hand outstretched toward me, my wedding band in his palm. This yours?
"I'll tell you more later. I promise," I say, and I mean it. Just not now, not when he's with me here in this coffee shop, aerial vines drifting down around us, so similar to a dream I once had, the loveliest form of déjà vu.
"Okay," he agrees after a long beat. "Okay."
"Home?" I ask, thinking of the nest we are only beginning to build, how tentative it is, the beginning of the season, precariously built before the storm.
"Home," he agrees. He stands, reaches out, and takes my hand.