Chapter 66 Chapter Notes
And so it begins: The complete refurbishment of Edward and Bella's house.
The chapter title belongs to Sheryl Crow, Jeff Trott and Brian MacLeod
Chapter 66 A Change Would Do You Good Sunday, November 19th
Esme had said 'empty it' and she wasn't joking. Bella thought she just meant furniture, but she meant everything. As I help her box up dishes, pot and pans, flatware, old pictures, towels and bed linens, she says, "We have to buy this stuff all over again?"
"Yeah, but how much fun will that be?" As we're folding her clothes to take to my house, I hear some commotion outside. We walk down the stairs to see Jacob with a couple of his Quileute friends. Bella had called him and told him he could take the lot.
He hugs Bella and shakes my hand. "Hey, I can't thank you enough for all this. I'm not telling my dad, just putting it all in storage for when we rebuild the house, except for the TV. I'm giving that to him today!" I ask Bella to get the rest of her clothing together as I help Jacob and his friends remove all the appliances, furniture and boxes.
Once we've loaded as much as the truck will hold, Jacob thanks me again and promises to be back for another load. I walk back into the house to find that Bella has finished emptying her closet. A series of boxes sit against the wall. She stands beside them, a blank expression on her face. "What's wrong?" I say, as I pull her to sit with me. "You look troubled."
"Not troubled. I was just remembering." She eyes the old rocker in the corner. We've decided to keep it, along with an old desk that belonged to her Grandma Swan. It's in pretty bad shape, but it and the antique mirror are the only heirlooms from her family.
She fiddles with a loose thread on her shirt hem. "When did you realize you were in love with me? Exactly?"
I scoot closer to her. "I knew for sure after the incident with Tyler's van. I'd risked everything to save you, but I didn't realize it until Alice made me see. Once I did, it was as clear as glass."
"But you had to stop hating me first, right?" I'm sure she's thinking of my murderous stare at her that first, terrible day in Biology.
"Yeah, but that was over by the time I'd gotten back from my shameful escape to Alaska. How about you? When did you know?"
She takes a deep breath. "You caught my eye from the first minute I saw you. I was disappointed," she glances at me and blood rushes into her cheeks, "well, devastated, actually, when you stopped speaking to me, after the thing with Tyler's van. But I knew for sure after you rescued me in Port Angeles. What Jacob told me about your family and the treaty didn't matter."
"Tell me something," I say. "You've always said I wasn't scary to you, but was there a time when I really frightened you? Where you were certain that I was going to hurt you, and that by choosing to be with me, you'd made a mistake?"
"You've always been more fascinating than scary," she says with a smile. "But that day in the meadow, I thought you were going to kill me." I wince but she shakes her head. "No, don't feel bad. I remember thinking, 'if this is it, then I've at least had a few days of what I could call happiness.' I didn't regret going there with you. It was out of my hands by that point. I was too far gone."
Bella doesn't know how many close calls there have actually been. With a sigh, I say, "You do know that there have been other close calls, right? I mean, you know that I love you, but sometimes—"
"Yeah. I know. Maybe not about all of them. I know it must have been horrible for you when I was bleeding on the street in front of Jacob's house, with Charlie gushing blood right beside me.
Horrible. Right. "Um, yeah. That was pretty terrible, but there have been other times when my muscles have coiled and venom has just flooded my mouth. When I had to hang on for dear life and put all my concentration into not feeding." These are harsh words, but Bella deserves to know.
"The thing is, I've always accepted that you're dangerous, Edward," she says. "I just don't care. That you're a vampire just doesn't matter."I take Bella in my arms and kiss her gently. She puts her warm head on my cold chest and sighs. "We're together," she says. "That's all that matters.
Bella sits up suddenly to a series of loud crashes, thumps and the unmistakable grind of a power saw. It sounds like the house is being demolished. We go downstairs and she pales at the sight, with sheetrock crumbled on the floor, carpet ripped up in heaps and tools laid out like surgical instruments on a large canvas tarp.
A toxic cloud overtakes us and I hurry her outside. Esme follows, wiping her hands on a rag. "Take Bella to the house, Edward, and relieve Rosalie from Alice duty. I need her over here anyway." She thinks, We're getting ready to strip the molding and stairs, so it isn't safe for Bella to be here. Don't bring her back during the demo. We'll begin refurbishing in a couple of days.
I hand Bella my keys and ask her to wait for me in the Volvo. She stumbles down the steps toward the car and I go back inside to see what's going on. A noxious mixture of chemical stripper, paint thinner and adhesive solvent hangs in the air from several different projects. I walk into the kitchen to see Emmett happily ripping the cabinets from the walls. Jasper is attacking the stairs with a power sander and the sharp whirr of Esme's drill drowns out all the other sounds.
"What are they doing in there?" Bella asks, when I appear in the seat beside her.
I think for a moment, deciding to synopsize. "Sanding. Stripping. Drilling. Sawing. Ripping."
Our eyes meet and she shakes her head seriously. "Got it." She doesn't ask any more questions.
During the week, I drop Bella off at my family's house after school and she sits with Alice while I lend a hand for a few hours. At suppertime, I bring her takeout from the restaurant of her choice and hold my breath if it's burnt cheese and tomatoes. We talk to Alice and Bella always lays down beside her and strokes her back for a while.
After Bella falls asleep, I go back home and work through the night.
Bella is allowed a visit after school on Wednesday, and she gasps when she sees her new front door. Inside, there's still a lot going on. The kitchen has been relieved of its flooring, counters and sink. The new cabinets she'd chosen are still in their boxes.
"Oh. My. God." She walks around and gazes at the house in wonder.
"Go look upstairs," Esme says.
"C'mon," Bella says. "Let's go look. I can't face it alone." She glances at me and grabs my hand, like I haven't been here every night to see it for myself. Esme shoots me a wide grin as Bella tows me up the stairs.
The bathroom is an empty shell. Tub, sink, flooring—all gone. "We start that tomorrow," Esme calls. Bella's old room has been similarly gutted, with some unmarked boxes stacked against the far wall.
The floors and walls have been done in our bedroom, and a new light fixture hangs above where the bed will sit. The closet is a barren hole, absent its rods, shelves and door.
Bella is speechless. We go downstairs and she tries to thank Esme, who is beaming. Emmett comes outside with us and murmurs, "This is exactly what she needed after what happened in Alaska."
On Thanksgiving, I drive Bella over to Maya's house and we have a slightly tense meal. They try to ignore the fact that I don't consume human food, but feel that it's rude to eat in my presence. I try to steer the conversation to the remodeling of the house and their upcoming wedding, but when it's time to take Bella home, I think everyone is glad that the day is over.
On Friday, we're off from school. It's cold and rainy, so we hang out at the house and do Alice duty. I think of how much Alice will hate it when she finally wakes up and hear that the family took turns doing 'Alice duty'.
I have a thought. "Hey, let's go to Seattle tomorrow. We can borrow Esme's Tahoe, so we'll have plenty of room for stuff. You can get kitchen towels and pans and dishes. We'll stay overnight, so pack a bag."
We have fun in Seattle. I take Bella to the World Market and we both get a basket, which proves not at all adequate for the amount of stuff we choose. Bella decides she wants her kitchen to have blue accent pieces and finds some woven towels and napkins in varying shades of azure. We spend hours shopping for dishes, flatware, pots and pans, and anything else we can think of that a kitchen might need.
I don't bother pointing out that in a few months she won't be eating human food. This is too much fun.
I take her to a large department store where she picks out big fluffy white towels, but goes with black accent pieces. I'm sure they will look stunning alongside the white.
For the bedroom, she chooses white bedding. Sheets, bed skirt, blanket, comforter, shams—all in a virginal white. She finds pillows of all shapes in a woven red and orange. She plans to hang her Grandma Swan's antique mirror beside the closet.
Bella had asked me for input on the decorating schemes, but I let her choose, except for the media room, which I want to do myself. "Don't tell me," she says. "I want it to be a surprise."
When we're finished, I pull into a Volvo dealership. She frowns and says, "What are we here for?"
I smile at her and get out. She's on her feet before I can hold the door for her, looking ready to do battle. A salesman approaches and we walk with him into the showroom, where I hand him my ID and a confirmation number. He disappears into an office and Bella stands beside me, her heart hammering.
"What are we doing here?" she hisses.
"I'm buying a Volvo for Alice," I whisper in her ear.
"Really?" She looks around, perplexed.
I laugh and shake my head. "No. Not really." Before she can ask any more questions, the salesman reappears and leads us outside to the sporty white S60 that I bought on the Internet.
Bella looks at me, then over to him, then at the car. "No, Edward." It's said very slowly, as if she can't quite come up with the proper amount of outrage when faced with such a beautiful automobile.
"Too late. It's already paid for."
The salesman playfully tosses her the keys and she's too surprised to speak. I close her fingers around the fob and say, "Follow me to the next shopping center."
In a few minutes, she pulls next to Esme's Tahoe. "How does it handle?" I ask.
"It's amazing. It has heated seats!"
"I thought you were going to give me a hard time," I confess. "I was a little bit worried."
"Well, I thought, what the hell. I knew I wasn't going to talk you out of it." She looks up. "Where are we going now?"
I point to a big box store. "Cell phone."
As we walk out with her new phone, fourteen CDs, thirty-five movies and a new iron, I point to a restaurant across the parking lot. Ti Amo Pizza! looks like a mellow place, something that Bella prefers to sit-down dining in fancy restaurants. "What do you think?" I ask. She nods and we drive over.
Bella orders eggplant parmigiana, which smells so revolting that I have to quit breathing. When she asks me what ti amo means, if I can speak Italian, and about a hundred more questions, I think about the fewest words I can say without having to take a breath.
"Ti amo. I love you. And yes, I can speak Italian." I then gesture for her to eat. She nods and forks food into her mouth, talking all the while about the stuff we bought, which items are her favorites, and how much fun it will be to set up the house when it's done. When we finally get the check, it takes all my strength not to throw my credit card and the server and bolt out the doors to the fresh air.
When Bella joins me at the vehicles after a short trip to the bathroom, I say, "I saw a place to stay down the road. Follow me. It's not far."
The motel is small and inviting. Bella parks her new Volvo carefully and when she gets out, she stands and admires it for a moment. "Thank you for accepting this gift so graciously." I kiss the top of her head and unlock the door.
Bella takes a bath and I turn on the TV. When she comes out, she smells too good. The thought of her warm, naked body next to mine leads me deep into an erotic fantasy that we're certainly not going to realize in a rented room, so I turn the sound down to a whisper and stroke her until she falls asleep.
I move to the other bed, but as the Weather Channel is the most interesting thing on, and after realizing I can find no entertainment value in the recap of our most recent rainstorm, I click the set off and think about our house.
Our house.
I still can't believe how perfectly this has worked out. Sometimes I have an insane desire to spit three times, which is an old Jewish superstition to ward off the evil eye after something wonderful has happened. I might succumb to this, if only to make myself feel better, but I can't leave pitted sidewalks or withered, desiccated plants in my wake, so I swallow the venom and hope for the best.
The next day we arrive back at my old house around noon. Emmett comes out to see Bella's new car and hoots at the bags that we've stuffed into every available space of the Tahoe.
"Any change?" I ask, glancing up at Jasper and Alice's bedroom window.
Emmett shakes his head and leans toward me. "Jasper is getting desperate."
I think about the forlorn figure of my vivacious sister, curled in a fetal position, her eyes open but not seeing. The room might as well be empty. I hear no thoughts from her at all.
Bella goes inside to sit with Alice for a while. As soon as she's up the stairs, Emmett says, "The rest of the furniture arrived today. Esme wants me to bring over the stuff that you bought, so she can place it before the walk through."
I hand Emmett the keys to the Tahoe. "I'll run over and see the progress," I say, as there's no room in that vehicle other than the driver's seat, but Emmett shakes his head.
"You're not allowed back in until the walkthrough," he says seriously. "Esme's orders."
"What? I'll see it in all of your heads!"
"No. We're not to have any contact with you until the walkthrough." He grins and punches me on the arm. "She's really enjoying this project," he says, as he prepares to get in the Tahoe. Again, his thoughts go to that frigid day when the water heater exploded.
I've seen this so many times, I feel as if I was there with them when it occurred. I've seen the explosion through Jasper's eyes, the devastation of the house through Emmett's eyes, Alice, lying still as death, through Rosalie's eyes, and the woman's hysterical husband and demoralized clinic staff through Carlisle's eyes. Esme won't let herself go there, as she feels it was her responsibility to check out the water heater before they moved in, a mistake guaranteed to never happen again.