The Visit
Christmas is a maelstrom of anxiety. Her mother does come. Which means the air mattress, and bunking together. The loom and the cloth and her guilty conscience stay locked in her suitcase in the closet. She deflects compliments on her "nice-smelling room spray." Swallows terror that every spell will be broken and he will never be able to return. Even wonders whether loom and cloth will still be there when her mother leaves.
In the end, it's only four nights. At the airport, stoicism deserts her and she cries in front of both parents, at a life that feels like a photograph being slowly ripped in two.
The year ends. House and heartbeat return to normal. The loom and its work are just as they were. She is left with only one certainty. She wants to see him again. She has no compass, only the tiny white feather.
She tries going to bed earlier. To call him. To make the night longer for him. She cheats a little – shuts out the light and hides under the covers, staying awake to wait for him. But night after night she hears no owl, and sees no him. The rule is the rule. And the weaving is losing time.
In the end she submits. Stays each night at the loom until she tires. Then goes sincerely to bed, and to sleep. And prays for the gate of dreams to open again.
But Edward does not return. Never when she is awake. And never when, eyelids closing in sleep, she asks the night, or the owl, or the moon, or the rain, or even that remembered scent on the chair to bring him.
Instead, Jacob and Uncle Billy come to call.
They have taken to visiting … or is it vigiling ?… often. Stringing together all of the weeks and months since she returned from her own Bardo, her sojourn on the water road. She wonders what they know.
It's too cold to wax the truck today. But there is sports on the T.V., and fish fry, and checkers, and she realizes that she has been in Forks for over a year now. She wonders how much time she has left.
"King me." Jacob's face is dark. He huffs, "You're not even paying attention, Bella. I'm wiping the board with you."
Closest thing she ever had to a little brother. He deserves better, and she feels the lump hot in her throat.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. She doesn't know how to make anything right any more.
The conversation at La Push comes back. About the Quileutes and the Cullens and bad blood. The dark colors, and the cold smells of salt and kelp blowing in from the water. Bleached tree bodies and the line of foam at the edges of the tide. The ghost of the sing for her grandmother. The rocks where she'd almost turned an ankle and smashed her face.
My dad and your dad went to war together … I thought that counted for something.
But she IS the outsider, now. And whose fault is that … now? Or ever …
She doesn't know how to make anything right anymore.
The game is abandoned and she has ended up weeping silently into the musty rug. Her dad and Jacob's dad are just low voices behind her. Jacob has brought his body next to hers, driving away the chill of the floor. He's way tall now, as tall as Charlie. Lanky from all that growth coming so sudden, but his arm feels heavy across her back, just below where the tattoo lies. His face is on the back of her neck, and he sighs heavily. "What the hell are we going to do with you, Bella?"
Neither of them knows how to make anything right anymore.
The upstairs, and the closet, and the next stitches for the weave, are a kudzu over her thoughts.
Not everything that's pretty is good.
Jacob and Bella have dragged themselves up from the floor, bussed the remains of the meal, and are in the kitchen washing the dishes.
Charlie stares unseeingly at the blathering post-game.
"I'm losing her, Billy. I'm losing her." Again. Story of his life, pretty much.
Billy leans back on the sofa and closes his eyes. "Can't choose their paths for them, Charlie. You know that."
Charlie does know. Always has.
It doesn't help.
Never has.
"Most we can do is make sure they know where we are. Know that we're there for them."
Charlie wonders if that matters when someone's on their way out for good.
"It does." Billy's hand goes to his friend's wrist, stopping him from cracking open a fifth beer. "A world of difference between leaving home, and leaving nothing. Think on it. What she'll carry with her is what she sees when she looks back over her shoulder."
Charlie puts the beer away.
… … …
After the kitchen is put to rights, Billy and Jacob pack on their jackets and leave. The night clouds are low, but there's been no rain all day, so getting Billy and the wheelchair down the porch steps is easy-peasy.
Charlie watches the tail lights of Sue's old Buick recede down the darkened street, and turns back into the house. He's startled to see Bella still there in the hallway. And then she's giving him one of their rare hugs.
"Thanks, Dad."
He knows better than to ask what for, and just stays steady with his arm around her. "Any time, Bells. Any time."
She hangs on his neck for a long half minute and then lets go. "I'm tired," she says, not looking at him.
"I know, kid. I know." His hand rests for a moment on her head, but a phantom younger self climbs the stairs with a small, sleepy child in his arms, clamped limpet-style against his chest.