Twenty-Two / Twenty-Four
March 2012
The street, a picturesque residential road, was lined with earth-colored, gently rounded adobe houses. The roofs were flat and parapeted. Thick, round beams extend out beyond the walls and roof lines. Strings of red chiles that looked like upside-down bouquets hung from roofbeams, and they made Isabella smile. Front gardens were landscaped with ochre earth. Shallow-rise landing steps lead from the pavement to the entrance.
The sky was pure cerulean, clashing beautifully against the ochre-and-red earth. There was a chill in the air, because one last snow had dusted the mountains for the season.
"Bee? Are you going to be OK, love? We don't have to do this."
We don't have to do this. Edward had repeated that mantra at every juncture in their journey. Edward said it when they boarded a plane to Albuquerque; when they landed; as they drove a rental sedan to a small boutique hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Isabella stared at the hanging ristras and the still wind chimes as if on the verge of being hypnotized. She took a deep breath.
"We've come this far." Bella steeled her shoulders with a mix of curiosity and resignation.
"We have," he agreed softly. "I just don't want you to feel like you have to do this. New Mexico's cool. If you decide you wanna hightail out of here, we've had a fun trip to the Land of Enchantment."
With that, Edward elicited her first muted grin of the evening.
Bella shifted forward to peck him on the lips. "I love you, you know that?" she murmured. "I couldn't do this without you. In any way."
With his one straight one, he nuzzled her button nose. "I love you more."
He sighed, looking peculiarly and distrustfully at the property before them. "We should come up with some kind of code word," Edward said. "For when you want to leave."
"OK. How about penguin?"
Edward snorted. "Sweetheart, how the fuck would anyone pop that in conversation?"
She laughed. "OK, then. What world would you suggest?"
"Scalpel," Edward suggested after a beat, and Bella laughed.
"Yeah, because that's so much easier," she deadpanned. "Let's just go with penguin."
"I don't know how the fuck you'll make that sound natural, but OK," Edward grumbled teasingly. "Ready?"
Taking a deep breath, Bella pushed the car door open. Wobbly, she stood on a pair of Doc Martens. Her orthoses clicked into place to hold her up. Edward hurried after her and handed her both crutches. Her heart was fluttering near her temple. For the umpteenth time that day, she considered fleeing.
Edward retrieved her crutches from the trunk. "Could you grab the cheesecake?" she asked him.
"Babe, I'm going to look like a fucking moron if they open the door and I'm holding a cheesecake."
Bella sniffed out a laugh.
Together, they walked up the stairs to the entrance. With each step, her hands grew clammier and clammier. The plastic crutch handles in her grip grew hot. Edward – her otherwise easily exasperated, short-tempered boy – was flawlessly patient with her every clumsy step.
Their hosts grew potted hibiscus flowers on their entrance porch. There was a blue-and-white porcelain sign hanging from the door.
Edward knocked, the door was pulled open, and Isabella froze.
"It's bullshit," Bella had said mordantly after reading Renée Jolie's email. Dozens of memories had flooded her brain like an avalanche, contradicting Renée Jolie's story.
She's four. Isabella and her mother – her perfect, impeccable mother – are in the park, feeding a raft of ducks. Three ducklings are trailing after their handsomely feathered mother. Holding Isabella's tiny hand in hers, Esme explains something. By her tone of voice, Bella can tell this is important. "Sometimes, babies grow in eggs. Sometimes, babies grow inside mommy's tummy, and sometimes, they grow in mommy's heart," Esme tells her dotingly, pressing a fingertip to her nose.
She's six. It's midday on her very first day of first grade. She's strapped to her bright pink pediatric wheelchair. She wears pink Welly boots on her tiny feet, and she's wearing denim overalls. Her disappointment is overwhelming. Esme is cuddling her close after her first incident with bullying. For the first time, she inquires why she can't walk. It's never struck her as strange before.
Her mother – her perfect mother – lifts her from the wheelchair and into her arms. "Remember how sometimes babies grow on their tummies, and you grew in my heart?" Esme asks tenderly, and Bella burrows into her mom. "Before you came to me and grew in my heart, you grew in… in another lady's tummy. You needed to stay there for nine whole months, but you were barely there for six." Bella's brow is wrinkled, and Esme smiles lovingly. "That other lady was evil. Like the witch in Snow White. She used to drink… she used to drink yucky, evil potions, and the potions made you come out of her tummy early. Those yucky evil potions hurt you."
It took her nearly ten years to realize her mother was using veiled references to drugs.
She's twelve. She and her father are fishing near the Olympic coastline. Charles Swan holds a fishing rod in his hands. "I was all alone with you. Your – that other woman – that other woman would have been a terrible mother, and she would just… Like, she'd just go."
Isabella had spiraled down to the present as if spit out by a tornado, to the screen, blinking with Renée's poorly-written letter. Renée Jolie was lying, she had decided. It was all a convenient fabrication. Edward had sucked in a breath, and his expression became inscrutable to her.
"Bella, I don't think it's bullshit, darling. I think it's true."
"Edward, she's lying through her teeth," Bella had forcefully. Deep in her heart, the pieces of her world fell back into place. From earliest childhood, from the moment she could form cogent thoughts, her mother had instilled two things in Isabella: impeccable manners and an instinctive disgust towards the woman who brought her into the world.
In the next second, she had felt bad for snapping at Edward. "Thank you for doing this with me," she had murmured sweetly. With her doe eyes, she had tried to convey to Edward how much it meant to have his hand in hers. "But that was just a steaming hot pile of bullshit."
"Bella," Edward had pleaded, keeping his voice cautious, with a hint of desperation. "Bella, I think there's at least two sides to every story, and this woman, Renée… She seemed convincing to me."
But Bella's mind had closed off. It had been too much. The information became lodged, like a knot in her throat that wouldn't loosen. Hand trembling with palsy, she had pushed the screen down.
"Do you wanna go watch Happy Feet 2?" she had piped, as if nothing had happened.
Through December, Isabella and Edward resumed their hectic life together. Isabella turned in her thesis and wept after it was done. The tears that fell that night were relief and pent-up stress. Edward took her as his date to a holiday party for medical school students and finished his semester. They found time to make love.
Underneath the façade, Bella started to crack.
The story spread through the foundation of her identity like black mold. This story, where Renée Jolie was a child actress victim of ephedrine and cocaine, where she was molested on movie sets, where Esme had swooped in to steal a baby – it was all so fucking convenient.
That was when Isabella started to rage. The fury that spewed out of her in waves unsettled her. Isabella had always been her mother's sweet-tempered little pea, and anger unsettled her. Her anger was rootless, erratic, aimless – vented out at Rosalie like a geyser spewing. "I agree with Charming, sweetie," Rose said carefully. "I think there's a side to every story. Aren't you at least curious about Renée Jolie's?"
In late December, Isabella had responded to Renée's email with such short and abrupt sentences that they were rude. She didn't start with a greeting, but instead went straight into asking questions: "I don't care about the past anymore," she lied, "Where do you live? What do you do?" Despite Edward's protestations, she and Edward spent Christmas apart. "Fuck Esme. My Dad, you and I can go somewhere warm and have a nice tropical vacation," Edward grumbled, making Isabella smile. Dressed in a patterned white knit sweater amid five silver-covered fake Christmas trees, Isabella had met her father's baby boy – Junior – and her Uncle Gary's second wife.
I can imagine your very angry. You deserve better than me and I'm sorry I ever bathered you but I'm glad you replied. So glad. I understand.
I live in New Mexico now. After I lost custody and Esme Masen decided to move to Washington, I followed. I had some visitation rites and I hung around until you turned five. I don't know if you remember. Esme was always very terrtorial during the visits but they are my most treasured memories. Even though I couldn't stop crying a lot of the time. Esme had a restraining order put in when you turned six. It was my fault completely. I got involved with another man that I shoulda never gotten with. My mom called me a magnet for terrible guys but she used another word for it if you catch my drift. It was bad luck. I had another episode of schizophrenia and the guy was busted.
It took me six tries but I finally found a good man. His name is Phil. I met him after I left Washington. I wanted to get away from everything and so I found an outpatient rehab facility in New Mexico. I bot myself a ranch. Phil founded a very suxesfull tech business near Los Alamos and he sold off his compeny a couple of years back. We still live in NM in Santa Fe. I wish I could tell you I do intresting things. I take pottery lessons and I volunteer at a local foodbank. If you ever want to call and nothing would make me happier than to have you call my number is below.
I wish I knew you. I love you very much.
At that point, Isabella felt like her mind was a broken internal combustion engine – like the gears had jammed. Renée's first letter had left her frozen; the information had gone to the back of her mind, where it could not touch her. Renée's second letter made the gears run, and her anger exploded. Esme was a wonderful Mom, she wrote. I think she did the right thing to protect me. Hot tears spewed from her eyes, and she had to bite the insides of her cheeks to contain her rage. Why had this happened? Why did it need to be this way? Why her? Why had she ended up with this broken birthmother, in this broken body?
It had been mid-week in January, and Rosalie had held her afterward while she cried.
I think she did the right thing to protect me, Isabella had said – filled with weakening conviction. The statement sat like rotten lunch on her stomach, and she vomited it metaphorically in late February.
Isabella decided it was the strangest phone call a person would ever have, and it took her four tries.
"Hello?"
"This is Isabella Swan," she spat, and she was nastier than she had ever been. Isabella was especially nice to telemarketers.
Renée Dwyer sucked in a breath so loudly Isabella head it through the speakers. She could hear Renée sniffling, and she was tempted to hang up, because she couldn't cope.
Renée Jolie opened the door, and she looked nothing like Isabella had imagined.
Isabella felt like she had spiraled into a bad episode of Black Mirror. Renée was like her aged mirror image. Slender and tall, Renée Dwyer had fine lines and wrinkles etched around her eyes and mouth. Her face and clavicles were peppered with a handful of sunspots, and her hair was trimmed short where Isabella's was long.
Isabella and Renée were otherwise identical – delicately bridged noses, sharp cheekbones, osebud mouth, and rounded doe eyes. For the first time in her life, Isabella had an out-of-body experience. She saw her own beauty with crystal clarity.
"Your face is just perfect," Edward would say sometimes, and Isabella would resist taking offense because it seemed so absurd.
Renée's eyes were glossy with tears, and her gaze was unspeakably tender. "Hi," she croaked lovingly, rendered almost mute by emotion. "Hi."
Edward put a protective hand on Isabella's lower back.
Isabella's every conception of herself was exploding, like fireworks were bursting inside her head. Her identity was shattering. She responded with one of her mother's – with Esme's classic, saccharine and lovely but ultimately fake – smiles. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Dwyer," Bella said dryly and robotically, taking the tone she might take at a cocktail party.
With her knuckles, Renée wiped at her eyes. Her eyes were so blue that they were crystal, and it was easy to see Bella had wounded her. Nervously, she smiled at Isabella warmly, genuinely. "You, too," Renée managed, and her voice broke. Her tears – unmanageable torrents of joy – were streaming down her face.
"Penguin," Isabella wanted to blurt. Penguin. A part of her desperately hated the idea of being here watching a woman she had reviled her entire life fall to pieces. For years, she had fantasized about taking pleasure in Renée's agony. It was very strange to see it finally without an iota of self-satisfaction.
Edward cleared his throat and held out a hand. "Mr. Dwyer, Mrs. Dwyer, I'm Edward Cullen. Pleasure," Edward said kindly, sounding so like his father. He took Renées hand with a gentleness that Bella thought was reserved for her.
"Phil Dwyer," Phil Dwyer said in a deep baritone, holding out a hand. "Isabella, it's …It's nice to see you again."
Bella tried to smile, and Phil wrapped an arm around his wife, squeezing. He whispered something in her ear.
Renée Dwyer wiped at her snot-filled nose with her sleeve, still sobbing. "Don't mind me," she said in an upbeat tone, smiling earnestly through a barrage of sobs of joy. " Would you kids like to come in? Phil, show them in. I'll – I'll be a minute."
"Right! Please make yourselves at home," Phil said, and Renée scurried away. Isabella and Edward settled knee-to-knee on a white sectional. Still having an out-of-body experience, an awestruck Isabella studied her surroundings. Stories she had been told, and stories she had told herself, collapsed like buildings under bombing.
Thousands of times, Isabella had imagined screaming ragefully at her mother. Thousands of times, she had imagined the setting. Isabella had imagined a wet bar, chrome-and-leather sectionals, infinity pools, and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.
The stucco walls were painted egg-yolk yellow, and Renée Dwyer had draped handmade crochet blankets over the sectional couch. The warm and inviting living room was decorated with pottery and overflowing with small succulents. Bella felt like her stomach was punctured when she caught sight of the rows of pictures adorning a mantle over a wood fireplace. Isabella at four, dressed like a pumpkin for Halloween. Isabella at twelve, graduated from Middle School. Isabella at fifteen, walking for the first time.
Isabella crashed back to reality thanks to Edward's hand on her knee – like Edward's hand had pulled her soul back into her body.
"Honey," Phil said, and Renée walked back into the room, her hands tugging at the opening in her cardigan.
"Sorry about that," Renée said bashfully. Her voice carried the slight twang that came after a recent cry. Her smile was radiant, and her voice was a sweet lilt that tugged at Isabella almost instinctively. "I needed a minute."
Phil looked her over worriedly and placed a hand on her shoulder. Renée settled on a loveseat and sat forward eagerly. Like she was a lovestruck teenager, her eyes drifted back to Isabella, studying her with a discomfiting hunger. Bella shifted uncomfortably.
"Reenie, honey, Edward here was telling me he's a medical student."
"Trying to be," Edward responded quietly but jokingly.
Renée smiled maternally at Edward. "Where're you going to school?"
"In the Boston Area," Edward said modestly. "Cambridge."
"And uh…Isabella?" Renée asked of Bella, all but pleadingly, with her eyes sparkling. "Do you – uh, do you prefer Bella?"
Bella's sense of awkwardness spiked, and she froze again. All her fantasies about screaming at this woman had been for naught. She was living through a moment she had fantasized about relentlessly. It was not transpiring the way she had imagined. She could barely speak. God. She plastered a polite, bashful smile on her face. "Bella is fine. Edward, uh… Edward calls me Bee, but he's the only person that does."
"That's very sweet. What do you do?" Renée asked, and there was voracious hunger in her expression. Combined with love and child-like eagerness, Renée's rabid curiosity made for a strange look.
Isabella steeled herself and spoke. She started slowly, bashfully, tugging at the hem of her sweater. A stiff collar was arranged over the hem of her dark blue cashmere sweater. Stubbed pearl earrings adorned the shell of her ear. She was dressed like her mother's daughter – like Esme Masen's daughter.
"I – uh, I go to a small liberal arts college. I'm a senior. I'm a double major, and I dabble in photography," she babbled. "I wanted to be an English or a Math teacher, but I uh, I'm also good at math. I took classes in Economics, and I really loved it. So I combined two subjects I love, and I'm wrote my thesis on the impact of pre-K on long-term outcomes for children in different states."
The expression on Renée's face was so earnestly curious and happy that all of Isabella's rage was gutted. Bella spoke and spoke, and Renée asked her questions. What her favorite food was. What drew her to her college, to photography, to her Economics major, to teaching? You write so beautifully and you're so smart, Renée would say dotingly, and her eyes welled with happy tears with every exchange. Renée wiped at her eyes again, unable to school the awe and the adoration in her expression.
"Sorry," Renée said to the room at large. "Sorry, I just wouldn't shut up. Would you kids like to stay for lunch?" Renée asked shyly, her blue doe eyes shining with child-like hope.
It was already three in the afternoon, and the vibrancy of the colors outside was fading. Edward was starving, but for once in his life, he'd been exactly like his father for four hours straight – charming in a self-effacing and very polite way. Isabella could hear his stomach growling.
One day, not many months from that day, Renée and Isabella would talk one-on-one. At that moment, Phil and Edward had provided a buffer that could be mobilized at any second. Renée had not let anybody but Isabella get a word in edgewise. What's your favorite movie? The Last of the Mohicans and Gone with the Wind, she would admit shyly, and her answers would make Edward smile ruefully. Isabella was having an out-of-body experience because the lilt and cadence of Renée's voice were so like Isabella's – and she had never believed in the potency of nature over nurture before.
Isabella's mind was fragmenting in a state of shell shock – and she was bombarded with memories.
She's thirteen, and she and her mother are making smores in the southern California villa where they summer. Fifteen-year-old Edward, ravaged by grief, is nowhere to be found. Bella is morosely thoughtful, watching as her perfect mother artfully places a crisped marshmallow over a chocolate square. Vitriolically, Edward has been accusing her of not-being-Esme's, of not-being-theirs. Bella despises this horrible boy who is so steadily and acidly looking to provoke her tears. She asks about the woman that gave her life, explicitly, for the first time. Esme's response is quiet. I don't want to hurt you, and that cements a sense that Isabella had lived with all along – that the birthmother is dangerous.
In the present, Edward looked at her with subdued concern. To the marrow, she knew that Edward would do and be whatever she needed at that moment, and she loved him.
"Thank you," Bella said, and for the first time, her voice was genuinely warm. "That'd be lovely."
"Edward, the cheesecake!" Bella added, and then her right leg caught – and she tripped on a rug. She fetched her crutches to stand and then meandered uneasily through Renée and Phil's living room. Terrified of breaking a terracotta pot or a jade vase filled with sunflowers, she tried to constrain her movements. Her crutches slammed against the edge of a pale pinewood coffee table. As she wobbled through with her crutches, her right foot caught on the tasseled edge of a terrace-patterned rug.
Her crutches fell to the floor, and she fell on both knees. For a minute, her sprawl on the floor reminded her of the upward-facing dog pose in a yoga class.
"Fuck. Bee?"
Bella fell often – so much so that she always laughed a little. The laughter bubbled after the shock of pain – to the skin and the bone – passed. Edward did, too, sometimes – once his concern was assuaged.
"I'm OK," Bella swore out of habit, and every inch of her skin tingled with heated embarrassment.
Renée Dwyer touched her for the first time, squatting down to the floor beside her, mirroring Edward. Renée placed a fine-boned, delicately fingered hand on Bella's shoulder, and it burned a hole in her heart.
"Sweetheart?" she blurted. "Sweetheart, are you OK?"
"I'm fine," Bella repeated sheepishly, and looked up at Renée Dwyer, hoping that her discomfort at being called sweetheart by this woman was plain. "Sorry. So sorry."
"You really OK?" Edward repeated gently, and Bella managed to get on all fours despite an ache that ran up her back.
Bella nodded and looked directly at him, too embarrassed to try to stand by herself in front of these strangers. "Help me up?"
Edward did as he was asked, lifting her into a cradle and setting her on one of the chairs in a round dining table. It overlooked the Dwyer's red-tiled patio, which Renée had peppered with bird feeders. Hands shaking at the shock of watching Bella fall, Renée served a family-style meal. There was a bowl of couscous salad, tossed with feta cheese and red bell pepper. There was a platter of chicken wraps from Trader Joe's.
"I used to really suck at cooking," Renée explained. "I've been taking cooking lessons."
Politely, Bella smiled. Edward grinned, and Bella felt like her stomach exploded with sweetness, because she'd never seen him like this.
"Can I ask?" Renée said shyly, and the hollows under her cheekbones pinkened just like Bella's – so much so that Bella herself felt embarrassed to blush. "About the two of you?"
Like she'd never seen him before, Edward tensed with a shy, ashamed uneasiness that Bella found strangely endearing.
It seemed like an important question to Edward, and he answered it with endearing sincerity – firm, genuine, even apologetic. His entire expression was open and warm in a way Bella thought was reserved for the privacy of their bubble. "I'm Esme Masen's nephew," he said, and he layered his statement with meaning. Bella felt like she was witnessing a heartfelt apology, but the gears in her head were jammed with ice.
Bella was shaking her head, and she interrupted him without casting a glance at the expression on Renée's face. "We kind of grew up together," she explained, and there was a sharp edge to her voice. "Well, we didn't see each other very much as kids. Five times, if that. But then Edward moved to Washington State, and we became friends, and we were friends for years."
Bella gnawed at her lip. "And then I realized I love her," Edward said, candidly and earnestly, like he wanted to reassure Renée Dwyer - like Renée Dwyer was worthy of reassurance. "And we've been together ever since. Almost a year."
Renée Dwyer looked at Edward with a warm, maternal expression on her face.
In the car, Edward turned on the GPS to drive them to their downtown hotel. He touched her knee again and asked if she really hadn't hurt the skin or the cartilage. Lovingly, Isabella shook her head.
Isabella had waved goodbye at Renée and Phil Dwyer. For one microsecond, Renée had made a move as if to hug her. For one microsecond, Isabella had flinched away, and Renée's expression had crumbled as if Bella had stung her. It was not satisfying, like Bella had imagined millions of times.
Bella was quiet, and Edward seemed to be restraining a burning need to talk.
"Bee, love?"
"Mmh."
"You're OK?"
"I'm fine."
"Really?"
"Really, really, darling," she said sweetly, and echo of a phrase he used often. She leaned over to kiss his cheek. She stroked his thigh. "Thanks for coming with me."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Edward said. "It's always nice to go places with you."
They took out her wheelchair. With Bella in the chair, they strolled through the ochre-and-desert-colored buildings. The light began to fade. The cherry blossoms on the main plaza were coated with snow. Edward bought her a pendant of Kokopelli, and Bella bought them dinner at a Southwestern eatery. She laughed when Edward teared up at the heat of a traditional green chile burger. Bella didn't want to talk about Renée; she said as much quite flatly. Instead prodded Edward gently about his upcoming examination on cardiology.
It could have been any other date, but for the fact that Edward was looking at her with such concern.
It was dark when they returned to their boutique hotel, and Edward ordered cheesecake. After Bella took a bath, Edward helped her with her stretching routine. He inspected her knees again, finding the skin had split open on Renée's hardwood floors, and he patted it down with a Band-Aid. As had become routine, Edward took that as his cue to hunch over a textbook. Like she did every night, Bella pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck, then another to his arched back. Bella went to bed at ten, slipping into the covers on the left side of the bed.
"I love you," she called out, before closing her eyes. Nearing midnight, the bed dipped next to her and Edward slipped in.
It happened at the crack of dawn when temperatures dropped, and the sky lightened. Startled, Edward woke to the sound of Isabella sobbing like a wounded animal, as he had only heard her cry once before.
"Baby?" he asked, terrified and panicked because he wasn't certain Isabella was breathing. "Bella, baby?"
Time stretched as she fought to calm down, assaulted by waves upon waves of grief. Like her feelings had been for months, her grief was rudderless. Bella thought about Renée. She let herself think about Renée – strikingly beautiful Renée, with her scratchy blue cardigan, her handmade crochet blankets, her hand-painted bird feeders, and a kind of lovely fragility. Was that what a schizophrenic person looked like? A former drug addict? And why had Isabella herself been so cruel? And why couldn't she reciprocate Renée's adoration?
Her grief raged, shattering the rose-colored glasses of her childhood, which had taken a sinister tone. She was grieving Without saying a word against Esme, Renée had destroyed her. Every memory of her perfect mother was cast in a different light. This story that everyone was pushing – that Isabella had been ripped from a younger, powerless mother by a much stronger woman driven by an unhealthy obsession – seemed plausible.
"Aaah—eee do-do-tuh haff-ff puh-grrr-grr-ents." Her words were agonized, garbled huffs and hisses. "O-rrh a fff-uh mee-lee."
"Yes, you do," Edward sad, in a voice that was as low as it was forceful, even as he held her very gently. "I can be your family. I am your family. We can be a family. Marry me, Bee."