Oh, the bitten mouth, oh, the kissed limbs
oh, the hungering teeth, oh, the entwined bodies.
Oh, the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Summer 2010
As Rose's due date loomed, and my jealousy did not wane, I reflected on the past few months.
Siobhan's funeral was hard on me. Carmen and Eleazar attended with Edward and me, and only a handful of other people were in the pews. Rows of emptiness caused echoes in the tiny church, and served as a reminder of what the end would look like.
Nobody to care, to come to your funeral. A rich life lived to the ninety-second year, and nothing to show but six neighbors and the two librarians and their spouses.
I had no idea where any of her family lived; the poor Irish children that were scattered in the wind when their mother needed help and turned to the wrong person. It seemed wrong that she was found days after her death when a neighbor finally noticed she hadn't seen her in awhile, when somewhere out there she had eight siblings. Of course, they were older than her, so maybe they couldn't be found anywhere save for under a stone marker.
I was struggling.
I was not pregnant, but Rose was going to deliver at any moment. Women came into the library, with ripe bellies and sticky toddlers. I felt envy, then guilt, then despair.
We went to dinner for our anniversary. Edward wanted to take me away, to spend time just the two of us. I couldn't.
My mood was constantly dark, like the clothing choices I now made. Brown, black, navy. In honor of Siobhan's death and my own selfishness. I think Edward was worried about me, but I wouldn't talk about it. Not when I couldn't articulate my feelings to myself, much less my doting husband.
His very nature that I originally fell in love with made the guilt stronger, a vise that never let up. It squeezed my chest until I couldn't breathe.
Mike was across the street most of the days I worked at the library. Carmen and I changed up my schedule so it wasn't predictable, and he continued to get it right about half the time. I wondered what his life entailed, or didn't, that he could waste so much of it on stalking me. I didn't tell Edward every time Mike showed up, I couldn't stand the look in his eyes. It was similar to the one I saw every month when I had to tell him I wasn't pregnant. Sadness. Loss, the loss of the idea of what if it's this time. . .
Rose gave birth to a pretty little fair-haired girl that she and Emmett named Vera, which means truth. Emmett nicknamed her Truvy immediately. He was so proud he crowed to anyone who would listen, and the ladies working the gift shop knew who he was by the end of the day. Every time he left her room he came back with a gift, something for her, something for the baby. Balloons, flowers, and stuffed animals crowded the already overfull space of her hospital room.
I found that there were pockets of time when I was happy, and this was one of them. I could truly be happy for Emmett and Rosalie, and their parents whom I met for the first time. The senior Cullens were there, doting on Vera as though she were their own grandchild. I pushed away the distress that tried to creep in as I thought that I was failing at giving them their very own grandbaby. They loved Emmett as a son, and his wife as a daughter-in-law, which I could attest to being the same as a daughter. So Vera was theirs too, in a way.
When we returned home from visiting them in the hospital, I told Edward I wanted to take a shower to have some time alone. I cried on the floor of the stall, the water turning cold as it pattered over my back and shoulders. We had been given a year by my doctor, an entire year before we were considered infertile and they would run tests.
Almost eight months had passed. That was not a year, and yet it might as well be an eternity. The library used to be my distraction, but then Siobhan passed away, and Mike kept creeping around, and that was ruined for me. I couldn't find solace at my favorite type of place when he continued to appear. My house was a source of comfort, but then there was that lone empty room upstairs, waiting to be turned into a nursery. The nursery of my dreams, as Edward had once put it.
I let Alice plan Rosalie's nursery with her, claiming I didn't know a thing and wouldn't be useful.
I really had been avoiding them.
I tried to shut down the guilt, to strangle it before it could strangle me.
Edward found me in the shower. I imagine when I didn't emerge and the water continued to run past the normal time a person would stay in the shower, he came searching for me.
He turned off the water, and wordlessly picked me up, ignoring the fact that I was sopping wet. He cradled me to his chest, placing a kiss on my forehead and walking me to our bed. He laid me down gently, grabbing the blanket from the foot of the bed and draping it over me. I shivered uncontrollably as he stretched out alongside my cold body, pulling me to him. His hands chafed my arms, his lips blowing warm breath in my ear as he whispered into it.
"It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay. I'm sorry it's hard, I know it's hard on you. I'm so sorry, Bella."
As it dried, my hair fluttered with every breath he took. This intimacy was what I needed, the knowledge that he most likely had the same feelings swirling around in his gut.
Not the same, my inner voice whispered viciously. I was the failure, not him. He wasn't the problem, I was.
~~~oOo~~~
At the end of August, when baby Vera was a month old, we were supposed to be leaving the house to visit them. I'd told Edward I needed to make a pit stop, but it was because I was expecting my period.
Three days before.
I didn't want to be optimistic; I knew I couldn't handle the crushing disappointment if I was wrong. It was always the loudest thought in my head, what cycle day I was on.
I set the timer I was already keeping in the bathroom for all of the ovulation and pregnancy testing that had gone on in there for the better part of a year.
I squeezed my fists tightly together over my stomach as I waited.
Three interminable minutes later, I stood on shaky legs and opened the bathroom door.
"Edward!" I called loudly, my voice cracking. I could hear him as he thumped up the stairs, apparently hurrying at the sound of my voice.
When he appeared, flushed and panting, I held the test in front of his face.
I think I screamed, I know he shouted, and the next thing I knew, he was twirling me around the bedroom, my feet inches from hitting the dresser every time we revolved.
Dizzy, laughing, breathless, crying. Both of us.
We burst through the McCartys' front door after a crazed bout of knocking, and the giddiness could not be contained. Emmett twirled me much the way Edward had done, and Rosalie laughed at us as she carefully burped her tiny infant on her shoulder. Alice and Jasper arrived a few minutes later, and the squeal that came out of Alice's little body could have shattered glass. Instead, it made Vera cry, and Alice was quick to apologize and take her from Rose, soothing and shushing.
I suddenly wanted to hold her, the compact body that was surprisingly heavy and warm. Alice handed her over, and I stared in marvel at the tiny nose, the blue eyes and blonde tufts of hair. Her mouth was a tiny pink circle, and I could only stare in awe.
After Rosalie put Vera down in her crib, she joined us on her living room couch. We talked about her baby, my pregnancy, and what Alice and Jasper had planned for the rest of their lives. I watched Jasper as we talked, and I could tell he was up to something. That was another friendship I'd neglected.
I pulled him aside before we left. "What's going on, Jasper? I saw your face."
He grinned at me. "I'm thinkin' of asking Ali to marry me. What do you think?"
"Yes! You have to, you two are perfect for each other. You've lived together long enough now, I think you know you're compatible," I teased.
"I know," he said sheepishly. "It's just, everythin' was so great, I settled in and saw no reason to rock the boat. I got lazy," he admitted.
I smacked his chest. "Well, fix it, idiot. You've found your soulmate, now marry her already."
He hugged me, and I relaxed into his embrace. "I've missed you, Sunshine."
I sighed. "I know, Jasper. Me, too."
~~~oOo~~~
And so I had the honor of helping him with picking out a ring. It had diamonds, but also multicolored stones to suit Alice's personality. She said yes, of course, and asked why he'd waited so long. She was going to take forever planning the perfect wedding, though, so she didn't have any room to complain about time. I told Jasper he had a good two years to continue being idle.
My birthday came and went, and I allowed some fanfare this year. There were plenty of jokes about me turning a quarter of a century old, and that I'd be Methuselah before the baby was born. It was the first time I'd laughed so much since Christmas, and I felt happy and whole again.
Esme and I started right away working on the nursery. My mom came over one long weekend and helped paint, and they insisted I sit and watch. It was a soft green, and I wasn't fooling anyone with my choice. It was the color of Edward's eyes when I caught him watching me, when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
I was folding the adorable onesie that Renee had brought me when I felt the first twinge. I tried to ignore it, but then I felt another, sharper pinch. Gasping and clutching my abdomen, I tried to breathe deeply.
"Mom?" I called, and it did not go unnoticed that I sounded like a child.
Esme and Renee rushed me to the hospital as Esme called Edward to meet us there. By the time I was wheeled into the little emergency triage room, there was blood pooling at the inseam of my pants, and I knew we were too late.
A Song Of Despair - Poem by Pablo Neruda
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
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