Writings

In 1987 I got a vision of Edward getting married.

I didn’t tell him about it. Too many steps between here and there.

Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake not warning him.

Forward

The first time I saw Edward, he was running, which I didn’t realize at the time would turn out to be one of the only things he loved. He ran with his mouth wide open and his head thrown back, his hair flying behind him like a banner and the sun turning it bright red in parts so that it looked like it was on fire. And out of nowhere, a streak of gold cut across his path and tackled him, and they fell to the ground and laughed so hard the grass shook.

Fifty years later I talked to Carlisle about that. Asked him if it happened. He searched his mind for a while. Edward says that Carlisle’s mind is very organized, that dipping into it is like wandering into a doctor’s office, with rows and rows of neat files all labeled with colored stickers. When he needs something, he goes to his big filing system and spends a moment hunting, then pulls out the right file and tells you what he thinks the contents tell him.

“I do remember that,” he said after a moment, a smile spreading across his face. “He thought I was running behind him, but I was actually in the trees. I dropped forty feet out of a pin oak and tackled him from the side.” He chuckled. “One of the few times I’ve ever surprised him. He learned to expect that maneuver and listen for the rustling of the leaves after that.”

Carlisle smiles a lot when he talks about Edward. Edward is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. I can’t see the past, and the way it would have forked, but I can see the future, and as it turned out, the running day was in the future when I awoke.

To this day, I think it’s interesting that my first vision of them was to know for certain that Carlisle would be happy. That I saw him tackling Edward, and the two of them laughing.

Jasper wasn’t laughing when I saw him first. He was sitting on an upended bucket in the dark corner of a barn with his head in his hands. In fact, I couldn’t tell if he was crying—well, at the time. Now that I remember it, I know he wasn’t, because Jasper has cried a total of three times in the last seventy years. And one of those was on our wedding day.

But I knew that I was in love with him.

You know how they talk about someone causing you heartache? Jasper caused me heartache. Right from the very beginning. It’s a thing you can feel, a weird twinge in the area of your gut that seems to be radiating from where your heart is, even if you’re like us, and your heart doesn’t move. I’ve never asked, but I’m sure Carlisle would have some explanation for that, some discussion of the xiphoid process or the diaphragm or some something; the way your brain interacts with all those weird muscles that otherwise do things like keep your food down or allow you to breathe. He’s a scientist, and that means he’s always looking for the exact explanations of things.

Thing is, though, exact explanations can sometimes ruin what is otherwise a really good heartache.

So I knew from that heartache I was going to have to find the man on the bucket.

But I also knew I was going to have to find the laughing boy.

And I guess that’s as good a beginning as any.

Forward

Jasper and I hiked down from the Cascades to the Oregon coast at dusk. A lot of wildlife lives in the Cascades—mountain lions and deer and bears.

It’s still hard for Jasper. Animals don’t give you the strength that humans do, and he misses being strong. But he does it for me. And he does it because it makes him feel like he’s a better person than he was before.

We sat on the beach, our bodies making indentations in the sand. I curled into his side, and he took off his shirt. Jasper has a lot of body hair compared to men these days. He has the second least of the men in our family, though—Emmett is the hairiest, followed by Carlisle, though Carlisle is blond and you don’t really see it on him.

Edward didn’t quite finish puberty, and he looks it. Jasper says he looks effeminate. Well, the word Jasper uses is “Aunt Nancy.”

He wrapped his arm over my shoulder as we sat and listened to the waves as they whooshed in and out. It was low tide, and little tide pools shimmered in what was left of the sunlight.

I mentioned that I was thinking about Edward.

“That boy is melancholy on two legs,” Jasper answered. “Not much you can do about it.” He pulled me closer to him and kissed the top of my head. “I like it that you worry.”

Melancholy on two legs. Not a terrible description. Edward spent a lot of time brooding. Sitting at his piano playing songs in minor keys. Pretending he didn’t hear any of us when we walked up to him, even if it was Carlisle or Esme.

I leaned against Jasper some more. “Do you think we’re bad for him?”

He laughed. “I think that boy is still too young to realize that if he’s going to live forever, he better get used to change.” He kissed my head again. “You’re change. A whole lotta change, in a teeny tiny package.”

I giggled. “Change on two legs?”

“Change on two legs.”

Jasper smiled. I couldn’t see it—we were both still looking out at the ocean—but I could feel it.

We stayed until the nighttime tide came in.

Forward

In 1990, I found out that the girl’s name was Isabella. There was something involving a high school classroom. Science. Chemistry, maybe, or Biology, I wasn’t sure. She had long, brown hair. That was really all I had.

But it could have been any high school classroom, anywhere.

And decisions can change.

Forward

When Edward wrecked his piano, the debris took up the entire living room. The piano lay splintered on the middle of the floor. I hadn’t realized until then that piano strings aren’t stringy at all; they’re big long straight wires that, if you break the rest of the thing, stick up at all sorts of angles. And Melancholy on Two Legs sat in the middle of them like a bird in a nest, with little white keys scattered around him like some freakish game of dominoes.

I knew why. Carlisle had made the announcement just a half-hour earlier, then disappeared to get his affairs in order at the hospital. We’d go back to the east coast; as far away from Oregon as we could get. That way no one would follow us.

Rosalie screamed that it was unfair and stalked out the back door, making Emmett chase her back to their house.

Esme started looking through her books of house designs.

And Edward…well, Edward destroyed his piano.

I went to sit down next to him. Maybe, I thought, I could convince him to pretend the keys actually were dominoes, and we could laugh.

But as soon as my bottom hit the floor, he leapt up, snarling.

“Edward,” I said, but he cut me off.

“You never should have come here, Freak.” His eyes flashed dark. “You and your husband. All you do is fuck things up for the rest of us.”

I didn’t realize he was gone until the sound of his bedroom door slamming echoed through the house, fading off into the sounds of Edward, playing piano…

At once, I saw the young man, brushing past my husband on the street. Too close. Too quickly. I saw the way Jasper turned, the way his teeth glinted in the lamplight…

I jumped to my feet.

“Let’s go hunt,” I told my husband. He looked at me like I had two heads, but then shrugged and followed me.

No one died.

We didn’t leave Oregon.

And Edward’s piano stayed intact.

But that was when I figured out that Jasper was right.

Edward is not a fan of change.

Forward