Charlie, 1985, shortly before proposing to Renee:
She laughs and spins away from me, sharing her blissful giggle with the trees. They enclose us in their bewitching boughs to form an ethereal pocket of world belonging only to us.
It is a stolen moment, and I mean to capture it in its perfection so I can replay it over and over. Grass stains on the knees of her skirt, polka dots on her favorite shirt, freckles on her delicate face, sun shining on her mahogany hair. I want to remember it all, every detail.
How do you say it out loud? How do you tell someone that you think their grass stains are beautiful, that you love the way they see the world, when you hardly ever say anything at all?
I offer her my hand again, wishing I could make my thoughts a tangible gift worthy of the beautiful girl in front of me.
Instead, she clasps my empty palm and requests, “Again!” in her magical dulcet pitch. So I spin her again, because this I can do, around and around ‘till her face blurs and her giggles crescendo. And then I pull her into my arms and watch the wisps of her hair sway in the sunshine.
I have watched her grow from gangly knees and elbows into curves and softness. I have watched her eyes delight in her whims; poetry, painting, learning Japanese, hiking all the mountains in a hundred mile radius. I have watched her skip from interest to interest, and have delighted in her fascination of the lot of it.
She wants to capture the world, and I will watch her do it.
Shyly our gazes meet, and it feels like this is the center of the known universe. Our sweaty hands and dirty fingernails: these are the most important things that could ever be.
For this moment, this encapsulated moment in the woods, I feel like I could do it all with her; conquer and experience any number of adventures. I feel like a rabbit’s foot dipped in holy water, the luckiest of all.
She leans her forehead against my chest. I want to tell her that I love the way she fits there, molded to me, but I don’t.
“Charlie, tell me what it will be like when we leave this town, when we see the world.” I watch the way her perfect mouth forms the whispered request.
I want to weave tales of our travels through the world, Eurasia, Australia and the Yukon. I want to tell her how we’ll see everything there is to see, everything worth seeing. I want to tell the girl I love what she wants to hear. But I am not one to turn an eloquent phrase, no orator to capture the magic of indefinable ideas and hopes.
So I stroke her arms, memorizing every freckle and curve of her skin with my fingertips. I press her to me and pray that through the contact she can feel all that I want for us despite my lack of verbal expression.
And she doesn’t push me to speak, because when you’re young and in love, you can forgive almost anything.
Charlie, 1986, when newly married to Renee:
The plus sign taunts me. Just like the six before it, this hard, made in China, inert little plastic rectangle carries a whirlwind of a message.
It’s strange that something as big as a human life in my new wife can be predicted by something so small and urine-covered. It leaves me feeling detached.
She sits on the edge of the tub, peeking through fingers, tapping her bare feet against the water jug she’s been guzzling from the last two hours. Our bathroom is blanketed in a surreal heaviness, and all I can really understand is the chipped red nail polish on her toes clashing against our God-awful pink tile.
“Oh God, oh God,” she murmurs.
Tears are streaming from her eyes, and I know this wasn’t in her plans, but I don’t want our first memory of this child to be one of regret.
“Hush now, we’ll make a way.” It’s my sad attempt at comfort. I should tell her that she’ll braid her hair, read her Austen, and teach her to paint. Or I will teach him to fish, to catch a line drive, and to be a gentleman. But all that I can offer in my shell shock is a directive to be quiet.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
A shift has occurred in this small span of time. It seems like the room is crowded with the three of us, and I am at a loss. I want to believe that it is only the unexpectedness that makes it feel this way. Once the concept has percolated she will feel more excited, seeing this, too, as an adventure.
Thankfully, I never mentioned the surprise trip to Italy I’d been planning. The funds will calm her anxiety once she knows we’ll have a nest egg to prepare for this baby.
Our child, this mystery, is growing in her even as we sit awkwardly in the bathroom.
Will it have her eyes, her smile, her energy? I hope it has more of her than me.
Charlie, 2005, before Bella moves to Forks:
My phone releases a final ring before the answering machine does the work I won’t. My attention is too focused on my hands.
Between two fingers I roll the polka dotted fabric. This small blue and green faded swatch a representation of all that I have lost, all that I let loose. Renee would correct me and say it was cerulean, like the sky on a clear day, and celadon, like the pale underside of the ferns she would pluck. She always had a way with colors.
My Renee was one to carry the ferns home rather than the flowers.
All that remains of her is now pressed between my thumb and forefinger. Once, it still smelled like her, this piece of her favorite shirt. When allowing the bleak reflections to overtake me, I would bring it to my cheek, letting her scent of wild honeysuckle pervade my senses.
On occasion, I still draw it to my face from habit. Though, with passing years it offers no olfactory comfort.
If she could see how soft I have become in these moments, if I could transplant some of this sensitivity I have found to the man I was then, would it have made a difference?
She is pure story at this point. It’s been a long sixteen years since I truly knew her. Even then, I might have only known the Renee atop the precarious pedestal on which I placed her. She was four years my junior, not yet ripe when I plucked her as my own.
In the night, when I dream of her, it’s still this young girl that I see behind my closed eyes with her enduring spirit and will to conquer the world.
When she said she was leaving, I was almost glad for it. The glow that lit my world was fading with the weight of the small town life I had etched out for us. She was made for bigger things than I could offer; adventures and experiences I didn’t long for or know how to provide. Even then, I couldn’t speak of them, when I was young and immortal through her love. The constant cloud cover and the ordinary life I offered were suffocating the fire that had drawn me to her at the start.
Letting her go was the most courageous thing I will ever do. The most wholly right thing that I can say I did on my day of judgment.
I will not smother a spark.
These moments of grim contemplation don’t come often any longer. I have found contentment here, in this town of few faces and many trees. I have etched an easy life of routine. Work, Rainer, fish, repeat. I have turned my loneliness into aloneness.
This existence does not squelch me like it did her. I am equipped for this life, built to carry the safety of a town on my shoulders with pride and precision. What would be a one-dimensional life to some has fleshed me out.
Still, there are days like today, where I roll the ‘what ifs’ through my head, regret tattooed indelibly across my heart. The organ beats the rhythm of lament.
what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...what-if...
Pulling this cloth from its stowed drawer and rolling it through my fingers, I match the reeling mental acts of my mind with the repetitive physical acts of my hands.
Now, now is when I miss my Isabella. While I can come to terms with the loss of a woman, I cannot ever make peace with my missing daughter. My child is so far away, in a place so different from my own, with sun, sand, and heat rather than trees and moisture and northern air. Stranger more than not, and growing by the day.
What is she like?Has she outgrown her clumsy nature? Has she grown to full height? Does she still bite her lip when she’s thinking?
This unknowable daughter is too far from me. I would gladly exchange these guesses of simple mannerisms from afar with the feelings of exclusion and rejection a father encounters when dealing with his teenage daughter in his home.
The feeling that I have contributed 13 chromosomes, birthday cards, child support, a surname, and little else is hard to swallow. I can’t shake the idea that it isn’t supposed to be this way. You’re supposed to know the people who occupy so much space in your heart and mind. I should know her. Her favorite color, her taste in movies, her favorite meals; all should spout from the tip of my tongue without effort.
But they don’t.
This line of thinking only leads to more self-pity than I should indulge. Decisively, I address the beckoning flash of the answering machine as a way to surface from my thoughts. If it was the station, I really shouldn’t leave the message go.
“Ch- Dad? It’s Bella. I have something I want to ask you.”
I hear her hesitant tone. I hear her tell me about how she’s a strong student so she can handle transition. I listen to her tell me how she’ll help me with cooking and cleaning.
More than hearing the words, I hear her uncertainty of how I will respond, her resolve that this is the right thing despite the sacrifice. Because she is a child of few words, I know each one carries immeasurable weight. That much, at least, I can understand.
I listen to her ask to come here to Forks, to me.
And suddenly, something invades my chest, a different rhythm altogether flowing through my veins, awakening a long paused life.
