Descending Star

FIRST DESCENT

Edythe had encouraged Carlisle to tell his story and had delivered Ben to his office to hear it. Now she said, "Esme, this really isn't necessary."

Esme shrugged, as though indifferent, but Ben said, "No, sorry Edythe, but I think it is."

Esme then looked kindly at Ben and explained, "Edythe is made uncomfortable by this story, because it challenges some of her most deeply held beliefs concerning the irreproachable goodness of her patriarch and benefactor. He is often professed to be the best among us, a living saint. One small taint upon that unimpeachable goodness would call the legitimacy of his beatification into question, would it not? Edythe, from the moment of her rebirth, has never been anything to Carlisle but his beloved daughter. But just look at her. I'm sure you have. Why, his daughter, and not more, not ever, not even a cursory attempt, not even an exploration of the question, motivated solely by curiosity? Haven't you wondered, Benjamin Swan? Why do you suppose that they were never intimate?"

Edythe looked away and seethed. Ben glanced between the two women and stammered, "Uhh, he had made a promise to Edythe's mother, Agatha, to save and preserve her."

Esme shrugged. "Men make promises to the mothers of daughters all the time. Promises to nurture them, promises to keep them, promises to have them. Agatha died minutes later. Carlisle has had a century to reconsider the terms of his compact with Edythe's mother. Yet Edythe has only ever been his daughter. I'll ask again, because the question is crucial to my story: why were they never husband and wife?"

Ben nervously speculated, "I had gathered the primary reason is that she is too young for him."

Esme gently countered, "They've often masqueraded as brother and sister, in service of the human charade. Their ages aren't so far apart, and she can pass for much older than sixteen, when she dresses to accentuate her figure. Maybe the problem wasn't that she was too young for him. Maybe she wasn't young enough."

Edythe whipped her head around and snarled, "Don't lead him, Mother. Tell your damned story, and let him judge for himself."

Esme smiled and reassured Ben, "This is not gratuitous cruelty. Bear in mind that my ending is apropos to your friend's impending folly in Yosemite, or I would not be inflicting it on either of you."

With this story, Edythe did not hold Ben and comfort him. She crossed her arms and stared dully out at the Sol Duc River. The others had disappeared, too, to clear the props and convert the horror movie set back to a house. They had all heard this story, too.

Esme began by jumping ahead. "Carlisle happened to have line of sight of my death, in New Hampshire. A beautiful place not far from the teaching hospital of Dartmouth College. This was two years after he created Edythe Cullen. Carlisle just happened to be there, to see me die, because Edythe just happened to be at Dartmouth College's teaching hospital, attending the Mary Hitchcock Medical School for Women, one of the few places in the country where women could earn a medical degree. I was twenty. When Carlisle just happened to be there, to witness my death and intercede. A remarkable chain of coincidences, wouldn't you agree?

"But that was not when Carlisle first knew me."

Ben tried to touch Edythe's shoulder and neck. Her skin felt cold as ice. She shook him off. His skin began to crawl. He asked Esme, "When did he first know you?"

Esme wrung her hands and said, "Let's start with an easier question: when I first knew him. That would have been six years before I died, and four years before Edythe died. I grew up in Chicago, an only child, from the time my family moved there when I was five. I was a child of two medical professionals. My father was a vascular surgeon, and my mother was a trained nurse– a rare thing in those days. Most nurses were Florence Nightingales who learned on the job, in the course of cleaning bedpans. My mother had a three year degree from a medical school in Boston, the first such school for women in this country, the New England Hospital for Women.