Our Infinite Sadness

Resolution

When Edythe returned to Ben's room, Carlisle's expression held a thousand questions. Colleen and she had whispered, if they had spoken at all. Colleen's gifts vastly exceeded her own, and justifiably so, since she was a newborn infant to this life, as compared to that most ancient of persons that any of them had ever encountered.

Even now Edythe could not be sure that Colleen was a telepath, like herself. Had she read Edythe's mind, or did she somehow just know everything, innately? Edythe felt as though Colleen had seen deeper than her mind, through and beneath her conscious will, into her soul—or into whatever misshapen clanking thing passed for a soul, in monsters such as themselves.

Edythe soothed Carlisle with assurances that Alice had spoken nothing but the truth when she had foretold that Colleen came not as Apothegm, but as Seraphim, bearing mercy and infinite sadness, particularly for Benjamin and herself.

"But what now?"

"She will be close by. Until Ben is up and about. She has much to tell us, and I imagine she wants to tell it only once. When we get back to Forks, she can have my room, for as long as she stays. She understands our conventions. She won't be a nuisance."

Edythe would say no more.

Since last night she had skulked about in the farthest corner of the room, perched on a Spartan tubular steel chair which several minutes ago, in a moment of shock, she had destroyed. Carlisle replaced the broken chair and had a blue vinyl upholstered recliner brought in, on the expectation of human visitors. He still would not give her the hour of Ben's reanimation, much less the minute that she craved.

She gently told him to skedaddle, and go back to repairing humans. He departed Ben's suite none too happy, dissatisfied by the persistent enigma of Clytemnæstra's presence.

Edythe no longer lurked in the corner. Now she sat in the recliner, which had been placed adjacent to the headboard of his bed, so that she could rest her head on the mattress, near his pillow, and gaze at the faint mauve capillaries beneath the thin membranes of his eyelids. In this attitude she still had to see the gauze and tape wrapped tightly around his scalp, concealing his lovely tousled hair, but the most glaring and offensive injuries were beyond her field of vision, and it was easier to imagine his eyes open, his smile animated, his heart and spirit alive and well.

Late in the morning, they had another expected visitor. While the encounter with Colleen had left her in suspense and ever more eager for Ben's awakening, the new arrival provided crucial and welcome illumination with her very approach.

Luckily Alice provided advance warning, or else Edythe might have raised the roof in her panic. "Ben's mom will be here in five minutes."

Edythe launched onto her feet with thoughts of tidying herself and working on her hair.

"You're so absurd, Edy. Your dress doesn't have a single wrinkle. You're scintillatingly luscious."

"Stop it. You're making me blush."

"Act natural. No big deal. She's going to adore you."

"Mothers never think any woman is worthy of their firstborn sons, Alice."

She wrinkled her nose and said, "This is a day for firsts. Colleen is about to be eclipsed. Sit. Smile. Look demure."

So she waited. Alice gave her five minutes, but she got her first dose of Ben's mother far sooner than that.

For the past day the minds on this ward, as well as those on the floors above and below, had mixed and congealed together into a dull, drab mélange which for the most part she managed to ignore.