BLOGGING TWILIGHT, pt. 21: Fevers & Mirrors

I’ve been reading Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 21: Phone Call

Bella calls her mother and tells her to not come back to Phoenix yet, and also not to worry because she will explain everything later. I'm sure that will work. Knowing as we do how Bella's mother is a calm, rational person who will certainly not freak out when she hears that message. Bella ends up falling asleep waiting for the phone to ring and Alice carries her to the bedroom. She wakes up some time later and it's dark out. "I knew I was getting the schedule of my days and nights reversed," she says. I've been looking for a big number 4 made out of plastic or something so I can sit it out in the sun and take a picture of the shadow it casts, because then I would have a "four shadow," get it? S. Meyer gets it.

Bella goes into the other room, where Alice is sketching.

I watched as Alice drew a square room with dark beams across its low ceiling. The walls were paneled in wood, a little too dark, out of date. The floor had a dark carpet with a pattern in it. There was a large window against the south wall, and an opening through the west wall led to the living room. One side of that entrance was stone - a large tan stone fireplace that was open to both rooms.

This is a detailed sketch! It's a good thing Alice brought her colored pencil set! How long does Bella stand there and watch? Then this happens:

"The phone goes there," I whispered, pointing.
Two pairs of eternal eyes stared at me.
"That's my mother's house."

This is a pretty weird beat, no? It's supposed to be kind of suspenseful, I think - the big reveal w/r/t what Alice is sketching - but don't you feel like Bella probably would have just said "Holy fuck, that's my fucking Mom's house," and not bothered with the business about the phone? It's too clever. Not that Bella isn't a clever girl, but this is supposed to be a serious, tense moment, and in a few lines Bella will fall into a total panic and basically become incapable of verbal expression. I found myself backtracking to this section over and over again while reading the next few pages, because it seemed so inconsistent with the rest of it, tone-wise.

Anyway, Alice snaps into action and calls Carlisle. Jasper slides next to Bella and uses his Vampire Valium to sedate her like they've put out an Amber Alert for her children. His power is apparently stronger when he makes physical contact - he puts his hand on Bella's shoulder - and now I'm seeing all sorts of reasons Alice is with this guy.

Alice tells the drugged-out Bella that Edward, Emmett, and Carlisle are coming down to take her away and hide for a while; Alice and Jasper are going to stay in Phoenix to guard her mother. It barely registers, but Bella is vaguely happy to know that Edward is coming. I've got to hand it to the Cullens, by the way. In a pinch, these guys are capable of Avon Barksdale-level change-ups.

"Remember Bella, you only do two days in here.
The day you go in and they day you come out."

Jasper must have let up on the sedatives for a second when he felt Bella get excited about Edward (gross, Jasper) because suddenly she is overcome with like, a super panic attack. The tracker is after Bella's mother and even if he never catches her he'll find and hurt someone she loves and there is nothing anyone can do about it because they'd be risking their lives to do so - in response to all of this, Alice glances "meaningfully" at Jasper. I'm guessing the meaning is "take this bitch out," because "a deep, heavy fog of lethargy" washes over Bella. Jasper has ditched the Vampire Valium for the Vampire Roofies I guess, but Bella fights it and runs into the bedroom. Then she really has a breakdown, staring at the wall for three hours and eventually coming to the conclusion that she's not going to make it out of this predicament alive, and the only thing that really matters now is keeping as many other people from getting hurt as possible. In the ideal movie version of this scene, Elliott Smith's "Needle In The Hay" would be playing.

Bella goes back into the main room, ashamed of her behavior - a nice, endearing, child-like gesture. Now that Edward's not around these reminders that Bella is young aren't as creepy. Alice is getting off the phone with Carlisle - they're getting on a plane - and Jasper has gone to check out of the hotel. Then the phone rings again and Bella starts walking forward, "reaching hopefully for the phone." I was weirdly reminded of being like, eleven years old at that image. Alice hands off the phone to Bella, mouthing "your mother."

It's weird that she would mouth it, because is there anything wrong with Bella's mother hearing that? But people really do that sort of thing, so I guess it's more a problem with real life than it is with S. Meyer's writing. What sort of people do the "mouthing who is on the phone" thing? My hypothesis is that it is a protective gesture, so you see it more with mothers and the more protective sort of friends. So Alice probably would make a good mother (though I doubt vampires can get pregnant) and a good friend. Maybe that's a stretch. But I've been extrapolating a lot about Alice's personality for the #TeamAlice movement, which is a movement I've decided to start as we move into New Moon and all of its subsequent push and pull between Jacob and Edward.

Having not actually seen the movie of New Moon, I'm not entirely sure what else I'm in for, but not being totally blind to marketing I know there is a lot of "Does Bella belong with Jacob or Edward?" stuff. Edward, duh, it's pretty fucking obvious that's where these books are going. I've resolved to not let myself be manipulated by this totally manufactured controversy, and instead invest my loyalties not in Team Jacob or even Team Edward, but rather a third way - one that's even more of a long shot than Team Jacob, really. Namely, I'm advocating for a homosexual relationship with Alice. I'm also open to the possibility of a polyamorous relationship with Alice and Jasper. I know that these books have all ready been written, so it's not like this can actually happen, but then again the last movie doesn't even have a director yet! It is not too late to re-write the Twilight Saga and do right by Bella. Plus there's always FanFic.

It should be noted, from the outset, that my advocacy for Team Alice is not at all borne of a Joey Tribbiani-like fascination with lesbians. The fact is, I like Bella as a human being. She is a good person, and does not deserve to be in a relationship with an asshole like Edward or a douchebag like Jacob. They are both terrible people. She deserves to be in a loving and mutually-respecting relationship, and I believe Alice could offer that. Let's examine the facts, and see what we can conclude.

"How YOU doin', Bella?"

FACT:
Alice doesn't hesitate to tell Bella how vampires are made - she doesn't shield her from information in the patriarchal way Edward does. It's hard to blame Edward for having antiquated, anti-feminist values - he was born before women could vote. But a modern woman should not have to put up with that shit. Put Edward in some Women's Studies classes, and then we'll talk.

ASSUMPTION:
A relationship between Bella and Alice would therefore be much more egalitarian and would have much less potential for future domestic abuse and/or divorce.

FACT:
Edward likes the patriarchal music of the fifties and the misogynistic music of the eighties.

ASSUMPTIONS:
Edward is a Republican; his favorite presidents were Eisenhower and Reagan. Edward believes in fucking Trickle-Down Economics. Alice likes rock and roll. Her favorite Dylan album is "Blonde on Blonde." She once followed Tom Waits across the country with the intention of turning him into a vampire, but found out he already was one. Her favorite president was Bill Clinton. Alice says she's an Independent, but she'd never vote for a Republican other than maybe Ron Paul.

FACT:
Alice has a mature perspective w/r/t evolution and the origin of species. She doesn't spout a bunch or propaganda from the pages of Of Pandas and People when someone asks how vampires came to exist, like Edward does.

ASSUMPTIONS:
Alice is an atheist. She thinks the term "secular humanist" is for pussies.

FACT:
Edward plays the piano, and is generally a snob about classical music.

ASSUMPTIONS:
Alice plays bass. Jasper plays drums. They have a Death From Above 1979 thing going on, and they do twice as much blow.

FACT:
Alice is a skilled artist.

ASSUMPTIONS:
Alice went to art school. Alice smokes Lucky Strikes. Alice has a tattoo of Marcus Garvey on her bicep, and one of Asaata Shakur on her ass.

As we learn more about Alice we will revise these assumptions - maybe in Eclipse we'll learn she smokes Marlboro Reds or something - I could be off a little bit. But I think my case is pretty strong.

So Bella gets on the phone and hears her mother's voice, but only for a second. BECAUSE IT'S NOT BELLA'S MOM ON THE PHONE.

"Be very careful not to say anything until I tell you to." The voice I heard now was as unfamiliar as it was unexpected. It was a man's tenor voice, a very pleasant, generic voice - the kind of voice that you heard in the background of luxury car commercials. He spoke very quickly.

I like that "nondescript" James has a "generic" voice. S. Meyer is clearly not invested in this guy at all - he's not going to live very long is he? If James was on Star Trek, he'd have a red shirt on. Either that or James is black and S. Meyer is trying to avoid saying "he spoke in a negro dialect."

So James tells Bella to do exactly as he says if she ever wants to see her mom alive again. He has her saying stuff out loud like "No Mom, stay where you are," while he instructs her to get away from Alice and Jasper and come her mother's house, where there will be a phone number she needs to call to get further instructions. This seems kind of needlessly complicated. At this point it is already pretty clear that James will tell her to go to the ballet room from Alice's first vision. Bella even says something immediately after the phone call about how the only thing left to do is "go to the mirrored room and die." But okay, whatever. Bella fights away waves of terror and panic and tries to put on a normal face when she returns to face Alice. "The only expression I could manage was a dull, dead look," she says. She manages to not arouse Alice's suspicions, telling her that her mother has decided to stay out of town for now. Bella spots a piece of hotel stationary and asks Alice to deliver a letter to her mother after she leaves with Carlisle and the gang (of course she just told Alice that her mother is not coming home anytime soon, but Alice doesn't point this out - I take this as further evidence toward my hypothesis that Alice does a lot of drugs and is not really paying attention). Instead she writes a letter to Edward, which she assumes will get to him eventually (she's also resting on the assumption that Alice won't read the letter immediately, and she doesn't, and you KNOW that Edward would). She apologizes to Edward for her future actions (and you know, death) and begs him not to come after James. This is kind of a great, selfless gesture. It's the kind of thing Alice would understand, but obviously it will just piss Edward off. Bella holds out hope he will understand, sealing up the envelope. "And then I carefully sealed away my heart," she says.

Ordinarily I would object to a line like that, but one of my favorite albums of all time, "One Jug Of Wine, Two Vessels" - a collaboration between Bright Eyes and Neva Denova - is being reissued this week. The best and last song, "Spring Cleaning," contains the line: "My heart is in mothballs, it's been/ packed away." It's not the best line in the song by far (that would be "He's poisonous, reason-less/ demons and Jesus") but I don't hold it against Conor Oberst, who wrote it, or Jake Bellows, who sings it. People in glass houses, you know?

By the way, Stereogum is giving away two of the tracks from "One Jug," so here they are! Dig it. Alice would. (Right click to download.)

"Happy Accident"
"Poison"

via Stereogum.