“Spread?”
“It’s a process we call metastasis. The cancer gets into your blood stream and travels to other organs”
“Right...so...what do we do about it?”
I still had no idea about the seriousness of the situation. I thought, “Bummer, I’ll have to have another operation”. After the miscarriage I never wanted to see the inside of a hospital EVER again.
They exchanged looks. And from that look one of them obviously drew the short straw because he got to be the lucky one to tell me that the cancer was in my lungs and my liver and two of my lymph nodes.
“But not my legs?”
“Sorry?”
“Well it seems like it’s everywhere else starting with the letter L”
Ok, a poor attempt at a joke.
There was nothing they could do. They could treat it with chemo, it might prolong my life by a few months, so I tried it but it was worse even than I imagined it could ever be, I was hot like I was burning from the inside out, blisters, mouth sores. I thought I was going to die. Well, you know what I mean.
After nearly 3 months and 6 treatments I felt worse, not better, which I knew would be the case but then they did some more scans and tests and told me that the cancer was so much more aggressive than they first thought and the treatments had had no effect at all, in fact it had spread to the rest of my lymph nodes.
“We’re so sorry” they said. “If only it been caught earlier.”
That’s when I realised that there was no escaping this; it was actually going to kill me. So I did some research (who needs to see a doctor when you’ve got google right?) and even though I didn’t tell Gran I did go and get a second opinion, I drove for 3 hours to Auckland to the best cancer specialist in the country and the result from both was the same.
“I’m sorry” he said, “the disease it too aggressive, too widespread.”
If only it had been caught earlier, the internet informed me, I might have stood a chance of survival.
Yeah, if only.
So I sat at home for a few weeks just staring at the wall and thinking about all the things I would never see, never do, never taste, never experience. All the men I would never kiss, the songs I would never hear. The technological advances designed to improve our quality of life; I would never be old enough to be happily confused about them, a pensioner’s right. I mulled over all these things and then I decided that I might as well improve the view while doing so, so I went to the Beach house.
And then I met Charlie. And somehow, without any intention, I let him into my life at the same time as my body was checking out.
Sorry about that Charlie.
I told him everything.
And when I finished I closed my eyes and lay my head back on the pillow and waited for the sound of him leaving.
He didn’t.
When I opened my eyes he was still there, looking at me with love, and a horrible gut wrenching sadness. Sadness that irrationally made me want to slap him. If I didn’t allow myself to be sad about it then how dare he assume he had the right?
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” he asked.
“I couldn’t” I gulped, tears bubbling up, washing the regret from my eyes. “I just wanted to feel normal again, like someone with a future, someone with a real past. I haven’t done anything! I haven’t made any impact on this world at all!”
And he held me while I cried and he stroked my hair and he wiped my tears away with his fingers.
CHARLIE
She was wrong because she had made an impact on me.
I stayed strong in front of her because I knew that’s what she needed, but inside I was a mess, a crumbling man.
She had been through so much. How had she even smiled at all the time I had known her, laughed, joked, with the knowledge she had of what was coming?
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone braver in my life.
I held her while she cried. She was Pearl. My Pearl. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that deep inside her body alien evil things were happening. Things that no matter how much I loved her I couldn’t fix.
It was too much to think about. When she fell asleep again I went for a walk, even though I didn’t want her to wake up without me there. I made the nurse promise to phone me the second she stirred.
“Tell her I’ll be right back” I said.
“Ok”
“Seriously, like, I’ll be a minute away. I can be right back in a flash”
“Ok”
I hesitated, she looked at me.
“What?” she said asked.
“Promise you’ll tell her?”
“Oh god will you just go already, I promise!”
I walked around the grounds of the hospital, past the smokers at the front door, sucking on their ciggies right beside the big red and white signs saying ‘NO SMOKING ON HOSPITAL GROUNDS’. There was a garden, with box hedges and huge oak trees and a pergola in the middle. No one was around so I went and sat in there, kicked a few dead leaves, drew patterns in the dirt on the floor, scuffing my shoe.
I had no words. No comprehension. Numb.
It wasn’t real.
It certainly didn’t feel real.
If it didn’t feel real...then was it?
Crazy man sitting in a pergola kicking dirt and arguing with reality in his mind.
That was me.
PEARL
Charlie called my parents. Against my express wishes I might add.
When I was asleep he went through my phone for their numbers and he called my mum, and of course she called dad and now they are both here, standing around my hospital bed and the air in this room is thick with years of pent up anger and tension because, apart from the time when I was 14 and I broke my arm falling off the back of my friends farm bike (long story), this is the first time we have all been together in the same room. Which might have been bearable except my dad has, with typical male stupidity, brought the very woman he left my mother for with him, and she is standing over by the window flicking her blond hair (bleached) with her long nails (fake) and checking her Cartier watch (also fake) and sighing a lot. Loudly. I want to tell her to fuck off if she has somewhere better to be. She and I have never gotten along, never even tried. That would have required effort on her part and forgiveness on mine.
My poor mother is radiating with emotion; anger, betrayal. Well, I’m dying, and I guess it should come with some privileges.
“Excuse me” I smile at the blond home wrecker. It is the smile of a wolf.
“What?” she eyeballs me, like she expects me to ask her for a kidney.
“I would like to be alone with my family”
“So?”
“So you’re not family”
She bristles, “Are you going to let her talk to me like that Andrew?” she asks him.
My father is torn. She is his wife; she has the ability to make his life hell. However I am his baby, and I am dying. I win.
“Kathy” he says, and shrugs helplessly. She flounces out, my mother smiles.
With her gone they both relax a little, even make small talk. They have plotted something I know it but I am waiting for them to tell me, I’m not going to ask.
Finally it comes.
“Pearl” my mum says, and looks at my father.
He clears his throat. “We want you to come home” he says. “Back to the city. We thought you might like to stay with both of us, week on week off, something like that”
“What am I, 5?” I say.
“Don’t be like that Pearl” mum says, her voice breaking.
“We just want to spend some time with you” dad says.
“Why?” It’s mean I know. But if I wasn’t dying they wouldn’t be proposing this. It’s amazing what death changes. “You both work” I say, “and you both know me already, so I rather give the family time a miss if you don’t mind.”
“Oh Pearl, you can’t stay at the Beach house until...”
“Until
what mum? Until I die?”
She starts crying, gulping sobs, her whole body shaking. My father watches her awkwardly for a few moments then walks over to her, puts a hand on her shoulder. It rests there lightly, the fingers twitching nervously like he’s not sure if touching her is the right thing to do.
I’m bored with grief. They can grieve when I’m gone. “Where’s Charlie?” I ask.
“He’s gone for a sandwich in the cafeteria”
“I want him back”
“He’ll be back soon”
“No, I want him back NOW” I lean forward, throw back the sheets and make out as if I’ll get up and get him myself.
They look at me; I’m not the girl they remember. I stare back defiantly.
“I’ll go and get him” my dad finally says, and leaves.
“Good” I settle back on my pillows. “Good”.
CHARLIE
Pearls dad is not at all what I expected. When she told me about her family history, sometime around our third ‘date’, I imagined him to be a suave man, with sideburns and shiny pointed shoes. In reality he has thinning hair and wears woollen sweaters, at least the two days I’ve known him he has. He has kind eyes and clearly loves Pearl, although he doesn’t seem to know quite how to show it. His wife is cold, clearly not happy to be here. She doesn’t seem to know Pearl nor like her very much. I have to resist the urge to tell her to get lost.
Pearl is not happy I called them, but really, what choice did I have? Although since her fainting episode she seems to have come right again, back to the Pearl I know. She is itching to get out of the bed so today when her mum was back at the hotel and her dad and his witch (sorry, wife) were in town for lunch I smuggled her out into the garden, to the pergola. There’s nothing keeping her here in the hospital really.
If you think about it.
What can they do that they haven’t already tried?
“I never liked winter much” she said, her leg thrown causally over mine, her hand on my inner thigh, her fingers idly tracing circles.
“Hmm, me either” I say, although it’s not true. I’m not sure why I agree with her. I quite like winter; I like the thought of travelling to the snow and learning snowboarding. I’ve thought about it every year since I was ten but I haven’t done it yet. It’s on my To Do list.
“Do you have a bucket list?” I ask Pearl.
She is surprised by the question. “Yes” she says after a pause, “I do. Rafting was one of the things on it” she adds.
Ah, it makes more sense now, her random act of insane adventurism.
“What else is on there?”
“Just stuff”
She doesn’t want to tell me, she’s gone shy. I know I shouldn’t push but I’m curious.
“Like what?”
“Stop asking me Charlie”
“Why don’t you want to tell me?”
“I don’t know, it’s private I guess”
“OK”. I let it go. If there’s one thing for sure I’ve learned about Pearl, it’s the more you push her, the harder she resists. Like a stubborn mule digging its heels in the dirt.
PEARL
My Bucket List
- Go white water rafting (Done)
- Walk into a flash shop and buy an outrageously ridiculously expensive dress (or boots)
- Get a tattoo
- Kiss fifty people before I die
- Ride an elephant
- Be a contestant on Survivor
- Donate blood
- Learn to belly dance
- Learn how to say hello in ten languages
- Backpack around Europe
- Stay up all night dancing at the Full Moon party in Koh Panghan, Thailand
- Eat raw fish sushi
- Travel somewhere in a massive luxury motor home
- Fly a kite
- Have “High Tea” at the Plaza Hotel in New York
- Meet the Dalai Lama
- Make a difference in at least one person’s life
- Learn to meditate
- Go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve
Some of these things I have accepted I will never do. Some, like donating blood, I’m not allowed to do. I made my bucket list one night a month or so before I came to the Beach house. I’d had a few wines and started cruising websites, looking for answers, or guidance. This was the first and only time I was going to die after all and I had no idea what was expected of me. “Creating a bucket list”, according to one particular website, “is one of the best ways to make sure that you use the time you have left and the resources you have in hand in order to accomplish and experience what you really want out of life”.
Ok so I didn’t stick to the rules necessarily, as some of the things on my list were not really accomplishable with the time I had left and definitely not with the resources I had in hand. But it was my list and I wanted it to be a good representation of the kind of person I was, or at least wished I was.
Frustratingly, the second Charlie started acting like he could care less about my list anymore the second I wanted to show it to him, so when we got back up to my room I found it, tucked neatly in my wallet beside a prezy card from mum last Christmas that I’d forgotten I had.
“What’s this?” he said when I held it out to him.
“My list”
“I thought you didn’t want me to read it”
“Shut up Charlie”
He grinned. He knows exactly how to wind me up. Which I think is a good thing because it shows he knows me quite well.
Thinking this I smile as I watch him reading my list, his lips mouthing the words silently, something he often does when he reads but which I don’t think he knows he does.
Something moves inside of me.
Shit.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
I think I’m in love with Charlie.
CHARLIE
Pearl went a bit weird. It started right after she gave me her list to read. One second we were smiling and joking around and the next it was like she had hit the reverse button and backed up about a million miles from me, distant, cold. The only thing I could think that I might have done was pressure her to let me read the list.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
But she just said “nothing” and shook her head and turned away from me slightly. I put my hand out to touch her face, make her look at me, but she jerked her face back and I was left hanging.
“Obviously something’s wrong, was it because I hassled you about the list?”
“No”
“Are you in pain?”
“No”, she shook her head.
“Well then what happened?”
“Nothing happened, I’m fine”
I looked at her, worried.
“Jesus Charlie, stop looking at me like that!”
“Like what?”
“Like a puppy I kicked, you always act like a fucking victim if you don’t get your own way”
I was confused. Did someone flip a coin or click their fingers as some kind of party trick? Her mood had changed, just like that, fast and without warning, and I was buggered if I knew what had caused it.
“I’m sorry” I said. Ever the peacemaker, extending the olive branch. Waving the white flag.
She sighed heavily, closed her eyes and rubbed them, hard.
“You shouldn’t do that” I said, knowing as soon as I said the words that I was pouring fuel on a fire but helpless to take them back.
She glared at me. “Do what?”
“Nothing”
“Charlie”
“It’s just...I was just going to say that you shouldn’t rub your eyes like that; it will cause irreversible wrinkling damage to the delicate surrounding skin area”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at me like I’d grown an extra head and if she’d had an axe handy she’d have used it to chop the head off.
“I saw it on Dr Oz once” I said, defensively.
“You’re kidding rig
ht?”
“Um, no”
“You’re seriously going to sit there and tell me off for giving myself wrinkles?”
“I wasn’t telling you off, it was just a stupid thought that came into my head and as usual I didn’t think before speaking, sorry”
“I’m dying Charlie! Do you understand what that means? It means I don’t GIVE A FUCK about wrinkles, ok? It means I would be so lucky to get old enough to have wrinkles! You’re such an idiot sometimes!”
“Stop calling me an idiot!”
“Well stop being one then!”
The curtain suddenly opened and a nurse stuck her head through.
“Keep it down you two! People are trying to get better in here”.
“Well good for them!” Pearl shouted at her, “Unfortunately I don’t have that luxury!”
The nurse hadn’t been expecting a return attack so just raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips and retreated, letting the curtain fall shut behind her.
Pearl closed her eyes, breathed heavily. “Charlie, I need a break”
“Sure, I’ll go for a walk”
“No! I mean, a little bit longer than that. Go back to the beach, open the shop”
“You can’t just keep sending me away whenever you feel like it”
“Actually yeah, I kinda think I can”
“Ok, if it’s what you really want I’ll go”
“It’s what I want”
“Pearl…”
“You knew Charlie, you knew the rules right from the start. I told you I wasn’t after anything serious, I told you!”
“I know you did! But feelings don’t play by ‘rules’, they’re not something you can just control however you feel like it”
“But don’t you get it? There’s no point! Get it through your head…in a few months, maybe a year, I’ll be gone. It’s better if we just say goodbye now”.
“That’s not what I want…”
“Go! Please Charlie”
“Pearl…”
“Please” her voice was sad. The saddest thing I had ever heard.
So because I loved her I did what she wanted and I left. Driving home I could hardly see the road through the tears that kept filling my eyes.
Charlie and Pearl Page 11