Charlie and Pearl

by Robinson, Tammy

  PEARL

  If my mother asks me one more time if I need a blanket I swear I’m going to have to kill her. I’ve been here for nearly two weeks and in my most desperate moments, usually around 4.00am when I can’t sleep because my lungs hurt and my bones feel full of lead, I’ve even wished death would come sooner.

  I know, horrible.

  In the light of day the nightmare is easier to forget. A week ago was daylight savings so we turned all the clocks forward and the days are slowly getting longer. I know this because I don’t have anything else to do except watch time pass from a lazy boy in my mother’s lounge. I spend the majority of my time either there or in the bed in my bedroom. My world is condensed to within these walls. Time passes very, very slowly. Since the hospital episode my body has started its real decline. In a weird twisted way it’s welcoming, because until now I have felt like fraud, a person with an internal death sentence who looked otherwise healthy.

  I’m not an invalid yet but it’s easier to let her treat me like one. I don’t have the energy to fight it.

  I don’t have an appetite so I’ve lost any weight I did have left and my bones stick out horribly, like those really skinny models you see in high fashion magazines that court all the anorexia controversy. I don’t know how they can think they look good, I feel ugly, not like a woman at all. My lungs have started to hurt when I breathe and my breath has developed a horrible taste, like something inside me has died. It’s not pleasant at all.

  Mostly I think about whether I made the right choice, to discontinue the chemo. I think I did, but I’ve done a lot of ‘research’ on the internet and most people persevere no matter how bad they feel afterwards. But then they also have hope. I go over and over the moment my doctors told me, the first and the second time, and I think maybe I got something wrong but I know I didn’t. The cancer is all through me now. I can feel it in there. Attacking me piece by piece; killing off my healthy tissue slowly, eating me alive from the inside out. I’m glad I had those last months of ‘normality’, at the Beach house, with Charlie.

  Oh Charlie, how I’ve mistreated you. He wasn’t supposed to fall in love with me, nor I with him.

  He has text me a few times, called a couple. I push ‘reject call’ and don’t reply to the texts. What is there to say? I’m sorry you fell in love with me Charlie; not knowing that the girl you loved was lying to you, that she would soon check out on life and leave you to pick up the pieces.

  What a bitch.

  CHARLIE

  Shop opens.

  Shop closes.

  Whole days pass slowly; the nights even slower.

  My phone stayed silent.

  It took me at least two weeks to realise she was serious. I thought she meant she just wanted a little time and space; that she would be in touch when she needed me again. But I heard nothing. So I text her, but she didn’t reply. I tried calling, it went to answer phone every time. I left messages.

  When I realised that what she’d really meant was that we were over, I felt like my heart was being crushed in a vice; my lungs sucked dry of air. Every dehydrated cell in my body cried out for her.

  So I did what any self respecting broken hearted man would do, and I got drunk and listened to terrible music about heartbreak and remembered the lines of her face.

  PEARL

  Winter, as much as I hate it, is an accurate reflection of my mood. The trees are exposed and shivering, and the ground is thickly littered with a carpet of softly decaying leaves. This morning when I woke and looked out the window there was a thick fog, ghostly. I couldn’t even see the letterbox let alone the house across the street and I had to fight the eerie feeling that our house had been picked up and transplanted somewhere different while we slept.

  I drank my morning coffee at the kitchen bench, watching the fog swirl outside the window. I felt like it was inside me as well, heavy, weighing me down and I had the stupid thought that maybe if I was really heavy then my spiritual being couldn’t leave this earth, it would be forced to stay in my body and my body would be forced to stay put. So I took my coffee outside and perched on the step and took deep breaths, sucking in great lungfuls of fog, drawing it right down to the bottom of my stomach, but all it did was freeze my insides and when I took another gulp of hot coffee to warm myself up it was a shock, causing me to splutter until my eyes watered and coffee came out my nose.

  After that I just couldn’t get warm so I ran a bath, carefully measuring out the recommended measure of my mother’s expensive bath salts then deciding, ‘what the hell’ and tipping more in. The luxurious scent of honeysuckle tinged with vanilla filled the steamy air. I stayed in there for nearly an hour, submerged apart from my head. I read a magazine for awhile. Then I just stared at the wall, my chin and ears under the water, a curious hollow sound all I could hear, like when you put a seashell to your ear and you can hear the sound of the sea.

  I tried to empty my mind of all thoughts, achieve one of those Zen like states Bridget Jones was always going on about but I’d never been good at stopping my thoughts. In past attempts at meditation I would close my eyes and breathe slowly and after a time think happily that I was thinking no thoughts, then realise that actually I was thinking about not thinking and then I would try to not think about whether I was thinking or not and end up in knots because everyone else in the world seemed to be able to do it except for me.

  Today, thoughts crept in as usual. The most popular one, and the one I tried hardest to ignore, was how much time I had left. I didn’t want to speculate on this but my mind was obsessed with it. Did I have weeks? Months? Or, even though I still felt relatively ok, maybe my body was right now failing and it was only a matter of days? Would I go in my sleep, without ever knowing, or would I be conscious right to the end, aware of what was happening to me. It didn’t feel real. This pale thin body lying in the water before me, upon which I could trace the ribs easily and which so sickened me with its deathly pallor and imagined stench of death.

  CHARLIE

  “Man, that’s some heavy shit aye” was Rangi’s take on the situation when I told him what had happened.

  Cushla was sad, “That sucks,” she eloquently said. “I don’t know her all that well” she admitted, “but no one deserves that. Fucken cancer, it’s everywhere these days. I blame all the phone and wireless signals and transmissions beaming through the air and our bodies all the time.” She glanced around and up and down as if she could see the evil transmissions all around her.

  Blame wasn’t going to change anything though was it?

  Mum was devastated. She hugged me but she had no words. “I didn’t see that coming” was all she could manage to say. “Oh my poor, poor boy”, and she hugged me tighter.

  Every third customer asked after her. There was no escaping her. She was haunting me. Every time I walked through the back office door I saw her as I saw her that first time.

  Locking the shop and walking to the car I could hear her footsteps beside me, feel her arm linked through mine. I started driving out to the Beach house some nights. It was the only place I could still feel close to her. It was all locked up now, the curtains closed. I would take some beers with me, sit on the deck, close my eyes and listen to the sea and just imagine she was right there with me, maybe out of sight but just inside, cooking our dinner. I peered through a crack in the curtains, saw the bed we lay in together, our cave. I even took a night shower outside and remembered her body wet against mine. My longing was strong, the pain intense.

  I was missing a part of me, only this time I knew it was missing.

  PEARL

  I watched the sunset tonight from outside on the deck. It was beautiful; all splashes of pink, lemon and mauve across the sky. You’re out there Charlie. The same stars are shining down upon your head. The same air is filling your lungs. I can’t bear the thought that you are also on this earth but somewhere else entirely apart from me. That I can’t reach out and touch you. I can’t sleep because every time I c
lose my eyes I see your face, smiling at me, the dimple in your cheek, and the day old stubble on your chin. I inhale and I smell you, lick my lips and I taste you.

  Everywhere I look is a reminder. Every song I hear is a memory. My skin still tingles from where you last touched it.

  CHARLIE

  Life just goes on doesn’t it? It has to. We are like an army of ants, unstoppable, set upon a path. I watched people laugh, shop, and eat, and I wanted to grab them by the shoulders and shake them; say to them, “Don’t you realise what’s happening right now at this very instant? That the woman I love is slowly dying and soon she won’t be here on this earth at all? I won’t be able to touch her, or see her face. Watch her sleep, kiss her lips, feel her breath on my neck while we hug. I won’t have the comfort of eating something she has cooked for me, or reading a birthday card she has written for me. I won’t ever be able pick up the phone and call her again, or say her name and see her turn to me, smiling the smile that makes me feel like the most loved man on this earth.”

  But I didn’t say any of it of course. For all I know they might also have lost or be losing someone they love. Death is indiscriminate, that’s about the only thing I’m sure of anymore.

  I would happily take a million stroppy nights and tantrum filled mornings if she could just live.

  PEARL

  I can’t believe my parents seriously thought I would consider this whole…shared custody thing. Of course I understand that they both want to spend time with me before I, you know, die, but we’ve never been that kind of family. You can’t suddenly decide you’re going to be close after decades of fond but distant affection.

  And then there’s Kathy. There is no way IN HELL I am going to live under the same roof as her. On principal.

  So I told my dad, sorry, but it’s no go, and I stayed at mums, even though I was fairly climbing the walls there. Gran was an option, but I didn’t want to be a burden on her. It was hard enough seeing the tears in her watery milky blue eyes every time she came around.

  Being in my mother’s house felt weird. I moved out the minute I finished high school and have been flatting with friends ever since. She redecorated my bedroom and turned it into a guest bedroom; with navy walls and crisp white sheets, metallic royal blue cushions and a white rug on the floor. It’s a nice room. But it’s designed for guests and that exactly what I feel like, a guest.

  It’s a horrible way to feel, that I didn’t fit in anywhere, had no home to call my own.

  I missed the Beach house and the freedom I had there.

  I missed the shop.

  Most of all I missed Charlie.

  One night he called over and over and just when I couldn’t take it anymore, just when I was about to answer and tell him it had all been a terrible mistake, that I missed him, the phone stopped ringing. I listened to the first message and then deleted the rest unheard. It would have been too hard to hear them all. His voice in the one I listened to was raspy, tortured.

  CHARLIE

  Rain has lashed the Bay for the last week solid. It’s fitting. Apart from one night when I got really smashed with Rangi and Mike in the pub and embarrassed myself by turning into a sobbing, hysterical mess, crying into their shoulders like a girl, I haven’t cried at all. I’m not sure why, because she’s all I ever think about. I called her repeatedly that night. God knows what messages I left on her phone, I don’t even remember doing it but my phone history the next morning couldn’t be argued with. 23 calls in less than two hours. If she wasn’t glad to be rid of me before that night she definitely would be after that.

  “Oh love,” mum sighed the next morning when she found me where I’d passed out on the floor in the kitchen.

  There’s only one person I need to call me love right now.

  PEARL

  The news got around. A few friends have visited. We are worlds apart now though. They are still young and with their whole lives ahead of them. Their bodies smell and look healthy, they are ‘robust’, as Gran would say. The most they have to worry about is what to wear out on the town this coming Saturday. The chasm between us is never more obvious than when they ask if I would like to come out with them and I have to tell them it’s all I can do to walk to the bathroom, and even then I sometimes don’t make it. Dignity is in the eye of the beholder, and I can see they are disgusted by my slow decay, although they try their hardest not to show it.

  Even Adam comes. We sit awkwardly in my room, me in the bed, he perched on the end. My mother anxiously flutters outside the door, perhaps she is concerned he has come here to try and ravish me. She needn’t worry. When I see him I nearly laugh. I was so stupid. All this time I still had a tiny nagging question at the back of my mind over whether Adam had been the love of my life.

  With Charlie, the love snuck up on me. It’s a comforting love, a familiar, soothing love. But I don’t feel the earth move or see fireworks when we kiss. Instead I revel in the simple feel of his arm around my waist, his warm breath tickling my ear as we sleep. The way he picks up my clothes when I leave them lying everywhere, squeezes the toothpaste on my toothbrush so that when I walk into the bathroom it’s laid neatly on the counter all ready to use.

  With Adam, I thought our passion and our intensity was the hallmarks of a great love affair. But when I see him I feel nothing. He has never even seen me without make-up. It was an immature love, and all in my head.

  My love with Charlie is real love. It is argumentative, non sugar-coated, fart in front of each other love.

  “Hey” Adam says. “I’m so sorry, you know, to hear about the…that you’re...”

  “Thanks, but it’s actually not your fault” I say, because I can, because I still have a mischievous streak even now.

  CHARLIE

  Mum’s worried about me. She said so herself.

  “Charlie,” she said, ‘I’m worried about you. You’re not eating much and I hear you pacing the house at night. Are you not sleeping well?”

  “I can’t sleep”

  “Oh love” she sighed heavily.

  Well I’m sorry but I could care less about food or sleep or even breathing.

  Not when I’m missing something much more vital.

  I can’t accept it’s over. That she doesn’t want to see me. But still she doesn’t answer my texts and my calls go unanswered. I’m tortured by thoughts of her, where she is, how she’s going. I’m scared shitless that she might die and I won’t know. Will I know on some subconscious level?

  How can she be dying? I have no control, no say in the matter. She’s so young, so beautiful and talented and clever.

  Mum suggested some sort of counselling but there is nothing that anyone can tell me that will ever explain or justify why Pearl has to die.

  Nothing.

  PEARL

  I’ve never taken notice before of the live things that surround us. In my room there are two pot plants. Each has grown since I’ve been here; one sheds leaves on a daily basis. When they fall off they are still green, but where they fall they slowly dry out, shrivel up and wither. My mother tried to vacuum them up but I told her to leave them.

  “I’m holding an experiment” I told her.

  Will my body dry out and shrivel like those leaves?

  Will it eventually crumble to dust and dissolve into the earth?

  I haven’t decided yet whether I want to be cremated or buried, although I’m leaning towards cremation. I don’t like the idea of my body being slowly eaten alive by worms; although I think in this day and age coffins are made to keep worms out. Are they? I must remember to Google it. But what if, a few hundred years down the track when people fly to work in cars like in that Will Smith movie, someone digs me up and they perform experiments on my body to find out how we lived in the 21st Century. Yuck. Of the two options, cremation sounded a little nicer. At least I could choose where they sprinkled my ashes, I liked that idea. Being in control. Where to sprinkle my ashes though? I didn’t want them separated, and I didn’t want to hav
e to choose between mum or dad having them, (Christ, why would I want to open that Pandora’s box. Besides, bloody Kathy would probably suck them up the vacuum cleaner and replace them with dirt from the garden.)

  Mum took me to the hospital and I made a Health directive, a legal document that said I did not want to be resuscitated. If I have to die, then I’m going to die on my terms.

  I spent an entire day searching the internet for people worse off than myself. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that goes on in this world every day. Plane crashes, boating accidents, totally bizarre freak accidents. Horrible things like one half of a couple being killed on their Honeymoon. This happens more than you would think. How tragic is that?

  I pondered whether it would be better to die unexpectedly or long and drawn out like I am.

  Things I will never get to do:

  Get married

  Get divorced (in case the first marriage doesn’t work out)

  Get married again

  Carry a baby inside of me - create the miracle of new life

  Watch that child grow, experience their milestones

  Have grandchildren

  Own a house, pay a mortgage. Decorate somewhere exactly as I would like it

  Have a pet (I’ve always wanted a dog)

  Celebrate my 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th or 70th birthday parties (See I wouldn’t even be greedy enough to expect 80 years – 70 would have been enough for me)