Charlie and Pearl (21 page)

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 listen
ed
to
terrible
music about heartbreak and remember
ed
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?

M
um 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 close 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.