Charlie and Pearl (22 page)

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 worrie
d 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 shed
s 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, c
remation 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 have 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 b
irthday parties (See I wouldn’t even be greedy enough to expect 80 years – 70 would have been enough for me)

Get wrinkles/arthritis/grey hair

Qualify for the pension

On a smaller scale, I won’t:

See another Christmas, or have another summer, if the doctors are right.

It’s this thought that wakes me screaming in the night, and it’s this thought I blame for the text I send Charlie.

Christmas has always been my favourite holiday. There’s something magical about Christmas.

The thought of not having another one, not decorating another tree, listening to Snoopy’s Christmas, drinking bubbly wine at breakfast and eating so much I gain two kilos in
a week
breaks my heart. I
send him a text
–
I
need
you.

I mean it but I regret it almost instantly, it’s not fair on him to drag him back into my mess, but the stars are aligned and for once I close the phone too slowly to stop the message from being sent.
Oh curses.