Charlie and Pearl (20 page)

-
             
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 fuck
ing
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? H
er 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 p
eacemaker, 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 r
ub 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 right?”

“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 b
ack to the beach, open the shop”

“You can’t just keep sending me away whenever you feel like it”

“
Actually y
eah, 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
!
B
ut 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? T
here’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.

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 a
n 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 d
ays pass
slowly
;
t
he nights even slower.