Charlie and Pearl (26 page)

What am I supposed to do?

I can’t watch her die. I just can’t. How can anyone expect me to? I’m a big fat chicken
-
shit boyfriend because I am scared
out of my head
and I sometimes all I want to do is run
far, far away
. Somewhere I don’t have to watch the cancer turn the woman I love into a carcass.

I’ve seen dead bodies before. Grandparents
from heart attacks and strokes
, an uncle
from a brain aneurism
, even a cousin once, killed in a car accident. They all looked pretty similar to how they looked in real life. One granddad looked so life like I kept expecting him to open his eyes and say “Gotcha!”
and i
f I stared at him hard enough I could swear I saw his chest rising and falling with
breath. The difference
here
is
that
they all died suddenly. With Pearl, she dies a little more every day, and every day she looks a little bit less like herself. Even skinnier, which I didn’t think was possible. Her eyes are huge
in her gaunt face
and her skin is becoming translucent. I can see the blood pumping through her veins. I want to stick a pin in
one
and drain all the sick blood out of her. Pump my own healthy blood back in.

I know that our holiday has given her something to live longer for. I know she’s enjoyed it. But every day she gets a little weaker.

We don’t take scenic walks like we did only a month ago.

We barely leave the motor home except to dine
out
and even that is no longer the fun experience we used to have.
She still likes to choose her food, likes to read the menu and take so long to decide that I threaten to order for her, reminding her I still haven’t paid her back for the Haggis. She laughs at me and decides on something and fidgets impatiently until it arrives but then she takes a mouthful or two and she can’t eat anymore. She wants to, but she can’t.

PEARL

“If you
could
go to
the one place in the world that you really wanted to
, where would
it be
?”

I remember Charlie asking me this question, months ago on one of our picnics when we were stretched out on a blanket on the beach. I also remember my answer clearly, “The full moon party in Koh Panghan, Thailand”

I’ve always wanted to go there. Ever since I was about twelve and Tania and I watched a programme about it. We were at that age where we were in a hurry to grow up. We weren’t children anymore, but we weren’t quite teenagers either. There was this whole world just around the corner; a world of make-up and hair dye, cool clothes and boys. We watched these gorgeous girls and guys, tourists, wearing short skirts and bikini tops, sandals and funky ethnic bracelets.
Drinking cocktails out of buckets.
They were all in Thailand for one thing – to party
.
To us they looked so healthy and
cool
.
And the full moon party was legendary, the greatest party of all.
O
n a beautiful crescent shaped beach
.
S
tarts at dusk when the yellow moon makes its appearance. They light lamps and tens of thousands of people dance the night away to a mix of DJ’s playing everything from trance to commercial dance to reggae music. Something for every
taste
.

I so badly wanted to go there. To dance all night under that moon with all those cool carefree people. See the fireworks and bathe in the warm water of the ocean. I wanted it so much I could actually taste the regret that I never would.

Charlie
organised
my own Full Moon Party. We parked up at a great campground right beside the beach. The sand was literally four steps away from the side door of the motor home. It was a prime spot
, by a big old weeping willow offering shade.
There were only three other motor homes and one tent at the camp site, and they were all down the other end near the toilets and kitchen block.

I took my towel and soap box and went to have a shower and when I came back Charlie had set up the most magical scene
;
c
olourful Chinese lanterns hanging from the awning poles and
lower
branches
of the willow, tea light candles in small jars on o
ur little plastic table
,
which
was decorated with a cherry red tablecloth, candles in glasses, bread and cheeses, salmon nibbles, all my favourite food.  There was some soft music playing, old stuff, classics.

“Oh wow
” was all I could say.

“Sorry it’s not techno dance music, it’s the only station I could get” Charlie shrugged, smiling
, clearly feeling very proud of himself
.

“
It’s amazing
”

We ate by candlelight then afterwards we danced, cheek to cheek, barefoot in the sand. A song came on that I didn’t know, but the lyrics were about moments to remember, something about shared laughter echoing throughout the years.

I looked up at Charlie, into his eyes which could see right inside to the feelings inside me. “Promise me you’ll remember this exact moment?” I asked him.

“I promise”.

CHARLIE

I brought the lanterns at an emporium while she was browsing in a clothes shop. Hid them in a drawer under the bed. They’d been there for over a week, just waiting till I found the perfect spot.

She loved it. It wasn’t
exactly like
The Full Moon party she’d dreamed of, the only station I could get played old music like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, but I actually think it worked out better because we got to dance arm in arm, body pressed against body.

“We’d have looked pretty stupid dancing to techno dance music all by ourselves” I told her
, giving her a demonstration
.

She laughed.

She asked me to promise her that I would remember that exact moment forever but she didn’t need to, every second of every moment I had ever spent with her was seared into my
memory
like our tattoos were seared into our flesh.

PEARL

Where is my happy ending?

I am a Disney generation girl. I was raised to believe the princess would always get her prince and they would live happily ever after and the evil queen/step mother/witch
would get her nasty
comeuppance.

I’m not supposed to be robbed of all my chances and possibilities like this.

In an internet cafe in
Queenstown
we spend time Googling the word hello in other languages and after half an hour we
can
both say
, correctly pronounced or not
:

Bon jour (French)

Szia (Hungarian)

Ciao (Italian)

Konichiwa (Japanese)

Salve (Latin)

Sveiki (Latvian)

Swasdi (Thai)

Hola (Spanish)

Czesc (Polish)

Alo (Romanian)

Privet (Russian)

Which I realise is actually Hello in 11 languages but I was on a roll. Of course that night in bed when I try to remember them I can only recall four to C
harlie’s eight but I don’t mind, it’s still firmly crossed off the list.

CHARLIE

I thought we would have more time than this. I mean, I’m not a doctor so I could be wrong, but I think Pearl is going downhill fast.

She’s lost so much weight. I don’t think she’d eat at
all if I didn’t remind her; she’s not i
nterested in food at all. She doesn’t know it but when she speaks
now
she speaks
very
slowly. It is taking her longer to process between her brain and her mouth. I ask her a question and watch as she tries to formulate the answer. Her eyes are huge in her face. They’re not as bright and clear as they were; it’s as if she is seeing something else when she looks at me, somewhere else.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.  Do I take her back home to her parents? To a hospital where they can treat her pain and offer her a little more dignity than I can?

I need answers and I don’t know where to go or who to turn to for them. 

PEARL

I woke up this morning and I was bleeding. Like a period, only much heavier. At first I was embarrassed because I had stained the white sheets on the bed that Charlie and I slept on. I hadn’t had a period in a couple of months so I wasn’t prepared, had no tampons or pads.

I cried. Charlie knew, of course he did. He woke up in the same bed as me; saw the same blood I did. He tried to make light of it, said my body must be feeling better if it was menstruating again.

But I knew this wasn’t normal menstrual blood. This was something else; the beginning of the end. The blood is not the fresh red blood of life. It’s
a
dark brown thick blood of death
,
and its smell is musty, like an old house. My body is failing. It’s so weak and useless and ugly and pathetic and I
hate it
.
I hate it with a passion that makes me want to beat it with my fists, find something sharp and stab it, throw it down the stairs. Why did I have to get a stupid faulty
body
? Why couldn’t I get one of the normal, healthy tanned specimens I see every day, on people who abuse them with cigarettes and crap food and don’t even seem to realise how lucky they are? If I was given my time again I would literally do what they say and treat my body like a temple. Only feed it the very best, exercise it regularly, wear SPF 30 sun block every day.
Would that have made any difference I wonder.