Charlie and Pearl

by Robinson, Tammy

  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.

  CHARLIE

  I’ve handed in my resignation. I woke up at 2.30am in the morning when the text came through and I knew what I had to do. So first thing in the morning I typed it up, emailed it through to the new owners and 2 minutes the phone rang and it was Pete’s sister, wanting to know why.

  It’s too simple to explain, and yet too difficult for anyone else to understand.

  “Is there anything we can do to get you to stay?” she asked, “More money?”

  “Oh no, the money’s great, the jobs great”

  “Then why are you leaving?”

  “Love” is the answer I give her.

  Ever since I’d left Pearl that day I’d been searching for a reason for why she had come into my life, why the universe would be so cruel as to send me my perfect someone, and then decide we were too happy and take her away again. And I’d decided that the reason was to give me a kick up the ass. Here I was, existing but not living, getting through day by day with the bare minimum of fuss and effort.

  It was time for a sea change. Time to shake things up a little, because for the first time in a long time I knew exactly what it was I wanted.

  PEARL

  Oh sweet, sweet joy! I am renewed; I have been granted a second wind.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t take it for a second longer in my mother’s house, my knight in blue jeans came and saved me. I was napping in the bedroom, tired, as I’m often tired these days, when I heard a loud engine rev and then a series of deep beeps, like seal barks, out front. I didn’t think it was anything to do with us; none of my mum’s friends would have a vehicle that made those kinds of noises, so I ignored it at first, but whoever it was just kept on beeping. So I got up and went to the window and the first thing I saw was the motor home, canary yellow, and the second thing I saw was a beaming Charlie behind the wheel. My heart skidded across my chest to see him and the memory of his eyes in mine while we made love in our cave flashed into my mind. I felt something down there. This was an excellent, timely reminder that I wasn’t dead just yet.

  I heard my mum open the front door. “Charlie” she said, “what a wonderful surprise!”

  “Good morning Claire” he said, in his lovely familiar voice.

  “You’ve come to visit Pearl, she’ll be so happy to see you”

  “I’m not here to visit her”

  “You’re not?” she was openly flustered.

  He’s not? By this time I’d reached the front door. He smiled that smile at me.

  “No, I’m here to kidnap her”

  “What took you so long” I grinned back at him.

  And so it is that I find myself, a mere two hours later, cruising down the highway in a canary yellow motor home, the window open and my pink tipped toes sticking out, and the radio blasting out Pearl Jam’s ‘alive’ which, really, is just too much of a coincidence.

  My mother was not happy. “You can’t go” she wailed, “You’re sick!”

  “I’m aware of that mum” I said, “which is exactly why I need to go. I’m sorry to leave you, and you know I love you, but if I have to stay here another second I’m going to hang myself before the cancer even gets me”

  Which, ok, may have been a bit on the cruel side but I wanted to get out of there so much.

  ‘Do we have a plan?” I asked Charlie.

  “Nope, no plan. Just an open road and all the money I’ve ever saved” he replied. Which when he told me how much I was impressed, it was quite substantial. I guess living at home with his mum meant he hadn’t needed to spend all that much over the years.

  I grinned at him.

  He grinned back at me.

  “I love you crazy girl” he said.

  “I love you too, idiot”

  “Such sweet words”

  “Shut up and drive”

  CHARLIE

  It was a gamble on my part, but one that paid off. The motor home I bought cheap from a friend of a friend of Rangi’s who bought it off Trademe with dreams of family summer vacations but whose children declared it “lame” and “wouldn’t be caught dead in it”. It had been sitting in his backyard slowly rusting and when Rangi explained why I wanted it the guy gave me a bargain price.

  It was far from luxurious but it was comfortable. I knew Pearl would think it was cute. I’d been mulling over her bucket list in my mind when it hit me. No one else was going to help her do those things, it was up to me. So I jacked in the job, borrowed the motor home and set about making it homely and welcoming, with a little help from some friends. It wasn’t quite the luxurious one she had on her list but I knew she’d understand.

  Rangi helped me paint the outside a bright cheery yellow, even though he thought the colour was hideous and that I would probably cause car crashes up and down the country.

  “There is a method to my madness, my friend” I told him. And there was.

  I wanted something that reminded Pearl there was a reason to smile every day, and yellow made me think of a giant Happy face, so I chose the brightest yellow I could find.

  Mum and I scrubbed the inside from top to bottom, and Cushla and some of her aunties sewed up smart white curtains to replace the faded and cobwebbed netting that was already there. They also made a cover for the mattress in the back and some pretty yellow and white striped cushions. I installed kitset cupboards above the small kitchen area and we filled them with food; all of Pearls favourites that I could think of and some of my own. I stocked the kitchen with plates, cups, and cutlery. There was a little stove and some elements that ran off a generator, and a shower, toilet, sink, taps and a little fold out table. It was a mini little home on wheels.

  PEARL

  I have 30 sunsets imprinted on my mind whose colours will linger there until I die. If you asked me about a particular day in the last month I could close my eyes and recall where I was and the sunset I saw. Each one was unique, like fingerprints. The shades of their colours, the patterns and streaks they make. Vibrant sunsets; intense reds, purples and oranges. And soft ones, lemons, mauves and rose pink.

  We have been on the road for a month now. Being with Charlie in our own little home on wheels has helped my health. Maybe it’s the fresh air, or the ever changing view. But I feel a little better, stronger. Maybe it’s just that at home with mum I was merely watching the clock and waiting to die. Waiting for the visit from Death, in his heavy black cloak and carrying his sharpened scythe. Let him try and find me now.

  Each morning I wake up to Charlie’s smiling face and his arms around me. I don’t like to talk to him until I’ve at least had a coffee, I’m paranoid about my morning breath with its decaying odour but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  We sometimes park in campgrounds, sometimes just on the side of the road. The best places are the DOC campgrounds; they still have a wild and natural air but are also well lit and maintained. We decided on that second day not to use maps, to instead just go wherever we felt like each day.

  It’s funny, both times when I made my dream book, I glued picture after picture of beautiful locations from around the world. Everywhere from Russia to Iceland, Colombia to Bali. But I never
stuck any photos of my own country in there. And apart from a few towns and cities I had seen bugger all of it really.

  Till now.

  We went back to the Beach house for a few days first, just to relax and prepare and make up for lost time. I was a little bit worried, not sure if my pathetically weak body could still enjoy being with him, but it was fine. It was more than fine. In fact it was exactly what my body needed.

  “Hmm, if only they could bottle this feeling and pump it into my veins” I purred after we made love, the proverbial cat with the cream. “I’m sure it would cure me in no time”.

  That was a sore point with Charlie, my illness. He refused to discuss me dying and would change the subject whenever it came up. I think he even hoped he could cure me, because every morning he squeezed fresh fruit juice for me in one of those high tech juicing machines that could get juice out of a rock, (mixtures made up from whatever we could buy at the numerous stalls on the side of the road or pick wild - oranges, kiwifruit, apples, carrots, pomegranates, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, blueberries, lemons, ginger) then we ate eggs and more fruit, (bananas and nectarines) and, you guessed it, even MORE fruit at lunch and after dinner. He also refused to have anything in the motor home that was processed or didn’t resemble its original form. I knew what he’d done; I’d done the same thing myself months ago. He’d googled ‘cancer’ and ‘cures’ and read about people changing their diets to fresh vegetables and fruits and cutting out all the bad stuff and, according to the internet, miraculously curing themselves. Hey, I wanted to believe it to. But even though eating all that good food made me feel stronger, I could still feel the slow decline deep inside.

  We started on the east and made our way down the coast, along with about a million foreign backpackers, who become, over the days, like a little family. The typical New Zealand road trip is as Kiwi as kiwifruit, buzzy bees, tiki’s, All Blacks, pavlova (despite any claims to the otherwise by the aussies), L&P, Footrot flats and No 8 wire. Nothing makes you feel prouder of your own country and countryman than seeing them through someone else’s eyes. Every time we pulled up at a campground or reserve we’d see one or two people or couples that we’d stayed with somewhere else previously. It got so we’d pull up and within half an hour we’d all be around a table outside someone’s tent or motor home sharing food and alcohol and stories, and sometimes we’d light a bonfire on the beach and do a bit of night fishing. Those nights, rugged up in a blanket with my bare feet burrowed in the sand, a plastic fluorescent pink glass of wine in my hand, listening to the talk around me, laughter universal in any language, I would look at the stars blanketing the skies above me and feel invincible. And I would wish hard that however long I had left I could live it feeling just like this.

  CHARLIE

  There are days when I think she’s doing really well. All the fruit that I keep squeezing into her has put a pink tinge back into her cheeks, a sparkle in her eyes. I banned all crap food from the motor home, although she threw a tantrum about her beloved red wine and at the very next internet cafe made me pull over so she could show me numerous websites (largely Mediterranean) extolling the many benefits of drinking wine daily. So I let her keep it. Well I had to really after she found the secret stash of twisties and raspberry liquorice and Cadbury caramel chocolate I had hidden in a drawer under the bed. Oops.

  “Hypocrite!” she laughed.

  And then there are the days when I know she’s in pain and I feel incredible rage towards the world and it’s all I can do to smile and hug her and carry on as if everything is as it should be. She’s the most witty, vibrant person I have ever met; even now as we travel I meet no one as colourful as she is. No one who lights up the surrounding air like she does, who makes people smile just by smiling at them.

  Who the hell gets to make the decisions on who lives and who dies...that’s what I want to know. I have no control and I have never felt so helpless.

  Her laugh is still the same. I try everything I can every day to hear it because it reminds me that no matter what is happening to her inside her body she’s still the same girl I fell in love with, and also because of the saying, ‘Laughter is the best medicine’. It’s worth a try.

  If you’ve ever seen the movie ‘Finding Nemo’ I’m sure you’ll remember the scene with the turtles in the current, I can’t remember what it was called exactly, but they were like cool surfer dudes man, and Nemo’s dad and Dory hitched a ride with them. Well the backpacker highway in New Zealand is a bit like that. Familiar people everywhere you pull up, all following the same current. It’s nice. Makes me proud to be a kiwi to see how much they love our country. We enjoyed spending time with them.

  Sometimes though there were nights when we just wanted to be alone. Those nights we parked somewhere remote, enjoyed being just the two of us, cooking dinner together, watching the sunset and then when it got dark crawling into bed together. I would hold her close and try hard to memorise the feel of our bodies together. We still made love almost daily, in fact she initiated it more than I did. I was scared of hurting her but it was like she had something to prove. Sometimes when we made love she did it with such fury, a roughness that she never had before. I didn’t know the reasoning behind it, but hey, I certainly wasn’t complaining.

  PEARL

  The list. To be honest I was all for forgetting it. Who needed a reminder of the things I would never accomplish when it already hovered over my like a dark cloud. I didn’t have the energy. But Charlie wouldn’t let me forget about it. He’d had it typed up and framed then hung it right above our bed so it was the last thing I saw when I went to sleep and the first thing I saw when I woke up.

  Along with the rafting we’d crossed off:

  - Travel around New Zealand in a massive luxury motor home

  The rest we separated into two groups, ones we could accomplish and ones we would have to admit defeat on. Then we set about doing some of the others.

  In Taupo I ate raw fish sushi by the lake while ducks hovered nearby hoping for scraps. It was squishy and slimy and I nearly threw it back up. The seaweed smelt rank and the fish smelled fishy. “That’s disgusting” I said, “I don’t know how Japanese people eat this every day. No wonder they’re so bloody skinny”. We played mini putt golf (I won; I think Charlie may have thrown the game though, no one can be that bad) and watched people throw themselves off a cliff attached by the ankles to a bungy cord. Charlie made noises about doing it but when it came down to it he chickened out.

  In Gisborne, in a little alcove at the back of a music shop that played thumping reggae beats, I got my first tattoo and fuck, did it hurt. We spent ages looking over the sample books beforehand. I couldn’t believe the things some people put on their bodies. Hideous things, like snakes eating clowns, and skulls with maggots crawling out the eyes. Even the Grim Reaper himself. Why tempt fate?

  Charlie wouldn’t tell me what he decided upon. “It’s a surprise” he told me.

  I went through the books twice and nothing really appealed, but in the end I got a little tattoo of a blue anchor on my left bicep. I felt like pop-eye.

  All up, for both of us, it took over 2 hours and cost, wait for it, nearly $500 hundred dollars. Yikes. I nearly pulled out when I heard the price because I figured even though it was on the list it was really a waste of time seeing how in a few months the tattoos would be dust along with the rest of me, but Charlie insisted, handing over his card and telling me firmly to “shut up and get in the chair”.

  While I was getting mine done another tattoo artist, who had blue hair and piercings through his chin, nose, forehead and eyebrows, tattooed Charlie on the other side of the shop where I couldn’t see what he was getting. When he triumphantly showed me the finished product I burst into tears, because the great lovable idiot had got a picture of an open oyster with a pearl nestled snugly inside.

  “I’m your oyster” he said, grinning. “And you’re my pearl”.

  CHARLIE

  I love my Tatto
o. It hurt like hell but I held it together as there was, after all, a man covered in tattoos with a needle nearby. I didn’t want him to think I was a total wimp. He probably did anyway because I did flinch and whimper a few times as he did it. Who knew they hurt so much? I mean, obviously I knew it was done with a needle, but I didn’t know the needle was repeatedly dragged across your skin like some kind of medieval torture treatment. I have a healthy new respect for the guys back home with whole arm sleeve tattoos. After today you’d probably need to knock me out to do anything like that.

  They didn’t have anything like the tattoo I wanted in their books, so I asked if I could use their internet and a few Google image searches later, voila. A simple case of printing it, tracing it and the magic work they do with ink and some liquid and I found myself the proud wearer of a tattoo of an open oyster shell, with a giant Pearl sheltered safely inside. Pearl cried when she saw it. Happy tears though, which made all the pain worthwhile.

  PEARL

  My lips are bruised. Well, if they’re not, they should be. They haven’t had as much action in my whole life as they have tonight.

  From Wellington we caught the interislander ferry across the Cook Strait to the South island. The journey sucked actually. I’d been looking forward to it as I’d never been on a boat that size before, but it turns out I get sea sick, thanks to waves I considered GIANT but which Charlie said were merely a ‘gentle swell’. I gave him a ‘gentle’ punch on the arm in answer. Ha.

  When we drove off at the other end I was so relieved to be back on solid, unmoving, ground that I insisted we stop somewhere in Picton and celebrate, rather than drive to Nelson as we’d originally planned. We drove round in circles for awhile, admiring the picturesque town, but even though it was full of cute cafes and nice restaurants nowhere jumped out at us so we drove for 40 minutes along the coast to Havelock where we found the perfect character pub called The Clansman. I love Irish and Scottish pubs. They have so much character and The Clansman didn’t let us down. We ate fresh mussels for entre, then I had a venison main and, because I dared him to, Charlie ordered a haggis.