Pearl

Hellie

We ended up out of the crawl space and back onto the sidewalk. I kept straining my head towards the doors leading back to the sanctuary, trying to hint I wanted to take a sneak peak inside, but Barbara Ann was all business by then. She had shown her cards too early and now a stranger knew her heart.

I kind of envied her the feeling.

She thanked me and said I should come by again, but the offer felt deflated. I waved my hand at her and at Zenith/Magellan who was ambling around the frame of the opened double doors. I walked away, hating the feeling of somebody watching me walking (where do I put my hands?), but soon that feeling was replaced with one of loneliness. It stalked me all the way back to my apartment where I can now hear The Golden Girls leaking through the cracks in our door. Pearl.

"Hey there, stranger," she says. She's tucked up neatly in the couch in the old quilt her mother had made when she was a girl, and the thing smells like it too. But it's become one of those deeply offensive smells you soon just can't live without.

"Hey yourself," I say. I often feel like Pearl receives all the things I'd love to say to my brother, if, you know, if he could handle them.

"How's Mr. Brent? Becoming a regular lady's man?"

"In fact, he is. He has a girlfriend."

"You're kidding." Pearl pops up out of the comforter and wide-eyes me. She's met Brent a few times without him knowing it, always careful to keep her distance and pretending to be prodding fresh fruit at the bodega or overly interested in the planted lilies over at Bear Park. I've been working up the courage for him to meet her outright, face-to-face. But I'm nervous about it. What if he goes all Brent on me and ends up hating someone I love?

Like with our mother, but in reverse.

"Nope. A regular girl human and everything. Except, of course, I haven't met her. I'm thinking of sneaking into one of his meetings just to confirm."

"That's probably the smart move," Pearl says. She gives me an amused smile, and I snuggle in next to her.

“How’s our novel?” Pearl asks. It used to bring me a flutter of pleasure to share this book with her. In fact, it’s the whole reason I live with Pearl. She had seen me at the diner a few years back when I started this whole bright idea of becoming a famous author. She asked me about the book I was writing (or at least the blinking cursor that indicated I was doing as much), and I told her all about my life plan of writing The Great American Novel. The next thing I know, she’s telling me all about her life, how her husband, Floyd, passed away from pancreatic cancer, and how she had all this life insurance money and didn’t know what to do with it.

She said she wanted to invest in me.

It felt dream-like, and horribly wrong. How could I take an old lady’s money not knowing if this book would be any good? But things were strained with my mother, hardly better with my brother, and I had no friends and honestly, no future.

Pearl seemed like an angel in disguise. And now? I feel like I’m exploiting that angel.

"You hear from The Insurance Agent?" I change topics, and she knows it, but Pearl’s a lady and doesn’t press.

"He's busy right now. The whole brood's there so I'm sure he has his hands full." She means her worthless son has taken his whole family to the Bahamas, his wife's parents included. I'm sure he's justified this, not wanting his mother to have an "attack," whilst in the Caribbean, but I know deep down it's because he wouldn't want it to ruin his vacation.

"Don't be so hard on him, Hellie. He does his best," she says, although we both know that's not true, considering I'm watching my closest friend wade in crumpled-up tissues filled with her own mucus. But I know that's my cue to zip it. Pearl is a lot better at giving people the benefit of the doubt than I am.

Hence, me still getting to live with her.

"How have you been today? How are the ol' wind bags?" I say, nodding at the TV.

"Still managing. I've only had one pretty bad fit. Poor Senator Murphy. It troubled him something fierce." Pearl nods at her goldfish in his sea-themed under water lair. I doubt Senator Murphy knows what planet he's on let alone the state of Pearl's health, but I give it to her. She loves that thing.

“And Blanche has fallen in love again.”

"That Blanche, she knows a good time when she sees one, apparently. Well, I'm in for the rest of the day, so no worries. If you need anything I'm here."

I wait for her to mildly nod in agreement, gently pinch my arm as she sometimes does to show her gratitude. But I can tell there's something solemn in her demeanor.

"What?" I ask.

She turns to me, her gold-framed glasses making her milky blue eyes look larger than life.

"Hellie, I appreciate how much you care for me. I do. I consider you a good friend. But don't you want to get out there? See the world? Meet someone?"

I answer blank-faced, trying not to show my irritation. But then she hits the final nail in the coffin.

"Don't you want to live?"

Oh, Pearl. Not you, too.