Belle Pearl (24 page)

I looked away because I didn’t want him to see that tear fall. The tear that told him I was almost a broken man. I turned from him, wiped my face and focused on a huge white bunch of lilies that Sophie had sent. The sweet cloying aroma was wafting about the room and for a second, it made me feel appeased. Pearl loved white lilies. Our engagement cake when I took her to the Empire State was garnished with fresh white lilies. She loved the smell of them, the elegant shapes they made.

I needed to be strong. For Pearl. For my children.

For myself.

20

I
t was early in the morning when Daisy slipped into the hospital room as noiselessly as a cat burglar. I sat up from my recliner with a jolt. At first I didn’t recognize her—she looked taller than before—but on a double take I noticed that she must have lost weight, and her extra height was just an illusion. Her fiery red hair had lost some of its wildness, too.

“I came as soon as I could,” she whispered. Her eyes were swollen and red, her eyelids enflamed. But her expression now was brave and her attitude chirpy as if everything were quite normal.
Nice try, Daisy.
Still, I appreciated the effort.

“Billy’s getting us some coffees from the vending machine.”

I looked at her blankly. “Billy, Pearl’s dad?”

“Yeah, he’ll be here in five minutes.”

“You came together?”

Daisy moved quietly over to Pearl’s side and took her hand. “Yes, we flew from Hawaii.” A tear slid down her English-rose cheek.

“Your living in Hawaii now?”

“Moved there a couple of months ago.”

“Where’s Amy?”

“With her dad in New York for a few days. You know, we’re getting a divorce but it’s still great for her to see him when she can.” She managed a limp smile.

“You’re living in Kauai?” I repeated, glad to have some distraction from my motor-mind. You came all this way?”

“Of course I did, Pearl’s my best friend.”

For the next five minutes, I told Daisy all I knew about Pearl’s condition, rattling off, in a monotone, every piece of information I gleaned from the neurosurgeon. I was on automatic pilot, my sensations numbed, my body felt as if it were stuffed with cotton wool. The neurologist, who was working alongside the surgeon, had also given me an update, earlier this morning. Pearl was stable but there was no improvement. He didn’t look hopeful, at all, but he wouldn’t give anything away.

Daisy said brightly, “I’ve prepared an iPod for Pearl. All her favorite songs. I thought she could have a listen in between siesta time.” We both tried to laugh at her joke but then she burst out crying and I tried not to let the lump in my throat morph into a full-blown sob. Daisy wept as we clung to each other, our bodies shaking, gripping each other for dear life, because that’s what it was…what it
is
…
Dear Life.
Even when staring death in the face in the French Foreign Legion, I had never appreciated the fragility of life as I did in that moment.

A freak accident, tripping on the stairs—that’s all it took for Pearl to be animated and extraordinary one minute, and the next, three hours later, a ghost of herself.

That is what life can do. Life can take away life from anyone, at any second. We cannot take it for granted. We cannot control it. We cannot expect it to dance to our tune.

I was looking at Pearl’s ghost now and it terrified me, mainly because I felt responsible.

“I feel so guilty, Daisy. If only I hadn’t had the stupid, fucking idea for us to go to the Caribbean. What a fool! We should have stayed in New York. Or Paris. Or somewhere that had state-of-the-art hospitals five minutes away, that didn’t involve a fucking helicopter ride.”

“We all know that’s not true, Alexandre. Accidents can happen anywhere.
Catastrophes
can happen anywhere, even right on your doorstep. 9/11 is a perfect example of that. You cannot prepare yourself against Fate’s cruel blows. If you live that way, you are only half a person.”

“But I should have been more careful. I should—”

“It’s not your fault, Alexandre. It was a freak accident. The damage occurred in the few hours between her fall and when she fell into a coma. Even if Pearl had been on the doorstep of any hospital in New York City, knowing her, she would have laughed it off and said she didn’t need a doctor, that she felt fine. It was a one in a million thing. She was just fucking unlucky.”

Her words were kind but didn’t alleviate the hatred I felt for myself. All my fury I’d had the night before for the medical team, was now directed at myself. What kind of shit husband takes his family to a fucking island, when his wife is five months pregnant and his children are toddlers?

“I mean it wasn’t as if you were in some third-world country,” Daisy went on, as if she could read my thoughts. She pulled away from me and looked at me steadily in the eye. “The Bahamas are safe, Americanized. What happened to Pearl could have happened anywhere. Besides, it was her idea to go off to the Caribbean and take a long break.”

“Yes, but she did it for me.”

“Bollocks, Alexandre, she did it because she wanted to. Pearl is headstrong, she does what she wants.” Daisy looked down at her feet. “Sorry, ‘headstrong’ wasn’t the best choice of words.”

I tried to smile. “Actually, it is the perfect word to describe Pearl and it gives me hope. She’ll get through this, Daisy. I promise.” I kissed Daisy’s brow lightly and felt comfort with her being there; knowing she was going through the same sort of pain as I was. She could identify. She understood.

“I brought coffee and doughnuts.” I looked up and saw Billy with a tray. He set it down on a table and came over to shake my hand. Then he laid an arm around Daisy’s shoulder. Were they dating? Just friends? From the way she shifted her body a touch away from him, it looked as if he had one thing in mind and she another. He pointed to the coffees. “These two have cream. The other’s black.”

I took one of the paper cups. “I’ll take the black one if that’s okay.”

“Pearl drinks black,” Daisy said. “That song
, Black Coffee—
the All Saint’s version, not the Julie London version, is on the mixed tape. On her iPod, I mean. I’ve tried to have mostly upbeat songs, you know. Perk her up a little.
Wake Up Little Suzy
is on there, too. Apparently, music can nudge people out of comas, especially if it’s a song they recognize and that means something to them.”

Perk her up?
I looked at Pearl.
Sleeping Beauty.
Maybe I was enough of a French frog to get her to wake up if I kissed her. Or did she have to kiss me back?

Daisy wrung her fingers through her thick red hair. “I made a promise to her once and I’ll need to speak to the staff about it.”

“A promise?” I felt nervous. What kind of promise?
To get them to pull the fucking plug?
To donate her organs? My eyes were darts, but Daisy just shook her head and smiled.

“Don’t look so horrified, Alexandre.”

Funny, this woman can read my thoughts.

“Once, Pearl and I were joking around, and she made me swear that if she ever ended up in a coma or was a vegetable, unable to move, that I’d make sure her beauty regime was taken care of. You know, hair-care, leg waxing and stuff. It was a
joke
—I never thought it would actually bloody
happen
, but a promise is a promise.”

I heaved a sigh of relief.

Silence sliced through the air like a razor. We looked at each other, Billy cast his eyes at the floor—maybe to stop himself from breaking down, and everybody felt speechless. Except Daisy started chatting again; obviously wanting to fill the awkward void.

She inhaled the bunch of flowers. “These lilies are beautiful. Pearl’s favorite. Well, I guess you know that already or you wouldn’t have chosen them.”

“Sophie sent them,” I said.

“How is Sophie?”

“Fine, she’ll be here tomorrow,” I told her.

“You sold HookedUp, then?”

“Yeah, we did.”
Shut up with the small talk, Daisy.

“Anthony’s on his way, right?”

“Yes, he’ll be here in a while.”

“Oh God, I nearly forgot!” Daisy said, reaching into her purse. “The last time we saw Pearl she let Amy try on her pearl necklace, you know…Amy had been obsessing about it for over a year…so for a special treat, we let her, and wouldn’t you know it, Amy went off with it! Naughty magpie.”

Daisy carefully brought out the Art Deco necklace I had given Pearl—the lucky one with eighty-eight pearls, the number of infinity of the Universe, the number of constellations in the sky. She laid the necklace about Pearl’s pale neck and fiddled with the diamond clasp for what seemed forever. I felt a lump choke up my throat.

“There…these pearls can work some magic, maybe,” Daisy said, and then lowered her voice to a whisper, “The nurse will probably say she isn’t allowed to wear them, or something, but worth a try, eh?”

The shimmering pearls looked exquisite, lustrous; myriad tones of pinkish gold and honey. I looked away—I thought I’d break into pieces.

“You know what?” I said, hardly able to speak. “I think Billy might want to be with his daughter for a bit. Have a chat.”
Hint, hint, Billy—let Pearl know you’re sorry for being such an absent father when she needed you most
. My anger was surging back again. At Billy, at myself. Pearl looked so beautiful in the necklace that I could no longer bear to look at her. I needed to get the hell out of this sterile hospital room for an hour or two so she didn’t feel my negative vibe.

“I’m going to my hotel to clean up, have something to eat and see my kids,” I told them. “I’ll be back in a bit. You’ve all got my number. Call me if anything, you know…happens. I’m five minutes away.”

Billy’s tall frame stood and sadness was carved across his weather-beaten face. He was a handsome man, with his loose, sandy-blond hair, and looked younger than his fifty-something years. But right now he looked like shit. I guess we all did.

Being back with my children temporarily eased me somewhat. I lay on the floor, which was carpeted wall-to-wall in a thick wool pile, and let them crawl all over me as if they were puppies. I told them how much their mother doted on them and that there was another baby on the way, trying to convince myself that everything would work out fine. But I felt haunted by what Daisy told me; that Pearl had asked her to make sure her legs got waxed if she ended up in a coma. Did she have a premonition? Sometimes, a voice speaks to you. Your subconscious, your gut, your instinct—call it what you will. Perhaps Pearl
knew
this was going to happen.

I played airplane with Madeleine, which she adored, lying on my back and balancing her on my feet while holding her hands. Louis was more grounded. He didn’t want to fly or play wild games. He wanted to be quiet and look at picture books or play with colored blocks.

“I’ve ordered room service,” Joy said, standing at the doorway. I turned to look at her and saw she’d been crying too. We were all pretending to each other to be brave but inside we were mush. “I thought you needed some nourishment before you went back to the hospital.” She retied her ponytail so her dark hair was scraped against her scalp. I’d become a bit obsessed with scalps, heads and brains in the last twenty-four hours. They’d shaved part of Pearl’s head. With my babies, I was always so careful when I held them, afraid to drop them, but a grown woman, who would have known such a thing could happen?

“Great.” I didn’t even bother asking Joy what she’d ordered. I didn’t care. Eating right now was an aid to help me function, nothing more. A way to fuel myself. The neurologist told me that they’d run more tests, but he didn’t want to put my hopes up.

As well as talking to all the medical staff, I’d done research. That’s all I did, in between massaging Pearl, reading her poetry and stories, and talking to her. But I hung on to Hope, Faith and fucking Charity. I reckoned for all the shit I went though for the first half of my life, I was owed one.