To Have It All(4)

“Where’d you sleep last night?” my friend Pearl, a middle-aged lady that’d been on the streets for three years asked.

“Bench in the park,” I grumbled as I plopped down beside her next to the small diner letting my back thud against the brick wall of the building.

Every Wednesday we met at the Quick Stop Diner because one of the waitresses, Mary, always bought us a sandwich to split. Mary was kind to us when most people only curled their lip at us as they passed by.

Pearl was one of the first homeless people I’d ever met. I’d stopped a couple of punks from bullying her, and she’d treated me like a saint ever since. I’d seen plenty of bums as they held their cups out to me, begging for money which I slipped them whatever spare change I might have in my pocket and felt good about it, but I’d never known one, personally. What a joke. If it hadn’t been for Pearl, I might have starved to death. Every day, she fought for food, for survival, but she chose to share with me. Mary had bought Pearl a sandwich every Wednesday for a year. It was her only guaranteed meal each week, and now Pearl gave me half. It’s funny how sometimes people with the least give the most.

“Have you seen Murry?” she asked, raising her brows in hope. The thing about Pearl was she was as sweet as they came, but she wasn’t all there upstairs. Murry, for all I could tell, was an invisible pet cat that only Pearl could see. Sometimes, Pearl would sit for hours with her hand moving as if she were petting him even though there was nothing there. The elusive Murry apparently had run away recently and she’d been looking everywhere for him.

“I haven’t seen him,” I told her, doing my best to play along. “I’m sure he’ll show up soon.”

My situation was unfortunate, and bad luck had dumped me in shitville. As lousy and hopeless as I felt, I hoped that maybe I’d make my way back to some normalcy someday with a job and a roof over my head. But people like Pearl, she was sick. The mentally ill and poor really got the shaft. No one wanted to pay to take care of them, and everyone treated them worse than just your stereotypical bum.

“Damn cat,” she griped, shaking her head. “Feed him, love him, protect him . . . and this is what I get? He just leaves me?”

I patted her leg. “I’m sure he’ll come back.” I’d listened to Pearl prattle on day after day about her missing invisible cat and how she used to live in a nice house in Jersey. It was the same story over and over, but each time she talked about Murry, I noticed it eased her. So day after day, I listened. I felt a deep obligation to this woman, and it wasn’t only because she had fed me. My grandmother, at the end of her life, suffered from Alzheimer’s. It was a truly heartbreaking time in my life when I watched one on the strongest people I’d ever known diminish before my eyes. Pearl, in a distant way, reminded me of my Grams, but unlike my Grams, she was alone. So I took on the duty of checking on her every day, and when she told me the same story over and over, I listened. My grandmother, before her Alzheimer’s was bad, once told me, “God gave us a mouth that closes and ears that stay open for a reason.” Sometimes people didn’t need advice or kind words, they just needed someone to listen. When When Pearl hung her head, clearly worried and sad, I decided listening wasn’t helping much today and tried to change the subject. “Where’d you stay last night?”

“That homeless shelter a few blocks down on Main again,” she informed me. “Don’t usually like that one because they won’t let you have pets, but with Murry missing it wasn’t a problem.”

I stayed in a shelter one night, and I swore, short of it being arctic cold outside, I wouldn’t do it again. The place was filled to the brim, and two people tried to pick through my bag while I was sleeping. But for someone like Pearl, I was grateful for places like that.

“You need a shower, Liam,” she divulged to me as she scrunched up her nose. “You smell ripe.” The other thing about Pearl, she was filter-free and brutally honest. If you smelled like shit, she was going to tell you. If you were an asshole, she’d tell you that, too.

After raising my arm and taking a whiff of my underarm, I winced before letting out a defeated sigh. She was right. I stunk to high heaven. When was the last time I’d had a shower? Three days earlier? And even then, it wasn’t a shower. I’d used the hand soap in the restroom of a fast food restaurant to wash under my arms and my lower region. It was better than nothing. I supposed.

Before I could respond, Pearl perked up and pointed. “There she is.”

Mary, the kind waitress, was hurrying toward us in her white sneakers and handed me the paper bag.

“Honey, you look thinner. You been working yourself to skin and bones?” Pearl asked as she gave Mary a thorough once over.

Mary smiled sheepishly, her cheeks blanketing with the slightest shade of pink. Apparently, she was shy. Her blonde hair was tied back in a neat ponytail and her lips shined as though she’d just applied gloss.

“No more than usual.” I hadn’t ever really looked at Mary, no more than meeting her eyes briefly to say thank you. Most days, I tried not to look anyone in the eyes hoping that if I didn’t, maybe they wouldn’t notice me. I wished shame equaled invisibility.

“Have you seen Murry, Mary?” Pearl asked, her tone thick with hope. “He’s my cat, all black and has big yellow eyes.”