‘Yes, I know she’s dead, Ella. But she raised you. This is your chance to say goodbye.’
Ella frowned, like a mother being forced to explain something painfully simple to a child. ‘You can’t “say” things to dead people, Bob. That’s ridiculous.’
Still, in the end Ella had taken Bob’s advice, because he was her friend and because he understood the world better than she did. She’d arranged today’s service, and posted notices in the local paper, and had a caterer provide sandwiches and drinks, and worn the black dress Bob’s wife Joanie suggested and carefully listened to Bob’s instructions on how to behave. ‘Just scatter the ashes, and if you can’t think of anything else to say to people, just say “thank you for coming”.’ So Ella had driven out here on her own, despite her terrible headache and having to pull over to the side of the road to vomit and despite her sadness that this was not her chance to say goodbye to her grandmother, whom she loved. She’d missed her chance to say goodbye, just like she’d missed it with her parents, and now she was all alone in this world and losing her mind and she didn’t even have a brain tumor to explain it. And now here she was sitting in this tiny bathroom with the timber walls and the framed Bible verses hanging over the basin, in this cabin where she’d grown up so lonely she’d almost died.
I almost died.
I would have died if I’d stayed here.
Anybody would.
Why couldn’t Mimi understand that?
A knock on the door broke her reverie.
‘Ella?’ It was the preacher. Reverend … Something. Ella couldn’t remember any more. ‘Are you all right in there, my dear? Your guests are starting to head inside. I know people want to offer their condolences.’
Ella splashed cold water on her face and popped two ibuprofen from the bottle in her purse. Opening the door she pushed past the preacher and hurried back out on to the porch, looking for the man in the suit. If he made Ella an offer for the ranch, she’d consider it. But he was nowhere to be seen, not outside or milling around the food tables with the rest of the locals.
Bob was wrong. It had been a mistake to come back here. Ella might be different but she wasn’t stupid. She could feel people’s eyes crawling over her, disliking her, disapproving, just as they had when she was growing up.
Ella had no memories of her life before she came to live with Mimi, other than sensorial ones: the smell of her mother’s perfume; the cool touch of her hand, so different to the warm, bear-like grip of Ella’s father. When Ella was four years old, her parents had sent her to stay with her grandmother while they traveled abroad together for a job. It was supposed to be for a few months. But they were killed in a car accident and never returned. Ella spent the rest of her childhood here, in the cabin. Yet it had never been ‘home’. ‘Home’ was a place Ella could never reach. A place where her parents were still alive.
Just then she saw him. The man in the suit, closing the old wooden gate behind him as he hit the button to unlock his car, a sleek two-door Lexus that looked even more out of place here than he did. If that were possible.
‘Hey!’ Ella called out to him from the porch, but the man didn’t register. Her voice must have been lost in the wind. ‘Hey! Hold up!’
She set off at a run, back down the hill, past the oak tree where Mimi’s ashes lay scattered, towards the gate. But before she was even halfway there, both man and car had gone.
‘He a friend of yours?’ Jim Newsome asked her when she got back to the house, nodding in the direction of the departed car.
‘No,’ Ella replied, still panting from the run.
Her headache, thankfully, was receding again, but the idea of playing hostess to Mimi’s uptight neighbors for the next two hours still filled her with dread. At least Mr Newsome wasn’t as bad as some of them. The women were the worst, generally.
‘D’you know his name?’ the old man pressed.
Ella shook her head. ‘No. I’ve never seen him before. Have you?’
‘Nope,’ said Jim. Strange. ‘Drink?’
He’d already poured a generous glass of Jim Beam for himself, and now offered a second to Ella.
‘Must be a tough day for you.’
Ella shrugged, declining the drink. ‘I try not to consume alcohol at social functions,’ she explained. ‘It makes me uninhibited and that’s … not always a good thing.’
‘OK,’ said Jim.
‘When I’m drunk I’m more likely to have sex, you see,’ she elaborated. ‘Bob says I should try to do that less.’
Jim Newsome choked on his drink, coughing and spluttering until the liquor burned the lining of his nose. But his eyes were laughing. If this was sober, ‘appropriate’ Ella, he hardly dared imagine the drunk version. Poor, God-fearing Mimi Praeger must have been at her wits’ end raising this crazy girl.
‘Oh he does, does he?’ Jim chuckled. ‘Well “Bob” sounds like a decent sorta guy.’
Jim’s wife Mary waddled over to the two of them, stiffly offering Ella her hand. ‘Hello, Ella. I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss.’
Ella looked at her curiously. Mary Newsome hated her. That much was obvious. Yet here she was being kind. Sometimes – often – other people behaved in a way that made no sense to Ella at all.
‘Here, have this. It’s an alcoholic drink.’ Not sure what else to do, Ella pressed the glass Jim Newsome had offered her into his wife’s hand. Then, recalling Bob’s advice, she smiled and added, ‘Thank you for coming.’
Mary Newsome stared after Ella as she walked away.
Beside her, Jim’s broad shoulders began to shake with laughter.
Ella woke late the next morning with a different kind of headache. The kind you get from drinking half a bottle of bourbon on your own, once all the guests and caterers and preachers have gone home, then passing out, fully clothed, on your childhood bed.
The first thing she was aware of was the light, streaming in through every window like an assault. Ella’s grandmother had not believed in drapes or blinds. ‘A healthy person rises with the sun,’ was one of her favorite sayings. A lot of Mimi Praeger’s nuggets of wisdom began with the words ‘A healthy person …’ Most were variations on the theme of hard work, prayerfulness and self-sufficiency.
‘A healthy person never lets others do for them what they can do themselves.’
‘A healthy person keeps a clean gun, clean shoes and a clean mind.’
Ella learned early that she was not a ‘healthy person’. At least, not by nature. She had to work at it, and she did work, to please her grandmother but also because, to put it bluntly, there was nothing else to do. Hunting and trapping and whittling and working with her hands became Ella’s ‘games’ – activities she learned to enjoy because, really, what was the alternative? After years of practice she excelled at them all, an achievement in which both she and Mimi took pride.
‘Look at you!’ Ella’s grandmother used to say, flashing a rare smile as she watched the eight-year-old pop a rabbit from two hundred yards. ‘There’s not a junior shot in San Joaquin County better than you, my darling.’ Once, when Ella was climbing rocks above one of their favorite fishing pools, Mimi told her she was as ‘nimble as a mountain goat.’ It was one of the happiest moments of Ella’s life, a true compliment. Her grandmother’s