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 praise was sparing and hard won, but it meant everything to the little girl. Because of course, Mimi was all she had. And vice versa.
There had been such love between them in those days.
What happened?
Crawling out of bed, Ella staggered to the cabin’s only bathroom (which hadn’t been installed until she was twelve – running water had been another grudging concession to social services) and splashed ice-cold water on her face angrily, as if it could wash away the regret. So much had been left unsaid between Ella Praeger and her grandmother, but it was all too late now. Wasted thoughts and feelings and emotions were left to trickle down the drain, like water from a forgotten faucet.
‘A healthy person never wastes God’s water …’
Peeling off her crumpled funeral dress and black underwear, Ella freed her hair from its disheveled braid and stepped under the cold shower, gasping as the jets pounded into her bare skin like bullets. She had a good figure, toned and athletic with high, round breasts counterbalancing her narrow, boyish hips. Her hair was dirty blonde and unfashionably long, an old style she was oddly reluctant to part with. But it was Ella’s face that really caught people’s attention. Hers was a kooky, love-it-or-hate-it
