The Phoenix Read online

Ella Praeger took the urn from the preacher’s clammy hands and solemnly carried it to the foot of the oak tree. Her grandmother had loved this tree. Ella would watch her stroking it sometimes, running a gnarled hand up and down its ancient bark affectionately, as if it were a pet dog.

  It got more affection than she ever showed me, Ella thought. But she wasn’t bitter. Mimi Praeger was who she was: a survivalist and a loner who had chosen a life completely at one with the land. She had taught Ella the things she knew. How to chop down a tree, how to fix a roof and build a boat, how to start a fire and shoot a rabbit and gut a fish and clean a gun. She had tried to teach her how to pray. Ella knew that her grandmother had loved her, in her own reserved, uncommunicative way. She had done her best to raise her dead son’s only child, a burden she never asked for.

  When Ella was eleven, a woman had come to the cabin – she was from social services, Ella now realized, although back then nothing was explained – and after the woman’s visit, Mimi had reluctantly allowed Ella to attend school in the nearest town. It was a two-hour journey, there and back, involving three buses and one long walk along a frightening, unlit road, and it was Ella’s first experience of life outside of the ranch. Of television and internet, of different clothes and cars, of pop music and fast-food restaurants and people. So many people. Ella observed all of it with a sort of detached wonder, like a visitor on a day trip to an exotic zoo. But while she excelled academically at Valley High, socially she never fit in. Never tried to fit in, her teachers believed. Ella brought home reports with words like ‘aloof’ and ‘arrogant’ mingled in with other, less damning adjectives. Gifted. Exceptional. Her language skills in particular were extraordinary, including a pronounced talent for computer languages, the newly voguish ‘coding’ that was becoming so highly prized by California colleges.

  Unfortunately Ella’s grandmother did not approve of computer science, for reasons that again were never explained to Ella, and those classes were dropped. But Ella’s GPA remained stellar, even as her struggles with social skills intensified. Ostracized by her peers at school, for her old-fashioned clothes and standoffish manner – (with the exception of the boys who flocked to sleep with her, delighted by Ella’s matter-of-fact promiscuity once she hit puberty and her complete disregard for the concept of ‘reputation’, so important to the other high school girls) – Ella’s isolation intensified. She lived in two worlds – the world of school and the world of Mimi’s ranch – but didn’t fit in to either of them.

  Mimi’s horror when Ella accepted a place at Berkeley took Ella by surprise. She’d assumed her grandmother would be happy and proud of her achievement, but once again she seemed to have missed those all-important signals.

  ‘But I thought you wanted me to go to college?’ Ella said imploringly.

  ‘What on earth made you think that?’ her grandmother wailed. ‘You can’t go to the city, Ella. I need you here.’

  ‘But … you always encouraged me to study.’

  ‘Not so you would leave! After everything I’ve done for you, Ella.’

  ‘What for, then?’

  ‘For yourself!’ Mimi banged a veiny fist on the simple kitchen table that the two women had eaten on every day for the last thirteen years. ‘To fulfill your God-given potential. Not so that you could run off to one of those dreadful, godless colleges and expose yourself to … to …’

  ‘To what, Granny?’ Ella had shouted back, in a rare loss of temper. ‘To life?’

  ‘To danger,’ the old woman replied, shaking a finger at Ella. ‘Danger.’

  Feeling the clay urn in her hands, that conversation came back to Ella as though it were yesterday. What ‘danger’ had her grandmother been so afraid of on her behalf? What fate in the city could possibly be worse than the slow death by suffocation of life up here on the ranch, in the middle of nowhere? Especially these last few years, when it didn’t even rain. Even God, it seemed, had abandoned them.

  Turning around just once to look at the group of mourners assembled on the hillside, Ella wondered what these people were doing here. Most of them she recognized vaguely as the owners of neighboring ranches, or faces from church or the store. But not one of them really knew Mimi, or her. They weren’t friends. Ella’s grandmother didn’t ‘do’ friends. Perhaps as a result, Ella had never acquired the skill of getting people to like her, of forging bonds of affection the way that other people seemed to do so effortlessly. Instead, like Mimi, she tended to say exactly what she thought, blurting out observations or responding to questions with a blunt honesty that frequently landed her in trouble.

  There was one man among the mourners whom Ella didn’t recognize, standing at the very back in a dark suit and mirrored sunglasses. Other than Ella herself, he was the only person present in ‘city’ clothes, and he looked as out of place among these simple, farming folk as a unicorn in a cowshed. He was tall and slim, and when he took the sunglasses off, Ella could see that he had a classically handsome face, like a model from a men’s clothing catalog. Strong jaw. Tanned skin. She wondered briefly what he would be like in bed, before refocusing on his identity. Maybe he’s a real-estate agent, come to make an offer on the ranch? Ella thought. It didn’t occur to her that such an approach at a funeral service might be considered insensitive, even offensive. The man’s presence made her curious, not angry.

  Unscrewing the top of the urn, Ella peered inside at the dust – all that was left of her grandmother. Not even the hardy, rugged Mimi Praeger could outrun old age forever. These ashes were now the sole remnants of Ella’s entire family, in fact. With more violence than she intended, she flung out her arm, scattering the ashes to the wind.

  Mimi’s neighbors gasped at the abruptness of the gesture, the shocking lack of ceremony. Ella sensed their disapproval but chose to ignore it, turning and walking purposefully back up the hill towards the cabin – her cabin, now – with her purse swinging jauntily over her shoulder and the empty urn in her hand.

  ‘Like she’s throwing out the trash,’ Mary Newsome whispered to Jim, shaking her head disapprovingly. The small gaggle of ranchers closest to Mary murmured their agreement. Poor Mimi. After all she did for that girl.

  ‘Come on, now. Let’s not be too quick to judge. Grief takes people in different ways,’ Jim Newsome reminded them. ‘Remember, that young lady’s lost just about everybody.’

  Inside the cabin, Ella hurried into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Sitting down on the toilet seat, she slumped forward with her head in her hands and massaged her throbbing temples. Please no. Not now. Not with all these people here.

  The headache she’d woken up with this morning was coming back, although thankfully not as strongly as before. This morning, as so often lately, the white noise inside Ella’s skull had been deafening, to the point where she couldn’t get out of bed. And when she did, finally, stagger to her feet, an overwhelming nausea had seen her staggering to the bathroom in her tiny Mission District apartment, throwing up the entire contents of her stomach.

  ‘It’s a brain tumor,’ Ella had informed her doctor two weeks ago, sitting in his plush corner office at San Francisco’s Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. ‘It’s growing. I can feel it.’

  ‘It isn’t a brain tumor.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Ella demanded. ‘How can you possibly know that?’

  ‘Because I’m a neurologist.’

  ‘Even so …’

  ‘And because I’ve comprehensively scanned your brain with the very latest technology. There is no tumor.’

  ‘You’ve made a mistake.’

  The doctor laughed. ‘No mistake, I assure you.’

  ‘Yes. You must have made a mistake.’

  He looked at his patient curiously.

  ‘Do you want to have a brain tumor, Miss Praeger?’

  Ella thought about this for a moment. On the one hand, a brain tumor was a bad thing. Brain tumors could kill you. I don’t want to die. On the other hand, a brain tumor might be an explanation for a
ll the crazy shit going on inside her head. The headaches and vomiting were only part of it, the part Ella had told her doctors. It was the rest of it that really scared her – voices; music; high-frequency throbbing that sounded to Ella like some sort of coded transmission. That stuff had been going on for a long time. As long as Ella could remember, honestly, although in recent months it had gotten a lot worse. If I don’t have a brain tumor, I’m crazy. I must be.

  ‘Would you like to talk to someone?’ the doctor asked, his amusement shifting to concern. ‘A psychologist, perhaps? Oftentimes the sort of symptoms you describe can be brought on by stress. I could refer you to—’

  But Ella had already gone, running out of his office, never to return.

  The next day, her grandmother died. Peacefully, in her sleep.

  ‘Were you close?’

  Bob, a shy, balding, middle-aged man who worked at the coffee shop near Ella’s work and was the closest thing she had to a friend, asked when Ella told him.

  ‘She was my closest relative, yes,’ Ella responded. ‘My parents are dead.’

  ‘Sure, but I meant emotionally. Were you close to her emotionally?’

  Ella looked at him blankly. She liked Bob, but found him strange. Evidently he felt the same way about her, because when she’d suggested they sleep together months ago, he’d declined. Even though he wasn’t homosexual.

  ‘I’m married, Ella,’ he explained.

  ‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘So you like having sexual intercourse with women.’

  For some reason Bob found this funny. ‘Well, yeah …’ he laughed. ‘I do.’

  ‘I’m a woman,’ Ella pointed out, with an endearing case closed finality to her tone.

  ‘You are a woman,’ Bob agreed. ‘A very beautiful woman. And I’m flattered … I mean, I appreciate the offer. But …’

  ‘You don’t want to have intercourse with me?’

  ‘OK firstly, just a little FYI – people usually use the word “sex”. “Intercourse” kind of sounds like a biology textbook.’

  ‘Right,’ said Ella. She’d been told this before, but her grandmother had always been a stickler for proper terminology, and old habits were hard to break.

  ‘And secondly, it’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you, Ella. It’s that I’m married. My wife would not be happy at all if I did that.’

  Ella looked even more perplexed. ‘But your wife won’t know. She won’t be there with us. Will she?’

  ‘None of us will be there!’ said Bob, who seemed to have accidentally stumbled into an episode of The Twilight Zone. ‘Because you and me sleeping together is really not a great idea. Just out of interest, is this how you usually …? I mean, have you asked other guys you don’t know that well if they want to, you know …?’

  ‘Have sex with me?’ Ella offered helpfully, pleased to have remembered the phrase du jour.

  Bob nodded.

  ‘Sure,’ said Ella.

  ‘And how have they responded?’

  ‘They do want to. The married ones too. Unless they’re homosexuals.’

  ‘OK,’ said Bob, rubbing his eyes. ‘You know, you can also say “gay”.’

  Mimi would have hated that, thought Ella. Her grandmother hadn’t exactly been ‘evolved’ on LGBT rights. ‘I’m tired of hearing about their rights,’ the old woman used to say. ‘We should be talking about their wrongs!’

  ‘I’ve actually had intercourse – sex – with one hundred and fourteen people,’ Ella informed Bob matter-of-factly, and not without a touch of pride.

  His eyes widened. ‘One hundred and fourteen? Wow, that’s, er … that’s a solid number. Again, just some friendly advice – you don’t actually need to share that kind of personal information with everyone.’

  ‘I’m not sharing it with everyone,’ Ella smiled. ‘Just you. Could I have another latte?’ If she and Bob weren’t going to have intercourse then she might as well enjoy another hot beverage. ‘With almond syrup in it?’

  After this conversation, for reasons Ella didn’t fully understand, Bob began taking a more active interest in her welfare. It was Bob who’d explained to her that she would have to organize some sort of service for her grandmother. He’d even offered to drive her out to the cabin, if she needed company or a shoulder to cry on.

  ‘You mean I have to go? Myself?’ Ella sounded surprised.

  ‘You don’t “have” to go. But you’re her next of kin, and she left you the ranch,’ Bob explained. ‘So, yeah. I’d say it’s sort of expected.’

  ‘Expected by whom?’

  ‘By everyone.’

  ‘Like who?’

  Bob tried another tack. ‘Your grandmother would have wanted it.’

  ‘Would she?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘OK but she’s dead now.’

  ‘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 ha
ve 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.’