She knew that she was old. She knew that her name was Ella. A chill went through her, and she held her breath; she waited.
“Mother,” a voice said.
There was a woman walking quickly across the parking lot. Ella recognized her. It was Vivien, her daughter. Here was a person who loved her. Ella’s mind felt gluey, as though it were shifting around. Vivien looked concerned. Ella wondered how she had come to sit on this bench. Something was wrong with her, and she was ashamed.
Vivien put her hand on her shoulder. “Why are you sitting there?”
“There is this nice cat,” Ella said, very softly. She raised her hands to her face. Her hairline was damp. She did not know what had just happened. “I got tired,” she said, feeling the words form themselves, like large bubbles, in her throat.
The day had come to an end. Ella felt the heat melting from the air. She looked out toward the Pacific, wondering how the dawn would look tomorrow, flushing orange across the sea. One day the morning would begin without her.
What would she feel, then, while the day spread itself in all its glorious tastes and colors and sounds? Perhaps Lou would drive up in the worn-out Ford they had driven to California, wearing a garish red suit she had never seen. “Hello, my love,” he would say, gripping her wrist. His chin would be blue with stubble, and his cologne would smell like an enormous party, tawdry but sweet.
She did not know where he would take her. Ella could only imagine that he would grasp her hand, squeezing it twice gently, the same assured way he had squeezed her hand on their first date. The door of the Ford would swing open. And before she got into the car, she would look back at what she was leaving.
How she would miss the world she had lived in: the way her lemon trees stood, fragrant in the morning mist; the way the warm wind whispered through the magnolia trees; the way the San Fernando Valley spread out before her as she drove over the 405 freeway, the valley hazy and wide and rimmed with golden hills. And Ella would deeply miss, too, the world she herself had constructed, the world she had made out of love.
Ella wanted to be able to comfort Vivien and Lena and Shelley on the day of her death. She imagined them waking up, hollowed, the sun and shadows perplexing them—but they had been shaped by her presence and her feelings.
Vivien helped Ella stand. Ella leaned against her daughter a little, and felt her adjust her stride to accommodate her mother’s weight; slowly they began to walk to the car. Thin palm trees swung up, with a kind of joy, into the darkness.
The sky swept toward morning, toward light. Ella felt the rise and fall of her daughter’s breath against her arm. Lena and Shelley were slouched in the back seat of the car, drinking their orange juice. They looked up, their faces alert, as though they had just heard a sudden, startling word. They would ride home, the four of them, together. The car door swung open, and, very gently, Ella took Vivien’s hand.
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