Page 5 of Phoenix Fire

At 5:30 PM she turned off the machines, the lights, locked the offices, and went home. She was still smiling her warm thoughts as she rode down in the crowded elevator. The people around her smiled in spite of themselves.

Chapter Four

Myrena Wimsley inspected her flower world. It was a magnificent bright blur of color from its wide curving top rim down some one hundred terraced yards to the bottom edge that followed briefly the winding private road up to her estate.

Myrena Wimsley’s estate stood alone on its own small mountain in northeast Phoenix. The three hundred sixty-degree vista was unparalleled in the entire ‘Valley of the Sun,’ though the Wrigley Mansion could claim that distinction as well. The house itself was a rambling two-story edifice of stone and wood, some ten thousand square feet of elegance, so much of it now not used. The house spilled over in spots off the mountaintop and down gentle slopes, the manicured land, including the flower field, reinforced along its sides with complicated girding of the earth.

Myrena had walked the meandering path down and back among her flowers, inspecting for rain damage. She stood now on the large flagstone terrace just above the resplendent rows of color, taking in the sweep of it all, a wistful smile upon her lovely time-chiseled face. The view was always new to her no matter how many times she saw it. Some random fleeting thoughts from the past came to her as she stood staring over her beautiful acres … mostly of a daughter lost to her years ago. The sun made her squint, gave her matriarchal countenance an even greater pose of power. There was no damage to the flowers from the recent rain storms, just as her gardener, Pancho, said.

Myrena was a small woman and her all-gray hair was bundled on top of her head in a tightly wound ball. Her eyes were a keen brown, and her lips were thin with age wrinkles. Her nose, a short upward pointing stub, had a peculiar flair, a near constant twitching. The angular and wrinkled character was there in her face, beguiling and impenetrable. At her age she was still a very striking lady. In her younger years her face would have held captive many anxious males.

She sighed and sat on an elaborate chaise lounge next to the rounded slab of colored stone that was the terrace table. She sat sipping straight from a small carafe of iced tea. The sun lulled her, and she sank into thought. She looked out across the hazy valley below her, watching cars moving like ants in all directions along busy freeways and artery roads. The cars were going to destinations, each vehicle conveying a story of someone's life. She thought of her own life, and a sad nostalgia momentarily rose within her.

“Oh, John,” she muttered softly, “it's been such a long trip in mortal terms, yet a speck we are in the total scheme of things.” Her words were taken by a gentle zephyr to the valley below. “It cannot be too long, my dearest, before I join you … Oh, I pray to be with you again in eternity.”

She soon stopped her whispered thoughts and succumbed to a lazy, silent musing.

How long did she have? she wondered. The doctor was candid but vague about her cancer. The exploratory surgery revealed a slow spread within her body. The doctor was concerned because of its proximity to her stomach. He did not recommend further surgery and he precluded chemo because of its terrible side effects. The doctor felt that she might possibly live for years, or, more likely, about twelve months. He prescribed medication that would have some minimal control on the cancer's spreading and pills which would fight the pain. He told her that the pain would be an on and off thing in her remaining time, increasing in its intensity toward the end. The pills would eventually have to be replaced with injections. The doctor was straightforward in answering her questions as he knew she would want him to be.

Myrena was strangely unaffected by the doctor's announcement, but, then, this was the essence of her character. From some spot in her marvelous genetic networking Myrena all of her life was able to keep perspective in the direst of situations. It would be in keeping and appropriate that she face her own mortality with prosaic calm. Whatever joy could possibly come from the news of her own death lay in the promise of her reunion with John. This thought would sustain her throughout the ensuing days and months.

Her thoughts went to the boys, Carlton and Jason. For most of their lives Myrena was more mother than grandmother. She spent, since the death of their parents, most of her time caring for the boys, consciously nudging and directing them toward manhood with high principles and purpose.

Myrena smiled, pursed her lips, and sipped her iced tea. She looked off into the distant horizon and whispered aloud once more. “Did a pretty good job, too, especially with Jason.”

Then a frown replaced her smile. She was not able to reach Carlton in the same way she reached Jason. There was something within Carlton akin to acute selfishness. He was now a man but he still acted so much like a small boy, somehow cheated and deprived.

What could she have done differently? She treated them both equally, certainly in the beginning, careful not to over dote on them or to push them farther than they could comfortably go. From the start, Jason had shown the will, the tenacity, the precocious cerebration that could thrill her so. Carlton, on the other hand, two years older than Jason, had shown early on a hard resentment and a callous disregard for anyone but himself. He was to become obsessive, constantly negative, dwelling on the tragedy of his parents' untimely deaths as though their demise was a premeditated event. In short, he was a spoiled brat, this in spite of the fact that she worked so hard to preclude such behavior.

She could fault herself, she supposed, for she at some point gravitated almost exclusively to Jason. She had rationalized finally that Jason needed her much more than Carlton, simply because Jason showed the potential for greatness and Carlton showed every indication that he would always seek attention through tantrums and negative actions.

Poor John, when he was alive, he tried so hard with Carlton, at least, within his limited time and space. It was so easy to bond with Jason but, with Carlton, John felt himself a failure. He worried about the boy right up to the time of his stroke and subsequent death. Carlton occupied so many of their bedtime chats. John's death had hurt both boys. However, Carlton seemed to veer farther away and use his grandfather's passing as yet another personal and selfish disclaimer.

Myrena felt a pang of sadness as she thought of her own death, not for herself but for Carlton. Even now, approaching age forty, he still came to her for 'dumping.' What would he do when she was gone? To whom would he go for his venting? Luckily, Carlton did have his one positive passion, his work. Somehow, he made it through law school and he was now a corporate tax attorney. He worked hard at his job and was considered one of the best in his field. Unfortunately, his people skills were so hopelessly lacking that he had very few good and reliable acquaintances. Friends, he had none, unless it was grandmother Myrena.

She smiled again at another distinction between the two boys. Jason called her 'Grandma' and Carlton called her 'Grandmother.'

Lately, Carlton came to her for some substantial loans. He called them loans, but she would never see a repayment. However, she would never want repayment unless it came as a sign of him facing his responsibility, and, as a sign that he was trying to be a man of good character. Mostly, she worried about his sudden need for so much money. His corporate salary was surely quite large. He mentioned needing the loans for some timely investments, but she was wary of his real reasons.

Carlton was an unusual study. He was tall, good looking, successful in his chosen profession but an enormous bust in his personal life. He tried marriage once but it was doomed to failure. He was able to destroy his relationships quickly and it was never his fault that caused the terminations. So, he lived a life of near neurotic negation.

Myrena loved her oldest grandson but she did not like him very much. She wished that he could change but held little hope that he would.

Jason was the polar opposite of Carlton, and Myrena loved him in a special way. She also liked this handsome grandson. She liked being with him, talking to him, watching the ordered way he did his thinking and how he lived his life. He was all that she could want in a grandson, though he felt more like a son.

Myrena drank again from her carafe of iced tea. She thought of how she should handle the matter of her estate. Oh, she knew how to handle it. It was already handled. It would all go to Jason, except for the house which she would leave to Carlton.

What she really had as a concern was how to handle her death, that is, whether or not to tell Jason and Carlton about her cancer. The conclusion came rather quickly: she could think of no compelling reason to tell either of her grandsons. It was not a question of being dishonest with them. Revealing her terminal condition would simply bring unnecessary and unwanted attention. Carlton would use the news to further his tragic persona, Of course, in his way, Carlton loved her, and, somehow, in the atavistic dimness of time, he was cursed with an abiding self-annihilation. Jason would be crushed by the news in a deeply personal way, not outwardly in a showy guise of sentimentality.

Myrena did not wish either of her grandsons to suffer in a prolonged fashion with the news of her condition. So, she would say nothing.

The warm sun made her lazy and she reclined in the chaise for some long moments, pleasantly floating on the opiate fringes of half sleep. Despite the gravity of her recent medical prognosis, she felt somehow satiated and at peace.

Her life was full and relatively free from pain, emotionally and physically. Yes, she had agonized about the untimely deaths of her only daughter and son-in-law, about Carlton, the death of John, but, on balance, her life was joyfully full and exciting. Jason and Carlton had helped fill the lonely gaps through the years since John's passing, particularly Jason. Jason excelled at everything he attempted but, above all, he was endowed with an amazing selflessness of character, with remarkable patience and perseverance, with a maturity and wisdom beyond his years, and with a dark Grecian beauty. Jason was not a child to be easily spoiled for he had an innate sense of pride and humility. Dear sweet John had often chided her on showing too much favoritism on one boy over the other. She knew that she did, but it did not concern her. She felt that it must be naturally ordained for her to feel a special simpatico for Jason. She supposed that it was a matter of loving both grandsons, just liking one more than the other.

So, the acknowledgment of her own death was an unremarkable sublimation. Her life was rich and full. She was more than ready to die and, while she was not an overly religious person, she had an almost devout belief that John awaited her beyond that dark curtain of death.

Suddenly, a pain deep in her gut brought her upright on the chaise lounge. Myrena's beautiful, weathered face contorted and her thin arms wrapped her narrow waist. She reached for the metal box next to the stone table and pushed a button. She could hear the staccato buzz through the cream colored box.

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