MARCH-APRIL_2017_final-fb

the Barbecue issue

by Crescent Dragonwagon T he Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan was telling us about a dinner she had hosted at which my father had been present, four days before his unexpected death. “Well, you know how he was,” she said. “I served a chocolate cake, and he loved it. ‘Well, then, Maurice,’ I said, ‘Why don’t you just take the rest of it with you?’ ‘Oh, Fionnula, no! I couldn’t! Really? The do with an unexpected death. We had tried to unravel them, though we’d not yet fully comprehended the basics: My 77-year-old father’s heart had abruptly stopped beating. His sudden death upended normality. Ned and I flew in from the middle of the country, arranging his memorial and clearing out his apartment. The week we did that we somehow ended up (I have no memory of how) as houseguests of kind Fionnula, whom we’d never met before this turn of events. Emerald Smiles whole thing?’ ‘Of course the whole thing,’ I said. You’d think I’d given him diamonds.” My husband and I exchanged looks. Across the surreality of it all, at least one minor mystery was solved: that empty wooden cake box, the name of its high-end bakery painted in gold leaf atop it — what, we’d wondered, was it doing sitting near the front door of my father’s Los Angeles apartment? Larger mysteries remained, as they always

52

MY ROUSES EVERYDAY MARCH | APRIL 2017