Opera, oysters, the world.

  He took us to a cathedral in the Adriatic lagoon that showed the green of Paradise, the legions of the blessed, and the angels unfurling the starry sky of night to the end of time. He called it the Last Judgment.

  But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I can’t keep up with my father while traveling. No one could. After going to six zillion churches, sometimes we had to go back to the same church to see something we had missed or mistaken—like we looked at the wrong altarpiece, or missed the picture of God.

  “Mom, do you think I’m capable of fully appreciating all the beauty I’m seeing, at my age?” Grace asked me one day amid all the frescoes and old masters.

  “Maybe not.”

  She seemed relieved.

  I was always captivated by the dueling orchestras at the Florian and the Quadri in the square. It must have been the offseason as there were no crowds. The waiters in white-tie and tails paced about the deserted arcade with its billowing white curtains in the ancient arches, the vast old square lit up, as the orchestras played on gallantly without an audience.

  •

  My father left his cigars to Jack. Amelia thought they were ruined, moldering away in the basement, since he hadn’t smoked them in three years or taken care of them. Jack went down to check and they were all perfectly magnificent, he found. It turns out cigars are not like wine. Cigars want heat and humidity. Jack was overjoyed.

  Then there was his will. It was beautiful—and awkward—to see his handsome gesture towards me and my brothers. It meant a lot to me though I felt guilty, considering. Considering how much Amelia and her daughters had done for him in the last twenty-three years. Considering that they had done everything and we had done nothing.

  When a man dies, his lawyer reads his will and distributes it to his heirs. Resentments, surprises, shocks can ensue. I claim no stake in the outcome because I am not materialistic. But mostly because I am married to a tycoon. I have no quibble as to where the chips may fall. I only see who needs the chips.

  He knew I didn’t need the chips, but in Louisiana there is a thing called usufruct—leftover from the Napoleonic Code still used there, to which he was devoted. He also strongly advocated something called Forced Heirship. So you can see which way the wind is blowing on this. Usufruct can cut both ways, though. It confers the “temporary” right to derive income and benefit from an estate which ultimately reverts to the heir.

  Our mild-mannered lawyer, Andrew Mallory, the executor of my father’s estate, took me to lunch. He’s the last living relic from Collier & Grace—Claude’s father’s law firm. He was asking me about Amelia. I explained the mutual devotion and love between her and my father and how much she had done for him.

  “She’s fierce,” I added.

  “Sacred Heart girls are always fierce,” he said.

  My father’s estate is in some disorder. I think it might be something of a shock to some. He lived handsomely and was extremely generous, dispensing his largesse with a free hand. He seems to have been one who lived to the limit of his means. Not exceeding his means. But kind of to the outermost limits of them, especially during the last four years. It may not be exactly what I think everyone was expecting.

  2.

  During this time my father-in-the-law was in the hospital in treatment for an illness, but I saw his irrepressible nature and immunity to melancholy as a barrier to disease. As if to prove my theory, he was in a great mood. Never has one man had so much fun in a hospital. He was in a new wing. He loved it. He loved the nurses. He loved everything about it.

  Then he took a sudden turn downhill. His doctor delivered some surprisingly bad news in a blunt manner. Dr. Doom, my father-in-law nicknamed the doctor with the bad bedside manner and bad news.

  To say that my own father bore his diminishments with stoic dignity for the three years of his illness was kind of an understatement. I did not think my father-in-law would want to put up with it. The writing was on the wall at that point. My father-in-law wanted out. He made his wishes known to Stella, who was in charge of him. He told the nurses.

  Soon he was mad at hospice because he thought it would be over sooner. What am I paying you for, etc. He started calling the pallbearers to line them up.

  Dad they’re not bridesmaids, said Jack.

  But I feel like a bridegroom before the wedding, he said, near the end. A little nervous.

  He died on Stella’s birthday. We were there. He wanted to see us.

  There was not much to see. Jack and I went out to dinner the night he died but Stella refused to leave her father’s side.

  Some things you can’t forget. After it was over and the heroic hospice nurses do the mysterious things they heroically do then, the funeral home is called and thirty minutes after that two strapping tall elegant North Carolina black men in a hearse arrive in the night to wheel him out in a body bag, delivering stalwart words of comfort and condolence as they depart.

  At first it is exhilarating to see it all like the curtain rising and then closing on a stage but later these same images are haunting. My father-in-law’s end seemed benign at first but from the next day onward it seemed violent.

  Also it seemed gallant. He was doing for Stella what he could not fully do for her in life. Confer her independence. He hastened to his end, maybe that’s all part of the gallantry and the violence. What his daughter did for him in turn and the heroic way in which she did it over the months when he was in her care is something I can never forget.

  But some images are haunting. Such as seeing him wheeled out in a body bag at midnight by the two strapping elegant black guys and having seen him at the end, this magnetic man who had such vitality. Who was ageless until three months ago. Something about his end wrenches your heart. His droll character and brave hurtle toward death.

  What I do not understand—then or now—is why his death raised the direct grief that my own father’s did not. I put it down to my devotion to abstractions, my claim of that immutability.

  •

  I just go from funeral to funeral giving orations.

  Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast.

  I left the day after my father-in-law’s funeral at the crack of dawn for my rescheduled duties in New Orleans, engulfed in sorrow—to go through my father’s papers and files. When I got there I was too busy to repine. Packing twenty-six boxes of his books and papers to send to relevant recipients and/or back to Washington, and digitizing an immense amount of photographs starting with his service in the army overseas in World War II. Seeing him as a soldier in these photographs you think: He belongs to the universe now—to the ages, the galaxies, etc.

  And if even a god like that could kick the bucket, my turn is next.

  The gift of faith—where is it now?

  Then the job was done and the fathers in the ground and I collapsed. Maybe abstractions are not so great after all.

  All the stuff I kept telling myself about how my father loved me, I revered him, he gave me all those abstract things that would endure to the end of time, so the intensity of my grief and shock was muted—when I went through his papers and was hit by a far worse grief than at his death I realized: I am going to be one of those people who can’t grieve at the time so they have to have a giant breakdown later.

  •

  Stella said a raven came to the porch—she thought it might be her father. Nevermore, she called out to it.

  Later when a raven crashed into my window twice—as if to get my attention, for it wasn’t hurt and then perched on a nearby branch trying to look innocent—I realized that my father was communicating through Stella’s father, who that night sent me a message from him during a streaming show. Hank Azaria was playing a Dick Van Dyke–type character from the 1950s. The scene shifted to black-and-white in honor of the era. After dinner he went to the piano with his cocktail and played a jazz song. His daughter had just gone on her first date and he had interviewed the young man who came to pick her up, and then was melancholy as he wandered over to the piano. His clothes, his manner, the jazzy song—it was all my father-in-law. But the sentiment was from my father. “My heart belongs to Delery,” he sang at the piano with his cocktail. “My Delery lights up the room when she walks in, and makes the world seem right,” he crooned—more Nat King Cole than Don Giovanni—but equally ecstatic, as a light was cast on the stage and the curtain rose and there was everything—OPERA, OYSTERS, THE WORLD.

  Lions And Daughters

  My descent from high society is now complete. Being as my father was my entree to it. Not being August Anhalt’s daughter is a gigantic comedown. At least when I’m in New Orleans. To step so effortlessly into the vanished world, where the curtain rises and the dramas multiply. And yet at every turn to suffer from remorse.

  It’s a problem. It’s a serious problem.

  Sometimes I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with the remorse. Like why did I have remorse, in my saga with Jack. Maybe because when you blame yourself, you’re not the victim.

  On the back flyleaf of my father’s edition of The Odyssey is one of his cryptic notes: “Penelope’s nightingale, p. 256.” No further elaboration was given. So I made my own interpretation. By your sorrows you may be unbroken, but you will always return to them from time to time, wandering amid the ruins.

  The lions snarling at the gate who thwart your purposes and bar your entrance from the desired realm, are they the ills within you? I would soon find out. Soon I met them in person, these lions snarling at the gate, and learned about them at first hand.

  It was Jack’s dream to go on an African safari. This was his long-held dream. So I would have the chance to observe these obtruding lions. And determine the source of their dominance. Unafraid and unrepentant—like Don Giovanni—is that their secret? Confidence, in a word. Not only courage.

  The dream safari was postponed twice over two years for COVID. Finally we embarked on his dream safari. I had some doubts about the dream safari. I had just had hip-replacement surgery. These things wear out—your bones. Jack wanted me to do it so I’d be OK for his beloved African safari.

  Certain other doubts arose about the dream safari. My daughters had political objections. “I don’t want to have a butler in Africa,” said Adelaide. A butler? That it would be luxury while everyone else was starving. Their father argued that the safari business supported jobs and the economy. Secretly I knew luxury wouldn’t be the problem, really. How luxurious could it really be, in the middle of an endless desert or swamp or jungle in the middle of nowhere?

  The problem would be wild animals. Not sure they’ll want me hanging around.

  Including lions. Snarling at the gate.

  September 5, 2023

  Emirates flight to Dubai; passengers predominately Indian and Arab. Watched some Middle Eastern TV shows just to see what they were like. They were moronic melodramas. Bar in back of plane with prayer times listed on TV screens—conflicting message? (Aren’t Muslims not allowed to drink?)

  Changed planes in Dubai for eight-hour flight to Johannes-burg.

  Landed at Johannesburg. The weather in Johannesburg ecstatic. Like California with the big sky and glittering clear air but warm like New Orleans. I always knew Africa would remind me of New Orleans. And that it would seem familiar for that reason. Like being in the cradle. Whether of civilization/humanity, or in the exact resemblance to the overwhelming black population of my childhood and youth there, not sure. My daughters would say I should explore, study, and unlearn certain aspects of these sentiments.

  September 7, 2023

  Flew to Zimbabwe, small plane, bumpy ride. We met our guide who took us directly to Victoria Falls. I was reading a biography of Livingstone, who supposedly discovered it in 1855 while searching for the source of the Nile. It’s one endless series of disasters marching through swamps and jungles with killer ants devouring them in their tents or swarms of spiders covering them at night and getting malaria, dysentery, cerebral parasites, etc.

  You can’t describe Victoria Falls—it’s too intense. Mainly you keep picturing those old movies where the people are innocently paddling down a placid river till too late they realize they’re about to tip over a ten-thousand-foot waterfall . . .

  Our guide took us to our first safari camp, on the Zambezi River. The staff is lined up waving at you when you arrive, like Downton Abbey. They told us all the rules. You’re not allowed to walk around the grounds alone and must always be alert/aware. I had the feeling that my days were numbered. What about snakes? In the movies people who have lived in Africa their entire lives and love snakes get bitten by them and if you don’t have the antidote at hand, it’s all over. I asked them if they had the antidote at hand. They don’t.

  It was five o’clock. They drove us to the river in a jeep. One guide sits on a jump seat that is unfolded far out in front of the vehicle and very high above it. He must be very brave as it does not seem safe. He is the tracker. When you set off he is looking all around intently—like the Indian trackers in James Fenimore Cooper—and has eyes which can see great distances like human binoculars.

  Two minutes after we got in the jeep to go down to the river for this late afternoon cruise, a band of marauding elephants came as if to attack me. They were bachelors, said the guide, young bachelors. They were bullies. The tracker claps his hand repeatedly against the jeep to make them stop and not maraud the vehicle. A bachelor elephant stormed directly towards the jeep, and the jeep retreated backwards. My days were numbered. The bachelor elephant then came around the vehicle to the side where I was sitting and started coming for me personally. This elephant was literally staring straight at me. Should I not be making direct eye contact with this elephant? I wondered. Some antipoachers in the bush beat on drums distracting him or calling him away and eventually he went off in their direction.

  Our guide said he was taking some guests on a river cruise a few days earlier and another tracker called him on the radio to say a lion was killing a baby elephant somewhere nearby. The guests implored him to take them there. Oh Jonathan, they said, we have to see that. So he drove the boat back to land and took them in the jeep to where it was happening. Then while watching it they wept and said, Oh Jonathan, why did you take us here . . .

  When we got back to the camp the staff was lined up again waving at us like Downton Abbey.

  At your bedside in the safari camp inside the mosquito net is a type of horn/alarm—the housekeeper says “in case of emergency” euphemistically and does not specify what kind of emergency, but I think we all know what kind of emergency. My days are numbered.

  September 8, 2023

  Awoke at six a.m. to go on game drive. Our guide pointed out a herd of impalas frolicking across the way.

  “The impalas are celebrating. They’re not sure what they’re celebrating.”

  Monumental mounds of elephant dung in all the roads. The landscape is so dry you think all the trees are dead.

  The bachelor elephants were in a really bad mood yesterday, he told us. Elephants are emotional, they said. But the other animals are quite philosophical. The night before we left my younger daughter Grace had watched a movie called Beast, starring Idris Elba, who takes his daughters on a safari where they are terrorized by a lion run amok. (Just to prepare for the safari by scaring herself out of her wits.) Poachers killed the lion’s family and that is why he ran amok. But in reality, the guide said, the lions see their children and family members killed all the time and they do not really repine. They know it’s just how it is.

  I went to the library and the gym at the camp. I met some other guests. They were funny. They also said the elephants came on their patio last evening and ate their fence. Their camp was on the river. I walked back to my villa alone and terrified since the elephants like to come down to the river; you can see the frequent evidence of their presence on this path that I was on. I wondered what actually to do if I encountered a belligerent bachelor elephant alone on my walk. Later I asked our guide. He said: Run.

  Dinner in the bush with lights strung up at tables among the other guests. Our tent manager said if I encountered an angry elephant or other wild animal on the path at night to remain perfectly still. He encountered a lion on the path one night and knelt down to its eye level while emanating a mystical and somehow supplicating attitude of equality until the lion walked away.

  September 9, 2023

  Starting to break down. The old bones, the aging brain, the lions in the path.

  I knew this trip was not for the faint of heart or the old.

  We left Zimbabwe.

  Sign at airport: WARNING: PERSONS MAKING INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS, HIJACKING, CARRYING WEAPONS OR EXPLOSIVES MAY BE PROSECUTED.

  Younger daughter Grace finally slept eight hours, though woke up at five a.m. “So I took a malaria pill and went back to sleep,” she said. I’m not sure that’s the way you’re supposed to take the malaria pills. It’s not like you just pop them at random times. Plus on the bottle it says to take them with large amounts of food.

  The hotter it gets, the more turbulent is flying, and it was ninety-five degrees. We were on a tiny propeller plane. We were not allowed to bring regular suitcases because the planes are so small. We also had to put our carry-on items in the hold, so I fished out my pillbox and clutched it tightly in my hand, in case the need arose.