When he died, their father had two requests. The first was easy: Visit the gravesite once a month and recite the Mourner’s Kaddish. Of course, that job would fall to Gail. Their mother had passed away six years earlier and Daniel lived in Los Angeles now. He sent her pictures of fragile-looking palm trees and coffee puffed with foam. As if she couldn’t get a caramel frappuccino on Long Island. It tasted better there, he insisted. They used special beans, imported from Venezuela. “People are fleeing Venezuela,” she reminded him. “There are six million refugees who left to escape violence and hunger. It’s immoral to consume anything made in that country.” But he had already stopped listening.
She and her father visited Daniel twice a year – for his birthday in June, and over a long weekend in August. It was always too hot. They had to go out at seven a.m. and do whatever Daniel had planned before waves of heat began to squeeze them, the air so thick with smog it made her feel like she was about to choke. The streets smelled of urine and everything was overpriced. Daniel minimized these concerns. He worked in video production for an advertising firm and could not be convinced that LA was anything less than a celebrity-dipped slice of heaven.
At the funeral, he muted his cell phone as the rabbi required, but kept glancing at it through the service, which annoyed Gail. “What is so important?” she hissed under her breath. “We’re at...
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