Continued from High School
Mom’s fantasy world hit a brick wall sometime after 1931. She and her parents were gathered at the breakfast table waiting—waiting for Adolph to come down from his room. From behind his newspaper, Papa asked, “Where is Adolph?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t seen or heard from him this morning,” Norah replied as she tipped the silver teapot toward her empty china cup.
Herman, dropped his right hand to peer around the paper at Yry, “Why don’t you run upstairs and knock on Adolph’s door. Tell him breakfast is on the table. We’re waiting.”
Sighing…she reluctantly pushed back her chair and took the stairs two at a time, feeling her mother’s pursed-lips gaze focused on her back. She raised her hand to knock on Adolph’s door but hesitated. What was that feeling? It was barely perceptible, unidentifiable, but lodged darkly between her stomach and her heart. Shaking herself out of a stupor, she gently rapped on the door. “Dolphi? We’re waiting for you to join us.” No answer. Another gentle knock. “Uncle Adolph, Papa’s getting grouchy. You know how he is when he gets hungry.” Still no answer. “Adolph? . . . Dolphi? Are you there?”
Cautiously she tested the door. It swung open to reveal a chaotic sitting room with an empty liquor bottle akimbo on the floor, papers scattered as if blown by a fan. Her eyes skimmed the open bedroom. Soft morning sunlight filtered through sheer curtains to reveal a bed made, but disheveled. The bathroom door was closed. With a knot tightening in her abdomen she tapped gently on the bathroom door. Silence. She knocked again and ever so gently jiggled the doorknob. “Uncle Adolph? Are you in there? Are you okay?” The bathroom door was locked.
With a hasty about-face, she raced to the dining room and breathlessly reported what she had not found.
“Cyril, would you come here?” Norah commanded.
The butler strode into the dining room as Herman rose from the table and said, “Something’s wrong upstairs.” The two men hurried up the stairs while Norah and Yry stared at each other over the every day china place settings. Their eyes widened at a crashing noise coming from upstairs, followed by a gasping duet.
Adolph was fully submerged in the claw-footed tub filled with once-steaming, now tepid, water. Pandemonium ensued: phone calls, strangers in and out of the house, ambulance, police officers, depositions, reporters. The drowning was ruled accidental. Lulled by the hot water, Adolph lost consciousness and slid under water. But Yry never bought that. With the settling of his “estate,” came the truth about Adolph Levi. The man her father had trusted as a brother was an almost-clever charlatan.
Oh my.. a sense of foreboding often proves to be ‘true’ — what a difficult place to be – to knock or not to knock.. to open the door or not..
your story brought back memories of when a family friend died in our home. i was quite young but remember so well the random detais…
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I’m sure something like that would make a huge impact on a child. Wonderful, as always, to hear from you!
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What an interesting story. Looking forward to the next chapter and to finding out who the charlatan was and why he was there.
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Tis a mystery….;-)
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If your purpose is to keep me on the edge of my seat till the next installment, worrying what happened to Adolph, you have me!
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If only I could keep you there! 😉
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Well written, Linda. We sensed the worst as the paragraphs unfolded.
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Thanks Keith. The story needed a little oomph.
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Adolf is an enigma. I have never been able to understand how naive our grandfather was about some things. I suppose he was too busy with his business. The firm’s lawyer thought Adolf was a spy for the Nazis. He had traveled to Japan. I still have his Hari Kiri knife.
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Perhaps Yry came by her naiveté quite honestly. We have all been blindsided by reality–at least most of us have. That is one of the things that unites humanity and gives us the ability to forgive others for our perceptions of their transgressions. I would love to know the real backstory between Adolph and Herman. It is funny, if reflecting on all these things that happened before I entered this world, I’ve often wondered about Herman’s travels. Today that jetsetting would not seem at all unusual. But in the day, for him to be absent from his family for so long…during such times…one could weave an interesting story.
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Herman was an international businessman, I’m married to one…it isn’t jet setting, it is work and in those days travel took much longer, ten days on a boat to get to Europe, then another ten back!! I have tons of postcards fro some of those trips, nothing sinister about them. In 1947 or so he went to Rio, imagine how long that trip took by boat.
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If sinister existed, we wouldn’t see it. I’m not necessarily saying anything sinister was going on. But all that travel__business travel, fluency in language, brilliance….those are the seeds that a half way good imagination could farm into quite some intrigue. Ah be still my conspiracy theorists! Commercial jet liners didn’t even exist at that time, hence the word is used facetiously.
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And mother would always tell me about how Adolf would catch her in darkened hallways and pull her arm behind her back and pinch her. She truly hated him…I’ve always wondered what else went on with him.
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