“Are you Isaac Adelstein?” I ask after a few moments of awkwardness.
“Yes.” He smiles curiously. “May I help you, son?”
“I–I'm here to see your son.”
“My son.”
“Yes, your son.” He is awaiting clarification. “Your son…Mordecai.”
“Mordecai,” he responds plainly. There is a certain patience in his voice, that slow determination that one has come to expect from older European men of the Greatest Generation — at least from those still lucid. “Come in, come in,” he says in a suddenly emphatic tone. The door opens wide.
I enter into his den, a warm space with abundant light. A piece in the style of Pollack catches my attention, as does a bookshelf that comprises an entire wall. The former is above the mantel; the latter is opposite the windows that look onto the street. He directs me to a chair as he walks to a desk that contains a lamp, an open book, and a legal pad. “You were a friend of his?” he asks as he closes the book and turns off the lamp. “You seem a bit young,” he adds.
“No, I've never met him,” I respond. “I would like to. That's what this is all about.”
He nods. I cannot see his expression because he begins looking through a vinyl collection that sits in a hollowed-out credenza adjacent to the bookshelf. “And by whom have you been sent?” he asks.
“No one. I'm here because I believe your son to be a famous artist.”
He laughs quietly as he pulls an album from the collection. “So you have come in search of Coprolalia, I presume.”
I return the quiet laugh. “Well…yes. I take it I'm not the first.”
“You're the first one to come to me.” I want to respond with something, but he begins anew before I have the opportunity with, “Sit down, please….” He turns to me with a raised brow. “My, you are a quiet one. Have you ever considered becoming an assassin? Perhaps a samurai?” He smiles again. He then pulls the needle before the last notes of the piece are played, removes the record from the turntable, places it into its jacket, and then reinserts the album back into the collection. “This is…this is never easy to say,” as he cuts the power of the player. He stares to the turntable as it loses speed: “I've grappled with it for nearly two months now.” He then turns, slowly, and begins in my direction. He sits upon a small sofa opposite me. A coffee table separates us. “Mordecai passed in April,” he says stoically. “He died in a car accident.”
The moment is suspended like a photographed gymnast. She strikes the trampoline, it recoils, and then shoots her into the air. In the photograph she remains meters above the trampoline, above the mats that have been carefully placed in strategic locations should the worst happen. She is the focal point, both of the photographer and the spectators (themselves just blurs and amorphous components of the necessarily amorphous crowd). It is irrelevant whether she is ascending, descending, at the apex of her parabola. It doesn't matter because we all assume that she will once again come back to the Earth.
“I'm so….”
He only raises his hand.
“I–I'm sorry I intruded, sir; I….” as I stand. “Really…I should be…I should be going. I didn't mean — I didn't mean to intrude like this.”
“You're not intruding. I invited you into this house,” he responds patiently. “Please. Sit back down.”
“How did it,” as I fall into the chair with a resounding fufseef.
“He was waiting for a light,” slowly. He is looking to the table with his fist on his chin, his elbow on the arm of the sofa. He has clearly gone over this countless times. “It was late. He was always coming back late. If you're familiar with his artwork and where it appeared, then I assume you know this much.” He pauses. “He was waiting for the light at the corner of Union and Broadway. A drunk driver rear-ended him. The force of the impact pushed his car into the intersection.” He licks the undersides of his lips, bites his lower lip, and then sighs. “He was pronounced D.O.A. at the hospital, so I know he did not suffer. I am grateful for this much.”
“Grateful? How—” I take a deep breath. “Again, I'm sorry to hear about your loss.”
“Would you like anything?” he asks. “I recently put a pot of coffee on.”
“Coffee? You just told me that your son died,” in a sheepish rage. “And now you're offering me coffee?”
He nods patiently and looks to me with what feels like pity. “One can not stay forever in mourning,” as stoic as Seneca. I suddenly understand the metaphors that are conveyed by Superman's powerful eyes. “I have no reservations about expressing my emotions, and I have worked to do so as constructively as I can. But I do not see any purpose in lamenting events that I cannot alter. Am I in pain? Of course. What kind of man would not be devastated?” His tone becomes less aggressive: “But I do not let the pain, the grief, the rage, consume me.” He looks to the floor. He remains in this position for some time. “Am I to seek vengeance due to the fate of my son?”
“…”
“This is not a rhetorical question. Would this serve any purpose?”
“No.”
“Then why should I act like a man plotting his revenge?”
“What do you mean?”
“I speak of brooding. One broods because one feels powerless. He imagines having the power to modify the events that have precipitated his misery. But some things cannot be changed. I am not an idle dreamer, especially when such dreams can only end in fruitless rancor. This is how Nazis are born.” He shakes his head. “Why should I brood over my loss, as though there is some retribution that I will receive? There is no answer. There is no retribution when one is dealing with lives. One cannot be exchanged for another.” He clears his throat. “Now, again, would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black, no sugar.”
“Ah,” with a smile or a wince, I can’t really tell, “A real coffee drinker.”
He walks away, into the kitchen with its hideous wallpaper and avocado tiling. There are flowers on some of the tiles, but it is impossible to discern the species at this distance. There is no television in the room in which I find myself, nor is there anything that could be called digital. A map of the world hangs opposite the mantel. The original was created in MDCXXV. There are hydras as large as islands threatening commerce and discovery. An old lamp and a framed photograph of the Adelstein family sit upon a small end table. There are three boys and a girl. Mr. Adelstein looks to be in his early-forties — robust, healthy, and mustached. His wife is probably only twenty-five. She is a plain woman, the type of person whom you walk past on the street several times a day without seeing. Two of the boys are in their late-teens. Both are somewhat gangly and clearly at home in silence. Their hair and sweaters fix the photograph's date in the early-eighties. The girl and the other boy, whom I assume to be Mordecai, are no older than seven or eight. She is lightly freckled with flaxen hair. Mordecai's ears protrude from his head as if they are being tugged by invisible hands. His face resembles his father's more than his mother's. Against the wall, behind this portrait, sits a framed Whistler print from the Frick Collection.