Liz Moore - The Unseen World

“What sort of place is it,” David was saying. “And tell me the name again.”

“St. Andrew’s Manor,” said Ada, hoping that the sound of the name would please him— manor being a word that, she imagined, might have similar connotations for him as it did for her. Of dignity, of prestige, of gray impressive stone.

But what he said was, “Oh, of all the things,” and she wondered if this was a specific response to the name, or simply an arbitrary outburst, evidence of the way his temper had been flaring recently at odd, unpredictable moments.

Phrases like that one had become a catch-all for him, when he couldn’t muster a more appropriate response. For heaven’s sake. Good heavens. I’ll be damned . It reminded her of the way ELIXIR had been given a set of responses to use when nothing else was available. David reverted to them frequently by then, and when he uttered them she read in his eyes a certain disappointment that he could not conjure up a more precise choice of words, volley quickly back the best response. Finding the mot juste had been a skill on which he had prided himself for as long as Ada could remember. Before the illness, he had loathed puns and loved cleverness in equal measure. Words, to David, were nearly mathematical: there was very clearly a correct one for every slot in every sentence. When he was at his sharpest he rolled them into place like a putter on a green. Now a good day meant that he could come up with a dozen in a row that were appropriate to the situation at hand.

In the front seat, Liston was making small talk. She feigned cheerfulness for David’s sake, to keep him settled, but she glanced at Ada in the rearview mirror every few moments. And Ada looked out the window. Liston had told her, again and again, that this was the best thing for David, that he couldn’t be cared for safely at home, not anymore; but since the decision had been made for him to go to St. Andrew’s, Ada had been envisioning, almost obsessively, other lives, other plans, for herself and her father.

She daydreamed often about running away with him, to New York City, to a different country, to the cabin in the woods of the Adirondacks that David had rented for years. (Conveniently, these daydreams simultaneously allowed her to envision leaving behind her education at Queen of Angels, as well.) And when she was not daydreaming, she was paying extra attention to David’s mannerisms, his appearance, his gait. She wanted to memorize them. With the little camera she rarely used, she had recently been taking photographs of him, surreptitiously, in different places in the house. Later, these would look to her like pictures of a ghost. In them, he was expressionless. Gone were David’s funny, theatrical, changing features; in their place was the lion face she had read about in articles, a term that frightened her with its implication of cruelty, its implication that the bearer of such a countenance might suddenly eat her alive. Instead she tried to think of David’s face as a doll’s face. A still and quiet mask.

Liston turned right at a sign that bore the name of the facility in an even font that reminded her of the lettering on banks: ST. ANDREW’S MANOR: EST. 1951. At the top of a small hill sat several low brick buildings in the shape of a U. Liston pulled her car into the parking lot, and Ada saw the fingers of David’s left hand curl into a fist. She leaned forward to take in the view. Two old women, much older than David, sat in wheelchairs on the paved driveway that abutted the front entrance. They were slumped in their chairs. One seemed asleep, her head lolling forward on her chest. The other moved her feet back and forth slowly, as if trying to get up and walk.

The three of them got out of the car, David only after Liston’s prompting. He was relatively able-bodied, still, and he got up quickly from his seat and closed the door behind him in one easy motion.

There was a plaque to the right of the white front door that identified Andrew as the patron saint of fishermen, and once Ada got inside she saw why the place was named for him: the large rear windows of the lobby looked east to the harbor some distance away, visible from the building only by virtue of the elevation of its plot of land. Still, Ada could see boats there, sailing inland and out, and it was a sunny day, which made everything seem a little less dismal. The rest of the lobby was drab and beige, with floral patterns on the pillows, with arrangements of armchairs and tables and books she was certain no one ever looked at, and two fireplaces that looked similarly untouched. They might not even work, she thought, and she wished that they did: David’s love of fireplaces was well known to everyone who knew him.

David stood and looked at the ocean while Liston navigated the front desk. Ada was grateful to her for doing this so that she didn’t have to. She had a speech prepared to make to the administration and staff about David’s needs and concerns, but it had gone out of her head, and she stood with David and stared. In a moment of self-awareness, she closed her jaw. He seemed too young to be in this place, she thought. Who would he talk to? She vowed to visit him every day, taking two buses from Dorchester to Quincy.

After a moment two administrators emerged from a hallway, one a Carmelite nun.

“How are you, Sister?” said Liston cheerily. It was clear from the nun’s response that she remembered Liston from her mother’s time in residence. As she introduced herself, Ada was uncertain about whether to shake her hand. She had not shaken the hands of any of the nuns who taught her, upon meeting them. But this one offered hers to Ada kindly, and she took it very gently, ignoring the admonitions David had always given her about being firm and businesslike when she gripped anybody’s hand in greeting. She was younger than Ada had thought most nuns to be — she must have been very young indeed the last time Liston had seen her — and she said her name was Sister Katherine. The other administrator was Patrick Rowan, a middle-aged man with stale breath and a wide blue tie. Ada immediately disliked him for the way he took David’s hand with one of his and put an arm behind David’s back. As if David were incapable of walking. As if he needed anyone else to navigate him in this way. David, too, recoiled.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said David. “What a production.” And Ada felt warm with satisfaction that he had produced such an appropriate response.

Their little group walked down the hallway toward a wing called the Mount Carmel Center for Memory Care, and stopped outside a set of double doors. Patrick Rowan punched in a code and the doors swung open. As Ada walked through them she turned back over her shoulder and noticed an identical keypad on the opposite side. Clearly, there was no leaving this wing without the password.

After several turns that left her feeling disoriented, she came to David’s room. On the wall outside it was a placard with two paper cards slid into it: one that said Mr. David Sibelius — Doctor , Ada thought to herself, not Mister —and one that said Mr. John Gainer . Inside, she saw that David’s roommate was ancient: to her he looked a hundred or more, though later, as an adult, she realized he had probably been closer to eighty-five. He said nothing to them as they entered. He was a small man, sitting in a recliner that cradled him like a hammock, his back bowed, his little neat feet sticking up at the end, an enormous magnifying glass in one hand, looking through it at a book that he did not lower as their party of five entered the room.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Gainer,” said Patrick Rowan loudly. And then he turned to Ada and said, in a normal voice, “Mr. Gainer can’t hear much.”