Liz Moore - The Unseen World

“Maybe we can come over sometime,” said Theresa Fitzharris, and Ada said she would have to ask Liston — calling her, awkwardly, Diana .

By the time lunch was over, Ada had realized the gravity of her error. She had exchanged her knowledge of William for a place as an insider, and in doing so she had falsely represented her relationship with him. Furthermore, she had given Melanie McCarthy information that she could use to get closer to him — the fact, for example, that he went to a nearby baseball field after school many afternoons with his friends to sit aimlessly in a circle around home plate; the fact that he had a weekend job at a nearby video store. Would this get back to him somehow? If they ever came over, would they expect Ada to introduce them to William, to watch television with him on the couch? She couldn’t say. Lisa Grady watched her with interest, knowing the depth of her lie, wondering, alongside Ada, what she would do next.

After school that day, Ada took the bus to St. Andrew’s as usual, to see David. She had begun doing her homework while she was there, since he mainly did not have much to say. She would spread her books out on his bed while he sat in his blue corduroy armchair, looking out the window, and she would chatter to him with false cheer about what she was learning.

As she walked from the bus stop, she stopped to pick up a particularly beautiful leaf from the grounds. She had been doing this each day that she visited. David took them from her, always, and contemplated them for a while, turning them over and over while he looked, tracing their veins with a finger. Usually he said nothing in response. Perhaps a quarter of the time, now, he produced the correct word for the object in his hands. The rest of the time he changed the subject, or continued a conversation he had been having in his mind. She opened the window whenever she could, which was whenever David’s roommate was out, to let in the crisp air. Sometimes she walked with him on the meager grounds of the place, although he had lately seemed less and less interested in doing so.

That afternoon, when Ada arrived, David’s roommate Paul was missing from the room, and a man in a too-bright shirt and pleated, baggy pants was sitting with David when she arrived. He was perched on the edge of David’s bed familiarly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His tie hung down between his legs. He was saying something—“Do you understand, Mr. Sibelius?”—when Ada walked in, and she dropped her blue backpack, the one that Liston had given her, heavily on the floor.

“You must be Ada,” said the man, standing up quickly from the bed. “I’m Ron Loughner.” He had a high, hoarse Boston accent and wore cuff links in his polyester oxford. He was balding ungracefully, his hair too long in places, an attempt to conceal his scalp. He did not look unkind, just uncomfortable. He came over and offered his hand to Ada, as if he expected her to know him, and she looked at it carefully before shaking it. David, in his armchair, didn’t turn around.

“I guess someone’s told you about me?” said Ron Loughner, and Ada shook her head.

“Hmmmmm,” he said. He put his hand on his face as if puzzled. “Well, your friend Diana Liston hired me, since she’s the executor of his estate. We’re in the early stages,” he said, and then he trailed off, looking suddenly sorry, noting her age, not wanting to continue.

“Early stages of what?” asked Ada.

“I think maybe you should talk to Ms. Liston,” said Loughner. Ada looked at him sharply. Already her heart was beginning to pump more quickly, sending an angry rush of blood to her face, swelling her veins. She did not like the feeling of not knowing something, when it came to David. It was not right of Liston to leave her out.

Impulsively, she walked around to the front of David’s armchair to see his face.

He said nothing to her. He looked, Ada thought, stormy. His brow was lowered; he frowned. His face had not been shaved yet, and a gray stubble was speckling his jaw. He was wearing a light blue cardigan that he never would have chosen for himself; it was October, and getting colder. Perhaps it was a donated sweater that the Carmelite Sisters had received from outside. The thought shamed her. She made a note to ask Liston if the two of them could buy him a few warmer things.

“Hi, David,” she said.

“No,” he said, his head back in his chair, looking at her sideways.

“What were you just talking about?” she asked him, loudly, so that Ron Loughner could hear. She shocked herself. Her anger made her bold.

In the background, she could see Loughner shifting.

“Nothing,” said David.

“Do you know him?” Ada asked him, pointing to Loughner.

“No, I don’t know him,” said David.

“Do you know me?” she asked. It had been more than a month since he had called her Ada without prompting.

“Yes, I know you,” he said, nodding.

“What’s my name?”

And he lifted a hand from the armrest, let it hover there, then dropped it down again, a needle on a record.

Ron Loughner took that opportunity to tell her that he really had to go, and he raised a hand to her in parting.

“Wait,” said Ada, “can you tell me anything? Just tell me what you were talking about,” she said bravely.

“You’d better talk to Ms. Liston,” he said again, and smiled tightly. He left the room, a faint scent of cologne trailing behind him.

David sat up slightly in his chair and turned around to see Loughner go. Then he looked at Ada.

“Bad,” he said, directing a thumb over his shoulder at where Loughner had been before.

“Who was that? What was he doing here?” Ada asked, but he shook his head.

“Bad,” he said again. He raised and lowered his eyebrows, and then his shoulders.

She did not stay with him any longer. She left him. And on the bus ride home she planned how she would confront Liston. This was the word — a confrontation —that echoed through her mind on the bus ride home, still bruised by the idea of her being closed out of some important decision. She had never confronted anyone before, but she was very upset. Until that afternoon, she had believed herself to be in charge of David’s welfare in some essential way: his protector, his overseer, his sentinel. To be left out of any discussion or negotiation when it came to his well-being infuriated her. To be treated like a child. Her face and her ears were hot with the injustice of it all.

But when she found Liston at the kitchen table, working out some problem on her yellow legal pad, Ada discovered that her voice had decided to fail her. Gone was the fury that had pumped through her at St. Andrew’s and on the bus ride home. Liston looked old to her, and she was pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers as if willing her brain to work.

“Hi, baby,” she said, when Ada walked in. “How’s David today?”

“He’s okay,” said Ada quietly.

And then she paused.

“Are you all right?” asked Liston.

“Who’s Ron Loughner?” Ada asked her.

Liston exhaled.

“He was supposed to meet with David this morning,” said Liston. “Was he still there when you got there?”

Ada nodded somberly, reveling slightly in her righteousness, waiting for an explanation, waiting for some sort of apology from Liston.

“He must have been late,” she said. Ada crossed her arms.

Liston put her pen down and looked at Ada steadily, assessing something. Then she nodded to herself. “Right,” she said, as if she had finally come to a decision.

“Ada, we have some reason to believe that David might not be who he has always said he is,” Liston said, carefully. And she stood up from her chair and crossed the room, extending both hands, at the same time that Ada sat down, hard, in her chair.