Liz Moore - The Unseen World

It was colder out that week than it had been, and the weather reminded her often of David, whose favorite season was approaching. She and her classmates walked together, the other girls laughing at this or that, impersonating their teachers — a favorite pastime — or other children in their grade. At times they shrieked so loudly that it stopped Ada’s heart. She could not get used to this fact about girls her own age: their volume, their exuberance, the outlandishness of their humor; the way they invented wild, improbable scenarios in their heads and then speculated about enacting them; the silliness of them; the sheer joyful foolishness, except when they were around boys. When they were around boys they reduced themselves, their voices, their bodies, made them smaller, making way for the male antics that occupied a place of precedence in the center of any room. Ada could barely keep up with their swinging, shifting moods. They seemed to her like birds in flight, like starlings, changing direction with such collective unspoken force that it seemed as if they shared a central root system, a pine barren joined together invisibly beneath the earth.

Ada did not know where any of them lived. She had never been to their homes, but she had heard, vaguely, that Melanie and Theresa lived on the same block, a nice one near the school, with well-kept houses. She began to worry, therefore, when they continued to walk with Ada past where she thought they might have turned off. At some point her three companions lapsed into first silence, then whispers. They walked a step behind her. Ada knew then — had known, in a way, since they left the school — that their plan was to meet William by shadowing her home, but she was uncertain how to stop it. She checked her watch. It was nearly 5:00; William wouldn’t be home yet, anyway. He rarely came home before seven or eight in the evening. This knowledge made her smug. She would say nothing, she decided; she would not try to stop them coming with her, only feign ignorance about their intentions when they all arrived at Liston’s house together.

Gregory was in the front yard when she arrived, and at the sight of the four of them he darted quickly onto the porch and then into the house. Ada wondered briefly whether he thought about Melanie McCarthy the way she thought about William Liston, and decided that the answer was probably yes.

“Hey, Gregory,” Theresa called after him, a singsong tone in her voice that Ada recognized as mocking in some way.

There was a pause.

“This is me,” she said then, turning to face them at last.

The three of them stood there silently, exchanging glances out of the corners of their eyes for a pause, until Theresa, the bravest, finally spoke up.

“Can we come in?” she asked.

Ada was about to tell her something — that Matty was sick, that Liston needed quiet for her work — when Liston herself came out onto the porch, startling her. She was not normally home so early.

“Hi, girls!” she said brightly. “Ada, are these your friends?”

Ada could see a look in her eyes that signified to her profound happiness, and surprise, that Ada was standing there in a group of such pretty, normal-looking peers. And, perhaps, the recognition of an opening — a new point of entry, a way to thaw the coldness that Ada had been directing at her for weeks.

Theresa nodded. “Hi, Miz Liston,” she said.

Liston descended from the porch and walked toward them on the little brick path to the sidewalk. The lawn had not been mowed in quite some time. Liston was wearing a sort of windbreaker-suit, the kind she wore whenever she was not at the lab: shiny, baggy, hot-pink pants with a matching zip-up jacket. Her hair was large that day: she had just gotten it permed. In retrospect, the outfit was absurd; and yet, later, Ada could recall feeling, against her will, grateful for Liston. For her normalcy, for the fact that she looked, presumably, like all of their mothers. The fact that she was the same age, had the same accent. She was nothing like David, whose shabby clothes and long, quick stride, whose obliviousness to those around him, had caused Ada such shame the day he came to meet her after school. Liston in her pink tracksuit made her feel, for the first time in her life, as if she belonged.

She asked for all of their names and then asked Janice Davies if her mother wasn’t Nancy Davies, who used to be Nancy Hill?

Janice nodded, and it was then that Liston put her hands together as if she had just come up with an idea.

“Can you stay for dinner, girls?” she asked them all, and they looked at each other, and then at Ada. “I can cook, for once,” said Liston, beaming at Ada, telling Ada with her expression that she was proud of her, that she was on her side. It was clear to Ada that Liston thought she was doing her a favor; that this was part of Liston’s ongoing plan to win back Ada’s trust.

While the girls called their mothers, Ada and Liston stood in the kitchen together.

“They seem nice,” said Liston, hopefully. Ada was alert now, listening for other sounds in the house. She wanted to ask Liston who else was home, but she couldn’t think of a way to; instead, she excused herself to go upstairs briefly, and sighed in relief when she passed William’s room and found it empty, the door ajar.

They made it all the way through dinner without William returning. Liston made spaghetti from a box and tomato sauce from a jar, and heated up some frozen broccoli florets she found at the back of her freezer. Matty ate it all enthusiastically, exclaiming sweetly that he thought it was delicious. (He may have; he may also have been happy to have his mother cook anything at all.) Gregory ate quietly at the table, avoiding eye contact with everyone — especially, thought Ada, Melanie McCarthy.

Liston, meanwhile, bonded instantly with all three girls, talking to them about their parents, their neighborhood, their houses, their siblings. They were talkative and eager with her, polite but outspoken. They had an easy way with Liston that made her jealous. They teased her, a bit, and Liston howled with laughter in response. These, Ada thought, were girls that reminded Liston of her own daughter; they were not serious like Ada, not quiet and severe.

“Let’s see what I can find for dessert,” said Liston. “Come help me, Ada.” Ada followed Liston into the kitchen, where Liston produced from her freezer a half-empty gallon of slightly frost-burned Neapolitan ice cream and asked Ada to get out some bowls and spoons.

“They seem like such nice girls,” said Liston, smiling at her. “You know you can invite them over anytime, baby.”

Ada wanted to tell Liston what she knew to be true: that these girls were not here for Ada, not really; that their aim was higher. Instead, she said thank you.

At 8:00 in the evening, Ada checked her watch and began to worry about William’s return. Liston and the other girls were still talking quickly and loudly; the girls were divulging what they knew about the children of Liston’s acquaintances in the neighborhood. “I always knew he’d turn out to be a bad apple,” said Liston, or “Sounds like her mother.” Abruptly, Ada stood up from the table. They looked at her.

“I guess it is that time,” said Liston, after a pause.

She hugged the girls goodbye, and Ada walked with them out onto the porch, and it was then — of course it was then — that she saw William Liston’s long ambling body come striding up the street in the early dark.

If she had been by herself she would have turned back inside and gone quickly into another room. That was what she normally did. But now she couldn’t, because all four of them together had seen him. Theresa stuck an elbow into Melanie’s ribs, and Melanie lurched to the side.