Liz Moore - The Unseen World

He did not ask if he could come in; he walked forward and closed the door behind him with a foot.

Her heart was pounding with an uncomfortable force. It thudded against her breastbone so quickly and powerfully that she wondered if it was visible to William, through her sweater, even in the dark room. She put her right hand to it instinctively, as if she were reciting a pledge.

William said nothing for a moment, only looked at her. There was a slight sway in his stance that she told herself must be drunkenness, though she only knew this from movies. His smell reached her suddenly: something bitter and woodsy and acrid, alcohol and smoke.

“I thought you might be here,” he said. “I saw your light.”

Her voice caught in her throat.

“Do you mind if I come in for a second?” he asked, which did not make sense. He was already in. Still, she shook her head no.

He took two steps forward and looked around the kitchen. Had he ever been inside David’s house before? She couldn’t remember; maybe when she was very small.

“You come here a lot,” said William. “I’ve seen you walking here.”

“Not a lot,” said Ada, defensively.

William shrugged. “It’s cool,” he said.

“Where’s Melanie?” asked Ada.

“She had to get home,” he said.

He walked out of the kitchen then and into the dining room. “Can you show me around?” he asked her. Her eyes had adjusted; she could see everything fairly well, though the only light came in from the streetlamps outside. So she did: she took him down the hallway, in silence, speaking only the names of the rooms. And then she walked up the stairs with him, and named those rooms as well. Her room was last, and she paused in the hallway, embarrassed suddenly. It was both childish and old-fashioned, her room: her austere little bed with its ancient comforter; her bedside lamp, which was shaped like an apple tree, with little Hummel figurines running round and around its base. The furniture was formal and strange, nothing like the modern furniture that Liston had bought for her children, and that Ada, at that time, preferred.

“Is this your room?” asked William, and Ada nodded.

He nudged open the door and made a slow circle around the little room. His head was inches from the ceiling; he was too large for the space. She stood in the threshold. The single lamp cast a tall shadow of William that moved along the walls as he paced. He ended at the bed and sat down, perched on the edge of it, his long legs bent deeply at the knee to accommodate its lowness. He put his elbows on his thighs and gazed down at the floor.

He looked very old to her suddenly: a man. Much more grown-up than she was. Ada marveled that Melanie was his girlfriend. How courageous she was, to be with someone William’s age. She glanced at him and then away. He was even more handsome than she had remembered. Everything about him was sculpted finely and perfectly, as if designed in advance by an architect: much different, she thought, than her own flawed, imprecise features. She would have changed nothing about him. He was finished.

He unzipped his coat halfway and then took a bottle out from inside it. It was tall and rectangular and the label was facing away from her. A clear liquid occupied the bottom third. He drank from it and then held it out to her.

She did not know which was worse: to say yes or no. This was an opportunity he was giving her. To say no would have cemented her forever, she thought, as an outsider. She couldn’t say no. But could she say yes, and have it seem natural? Lacking any alternative, it was a chance she had to take. Besides, she had had alcohol before: David had given her wine, she reminded herself, and he always let her take sips of the cocktails the two of them made for guests.

Ada walked toward him and took the bottle. She did as he had done: she held it to her lips and took a healthy swig, about as much as she might have taken from a gin and tonic. But this was different, and it burned painfully in her esophagus and settled roughly into her stomach. She immediately felt her joints and muscles loosen. She sat down next to William on the bed.

“Thanks for taking care of Matty,” said William. “I know you help him with his homework and stuff. So thanks.”

“I like it,” said Ada.

“He loves you,” said William. “He always asks me stuff about you. Since our dad’s gone,” he said, but he stopped halfway through his sentence, and did not pick it up again. He drank.

Ada nodded. She noticed a slight elision between his words, a blending-together, final consonants attaching themselves to succeeding vowels. She closed her eyes briefly, letting what he had said echo in her mind, noting the particulars of his accent, like Liston’s, and his intonation. And that sentence: He loves you .

William tipped the bottle back again, showing his white teeth briefly when he was done, running a hand through the light hair that had fallen down across his brow. Then he handed it to her. She did the same. It was gin: she saw the label.

“Bob Conley told me he saw you in the Woods,” said William.

Ada looked at him.

“He said you were hiding behind a tree,” he said. A slight smile was coming across his face, now, and Ada dropped her shoulders in embarrassment. So this was why he was here: to make fun of her.

“Were you spying on me?” he asked her.

Ada briefly considered the idea of denying it all. I’ve been here the whole night , she could say. She could look at him like he was crazy. But in the corner of the room something caught her eye: it was a pile on the floor of her parka and hat and gloves. This, combined with Bob Conley’s testimony, was probably too much evidence to deny.

“I was just going for a walk,” Ada said. “I didn’t know you guys were there.”

He smiled briefly, looked away.

He took another sip. He handed her the bottle. She took another sip.

“Are you gonna tell my mom?” he asked her, with a tone in his voice that sounded like teasing. “I know you guys are pals.”

Ungracefully, he unzipped his jacket the rest of the way and tried to extract himself from it. His wrists were stuck; his hands weren’t working. Ada reached out and held a wristband in place while he wrenched his arm out of it. He thanked her politely.

Then he said, “You used to spy on us before you lived at our house.”

Ada looked at him.

“I saw you,” said William. “Once or twice, in our backyard.”

Ada shook her head. A lump had started in her throat and she willed it backward, swallowing hard. It seemed unfair, somehow, that he had seen her, but she was too tired to deny anything. The gin had loosened her mind and her body and a dull ache had begun to move through her. She was hungry and cold and alone.

“What were you doing back there?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” said Ada. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t tell him that she dreamed about him every night: that it was William she had sought when she made those lonely nighttime walks. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he had a sense that everyone, everywhere, loved and desired him. Did people like William Liston know this? They must, she thought.

They said nothing for a while. They drank again. Normally the silence would have bothered her, but it felt comfortable to her, somehow. She smiled to herself. Why did she worry so much? she wondered. She could say anything she wanted.

“You all seemed so normal. I wanted to see what it would be like to have a normal family,” she said.

He laughed. “Normal,” he said. “Nobody’s normal. We’re probably, like, the weirdest family there is. I guess you know that by now.”

“Except for my family,” Ada said. “We’re weirder. I’m the weirdest,” she said. But there was too much truth to it, and she wished immediately that she had not said it. Besides, the word family had never seemed to apply to her and David. They were not a family; they were a pair. And now they weren’t even that.