Liz Moore - The Unseen World

For a time he believed Susan would come back. He never saw her body. He had asked to see it, wanting to say goodbye. Only Catholics viewed their dead, said his father, and certainly they were not that. He had feverish dreams in which she came to him, shrieking in pain, bleeding from every orifice. He had tender dreams in which she put a steady hand on his head, as if blessing him, and in those dreams he felt the presence of God more clearly than he ever had in his father’s church.

Her absence made it clear to him that she had been the only tolerable part of his existence. She had teased him warmly, inventively; she had let him know that fun and lightness existed in the world. She had sheltered him from the worst of their father’s rages. She had pushed an older boy, once, for calling him a bad word: pushed him so hard that the boy had taken two long steps backward, saying, Whoa, whoa . She had been his family.

He grew mute and tidy and invisible. He did not speak unless spoken to: not to his parents, not to his friends.

It was around this time — ten, eleven, twelve — that thoughts he had pressed down deeply when he was younger began to spring up, as if they were seeds he had planted early in his life. As if it were now spring. His first thoughts were about two of the boys he grew up with. (Ignobly, they were the two most obvious choices, the best-looking boys in the school.) He tried telling himself, at first, to push these thoughts away again, to bury them permanently. He tried telling himself that these thoughts were evil; but the person who had most emphatically convinced him of that — his father — was, Harold decided, himself the embodiment of most of the pain and suffering that existed in his world. The logic did not hold.

He continued to go to the library with kind Mr. Macklin, and their mutual silence turned from an embarrassment to a comfort. He read everything. He asked for more from the librarian: specific tomes that he had seen referred to in the Encyclopædia Britannica , at the end of the entries he particularly liked. He read about far-flung places that seemed more civilized to him: Boston, Philadelphia, New York. Paris. Rome. Alexandria. California. In his spare time he worked through every famous math problem that had ever been solved, following the steps that had been taken already when he could not unravel it himself, studying it until he felt he understood. He taught himself well. He counted the days until he could leave home. And he vowed — to himself, to Susan — that when he did, he would never return.

Ada paused briefly on Liston’s porch, closing her eyes, making a wish that nobody would be home. She had been absent since 11:00 the night before, when she snuck past a sleeping Liston on her way to the Woods. It was early afternoon now, the next day; she had just left Miss Holmes’s apartment, and there was no place else she could think of to go. She could not — did not want to — return to David’s. Besides, if anyone was looking for her, they would look there first.

Would Liston be angry with her for disappearing?

Would William be inside, pretending nothing had happened — pretending he had not recently changed her entire internal world in a permanent, irreversible way? Worse: Would Melanie be by his side?

The front door opened. Ada opened her eyes.

Gregory stood inside, wearing a T-shirt with an alien on it. He looked contrite.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

“Can you come upstairs for a second?” he asked, backing away into the shadows of the house. Ada hesitated.

“Just a second,” said Gregory, and at last she followed.

The rest of the house was quiet; it seemed as if no one was home.

In the attic, Gregory was waiting for her, standing there forthrightly, his arms hanging at his sides.

“I would like to apologize,” he said formally.

Ada paused. “Okay,” she said.

She crossed her arms. “What are you sorry for?”

He flushed. He looked down at the floor. “For calling you stupid. And for — saying that about your father.”

She did not ask him whether he thought it was true. She knew now, and he knew, that it was.

“Do you accept my apology?” Gregory asked.

That’s not how it works , Ada wanted to say. You wait and see . Instead, she nodded, once.

Gregory looked pleased.

“It never happened before,” said Ada. “In case you were wondering.”

“Oh,” he said.

“I don’t like him,” she said, about William. “You asked me last night if I did. I don’t.

“It was a mistake,” she added — a phrase she had heard only in films.

They sat together for a while. Ada felt changed: as if she had crossed a bridge that had collapsed behind her, suddenly, without warning. Gregory seemed younger to her now. She had left him behind. All day, her feelings had swung wildly back and forth. There was a part of her that wished she could return to her childhood, yes, retreat to the opposite shore; but she also had the satisfying sense that she had gained a new and interesting piece of wisdom about the universe, had been granted access to a secret that the adults in her life had known for years. It made her consider all of them with new interest. It made her wonder new things.

Miss Holmes had given her the letter from the librarian in Olathe to keep. She considered whether or not to share it with Gregory. He had his back to her now. He was playing some sort of primitive game on his computer — two pixelated machines were scuttling back and forth across the bottom of the screen. What is it? she would have said to him, formerly; formerly she would have asked if she could play.

“By the way,” he said. “Mom’s been looking for you.” He didn’t turn around.

“She has?” said Ada. She had been hoping that, against all odds, Liston simply had not noted her absence. David probably wouldn’t have.

“Yeah,” said Gregory. “She’s worried. She’s driving around looking for you.”

“Do you know where she went?” Ada said.

“Nope,” said Gregory. “She has Matty with her. She said she was gonna call the police if you weren’t back when she got back.”

“Shit,” said Ada quietly.

“She asked me if I knew where you were,” said Gregory, after a pause.

“Did you tell her?” asked Ada, and a sudden panic hit her: that Gregory, before his first wave of anger had subsided, might have told her what he saw. She could not face Liston if he had.

Gregory turned around, slowly, in his chair. He had won the game. He swiped a quick hand under his nose. “No,” he said finally. “I didn’t tell her anything. I said I thought maybe you’d just left early and gone for a walk. I don’t think she believed me, though.”

“Thank you,” said Ada. Gregory nodded, somewhat formally, once.

She decided, then, that she would show him the letter. He seemed genuinely contrite. Besides, there was no one else to whom she could show it. “Look,” said Ada, to Gregory. She held it forth. He took it and read it, mouthing the words intently — a habit of his that Ada had noted before.

“Harold Canady,” he said, looking up.

Ada nodded. “Miss Holmes says we can research him next.” And she was glad, for the first time, to have Gregory alongside her, worrying the same things that she was worrying, working away at the same mystery that she was trying to work out. He was the only person in her life, she realized, who knew everything there was to know about David. Everything that she knew, at least. And he seemed not to judge David, but to think of him somehow — as a part of Ada did, too — with respect. As the creator of a long and interesting riddle for both of them to solve. As a genius: which, despite everything that had transpired, was still the grain of truth about her father that Ada clung to, that gave her some measure of comfort.