Liz Moore - The Unseen World

Liston came home an hour later. From the attic, Ada heard her open the front door, and then she heard Liston’s low panicked voice tell Matty to go to his room for a while. “Why!” Matty exclaimed, and Liston said, tensely, she had some things to take care of.

“I’m here,” called Ada. She walked down the attic stairs, and then down the staircase to the first floor, passing Matty as she went.

“You’re gonna be in trouble,” Matty said, raising his eyebrows.

“I know,” Ada said.

“ Ada? ” cried Liston, and then there were quick footsteps down the hallway, and at the bottom of the stairs Liston came into sight, her face slightly crumpled. She was wearing a windbreaker suit and a red winter hat with a pom-pom on it, Red Sox knitted in white around its crown. She was wearing her overcoat: it was her formal one, the one she wore to work events in the winter, and it did not match the rest of her clothing. Ada imagined her throwing it on in a hurry, leaving with Matty in the car. Looking for her, for Ada.

“Oh, my God, baby. Where have you been,” said Liston quietly.

“I’m sorry,” said Ada. She did not want to tell her. She also did not want to lie.

Liston put one hand on the banister. “Oh my God. You scared the bejeezus out of me,” she said. “You have to tell me where you were.”

“I’m sorry,” Ada said again. “I don’t think I can.”

Liston looked at her, considering.

“I won’t do it again. I promise,” said Ada.

“Should I be worried?” asked Liston.

“No,” said Ada.

“I think I’m going to have to punish you,” said Liston, as if the thought was occurring to her for the first time.

“I know,” said Ada.

“Did David ever punish you?” Liston asked.

“No,” said Ada. “But you can,” she said, encouragingly.

She didn’t watch TV or play Atari; these could not be taken away. She rarely went to see friends; grounding wouldn’t have made sense. Therefore, her punishment, Liston decided, would be chores: a full cleaning of the kitchen that afternoon, and dinner duty every night that week.

While she cleaned, Liston sat with her.

“Are you all right?” she said. Her chin was propped on her hand. “I’ve been worried about you for months.”

“I’m not sure,” Ada said. “I think so.”

“I know you haven’t been going to see David,” said Liston, and Ada paused. She closed her eyes briefly.

“Sister Katherine asked me where you’d been. It’s okay,” said Liston quickly. “You have the right to be mad at him.”

Ada winced. She turned her back to Liston and swept the same spot for too long. In her mouth was the bitter, salty taste of tears. And tears were in her eyes, too, and then on her cheeks. She did not want to show them to Liston. She sniffed. She put a shaky hand to her nose and then she pinched it.

“Ada?” asked Liston. And then suddenly Ada was bent over at the waist, and then she sank down against the refrigerator, all the way to the floor, her head on her knees. The broom clattered on the floor beside her. Sobs racked her muscles and her bones. She coughed. It was the first time, in her memory, that she had ever cried in front of anyone. David had not liked her to cry.

Liston sat down on the floor beside her, still in her overcoat, and she put her right arm over Ada’s shoulders, and bent her head down to Ada’s head. They sat like that until the room grew dark.

Within a week, Ada had recounted everything there was to know about David to Liston. The story of the scandal in the Sibelius family; the story of the Canady family, and Harold Canady’s apparent death. “Gregory knows, too,” she said, and Liston looked confused but pleased.

“Oh!” she said. “Have you two been spending time together?”

Ada gave a copy of the For Ada disk to Liston, too, and Liston was now at work on the code, along with the rest of the members of the Steiner Lab. They talked about it at lunch, Liston said; with Ada’s permission, they had given it to other friends, and friends of friends, too.

Meanwhile, on weekends, the four of them — Liston, Ada, Gregory, and Matty — researched Harold Canady in Widener Library’s massive newspaper archive, to which Liston had access as part of an agreement between Harvard and the Bit. “These are my research assistants,” she said, straight-faced, to the kind guard who stood just inside the door.

They sat there together, the three eldest bowed over microfilm readers, searching through every issue of the Washington Times Herald from 1947 on for Harold Canady’s name. Matty did his homework or read comic books, patiently, happy to have them all united again. Later, Ada would remember these afternoons as some of the pleasantest ones of her life: it was the quiet of the library, its calmness (she breathed more deeply; her heart rate slowed); the smell of it, must and mildew and paper, like the smell of David’s house; the echoing footfalls of students and librarians and researchers, which gave the place the feeling of a pool or a spa; the beauty of the building, which David always loved; and, most of all, the feeling of being part of a team again, a group of individuals all working together toward the same goal. She had not felt this way since David had been at the helm of the Steiner Lab.

After their sessions they went to get pizza nearby and Liston asked them all everyday questions about school, about friends, about teachers. She asked them if they wanted to watch TV with her that night, and what it was they wanted to watch. She split up arguments between Gregory and Matty. She rolled her eyes at Ada conspiratorially. And Ada remembered — slowly at first, and then in a warm, intoxicating rush — everything she had ever loved about Liston.

Now, with no secrets, there was more to talk about. Now there was music, sometimes, in the evening: the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, or Sam Cooke, or Peggy Lee. Now there were Sunday dinners.

Mainly, the Liston family did not spend time with William. He was out, almost always now, with his friends — which included Ada’s friends as well. The first time she had seen him after their encounter, he had been with Melanie: the two of them, together, had walked in the kitchen door of Liston’s house, and Melanie had greeted her with her usual measured pleasantness, and Ada had known that William had said nothing to her. He was standing slightly behind Melanie, as if she were a shield he was putting forth between himself and Ada.

“Hey,” he said, but he did not meet her gaze.

“Hey,” said Ada.

And then they had left the room, and that was all.

The only difference was that Ada no longer spent any time with him or with Melanie and her friends. She didn’t join them when they watched television in the den; she didn’t ever go out in a group with Janice and Theresa and William’s friends. She stayed in her room when Melanie was over; at school she made new friends, and she refocused her attention on Lisa Grady, who, charitably, allowed Ada back into her graces.

By then it had been nearly two months since she had seen her father. In that time she had developed a dull, enduring ache that replaced David’s physical presence in her life. She awoke from terrible nightmares, sweating and cold at once, in which she found he had died, that she was too late to see him one more time. Sometimes she imagined telling him that she loved him, that there was no one she loved better; other times she imagined shouting at him, hollering at the top of her lungs that he had betrayed her. At school she was distracted. Avoiding him was, by far, worse than seeing him; and yet she did not go to him. Liston did not press her. “It’s your choice,” she said simply.