by Liz Moore
Ada did not think Liston had any interest in doing these things. She came on most of the work-related trips that Ada and David took, but kept to herself, proclaiming her hatred for hotel rooms and her love of home. In her tastes she was polite but not adventuresome; she hopefully scanned every English-language menu they were presented for its blandest, palest dish. Until yesterday, Ada had always imagined that she did cozy things on weekends, made popcorn, watched movies with her boys, cooked meals with her oldest, Joanie, when she stopped by with the baby. How Ada came up with this idea, she was not certain: she had no reason to believe that the scientifically inclined Liston was domestic in any way. She knew that Liston did not like to cook, and could not abide housework. (She bragged often about raising her boys to be good husbands, assigning the weekly chores on a magnetic whiteboard that she stuck to the refrigerator.) Despite this, she still seemed traditional to Ada, in a way that Ada and David were not, and in a way—if she was honest with herself—that she envied. Liston drank Diet Coke. She brought ham-and-cheese sandwiches to work, on white bread. The sight of them made Ada’s mouth water. The idea of Liston’s house as a bastion of normalcy and tradition, right down the street, was one that Ada had always kept dear: it seemed somehow to anchor her and David’s house physically, in the same way that Liston’s friendship with them proved reassuringly to Ada that there was nothing so unusual about her situation, after all.
It was not until shortly after nine that Ada noticed any movement upstairs. Upon hearing it, she tiptoed to the downstairs bathroom to hide, in case it was one of the boys. She did not want to greet them before their mother was there to protect her.
Ada heard footsteps walking down the stairs and into the kitchen, just as she had done, and then someone picked up the telephone receiver. She could hear it all quite clearly.
“It’s Di,” said Liston, in the other room.
Ada didn’t know whom she had called, but she began to describe to the person the events of the day and night before, beginning with Ada’s phone call to her. Ada froze. She thought perhaps she should clear her throat or turn on the water to let Liston know she was there, but she was immobilized by shyness and fear. She stood still, clutching herself around the middle.
“She’s still at my house. She’s upstairs sleeping,” said Liston.
She paused.
“And what if he’s not back today? When do we call the police?” said Liston.
And then, “He might get in trouble. It might affect Ada. What if they say he’s incompetent?
“It’s a sin,” said Liston. “An honest sin.”
After Liston hung up she began to move around the kitchen, opening cabinets. Ada held her breath. She didn’t think she could emerge, just yet—Liston would know she had heard everything. She decided to wait until Liston went upstairs again, or into a different room, at which point she could make a quick exit and pretend she had been someplace else.
Ada sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. Incompetent, Liston had said. It was the word she had used about David. It contrasted with every understanding of her father that Ada had. She put her face into her hands. And at that moment Liston opened the bathroom door, and shouted in surprise.
She clutched her heart and doubled over. “Ada!” she said. “What on earth.”
“I’m really sorry,” said Ada, not knowing what else to say.
“Are you all right?” Liston asked her, and she nodded.
Liston put her hand to her chin, as if in thought. She was wearing a blue terry robe that looked perhaps a decade old.
“Did you hear me talking on the phone?” she asked Ada, and Ada had the urge to lie, but could not do it. Liston would have known. She nodded once more.
Liston took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said. She opened and closed her mouth, as if deciding whether to say more, and then gestured with her head that Ada should follow her into the kitchen, which she did.
“How’d you sleep?” she asked, and Ada said that the bed was very comfortable, and that she had slept excellently, though it wasn’t true.
“Are you hungry?” Liston asked, and she nodded. On the kitchen counter was a line of boxed cereals, with a gallon of whole milk at the end. “Bowls there, spoons there,” Liston said, pointing.
What David called cereal was hot and eaten with brown sugar. Ada had never before had cold cereal, and she inspected her options carefully, searching for the one that David would be least likely to bring into the house. At last she chose one called Smacks because of the happy frog on the box, one arm extended skyward, proudly presenting its bounty.
While she ate she waited for Liston to speak. She had settled down at the kitchen table, where her papers were still spread out from the night before, and was working out some problem with her pen, as if solving it would help her answer the larger question facing them. Handwritten code blossomed across the page. At that moment a great longing came over Ada for David and for their home. Every so often Liston looked up at her and smiled, but she did not speak: as if waiting for Ada to confess something, some information she had previously kept to herself. But Ada had none.
“Are you going to church today?” Ada asked. She knew that Liston was an active member of the parish just over the bridge, and often on Sundays she had seen Liston marching there and back again with her boys, who were always dressed in ill-fitting khakis, button-down shirts, loose ties, scuffed and poorly knotted shoes. It occurred to her that day that Liston was not dressed for it; she did not wish to be the cause of any change in plans.
“We’ll skip it today,” said Liston, smiling. “The boys will be thrilled.”
She put her pen down then and looked out the window. She spoke without shifting her gaze.
“What have you noticed, Ada?” she said.
“What do you mean?” Ada asked. She hated this: the feeling of being asked to betray David.
“About your dad,” said Liston. “Has he been acting differently? Has he said anything strange?”
“I think he’s just under a lot of stress,” Ada said, and Liston nodded noncommittally.
Both of them were silent, and then both spoke at the same time. Ada said, “I think he’ll be all right.” And Liston said, “Honey. I think we should call the police.”
Ada thought of David’s mistrust of law enforcement; his vehement disapproval of the meddlesome State; his passionate dedication to privacy. And then she decided that whatever fear he had of the police, hers was greater of losing him.
“All right,” she said, and immediately felt unfathomably disloyal, treacherous. She lowered her head.
Ada disliked the two police officers who arrived later that afternoon. She couldn’t help it; her well had been poisoned by David’s mistrust of authority. One was tall and thin; the other short and thin. Both had mustaches.
“And the last time you saw him was?” asked the tall one, Officer Gagnon.
“And has he been acting unusual?” he asked.
“And do you have any idea where he might be?” he asked.
He seemed bored. Both accepted Liston’s offer of coffee, and then sipped it loudly.
“You’re the daughter?” asked the shorter one, finally, and Ada said yes. “And how do you two know each other?” he asked, gesturing back and forth between Liston and her with his pen.
Liston explained, and the two of them looked at each other.
“We’ll have to get social services in here,” said Officer Gagnon. “Since there’s no relation.”
“Really? Are you sure?” said Liston. “I’ve known her since she was born.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” said Gagnon. “Just procedure. They’ll be over soon.”
It was then, for the first time, that Ada let her imagination run its terrifying course. She was an impressionable child, and she thought of what ruins might await her: she had read too much Dickens. Did workhouses still exist?
Before they left, Matty came into the kitchen—the suddenn
ess and quietness of his appearance gave Ada the impression that he had been eavesdropping on them from someplace nearby—and looked shyly at the officers.
“Hey, big guy,” said Gagnon, on his way out.
“Hey,” said Matty, softly, but the door was already closed.
There was little to say for quite some time. Ada sat still at the kitchen table, pretending to read a newspaper, until at last Liston said that it must be close to dinnertime, and stood up, and went to the cupboards. She opened them one at a time, looked inside them beseechingly. At last she pulled down a blue box of spaghetti and some canned tomato sauce and opened both, started a pot of water.
“Are you all right?” Liston asked Ada at one point, and Ada nodded. But the truth was, of course, that she was not—would not be until David had returned. If he returns at all, she thought, and put her chin in her hands to keep it from trembling.
She stood up from the table abruptly. She had never cried in front of Liston before, and she didn’t wish to now.
“I think I should get a few more clothes from my house,” said Ada, and walked quickly out the door before Liston could follow her, or agree.
She inhaled deeply, willing herself to calm down. Outside it was beautiful. It had cooled off slightly for the first time that August. In the distance the low hum of a lawn mower started. One of the neighbors was barbecuing. The smell of burning charcoal and meat, the particulates of matter that found their way to her on a pleasant breeze, normally signaled happiness and relaxation to Ada. Ever since learning about neurotransmitters from David, she had imagined her brain as a water park, a maze of waterslides down which various chemicals were released. Charcoal and smoke and fresh-cut grass usually sent rivers of serotonin down the slides in Ada’s head, as she pictured them. But that night the scents only served to remind her of David’s absence. Warm summer evenings, he always said, were his favorites, too.
Ada let herself in through the kitchen door and poured a glass of water from the tap. She took it with her to her room at the top of the stairs and gazed out the window, and then felt drawn to the old computer at her little desk. She turned it on. She dialed into the ELIXIR program. She began to type. There was something comforting in the familiarity of ELIXIR’s responses, the small turns of phrase she recognized as having come from colleagues at the lab. Where is David? she typed, and ELIXIR said, That’s really a very good question. An answer that reminded her, in fact, of David’s syntax.
There was a great deal to tell ELIXIR. It had only been two days since their last conversation, but it felt like it had been much longer. She looked at the clock after twenty minutes and, fearing that Liston would worry, shut down the program and then the computer, which gave a long sweet sigh as it went to sleep.
It was then that she thought she heard someone moving downstairs. She held her breath, listened for several more seconds.
A drawer opened someplace deep in the house. The basement, she thought. Footsteps. Someone dropped something on the floor. Someone began to walk up the basement stairs.
Ada was easily frightened as a child and she sat frozen in place, clutching her water glass, terrified to move. She eyed the window, measuring whether she could jump out of it if necessary. She decided, at last, that the thing to do was to ascertain the identity of the other person in the house as quickly as possible, so that—if necessary—she could make her escape.
“David?” she called out, loudly, bravely.
There was no answer. She tensed, prepared to run.
“David?” she called again.
“Hello,” said David, his voice warm and familiar. “Is that you, Ada?”
She went limp. All of her muscles contracted and then relaxed. She had not realized the weight of the fear she had been holding in her gut, the tension of it; she felt as if she were breathing out completely for the first time in her life. Her face was crumpled and red when she descended the stairs and met her father in the kitchen. He paused with a hand on the wall. He was holding a notepad in his other hand and he had one of his contraptions, which looked something like ski goggles, pushed back on his head.
“Good grief,” said David. “What’s the matter, Ada?” The look he wore was a sort of perplexed smile, as if they were about to discover a grand misunderstanding that they would look back on one day and find comical.
“Where have you been,” she lamented. “Where did you go?”
Her voice must have conveyed a very particular emotion—it was anger at David’s betrayal of her trust. From the time she was small, she had felt it whenever she was embarrassed in public, with him by her side: while skiing, for example, if she fell down and, in the tangle of her equipment, could not immediately get up. “Help me,” she would mutter to David, under her breath. She always sensed, somehow, that it was his fault she had fallen down. She felt the weight of others’ stares upon her, seethed in her own embarrassment, converted it into anger at her father. He seemed so well equipped to deal with anything, so utterly competent: and this made her feel that it was his responsibility to preempt and prevent any mistake, any humiliation, not just for himself but for her. Standing in the kitchen, staring at her prodigal father, she felt the same emotion, only stronger: thinking of what she would have to tell Liston, what Liston would invariably tell her boys. In that moment, Ada knew for the first time she could no longer hope to protect David from Liston’s judgment, from anyone’s judgment—as she had been doing, if she was honest with herself, for over a year.
David had not answered her yet. He was looking at her in a hazy, puzzled way.
“David,” she said again.
“I told you,” he said finally, speaking carefully, measuring his words. “I told you I was going out of town for work.”
As an adult, when Ada tried to recall her father’s face, it was often and regrettably this version of him that she thought of: David looking mad, ski goggles pushed back on his head, his shirtsleeves rolled up. There was little connection to David as he normally was, placid, reserved, attentive. This David was growing increasingly stubborn with every additional question he was asked. He had been in New York City, he said, meeting with the chair of the Computer Science Department at NYU. Ada tried to convince him to come back with her to Liston’s, but he wouldn’t.
She studied him for a moment.
“Really, this is silly, Ada,” he told her. “A simple misunderstanding. I’m in the middle of an experiment.” He held forth the notepad he was carrying as if by way of explanation. Pointed to the device on his head.
“Wait right here, then,” said Ada, and she ran to get Liston.
Inside Liston’s house, Liston was pouring the pasta into a colander in the sink. Steam rose up from the boiling water and wilted her hair.
“He’s back,” Ada told her. “He says he was out of town for work. He says he told me. Maybe I forgot.”
It pained her to say it.
Liston looked at Ada uncomprehendingly for a moment and then followed her out the door, down the street to her house. By the time they reached David, he was back in the basement, bent over the device he had been wearing, turning into place a tiny screw.
“Shhhhhhhh,” he said, as Liston began to speak.
“Honestly, David,” said Liston. “Enough of this.”
He straightened and then looked wounded.
“You’ve been gone for almost forty-eight hours,” said Liston. “Where were you?”
“I was in New York for work,” he said slowly. “For heaven’s sake. I wasn’t gone long at all.” But his face was changing.
“What work?” she asked him.
He looked down at the workbench. Spun the device on the table in a full circle.
Liston folded her arms.
“It’s time to tell Ada,” said Liston. “David? Do you hear me?”