The Unseen World
Page 20
“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.
Here was the moment Ada had been waiting for, dreading, and yet the fact that it was happening gave her almost a feeling of relief, to be so thoroughly undone. To be so caught.
William turned up the brick pathway toward the house and his step hitched a bit when he saw them.
Ada took in a deep breath. “Hey, Will,” she said—the first time she had ever used his nickname; perhaps the first time she had ever called him directly by name.
“Hi,” he said, uncertainly.
She felt feverish with nerves. She was lit only by the dim porch light, a naked bulb attended by dozens of moths.
“These are my friends,” she continued. “Theresa, Janice, Melanie.”
“Hey,” said William, again. And he walked forward again, toward their little group, and seemed almost about to let himself in the door, until he stopped near Melanie, on his right, and turned to her.
“I know you,” he said. “I’ve seen you at school before.”
Melanie, in the porch light, looked even more angelic than usual: her long hair silky, golden, the color of grain; her face upturned, her sleepy eyes wide open.
“What’s your name again?” asked William.
“Melanie,” she said.
“Melanie McCarthy,” said William. “I’ve heard about you.
“All good things,” he added. “Don’t worry.”
Then he winked at her—suddenly the memory of the same gesture in Ada’s direction felt unimportant in comparison—and walked inside.
“Night, Ada,” he said to her, before he left.
Within two weeks, William and Melanie were dating. Within a month, Melanie had replaced Karen as another presence in Liston’s home, and Liston’s approval of her as Ada’s friend had turned to a kind of wary acceptance of her as William’s girlfriend.
“She’s awfully young, William,” Ada overheard her say to him once.
“She’s in high school, Mum,” said William, and Liston replied to him that freshmen and seniors were at very different stages in their lives.
“Just don’t get in any trouble,” said Liston. “Promise.”
Ada’s friendship with Melanie, with all of them, remained superficially intact. When she came to Liston’s house the two of them would chat, and sometimes Janice and Theresa would come along as well, and then they would all spend time together. But mainly Melanie spent time with William, in his room, with the door open (at Liston’s insistence).
Sometimes Ada was shocked that these girls had hatched a plan and enacted it so successfully, had gotten exactly what they had set out to get. In another way it confirmed for her that there was a sort of justice in the world. Beautiful people made up their minds to achieve something and then achieved it. It was natural, orderly. There was logic in it. She shared David’s abstract appreciation of attractive people as aesthetic objects—though she tempered this by maintaining, like him, a feeling of intellectual superiority over them, a satisfying conviction that she was in some way abstemious and therefore holy—and the fact of Melanie’s dating William didn’t crush her the way she thought it might. Instead, it brought Ada several degrees closer to him than she had been; and for this she was, perversely, grateful to Melanie.
Spending more time with William revealed something to Ada: that he wasn’t unintelligent; he could be funny and dry when he wanted to be. He had some of Liston’s good nature, though he also had a dose of Gregory’s spitefulness, often getting angry with his mother for reasons that seemed small and insignificant to Ada. He asked Ada what she thought of things, at times, and listened to her answers in a way that felt genuine. Once, speaking to Melanie, he said, about Ada, “She’s funny.” Tipping his head toward her: as if Ada weren’t in the room with them. Melanie had no more to say now than she did before they had gotten together. Mainly, she sat quietly as Ada and William talked, and with her large eyes she tracked all of William’s movements, mimicking him subtly with her own.
Shortly after Melanie and William began dating, and with a certain amount of shame, Ada began to go without her glasses whenever it was possible, donning them only when she needed to read something on the board. Her eyesight wasn’t terrible; she could see well to a distance of ten feet, more than enough to read the facial expressions of others near her, but not quite enough to recognize a friend at the end of a hallway. “Did you get contacts?” asked Theresa, and she told her that she had. “You look way better like that,” she said. Ada carried this half compliment inside her chest for weeks afterward, letting it fill her with shameful pride.
By mid-November, Ron Loughner had produced no further information about David—no clues about his past or his identity. No information about why he might have been reported missing, nor about why Caltech had no record of him as a student. Neither had Ada.
Twice Liston had timidly broached the subject of her father with her, and each time Ada had cut her off; she was not interested in Liston’s theories on why David might have lied. “Been dishonest,” Liston corrected herself quickly. “Been . . . misguided.”
“He wasn’t,” Ada said sharply, and walked out of the room. She caught a glimpse of Liston’s expression before she left: it was wounded, collapsed, her mouth slightly open, her hands entwined, frozen in mid-gesture.
Despite her loyalty to David, she began to see him less. He
r visits with him saddened her; they felt unproductive and disturbing. She had failed to mention this to Liston, who, she imagined, assumed that Ada was still visiting her father after school each day. A year ago, Ada would have felt guilty about deceiving her; but the mistrust that had settled in her heart, when it came to Liston, allowed her to justify her actions to herself. She did not owe anything to Liston, thought Ada. During her newly free afternoons, Ada had begun to visit the library branch that she and David used to frequent, where their favorite librarian, Anna Holmes, still worked. Miss Holmes had not heard anything about Ada’s father’s decline, and assumed that he was still as he always was, living at home, working at the Steiner Lab. There was something so comforting about her presence—a reminder of Ada’s past—that she did not correct Miss Holmes on this point. Instead, when she walked into the library, she allowed herself to slip back in time, and a calm happiness washed over her, and Miss Holmes beamed in greeting. She was a lovely woman, tall and elegant, with hair that was blond and gray together, and a smile that sent lines down her cheeks from the corners of her eyes.
“That is a person who is good at her job,” David had said to Ada once, respectfully, about Miss Holmes.
Now she asked after David often, betraying a subtle disappointment that he no longer came in to see her. Once or twice she even sent Ada home with something for him, a new book that she thought he would enjoy, or, once, a jar of sauce that she had cooked and canned from tomatoes she grew in her garden in Ashmont. Ada accepted all of these gifts for David, assuring herself that one day she would tell Miss Holmes the truth. In the meantime, she allowed herself this respite, this brief calm in her otherwise uneasy existence.
Without David there to guide what she read, Ada had begun to read other sorts of books. She had stalled on the marble composition books that he had filled with the titles of novels, biographies, theorems, concepts; it all felt untrustworthy now. In light of all his betrayal, how could she be certain that his recommendations were worthwhile? Instead, in her bedroom, she read bad books she found at Liston’s house, including a dirty one with a heroine in a torn dress on its cover. Liston had a stack of these books in plain sight on her bedside table.
And at the library, Ada now read books for teenage girls that her friends at school liked. Sweet Valley High. Flowers in the Attic. Books by Michael McDowell and Frank Belknap Long with gruesome covers that made her afraid to be alone in the dark. Her favorites were books called the Tina Marie series, about teenage girls in a pop band: books she would never have read in front of David. With a certain sinking feeling, she realized she had no reason to hide them any longer.
Each morning, when she woke, she thought about going to visit David, and then quailed. She could not bear it, the thought of looking at his blank countenance with so many unanswered questions between them; she felt she did not know him. Some nights, unable to bear her loneliness, she called his hospital room in the hope of hearing his voice. But always, always, she hung up after one ring, before he answered. She had terrible dreams of his death, woke up crying and guilt-stricken, vowed to go see him. But the truth—when she allowed herself to think it—was that she was afraid. And the longer she waited, the more afraid she became of seeing him. Who would be there, in his room, in his chair, when she arrived? David might be gone, spirited away, she thought. And there, in his place, some changeling.
Liston still went to visit him every Sunday after church. When she asked Ada if she wanted to come, Ada made up the same excuse: she’d seen him all week, she said, and she had too much homework.
At last, one Friday, Ron Loughner called Liston to tell her he had new information for them, and Liston was careful to let Ada know right away. He came over that evening to present it, looking proud of himself, smug in a way that Ada did not like. He had been recommended to Liston by a friend on the police force, but Ada could tell that even she found him grating, maybe somewhat incompetent.
She had hoped that Melanie and William would not be home for this, and she was relieved that the house was still empty when Loughner arrived. Even Matty was out at a friend’s house for dinner.
The three of them sat at the kitchen table. Liston asked if anyone wanted a drink, and Ron Loughner asked for a Coca-Cola. Ada had the vague suspicion that he was a recovering alcoholic.
“I only have Diet,” said Liston, and he said that would be fine.
He produced a manila folder with paperwork neatly stacked inside, and opened it. From it he removed a photocopied list of Sibelius births and deaths in New York over the course of the last century.
“The extended Sibelius family is getting smaller by the decade,” he began. “At the beginning of the century they were a huge presence in New York, lots of cousins, lots of branches. In the 1920s, ’30s, Sibelius was like Astor or Carnegie. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting one at some society function. But by now a lot of the branches have died out. They weren’t a particularly fertile bunch, I guess,” he said, pleased with this turn of phrase. He took a sip of his Diet Coke.
He continued. “By now anyone with the last name Sibelius has moved elsewhere, and they’re mainly cousins, second cousins twice removed from John Fairfax and Isabelle Sibelius,” he said, naming David’s parents. “One of the first things I did when I took on the case was to try to find any living Sibelius to tell me why David’s family would have reported him missing.”
“They were estranged,” Ada said quickly. “David didn’t speak to them.”
Loughner paused for a moment, regarding Ada with something she suspected was sympathy, and then continued.
“Recently I found one living relative,” he said. “Isabelle’s younger half-sister, much younger, Ellen Palmer. She lives now in Burlington, Vermont. She’s seventy-four years old. Same father, different mother. She wasn’t close to Isabelle, but she visited New York every Christmas as a child, until she was eighteen or so. She only would have been fourteen years older than David,” said Loughner. “And therefore he presumably would have still been in the house when she visited.”
He paused for a moment, letting the weight of his statements settle over the room.
“She says the Sibelius son disappeared at seventeen,” he said finally, placing a palm delicately on the table. “And only resurfaced when he was a legal adult, at which point he indicated, by mail, that he did not want anything to do with them. The case was closed, legally, but they never saw him again.”
“That makes sense,” said Ada, looking at Liston for validation. “That’s what David said happened.” She was beginning to feel uplifted; perhaps this had been, simply, a misunderstanding.
Liston avoided her gaze.
“She also gave us a picture of David,” said Loughner. He reached again into the manila folder, and produced a large-scale photograph that he observed himself, before sliding it across the table to them.
“Ellen Palmer says this is her nephew at sixteen,” said Loughner.
Ada pulled the picture toward her.
In it were two people. One was a young woman, pretty, stout, with a high collar and a short, fashionable haircut: Ellen Palmer, perhaps. The other was a slender, sensitive-looking boy, wearing a tie and a scowl. The boy had blond hair, a slightly upturned nose, large dark eyes. He also had a birthmark, a small mole, in the middle of his right cheek.
She turned the picture over. On the back was written, in beautiful old-fashioned handwriting, E. Palmer. D. G. Sibelius. 1941.
This was not David. This was not her father.
Liston took the photograph from her.
Ada looked back and forth between them, Liston and Loughner.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Loughner paused. “It seems likely,” he said finally, “that your father was not a Sibelius.”
“Maybe she’s lying. Maybe she’s just afraid we’re going to come after her money,” said Ada. But she doubted this as she said it.
“I’m not sure what to say,” said Loughner.
Ada gathered all the scraps of her fourteen-year-old self-possession, and she asked Ron Loughner very politely whether he had been able to determine anything further about David’s identity.
“Not yet,” said Loughner. “Now we know who he wasn’t, if you know what I mean. We still have to figure out who he was.”
“Thank you,” said Ada, with dignity.
Then she excused herself carefully from the table, and walked down the hallway toward the stairs.
“Ada?” Liston called after her. But she didn’t stop.
At 7:00, Liston knocked gently on her door and called to her through it, asking her if she wanted dinner. Ada declined. She couldn’t eat. She felt incorporeal. She felt she had been cut adrift from everything on earth; she felt as if she were floating, untethered, in the atmosphere.
Formerly fond memories of David now presented themselves to her, one after another, as something painful. Here was David, in his apron, in the kitchen; David, listening to his records, head lowered to his hand in contemplation. David bouncing excitedly on his toes, delivering the news of some discovery, or of a new friend, or of the engagement of a friend or acquaintance or a grad student at the lab. (He was deeply, unexpectedly romantic; he loved weddings; he loved surprise engagements, and hearing the stories of proposals. “And did he take a knee?” Ada heard him ask a former postdoc, Sheila, once, subsequently expressing great approval that her fiancé had done so.)