The Unseen World

by Liz Moore

  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.

  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 roo
m 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.

  On Christmas she had stayed in her room for most of the day, tormented, remembering all of the Christmases she had ever spent with David. It was his favorite holiday. It was not so many years before, she had thought, that David had been well enough to host a Christmas party at the lab, to write a play for all of them. She recalled him as he had looked, beckoning her up before the audience; she recalled her own humiliation. “A Christmas play!” he had announced, delighted, vibrant, alive. She would have given anything to be back inside that moment. She could not face him now.

  Liston went to visit him at St. Andrew’s, still, once or twice a week. But they did not speak about him when she returned. Ada never asked how David was doing; and Liston never told her.

  In mid-January, at Widener Library, Ada found the article they had been searching for. It came from the October 19, 1950, edition of the Washington Times Herald. “Wrecked Car Found in Shenandoah; Driver Missing; Presumed Dead” read the headline.

  The author of the story was Henry Fell, an oddity that would implant itself forever in Ada’s memory because of the coincidence of the reporter’s name, the image it conjured of some final plunge. The car, a beige 1947 Chrysler Windsor coupe, was found upside down in the river, its windows rolled down. There were burnt-rubber tracks on the rural Virginia bridge that spanned the space above; they matched the tires on the coupe. The theory put forth by the police was that the driver had been thrown into the river from the car, either during the skid or during the fall, and that his body would be recovered later.

  The car, wrote Fell, belonged to one Harold Canady, thirty-two, unmarried, childless, “a resident of Washington and an employee of the State Department.” His parents in Kansas had been informed already of his probable death. Whether the incident was intentional or accidental, Fell did not speculate; nor did he mention what Canady might have been doing in rural Virginia in the early hours of the morning, when the incident supposedly took place.

  At the bottom of the story there was a small, somewhat blurry image of the victim, with a caption beneath: Harold Canady, 32.

  Liston and Gregory were there next to her, each scanning the newspaper from a different year. Matty was at a table nearby, reading a comic book, pretending to do his homework. Ada did not want to tell any of them yet. Instead, she sat in front of the microfilm reader, studying the article, studying the picture for signs of David. The man in the picture had a full head of dark hair, and he wore round tortoiseshell eyeglasses that partially obscured his eyebrows. He wore a suit that looked nothing like any suit the David she knew would wear. But he was smiling slightly—she could not help but think that he looked like a man with a secret—and it was David’s smile. In his cheekbones, his nose, his mouth, Ada could see her father. Yes: she felt certain that this was David.

  She sat for a while longer, alone with him, and then at last she called the rest of them over. “Look,” she said.

  Liston put a hand on her shoulder. “David,” she said, unswervingly.

  Though they spent the next several weeks looking through every local paper for any further mention of the incident, they found none. With the help of Miss Holmes, they contacted the Washington, D.C., Department of Health, which maintained the vital records of the area. A death certificate for Harold Canady had not been issued for another seven years, in accordance with federal law, and then he had been declared dead in absentia. His worldly goods had, presumably, gone to his parents.

  They contacted the State Department to inquire about his work for them and were given the vague answer that he had worked “in security” from 1940 to 1950. The information was jarring: she could not imagine her father, David, skeptical of the government, skeptical of bureaucracy, working for the State.

  The question, then, was what happened between Harold Canady’s death in 1950 and David’s arrival at the Bit as a graduate student in 1951. The best person to ask for further details would have
been President Pearse. But President Pearse was dead.

  There were so many more questions than answers: Why choose such a prominent family as the Sibeliuses, if David was going to make up a backstory? Why choose the Bit, why Boston? There was the problem of age, too: Canady had been born in 1918, and David always said he had been born in 1925—which meant, if they were the same man, that David had shaved seven years off his biological age. And suddenly there was a new context for his illness.

  “He’s not doing well, baby,” said Liston.

  They were in the kitchen; it was a Sunday. It was February. Liston had just come home from visiting David.

  “I thought you should know,” she said.

  St. Andrew’s was decorated for Valentine’s Day. Construction-paper valentines hung in the large picture windows facing the parking lot; red garlands curled around the columns that supported the portico. Inside, a bunch of red roses sat in a vase on the front desk. The nurses wore cupid pins and dangling heart-shaped earrings. She should have brought flowers, Ada thought; cut flowers were something that David loved having nearby.

  She felt a tumbling in her stomach. She felt that she was going to see a stranger. She had not seen him since November. Now, walking down the long hallways, past the desk attendant, past several nurses who recognized her warmly from months prior, she was afraid. There were new patients whom she did not recognize, and other names that had disappeared from the placards on each door. Liston had warned her again that David had declined: even more than Ada would expect, she said.

  “He won’t recognize you, baby,” said Liston. “He doesn’t ever recognize me now.”

  Liston put a hand on Ada’s shoulder before they got to David’s doorway. The door was open only a crack. Liston raised the back of her hand to it and knocked, once, twice.

  “David?” she said loudly. And then she pushed the door open by its handle, and walked first into the room.

  “Hi, David!” said Liston, brightly, and Ada followed behind until she saw her father.