The Unseen World Read online

  Ada walked up the steps with great apprehension and raised her fist to knock softly on the door. No one answered. She looked at her watch and told herself that if, after two minutes, no one had answered, she would try again.

  She did, with slightly greater force. And this time quick footsteps came rushing toward the door, and Matty opened it.

  He said nothing. He was nine years old at the time, tall for his age. He had a feathery haircut, and he wore denim cutoffs and a red-striped tank top. Both knees were scraped up, and as he appraised Ada, he reached down to scratch at one of his scabs absentmindedly.

  “Hi,” Ada said.

  “Hi.”

  “I’m here to see your mom,” she told him. She felt ridiculous saying it: only four years older than he was, and yet playing the role of an adult, a friend of his mother’s.

  But at that moment Liston came into sight behind Matty, sock-footed.

  “What are you doing, Matty? Open the door for Ada,” she said, and then did it herself, and Matty shrugged and ran upstairs.

  “No manners,” said Liston, after Ada had stepped inside. Liston shut the inner door behind them. Liston hated the heat more than anyone Ada had ever met, and several years before had installed central air in her hundred-year-old house, which cost her more than she cared to admit. All spring Ada had seen men working on Liston’s roof, coming and going through the front door. Now a large metal box occupied a space in her backyard, near the patio, and inside the house it felt calm and cool and shadowy. The sweat on Ada’s neck cooled and disappeared.

  She had only been in Liston’s house a handful of times before. Normally when she and David got together outside work it was at a restaurant, or at David’s house. In its layout her home was similar to David’s—living room, sitting room, dining room, kitchen on the first floor; bedrooms above—but she had decorated it quite differently. All the upholstery was floral or patterned in some way, in accordance with the fashion of the decade. Large framed mirrors hung on some of the walls, so that Ada could not avoid seeing herself at every turn; prints of famous paintings or reproductions of movie posters hung on others.

  Liston brought her into the kitchen, which was larger than David’s, and sat Ada down at a built-in nook that looked something like a booth at a restaurant.

  “What can I get you to eat, hon?” asked Liston, and rattled off a list of all the snacks of the 1980s that Ada was never permitted to have: canned pastas by Chef Boyardee, Fluffernutter sandwiches, fluorescent Kraft macaroni and cheese. In truth, Ada had never even heard of some of the food Liston offered her. She chose the sandwich, thinking it would mean the least work, and Liston scooped out something white and soft and put it on a piece of Wonder Bread, with peanut butter on another piece, and then she closed them together with a clap, and handed it to Ada with a glass of milk.

  For a while she watched Ada eat. Then, finally, she spoke.

  “What do you want to do? Do you want to watch TV?”

  Ada opened and closed her mouth twice.

  “Do you not watch TV?” Liston inquired.

  “No, I do,” said Ada, and told herself that it was not, in fact, a lie, because there was a police drama that David and she watched together sometimes, and occasionally David rented and watched old films or television shows on the VCR, which counted, she supposed.

  Ada followed Liston into what she called “the TV room,” which David would have called a sitting room, and there it was, a big box of a television, as big as any Ada had ever seen. Facing it was a couch with a right angle built into it. She sat down there, in the elbow of the curve. She put a pillow over her lap.

  Liston turned on the television with a remote control, which she handed to Ada. “We just got cable,” said Liston. “There are probably a hundred channels on there. I don’t know what half of them are.”

  Ada inspected the remote. David had made a primitive variant that they used at home, but this one looked official, and had many more buttons.

  “I’ll be working in the kitchen if you need me,” said Liston.

  Ada flipped upward through the channels. The following images came onto the screen—and for the rest of her life, for reasons she could never explain, they stayed with her. A bride in a dress. Two men fishing. A gentleman walking through an empty home. Congresspeople debating. A redheaded girl with a redheaded boy. Somebody standing in a field of blue flowers. A cartoon of Superman flying. A movie about war, with soldiers climbing over a low stone wall. She left the last one on and watched as they advanced on the opposition. It looked like it was meant to be World War II, and the troops looked like they were meant to be British. David liked war movies. Ada knew about war.

  She watched the entire film and then she began to watch the next one, which was its sequel, when suddenly she noticed someone standing next to her, in her peripheral vision. She kept her face turned very straight ahead, for she knew that it was one of Liston’s older boys, and the possibility that it was William made her stiffen with nerves.

  “What are you watching,” said the boy. He had a low voice, much as she remembered William’s voice sounding.

  “I don’t know,” Ada whispered.

  “You like this movie?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered, but he must not have heard her, because he said, “You can’t talk?”

  Ada’s voice had been taken from her, so she only shook her head. She could recall for the rest of her life the very particular feeling she had at that age, when asked to interact with a peer—it often seemed as if her voice had retreated into her stomach, which then clenched it very tightly and held it deeply inside of her, and wouldn’t release it until she was alone once more.

  Ada shifted her eyes as far to the left as they would go and made out a boy in a blue T-shirt with his hand on the back of the sofa. She let herself turn her head ever so slightly to more closely inspect his arm, which was sturdy and tan, and his hand at the end of it, which had nails that were very severely bitten, down to the part that hurts. She did not look up at his face.

  Then he took his arm away and then he took himself away, out of the room. She breathed out heavily.

  She was alone again.

  At a certain point she could smell and hear Liston microwaving something, probably making dinner, and she knew then that it would be polite to go in and ask her if she needed help, but she was frightened of encountering any of the boys again, so she stayed where she was on the sofa. She was expecting a cry from Liston—Dinner! she might say, and the boys would come rushing to the kitchen—but it never came. Instead, Liston poked her head into the TV room and asked if she wanted to eat there or at the table.

  “Either,” Ada said, and Liston winked at her and said maybe the two of them should eat at the table, like civilized people. “David would be appalled if I let you watch too much TV.”

  Ada followed her into the kitchen and watched as, from the microwave, Liston pulled two frozen meals. Dining-In, said the packages on the counter. Salisbury Steak Dinner.

  “Where are the boys?” Ada asked, before she thought better of it.

  “Oh, they fend for themselves, mostly,” said Liston lightly. “They don’t like my cooking.”

  Ada was surprised. She had imagined, somehow, that everyone in this family ate together all the time. She had liked to imagine it that way.

  They talked about anything but David: the latest gossip from the lab, the problem Liston was working on. At one point Matty came in and asked Liston if he could watch television, “now that she’s not watching.” And Liston told him all right, for fifteen minutes, but then he had to get ready for bed.

  Soon there was a knock at the door. Her heart surged: it was David, she thought, at last. But Liston looked as if she had been expecting one.

  “WILLIAM,” she called loudly, without turning around.

  Her oldest son came running down the stairs and around the corner, into the kitchen, and Ada, for the first time, allowed herself to look fully at h
is face, which was more handsome than she had remembered it. She looked away again quickly. He opened the door and said nothing. A girl his age came in and shut the door behind her. She was tall and skinny, with blond hair and an arc of sideways bangs, and she wore a shirt that hung off her shoulder, a bra strap showing itself assertively. She wore high heels, too. Ada thought she was pretty, but not quite as good-looking as William.

  “Hey, Miz Liston,” said the girl, and Liston said, “Hello, Karen,” but didn’t look up. William and Karen went upstairs together.

  “That door better be open when I come upstairs,” Liston called after them.

  When Ada finished her dinner she was not sure where to go. So she very quietly picked up her fork and rinsed it at the sink, and then opened the dishwasher, but she wasn’t certain whether to put it on the top or the bottom. David and she did not have a dishwasher.

  “Just leave it in the sink, honey,” said Liston.

  When Ada turned around, Liston was looking at her, arms crossed. She glanced at the clock on the wall and back again. It was 9:00 at night.

  “Should we try David one more time?” asked Liston, and Ada said yes, gratefully. She had not wanted to be the one to ask. But when she called her home number, no one was there.

  “I think I’ll go to bed now,” said Ada. She was not tired, but it seemed the most out-of-the-way thing to do.

  “Okay,” said Liston. She put her hands on her hips for a moment and regarded her.

  “We’re glad you’re here,” she said, and it made Ada buckle for reasons she couldn’t explain.

  “C’mere,” said Liston. She brought Ada to her, and kept her in her arms. Ada had rarely, in her life, been hugged, and she stiffened.

  “It’ll be all right,” said Liston. “You’ll be just fine.” She did not, however, say that David would return.

  The bedroom Liston put Ada in was decorated in shades of red and blue and green. It contained a small Lego-land that someone had labored over in the corner, and a twin bed with a frame shaped like a racecar.

  “This is Matty’s room,” said Liston, “but I’ve thrown him in with Gregory for the night.”

  Ada did not like the idea of Matty’s being thrown anywhere because of her, but Liston assured her that he would like it. “He’ll get a kick out of it,” she said. “He’s obsessed with his older brothers.”

  “Can I get you anything else?” Liston asked. “A glass of water? The bathroom’s down the hall.”

  Ada said that she was fine, and Liston put one hand on her head and looked at her, and told her again that it would be all right. Then she left her alone in Matty’s room.

  Liston’s house was built so much like David’s that Ada knew where she was going without asking. She got out her toothbrush and changed into her nightgown. She walked toward the bathroom at one end of the dim upstairs hallway and she passed an open door on her way there. She looked into the room as she did, and inside of it she saw William and Karen kissing on the bed. For one moment, she froze—trying to decide, perhaps, whether to retreat to her room or advance to the bathroom—and she stared. She had never seen a real-life kiss before, and the heads of the parties involved moved about in a surprisingly vigorous way. In the movies Ada had seen, old-fashioned ones that David and she watched together, the heads of the protagonists stayed coolly in place at an elegant angle as they embraced.

  Suddenly William looked up and saw her. “What the hell,” he shouted. He stood up and slammed the door.

  “Oh my God, Will,” she heard Karen say.

  “She came out of nowhere,” she heard William say.

  Ada burned with embarrassment. She looked down at her plaid nightgown. It had ruffled wrists and a ruffled hem and was befitting of a much younger child or an old lady. She stood in place and thought about what she had done for a time, and then, afraid that William would fling open the door again, she continued to the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth with her finger and with toothpaste she borrowed from the Listons, having forgotten her own, and then she took her glasses off and splashed cold water on her face and patted it dry with someone else’s towel, which smelled like cologne and was stiffer than it should have been.

  After that she walked quickly back to her room, looking straight ahead in case William’s door was open again, and closed the door behind her.

  She stood in place for a while, breathing. She was not tired yet, and everyone else was still awake. She stayed up late into the night in Matty’s room, reading one of the seven books that she had brought along with her, and eventually succumbing to the temptation of the hundreds of Legos in a bucket in the corner—they had been her favorite when she was younger, and a favorite of David’s, too—and assembling a little castle with a drawbridge, a king, and a princess.

  When, finally, she went to bed, it was difficult to fall asleep. She missed their house and she missed David.

  To comfort herself, she imagined the worlds that were orbiting inside of every closed door along the hallway: Matty and Gregory in Gregory’s room, breathing slowly in and out as they drifted toward sleep; and William and Karen kissing violently on William’s bed; and the sheets and towels resting in the linen closet; and the spiders in the basement, spinning their webs, and every small living thing in the house—the dust mites, the gnats; and the water dripping out of the bathroom sink; and below her, Liston, old friend, scratching away at her yellow pad on work for the Steiner Lab, which was their second home.

  And she wondered about David, where he might be.

  In her mind, she went through the steps of their after-dinner ritual, which began while Ada cleaned up the dishes. Next she would go and stand outside David’s office. His door was always open but a sort of impenetrable field surrounded him if he was working. Since the time she was small she had known the importance of never interrupting him. So she would press her head into the doorframe and stand on the edges of her sneakers and wait, and wait. And then, finally, he would turn to her and smile, as if waking from a dream.

  “Let me explain something to you,” he would say.

  And then they would sit together at the dining room table and start on a lesson, one of the many thousands that he taught her in her life.

  When she asked him a question that he thought was intelligent he slapped one hand down on the table in celebration. “That is exactly the question to ask,” he told her.

  When she asked him a question that revealed some chasm in her learning, some gap where a concept should have existed, he put his head in his hands as if trying to summon the energy to explain all that would need to be explained to her to make her fully formed. But he didn’t despair: he started from a point that was more rudimentary than he thought necessary (generally it was, in fact, necessary) and proceeded from there, his graceful geometrical hands drawing diagrams on the pads of paper that he collected from conferences and hotels and then hoarded in his desk. He often said he could not speak without a pen in his hand. He waved with his pen, pointed with it, scribbled absentmindedly when on a telephone call. He drew funny things like flowers and birds when he was talking to Ada, and sometimes during her lessons. For the rest of her life, Ada did this, too. She adopted many of David’s habits. They were alike: everyone said it. And that he understood her—more than anyone else in the world ever understood her—seemed to her like an incredible stroke of luck. “You are more machine than human, Ada,” he said at times. And it was the truth, not an insult. And it was calming to her to be so understood. And, sometimes, she felt it was why he loved her.

  She thought of this image as she tried to fall asleep. She pictured herself with David at his desk, the two of them bowing their heads together, their minds a Venn diagram—Ada’s mind full of childish trivia, and David’s full of the mysteries of the universe, and the center between them growing, growing. In these moments he was Zeus to her, and she Athena, springing fully formed from the head of her father, alight with grace and wisdom. There they were at the lab or at home, the two of them,
always the two. There they were solving whatever problem it was that she was facing.

  In the morning, Ada was woken from a dream about David by the sound of the bedroom door creaking slowly open. There in the doorway stood Matty, holding a canvas tote bag and observing her. She sat up in bed and rubbed her hands over her face.

  “I just have to get some stuff out of here,” said Matty, and then he came in and gathered up all of his Lego people and parts, two books, a small portable radio with a trailing wire. All of this he stuffed into his canvas bag, looking sideways at her as he did.

  He sidled toward her before he left the room. He said to Ada, “Where’s your dad?”

  She lifted her shoulders and lowered them slowly. She kept her face very still.

  Then he turned on his heel and closed the door firmly behind him. Ada heard him running down first one and then another flight of stairs, into the basement, she assumed.

  Ada rose and tiptoed to the door and put her head out into the hallway. It was a Sunday, and everyone else seemed to be asleep still. As quietly as she could, she descended the stairs and went into the kitchen, where Liston’s work was sprawled out over the table, and a yellow phone was mounted to the wall. She lifted the receiver from its cradle and dialed the number for her and David’s house, holding her breath while the rings came, four in a row, five, ten. Nobody answered.

  Then, hanging up the telephone, she pondered her options. It still felt odd to be in Liston’s house for almost the first time after so many years of knowing her. She had no idea about Liston’s habits or her daily routines—no idea, for example, whether she was an early riser on weekends or preferred to sleep late, and no idea what she did when she was not at work and not with David. If Ada had been at home with David, she would have known what to expect from her weekend: David would have stayed in his home office for most of the day, breaking for every meal; Ada would have read or worked on the assignments that David gave her. Some weekends they did something different and interesting: a trip to a nearby mountain for skiing in the winter, for example; or, in the summer, a trip to a cabin in upstate New York that David had been renting since the fifties; or some other excursion to a nearby town or city. Sometimes they went to Washington, D.C.; David had a friend there named George, an artist, one of the few people he had kept in touch with from his childhood. He also went on several work trips a year, to conferences in locations as mundane as Cleveland and as far-flung as Hong Kong. These counted as their vacations: typically they would stay a few extra days in every place, seeing more than they otherwise would have. Sometimes, if he’d be in meetings all day and he thought that Ada would have nothing to do, he went by himself to conferences; on these occasions, he paid the division secretary, Martha, to stay with Ada at the house on Shawmut Way, and returned as quickly as he could. And there were, of course, the yearly trips to New York City, always in winter, always to see the Christmas concert at Calvary Episcopal. On those same trips, they would see an opera or a ballet at Lincoln Center, and visit the Met, and walk in Central Park. David always reserved the same accommodations: two adjacent rooms on the third floor of a bed-and-breakfast in Brooklyn Heights (“Manhattan is overpriced,” he always said, though Ada secretly wondered if he wished to limit, as much as possible, his chances of running into acquaintances from his past), owned by a charming, fragile septuagenarian named Nan Rockwell. She served scones for breakfast and talked with David about classical music until late into the night, playing on her turntable famous recordings that she sought out and traded for like cards. Always, they had dinner at a little cafeteria near Union Square, a nondescript place that David said reminded him of his youth, for reasons he did not explain to Ada.