“Isn’t it cozy out,” David was fond of saying, on first snowfall. “Ada, come look.” And if she was asleep, he would wake her; and she would rise from her bed, sleepy-eyed, rubbing her face, and walk to the window of their drafty house, and together she and David would stand in silence, together in the night, looking out onto Shawmut Way through a frosty, rattling window, their breath obscuring it slowly.
The Christmas party was the culmination of all of these traditions, and perhaps David’s favorite tradition of all. He insisted, always, that a party was not complete without some entertainment, a game, an organized activity that required everyone’s participation. Some years it was a hired guitarist or a group of carolers; some years it was a juggler or a magician. (“What else is one supposed to do—just stand around and drink?” asked David, perplexed.) It was this philosophy that caused him to declaim the same riddle to the new graduate students at the dinner he held for them every year; and it was this philosophy that had caused him, that December, to write a Christmas play for every member of the lab to perform, in front of a small audience of colleagues from other departments, spouses and children of lab members, and staff and administrators from other parts of the university.
He had told none of them this in advance. Instead, at 9:00, tinging his glass with a finger, he asked for everyone’s attention, and directed them all to form a semicircle in the main room of the lab.
“Here we go,” said Hayato, good-naturedly.
“Except you, Hayato,” said David. “You come up here. And you, and you, and you,” he said, grabbing the rest of the lab. “And you,” he said, last, to Ada, who had been praying to be forgotten. Her face burned as she walked to the front of the room and stood with the rest of them. In front of her, she saw a blur of faces before looking quickly down at the floor.
David was holding, in his left hand, a stack of stapled pages, which he passed out to each of them with mock seriousness, a flourish for each one. His face was pink and excited; his thick glasses were slipping down on his nose.
He turned back to the audience. “A play!” he announced. “A Christmas play.”
Later, Ada would not remember its exact plot—something about a group of superhero nerds sent back in time to determine how to achieve a better lift-to-drag ratio for Santa’s sleigh. (Ada played a reindeer.) What she did remember: David’s happiness, his complete contentment at the execution of his plan, how carefree he looked; and the way he directed them all, like a conductor with a baton; and her own embarrassment, her burning face, her quiet, noncommittal line delivery; and, in the front row, the faces of the audience members, some of whom looked bemused, some of whom looked befuddled; and there, to the right, at the edge of the crowd, the face of William, Liston’s oldest son, who stared at all of them incredulously, his mouth slightly agape.
In March she turned thirteen.
“A teenager,” said David, shaking his head. “Hard to believe, isn’t it, Ada?”
She nodded.
“Would you like a cake? I suppose you should have something festive,” said David, but Ada said no.
Secretly, she had been wanting one, a candle to blow out, a wish to make. She had gotten only one present that year, from Liston, naturally: a hot-pink sweater with a purple zigzag pattern that Ada loved but felt too self-conscious to wear. David had not gotten her anything: she was not surprised, since he was both absentminded and vaguely opposed to consumerism. That year, however, she had been secretly hoping for something from him, which she only realized when nothing came. Some external signifier of what she thought was an important birthday. A piece of jewelry, maybe. An heirloom. Something timeless and important. She wished, too, as she had been doing with increasing frequency, that she and David could engage in some of the more typical conventions that accompanied occasions such as birthdays. A big party with friends, for example. A sleepover: she had never had a sleepover. She had no one to ask.
That evening, after a quiet dinner at home, the telephone rang, and David answered in his office.
“Yes?” he said, slowly, a note of surprise in his voice. It was nearly 11:00 at night. Normally Ada would have been in bed, but she felt unsettled and alight with something: the newness of being a teenager, perhaps. She felt untired and alert.
From the dining room, Ada listened to her father, in his office, on the phone; but David was quiet for some time. She could see the back of him, the receiver pressed to his ear. He said nothing.
Abruptly, he stood and walked to his office. She caught his eye quickly, and then he closed the door. Lately he had been intentionally excluding her from things, and each time she felt the sting of it sharply.
She sat for a while at the dining room table, but, although she could hear the low murmur of David’s voice through the door, his words were indecipherable. She stood up.
She walked outside, into the sloping backyard behind the house on Shawmut Way. All of the yards on their side of the road were fenceless and connected, lined at the bottom of a small hill by a street-length row of trees. Dorchester was a city neighborhood comprised of other neighborhoods, mainly working-class, high in crime by the 1980s, appealing to David in part because of these features, because of his self-identification as somebody unassuming and down-to-earth. But the neighborhood they lived in, Savin Hill, was an old and Irish one, very safe, suburban in its aspect. Over a bridge that separated their part of Savin Hill from the rest of the city, two leafy roads formed an interior and exterior circle at the base of the hill the area was named for. Shawmut Way connected the two roads together, like a spoke in a wheel. A small beach spanned the eastern border of the neighborhood and a park with public tennis courts framed the central hill. Liston continued to live there because of these features and David had agreed to live there, against his normal preferences, despite them. “I feel like I’m on vacation,” he said, often, when walking home from the T after work. This was, from David, a complaint. He preferred that his cities feel like cities; but his respect for Liston’s advice, when it came to Ada’s needs, outweighed his resistance.