“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?”