They brought Ada to the living room to deliver the news. Later, she recalled wondering, perversely, if this was what it was like to have both a father and a mother. They sat together across from her. She was on a little chair that David said had come from his grandmother. They were on a leather sofa that David attended to from time to time with an oil that smelled like lemons.
David looked at Liston for help, but she shook her head.
He cleared his throat.
“Two years ago,” he began, “at Liston’s insistence, I visited a doctor for the first time in quite a while. There I was instructed to return for further testing. Upon doing so, I was informed that it was likely that I might be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I disagreed with that assessment. I still do.”
He paused.
“How familiar are you with Alzheimer’s disease?” he asked.
Ada considered, and then said she knew what it was. She had read about it in some book or other, or perhaps more than one book. It was part of her vocabulary. She pictured it as a slow gray fog that rolled in over one’s memory. She pictured it seeping in through the doors and windows as they spoke, invading the room. She felt cold.
“Have you been back to the doctor since then?” Ada asked.
Liston glared at David.
“No,” he said, hesitantly.
“What?” he said to Liston. “There’s nothing they can do for me. Even if their diagnosis is correct.”
“You seem fine,” Ada said to him, and to Liston, and to herself.
“I am,” he said. “Don’t worry too much about this, Ada,” he said. “I’m quite all right.”
Ada could feel the tension between David and Liston. She knew, though she was young, what was causing it: it was Liston’s wish to protect her with honesty, and David’s to protect her—and himself—with optimism, wishfulness, some willful ignorance of his impending fate.
“I think David might have told me he’d be going out of town, actually,” said Ada. “I can’t remember now.”
It was a lie. Of course it was a lie. Liston looked at her sadly.
“You see?” said David, but Liston didn’t respond.
Finally, in the midst of their silence, Ada stood up. She turned to Liston.
“I guess I can stay here now,” she said, and she excused herself, and walked slowly up the stairs to her bedroom, which was as unfrilled and austere as a man’s, wallpapered in a brown plaid that the previous owners had chosen. She’d been reading The Way of a Pilgrim, like Franny Glass, and although she was not religious, she said the Jesus Prayer aloud, quietly, five times. She told herself that everything would be fine, because she could imagine no alternative. Because no life existed for her outside of David.
In a week, the Boston Department of Children & Families came to visit them. Liston had called Officer Gagnon to let him know that David had been found, but they were concerned enough about his disappearance to investigate.
David was appalled. He sulked his way through the home visit, with a woman named Regina O’Brien, a gray lady with gray hair. To her questions he gave single-word answers, sometimes unsubtly rolling his eyes. In order to offer an explanation for an absence that had brought the police to their home, David was forced to reveal his diagnosis to the DCF. His first proposal that he had simply forgotten to tell Ada that he’d been going out of town had seemed to alarm them more than it assured them of his competence.
Then came a question that David and Ada had not prepared for in advance. Miss O’Brien looked at Ada and asked how she was doing in school.
Ada paused. She looked at David, who looked at Miss O’Brien and told her that Ada was doing very well in school.
It was not, perhaps, a lie, if one counted David’s method of educating her at his laboratory as school. He had always been hazy about homeschooling Ada; in that decade, everyone thought it was odd and eccentric, but not out of line with the rest of David’s odd, eccentric behavior. Everyone, including Ada, seemed to accept that he had worked something out with the state. In that moment, for the first time, it occurred to Ada that perhaps he never had.
It must have occurred to Regina O’Brien, too, for she looked at Ada levelly and asked her what school she attended.
She panicked. She looked at David, who said nothing. She thought she should lie. “Woodrow Wilson,” she said, naming a nearby middle school, uncertain whether it was even the one she’d be sent to.
“And what grade are you in?” asked Miss O’Brien.
“Eighth,” said Ada.
Miss O’Brien paused.
“And who’s your favorite teacher there?” she asked.
At last, David interjected. “She doesn’t go anyplace. I teach her,” he said. “I provide an education for her at home and at my place of work.”
And from the look on Miss O’Brien’s face, Ada knew that they were deeply in trouble.
Later in the 1980s, a series of cases worked their way through the Massachusetts courts that would define the laws that now govern the idea of homeschooling. In Care and Protection of Charles & Others, one will find an overview of what is now required of homeschoolers in the state of Massachusetts: Prior approval from the superintendent and school board, for one. Access to textbooks and resources that public school children use, for another. David and Ada had neither. In 1984, David’s failure to enroll his daughter in any school was only further evidence of his neglect, in the eyes of the DCF.
He seemed not to recognize the severity of the allegations against him. He felt it was impossible that they could take his child from him. Absurd. He told Liston it would not happen.
But after that first visit, their lives began to change. The DCF commanded David to enroll Ada in an accredited school. Miss O’Brien recommended to her supervisor that home visits be continued, and social services required David to see a doctor regularly to monitor the progress of his disease. To see whether, and how fast, he was progressing toward parental incompetence. Incompetence: the word that Liston had once used in reference to him. Incompetence: the opposite, to Ada, of her father’s name.