Liston convinced David to make her his executor shortly after that, when it became clear that the home visits by social services were going badly. Her childhood friend Tom Meara, who worked for the DCF, had warned her.
Ada, who had become masterful at eavesdropping in the last year, stood in the upstairs hallway of David’s house, the receiver of a telephone extension pressed to her ear, the mouthpiece upended in the air. She breathed as lightly as she could, listening as her father and Liston negotiated her fate.
“They’ll take Ada away from you,” she heard Liston say. “Don’t think they won’t.”
“Really, Liston,” said David, protesting. But in his voice Ada heard something resigned and anxious.
“It would be best for Ada, David,” said Liston. “Right? I mean, wouldn’t it?” And it was then that Ada put the receiver gently down on the table, not wanting to hear anything more. She did not know whom to trust.
Only later did Ada learn all of the details of their arrangement. Mercifully, that year they attempted to keep her protected from whatever backroom dealings in which the two of them were engaging. Even David, never one to shelter her from the affairs of grown-ups, undertook to baby her just a bit, given the circumstances. Or perhaps, more likely, he simply forgot to tell her. But over the course of the following months, it became clear that Liston and David had agreed—whether it was Liston’s idea or David’s, Ada was never certain—that Liston would be designated Ada’s legal guardian in the event that her father became unable to care for her.
On April 1, 1985, David resigned from the Steiner Lab. He did not tell Ada he had done so; she found out only when a grad student let her know that she would really, really miss her father.
“He’s just a great guy,” said the student earnestly. “A classic. There’s not many like him anymore.”
A week later, they received an invitation to a retirement party, formally worded, to be held in a ballroom at the Bit. President McCarren was listed as the host—a fact that made David, even in his somewhat incapacitated state, scoff. Peter McCarren, who had replaced President Pearse several years prior, was despised by David for reasons Ada never fully understood. McCarren was a short, rough man, quite unlike his stately predecessor. He was pushy and red-faced, a bulldog, good at fundraising but bad at math. “That idiot,” David said, anytime his name was raised.
“Good old McCarren,” he said now, ruefully, more slowly than he might have before. “He probably couldn’t wait to see me go.”
The dinner itself was on a Friday night, David’s last official day of work. Ada was to meet him at the lab that afternoon, after her school day ended. In the morning, David had come downstairs in an unironed button-down shirt, and Ada pleaded with him to go back upstairs and put on a suit. She herself ran home briefly after school to change out of her school uniform and into a dress that was slightly too small for her, a pretty one that Liston had helped her pick out the summer before, on one of the shopping trips she sometimes orchestrated for Ada, to David’s mild disgust. The dress, made of light yellow cotton, was too summery for April, and to compensate Ada had paired it with black tights, black patent-leather shoes, and a blue ski parka—her only winter jacket. She had hoped to do without it, but it was still cold that April, and it would not warm up for a month. She looked odd, even she knew it, but she had few other options. She ran to the T through a chilly rain. Inside, she produced the piece of paper she had been carrying in her pocket all day.
This was her secret: at Liston’s urging, she had composed a speech in her father’s honor, a description of his career, the awards he’d won, the impact he’d had on his field. She had stayed up late every night that week, working in her bedroom with one light on, neglecting the homework her teachers at Queen of Angels had assigned her. My father, David Sibelius, it began, is retiring after nearly 30 years of running the Steiner Laboratory. She had crafted it carefully to emphasize his great accomplishments, the nobility of his character, while keeping it relatively restrained and dignified. She had tried to make it funny. If there was one thing David hated, she knew, it was sentimentality.
When she reached the lab she went straight to Liston’s office.
“Don’t you look pretty!” said Liston, standing up from behind her desk, taking off the reading glasses she needed but professed to hate. She, too, had dressed up for David’s dinner: she was wearing an oversized pink blazer that both clashed with and set off her hair, and she had applied more blush than usual. She was wearing big, dangly earrings in geometrical shapes. She would be the one assuming David’s role as head of the lab. She looked as if she had attempted to dress in a way that reflected her promotion, but even Ada knew she had gotten it slightly wrong.
It was 4:00 in the afternoon: three hours before the dinner was set to begin. Shyly, Ada produced from her pocket the speech she had written, and asked if Liston would mind looking at it. Then she sat down on the beanbag chair that she had slept in, often, as a child, and stared at the floor, and waited anxiously for Liston to respond.
“Oh, Ada,” Liston said, “I think it’s perfect.” When she looked up, Ada saw that little pools of tears were hovering precariously above Liston’s lower lashes, threatening to spill over. Liston smiled briefly and then let her face drop. Ada studied her. She was a pretty woman, forty-three that year, slightly plump, soft-featured. To Ada, she looked perpetually like a teenager; Ada had never been privy to the dressing-table rituals and ministrations of women; she mistook Liston’s fashion sense, her dyed red hair, the mascara she wore, for signifiers of youth.
“I’m sorry,” said Liston, and she let out a sad little laugh. “I’ll just miss having you here, that’s all. Both of you.”
All six colleagues filed out, one at a time, from the main room of the Steiner Lab. Charles-Robert, and then Liston, and then Frank, and then Hayato, and then David. Ada left last; and, placing a hand on the wall behind her, she tapped the light switch down instinctively, without having to search for it. She looked backward, into the darkened office, and it felt, in a way, as if she were leaving her life and her body behind: as if, when she closed the door behind her, she would become a ghost, something spectral and disincarnate, something without a home. She wondered if this was what David felt like all the time. She wondered what would happen next.
The dinner was held in the faculty dining room of the Bit, which had been decorated with linens and flowers.