Inside, quickly, she threw off her clothing, fell into her bed. She set her phone alarm for 6:00. If she fell asleep right away, she would get over four hours of sleep.
But for what seemed like an eternity, outside her window, the rhythmic bouncing of the ping-pong ball overpowered the earplugs she had put into her ears. Perhaps, she told herself, it was time to move.
1980s
Boston
Ada Sibelius was supposed to be at school. Instead, she was at her father’s house, which still had not been sold. She had called Queen of Angels from David’s that morning, lowering her voice into what she hoped was a decent impression of an adult, letting the secretary know that Ada Sibelius was sick and would not be coming in. Then she had walked up the stairs to the attic, telling herself that she would begin at the top, go through each box in turn. Next she would move into David’s bedroom and go through all his drawers. And, at last, she would search his office, which contained volumes and volumes of files and papers. She was looking for answers.
In the two days after Ron Loughner’s visit to St. Andrew’s, Ada had learned that, in the process of transferring custody of Ada from David to Liston, a question had arisen as part of a routine background check. At some point, a missing-person report had been filed for David by his own family. This was enough to trigger further investigation into his past—which, in turn, had led to the further revelation that Caltech—the institution that David had always cited as his undergraduate alma mater—had no record of his name. Furthermore, no official documentation of the legality of David’s surrogacy arrangement existed—not entirely surprising, given David’s failure to make legal his decision to homeschool his daughter—and therefore it was possible that Ada’s biological mother would make a bid for custody. All of this Ada had learned either through direct conversation with Liston or through eavesdropping on her phone calls, at which she had become very skilled. The family court judge adjudicating the process said that they could not move forward until these questions had been resolved.
The sum of this information had sent Ada into a spiral of doubt and pain so profound that it threatened to fell her. She did not believe what Liston told her, and she had told Liston this, somewhat rudely. In front of Liston, she had picked up the telephone in the kitchen and dialed the number for David’s room at St. Andrew’s. But it was not David who answered, and his roommate was incomprehensible and uncomprehending, ranting without pause, hanging up twice on Ada.
“It’s okay,” Liston had said. “We can talk more tomorrow, baby. Let’s try David tomorrow.”
The next afternoon, after a school day during which she had not even tried to concentrate, Ada had taken the bus to St. Andrew’s, her heart pounding. She had signed in hastily and then fairly sprinted toward David’s room. He had been by himself, sitting in his blue armchair, when she arrived, and she sat down in front of him breathlessly.
“David,” she said, “David, you need to help me.” And she had told him what she’d heard without stopping for breath. She begged her father to tell her the truth, to remember who he was, to let her know. Where did you go to college? Why did your family say you were missing? Why didn’t you draw up a contract with Birdie Auerbach, when you arranged to have her act as a surrogate? But, though he looked at her worriedly, his eyebrows rising and furrowing, he said nothing. She pressed on. Speaking with him, by then, was like speaking to someone who only knew a handful of English words.
“For heaven’s sake,” he said to her once.
She looked at him closely. Had she seen, at times, David’s old expression come across his face, breaking through his impassive gaze like a shaft of light? Was it pity, compassion, that crossed his face? Some sign of understanding beyond what he admitted? Once, she was sure she saw his eyes fill with tears, but they did not fall. Several times he reached for her hand and took it. Several times he uttered some word or phrase she did not recognize, and she wrote these down in a little notebook she kept in her schoolbag, in the hope that they would lead to some discovery.
She went back the next day, too, repeating the process, entreating him to remember, to tell her what he knew. But this time he became agitated, raising his voice in response to hers. He had begun in recent weeks to utter nonsense noises when he could find no words. “Walala,” he said to her, too loudly. “Oh, walla, walalalala.” And then, unexpectedly, her name: “Ada.”
Was this, she wondered, what he had been speaking of when he had come into her room following his botched retirement dinner? When he had warned her about information that might come to light in the future?
She decided, irreversibly, that it had to be. He must have had a plan: there was no question. She told herself that whatever secrets he had, he must be keeping for a reason; and, furthermore, that perhaps it was her job to discover them. To clear his name.
In her mind, there was no alternative: she could not imagine living in a world in which David did not represent—to her, to everyone—virtue, intellect, morality.
She took his hand. She looked at him carefully.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry, David,” she repeated—but she was saying it as much to herself as to him.
Meanwhile, a deep and abiding rage was growing inside of her, alarming in its intensity, directed mainly at Liston. Since Liston’s revelation, Ada had spoken to her as little as possible. She answered in monosyllables. She spent even more time in her room. She had decided—perhaps unfairly—that if only Liston had included her in this process from the start, she might have been able to draw something out of David when he had been slightly better, more coherent. But Liston assured her that she had tried herself to do this, unsuccessfully. She told Ada that she had been concerned about telling her anything too early—worried that she was somehow profoundly mistaken, that there was a good explanation for everything.
“I wanted to make sure that I had it right, baby,” said Liston. “Before I told you. Do you understand?”
Ada didn’t, at the time, but later she would—it was that Liston knew how pivotal David was to her understanding of the world, to her trust in what was right and good. And Liston knew that to remove him from the center of it, to place his identity on unsteady ground, might undo Ada in some essential way.
Ada decided that an intensive investigation of David’s possessions was merited, the kind that would take many hours in a row. And this was how she had come to be at her old house on a school day.