The Unseen World (30 page)

Aside from working together on this decryption, what she and Gregory talked about was mainly impersonal: in addition to codes and cryptography and cryptanalysis and computers, they discovered that they had in common a great love of the
Star Wars
movies (one of David's only concessions to popular culture; he had taken her to every one in the cinema near the lab, and bought them a large popcorn and Raisinets to split), and the
Lord of the Rings
books—also favorites of David's—and
Hardy Boys
mysteries. Gregory would not admit to liking
Nancy Drew
books, though she argued that they were better. He had read many of the books on programming that Liston kept around the house, and from them he had taught himself the fundamentals. Outside the house, he read everything he could find on biology and physics and the cosmos, but thus far he had limited himself to what was available at the Queen of Angels Lower
School library, which offered only the equivalent of children's encyclopedias, along with a series for Catholic children called
Let's Learn About
. . . He showed Ada one of these books, a slim tome on the life cycle of plants, and she tossed it across the room dramatically in disgust. She was showing off—the action did not come naturally to her—but his eyes widened, and Ada imagined that she had earned his respect.

It became clear to her that Liston, out of a benevolent desire to allow her children to have “normal” childhoods (perhaps, in fact, taking into consideration Ada as a counter-example), had inadvertently deprived Gregory of an education in the areas that interested him. What he knew about computer science he had largely taught himself; when he asked his mother questions about her work, she would answer him kindly but concisely, never in enough detail to satisfy him. With three other children, a grandchild, and a full-time job, Liston had not had the time that David had had to transfer what he knew to his offspring. Liston's main concern with Gregory was that he spend more time outdoors, make friends, have fun—goals for her child that had never crossed David's mind as something for Ada to work toward.

Now Ada had a pupil, and, although she did not admit it, she relished the task before her. She corrected mistakes in Gregory's thinking; she taught him what she could about programming and cryptography and cryptanalysis. She assigned him books to read, just as David had done for her, curating them to align with what she perceived to be Gregory's interests.

He was a quick but often recalcitrant learner, occasionally insisting that Ada was incorrect on a point that she knew to be true, or asking her questions she could not answer and then triumphantly crowing that he had stumped her.

As she got to know him better, it occurred to her why he had such difficulty at school. There was a certain amount of arbitrariness to his persecution, yes; he had been designated early on as the
lowest-ranking member of his class, and that was a difficult role to escape. Yet Ada, although her tenure at Queen of Angels had been short, had already learned certain truths that seemed to perpetually elude him. One was that simple words were better. She concealed her vocabulary most of the time, but Gregory, when spoken to or yelled at in the hallway, responded in words and sentences that were at times positively Shakespearean.
Coward
, he would mutter, or
fool
, or
imbecile
. Once he called one of his tormentors a
callow dog
. The idea, especially for boys, was either to pretend you hadn't heard what was shouted at you or to retaliate with strong, unexpected physical force. These were the only good options. But Gregory chose neither of them, and so was punished for it. In turn, he often acted unpleasantly, which further fueled his oppressors, and allowed them to justify their behavior toward him. Had he been in the Upper School with William, his brother's presence might have leant him some respect or protection; but to the eighth-graders at the Lower School, William Liston seemed very far away, and only served as a reminder of everything that Gregory lacked—presumably even to Gregory himself. Therefore he slunk through the hallways with his head down, looking up only to snarl back a response to someone who had lobbed an insult at him.

His unpleasantness often extended even toward Ada. “Ha-ha,” he said to her sometimes, pointing a small finger in her direction. He did this when she was wrong on any point. It was maddening, and Ada often had the urge to walk away from him, to leave him once more to his own devices. But she never did; for in certain ways her interactions with Gregory brought back to her a piece of her former self, and this, to Ada, was invaluable.

She began to let Gregory come with her to the Fields Corner library after school, where she had been working, with Miss Holmes's guidance, on going through their collection of the
New York Times
on microfilm—specifically the society pages from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s—in
the hope of finding more information on the Sibelius family, and why and how David might have connected himself to them.

But the society pages, thus far, had yielded nothing. Ron Loughner, thought Ada, was mistaken. There were plenty of Astors and Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and Whitneys and Morgans at every party; and although certain branches of the Sibelius family turned up here and there, J. Fairfax and Isabelle were nowhere to be found. Nor was the real David Sibelius—whom she had begun to think of as “other-David” in her mind, being unable to imagine her own father being called anything else. Certainly not
Harold—
a name that did not, she thought, fit him in the least. She scanned hundreds, and then thousands, of newspaper pages, looking for any image of the same fair-haired young man with a mole on his cheek that Ellen Palmer had claimed was David Sibelius. Ada would believe it, she decided, when she saw a picture of him, printed in an official source, with a caption beneath. Together she and Gregory made headway through a decade of society pages.

On the opposing front, Miss Holmes had not yet heard back from the librarian in Olathe, though she had called once, after two weeks, to check in again, and had left a message.

Gregory always left earlier than Ada, so that they would not return to the house at the same time. And one day, as she was walking home just after dusk, Ada saw Mrs. O'Keeffe, their neighbor, on her porch. It was an unusual sighting: it was early December, and typically she went inside for the winter in late October and did not emerge again until May. But it was unusually warm that day, and the first snow had not yet fallen. One brave cricket croaked its song nearby. Mrs. O'Keeffe was still wearing her dark glasses, though the sun was down, and sitting in a rocking chair. She was wearing a blanket that covered her lap, and a puffy pink jacket that Ada had never seen before: perhaps a gift from her daughter Mary, who was a regular presence at the house.

Suddenly Ada was inspired.

She approached the porch, calling out to Mrs. O'Keeffe loudly so that she would not be startled. But Mrs. O'Keeffe seemed almost as if she had been expecting someone.

“It's Ada,” she said, when she reached the top step of the porch, and Mrs. O'Keeffe rocked slowly in her chair and nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “I know who you are.”

“Nice out,” said Ada, who was having trouble beginning.

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. O'Keeffe. And then: “How's your father, dear? I haven't seen him in so long.”

“He's fine,” said Ada quickly. She could not tell how much the neighbors knew about their situation. Many of them, including Mrs. O'Keeffe, had seen him the day the firemen were called, covered in a blanket like a child on the front lawn. Furthermore, Liston was social, and loved gossip; but she was also intensely loyal when it came to both Ada and David. Ada could not decide which of these two characteristics might influence Liston more.

“Actually, I was wondering,” said Ada. “I mean, I had a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“I was wondering if you knew his parents,” said Ada. “When you worked in New York.”

“The Sibeliuses?” said Mrs. O'Keeffe, and Ada nodded, and then said, “Yes,” in case Mrs. O'Keeffe hadn't seen her. Her head was turned vaguely in the wrong direction, five or ten degrees off from where Ada was standing.

“I knew of them,” said Mrs. O'Keeffe. “Of course, I left New York in 1923, just a few years after they were married, I suppose. Before your father would have been born. I worked for a family called Baker. Their house was on Gramercy Park, not far from the Sibeliuses, and it's fair to say we all gossiped among ourselves. The staff, I mean.”

“What were they like? His parents,” asked Ada.

Mrs. O'Keeffe paused.

“What were they
meant
to be like, you mean?” There was still a very faint trace of an Irish accent in her voice, which, David had
pointed out, presented itself more obviously when she was speaking about her former life.

“I guess so.”

“Oh, now, I really couldn't say. I didn't know them personally, you see.”

Ada was disappointed. “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

Mrs. O'Keeffe turned her head ever so slightly to the left, so that she was looking more directly at Ada.

“Why do you ask, dear?” she said.

“I'm just,” said Ada. “I'm just trying to find out more about his history.

“He's not doing well,” she added.

And this seemed to do the trick.

“Well,” said Mrs. O'Keeffe, lowering her voice, “if you want to know what I heard—don't tell your father I told you—but there was a sort of scandal.”

“A scandal?” said Ada.

“Yes, dear. Before your father was born, of course. Something to do with a lady and Mr. Sibelius.”

“Oh,” said Ada, embarrassed.

“
She sued him
,” whispered Mrs. O'Keeffe. “For defamation of character. In the papers and everything. This wasn't a lady you'd want to have over for dinner. Poor Mrs. Sibelius took to her bed,” she added.

“Do you know when that happened?” asked Ada.

“Let's see, now,” said Mrs. O'Keeffe, putting a trembling hand to her cheek. “Directly before I was married and left: 1923. Spring of 1923, most likely. Of course, this gave the maids on the block plenty to talk about,” she said.

When she had finished speaking, she drifted into quietness again, and at last Ada thanked her, and told her good night.

“Now don't tell your father I told you this,” said Mrs. O'Keeffe. “If he'd wanted you to know, he'd have told you himself, wouldn't he?”

The next day, at the library, Ada told Miss Holmes what she had learned, and their focus shifted. Instead of looking at the society pages, she and Gregory spent the afternoon scanning the
Times
for articles from the spring of 1923.

Occasionally Miss Holmes stopped by to check on their progress. There were two microfilm readers at the Fields Corner branch and they had been monopolizing them for days. Fortunately, there was not much in the way of competition.

At 4:45, fifteen minutes before the library was due to close, Gregory held up his left hand. Ada saw him in her peripheral vision.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Come look,” said Gregory. His face was pink with pleasure: he had found something.

There, on the screen in front of him, was a headline: “Miss Polly Howard Files Suit against Sibelius Heir.” And on the next page, a clear black-and-white image of a man emerging from a courtroom, flashes going off as reporters swarmed him. His face was turned directly toward the camera, and he was looking at it with palpable contempt, the edges of his mouth turned down, his chin tilted upward.

Ada considered it. From her backpack, she produced the photograph of David and his parents from the studio in Olathe.

There was no question: the man in the newspaper looked nothing like David. He was the twin, instead, of the boy in the photograph Ellen Palmer had produced. J. Fairfax Sibelius, in the newspaper, was short, bulldoggish, heavy-jowled, and fair; the man in the Olathe photograph was tall and thin and dark, like David.

Lying in her bed that night, Ada could not sleep. She was trying not to despair; but it seemed that the more they researched David, the less of his life felt understandable and true. It seemed as if her questions were growing in number while her answers shrank. It had already been three weeks since Miss Holmes had called the librarian
in Olathe, and one since she had left a second message, but they had received no information about Harold Canady. Perhaps, she thought, it was simply a nonsense name: several syllables David had babbled in a row. The disease made him seem to speak sometimes in tongues.

The most important piece of unsolved evidence she had now seemed to her to be the disk that David had given her, and as she looked into the dark of her room, she decided that it was, perhaps, time to call in the experts. There was nothing more to lose.

F
rank Halbert was, David always liked to say, more of a worker than a thinker. “Every lab needs one of them, though,” he said. It was not surprising, therefore, that on Saturday, Frank was the first to arrive at the Steiner Lab, a puzzled look on his face.

Ada was waiting outside. She no longer had a key, and she did not know the new guard who had started working since she'd last been to the lab.

“Hi,” said Ada. It had been six months since the last time she'd seen Frank, when he came over to Liston's for dinner. It had not been so very long before that that she had spent every day working side by side with him—with everyone at the lab. But now she felt shy around him. She had heard from Liston that he'd gotten engaged recently, and she wanted to tell him congratulations, but she lacked the courage and the poise.

“Hi, Ada!” said Frank, brightly. He stood back, regarding her for a moment. “It was a nice surprise to hear from you,” he said. “Do you want to go up? The others should be here soon.”