The Unseen World (39 page)

“No,” said Ada. “No, they were friends.”

“You didn't see what we saw,” said Gregory. “Before he got sick. She mooned over him. She confessed it to Joanie when Joanie got older. If he'd liked women I think they could have had a great love story. They made sense together.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” she said, vaguely. “I don't think she was.”

She searched the room for an escape. David had been gone for twenty years now, and still his name now produced in her something akin to pain. She loved her father, still loved him, but it elicited a deep, dull ache in her to think of him, to speak of him—there were too many unresolved questions about him. Over the years, Ada's vision of David had become something delicate and tense, a raveled knot of emotion that twisted tighter at any mention of him.

“I do,” said Gregory. “My brothers and sister and I talked about it all the time. We teased her about it.”

She smiled ruefully. “Well,” she said. She could think of nothing more to say.

But Gregory was not finished.

“You were both like that,” he said. “You Sibeliuses.” His voice had taken on an edge, and Ada could not identify its source. She searched his face. He looked away.
Like what?
she wanted to ask, but she felt it was a door that should not be opened.

“I'd better get going,” she said. She lifted her purse onto her shoulder.

Awkwardly, she had hugged Gregory, Matty, Kathryn, the rest of them—even William.

She had said goodbye to Shawmut Way, to the houses on it. First Liston's house—into which Gregory and his new wife Kathryn would move that same year—and then David's, which had recently been acquired by its third set of owners since she and Liston had sold it, at last, in 1987. Liston had kept her apprised of its state from across the country whenever they spoke. “The Burkes have it planted nicely,” she told Ada; or, “This new family needs to get someone to mow the lawn.” Ada would miss those reports.

Finally, she had gone back to her hotel. She hadn't slept. She had lain awake until the sun rose, and then boarded the plane that took her back to San Francisco.

That was five years ago. Since then, she had exchanged sporadic, halfhearted e-mails with Matty, now Matt (a serial dater, a perennial youngest child, who hopped between jobs and girlfriends with equal enthusiasm); had exchanged Facebook likes and messages with Joanie, who texted her photographs of her children (Kenny, the oldest, would be a father himself soon) and complaints about what terrible things Kathryn was doing to Liston's house.
You'd hate it
, Joanie had written confidentially.
It looks like a beach house or something. White wicker everywhere
. Though she had settled into an amicable relationship with William, she still kept her distance from him; they had nothing in common, Ada realized, and they never had. Every so often she sent a line to Gregory, to whom she had been closest as a child; but his replies to her were typically brief, and so after a while she ceased to.

There was nothing keeping her at the office now: Meredith, after all, was leading the meeting. She put on her jacket, stood up, and walked across the main floor—strange looks from her colleagues, from Tom Tsien—and then out the door and into her car. She had suggested, to Gregory, a restaurant called Larkspur, avoiding Palo Alto's most popular spots. It was a sort of tearoom, someplace that served breakfast and lunch, someplace she hadn't tried before; someplace, she thought, where she wouldn't be seen by anyone she knew. She didn't want to have to introduce Gregory to anyone, or explain what they were doing.

As she drove, she contemplated David.

He existed in a deep recess of her mind as a strange and painful chapter of her own history that she only thought about when she was prepared for sadness. She tried to convince herself that she had come to terms with him; that she was comfortable, at last, with never knowing the truth about him. But she was not certain she had been successful in this endeavor. He was
troubled
: this was how she had categorized him. The word she used to describe him, always, to friends.

She still had dreams about him, though—regularly, once a week or more—and in them he appeared to her as the face of all the benevolence in the universe. A kind and somehow holy presence that blessed and pacified her, that eased her worry, that calmed her. She woke up from these dreams consoled; but any warm feelings she had were quickly replaced with suspicion, with the unsettling sensation of being lied to again and again—even by her own recollections.

T
he restaurant was on a side street, in a Craftsman-style house.

When she walked in, she realized that she had gotten there first. She had not wanted to. She was more nervous than she could have anticipated: to see Gregory, yes; but also to hear what he had to say. It had been so long since she had spoken directly to anyone about David.

The place was decorated inside to represent the period of the house's construction. Light wood and rich colors. She ordered tea. She asked for bread. It came with delicate small pots of jam and marmalade. She waited five minutes, and then ten.

Moments later she received a text from him:
looking for parking. be there soon
.

And then there he was, Gregory, finally, rushing toward her in an overcoat, a look of apology on his face. He was benevolently inept: he elbowed another patron in his rush to the table, and then stooped down to excuse himself for longer than was necessary, bowing in apology.

There was a moment when Ada half rose from the table, uncertain whether he would expect a hug, but he sat down abruptly across from her and, relieved, she sank back into her chair.

“Cold out!” said Gregory, before he said anything else. He took a
piece of bread from the basket, ripped off a piece, chewed quickly. “I thought San Francisco was supposed to be warmer this time of year.”

Ada nodded. It was January. Typically, it was. She watched his jaw as he chewed. It was a day or two past being shaved: his face was thin now, thinner than it had been the last time she had seen him. He had lost the elfin look he had had as a child; but his eyes were still large and inquisitive, his mouth fine and interesting. Now, newly, there were flecks of gray in his hair.

“How have you been? Good to see you,” said Gregory. He seemed nervous.

“I'm good,” said Ada. And she racked her brain for questions she could ask him, so she would not have to answer any about herself. “How's the house?”

“Oh,” Gregory said vaguely. “Old. You know.”

“And the job?”

“Great,” said Gregory. “Good as it can be, I mean. Too much sometimes, but you know how it is.”

“I do,” said Ada.

“How about yours?” Gregory asked. “How's Tri-Tech?”

She paused. She wondered if Gregory knew the details of Tri-Tech's recent troubles. Industry websites had been reporting on the topic for a year, and last week rumors of layoffs had been posted on TechCrunch. Gregory didn't seem like the type to keep up with industry gossip, though.

Before she could say anything, the waitress came by to ask him for his drink order.

“Coffee,” he said. “Black.”

“And how's Kathryn?” asked Ada.

Roughly, he ripped off another piece of the bread with his teeth, and chewed it with a sort of aggressiveness, to make it clear perhaps that he could not speak. He looked out the window as he did so.

Ada took a sip of her tea. She wasn't certain what to say. The silence went on for longer than was comfortable.

“I was hoping to save that for later,” said Gregory. “But what the heck. We're getting a divorce.”

He shrugged at her, looked at her with wide, defensive eyes.

“I'm sorry,” said Ada.

“Yeah,” said Gregory. “Really knocks the wind out of you.”

She had a vision of him, suddenly, as he had been in middle school: broken, scurrying from place to place, avoiding anyone's eye. These days he stood up straighter, looked intently at anyone speaking to him. He might even be called handsome, in a way that was subtle enough to present itself slowly, over the course of a long conversation. It was funny, she thought, what adulthood did to a person; William had grown into something nearly unrecognizable, his only attractive quality the unshakable confidence that he had acquired as a child. Gregory, on the other hand, had grown interesting to look at. He had fine dark eyebrows that he raised, one at a time, to emphasize a point. Thanks to years of braces he had excellent teeth, straight and white, and as an adult he smiled frequently. Ada imagined that new acquaintances of his suspected nothing of the trauma he had endured at school when he was a child. But his voice had retained a hint of it: there was a slight, almost imperceptible quaver to his speech, and he still occasionally stammered. Ada heard both qualities, now, as he spoke.

The waitress returned, delivered his coffee; and then, perhaps sensing the gravity of the moment, departed swiftly once again.

“She's keeping the house, too,” said Gregory.

“No,” said Ada.

“Yup,” said Gregory. “Mom's house. I've got half my stuff in my car already. Mostly old gear and cables and stuff, antiques.”

“Where are you moving?”

“Some new apartment building in Cambridge,” he said. “With a bunch of college kids. Can you believe it?”

“When do you have to leave?” Ada asked.

He shrugged again, ripped off more bread. He was clutching the
crust of it in his hand too firmly. It was disintegrating in his grip. “Soon as possible,” he said. “I'm already paying rent at the new place. We've been separated for a year already, and she's at her new boyfriend's now most of the time, anyway. They'll probably move into the house together as soon as I'm gone.”

They sat in silence, briefly, until at last the waitress returned to take their order.

“Two scrambled eggs,” said Gregory.

“Nothing, thanks,” said Ada.

Ada sipped her tea. She pictured Liston's house and David's house, too, sitting a few lots apart on Shawmut Way. Soon she would know nobody who lived there, and the thought made her feel hollow. For as little as she saw Gregory, she still took comfort in the thought of him living on their old street, bearing inside him the story of his mother, of David, of Ada. It connected her, in some intangible way, to her past.

He stared down at the table. He looked incredibly forlorn.

“Tri-Tech's failing,” she said, abruptly. “I wouldn't be surprised if they folded in a year.” It was true, and it seemed right to tell him. A fair trade, a secret for a secret.

“On top of that,” she continued, “I think they might be edging me out. I was supposed to be leading a meeting right now that I was disinvited to this morning.” It was almost funny, as she told it to Gregory: it was a relief to say it. She felt the deep absurdity of it welling up inside her, softening its edges, lessening the blow of having wasted most of her professional life to date on a company that was fundamentally unsound, subject to the ignoble whims of an egomaniacal leader. She was working for an outfit that prized money over ideas. David, she knew, would have predicted a different future for her: and this was the thought that needled her, that pierced her sometimes unexpectedly as she was driving to work each day. This was the guilty whispering voice that kept her up at night.

“I'm thinking of quitting,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked. “I guess we're both screwed.” And, for the first time, he smiled.

Gregory reached into the inner pocket of his overcoat then, and from it he produced an object. Silently, he offered it to her.

It was the original floppy disk that David had given her twenty-six years ago. It was lost; she had thought that it was lost. That Liston had donated the dictionary in which it had been housed.

“My God,” said Ada, and instinctively she reached for it, as if reaching for her father.

“I found it while I was going through the house,” said Gregory. “Packing to leave.”

“Where was it?” she asked.

“The attic,” he said.

“How did it get up there?” she asked him, and he told her he didn't know.

It had been many years since she had held a floppy disk. Even longer since she had held this one, the original, which she had years and years ago stashed away for safekeeping, working only from copies after that. This one was a five-and-a-quarter-inch disk—an obscure link between the eight-inch disk and the more famous three-and-a-half-inch disk—that just happened to be the standard format for saving data when David had created it. It was enclosed in an opaque white clamshell case,
For Ada
scrawled in black permanent marker across it. She opened it. Inside was the disk itself, made of matte black plastic. A sticker with the brand name,
Verbatim
, was affixed to the upper left corner. The upper right corner was the one with the label. There, too, was David's familiar handwriting, which felt, as always, like a punch to the gut. It had been so long since she had seen it.

Dear Ada
, it said on the label.
A puzzle for you. With my love, your father, David Sibelius
.

“I put it into an ancient disk drive and opened it,” said Gregory. “But the file was corrupt.”

Ada was distracted. She put a finger up to the inscription.

“So no one's solved it,” said Gregory.

Ada shook her head. She looked at him. In his face she recognized an old glint of the self-satisfaction that had annoyed her as a child, but now it gave her hope.

“Do you have the encryption memorized?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought you would,” he said. “Here. Write it out.” He fished in his pockets once again, produced a pen, pushed a napkin across the table at her.

She wrote:

DHARSNELXRHQHLTWJFOLKTWDURSZJZCMILWFTALVUHVZRDLDEYIXQ
.