The Lowland

on, never seeing them again. She can’t imagine being part of a couple, or of any other family. She’s never had a romantic relationship that’s endured for any length of time.
    She feels no bitterness, seeing Noel and Violet and Ursula together. Their closeness fascinates her, also comforts her. Even before her mother left, they’d never really been a family. Her mother had never wanted to be there. Bela knows this now.
    Visiting her father a few months ago, she’d learned that he was seeing someone. Not just anyone, but someone she knew. Mrs. Silva had been her history teacher. But Bela was asked, the day they all went out to breakfast, to call her Elise.
    She’d been astonished to learn of their involvement; the most significant figure of her upbringing, paired with a minor one. She’d been secretly upset by it, at first. But she knew it was unfair of her, given that she barely saw her father, given that she continued to measure out her contact with him, whether to deny herself or to deny him, she could not be sure.
    She saw he’d been nervous, telling her. She saw that he was afraid she would react badly, that maybe she would use this as further cause to keep away. Intuiting this fear, not wishing to intimidate him, she had reassured him, saying she was happy he’d found a companion, that of course she wished him well.
    The truth is, she had always liked Elise Silva. Bela had forgotten about her, but she remembered looking forward to her class. Last summer, right away, she’d perceived the affection between Elise and her father. The way they’d studied the menu together at breakfast, her father looking over Elise’s shoulder when he might have picked up his own. The way Elise encouraged him to forgo the oatmeal and indulge in Belgian waffles. She observed a tranquility in their faces. She saw how, shyly, in contrast to her mother and father, they were already united.
    She wonders if her father and Elise will eventually marry. But this would mean his divorcing her mother first. Bela will never marry, she knows this about herself. The unhappiness between her parents: this has been the most basic awareness of her life.
    When she was younger she’d been angry at her father, more angry than she’d been at her mother. She’d blamed him, probably unfairly, for driving her mother away, and for not figuring out a way to bring her back. Perhaps a remnant of that anger is the reason she doesn’t bother to tell him now that she’s living just three hours away in New York City. But this has been her policy: seeing him on her own terms, never making it clear where she is.
    At this point she’s lived nearly half her life apart from him. Eighteen years in Rhode Island, fifteen on her own. She’ll be thirty-four on her next birthday. She craves a different pace sometimes, an alternative to what her life has come to be. But she doesn’t know what else she might do.
    She wishes it were easier, the time she spends with her father. She wishes Rhode Island, which she’d loved as a child, wouldn’t remind her of her mother, who’d hated it. When Bela’s there she’s aware that she is unwanted, that her mother is never coming back for her. In Rhode Island she feels whatever is solid within her draining. And so, though she continues visiting, though she’s more or less made peace with her father, though he is her only family, she can never bear it for very long.
    Years ago, Dr. Grant had helped her to put what she felt into words. She’d told Bela that the feeling would ebb but never fully go away. It would form part of her landscape, wherever she went. She said that her mother’s absence would always be present in her thoughts. She told Bela that there would never be an answer for why she’d gone.
    Dr. Grant was right, the feeling no longer swallows her. Bela lives on its periphery, she takes it in at a distance. The way her grandmother, sitting on a terrace in Tollygunge, used to spend her days overlooking a lowland, a pair of ponds.
    She approaches the workmen. Once again she absorbs their conversation, both foreign and familiar. They have no idea that their talk affects her. She moves down the block, saluting them, wondering where she’ll go after Brooklyn. They see her and wave.
    The next time she visits her father she’ll speak to him in English. Were her mother ever to stand before her, even if Bela could