The Lowland

connection Elise and Subhash shared. It emerged when he told her his name, and then she asked if by any chance he was related to a student named Bela Mitra, who had taken her American history class many years ago at the local high school.
    I’m her father.
    He felt oddly nervous, proclaiming it that way, making an assertion that had to prove his identity as well as his link to Bela.
    He looked at this woman who had once taught her. Elise Silva was one of so many things he had not known about his daughter, after she’d reached a certain age. He still remembered the names of some of her teachers in elementary school. But by high school it was just the report card, the list of grades he scanned.
    You don’t know me, and yet you’ve let me drive your daughter to Hancock Shaker Village, she said. She had taken Bela with a small group of other students on a field trip there.
    My ignorance is shameful. I don’t even know where Hancock Shaker Village is.
    She laughed. That is shameful.
    Why does one visit?
    She explained. A religious sect begun in the eighteenth century, dedicated to celibacy, to simple life. A utopian population whose very faith had caused their numbers to dwindle. She asked where Bela lived now.
    Nowhere. She’s a nomad.
    Let me guess, she carries her life around in a backpack, doing things to make the world a better place?
    How did you know?
    Some kids form early. They’re focused. Bela was one.
    He had a sip of wine. She had no choice, he said.
    Elise looked at him, nodding. Indicating that she knew the circumstances, that Gauri had left.
    She talked to you about it?
    No. But her teachers were told.
    Do you still teach?
    After fifty-five I couldn’t keep up with them. I suppose I needed a change.
    She worked part-time at the local historical society now, she said. She was transferring archives online, editing their newsletter.
    He told her he’d been reading about the Great Swamp Massacre. He asked if any records remained.
    Oh sure. You can even find musket balls if you poke around the obelisk.
    I tried to find it once. I got lost.
    It’s tricky. You used to have to pay a farmer who maintained the road.
    He felt tired from standing. He realized he had not eaten. I’m going to get some food. Would you like to join me?
    They approached the buffet table. Richard’s widow stood at one end. She was crying, being embraced by one of her guests.
    I went through this, years ago, Elise said. She had watched her husband die from leukemia at forty-six. He’d left her with three children, two sons and a daughter. The youngest had been four. After her husband’s death she’d moved with her children into her parents’ home.
    I’m sorry.
    I had my family. Sounds like, with Bela, you were on your own.
    Her daughter had married a Portuguese engineer and lived in Lisbon. It was where Elise’s ancestors were from, but she’d never visited Europe until her daughter’s wedding. Her sons lived in Denver and Austin. For a while, after she retired, she’d split her time among those places, helping out with grandchildren, going to Lisbon once a year. But she had moved back to Rhode Island about a decade ago, after her father died, to be closer to her mother.
    She mentioned a tour the following weekend, a house in the village that the historical society had restored. She handed him a postcard that was in her purse, with the details.
    He accepted the card, thanking her. He folded it to fit into his jacket pocket.
    Tell Bela hello from me, she said, leaving him with no one to talk to, turning to someone else in the room.
    After the funeral, for several nights, sometimes as late as three o’clock in the morning, he lay awake, unable to lose consciousness for any sustained period. The house was silent, the world surrounding it silent, no cars on the road at that hour. Nothing but the sound of his own breathing, or the sound his throat made if he swallowed.
    The house, always to his regret, was too far from the bay to hear the waves. But sometimes the wind was strong enough to approximate the roar of the sea as it blew inland. Insubstantial, in a rage, a violent power rooted in nothingness. Threatening, as he lay unmoving under his blanket, to tear the rooms of the house from the foundation, to fell the trembling trees, to demolish the structure of his life.
    A colleague, noticing his fatigue at work, suggested getting more exercise, or a glass of