The Lowland

polished, pretty sandals on her feet. At breakfast Gauri watched them feeding the boy yogurt and cereal from a spoon.
    They asked Gauri, in English, where she was from, saying they came to America every summer, that this was where both their sons lived and that they liked it very much. One son lived in Sacramento, the other in Atlanta.
    Since becoming grandparents, they took each of their grandchildren on a separate vacation, to get to know them on their own terms, and to give their sons and daughters-in-law some time to themselves.
    At our age, what else is there to live for? the man asked Gauri, the child tucked into his elbow. And yet they preferred India, not wanting to retire here.
    Do you go back often? the wife asked.
    It’s been a while.
    Are you a grandmother?
    Gauri shook her head, then added, wanting suddenly to align herself with this couple, I’m still waiting.
    How many children do you have?
    One. A daughter.
    Normally she told people she did not have any children. And people backed away politely from this revelation, not wanting to press.
    But today Gauri could not deny Bela her existence. And the woman merely laughed, nodding, saying that children these days had minds of their own.
    In time her wrist grew stronger. In her therapy sessions they wrapped it in warmed wax. Again she was able to grasp her toothbrush and clean her teeth, to sign a check, or turn the knob of a door. Then she was able to drive again, to seize the gearshift and make a turn, to edit drafts and correct student papers with her dominant hand.
    The semester went on, she taught her last classes, turned in her grades. She would be on leave the coming fall. One afternoon, after finishing up at her desk, she walked across the parking lot of her apartment complex and opened her mailbox. With some effort she twisted the key.
    She returned to her apartment and pushed back the sliding glass door that was off the living room, leading to her patio. She set the mail on the teak table and sat down to go through it.
    Among the bills, the catalogues that had come to her that day, there was a personal letter. Subhash’s handwriting was on the envelope, the return address of the house in Rhode Island, close to the bay. He had boiled down to the proof of his penmanship, the dried saliva on the back of a stamp.
    He’d sent it care of her department. The secretary had done the courtesy of forwarding it to her home.
    Inside was a short letter written in Bengali, on two sides of a sheet of office stationery. She had not read Bengali penmanship in decades; her communication with Manash was by e-mail, in English.
    Gauri,
    The Internet tells me this is your address, but please confirm that this has reached you. As you see, I am in the same place. I am in decent health. I hope you are, too. But I will be seventy before too long, and we are entering a phase of life when anything might happen. Whatever lies ahead, I would like to begin to simplify things, given that, legally, we remain tied. If you have no objection, I am going to sell the house in Tollygunge, to which you still have a claim. I also think it’s time to remove your name as joint owner of the house in Rhode Island. I will leave it to Bela, of course.
    She paused, warming her hand against the surface of the table before continuing. The hand had turned vulnerable while it was bound up. Now her veins protruded, so that they resembled a piece of coral rooted to her wrist.
    He told her he didn’t want to drag her back to Rhode Island in the event of an emergency, not wanting to burden her in case he were to go first.
    I don’t mean to rush you, but I’d like to resolve things by the end of the year. I don’t know if there’s anything else we have to say to one another. Though I cannot pardon what you did to Bela, it was I who benefited, and continue to benefit, from your actions, however wrong they were. She remains a part of my life, but I know she is not a part of yours. If it were easier I’d be open to our meeting in person, and concluding things face-to-face. I bear you no ill will. Then again it’s just a matter of some signatures, and of course the mail will do.
    She had to read the letter a second time to realize the point of it. That after all this time, he was asking her for a divorce.
    2.
    Telling no one in their families, not even Manash, they’d married each other. It was January 1970. A registrar came to a house in Chetla. It