Her father was sitting on the sofa, not seeing Bela as she approached, not even though she stood a few feet away. His face looked different, as if the bones had shifted. As if some of them weren’t there.
Baba?
On the table beside him was a sheet of paper. A letter.
He put out his hand, seeking hers.
I have not made this decision in haste. If anything, I have been thinking about it for too many years. You tried your best. I tried, too, but not as well. We tried to believe we would be companions to one another.
Around Bela I am only reminded of all the ways I’ve failed her. In a way I wish she were young enough simply to forget me. Now she will come to hate me. Should she want to speak to me, or eventually to see me, I will do my best to arrange this.
Tell her whatever you think will be least painful for her to hear, but I hope you will tell her the truth. That I have not died or disappeared but that I have moved to California, because a college has hired me to teach. Though it will be of no comfort to her, tell her that I will miss her.
As for Udayan, as you know, for many years I wondered how and when we might tell her, what would be the right age, but it no longer matters. You are her father. As you pointed out long ago, and as I have long come to accept, you have proven yourself to be a better parent than I. I believe you are a better father than Udayan would have been. Given what I’m doing, it makes no sense for her connection with you to undergo any change.
My address is uncertain, but you can reach me care of the university. I will not ask anything else of you; the money they offer will be enough. You are no doubt furious with me. I will understand if you do not wish to communicate. I hope that in time my absence will make things easier, not harder, for you and for Bela. I think it will. Good luck, Subhash, and good-bye. In exchange for all you have done for me, I leave Bela to you.
The letter had been composed in Bengali, so there was no danger of Bela deciphering its contents. He conveyed a version of what it said, somehow managing to look into her confused face.
She was old enough to know how far away California was. When she asked when Gauri was coming back, he said he didn’t know.
He was prepared to calm her, to quell her shock. But it was she who comforted him in that moment, putting her arms around him, her strong slim body exuding its concern. Holding him tightly, as if he would float away from her otherwise. I’ll never go away from you, Baba, she said.
He knew the marriage, which had been their own choice, had become a forced arrangement day after day. But there had never been a conversation in which she expressed a wish to leave.
He’d sometimes thought, in the back of his mind, that after Bela went off to college, after she moved away from them, he and Gauri might begin to live apart. That a new phase could begin when Bela was more independent, when she needed them less.
He’d assumed, because of Bela, that Gauri would tolerate their marriage for now, as he’d been tolerating it. He never thought she would lack the patience to wait.
Of the three women in Subhash’s life—his mother, Gauri, Bela—there remained only one. His mother’s mind was now a wilderness. There was no shape to it any longer, no clearing. It had been overtaken, overgrown. She’d been converted permanently by Udayan’s death.
That wilderness was her only freedom. She was locked inside her home, taken out once each day. Deepa would prevent her from endangering herself, from embarrassing herself, from making further scenes.
But Gauri’s mind had saved her. It had enabled her to stand upright. It had cleared a path for her. It had prepared her to walk away.
What else had her mother left behind? On Bela’s right arm, just above the elbow, in a spot she had to twist her arm to see, a freckled constellation of her mother’s darker pigment, an almost solid patch at once discreet and conspicuous. A trace of the alternative complexion she might have had. On the ring finger of her right hand, just below the knuckle, was a single spot of this same shade.
In the house in Rhode Island, in her room, another remnant of her mother began to reveal itself: a shadow that briefly occupied a section of her wall, in one corner, reminding Bela of her mother’s profile. It was an association she noticed only after her mother was gone, and was unable thereafter to dispel.
In this shadow she saw the impression of her mother’s forehead, the slope of her nose. Her mouth and chin. Its source was unknown. Some section of branch, some overhang of the roof that refracted the light, she could not be sure.
Each day the image disappeared as the sun traveled around the house; each morning it returned to the place her mother had fled. She never saw it form or fade.
In this apparition, every morning, Bela recognized her mother, and felt visited by her. It was the sort of spontaneous association one might make while looking up at a passing cloud. But in this case never breaking apart, never changing into anything else.
Chapter 4
The effort of being with her was gone. In its place was a fatherhood that was exclusive, a bond that would not have to be unraveled or revised. He had his daughter; alone he maintained the knowledge that she was not his. The reduced elements of his life sat uneasily, one beside the other. It was neither victory nor defeat.
She entered the seventh grade. She was learning Spanish, ecology, algebra. He hoped the new building, the new teachers and courses, the routine of moving from class to class, would distract her. Initially this seemed to be the case. He saw her organizing a three-ring binder, writing in the names of her subjects on the tabbed dividers, taping her schedule inside.
He rearranged his hours at work, no longer going in as early, making sure he was there in the mornings to fix her breakfast and see her off. He watched her setting out each day for the bus stop, a backpack strapped to her shoulders, heavy with textbooks.
One day he noticed that beneath her T-shirts, her sweaters, her chest was no longer flat. She’d shed some part of herself in Tollygunge. She was on the verge of a new type of prettiness. Blossoming, in spite of having been crushed.
She became thinner, quieter, keeping to herself on weekends. Behaving as Gauri used to do. She no longer sought him out, wanting to take walks together on Sundays. She said she had homework to do. This new mood settled upon her swiftly, without warning, like an autumn sky from which the light suddenly drained. He did not ask what was wrong, knowing what the answer would be.
She was establishing her existence apart from him. This was the real shock. He thought he would be the one to protect her, to reassure her. But he felt cast aside, indicted along with Gauri. He was afraid to exert his authority, his confidence as a father shaken now that he was alone.
She asked if she could change her bedroom and move into Gauri’s study. Though this rattled him, he allowed it, telling himself that the impulse was natural. He helped her to set up the room, spending a day moving her things into it, hanging her clothes in the closet, retaping her posters to the walls. He put her lamp on Gauri’s desk, her books on Gauri’s shelves. But within a week she decided she preferred her old room and said she wanted to move back into it again.
She spoke to him only when necessary. Certain days, she did not speak to him at all. He wondered if she’d told her friends what had happened. But she did not seek his permission to see them, and none visited her at the house. He wondered if it would have been easier if they still lived close to campus, in an apartment complex that was filled with professors and graduate students and their families, and not in this isolated part of the town. He blamed himself for taking her to Tollygunge, for giving Gauri the opportunity to escape. He wondered what Bela had made of his mother, of the things she’d heard about Udayan. Though she never mentioned either of them, he wondered what she’d gleaned.
In December he turned forty-one. Normally Bela liked to celebrate his birthday. She’d get Gauri to give her a little money so that she could buy him some Old Spice from the drugstore, or a new pair of socks. Last year, she’d even baked and frosted a
simple cake. This year, when he returned from work, he found her in her room as usual. After they finished eating dinner, there was no card, no small surprise. Her retreat from him, her new indifference, was too deep.
One day when he was at work, Bela’s guidance counselor called. Bela’s performance in middle school was concerning. According to her teachers she was unprepared, distracted. On the recommendation of her sixth-grade teacher she’d been placed in upper-level classes, but they were proving to be too great a challenge.
Put her in different classes, then.
But it wasn’t just that. She no longer seemed connected to the other students, the counselor said. In the cafeteria, at the lunch table, she sat alone. She hadn’t signed up for any clubs. After school she had been seen walking by herself.
She takes the bus home from school. She lets herself in and does her homework. She is always there when I return.
But he was told that she’d been seen, more than once, wandering through various parts of the town.
Bela has always liked going on walks with me. Perhaps it relaxes her, to get some fresh air.
There were roads where cars traveled quickly, the counselor said. A small highway not meant for pedestrians. Not the interstate, but a highway all the same. This was where Bela had last been spotted. Balancing on the guardrail beside the shoulder lane, her arms raised.
She’d accepted a ride home from a stranger who’d stopped to ask if she was all right. Fortunately, it had turned out to be a responsible person. Another parent at the school.
The counselor requested a meeting. She asked both Subhash and Gauri to attend.
He felt his stomach turning over on itself. Her mother no longer lives with us, he managed to say.
Since when?
Since summer.
You should have notified us, Mr. Mitra. You and your wife sat down with Bela before you separated? You prepared her?
He got off the phone. He wanted to call Gauri and scream at her. But he had no phone number, only the address at the university where she taught. He refused to write to her. Stubbornly, he wanted to keep the knowledge of Bela, of how Gauri’s absence was affecting her, to himself. You have left her with me and yet you have taken her away, he wanted to say.
He began to drive Bela, the same evening every week, to see a psychologist the guidance counselor had suggested, in the same suite of offices where his optometrist was. He’d resisted at first, saying he would talk to Bela, that there was no need. But the counselor had been firm.
She said that she had already spoken to Bela about it and that Bela had not objected. She told him that Bela needed a form of help he could not provide. It was as if a bone had broken in her body, the counselor explained. It was not simply a matter of time before it mended, nor was it possible for him to set it right.
Again he thought of Gauri. Though he’d tried to help her he’d failed. He was terrified now that Bela would shut down permanently, and that she would reject him in the same way.
And so he wrote out a check in the psychologist’s name, Dr. Emily Grant, and placed it in an envelope, as he might another bill. The bills were typed on small sheets of paper, mailed to him at the end of the month. The dates of the individual sessions, separated by commas, were written in by hand. He threw out the bills after he paid them. In the ledger of his checkbook, he hated writing Dr. Grant’s name.
Bela attended the appointments alone. He wondered what she said to Dr. Grant, if she told a stranger the things she no longer told him. He wondered whether or not the woman was kind.
He remembered first learning that Udayan had married Gauri, and feeling replaced by her. He felt replaced now, a second time.
It had been impossible, the one occasion he’d seen Dr. Grant in person, to get a sense of her. A door opened, and he stood up to shake a woman’s hand. She was younger than he expected, short, with a mop of unruly brown hair. A pale steady face, sheer black tights, plump calves, flat leather shoes. Like a teenager dressed up in her mother’s clothes, the jacket a little too big for her, a little long, though through the open door of her office he saw the progression of framed degrees on her wall. How could a woman with such a confused appearance help Bela?
Dr. Grant had expressed no interest in him. She’d locked eyes with him for an instant, a firm but impenetrable look. She’d ushered Bela through the door to her office, then shut it in his face.
That look, knowing, withholding, unnerved him. She was like any other intelligent doctor, examining the patient and already knowing the underlying disease. In the course of their sessions, had she intuited the secret he kept from Bela? Did she know that he was not her real father? That he lied to her about this, day after day?
He was never invited into the room. For some months he received no indication of Bela’s progress. Sitting in the waiting area, with a view of the door Bela and Dr. Grant were on the other side of, made him feel worse. He used the hour to buy groceries for the week. He timed the appointments, and waited for her in the parking lot, in the car. When it was over she sat beside him, shutting the door.
How did it go today, Bela?
Fine.
It’s still a help to you?
She shrugged.
Would you like to go to a restaurant for dinner?
I’m not hungry.
She was deflecting him, as Gauri would. Her mind elsewhere, her face turned away. Punishing him, because Gauri was not there to be punished.
Would you like to write her a letter? Try to speak to her on the phone?
She shook her head. It was lowered, her brow furrowed. Her shoulders were hunched, pressed toward one another, as tears fell.
Standing in her doorway at night, watching her as she slept, he remembered the young girl she’d been. On the beach with her when she was six or seven. The beach nearly empty, his favorite hour. The descending sun pours a shaft of light over the water, wider at the horizon, tapering toward land.
Bela’s limbs are pink, glowing. She never seems as alive as when he brings her here, her solitary body bravely poised against the sea’s immensity.
He is teaching her to identify things, they are playing a game: one point for a mussel shell, two for scallop, three for crab. The plovers, darting single-mindedly from the dunes toward the waves, get five. The first one to call out gets the point.
She trails at a distance behind him, stopping every few paces to finger something on the ground. Over rocky sections she treads carefully. She is humming a little tune, a section of her hair tucked behind one ear. They call to one another, revising the score.
He stops to wait for her, but she has a sudden burst of energy, passing him. On and on she sprints, unobstructed, kicking up her heels at the water’s edge. Dark hair to her chin, rearranged by the wind, obscuring her face. Just when he thinks she will have the energy to run forever, to escape his sight, she pauses. Turning back, breathing hard, her hand on her hip, making sure he is there.
• • •
The following year, slowly, a release from what had happened. A new clarity in her eyes, a calmness in her face. She turned outward, toward others. She carried herself differently, the wind no longer opposing her but at her back, thrusting her into the world.
Instead of always being at home she was never there now. By eighth grade the phone was ringing throughout the evening, different people, male and female, wanting to talk to her. Behind a closed door, for hours at a time, she conversed with her peers.
Her grades improved, her appetite returned. She no longer set down her fork after two bites saying that she was full. She’d joined the marching band, learning to play patriotic songs on the clarinet, fitting together the parts of the instrument after dinner and practicing scales.
On Veterans Day he stood on a sidewalk in the center of town and watched her filing past. Dressed in uniform, bearing the autumn chill, focused on the sheet music hooked around her neck. Another day, emptying the dustbin in the bathroom, he saw the discarded wrapper from a sanitary pa
d and realized she’d begun menstruating. She had mentioned nothing to him. She had bought the supplies, kept them hidden, maturing on her own.
In high school she joined the nature studies club, assisting the biology teacher in the tagging of turtles and the dissection of birds, going to beaches to clean up nesting grounds. She went to Maine to study harbor seals, and to Cape May for the monarch butterflies. She began to occupy herself with other pursuits he could not object to: going from door to door with another student, seeking signatures for petitions to recycle bottles, or to raise the minimum wage.
When she received her learner’s permit she began driving to local restaurants, collecting discarded food and contributing it to shelters. In summers she got jobs that kept her out of doors, watering plants at a nursery or assisting at children’s camps. She was uncovetous, uninterested in buying things.
The summer after she graduated from high school she didn’t travel with him when news came from Deepa, saying his mother had suffered a stroke. She told him she wanted to stay in Rhode Island, to spend time with the friends from whom she’d soon be separated. He arranged for her to stay with one of them. And though he didn’t like the idea of being so far away from Bela for a few weeks, in a way it was a relief, not to have to take her back to Tollygunge again.
It was unclear to Subhash, the degree to which his mother recognized him. She spoke to him in fragments, sometimes as if he were Udayan, or as if they were boys. She told him not to muddy his shoes in the lowland, not to stay out late playing games.
He saw that his mother was dwelling in an alternate time, a more bearable reality. The coordination of her legs was gone, so there was no longer the need to place a chain across the stairwell. She was bound to the terrace, on the top floor of the house, for good.
He understood that perhaps he no longer existed in his mother’s mind, that she’d already let go of him. He’d defied her by marrying Gauri; for years he’d avoided her, leading his life in a place she’d never seen. And yet, as a child, he’d spent so many hours sitting by her side.
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