[009 clip from novel] The Lowland_Hailey

The Lowland

By Jhumpa Lahiri

This unknown person maturing inside her was the only being with whom Bela felt any connection as she traveled away from Rhode Island to calm herself, to take in what she’d been told. It was the only part of her that felt faithful, familiar. As she stared out the window of a Peter Pan bus at the scenery of her childhood, she recognized nothing.

She’d been lied to all her life. But the lie refused to accommodate the truth. Her father remained her father, even as he’d told her he wasn’t. As he’d told her the Udayan was.

She could not blame her father for not telling her until now. Her own child might blame her, someday, for a similar reason.

Here was an explanation for why her mother had gone. Why, when Bela looked back, she remembered spending time with either one parent or the other, but so seldom with both at the same time.

Here was the source of the compunction that had always been in her, of being unable to bring pleasure to her mother. Of feeling unique among children, being a child who was incapable of this.

Around Bela her mother had never pretended. She had transmitted an unhappiness that was steady, an ambient signal that was fixed. It was aware of it, as one is aware of a mountain. Immovable, insurmountable.

Now there was a third parent, pointed out to her like a new star her father would teach her to identify in the night sky. Something that had been there all along, contributing a unique point of light. That was dead but newly alive to her. That had both made her and made no difference.

When her mother had left Rhode Island, she’d taken her unhappiness with her, no longer sharing it, leaving Bela with a lack of access to that signal instead. What had seemed impossible had taken place. The mountain was gone.

In its place was a heavy stone, like certain stones embedded deep in the sand when she dug on the beach. Too large to unearth, its surface partly visible, but its contours unknown.

She taught herself to ignore it, to walk away. And yet the hole remained her hollow point of origin, the cold crosshairs of her existence.

She returned to it now. At last the sand gave way, and she was able to pry out what was buried, to raise it from its enclosure. For a moment she felt its dimensions, its heft in her hands. She felt the strain it sent through her body, before hurling it once and for all into the sea.