Arcadia

An adult Bit paints a mural of Arcadia in his three-year-old daughter Grete’s room. Handy’s son Leif now owns Arcadia, with Arcadia House having been turned into a modern workspace. Bit tells Grete fairy tales of her mother Helle’s name. Sometime after leaving Arcadia, he married Helle, but she left their family without saying goodbye; in the meantime, his neighbor Sharon helps watch Grete. Bit works as a photography professor, but is unmoored by Helle’s absence. When she disappeared, he visited her parents. Handy is still a musician and married to his fourth wife, and main wife Astrid is still a midwife; neither had spoken to Helle in a week. Bit’s best friend Jincy lives in the suburbs with a new baby, and hadn’t heard from Helle either. In Helle’s 20s, she battled drug abuse; her brother Ike died of AIDS. Hannah and Abe recently separated, because Abe spent their life savings building a house on the outskirts of Arcadia in protest against Leif’s corporatization. Hannah was so angry that she couldn’t be of much comfort to Bit when Helle left.

Now, nine months later, women from Arcadia call Bit regularly. He filed a police report and hired a private detective, but there’s no news of Helle. Sharon is going through divorce, and he envies her closure. When Bit left Arcadia at age 14, his family moved to Queens. He had been overwhelmed with the city and didn’t make friends. He learned to use photography as an escape, a way of controlling his world. However, Bit grew depressed and was institutionalized. Since then, he’s been on antidepressant medication. He reconnected with Jincy in college, and she had kept in touch with many Arcadians. She told him about Helle returning from Norway and working as a model. She then reconnected Bit with his friend Cole, whose mother hosted Helle when she came to the city. Through Cole, Helle attended one of Bit’s photography galleries. He recognized her right away, but noted her appearance was ragged from drug abuse and struggle.

Hannah comes to visit for Thanksgiving. Bit notes how aged she is, and how she now talks to herself in rage. He leaves Grete with Hannah while he travels to Philadelphia, hopeful that Ilya, Helle’s ex-husband, knows where she is. Ilya, a troubled violinist from Ukraine, reveals he hasn’t heard from Helle, that she is likely dead. He says he’s moving back to Ukraine to die and wants to give his house to Bit, to do as he pleases; he wishes to be paid with a photograph of Grete. On the train ride home, Bit sees a beautiful woman. He is captivated and pictures falling in love with her, but can’t fully conceptualize it until he finds out what happened to Helle.

When Bit and Helle first reunited, he had been shocked to hear her version of their childhood. He remembers the idyllic first years of Arcadia, but she remembers being given acid by her father when she was five and being surrounded by sex. Even so, he holds on to his happy memories because it’s a way of holding on to himself. In the present, Abe visits for Thanksgiving, though Bit doesn’t tell Hannah ahead of time. The couple work through their issues and get back together.

A year after Helle’s disappearance, Bit’s student Sylvie continually flirts with him. He avoids her, instead asking Sharon out on a date. They kiss, but he doesn’t feel right about it; they agree to remain friends. At the end of the semester, Sylvie comes into Bit’s office and tries to kiss him, but he rejects her advances. Later, he receives a letter from a lawyer informing him of Ilya’s death. Ilya has left him his house and a large sum of money in his will. Years pass, and Bit never stops searching for Helle, seeing her everywhere.