Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

by Maria Semple

  *

  From: Bernadette Fox

  To: Manjula Kapoor

  Attached, please find information for a fellow who “abates” blackberry vines. (Can you believe there’s such a thing?!) Contact him and tell him to do who-what-when-where-how he needs. I’ll pay for it all.

  *

  Five minutes later, Mom followed it up with this:

  From: Bernadette Fox

  To: Manjula Kapoor

  I need a sign made. 8 feet wide by 5 feet high. Here’s what I want it to read:

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  NO TRESPASSING

  Galer Street Gnats

  Will Be Arrested

  and Hauled Off to Gnat Jail

  Make the sign itself the loudest, ugliest red, and the lettering the loudest, ugliest yellow. I’d like it placed on the western edge of my property line, at the bottom of the hill, which will be accessible once we’ve abated the despised blackberries. Make sure the sign is facing toward the neighbor’s yard.

  *

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7

  From: Manjula Kapoor

  To: Bernadette Fox

  I am confirming that the sign you would like fabricated is eight feet wide by five feet high. The gentleman I have contracted remarked it is unusually large and seems out of proportion for a residential area.

  Warm regards,

  Manjula

  *

  From: Bernadette Fox

  To: Manjula Kapoor

  You bet your bindi that’s how big I want it.

  *

  From: Manjula Kapoor

  To: Bernadette Fox

  Dear Ms. Fox,

  The sign has been ordered and will be erected the same day Tom completes the abatement work.

  Also, I am pleased to inform you I have found a doctor willing to write a prescription for ABHR cream. The only compound pharmacy in Seattle that will fill it, unfortunately, does not deliver. I inquired about messenger services, but, alas, the pharmacy insists that you pick up the prescription because they are required by law to review the side effects with you in person.

  Attached please find the address of the pharmacy and a copy of the prescription.

  Warm regards,

  Manjula

  *

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10

  From: Bernadette Fox

  To: Manjula Kapoor

  I’m heading down to the pharmacy now. Not a terrible thing to be getting out of the house while this infernal machine with spikes, telescoping arms, and vicious rotors is chewing up my hillside and spraying mulch everywhere. Tom has literally lashed himself on top of the beast so he doesn’t get bucked off. I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts spitting fire.

  Oh! The fishing vests arrived. Thank you! Already, I’ve tucked away my glasses, car keys, cell phone. I may never take this thing off.

  *

  From: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal

  To: Audrey Griffin

  As Ollie-O would say… REAL-TIME FLASH!

  I told you I was being made admin of a new team? I just found out the team is Samantha 2, headed by none other than Elgin Branch!

  Audrey, my body is a cauldron of emotions right now! When Elgin unveiled Samantha 2 at the TED conference in February, it caused a near riot on the Internet. In less than a year, his is the fourth-most-watched TEDTalk of all time. Bill Gates recently said his favorite project in the whole company is Samantha 2. Last year, Elgin was given a Technical Recognition Award, Microsoft’s highest honor. The Samantha 2 guys, and Elgin in particular, are like rock stars around here. You go over to Studio West and you can tell by their swagger they’re on Samantha 2. I know I’m good at my job, but to be put on Samantha 2 means everyone here knows it, too. It’s a giddy feeling.

  Then there’s Elgin Branch himself. His rudeness and arrogance that day on the Connector, it was a slap in the face that still stings. Wait until you hear what happened this morning.

  I went to HR to get my new key card and office assignment. (In ten years, this is the first time I’ve had a window office!) I was unpacking my photos, mugs, and snow baby collection when I looked up and saw Elgin Branch across the atrium. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, just socks, which I found odd. I caught his eye and waved. He vaguely smiled, then kept walking.

  I decided to be proactive (one of the three P’s that serve as the interpersonal foundation for Victims Against Victimhood) and initiate our first face-to-face meeting in our new roles as manager and admin.

  Elgin was at his stand-up desk, his hiking boots in a tangle at his feet. Immediately, I was struck by the number of patent cubes haphazardly piled around the office. (Anytime a developer patents something, he receives a ceremonial cube, a cute thing we do at MS.) My last GM had four. On Elgin’s windowsill alone there were twenty, not to mention those that had fallen on the floor.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” he said.

  “Good morning.” I straightened myself. “I’m Soo-Lin Lee-Segal, the new admin.”

  “Nice to meet you.” He held out his hand.

  “We’ve actually met. I have a son, Lincoln, at Galer Street, in Bee’s class.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course.”

  The Dev lead, Pablo, popped his head in. “It’s a beautiful day, neighbor.” (Everyone on the team teases Elgin with Mr. Rogers references. It’s a quirk of Elgin’s, apparently, that as soon as he gets inside, like Mr. Rogers, he removes his shoes. Even on his TEDTalk, which I just rewatched, Elgin is standing there in his socks. In front of Al Gore and Cameron Diaz!) “We’re on for noon,” Pablo went on. “We have a third-party meeting in South Lake Union. How about we turn it into lunch downtown? Wild Ginger?”

  “Great,” answered Elgin. “It’s next to the light rail station. I can go straight to the airport.” I had seen on the Samantha 2 calendar that Elgin has an out-of-town presentation tomorrow.

  Pablo turned, and I introduced myself. “Hooray!” he said. “Our new admin! Man, we’ve been dying around here without you. How about you join us for lunch?”

  “You must have heard my stomach growling,” I chirped. “I have a car. I can drive us downtown.”

  “Let’s take the 888 Shuttle,” Elgin said. “I’m going to need the Wi-Fi to get some emails out.”

  “The 888 Shuttle it is,” I said, insulted at the rejection but a little consoled because the 888 Shuttle is for VPs and up, and this will be my first opportunity to ride it. “Wild Ginger at noon. I’ll make a reservation.”

  So here I am now, dreading the meal on what should be the happiest day of my life. Oh, Audrey, I hope your day is going better than mine.

  *

  From: Audrey Griffin

  To: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal

  Who cares about Elgin Branch? I care about you. I’m so proud of everything you’ve overcome since the divorce. Finally, you’re getting the recognition you deserve.

  My day is going dandy. A machine is ripping out all the blackberry vines from Bernadette’s hill. It has put me in such soaring spirits that I am able to laugh off an incident at Galer Street that otherwise might have landed me in a snit.

  Gwen Goodyear grabbed me this morning and asked to speak privately in her office. Who was sitting there in a big leather chair with his back to me? Kyle! Gwen shut the door and went behind her desk. There was a chair next to Kyle, so I sat down.

  Gwen opened her drawer. “We found something in Kyle’s locker yesterday.” She held up an orange pill bottle. It had my name on it—it was the Vicodin prescription I got after Our Lady of Straight Gate tried to plow me over in her car.

  “What’s that doing here?” I said.

  “Kyle?” Gwen said.

  “I don’t know,” said Kyle.

  “Galer Street has a zero-tolerance drug policy,” Gwen said.

  “But it’s prescription medicine,” I said, still not understanding her point.

  “Kyle,” Gwen said. “Why was it in your locker?”

  I did not like where this was going. Not one
bit. I told her: “I went to the emergency room thanks to Bernadette Fox. I left on crutches, if you remember. I asked Kyle to hold my purse, and the prescription medicine. Good Lord.”

  “When did you realize your Vicodin was missing?” Gwen asked.

  “Not until this moment,” I said.

  “Why is the bottle empty? Let Kyle answer this, Audrey.” She turned to Kyle. “Kyle, why is it empty?”

  “I don’t know,” Kyle answered.

  “I’m sure it was empty when we got it,” I said. “You know how understaffed they are over at the UW Medical. They probably forgot to fill it. Are we done yet? Maybe you haven’t heard, but I’m hosting a party tomorrow for sixty prospective parents.” I got up and left.

  Now that I write this, I’d like to know what Gwen Goodyear was doing in Kyle’s locker. Don’t they have locks on them? Isn’t that why they’re called lockers?

  *

  All our lockers have combination locks built into the doors. It’s a total drag to turn the little dials back and forth a million times whenever you need to get something. Everyone hates it. But Kyle and the juvies figured out a way around it, which is to smash the locks until they break off. Kyle’s locker door is permanently ajar. That’s what Ms. Goodyear was doing in Kyle’s locker.

  *

  From: Bernadette Fox

  To: Manjula Kapoor

  It was the first time I had been downtown in a year. I immediately remembered why: the pay-to-park meters.

  Parking in Seattle is an eight-step process. Step one, find a place to park (gooood luuuuck!). Step two, back into the angled parking space (who ever innovated that should be sentenced to the chokey). Step three, find a ticket dispenser that isn’t menacingly encircled by a stinky mosaic of beggars/bums/junkies/runaways. This requires step four, crossing the street. Oh, plus you’ve forgotten your umbrella (there goes your hair, which you stopped worrying about toward the end of the last century, so that’s a freebie). Step five, slide your credit card into the machine (small miracle if you’ve found one that hasn’t been filled with epoxy by some misguided malcontent). Step six, return to your car (passing aforementioned putrid gauntlet, who heckle you because you didn’t give them money on the way there—oh, and did I mention, they all have shivering dogs?). Step seven, affix the ticket to the proper window (is it passenger-side for back-in angle parking? or driver-side? I would read the rules on the back of the sticker but can’t because WHO THE HELL BRINGS READING GLASSES TO PARK THEIR CAR?). Step eight, pray to the God you don’t believe in that you have the mental wherewithal to remember what the hell it was you came downtown for in the first place.

  Already I wished a Chechen rebel would shoot me in the back.

  The compound pharmacy was cavernous, wood-paneled, and home to a few poorly stocked shelves. In the middle of it sat a brocade sofa, over which hung a Chihuly chandelier. The place made no sense at all, so already I was pretty much a wreck.

  I approached the counter. The girl was wearing one of those white headdresses that look like a nun’s hat without the wings. I have no idea what ethnicity that made her, but there are tons of them here, especially working at rental-car places. One of these days, I really need to ask.

  “Bernadette Fox,” I said.

  Her eyes met mine, then flashed mischief. “One moment.” She stepped onto a platform and whispered something to another pharmacist. He lowered his chin and examined me severely over his spectacles. Both he and the girl descended. Whatever was about to happen, they had decided beforehand it was a two-person job.

  “I received the prescription from your doctor,” said the gentleman. “It was written for seasickness, for a cruise you’ll be taking?”

  “We’re going to Antarctica over Christmas,” I said, “which requires crossing the Drake Passage. The statistics about the speed of the swirling water and the heights of the swells would shock you if I told you. But I can’t, because I’m hopeless when it comes to remembering numbers. Plus, I’m trying really hard to block it out. I blame my daughter. I’m only going because of her.”

  “Your prescription is for ABHR,” he said. “ABHR is basically Haldol with some Benadryl, Reglan, and Ativan thrown in.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Haldol is an antipsychotic.” He dropped his reading glasses into his shirt pocket. “It was used in the Soviet prison system to break prisoners’ wills.”

  “And I’m only discovering it now?” I said.

  This guy was proving resistant to my many charms, or else I am without charm, which is probably the case. He continued. “It has some severe side effects, tardive dyskinesia being the worst. Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by uncontrollable grimacing, tongue protrusion, lip smacking…”

  “You’ve seen those people,” the Flying Nun gravely added. She held a contorted hand up to her face, cocked her head, then shut one eye.

  “You obviously don’t get seasick,” I said. “Because a couple of hours of that is a day at the beach by comparison.”

  “Tardive dyskinesia can last forever,” he said.

  “Forever?” I said weakly.

  “The likelihood of tardive dyskinesia is about four percent,” he said. “It increases to ten percent for older women.”

  I blew out really hard. “Oh, man.”

  “I spoke to your doctor. He wrote you a prescription for a scopolamine patch for motion sickness, and Xanax for anxiety.”

  Xanax, I had! Bee’s battalion of doctors had always sent me home with Xanax or some sleeping pill. (Have I mentioned? I don’t sleep.) I never took them, because the one time I did, they left me nauseous and not feeling like myself. (I know, that should have been a selling point. What can I say? I’ve grown accustomed.) But the problem with the Xanax and the hundreds of other pills I had squirreled away was this: they were currently jumbled together in a Ziploc bag. Why? Well, once, I was thinking about OD’ing, so I dumped the contents of every prescription bottle into my two hands—they didn’t even fit, that’s how many I had—just to eyeball to see if I could swallow them all. But then I cooled off on the whole idea and dumped the pills in a baggie, where they languish to this day. Why did I want to OD? you’re probably wondering. Well, so am I! I don’t even remember.

  “Do you have some kind of laminated chart of what the pills look like?” I asked the pharmacist. My thinking was, maybe I could figure out which ones were Xanax and return them to their proper container. The poor guy looked baffled. Who can blame him?

  “Fine,” I said. “Give me the Xanax and that patch thing.”

  I removed myself to the brocade couch. It was murderously uncomfortable. I put my leg up and leaned back. That was more like it. It was a fainting couch, I now realized, and wanted to be lain upon. Hovering over me was the Chihuly chandelier. Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They’re everywhere, and even if they don’t get in your way, you can’t help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them.

  This one was all glass, of course, white and ruffly and full of dripping tentacles. It glowed from within, a cold blue, but with no discernible light source. The rain outside was pounding. Its rhythmic splatter only made this hovering glass beast more haunting, as if it had arrived with the storm, a rainmaker itself. It sang to me, Chihuly… Chihuly. In the seventies, Dale Chihuly was already a distinguished glassblower when he got into a car accident and lost an eye. But that didn’t stop him. A few years later, he had a surfing mishap and messed up his shoulder so badly that he was never able to hold a glass pipe again. That didn’t stop him, either. Don’t believe me? Take a boat out on Lake Union and look in the window of Dale Chihuly’s studio. He’s probably there now, with his eye patch and dead arm, doing the best, trippiest work of his life. I had to close my eyes.

  “Bernadette?” said a voice.

  I opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep. This is the problem with never sleeping. Sometimes you actually do, at the worst times: like this time: in public.

  “Bernadette?” It was Elgie. “What are
you doing asleep in here?”

  “Elgie—” I wiped the drool off my cheek. “They wouldn’t give me Haldol, so I have to wait for Xanax.”

  “What?” He glanced out the window. Standing on the street were some Microsoft people I vaguely recognized. “What are you wearing?”

  He was referring to my fishing vest. “Oh, this. I got it from the Internet.”

  “Could you please stand up?” he said. “I have a lunch. Do I need to cancel it?”

  “God, no!” I said. “I’m fine. I didn’t sleep last night and just dozed off. Go, do, be.”

  “I’m going to come home for dinner. Can we go out to dinner tonight?”

  “Aren’t you going to D.C.—”

  “It can wait,” he said.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Buzz and I will pick a place.”

  “Just me and you.” He left.

  And this is when it began to unravel: I could swear one of the people waiting for him outside was a gnat from Galer Street. Not the one who’s hassling us about the blackberries, but one of her flying monkeys. I blinked to make sure. But Elgie and his group had been absorbed into the lunch rush.

  My heart was really thumping. I should have stayed and popped one of those Xanax. But I couldn’t stand to be in that compound pharmacy anymore, trapped with the icy portent. I blame you, Dale Chihuly!

  I fled. I had no idea which way I was pointed, where I was even headed. But I must have gone up Fourth Avenue, because the next thing I knew, I was standing outside the Rem Koolhaas public library.

  I had stopped, apparently. Because a guy approached me. A graduate student, he looked like. Completely nice, nothing mean or threatening about him.

  But he recognized me.

  Manjula, I have no idea how. The only photograph of me floating around was one taken twenty years ago, right before the Huge Hideous Thing. I am beautiful, my face radiating with confidence, my smile bursting with the future of my choosing.

  “Bernadette Fox,” I blurted.

  I am fifty, slowly going mad.

  This can’t make sense to you, Manjula. It doesn’t have to. But you see what happens when I come into contact with people. It doesn’t bode well for the whole Antarctica thing.