Where'd You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

  Here’s the second way a conversation with an MS employee ends. (MS—oh, God, they’ve got me doing it now!) Let’s say I’m at the playground with my daughter. I’m bleary-eyed, pushing her on the swings, and one swing over there’s an outdoorsy father—because fathers only come in one style here, and that’s outdoorsy. He has seen a diaper bag I’m carrying which isn’t a diaper bag at all, but one of the endless “ship gifts” with the Microsoft logo Elgie brings home.

  OUTDOORSY DAD: You work at Microsoft?

  ME: Oh, no, my husband does. (Heading off his next question at the pass) He’s in robotics.

  OUTDOORSY DAD: I’m at Microsoft, too.

  ME: (Feigning interest, because really, I could give a shit, but wow, is this guy chatty) Oh? What do you do?

  OUTDOORSY DAD: I work for Messenger.

  ME: What’s that?

  OUTDOORSY DAD: You know Windows Live?

  ME: Ummm…

  OUTDOORSY DAD: You know the MSN home page?

  ME: Kind of…

  OUTDOORSY DAD: (Losing patience) When you turn on your computer, what comes up?

  ME: The New York Times.

  OUTDOORSY DAD: Well, there’s a Windows home page that usually comes up.

  ME: You mean the thing that’s preloaded when you buy a PC? I’m sorry, I have a Mac.

  OUTDOORSY DAD: (Getting defensive because everyone there is lusting for an iPhone, but there’s a rumor that if Ballmer sees you with one, you’ll get shitcanned. Even though this hasn’t been proven, it hasn’t been disproven either.) I’m talking about Windows Live. It’s the most-visited home page in the world.

  ME: I believe you.

  OUTDOORSY DAD: What’s your search engine?

  ME: Google.

  OUTDOORSY DAD: Bing’s better.

  ME: No one said it wasn’t.

  OUTDOORSY DAD: If you ever, once, went to Hotmail, Windows Live, Bing, or MSN, you’d see a tab at the top of the page that says “Messenger.” That’s my team.

  ME: Cool! What do you do for Messenger?

  OUTDOORSY DAD: My team is working on an end-user, C Sharp interface for HTML5…

  And then they kind of trail off, because at some point in every conversation, there’s nobody in the world smart enough to dumb it down.

  It turns out, the whole time in L.A., Elgie was just a guy in socks searching for a carpeted, fluorescent-lit hallway in which to roam at all hours of the night. At Microsoft, he found his ideal habitat. It’s like he was back at MIT pulling all-nighters, throwing pencils into ceiling tiles, and playing vintage Space Invaders with foreign-accented code monkeys. When Microsoft built their newest campus, they made it the home of Elgie’s team. In the atrium of his new building, there’s a sandwich shop with the sign BOAR’S HEAD FINEST DELI MEATS SERVED HERE. The moment I saw that, I knew I’d never see him again.

  So here we are in Seattle.

  First off, whoever laid out this city never met a four-way intersection they didn’t turn into a five-way intersection. They never met a two-way street they didn’t suddenly and for no reason turn into a one-way street. They never met a beautiful view they didn’t block with a twenty-story old folks home with zero architectural integrity. Wait, I think that’s the first time the words “architectural” and “integrity” have ever been used together in a discussion of Seattle.

  The drivers here are horrible. And by horrible, I mean they don’t realize I have someplace to be. They’re the slowest drivers you ever saw. If someone is at a five-way stoplight, and growing old while they’re waiting for the lights to cycle through, and finally, finally it’s time to go, you know what they do? They start, then put on their brakes in the middle of the intersection. You’re hoping they lost a half a sandwich under their seat and are digging for it, but no. They’re just slowing down because, hey, it is an intersection.

  Sometimes these cars have Idaho plates. And I think, What the hell is a car from Idaho doing here? Then I remember, That’s right, we neighbor Idaho. I’ve moved to a state that neighbors Idaho. And any life that might still be left in me kind of goes poof.

  My daughter did an art project called a “step book,” which started with the universe, then opened up to the solar system, then the Earth, then the United States, then Washington State, then Seattle—and I honestly thought, What does Washington State have to do with her? And I remember, that’s right, we live here. Poof.

  Seattle. I’ve never seen a city so overrun with runaways, drug addicts, and bums. Pike Place Market: they’re everywhere. Pioneer Square: teeming with them. The flagship Nordstrom: have to step over them on your way in. The first Starbucks: one of them hogging the milk counter because he’s sprinkling free cinnamon on his head. Oh, and they all have pit bulls, many of them wearing handwritten signs with witticisms such as I BET YOU A DOLLAR YOU’LL READ THIS SIGN. Why does every beggar have a pit bull? Really, you don’t know? It’s because they’re badasses, and don’t you forget it.

  I was downtown early one morning and I noticed the streets were full of people pulling wheelie suitcases. And I thought, Wow, here’s a city full of go-getters. Then I realized, no, these are all homeless bums who have spent the night in doorways and are packing up before they get kicked out. Seattle is the only city where you step in shit and you pray, Please God, let this be dog shit.

  Anytime you express consternation as to how the U.S. city with more millionaires per capita than any other would allow itself to be overtaken by bums, the same reply always comes back. “Seattle is a compassionate city.”

  A guy named the Tuba Man, a beloved institution who’d play his tuba at Mariners games, was brutally murdered by a street gang near the Gates Foundation. The response? Not to crack down on gangs or anything. That wouldn’t be compassionate. Instead, the people in the neighborhood redoubled their efforts to “get to the root of gang violence.” They arranged a “Race for the Root,” to raise money for this dunderheaded effort. Of course, the “Race for the Root” was a triathlon, because God forbid you should ask one of these athletic do-gooders to partake in only one sport per Sunday.

  Even the mayor gets in on the action. There was a comic-book store in my neighborhood that demonstrated great courage by putting a sign in the window indicating that nobody with pants pulled below their buttocks would be allowed in. And the mayor said he wanted to get to the root of why kids sag their pants. The fucking mayor.

  And don’t get me started on Canadians. It’s a whole thing.

  Remember when the feds busted in on that Mormon polygamist cult in Texas a few years back? And the dozens of wives were paraded in front of the camera? And they all had this long mouse-colored hair with strands of gray, no hairstyle to speak of, no makeup, ashy skin, Frida Kahlo facial hair, and unflattering clothes? And on cue, the Oprah audience was shocked and horrified? Well, they’ve never been to Seattle.

  There are two hairstyles here: short gray hair and long gray hair. You go into a salon asking for hair color, and they flap their elbows and cluck, “Oh, goody, we never get to do color!”

  But what really happened was I came up here and had four miscarriages. Try as I might, it’s hard to blame that one on Nigel Mills-Murray.

  Oh, Paul. That last year in L.A. was just so horrible. I am so ashamed of my behavior. I’ve carried it with me to this day, the revulsion at how vile I became, all for a stupid house. I’ve never stopped obsessing about it. But just before I completely self-immolate, I think about Nigel Mills-Murray. Was I really so bad that I deserved to have three years of my life destroyed for some rich prick’s practical joke? So I had some cars towed, yes. I made a gate out of trash doorknobs. I’m an artist. I won a MacArthur grant, for fuck’s sake. Don’t I get a break? I’ll be watching TV and see Nigel Mills-Murray’s name at the end. I’ll go nuts inside. He gets to keep creating, and I’m the one who’s still in pieces?

  Let’s inventory the toy chest: shame, anger, envy, childishness, self-reproach, self-pity.

  The AIA gave me that nice honor year
s back, there’s this 20 × 20 × 20 thing, an Artforum reporter tried to talk to me about some article. Those things just make it worse, you see. They’re booby prizes because everyone knows I am an artist who couldn’t overcome failure.

  Just last night, I woke up to pee. I was half asleep, with no concept of myself, a blank, and then the data started reloading—Bernadette Fox—Twenty Mile House destroyed—I deserved it—I’m a failure. Failure has got its teeth in me, and it won’t stop shaking.

  Ask me about the Twenty Mile House now, I’m a twister of nonchalance. That old thing? Who cares? It’s my false front, and I’m sticking to it.

  When the miscarriages started, Elgie was there for me, leaning in.

  “It’s all my fault,” I’d say.

  “No, Bernadette,” he’d say. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I deserve this,” I’d say.

  “Nobody deserves this.”

  “I can’t make anything without destroying it,” I’d say.

  “Please, Bernadette, that’s not true.”

  “I’m a monster,” I’d say. “How can you possibly love me?”

  “Because I know you.”

  What Elgie didn’t know was that I was using his words to help me heal from an even deeper grief than the miscarriages, a grief I couldn’t admit to: grief over the Twenty Mile House. Elgie still doesn’t know. Which just adds to my bottomless, churning shame, that I have become so demented and dishonest, a stranger to the most brilliant and honorable man I’ve ever met.

  The only thing you can blame Elgie for is he makes life look so damn simple: do what you love. In his case, that means working, spending time with his family, and reading presidential biographies.

  Yes, I’ve hauled my sorry ass to a shrink. I went to some guy here, the best in Seattle. It took me about three sessions to fully chew the poor fucker up and spit him out. He felt terrible about failing me. “Sorry,” he said, “but the psychiatrists up here aren’t very good.”

  I bought a house when we got here. This crazy reform school for girls with every building restriction conceivable attached. To make something of it would require Harry Houdini ingenuity. This, of course, appealed to me. I truly intended to recover from the body blow of the Twenty Mile House by making a home for me and Elgie and the baby I was always pregnant with. Then I’d sit on the toilet and look down, my upper body a capital C, and there it was, blood on my underpants, and I’d weep to Elgie all over again.

  When I finally stayed pregnant, our daughter’s heart hadn’t developed completely, so it had to be rebuilt in a series of operations. Her chances for survival were minuscule, especially back then. The moment she was born, my squirming blue guppy was whisked off to the OR before I could touch her.

  Five hours later, the nurse came around and gave me the shot to dry up my milk. The surgery had been botched. Our baby wasn’t strong enough to endure another one.

  Here’s what inconsolable looks like: me sitting in my car in the parking lot of Children’s Hospital, all the windows rolled up, wearing my hospital gown, twelve inches of pads between my legs and Elgie’s parka over my shoulders, Elgie standing outside in the dark, trying to make me out through fogged windows. I was all torture and adrenaline. I had no thoughts, no emotions. Inside me roiled something so terrible that God knew he had to keep my baby alive, or this torrent within me would be unleashed on the universe.

  Ten in the morning, a knock on the windshield. “We can see her now,” Elgie said. That’s when I met Bee. She was sleeping peacefully in her incubator, a little blue loaf with a yellow cap on, the sheets perfectly stretched across her chest. There were wires and tubes stuck on and in every piece of her. Beside her towered a rack of thirteen monitors. She was plugged into every one. “Your daughter,” the nurse said. “She’s been through a lot.”

  I understood then that Bee was other and that she had been entrusted to me. You know those posters of baby Krishna, “Balakrishna,” as he’s known, the incarnation of Vishnu, the creator and destroyer, and he’s fat and happy and blue? That’s what Bee was, the creator and the destroyer. It was just so obvious.

  “She’s not going to die,” I said to the nurses, like they were the stupidest people on earth. “She’s Balakrishna.” The name was put on her birth certificate. The only reason Elgie played along was because he knew the grief counselor was scheduled to meet with us in an hour.

  I asked to be left alone with my daughter. Elgie once gave me a locket of Saint Bernadette, who had eighteen visions. He said Beeber Bifocal and Twenty Mile were my first two visions. I dropped to my knees at Bee’s incubator and grabbed my locket. “I will never build again,” I said to God. “I will renounce my other sixteen visions if you’ll keep my baby alive.” It worked.

  Nobody in Seattle likes me. The day I got here, I went to Macy’s to buy a mattress. I asked if someone could help me. “You’re not from around here, are you?” the lady said. “I can tell from your energy.” What kind of energy was that? That I asked to be helped by a mattress saleslady in a mattress department?

  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been in the middle of a perfunctory conversation, and someone will say, “Tell us what you really think.” Or “Maybe you should switch to decaf.” I blame the proximity to Canada. Let’s leave it at that; otherwise I’ll get onto the subject of Canadians, and that’s something you seriously don’t have time for.

  I recently made one friend, though, a woman named Manjula, who runs my errands for me all the way from India. She’s virtual, but it’s a start.

  The motto of this city should be the immortal words spoken by that French field marshal during the siege of Sebastopol, “J’y suis, j’y reste”—“I am here, and here I shall remain.” People are born here, they grow up here, they go to the University of Washington, they work here, they die here. Nobody has any desire to leave. You ask them, “What is it again that you love so much about Seattle?” and they answer, “We have everything. The mountains and the water.” This is their explanation, mountains and water.

  As much as I try not to engage people in the grocery checkout, I couldn’t resist one day when I overheard one refer to Seattle as “cosmopolitan.” Encouraged, I asked, “Really?” She said, Sure, Seattle is full of people from all over. “Like where?” Her answer, “Alaska. I have a ton of friends from Alaska.” Whoomp, there it is.

  Let’s play a game. I’ll say a word, and you say the first word that pops into your head. Ready?

  ME: Seattle.

  YOU: Rain.

  What you’ve heard about the rain: it’s all true. So you’d think it would become part of the fabric, especially among the lifers. But every time it rains, and you have to interact with someone, here’s what they’ll say: “Can you believe the weather?” And you want to say, “Actually, I can believe the weather. What I can’t believe is that I’m actually having a conversation about the weather.” But I don’t say that, you see, because that would be instigating a fight, something I try my best to avoid, with mixed results.

  Getting into fights with people makes my heart race. Not getting into fights with people makes my heart race. Even sleeping makes my heart race! I’m lying in bed when the thumping arrives, like a foreign invader. It’s a horrible dark mass, like the monolith in 2001, self-organized but completely unknowable, and it enters my body and releases adrenaline. Like a black hole, it sucks in any benign thoughts that might be scrolling across my brain and attaches visceral panic to them. For instance, during the day I might have mused, Hey, I should pack more fresh fruit in Bee’s lunch. That night, with the arrival of The Thumper, it becomes, I’VE GOT TO PACK MORE FRESH FRUIT IN BEE’S LUNCH!!! I can feel the irrationality and anxiety draining my store of energy like a battery-operated racecar grinding away in the corner. This is energy I will need to get through the next day. But I just lie in bed and watch it burn, and with it any hope for a productive tomorrow. There go the dishes, there goes the grocery store, there goes exercise, there goes bringing in the garbag
e cans. There goes basic human kindness. I wake up in a sweat so thorough I sleep with a pitcher of water by the bed or I might die of dehydration.

  Oh, Paul, do you remember that place down the street from the Twenty Mile House, on La Brea, with the rosewater ice cream and they’d let us have meetings there and use their phone? I’d love you to meet Bee.

  I know what you’re wondering: When on earth do I find time to shower? I don’t! I can go for days. I’m a mess, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve gotten into a dispute with a neighbor—yes! again!—and this time, in retaliation, I put up a sign and inadvertently destroyed her house. Can you fucking believe it?

  The tale of woe begins in kindergarten. The school Bee attends is wild about parental involvement. They’re always wanting us to sign up for committees. I never do, of course. One of the parents, Audrey Griffin, approached me in the hall one day.

  “I see you didn’t sign up for any committees,” she said, all smiles and daggers.

  “I’m not so much into committees,” I said.

  “What about your husband?” she asked.

  “He’s even less into them than I am.”

  “So neither of you believes in community?” she asked.

  By now, a gaggle of moms was circling, relishing this long-overdue confrontation with the sick girl’s antisocial mom. “I don’t know if community is something you do or don’t believe in,” I answered.

  A few weeks later, I went into Bee’s classroom and there was a thing up called the Wonderwall. On it, kids wrote questions like, “I wonder what children in Russia eat for breakfast?” or “I wonder what makes an apple red or green?” I was bursting with cuteness when I came upon the following, “I wonder why all the parents except one volunteer in the classroom?” Written by Kyle Griffin, spawn of the trout.

  I never liked this kid, Kyle. In kindergarten, Bee had one hell of a scar blazing the length of her chest. (It’s melted away with time, but back then, it was a beaut.) One day, Kyle saw Bee’s scar and called her “Caterpillar.” I wasn’t thrilled when Bee told me, of course, but kids are cruel, and Bee wasn’t even that upset. I let it go. The principal, who knew this kid was a bad seed, used Bee as cover and convened a bullying forum.