by Maria Semple
“We’re about to go back upstairs,” Dad said loudly.
I pushed him behind a bank of lockers. “Give me the jackets.” I stuffed them in an empty locker and led him to the crew section, where I had been with Nick. On the wall was a line of black parkas. “Put one of those on,” I whispered.
I strolled to the floating dock, where a Zodiac was tied up. The only crew member was a Filipino. His nametag said JACKO.
“I heard one of the sailors talking,” I said. “The ship is picking up satellite signals from Palmer Station, so they’re all on the bridge calling home for free.”
Jacko disappeared up into the ship, two steps at a time. I whispered to Dad, “Now!”
I zipped myself into a gigantic crew parka and rolled up the sleeves. We grabbed two life vests and clambered into a Zodiac. I unlooped the rope from its cleat, then pushed a button on the motor. The engine coughed to life. We broke from the Allegra and headed across the sparkling black water.
I looked back. A few passengers were still on deck taking pictures, but most had retired inside. The sudoku lady was now in the library. Iris and Vivian sat at our Risk game, looking out the window. Most of the cabin shades were lowered. As far as the ship was concerned, Dad and I were cozily on board.
“Get down,” Dad said. A Zodiac was now headed in our direction. “You’re way smaller than anyone who should be out here.” He stepped in front of the motor and grabbed hold of the wand. “Lower,” he said. “All the way.”
I lay belly-down on the plank bottom. “Take off your stupid glasses!” Dad was wearing his clear ones, and the taped-over lens was really noticeable.
“Shoot!” He fumbled to stuff his glasses into his pocket and zipped his jacket to above his nose.
“Who is it coming toward us?” I asked. “Can you tell?”
“Frog, Gilly, and Karen,” Dad said all lockjawed. “I’m going to gently sway this way. Nothing too extreme, just getting a little distance.” He waved at them.
I felt their Zodiac pass.
“OK, we’re good,” he said. “Now I’m looking for a place to dock…”
I peeked over the rubber edge. Palmer Station was all around us. “You just ram really fast up onto the rocks—” I said.
“No you don’t—”
“Yes you do,” I said, standing up. “Just full speed—”
Dad did, and I suddenly got pitched onto the inflated rubber edge. I grabbed onto the rope railing, and my body slammed against the outside. My feet and one knee got trapped between the hard rubber and the rocky shore. “Gaaah!” I screamed.
“Bee! Are you OK?”
I didn’t think I was, actually. “I’m fine.” I pulled free and stood up, wobbly. “Oh, no!” That other Zodiac had circled back around, and those onboard were waving their hands and shouting. At us. I ducked behind the boat.
“Go,” Dad said.
“Where?”
“Just find her,” he said. “I’ll hold them off. Our ship leaves at three a.m. That’s thirty minutes from now. Find someone. Ask for Mom. She’ll either be here or she won’t. If you want to return, you must radio our ship by two fifty. Got that? Two fifty.”
“What do you mean, if I want to return?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” said Dad.
I took a big gulp and stared up at the corrugated sprawl.
“Make sure you”—Dad reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a small black velvet bag with a gold silk rope—“give her this.”
Without saying good-bye, I limped up the road, most of its gravel eaten away by erosion. On my left and right were shipping containers, different shades of blue, with stenciled signs. REEFER, VOLATILE, FLAM LOCKER, CORR LOCKER, THE BAT CAVE. On wooden decks, tents were set up. They had real doors, and funny flags, like a pirate, or Bart Simpson. Even though the sun was in the sky, I was walking through the silence of night. As I continued, the buildings became denser and connected by a Habitrail of red bridges and bundled pipes. To my left was an aquarium with squid and starfish pressed up against the glass, and strange sea creatures like from the evening recap. There was a big aluminum drum, and next to it a sign with a martini glass which read ABSOLUTELY NO GLASS CONTAINERS NEAR THE HOT TUB.
I arrived at the steps leading to the main building. Halfway up, I dared to look back.
The other Zodiac had pulled next to Dad’s. One of the guides had climbed into it. There seemed to be some arguing going on. But Dad stayed positioned at the motor, which meant the guides had their backs to me. So far, I hadn’t been spotted.
I opened the door and found myself alone in a big toasty room with carpet tiles and a row of aluminum picnic tables. It smelled like an ice rink. One wall was devoted to shelves filled with DVDs. Toward the back was a counter and an open stainless-steel kitchen. On a dry-erase board were the words WELCOME HOME, NICK!
Laughter erupted from somewhere. I ran down the hall and started opening doors. One room was nothing but walkie-talkies plugged into charging stations. A huge sign read NO COFFEE MUGS ALLOWED EXCEPT FOR JOYCE’S. The next room was desks and computers and oxygen tanks. One was just weird scientific machines. Then there was a bathroom. I heard voices from around the corner. I ran toward them. Then I tripped.
On the floor was a spaghetti pot sitting atop a flattened-out trash bag. Inside the spaghetti pot was a T-shirt with something familiar on it… a rainbow handprint. I reached down and picked it out of the cold gray water. GALER STREET SCHOOL.
“Dad,” I cried. “Daddy!” I ran back down the hall to the wall of windows.
Both Zodiacs were zooming away from Palmer Station, toward our ship. Dad was in one of them.
Then, at my back, “You little rotter.”
It was Mom, standing there. She was wearing Carhartt pants and a fleece.
“Mom!” Tears sprang up in my eyes. I ran to her. She dropped to her knees, and I just hugged her so hard and buried my body in her. “I found you!”
She had to carry all my weight in her arms because I had just given up. I stared into her beautiful face, her blue eyes examining me like they always used to.
“What are you doing here?” she said. “How did you get here?” Her wrinkles radiated like sun rays from her smiling eyes. There was a big stripe of gray running down her part.
“Look at your hair,” I said.
“You almost killed me,” she said. “You know that.” Then, with tears and confusion, “Why didn’t you write?”
“I didn’t know where you were!” I said.
“My letter,” she said.
“Your letter?”
“I sent it weeks ago.”
“I never got your stupid letter,” I said. “Here. This is from Dad.” I handed her the velvet bag. She knew what it was, and pressed it to her cheek and closed her eyes.
“Open it!” I said.
She untied the cord and pulled out a locket. In it was the photograph of Saint Bernadette. It was the necklace Dad had given her after she won her architecture prize. It was the first time I’d ever seen it.
“What’s this?” She pulled out a card and held it away from her face. “I can’t read what it says.” I took it from her and read it aloud.
1. BEEBER BIFOCAL
2. TWENTY MILE HOUSE
3. BEE
4. YOUR ESCAPE
FOURTEEN MIRACLES TO GO.
“Elgie,” Mom said, and breathed out a sweet relaxed smile.
“I knew I’d find you,” I said, and hugged her my tightest. “Nobody believed me. But I knew.”
“My letter,” Mom said. “If you never got it—” She pulled my arms apart and looked into my face. “I don’t understand, Bee. If you never got my letter, how are you here?”
“I did it like you,” I said. “I slipped away.”
PART SEVEN
The Runaway Bunny
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21
My first day back at Galer Street, on the way to music, I passed my cubby. It was stuffed with notices from the past few
months. Crammed in with all the flyers about the recycling challenge and Bike-to-School Day was an envelope, a stamped envelope, addressed to me in care of Galer Street. The return address was a contracting company in Denver and the writing: Mom’s.
Kennedy saw my face and she started hanging on me, all “What is it? What is it? What is it?” I didn’t want to open the envelope in front of her. But I couldn’t open it alone. So I ran back to homeroom. Mr. Levy was with some teachers who were about to walk to Starbucks on their break. As soon as Mr. Levy saw me, he told the others to go on ahead. We shut the door, and I tried to tell him everything all at once, about the intervention and Audrey Griffin who saved Mom and Choate and my roommate who didn’t like me and Antarctica and Soo-Lin’s baby and finding Mom and now this, the missing letter. But it squirted out in a big jumble. So I did the next best thing. I went to my locker and gave him the book I wrote at Choate. Then I went to music.
At lunch recess, Mr. Levy found me. He said he liked my book OK, but in his mind, it needed more work. He had an idea. For my spring research project, how about I complete it? He suggested I ask Audrey and Paul Jellinek and Ms. Goodyear and anyone else to provide documents. And Mom, of course, but she wasn’t going to be back from Antarctica for two weeks. Mr. Levy said he’d give me credit for the classes I’d missed so I could graduate with the rest of my class. And that’s what this is.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 7
The missing letter from Mom
Bee,
I write to you from a shipping container in Antarctica, where I’m waiting to have four wisdom teeth voluntarily extracted by a veterinarian. Let me back up.
Last thing you knew, I vanished while being chased around the living room with a butterfly net. Earlier that day, you’ll recall, I was at World Celebration Day. To avoid actual “celebration” with occupants of said “world,” I made busy at the coffee table, pouring, stirring, and slamming, in all, five cups of mud. The moment the performance was over, I hightailed it home (not to Dr. Neergaard’s to get my teeth pulled, which was truly an insane idea, even I had come to realize that) and intervened in my own intervention, rendered much more painful by the fact that I had to pee something fierce. I went into the bathroom, and, hark, cameth a tap, tap, tap.
You know how we thought Audrey Griffin was the devil? Turns out Audrey Griffin is an angel. She plucked me off the balcony and whisked me to the safety of her kitchen, where she presented me with the dossier of my truly terrible behavior, which you have by now received via snail mail.
I know it seems like I just took off, but here’s the thing: I didn’t.
For all I knew, Elgie was still planning to take you to Antarctica. He was very adamant about that in the intervention. The next morning, I headed to the airport so I could talk to you both in person. (Be warned. I will never, ever email, text, or possibly phone anyone again. From now on, I’m the Mafia, only face-to-face contact or nuttin’.) I asked if you had checked in, but divulging such information was strictly forbidden—those 9/11 hijackers just keep on giving—so my only option was to check in and board the plane.
As you know, you weren’t on the flight. I panicked, but then a pretty stewardess handed me a glass of orange juice over chipped ice. It tasted way better than it had any right to, so I took the trip to Miami, my mind on fire: a furious, injury-seeking missile. Elgie was the rat, I the misunderstood genius. The screeds I rehearsed were epic and airtight.
Stepping off the plane in Miami was like reentering the womb. Was it the welcoming voices of LeBron James and Gloria Estefan? No, it was the scent of Cinnabon. I ordered a large and headed down to a tram, which would deliver me to the ticket counter. There I’d buy passage home and accept my fate.
The Cinnabon wasn’t going to eat itself, so I sat. Trams came and went as I pulled apart the puff of deliciousness, enjoying every bite, until I realized I’d forgotten napkins. Both my hands were plastered with icing. My face, too. In one of my vest pockets was a handkerchief. I held up my hands, surgeonlike, and asked a lady, “Please, could you unzip this?” The pocket she unzipped contained only a book on Antarctica. I lifted it out and wiped my hands and, yes, my face, with its clean pages.
A tram arrived. The doors jerked open and I took a seat. I glanced down at the book, now on my lap. It was The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the few survivors of Captain Scott’s ill-fated attempt at the South Pole. The back read, “People don’t go to Antarctica. They’re called to Antarctica.”
We pulled into the main terminal. I didn’t get off. I went to Antarctica.
Of course, the first place you’d check for me would be the cruise company. They’d tell you I was on board and, therefore, you’d know I was safe. Added bonus: once I set sail, there was no way to communicate. It was what Dad and I desperately needed: a three-week time-out.
As soon as I boarded the Allegra—I’m still slightly shocked I wasn’t yanked off at the last minute by some authority—I was greeted by a naturalist. I asked how he was.
“Fine,” he answered. “As long as I’m headed back to the ice.”
“Didn’t you just come from the ice?” I asked.
“Three days ago,” he answered wistfully.
I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. It was ice. How much can you love ice?
Well, I found out. After two days of heinous seasickness, I awoke in Antarctica. Out my window, three times as high as the ship, and twice as wide, was an iceberg. It was love at first sight. An announcement was made that we could go kayaking. I bundled up and was first in line. I had to commune, up close, with the Ice.
Ice. It’s trippy, symphonies frozen, the unconscious come to life, and smacking of color: blue. (Snow is white; ice is blue. You’ll know why, Bee, because you’re knowledgeable about these things, but I had no idea.) It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it’s tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world’s fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman’s shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit’s cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black.
There was something unspeakably noble about their age, their scale, their lack of consciousness, their right to exist. Every single iceberg filled me with feelings of sadness and wonder. Not thoughts of sadness and wonder, mind you, because thoughts require a thinker, and my head was a balloon, incapable of thoughts. I didn’t think about Dad, I didn’t think about you, and, the big one, I didn’t think about myself. The effect was like heroin (I think), and I wanted to stretch it out as long as possible.
Even the simplest human interaction would send me crashing back to earthly thoughts. So I was the first one out in the morning, and the last one back. I only went kayaking, never stepped foot on the White Continent proper. I kept my head down, stayed in my room, and slept, but, mainly, I was. No racing heart, no flying thoughts.
At some point, I was paddling in the water, and a voice popped out of nowhere.
“Hello!” it said. “Are you here to help?” It might have been saying, Are you a good witch or a bad witch? It was that perky, the blues that Technicolor, the iceberg that spirally.
The greeting belonged to Becky, a marine biologist, who was out in a Zodiac, taking water samples. She was bunking on the Allegra en route to Palmer Station, a scientific research center, where, she explained, she was going to live for the next several months.
I thought, No way, you can actually live down here?
I climbed into her Zodiac and called out phytoplankton le
vels. She was a big talker. Her husband was a contractor who was back home in Ohio using a computer program called Quickie Architect (!) because he wanted to be put up for a project at the South Pole to dismantle a geodesic dome and replace it with a research station.
Whaaaaa…?
By now you’ve learned that I’m a certified genius. Don’t say I never told you about my MacArthur grant, because I did. I just never stressed what a big deal it was. Really, who wants to admit to her daughter that she was once considered the most promising architect in the country, but now devotes her celebrated genius to maligning the driver in front of her for having Idaho plates?
I know how bad it must have been for you, Bee, all those years, strapped in the car, hostage to my careening moods. I tried. I’d resolve never to say anything bad about any of the drivers. Then I’d be waiting, waiting, for some minivan to pull out of a parking space. “I’m not going to say it,” I’d remind myself. From the backseat, in your squeak: “I know what you were going to say. You were going to call her a fucking idiot.”
Why I’m even mentioning this, I guess it’s to say that I let you down in a hundred different ways. Did I say a hundred? A thousand is more like it.
What did Becky mean, dismantle the dome? What were they going to do with it? What was the new station being built from? What materials are even found at the South Pole? Isn’t it just ice? I had a million questions. I asked Becky to have dinner with me. She was a drab type, with a ten-gallon ass, unctuous toward the waiters in some “see how well I treat the help” show of superiority. (I think it’s a midwestern thing.) After dinner, Becky strongly suggested she’d like to hit the bar, where, between her questions to the bartender about the ages of his “kinders” back in Kashmir, I pumped her for more facts.
At the risk of being like Dad and overexplaining stuff you already know: Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest place on the planet. The South Pole averages sixty below zero, has hurricane-strength winds, and sits at an altitude of ten thousand feet. In other words, those original explorers didn’t have to just get there, but had to climb serious mountains to do so. (Side note: Down here, you’re either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you’ll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he’s a legend, all-star personality, but there’s the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e., won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don’t know. Finally, there’s Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.) The South Pole is on a shifting ice sheet. Every year they have to relocate the official Pole marker because it can move one hundred feet! Would this mean my building would have to be a wind-powered crab-walking igloo? Maybe. I’m not worried about it. That’s what ingenuity and insomnia are for.