by Maria Semple
Any structure built would have to be coordinated out of the United States. Every material, down to the nail, would have to be flown in. Getting the supplies there would be so costly that absolutely nothing could be wasted. Twenty years ago, I built a house with zero waste, using only materials from no farther than twenty miles. This would require using materials from no closer than nine thousand.
My heart started racing, not the bad kind of heart racing, like, I’m going to die. But the good kind of heart racing, like, Hello, can I help you with something? If not, please step aside because I’m about to kick the shit out of life.
The whole time I was thinking, What a fabulous idea of mine to take this family trip to Antarctica!
You know me, or maybe you don’t, but from then on, every hour of my day became devoted to plotting my takeover of the new South Pole station. When I say every hour of my day, that would be twenty-four, because the sun never set.
If anyone asked me—which in his defense, that Artforum reporter valiantly attempted, but every time I saw his name in my in-box I frantically hit delete delete delete—I’d say I never considered myself a great architect. I’m more of a creative problem solver with good taste and a soft spot for logistical nightmares. I had to go. If for no other reason than to be able to put my hand on the South Pole marker and declare that the world literally revolved around me.
I didn’t sleep for two days straight because it was all too interesting. The South Pole, McMurdo, and Palmer stations are all run by the same military contracting company out of Denver. The coordinator of all Antarctic operations happened to be at Palmer for the next month. My closest connection to any of this was Becky. I resolved then: I don’t care how profusely Becky apologizes every time she asks a waiter for more dinner rolls, I’m going to stick with her.
One of those days, I was out on the water with Becky in our floating science lab, calling out numbers. Ever so casually, I mentioned that it might be fun for me to accompany her to Palmer Station. The tizzy that erupted! No civilians allowed! Only essential personnel! There’s a five-year wait! It’s the most competitive place in the world for scientists! She spent years writing a grant!
That evening, Becky bid me adieu. This was a shock, because we were nowhere near Palmer Station. But a ship was swinging by at three in the morning to get her. Turns out there’s a whole shadow transportation network down here in Antarctica, much like the Microsoft Connector. They’re marine research vessels on a constant loop, transporting personnel and supplies to the various stations, often hooking up with cruise ships, which also double as supply ships for these remote stations.
I had a measly six hours. There was no way I could persuade Becky to bring me to Palmer Station. I was in bed despairing when, at the stroke of three, up sidled a giant paprika-colored bucket, the Laurence M. Gould.
I went down to the mudroom to get a front-row seat to my future slipping away. Stacked on the floating dock were Becky’s lockers and fifty crates of fresh produce. I could make out oranges, squash, cabbage. A sleepy Filipino loaded them onto a bobbing, unmanned Zodiac. Suddenly a crate of pineapples was thrust at me.
I realized: For days, I’d gone out with Becky on plankton-measuring excursions. This guy thought I was a scientist. I took the crate and jumped into the Zodiac and stayed there as he passed me more. After we filled the Zodiac to capacity, the sailor hopped in and fired up the engine.
Just like that, I was headed to the massive, utilitarian Laurence M. Gould. We were met by an equally sleepy and resentful Russian sailor. The Filipino stayed in the Zodiac and I climbed onto the Gould’s dock and began unloading. The Russian’s only concern was logging in the crates. When the Zodiac was empty—and to test that this was actually happening—I faintly waved to the Filipino. He motored back to the Allegra by himself.
There I was, standing firmly on the Laurence M. Gould. The best part: I hadn’t scanned out of the Allegra. They’d have no record of me leaving, and probably wouldn’t know I was missing until they docked in Ushuaia. By that time, I could get word to you.
I looked back at the Allegra and gave her a nod of thanks. Then, in the maw, the shape of Becky started loading the remaining supplies onto a Zodiac. My irrational dislike of her took hold again. And I thought, What do I need Becky for? Becky’s not the boss of me.
I found my way into the belly of the ship and through a labyrinth of foul-smelling passages, a combination of diesel fuel, fried food, and cigarettes. I came upon a tiny lounge with pilly pastel sofas and a boxy TV. I sat there as the engine grumbled to life. I sat there as the boat pulled away. I sat there some more. And then I fell asleep.
I awoke to the screech of Becky. Around breakfast time, some sailors had seen me sleeping and asked around. Luckily, we were just six hours from Palmer Station. Becky decided the thing to do was deliver me to Ellen Idelson, the manager of Antarctic operations. For the rest of the journey, I was a prisoner in the lounge, an object of curiosity. Russian scientists would poke their heads in, watching me watch Lorenzo’s Oil.
As soon as we reached Palmer, Becky dragged me by the scruff to dear leader, Ellen Idelson. To the chagrin of Becky, Ellen was thrilled when I declared I’d work for free and that no job was too demeaning.
“But how is she going to get home?” Becky wailed.
“We’ll stick her on the Gould,” Ellen said.
“But the beds are all accounted for,” Becky said.
“Yeah,” Ellen said. “That’s what we always say.”
“But she doesn’t have her passport! It’s on the Allegra.”
“That’s her problem, isn’t it?”
We both watched Becky huff off.
“She’s really good at writing grants,” Ellen said with disgust. It was a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” June was busting out all over.
I was turned over to Mike, a former state senator from Boston who had wanted so badly to spend time in Antarctica that he had trained to become a diesel mechanic. He put me to work sanding and painting the decks around the generator housing. He handed me a stack of industrial-grade sandpaper. Before I went through the grits, the wood needed to be scraped. I had a putty knife, which was dull, and I figured I could borrow a whetstone from the kitchen.
“There she is,” said Ellen, who had been having a tête-à-tête with the chef when I entered. Ellen pointed to a picnic table. I obediently sat.
She walked over with an open laptop.
On the screen was my Wikipedia page. In a window behind it, Artforum dot-com. (On a side note, the Internet here is faster than I’ve ever seen, because it’s military or something. The motto should be Palmer Station: Come for the Ice. Stay for the Internet.)
“It wasn’t cool, what you did,” Ellen said. “Stowing away on the Gould. I just didn’t want to get Becky more excited. That’s not good for morale.”
“I understand.”
“What do you want?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
“I need to get a letter to my daughter. Not an email, but a real letter. One that will arrive in Seattle by the seventeenth.” It’s imperative that you get this letter, Bee, before the ship returns to Ushuaia, so nobody will worry.
“The pouch goes out tomorrow,” Ellen said. “The letter will make it.”
“Also, I’d like a shot at designing the South Pole station. But I need to get there in person and catch a vibe.”
“Ah,” Ellen said. “I was wondering.”
Ellen launched into the utter impossibility of this: planes to the Pole depart only from McMurdo Station, which is 2,100 nautical miles from Palmer. Getting to McMurdo was relatively easy. Flights to the Pole were a different beast. They were strictly reserved for EP, essential personnel, and I gave new meaning to the term non-EP.
Halfway through this speech, it dawned on me that Ellen Idelson was a contractor. She was performing contractor Kabuki. It’s a ritual in which (a) the contractor explains in great detail the impossibility of the job you’ve asked him to
do, (b) you demonstrate extreme remorse for even suggesting such a thing by withdrawing your request, and (c) he tells you he’s found a way to do it, so (d) you somehow owe him one for doing what he was hired to do in the first place.
We played our roles expertly, Ellen ticking off the enigmas, difficulties, me abjectly apologizing for such an irrational and thoughtless request. I nodded gravely and retired to my sanding chores. Five hours later, Ellen whistled me into her office.
“Lucky for you,” she said, “I’m partial to weirdos, enigmas, and geniuses. I got you a spot on a Herc from McMurdo to Ninety South. The plane leaves in six weeks. You’ll leave Palmer in five. You’ll have to stand up the whole three-hour flight. I’ve got it packed with weather balloons, powdered milk, and jet fuel.”
“I’m fine with standing,” I said.
“You say that now,” Ellen said. “One question, though. Do you have all your wisdom teeth?”
“Yeah…,” I answered. “Why would you ask?”
“Nobody with wisdom teeth is allowed at the South Pole. A couple years back we had to airlift out three people with infected wisdom teeth. Don’t ask me how much that cost. We instituted a rule: no wisdom teeth.”
“Shit!” I jumped up and down like Yosemite Sam, hopping mad that of all the reasons the South Pole would slip through my fingers, it’d be because I didn’t go to that goddamn dentist appointment!
“Easy,” Ellen said. “We can remove them. But we’ll have to do it today.”
My body gave a little jolt. Here was a woman who took can-do to an exciting new level.
“But,” she said, “you need to know what you’re getting yourself into. The South Pole is considered the most stressful living environment in the world. You’re trapped in a small space with twenty people you probably won’t like. They’re all pretty awful in my opinion, made worse by the isolation.” She handed me a clipboard. “Here’s a psych screening the overwinterers take. It’s seven hundred questions, and it’s mostly bullshit. At least look at it.”
I sat down and flipped to a random page. “True or False: I line up all my shoes according to color. If I find them out of order, I can turn violent.” She was right, it was bullshit.
More relevant was the cover sheet, which set forth the psychological profile of candidates best suited to withstand the extreme conditions at the South Pole. They are “individuals with blasé attitudes and antisocial tendencies,” and people who “feel comfortable spending lots of time alone in small rooms,” “don’t feel the need to get outside and exercise,” and the kicker, “can go long stretches without showering.”
For the past twenty years I’ve been in training for overwintering at the South Pole! I knew I was up to something.
“I can handle it,” I told Ellen. “As long as my daughter gives me her blessing. I must get word to her.”
“That’s the easy part,” Ellen said, finally cracking a smile for me.
There’s a guy here studying fur seals. He’s also a veterinarian from Pasadena, with a degree in equine dentistry. He used to clean Zenyatta’s teeth. (I’m telling you, there are all kinds down here. At lunch today, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist explained “the quilted universe.” I’m not talking about Galer Street pickup, with the parents standing around in their North Face. It’s a quantum physics concept where everything that can happen, is happening, in an infinite number of parallel universes. Shit, I can’t explain it now. But I’m telling you, for a fleeting moment at lunch, I grasped it. Like everything else in my life—I got it, I lost it!)
So. The veterinarian is going to extract my wisdom teeth. The station doctor, Doug, will assist him. Doug is a surgeon from Aspen who came here as part of a lifelong quest to ski all seven continents. They’re confident the extraction will be a cinch because my wisdom teeth have erupted through my gums and aren’t at funky angles. For some reason, Cal, a genial neutrino specialist, wants in on the tooth action. Everyone seems to like me, which has everything to do with the fact that I came bearing fresh produce, and the paucity of women. I’m an Antarctic 10, a boat ride away from being a 5.
Bee, I have one shot to make it to the South Pole. The Laurence M. Gould is headed to McMurdo in five weeks. From there, if my streak continues, I can catch that sleigh to Ninety South. But I will go only if I hear back from you. Send word through Ellen Idelson to the email below. If I don’t hear back, I’ll take that ship to McMurdo and from there fly home.
XXXX
Doug the surgeon just gave me Novocain and Vicodin, which was the only reason Neutrino Cal was on hand, it turns out, because he heard they were unlocking the drug chest. He’s gone now. I don’t have much time before I get loopy. Now for the important stuff:
Bee, don’t hate Dad. I hate him enough for the both of us. That being said, I may forgive him. Because I don’t know what Dad and I would be without the other. Well, we know what he’d be: a guy shacking up with his admin. But I have no idea what I’d be.
Remember all those things you hated about me when you were little? You hated when I sang. You hated when I danced. You really hated when I referred to that homeless guy with the dreadlocks who walked around the streets with a stack of blankets across his shoulders as “my brother.” You hated when I said you were my best friend.
I now agree with you on that last one. I’m not your best friend. I’m your mother. As your mother, I have two proclamations.
First, we’re moving out of Straight Gate. That place was a decades-long bad dream, and all three of us will awake from it when I snap my fingers.
I got a phone call a few months ago from some freak named Ollie-O, who was raising money for a new Galer Street campus. How about we give them Straight Gate, or sell it to them for a dollar? The unutterable truth: Galer Street was the best thing that ever happened to me, because they took fantastic care of you. The teachers adored you, and there you blossomed into my flute-playing Krishna, Bala no more. They need a campus, and we need to start living like normal people.
I’ll miss the afternoons when I’d go out on our lawn and throw my head back. The sky in Seattle is so low, it felt like God had lowered a silk parachute over us. Every feeling I ever knew was up in that sky. Twinkling joyous sunlight; airy, giggling cloud wisps; blinding columns of sun. Orbs of gold, pink, flesh, utterly cheesy in their luminosity. Gigantic puffy clouds, welcoming, forgiving, repeating infinitely across the horizon as if between mirrors; and slices of rain, pounding wet misery in the distance now, but soon on us, and in another part of the sky, a black stain, rainless.
The sky, it came in patches, it came in layers, it came swirled together, and always on the move, churning, sometimes whizzing by. It was so low, some days I’d reach out for the flow, like you, Bee, at your first 3-D movie, so convinced was I that I could grab it, and then what—become it.
All those ninnies have it wrong. The best thing about Seattle is the weather. The world over, people have ocean views. But across our ocean is Bainbridge Island, an evergreen curb, and over it the exploding, craggy, snow-scraped Olympics. I guess what I’m saying: I miss it, the mountains and the water.
My second proclamation: you are not going away to boarding school. Yes, I selfishly can’t bear life without you. But mostly, and I mean this, I hate the idea for you. You will simply not fit in with those snobby rich kids. They’re not like you. To quote the admin, “I don’t want to use the word sophistication.” (OK, we need to double-swear to never tease Dad about the emails from the admin. You may have a hard time seeing it now, but trust me, it meant nothing. No doubt poor Dad is already dying of mortification. If he hasn’t ditched her by the time I return, have no fear, I will swat her away myself.)
Bee, darling, you’re a child of the earth, the United States, Washington State, and Seattle. Those East Coast rich kids are a different breed, on a fast track to nowhere. Your friends in Seattle are downright Canadian in their niceness. None of you has a cell phone. The girls wear hoodies and big cotton underpants and walk around with tangled hai
r and smiling, adorned backpacks. Do you know how absolutely exotic it is that you haven’t been corrupted by fashion and pop culture? A month ago I mentioned Ben Stiller, and do you remember how you responded? “Who’s that?” I loved you all over again.
I blame myself. None of what’s become of me was Seattle’s fault. Well, it might be Seattle’s fault. The people are pretty boring. But let’s withhold final judgment until I start being more of an artist and less of a menace. I make you only one promise, I will move forward.
Sorry, but you have no choice. You’re sticking with me, with us, close to home. And I don’t want to hear it from the Runaway Bunny. The Runaway Bunny stays.
Say yes, and I’ll be gone an extra month. I’ll return and work on my plans for the new South Pole Station, you’ll graduate Galer Street and go to Lakeside, Dad will continue making the world a better place at Microsoft, and we’ll move into a normal house, dare I say, a Craftsman?