Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

by Maria Semple

NO TRESPASSING

  Galer Street Gnats

  Will Be Arrested

  and Hauled Off to Gnat Jail

  By now, the guests were flying out the front door and screeching off in their cars. Mud-caked servers and chefs were milling around, viciously whooping as if this were the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen. Mr. Kangana was swimming in mud, scooping up marimbas. Gwen Goodyear was in the foyer, trying to keep a brave face as she handed out Galer Street gear. Ollie-O was in a semicatatonic state, uttering nonsensical phrases like “This is not biodegradable—the downstream implications are enormous—the optics make for rough sledding—going forward—” before getting stuck on the words “epic fail,” which he kept repeating.

  Most incredible, perhaps, Audrey Griffin was running down the street, away from her home. I called after her, but she had turned the corner.

  I alone was left to care for thirty traumatized kindergarteners.

  “OK,” I rallied. “Let’s everyone find their boots and raincoats!” I recognize now this was the wrong thing to say, as it only drew attention to the impossibility of such a task. Further, these children were in their socks, some even barefoot, and there was broken glass everywhere.

  “Nobody move.” I collected every cushion I could find and laid a path out the front door to the sidewalk. “Walk on these cushions, and line up against the hedge.”

  If there’s one thing kindergarteners understand, it’s how to line up. One by one, I carried each child down the street to the bus, which I drove back to Galer Street.

  This is why your children were returned to you shoeless, jacketless, covered in mud, and full of fantastic stories.

  Now let me speak to you as a PTSD specialist.

  “Trauma” can be loosely described as any event a person experiences which he perceives as being a threat to his life. This can take as little as 1/18th of a second. In the immediate aftermath of trauma, children might demonstrate fear or confusion. I took the time to carry each child to the bus so that I had the opportunity to physically connect with them. Research has shown how healing touch can be immediately following trauma, especially with children.

  During the walk to the bus, I was able to listen, express curiosity, and simply “be” with each child. I was also able to observe them for early indications of PTSD. I am happy to report that your children appeared to be coping very well. Their greatest concern was whether they’d get their rain gear back, and how it would be returned to them. I answered every question as honestly as I could. I told them we’d do our best to recover their belongings, which would probably be dirty, but the mommies would try to clean them.

  The good news is this was a single traumatic incident, and therefore the chances of developing PTSD are minor. The bad news is that PTSD can surface months or even years after an event. I feel it is my responsibility as a doctor to let you know some symptoms of PTSD that may occur in your child:

  worry about dying

  bed-wetting, nightmares, insomnia

  reverting to thumb sucking, baby talk, and diaper wearing

  physical complaints for which there is no underlying physical cause

  withdrawal from family and friends

  refusal to attend school

  sadistic, violent behavior

  If you notice any of these symptoms now or within the next several years, it is important you immediately notify a specialist and tell them about the events at Audrey Griffin’s house. I’m not saying this will happen. The chances are very much against it.

  I have offered Gwen Goodyear my counseling services for both kindergarten classes. We are still weighing whether to have an all-school assembly, a kindergarten-only gathering, or a parent forum to collectively process this traumatic event. I’d like to hear your feedback.

  Sincerely,

  Helen Derwood, PhD

  *

  So you understand fully, here’s how freakish the weather was that morning: it was the first time since 9/11 that ferry service was suspended.

  Mom and I had breakfast at Macrina, then hit Pike Place Market for our usual Saturday rounds. Mom waited in the car while I ran to the flying fish guy for salmon, Beecher’s for cheese, and the butcher for dog bones.

  I was going through an Abbey Road phase because I had just read a book about the last days of the Beatles, and I spent most of breakfast telling Mom about it. For instance, that medley on the second side, it was originally conceived as individual songs. It was Paul’s idea to string them together in the studio. Also, Paul knew exactly what was going on when he wrote, “Boy, you’re going to carry that weight.” It’s about how John wanted the Beatles to break up, but Paul didn’t. Paul wrote, “Boy, you’re going to carry that weight” right at John. He was saying, “We’ve got a good thing going. If this band breaks up, it’s all on you, John. You sure you want to live with that?” And the final instrumental at the end, where the Beatles trade off leads on guitar, and which has Ringo’s only drum solo? You know how it always seems like this tragic, intentional farewell to the fans and you picture the Beatles dressed like hippies playing that last part of Abbey Road all looking at one another, and you think, Oh, man, they must have been crying so hard? Well, that whole instrumental was also constructed by Paul in the studio after the fact, so it’s just a bunch of fake sentimentality.

  Anyway, when we got to the ferry dock, the line was all the way out the loading lot, under the viaduct, and across First Avenue. We had never seen it that long. Mom parked in line, turned off the engine, and walked through the pelting-down rain to the booth. She returned and said a storm drain on the Bainbridge side had flooded the ferry terminal. Three boats were backed up, full of cars waiting to unload. It sounded totally chaotic. But all you can do when it comes to ferries is get in line and hope.

  “When’s that flute performance?” Mom said. “I want to come see you.”

  “I don’t want you to come.” I was hoping she’d forgotten about it.

  She dropped her jaw all the way down.

  “The words to it are too cute,” I explained. “You might die of cuteness.”

  “But I want to die of cuteness! It’s my favorite thing, to die of cuteness.”

  “I’m not telling you when it is.”

  “You are such a rotter,” she said.

  I popped in a CD of Abbey Road, which I’d burned that morning, and cranked it. I made sure only the front speakers were on because Ice Cream was asleep in the back.

  Of course, the first song is “Come Together.” It starts with that great weird “shoomp” and the bass part. And when John started singing “Here come old flattop…,” what happened, but Mom knew every single word of the song! Not just every word, but every cadence. She knew every “all right!” and “aww!” and “yeaaaah.” And it kept going, song after song. When “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” started, Mom said, “Yuck, I always thought this was totally sophomoric.” Still, what did she do? She sang every single word of that, too.

  I hit the pause button. “How do you even know this?” I demanded.

  “Abbey Road?” Mom shrugged. “I don’t know, you just know it.” She unpaused the CD.

  When “Here Comes the Sun” started, what happened? No, the sun didn’t come out, but Mom opened up like the sun breaking through the clouds. You know how in the first few notes of that song, there’s something about George’s guitar that’s just so hopeful? It was like when Mom sang, she was full of hope, too. She even got the irregular clapping right during the guitar solo. When the song was over, she paused it.

  “Oh, Bee,” she said. “This song reminds me of you.” She had tears in her eyes.

  “Mom!” This is why I didn’t want her to come to the first-grade elephant dance. Because the most random things get her way too full of love.

  “I need you to know how hard it is for me sometimes.” Mom had her hand on mine.

  “What’s hard?”

  “The banality of life,” she said. “But it won’t keep me from taking you to the S
outh Pole.”

  “We’re not going to the South Pole!”

  “I know. It’s a hundred below zero at the South Pole. Only scientists go to the South Pole. I started reading one of the books.”

  I wiggled out my hand and hit play. Here’s the funny part. When I burned the CD, I didn’t uncheck the thing iTunes defaults to when it asks if you want two seconds between songs. So when it came to the awesome medley, Mom and I sang along to “You Never Give Me Your Money,” then “Sun King,” which Mom knew, even the Spanish part, and she doesn’t even speak Spanish, she speaks French.

  And then the two-second gaps started.

  If you don’t understand how tragic and annoying this is, seriously, start singing along to “Sun King.” Toward the end, you’re singing all sleepy in Spanish, gearing up to start grooving to “Mean Mr. Mustard,” because what makes the end of “Sun King” so great is you’re drifting along, but at the same time you’re anticipating Ringo’s drums, which kick in on “Mean Mr. Mustard,” and it turns funky. But if you don’t uncheck the box on iTunes, you get to the end of “Sun King” and then—

  HARSH DIGITAL TWO-SECOND SILENCE.

  And during “Polythene Pam,” right after the “look out,” it—GAPS OUT—before “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” Seriously, it’s torture. During all this, Mom and I were howling. Finally, the CD ended.

  “I love you, Bee,” Mom said. “I’m trying. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

  The ferry line hadn’t moved. “I guess we should just go home,” I said. It was a bummer because Kennedy never wanted to spend the night in Seattle because our house scares her. Once, she swore she saw a lump in one of the rugs move. “It’s alive, it’s alive!” she screamed. I told her it was just a blackberry vine growing through the floorboards, but she was convinced it was the ghost of one of the Straight Gate girls.

  Mom and I headed up Queen Anne Hill. Mom once said the ganglia of electric bus wires overhead were like a Jacob’s ladder. Every time we drove up, I imagined reaching my fanned fingers up into the web and pulling them through the roof in a cat’s cradle.

  We turned into our driveway. We were halfway through the gate. And there was Audrey Griffin walking up to our car.

  “Oh, boy,” Mom said. “Déjà vu all over again. What is it now?”

  “Watch out for her foot,” I said, totally joking.

  “Oh, no!” Mom’s voice kind of barfed out the words. She covered her face with her hands.

  “What?” I said. “What?”

  Audrey Griffin wasn’t wearing a jacket. Her pants were covered in mud from the knee down, and she was barefoot. There was mud in her hair, too. Mom opened her door without turning off the car. By the time I got out, Audrey Griffin was screaming.

  “Your hillside just slid into my home!”

  I was like, what? Our yard was so big, and the end of our lawn was so far down, I couldn’t see what she was talking about.

  “During a party,” Audrey continued, “for prospective Galer Street parents.”

  “I had no idea—” Mom’s voice was all shaky.

  “That I believe,” Audrey said, “because you are totally uninvolved in the school. Both kindergarten classes were there!”

  “Was anyone hurt?” Mom said.

  “Thank the Lord, no.” Audrey had a crazy smile. Mom and I share a fascination with what we call happy-angry people. This display of Audrey Griffin’s had just become the best version of that ever.

  “OK. That’s good.” Mom sighed a huge sigh. “That’s good.” I could tell she was trying to convince herself.

  “Good?!” Audrey shrieked. “My backyard is six feet high in mud. It broke windows, destroyed plants, trees, hardwood floors, ripped my washer and dryer out of the wall!” Audrey was talking really fast and taking lots of breaths. It was like with each item she ticked off, the needle on her happy-angry meter was moving more and more to the right. “My barbecue is gone. My window treatments are ruined. My greenhouse crushed. Seedlings killed. Specimen apple trees that have taken twenty-five years to establish, pulled up by the roots. Japanese maples flattened. Heirloom roses gone. The fire pit that I tiled myself is gone!”

  Mom was sucking in the corners of her mouth to keep a smile from forming. I had to quickly look down so I wouldn’t crack up. But any perverse humor we might have found in the situation suddenly ended.

  “And that sign!” Audrey said with a growl.

  Mom’s face dropped. She could barely utter the words “The sign.”

  “What sign?” I asked.

  “What kind of person puts up a sign—” Audrey said.

  “I’ll have it taken down today,” Mom said.

  “What sign?” I repeated.

  “The mud took care of that for you,” Audrey told Mom. I’d never noticed how light green Audrey Griffin’s eyes were until they bugged out at my mother.

  “I’ll pay for everything,” Mom said.

  Here’s something about Mom: she’s bad with annoyances, but great in a crisis. If a waiter doesn’t refill her water after she’s asked three times, or she forgets her dark glasses when the sun comes out, look out! But when it comes to something truly bad happening, Mom plugs into this supreme calm. I think she got it from all those years half living at Children’s because of me. I’m just saying, when things are bad, there’s nobody better to have in your corner than Mom. But this calm of hers seemed only to set Audrey Griffin off worse.

  “Is that all everything is about for you?! Money?!” The madder Audrey got, the sparklier her eyes became. “Up here in your gigantic house looking down on all of us, writing checks, but never deigning to come off your throne and honor us with your presence?”

  “You’re obviously emotional,” Mom said. “You need to remember the work I had done on the hillside was at your insistence, Audrey. I used your guy and had him do it on the day you specified.”

  “So none of it is your responsibility?” Audrey clucked. “That’s mighty convenient for you. How about the sign, then? Did I make you put that up, too? Really, I’m curious.”

  “What sign?!” I started to get scared with all the talk of the sign.

  “Buzz,” Mom turned to me. “I did something really stupid. I’ll tell you about it.”

  “This poor child,” Audrey said bitterly. “With everything she’s had to go through.”

  “Whaa—?” I said.

  “I’m truly sorry about the sign,” Mom stated emphatically to Audrey. “I did it on impulse the day I found you on my lawn with your gardener.”

  “You’re blaming me?” Audrey said. “Isn’t this just fascinating!” It was like her happy needle had busted through the danger zone and was now entering uncharted territory where no happy-angry person has gone before. I, for one, was frightened.

  “I’m blaming myself,” Mom said. “I’m just making the point that there is a larger context to what happened today.”

  “You think a gentleman coming to your house to give you an estimate for yard work, which is legally required by city code, is equivalent to putting up a billboard, traumatizing both kindergarten classes, jeopardizing Galer Street enrollment, and destroying my home?”

  “The sign was a reaction to that,” Mom said. “Yes.”

  “Wooowww,” Audrey Griffin said, spreading the word up and down like a roller coaster. Her voice was so full of hate and craziness that it pierced my skin. My heart began racing in a scary way it never had before.

  “This is really interesting.” Audrey widened her eyes. “So you think putting up a hateful billboard over my home is an appropriate reaction to getting an estimate for yard work.” She pointed her finger in eight different directions during that last sentence. “I think I understand.”

  “It was an overreaction,” Mom told Audrey with renewed calm. “Don’t forget you were trespassing on my property.”

  “So basically,” Audrey exploded, “you’re insane!” Her eyes fluttered spastically. “Golly, I was always wonderi
ng. Now I have my answer.” Her face froze in demented wonder and she started clapping her hands really fast and small.

  “Audrey,” Mom said. “Don’t stand there and pretend you haven’t been playing this game, too.”

  “I don’t play games.”

  “How about getting Gwen Goodyear to send out that letter about me running over your foot? What was that?”

  “Oh, Bernadette,” Audrey said, shaking her head sadly. “You really need to stop being so paranoid. Perhaps if you interacted more with people, you’d realize we’re not a bunch of scary bogeymen who are out to get you.” She held up both hands and clawed the air.

  “I think we’re done,” Mom said. “Again, I want to apologize for the sign. It was a stupid mistake and I intend to take full responsibility, in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of Gwen Goodyear and Galer Street.” Mom turned and walked around the front of the car. When she was about get in, Audrey Griffin started up again, like a movie monster come back to life.

  “Bee never would have been accepted to Galer Street if they knew she lived in this house,” Audrey Griffin said. “Ask Gwen. Nobody realized you were the people from L.A. who came to Seattle and bought a twelve-thousand-square-foot building in the middle of a charming neighborhood and called it your home. Where we’re standing now? Within a four-mile radius is the house I grew up in, the house my mother grew up in, and the house my grandmother grew up in.”

  “That I believe,” Mom said.

  “My great-grandfather was a fur trapper in Alaska,” Audrey said. “Warren’s great-grandfather bought furs from him. My point is, you come in here with your Microsoft money and think you belong. But you don’t belong. You never will.”

  “Say amen to that.”

  “None of the other mothers like you, Bernadette. Do you realize we had an eighth-grade moms-and-daughters Thanksgiving on Whidbey Island, but we didn’t invite you and Bee? But I hear you had a wonderful holiday at Daniel’s Broiler!”

  My breath kind of stopped then. I was standing there, but it was like Audrey Griffin had knocked the wind out of me. I reached for the car to steady myself.