by Maria Semple
When I got back to Seattle after leaving Choate, it was a Friday, so I went straight to Youth Group. I walked in on the middle of some stupid game called Hungry Birdies, where everyone was divided into two teams and the mommy birds had to pick up popcorn from a bowl using a piece of red licorice as a straw, then run it over to the chicks and feed it to them. I was shocked that Kennedy was playing something so babyish. I watched until they noticed me and then it turned quiet. Kennedy didn’t even come over. Luke and Mae gave me a big Christian-style hug.
“We’re so sorry about what happened to your mother,” said Luke.
“Nothing happened to my mother,” I said.
The silence got stiffer, then everyone looked at Kennedy, because she was my friend. But I could tell she, too, was afraid of me.
“Let’s finish the game,” she said to the floor. “Our team is up, ten–seven.”
We got our passports stamped and emerged from the tent. A lady said to follow the white line to the captain, who will welcome us onboard. Just hearing the words “the captain” made me run along the splintery dock so fast I knew it wasn’t my legs but my excitement carrying me. There, at the bottom of some stairs, stood a man in a navy suit and a white hat.
“Are you Captain Altdorf?” I said. “I’m Bee Branch.” He had a confused smile. I gulped some air and said, “Bernadette Fox is my mother.”
Then I saw his name badge. CAPTAIN JORGES VARELA. And under it, ARGENTINA.
“Wait—” I said. “Where’s Captain Altdorf?”
“Ahh,” said this false captain. “Captain Altdorf. He’s before. He’s now in Germany.”
“Bee!” It was Dad, huffing and puffing. “You can’t just run off like that.”
“Sorry.” My voice cracked and I started crying in my mouth. “I’ve seen so many pictures of the Allegra that it’s making me feel a lot of closure.”
That was a lie, because how can seeing a ship give you closure? But after Choate, I quickly learned that in the name of closure Dad would let me do anything. I could sleep in Mom’s Airstream, not go back to school, and even come to Antarctica. Personally, I found the concept of closure totally offensive, because it would mean I was trying to forget about Mom. Really, I was going to Antarctica to find her.
When we got to our cabin, our bags were waiting for us. Dad and I each had two: one suitcase with normal clothes, plus a duffel with our expedition stuff. Dad immediately started unpacking.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll take the top two drawers, and you can have the bottom two. I’ll take this side of the closet. Great! The bathroom has two drawers. I’ll take the top one.”
“You don’t have to comment on every boring thing you do.” I said. “This isn’t Olympic curling. You’re just unpacking a suitcase.”
Dad pointed to himself. “What you are looking at is me ignoring you. That’s what the experts told me to do, so that’s what I’m doing.” He sat down on his bed, dragged his duffel between his legs, and unzipped it in one clean swoosh. The first thing I saw was his neti pot, the thing he uses to irrigate his nasal passages. There was no way I was going to be in the same tiny room while Dad did that every day. He stuck it in a drawer, then continued unpacking. “Oh, God.”
“What?”
“It’s a travel humidifier.” He opened a box. Inside was a machine the size of a mini cereal box. Then his face twisted and he turned to the wall.
“What?” I said.
“I asked Mom to get one for me, because the Antarctic air is so dry.”
My eyes widened into saucers, and I thought, Oh, God, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go on this trip if Dad was going to be crying the whole time.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen.” Thankfully it was a Kiwi voice crackling over a speaker in the ceiling. “Welcome onboard. As soon as you’re settled, please join us in the Shackleton Lounge for welcoming cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.”
“I’m going.” I dashed out of there, leaving Dad alone to blubber.
Whenever I lost a baby tooth, the tooth fairy used to leave me DVDs. My first three were A Hard Day’s Night, Funny Face, and That’s Entertainment. Then, for my left front tooth, the tooth fairy left me Xanadu, which became my favorite movie of all time. The best part was the final number in the brand-new roller disco, which was all shiny chrome with polished wood, curved velvet seats and walls made of shag carpet.
That’s what the Shackleton Lounge looked like, plus it had bunches of flat-screen TVs hanging from the ceiling, and windows to look out. I had it all to myself because everyone else was still unpacking. A waiter put out potato chips on the tables, and I munched down one basket all by myself. A few minutes later, a pack of supertan people wearing shorts, flip-flops, and nametags ambled up to the bar. They were crew members, naturalists.
I walked over. “Can I ask you a question?” I said to one of them, Charlie.
“Sure.” He popped an olive into his mouth. “Shoot.”
“Were you on the trip that left just after Christmas?”
“No, I started mid-January.” He dropped a couple more olives into his mouth. “Why?”
“I was wondering what you knew about one of the passengers. Her name is Bernadette Fox.”
“That I wouldn’t know.” He spit a bunch of pits into his palm.
Another equally tan guide whose nametag said FROG asked, “What’s your question?” He was Australian.
“It’s nothing,” the first naturalist, Charlie, said, and kind of shook his head.
“Were you on the New Year’s trip?” I asked Frog. “Because there was a woman on it named Bernadette—”
“The lady who killed herself?” Frog said.
“She didn’t kill herself,” I said.
“Nobody knows what happened,” Charlie said, widening his eyes at Frog.
“Eduardo was there.” Frog reached into a bowl of peanuts. “Eduardo! You were here when the lady jumped. It was the New Year’s trip. We were talking about it.”
Eduardo had a big round Spanish-looking face and spoke with an English accent. “I believe they’re still investigating.”
A woman with curly black hair piled on top of her head got in on the conversation. KAREN, said her badge. “You were there, Eduardo?—aaagh!” Karen screamed and spit out a mouthful of beige pasty stuff into a bowl. “What’s in there?”
“Shit, those are peanuts?” Charlie said. “I’ve been spitting my olive pits in there.”
“Crap,” Karen said. “I think I broke a tooth.”
And then it all started happening really fast: “I heard she escaped from a mental institution before she got here.” “I chipped a tooth.” “How could they let someone like that onboard? is my question.” “That’s your tooth?” “They’d let anyone on if they have the twenty grand.” “You fucker!” “Gee, I’m sorry.” “Thank God she killed herself. What if she killed a passenger, or you, Eduardo—”
“She didn’t kill herself!” I screamed. “She’s my mother, and there was no way she’d ever do that.”
“She’s your mother,” Frog muttered. “I didn’t know.”
“None of you knows anything!” I gave Karen’s chair a kick, but it didn’t move because it was bolted to the floor. I flew down the back stairs, but I had forgotten our room number and even what deck we were on so I kept walking and walking through these horrible narrow hallways with low ceilings and which reeked of diesel fuel. Finally one of the doors opened, and it was Dad.
“There you are!” he said. “You ready to head upstairs for orientation?”
I shoved my way past him into the room and slammed the door. I waited for him to come back in, but he didn’t.
Off and on, throughout preschool and even the beginning of kindergarten, my skin was blue because of my heart. Most times you could hardly tell, but other times it was pretty bad, which meant it was time for another operation. Once, before my Fontan procedure, Mom took me to the Seattle Center and I was playing in the huge musical fountain. I had stripped do
wn to my underwear, and I was running up and down the steep sides, trying to outsmart the shooting water. An older boy pointed. “Look,” he told his friend. “It’s Violet Beauregarde!” That was the bratty girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory who turned blue and ballooned into a huge ball. I was puffy because they’d pumped me up with steroids to get me ready for surgery. I ran to Mom, who was sitting on the edge. I stuffed my face in her breasts. “What is it, Bee?” “They called me it,” I squeaked. “It?” Mom’s eyes were across from mine. “Violet Beauregarde,” I managed to say, then burst into fresh tears. The mean boys huddled nearby, looking over, hoping my mom wouldn’t rat them out to their moms. Mom called to them, “That’s really original, I wish I’d thought of that.” I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn’t fall, because Mom was in the world.
I sat down on one of the narrow beds in our tiny room. The ship’s engine began to rumble, and the Kiwi came over the PA.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. The sound cut out for a second, like he was about to announce something bad and he had to collect his thoughts. Then, he came back on. “Say good-bye to Ushuaia, because our Antarctic adventure has just begun. Chef Issey has prepared the traditional bon voyage roast beef and Yorkshire pudding to be served in the dining room, after our orientation.”
There was no way I was going to that, because it would mean sitting with Dad, so I decided to get to work. I pulled out my backpack and took out the captain’s report.
My plan was to follow in Mom’s footsteps because I knew something would jump out, some kind of clue that nobody but me would notice. What, exactly? I had no idea.
The first thing Mom did was charge $433 at the gift shop a few hours after she got on board. The bill wasn’t itemized, though. I headed out, then realized this was also my perfect opportunity to toss Dad’s neti pot. I grabbed it, then walked toward the front of the ship. I passed a trash can in the wall and chucked the neti pot, then covered it with paper towels.
I turned the corner to the gift shop, and that’s when—whoa—the seasickness hit. It was all I could do to keep it together to slowly turn around and back down the stairs, one by one, very gently, because I’d vomit if I jerked my body even a little. I’m not kidding, it took me, like, fifteen minutes. When I got to the landing, I carefully stepped into the hallway. I took a deep breath, or tried to, but all my muscles had seized up.
“Little girl, you sick?” a voice sliced into my ears. Even the sound of a voice made me feel like throwing up, that’s how bad it was.
I turned stiffly. It was a housekeeper, her cart bungeed to a handrail.
“Here, lady, take this for seasick.” She handed me a little white packet.
I just stood there, barely able to lower my eyes.
“Oh, you sick, lady.” She handed me a bottle of water. I could only look at it.
“What cabin you in?” She picked up the ID badge around my neck. “I help you, little girl.”
My room was a few doors away. She opened it with her key and propped open the door. It required fierce determination, but I slowly managed the steps. By the time I entered, she had closed the shades and turned down the beds. She put two pills into my hand and offered me the opened water bottle. I just stared at them, but then counted to three and summoned the concentration to swallow the pills, then sat on a bed. The woman kneeled and pulled off my boots.
“Take off your sweater. Take off pants. It’s better.”
I unzipped my hoodie, and she pulled it off by the cuffs. I squirmed out of my jeans. I shivered with the air against my bare skin.
“You lie down now. You sleep.”
I gathered the strength to slip under the chilly covers. I curled up and stared at the wood paneling. My stomach was filled with the wobbly chrome eggs Dad had on his desk. I was alone with the rumbling of the engine, the tinkling of the hangers, and the opening and closing of drawers. It was just me and time. It was like when we had a backstage tour at the ballet, and I saw the hundreds of weighted ropes, the bank of video monitors, and the light board with one thousand lighting cues, which were all used for one small scenery change. I was lying there on the bed, seeing the backstage of time, how slowly it went, everything it’s made up of, which is nothing. The walls were dark blue carpet on the bottom, then a metal strip, then shiny wood, and then beige plastic to the ceiling. And I thought, What horrible colors, they might kill me, I have to close my eyes. But even the effort of that seemed impossible. So, like the ballet stage manager, I pulled one rope in my brain, then the other, then five more, which closed my eyelids. My mouth hung open, but no words came out, just a crackly moan. If there were words to it, what they would say was, Anything but this.
Then it was fourteen hours later, and there was a note from Dad saying he was in the lounge, listening to a seabird lecture. I jumped out of bed, and my legs and stomach got sloshy again. I pulled the chain on the window shade. It was like we were on the inside of a washing machine. I got pitched back onto the bed. We were crossing the Drake Passage. I wanted to absorb it, but there was work to do.
The ship’s hallway was festooned with barf bags, pleated like fans and tucked in the railing joints, behind hand-sanitizer dispensers, in door pockets. The ship was so tipped that one of my feet was walking on the wall and the other was on the floor. The reception area was really wide, which meant there were no railings to grab onto if you wanted to cross it, so they had rigged a Spider-Man web of ropes. I was the only person. Like sick animals, everyone else had retreated into their warrens of misery. I pulled on the door of the gift shop, but it was locked. A lady working behind the desk looked up. She was massaging something into the inside of her wrist.
“Are you open?” I mouthed.
She walked over and unlocked the bottom metal strip. “Are you here for the origami paper?” she said.
“Huh?” I said.
“The Japanese passengers are doing an origami demonstration at eleven. I have the paper if you’d like to participate.”
I had noticed them, a group of Japanese tourists. They didn’t speak a word of English, but they had their own interpreter, who got their attention by waving a stick with ribbons and a stuffed penguin dangling from it.
The boat jerked, and I fell into a basket of Harmsen & Heath sweatshirts. I tried to get up, but there was no way. “Is it always this bad?”
“This is pretty rough.” She went behind the desk. “We’re getting thirty-foot swells.”
“Were you here for Christmas?” I asked.
“Yes, I was.” She opened a little unlabeled jar and dipped her finger into it. She started rubbing the inside of her other wrist.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “What’s that in the jar?”
“It’s a cream for motion sickness. The crew couldn’t function without it.”
“ABHR?” I said.
“Actually, yes.”
“What about tardive dyskinesia?”
“Wow,” she said. “You know your stuff. The doctor tells us the dosage is so low there’s no chance of it.”
“A woman was on the Christmas trip,” I said. “She bought a bunch of stuff from the gift shop on December twenty-sixth, in the evening. If I give you her name and room number, could you look up the receipt so I can see exactly what she bought?”
“Oh—” The woman gave me an odd look that I couldn’t figure out.
“It’s my mother,” I said. “She bought four hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise.”
“Are you here with your dad?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you go back to your cabin, and I’ll dig up the receipt. It might take about ten minutes.”
I gave her my room number and pulled myself along the ropes and back to my room. I had been all excited about having a TV, but
then got less excited when the only two stations were showing Happy Feet and the seabird lecture. The door swung open. I jumped up. It was Dad… followed by the gift shop lady.
“Polly said you asked to see a copy of Mom’s receipt?”
“We were instructed to get your father,” she told me, shamefaced. “I did bring some origami paper.” I glowered at her, Kubrick style, and threw myself on the bed.
Dad gave Polly a look like, I’ll take it from here. The door closed, and Dad sat across from me. “The naturalists felt really bad about last night,” he said to my back. “They came to find me. The captain spoke to the whole crew.” There was a long pause. “Talk to me, Bee. I want to know what you’re thinking and feeling.”
“I want to find Mom,” I said into the pillow.
“I know you do, baby. So do I.”
I turned my head. “Then why were you at a stupid seabird lecture? You’re acting like she’s dead. You should be trying to find her.”
“Now?” he said. “On the ship?” The side table was crammed with Dad’s eyedrops, reading glasses with one lens taped over, dark glasses with one lens taped over, those awful Croakie things that keep your glasses on, his heart-rate monitor, and a bunch of little tubes of vitamins you put under your tongue. I had to sit up.
“In Antarctica.” I pulled the captain’s report out of my backpack.
Dad took a deep breath. “What are you doing with that?”
“It’s going to help me find Mom.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” he said. “We’re here because you wanted closure.”