Where'd You Go, Bernadette

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23

From: Bernadette Fox

To: Manjula Kapoor

Attached please find a scan of an emergency room bill I suppose I should pay. One of the gnats at Galer Street claims I ran over her foot at pickup. I would laugh at the whole thing, but I’m too bored. See, that’s why I call the mothers there “gnats.” Because they’re annoying, but not so annoying that you actually want to spend valuable energy on them. These gnats have done everything to provoke me into a fight over the past nine years — the stories I could tell! Now that Bee is graduating and I can smell the barn, it’s not worth waging a gnat battle over. Could you check our various insurance policies to see if something covers it? On second thought, let’s just straight-up pay the bill. Elgie wouldn’t want our rates rising over something so trifling. He’s never understood my antipathy toward the gnats.

All this Antarctica stuff is fantastic! Get us two Class B Queen rooms. I’m scanning our passports, where you’ll find our birthdates, exact spelling of names, and all that other good stuff. I’ve thrown in driver’s licenses and SS numbers just to be safe. You’ll see on Bee’s passport that her given name is Balakrishna Branch. (Let’s just say I was under a lot of stress, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.) I realize that her plane ticket has to read “Balakrishna.” But when it comes to the boat — nametag, passenger list, etc. — please move heaven and earth to make sure the divine child is listed as “Bee.”

I see there’s a packing list. Why don’t you get us three of everything. I’m a women’s medium, Elgie a men’s XL, not for his girth but because he’s six foot three without an ounce of flab, God bless him. Bee is small for her age, so why don’t you get her whatever would fit a ten-year-old. If you have questions about size and style, send us several to try on, as long as returns require no more from me than leaving a box outside for the UPS guy. Also, get all suggested books, which Elgie and Bee will devour, and which I will intend to devour.

I’d also like a fishing vest, one replete with zippered pockets. Back when I actually enjoyed leaving the house, I sat on a plane next to an environmentalist who spent his life zigzagging the globe. He had on a fishing vest, which contained his passport, money, glasses, and film canisters — yes, film, it was that long ago. The genius part: everything’s in one place, it’s handy, it’s zipped in, plus you can whip it off and plop it down on the X-ray belt. I always said to myself: next time I travel, I’m going to get me one of those. My time has come. You’d better get two.

Have it all shipped to the manse. You’re the best!

From: Manjula Kapoor

To: Bernadette Fox

Dear Ms. Fox,

I have received your instructions regarding the packing list and will proceed accordingly. What is manse? I do not find it in any of my records.

Warm regards,

Manjula

From: Bernadette Fox

To: Manjula Kapoor

You know what it’s like when you go to Ikea and you can’t believe how cheap everything is, and even though you may not need a hundred tea lights, my God, they’re only ninety-nine cents for the whole bag? Or: Sure, the throw pillows are filled with a squishy ball of no-doubt toxic whatnot, but they’re so bright and three-for-five-dollars that before you know it you’ve dropped five hundred bucks, not because you needed any of this crap, but because it was so damn cheap?

Of course you don’t. But if you did, you’d know what Seattle real estate was like for me.

I came up here on a whim, pretty much. We’d been living in L.A. when Elgie’s animation company was bought by Big Brother. Whoops, did I say Big Brother? I meant Microsoft. Around the same time, I’d had a Huge Hideous Thing happen to me (which we definitely do not need to get into). Let’s just say that it was so huge and so hideous that it made me want to flee L.A. and never return.

Even though Elgie didn’t need to relocate to Seattle, Big Brother strongly recommended it. I was more than happy to use it as an excuse to hightail it out of La-La Land.

My first trip up here, to Seattle, the realtor picked me up at the airport to look at houses. The morning batch were all Craftsman, which is all they have here, if you don’t count the rash of view-busting apartment buildings that appear in inexplicable clumps, as if the zoning chief was asleep at his desk during the sixties and seventies and turned architectural design over to the Soviets.

Everything else is Craftsman. Turn-of-the-century Craftsman, beautifully restored Craftsman, reinterpretation of Craftsman, needs-some-love Craftsman, modern take on Craftsman. It’s like a hypnotist put everyone from Seattle in a collective trance. You are getting sleepy, when you wake up you will want to live only in a Craftsman house, the year won’t matter to you, all that will matter is that the walls will be thick, the windows tiny, the rooms dark, the ceilings low, and it will be poorly situated on the lot.

The main thing about this cornucopia of Craftsmans: compared to L.A., they were Ikea-cheap!

Ryan, the realtor, took me to lunch downtown at a Tom Douglas restaurant. Tom Douglas is a local chef who has a dozen restaurants, each one better than the last. Eating at Lola — that coconut cream pie! that garlic spread! — made me believe I could actually be happy making a life for myself in this Canada-close sinkhole they call the Emerald City. I blame you, Tom Douglas!

After lunch, we headed to the realtor’s car for the afternoon rounds. Looming over downtown was a hill crammed with, say what, Craftsman houses. At the top of the hill, on the left, I could discern a brick building with a huge yard overlooking Elliott Bay.

“What’s that?” I asked Ryan.

“Straight Gate,” he said. “It was a Catholic school for wayward girls built at the turn of the century.”

“What is it now?” I said.

“Oh, it hasn’t been anything for years. Every so often some developer tries to convert it to condos.”

“So it’s for sale?”

“It was supposed to be converted into eight condos,” he said. Then, his eyes began to pirouette, sensing a sale. “The property is three whole acres, mostly flat. Plus, you own the entire hillside, which you can’t build on, but it does ensure privacy. Gatehouse — which is what the developers renamed it because Straight Gate seemed antigay — is about twelve thousand square feet, loaded with charm. There is some deferred maintenance, but we’re talking crown jewel.”

“How much are they asking?”

Ryan gave a dramatic pause. “Four hundred thousand.” He watched with satisfaction as my jaw dropped. The other houses we’d seen were the same price, and they were on tiny lots.

Turns out the huge yard had been deeded to open space for tax purposes, and the Queen Anne Neighborhood Association had designated Straight Gate a historic site, which made it impossible to touch the exterior or interior walls. So the Straight Gate School for Girls was stuck in building-code limbo.

“But the area is zoned for single-family residences,” I said.

“Let’s take a look-see.” Ryan shoved me into his car.

In terms of layout, it was kind of brilliant. The basement — where the girls were penned, it appeared, from the dungeon door that locked from the outside — was certainly creepy and depressing. But it was five thousand square feet, which left seven thousand feet above-grade, a swell size for a house. On the ground floor was a kitchen opening onto a dining room — pretty fabulous — a huge receiving area that could be our living room, and a couple of small offices. On the second floor was a chapel with stained-glass windows and a row of confessionals. Perfect for a master bedroom and closet! The other rooms could be a kid’s room and a guest room. All that was required was cosmetic: weatherproofing, refinishing, paint. A cinch.

Standing on the back portico, facing west, I noticed ferry boats gliding like snails along the water.

“Where are they going?” I asked.

“Bainbridge Island.” Ryan answered. No dummy, he added, “Lots of people have second homes out there.”

I stayed an extra day and grabbed a beach house, too.

From: Manjula Kapoor

To: Bernadette Fox

Dear Ms. Fox,

The items on the packing list will be shipped to the Gate Avenue address.

Warm regards,

Manjula

From: Bernadette Fox

To: Manjula Kapoor

Oh! Could you make dinner reservations for us on Thanksgiving? You can call up the Washington Athletic Club and get us something for 7 PM for three. You are able to place calls, aren’t you? Of course, what am I thinking? That’s all you people do now.

I recognize it’s slightly odd to ask you to call from India to make a reservation for a place I can see out my window, but here’s the thing: there’s always this one guy who answers the phone, “Washington Athletic Club, how may I direct your call?”

And he always says it in this friendly, flat… Canadian way. One of the main reasons I don’t like leaving the house is because I might find myself face-to-face with a Canadian. Seattle is crawling with them. You probably think, U.S./Canada, they’re interchangeable because they’re both filled with English-speaking, morbidly obese white people. Well, Manjula, you couldn’t be more mistaken.

Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass — anything and everything — the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that’s how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone’s ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don’t understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such.

Yes, I’m done.

If the WAC can’t take us, which may be the case, because Thanksgiving is only two days away, you can find someplace else on the magical Internet.

I was wondering how we ended up at Daniel’s Broiler for Thanksgiving dinner. That morning, I slept late and came downstairs in my pajamas. I knew it was going to rain because on my way to the kitchen I passed a patchwork of plastic bags and towels. It was a system Mom had invented for when the house leaks.

First we lay out plastic bags under the leaks and cover them with towels or moving blankets. Then we put a spaghetti pot in the middle to catch the water. The trash bags are necessary because it might leak for hours in one place, then move over two inches. Mom’s pièce de résistance is putting an old T-shirt inside the spaghetti pot to muffle the drip-drip-drip. Because that can drive you crazy when you’re trying to sleep.

It was one of the rare mornings when Dad was around. He’d gotten up early to go cycling, and he was sweaty, standing at the counter in his goony fluorescent racing pants, drinking green juice of his own making. His shirt was off, and he had a black heart-rate monitor strapped across his chest, plus some shoulder brace he invented, which is supposedly good for his back because it pulls his shoulders into alignment when he’s at the computer.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said disapprovingly.

I must have made some kind of face. But I’m sorry, it’s weird to come down and see your Dad wearing a bra, even if it is for his posture.

Mom came in from the pantry covered with spaghetti pots. “Hello, Buzzy!” She dropped the pots with a huge clang. “Sorry-sorry-sorry. I’m really tired.” Sometimes Mom doesn’t sleep.

Dad tap-tap-tap-tapped across the floor in his bicycle shoes and plugged his heart-rate monitor into his laptop to download his workout.

“Elgie,” Mom said, “when you get a chance, I’ll need you to try on some waterproof boots for the trip. I got you a bunch to choose from.”

“Oh, great!” He tap-tap-tapped into the living room.

My flute was on the counter and I played some scales. “Hey,” I asked Mom, “when you were at Choate, was the Mellon Arts Center there yet?”

“Yes,” Mom said, once more laden with pots. “It was the one and only time I was ever onstage. I played a Hot Box Girl in Guys and Dolls.”

“When Dad and I went to visit, the tour girl said Choate has a student orchestra, and every Friday people from Wallingford actually pay to see the concerts.”

“That’s going to be so great for you,” Mom said.

“If I get in.” I played some more scales, then Mom dropped the pots again.

“Do you have any idea how strong I’m being?” she erupted. “How much my heart is breaking that you’ll be going off to boarding school?”

“You went to boarding school,” I said. “If you didn’t want me to, you shouldn’t have made it sound so fun.”

Dad pushed open the swing door, wearing muck boots with tags hanging off them. “Bernadette,” he said, “it’s amazing, all this stuff you’ve gotten.” He put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “What, are you spending every waking hour at REI?”

“Something like that,” Mom said, then turned back to me. “See, I never thought through the actual implication of you applying to boarding schools. I.e., that you’d be leaving us. But really, it’s fine with me if you run off. I’ll still see you every day.”

I glowered at her.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” she said. “I’m going to move to Wallingford and rent a house off campus. I already got a job working in the Choate dining hall.”

“Don’t even joke,” I said.

“Nobody will know I’m your mother. You won’t even have to say hi. I just want to look at your gorgeous face every day. But a little wave every now and then would sure warm a mum’s heart.” She did that last part sounding like a leprechaun.

“Mom!” I said.

“You have no choice in it,” she said. “You’re like the Runaway Bunny. There’s no way for you to get away from me. I’ll be lurking behind the sneeze guards with my plastic gloves, serving hamburgers on Wednesdays, fish on Fridays—”

“Dad, make her stop.”

“Bernadette,” he said. “Please.”

“Both of you think I’m joking,” she said. “Fine, think that.”

“What are we doing for dinner tonight anyway?” I asked.

Something flashed on Mom’s face. “Hold on.” She went out the back door.

I grabbed the TV remote. “Aren’t the Seahawks playing Dallas today?”

“It’s on at one,” Dad said. “How about we hit the zoo and come back for the game.”

“Cool! We can see that new baby tree kangaroo.”

“Want to ride bikes?”

“Will you be on your recumbent bike?” I asked.

“I think so.” Dad made his hands into fists and twirled them. “These hills make it tough on my wrists—”

“Let’s drive,” I said quickly.

Mom returned. She wiped both hands on her pants and took a gigantic breath. “Tonight,” she declared, “we are going to Daniel’s Broiler.”

“Daniel’s Broiler?” Dad said.

“Daniel’s Broiler?” I repeated. “You mean that totally random place on Lake Union with the tour buses that always advertises on TV?”

“That’s the one,” Mom said.

There was a silence. It was broken by a huge “Ha!” which was Dad. “In a million years,” he said, “I’d never have thought you’d pick Daniel’s Broiler for Thanksgiving.”

“I like to keep you guessing,” she said.

I used Dad’s phone and texted Kennedy, who was with her mom on Whidbey Island. She was totally jealous we were going to Daniel’s Broiler.

There was a piano player and they gave you free refills on lemonade, and the chocolate cake was a huge slab, they call it Death by Chocolate, and it was even bigger than the colossal slice you get at P. F. Chang’s. When I got to school on Monday, everyone was all “No way, you got to go to Daniel’s Broiler for Thanksgiving? That’s so cool.”