Where'd You Go, Bernadette

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15

From: Audrey Griffin

To: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal

Oh, Soo-Lin!

I must confess, the Westin is nothing like I described in my holiday verse. Where do I begin?

All night self-closing doors slam, the plumbing chugs whenever a toilet is flushed, and any time someone takes a shower, it sounds like a teakettle whistling in my ear. Families of foreign tourists save their conversations until they’re standing outside our door. The mini-fridge rattles and hums so much you think it’s about to spring to life. Garbage trucks screech and collect dumpsterfuls of clanging bottles at 1 AM. Then the bars let out, and the streets fill with people yelling at one another in gravelly, drunken voices. All the talk involves cars. “Get in the car.” “I’m not getting in the car.” “Shut up, or you’re not getting in the car.” “Nobody tells me I can’t get into my own car.”

That’s a lullaby compared to the alarm clock. The housekeeper must run her rag along the top of it when she cleans, so it’s been going off every night at a different wee hour. We finally unplugged the flippin’ thing.

Then, last night at 3:45, the smoke alarm started chirping. But the maintenance man was AWOL. Just as we were adjusting to this nerve-grating sound, the radio alarm in the next room went off! Full-blast, half-static, half-Mexican talk radio. If you ever wondered what the walls at the Westin are made of, I have your answer: tissue paper. Warren sleeps like a log, so he was useless.

I got dressed to go hunt for someone, anyone, to help. The elevator door opened. You wouldn’t believe the band of degenerates that tumbled out. They looked like those horrible runaways who gather across from the Westlake Center. There were a half-dozen of them, full of the most unspeakable piercings, neon-colored hair shaved in unflattering patches, blurry tattoos top-to-bottom. One fellow had a line across his neck imprinted with the words CUT HERE. One gal wore a leather jacket, on the back of which was safety-pinned a teddy bear with a bloody tampon string hanging out of it. I couldn’t make this up.

I finally tracked down the night manager and expressed my dissatisfaction with the unsavory element they allow into their establishment.

Poor Kyle, who’s two rooms over, is feeling the stress. His eyes are always bloodshot from the lack of sleep. I wish we owned stock in Visine!

On top of all this, Gwen Goodyear is trying to haul in Warren and me for yet another Kyle summit. Considering our circumstances, you’d think she’d give us a grace period before cranking up that boring old tune. I know Kyle’s not the most academically minded, but Gwen has had it in for him ever since Candy-machine-gate.

Oh, Soo-Lin, just writing this transports me to the halcyon days when we were happily collecting outrages about Bernadette! What simple times those were.

From: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal

To: Audrey Griffin

You want to be transported back? Well, Audrey, buckle your seat belt. I just had the most devastating conversation with Elgie Branch, and you’ll be shocked to learn what I just did.

I’d put Elgie in a conf. room for an 11 AM all-hands. I was running around fulfilling laptop requests, expediting furniture exchanges, authorizing battery orders. I even found a missing ball for the foosball game. All I can say about life at Mister Softy is: when it rains it pours. When I got to my office — did I mention, I finally have a window office! — no less than six coworkers told me Elgie had come by looking for me, in person. He’d written a note on my door for everyone to see, asking if we could have lunch. He signed it EB, but some joker had come by and changed it to “E-Dawg,” one of his many nicknames.

As I headed out, he appeared at my door, wearing shoes.

“I thought we could bicycle,” he said. It was such a nice day, we decided to get some sandwiches at the deli downstairs and bike to a nice spot off campus.

Because I’m new to Samantha 2, I didn’t realize we have a dedicated fleet of bicycles. Elgie is quite an acrobat. He put one foot on the pedal and skated along with the other, then swung it over the seat. I haven’t been on a bike in years, and I’m afraid it showed.

“Is something wrong?” Elgie said when I veered off the path and onto the lawn.

“I think the handlebars are loose.” It was the damndest thing. I couldn’t keep the bike pointing straight! As I got back on, Elgie stood on his bike with both feet on the pedals and jiggled so he didn’t fall over. You think that’s easy? Try it sometime.

I finally got the hang of it, and we zoomed along. I’d forgotten the freedom that comes with riding a bicycle. The wind was fresh against my face, the sun was shining, and the trees were still dripping from the storm. We rode through the Commons, where people were taking their lunch outside, enjoying the sunshine and the Seahawks cheerleaders, who were doing a demonstration on the soccer field. I could feel the curious eyes upon me. Who’s that? What’s she doing with Elgin Branch?

A mile away, Elgie and I found a church with a lovely fountain courtyard and some benches. We unpacked our sandwiches.

“The reason I asked you to lunch,” he said, “is what you said this morning about having my hands full at home. You were referring to Bernadette, weren’t you?”

“Oh—” I was shocked. Work is work. It was very disorienting for me to switch gears.

“I’m wondering if you’ve noticed anything different about her recently.” Elgie’s eyes welled up with tears.

“What’s wrong?” I took his hand, which I know probably sounds forward, but I did it out of compassion. He looked down, then gently extracted his hand. It was fine, really.

“If something’s wrong,” he said, “it’s my fault as much as it is hers. It’s not like I’m around. I’m always working. I mean, she’s a great mother.”

I didn’t like the way Elgie was talking. Thanks to Victims Against Victimhood, I have grown expert at detecting the signs of being victimized by emotional abuse: confusion, withdrawal, negotiating reality, self-reproach. At VAV, we don’t help newcomers, we CRUSH them.

C: Confirm their reality.

R: Reveal our own abuse.

U: Unite them with VAV.

S: Say sayonara to abuse.

H: Have a nice life!

I launched into the saga of Barry’s failed businesses, his trips to Vegas, his Intermittent Explosive Disorder (which was never diagnosed, but which I’m convinced he suffers from), and finally how I found the strength to divorce him, but not before he successfully drained our life savings.

“About Bernadette…,” he said.

My face flushed. I had been talking a lot about myself and VAV, which I have been known to do. “I’m sorry,” I said. “How can I help?”

“When you see her at school, how does she seem? Have you noticed anything?”

“Well, to be honest,” I said carefully, “from the beginning… Bernadette didn’t seem to value community.” “What does that have to do with anything?” “The underlying principle of Galer Street is community. It’s not written anywhere that parents have to participate. But the school is built on unspoken assumptions. For instance, I am in charge of classroom volunteers. Bernadette has never once signed up. Another thing, she never walks Bee into the classroom.”

“That’s because you drive up and drop off the kids,” Elgie said.

“You can do that. But most mothers prefer to walk their children into the classroom. Especially if you’re a stay-at-home mom.”

“I guess I’m not understanding,” he said.

“The foundation of Galer Street is parent participation,” I pointed out.

“But we write a check each year, on top of tuition. Isn’t that participation enough?”

“There’s financial participation, and there’s the other, more meaningful participation. Like traffic duty, baking healthy snacks for Talent Night, brushing hair on Picture Day.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m with Bernadette on this—”

“All I’m trying to do—” I felt my voice rising and took a breath. “I’m trying to give you a context for the tragedy this weekend.”

“What tragedy?” he said.

Audrey, I thought he was joking. “Haven’t you been getting the emails?”

“What emails?” Elgie asked.

“From Galer Street!”

“God, no,” he said. “I asked to be taken off those lists years ago… hang on. What are you talking about?”

I proceeded to tell him about Bernadette erecting that billboard and destroying your home. Hand to God: he knew nothing! He just sat there, taking it all in. At one point, he dropped his sandwich and didn’t even bother to pick it up.

My phone alarm beeped. It was 2:15, and he had a 2:30 skip 1:1.

We bicycled back. The sky was black, except for a brilliant white cloud patch where rays of sunshine broke through. We rode in a darling neighborhood of little bungalows cuddled together. I love the gray-green-putty colors against the leafless cherry trees and Japanese maples. I could feel the crocus, daffodil, and tulip bulbs underground, gaining strength, patiently enduring our winter, waiting to burst forth for another glorious Seattle spring.

I held my hand out and whooshed it through the thick, healthy air. What other city has given birth to the jumbo jet, the Internet superstore, the personal computer, the cellular phone, online travel, grunge music, the big-box store, good coffee? Where else could somebody like me ride bikes alongside the man with the fourth-most-watched TEDTalk? I started laughing.

“What’s wrong?” Elgie asked.

“Oh, nothing.” I was remembering how crushed I was when my father couldn’t afford to send me to USC and instead I went to the UW. I’d hardly been out of Washington State. (And I still have never seen New York City!) Suddenly I didn’t care. Let everyone else travel all over the world. What they’re searching for in Los Angeles and New York and everywhere else is something I already have right here in Seattle. I want it all to myself.

From: Audrey Griffin

To: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal

Do you think I woke up this morning and drank a big cup of stupid? Wouldn’t it be convenient if Elgin Branch knew nothing of his wife’s swath of destruction? I shared your tale with Warren, who suspected the same thing as me: Elgin Branch is attempting to establish a paper trail so when we sue him for everything he’s worth, he can claim ignorance. Well, that trick won’t work. Why don’t you tell that to E-Dawg next time you’re littering at a house of God? He didn’t receive any of the emails! What a pantload!

From: Audrey Griffin

To: Gwen Goodyear

Please check the all-school email list and confirm that Elgin Branch is on it. I’m not talking about Bernadette, but Elgin Branch specifically.

It was Kennedy’s birthday that night, and her mother works nights, so Mom and I did what we always do, which is take Kennedy out for a birthday dinner. That morning at drop-off, Kennedy was waiting for me and Mom to pull up.

“Where are we going, where are we going?” Kennedy said.

Mom rolled down her window. “The Space Needle restaurant.”

Kennedy screamed with joy and started jumping up and down.

First Daniel’s Broiler, and now this? “Mom,” I said. “Since when did you get so supercool about restaurants?”

“Since now.”

On the way to homeroom, Kennedy had a hard time containing her excitement.

“Nobody ever goes to the Space Needle restaurant!” she shrieked. Which is true, because even though it’s at the top and it revolves — which should make it the only restaurant you’d ever go to — it’s totally touristy and the food is expensive. Then Kennedy did her growl thing, and tackled me.

It had been at least ten years since I’d been to the Space Needle restaurant, and I’d forgotten how awesome it is. We ordered, then Mom reached into her purse and whipped out a pencil and piece of white cardboard. In the middle, she’d written in different-colored markers, MY NAME IS KENNEDY AND I’M TURNING FABULOUS FIFTEEN.

“Huh?” Kennedy said.

“You’ve never been here, have you?” Mom asked Kennedy, then turned to me. “And you don’t remember, do you?” I shook my head. “We put this on the windowsill.” She propped the card against the glass. “And we put a pencil next to it. While the restaurant revolves, everyone will write something, so when it comes back around, you’ll have a card full of birthday wishes.”

“That’s so cool!” Kennedy said at the same time that I said, “That’s no fair!”

“We can come here for your birthday next year, I promise,” Mom said.

The birthday card slowly left us, and, oh, we had so much fun. We did the one thing that Kennedy and I always do when we’re with Mom, which is talk about Youth Group. Mom was raised Catholic and became an atheist in college, so she completely freaked out when I started going to Youth Group. But I only went because it was Kennedy’s idea. Kennedy’s mom spends half her life at Costco, so they have these huge bags of candy bars and drums of licorice at home. Plus, they have a giant TV with every cable channel, which means I spent a lot of time at Kennedy’s house eating candy and watching Friends. But then one day Kennedy started thinking she was fat and wanted to go on a diet, and she was, like, “Bee, you can’t eat licorice because I don’t want to get fat.” Kennedy is totally crazy like that, and we always have the craziest conversations. So she made this huge declaration that we weren’t allowed to go to her house anymore because it makes her fat and instead we had to go to Youth Group. She called it her “Youth Group diet.”

I kept it secret from Mom as long as I could, but when she found out she was furious because she thought I was going to turn into a Jesus freak. But Luke and his wife, Mae, who run Youth Group, aren’t into that at all. Well, OK, they’re a little into that. But their Bible talk lasts only, like, fifteen minutes, and when they’re done we have two hours to watch TV and play games. I kind of feel sorry for Luke and Mae because they’re all excited to have half of Galer Street coming over on Fridays. But they have no idea there’s nowhere else to go because Friday is the one day there’s no sports or extracurriculars, and all we really want to do is watch TV.

Still, Mom hates Youth Group, which Kennedy thinks is the most hilarious thing in the world. “Hey, Bee’s Mom,” Kennedy said. That’s what she calls Mom. “Have you ever heard of poop in the stew?”

“Poop in the stew?” Mom said.

“We learned about it in Youth Group,” Kennedy said. “Luke and Mae did a puppet show about drugs. And the donkey was, like, ‘Well, just one little puff of marijuana can’t hurt.’ But the lamb said, ‘Life is stew, and pot is poop. If someone stirred even a teeny-tiny bit of poop in the stew, would you really want to eat it?’ ”

“And those featherheads wonder why people are fleeing the church? Puppet shows for teenagers—” Before Mom could totally go off, I grabbed Kennedy’s hand.

“Let’s go to the bathroom again,” I said. The bathroom is in the part of the restaurant that doesn’t revolve, so when you return, your table isn’t where you left it. That time, we were walking back, all like, “Where did our table go?” and we finally spotted Mom.

Dad was there, too. He was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and a parka, and he still had his Microsoft badge around his neck. Some things you just know. And I just knew Dad had found out about the mudslide.

“Your dad is here!” Kennedy said. “I can’t believe he came to my birthday party. That is so nice.” I tried to stop Kennedy, but she squirmed away and bolted over.

“Those blackberries were the only thing holding up the hillside,” Dad was saying. “You knew that, Bernadette. Why on earth would you denude an entire hillside in the middle of the wettest winter on record?”

“How did you find out?” Mom said. “Let me guess. Your admin is pouring poison in your ears.”

“Keep Soo-Lin out of this,” Dad said. “She’s the only reason it’s even feasible for me to leave for three weeks.”

“If you’re interested in the truth,” Mom said, “I had the blackberries removed in accordance with the specifications of Bugs Meany.”

“Bugs Meany from Encyclopedia Brown?” Kennedy said. “That’s so awesome!”

“Will you stop treating this as a joke?” Dad told Mom. “I look at you, Bernadette, and I’m scared. You won’t talk to me. You won’t go to a doctor. You’re better than this.”

“Dad,” I said, “stop freaking out.”

“Yeah, really,” Kennedy said. “Happy birthday to me.”

There was a moment of quiet, then me and Kennedy burst into giggles. “I’m, like, happy birthday to me,” Kennedy said, which triggered another fit of laughter.

“The Griffins’ house caved in,” Dad said to Mom. “They’re living at a hotel. Is this something we’re going to have to pay for?”

“Mudslides are considered an act of God, so the Griffins’ insurance covers it.”

It was like Dad was a crazy person who had come into the Space Needle waving a loaded gun, and then he turned it on me. “Why didn’t you tell me, Bee?”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly.

“Goody, goody gumdrops!” Kennedy said. “Here comes my birthday card!” She grabbed my arm really hard and squeezed it.

“Could you please take some Ritalin and shut up?” I said.

“Bee!” Dad snapped. “What did you just say? You don’t talk to people like that.”

“It’s OK,” Mom told Dad. “It’s how they talk to each other.”

“No, it’s not!” He turned to Kennedy. “Kennedy, I need to apologize for my daughter.”

“For what?” she asked. “Here comes my card!”

“Dad,” I said. “Why do you even care? You don’t even like Kennedy.”

“He doesn’t?” Kennedy said.

“Of course I like you, Kennedy. Bee, how could say such a thing? What’s going on with this family? I just came here to have a conversation.”

“You came here to yell at Mom,” I said. “Audrey Griffin yelled at her already. You weren’t even there. It was horrible.”

“Get it, get it!” Kennedy climbed over me and grabbed her birthday card.

“It’s not about yelling at Mom—” Dad became flustered. “This is a conversation between me and your mother. It was my mistake to interrupt Kennedy’s birthday dinner. I didn’t know when I’d have the time otherwise.”

“Because you’re always working,” I mumbled.

“What’s that?” Dad demanded.

“Nothing.”

“I’m working for you, and for Mom, and because the work I’m doing has the potential to help millions of people. I’m working especially long hours now so I can take you to Antarctica.”

“Oh, no!” Kennedy shrieked. “I hate this thing.” She was about to rip up her card, but I grabbed it out of her hand. It was full of patches of different writing. There were a few “Happy Birthday”s. But mostly the card was covered with things like “Jesus is our savior. Remember our Lord Jesus died for our sins.” Plus passages from the Bible. I started laughing. And then Kennedy started crying, which she does sometimes. Really, the thing to do is just let it pass.

Mom snatched the card. “Don’t worry, Kennedy,” she said. “I’m going to go hunt down those Jesus freaks.”

“No, you are not,” Dad said to Mom.

“Do it,” Kennedy said, suddenly perky. “I want to watch.”

“Yeah, Mom, I want to watch, too!”

“I’m leaving,” Dad said. “Nobody cares, nobody listens, nobody wants me here. Happy birthday, Kennedy. Good-bye, Bee. Bernadette, go ahead, embarrass yourself, attack people who have actually found some meaning in their lives. We’ll continue this when you get home.”

When we drove up to the house, the light in their bedroom was on. Mom headed straight out to the Petit Trianon. I went inside. The floorboards above me creaked. It was Dad, getting out of bed, walking to the top of the stairs.

“Girls,” he called down. “Is that you?”

I held my breath. A whole minute passed. Dad walked back to the bedroom, then to the bathroom. The toilet flushed. I grabbed Ice Cream by her flabby neck and we slept with Mom out in the Petit Trianon.

And Mom didn’t hunt down the Jesus freaks at the restaurant. But she did write, “IT’S A CHILD’S BIRTHDAY. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?” and set it on the window, and as we left, it started to go around.