Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Fax from Audrey Griffin to her husband

Warren,

I need you to immediately go home and check the answering machine, my mail, and email. I’m urgently looking for anything from Bernadette Fox.

Yes, Bernadette Fox.

For months, you’ve wanted to know what transpired during those days before Christmas that caused me to capitulate. I have been trying to find the courage to tell you one of these weekends in family therapy. But God has decided he wants me to tell you now.

Those days leading up to Christmas were a nightmare. I was furious at Bernadette Fox. I was furious at Kyle for being such a stinker. I was furious at Soo-Lin for siding with Elgin Branch. I was furious at you for drinking and refusing to move to Soo-Lin’s with us. No matter how many gingerbread houses I made, it only increased my fury.

Then one evening I visited Soo-Lin at work. A woman came in and asked for Elgin Branch. I noticed an ID badge from Madrona Hill, the mental institution. I was intrigued, to put it mildly. My interest was further piqued when Soo-Lin lied to me about this woman’s identity.

Soo-Lin returned home late that night, and while she slept, I rifled through her bag. In it, I found a classified FBI dossier.

The contents were astonishing. Bernadette had unwittingly given her financial information to an identity-theft operation, and the FBI was conducting a sting. Even more shocking were Post-it notes stuck to the back of the file. They were handwritten, between Elgin and Soo-Lin, suggesting that he was meeting with Madrona Hill because Bernadette was a harm to herself and others. His evidence? That she had run over my foot and destroyed our home.

My sworn enemy was being sent away to a mental institution?! It should have been cause for celebration. Instead, I sat on the hall bench, my whole body quivering. Everything fell away but the truth: Bernadette never ran over my foot. I faked the whole thing. And the mudslide? Bernadette removed the blackberries exactly as I had asked her to do.

A full hour must have passed. I didn’t move. I just breathed and stared at the floor. I wish a camera had been trained on me, because it would show what it looks like for a woman to be awakened to the truth. The truth? My lies and exaggerations would be responsible for a mother being locked up.

I dropped to my knees. “Tell me, God,” I said. “Tell me what to do.”

A calm came over me. A calm that has protected me for the past month. I walked to the twenty-four-hour Safeway, made a copy of every document in that file, plus the Post-it notes, and tucked the originals back into Soo-Lin’s bag before anyone was up.

While everything in those documents was true, it was a partial truth. I was determined to fill in the story with my own documentation. The next morning, I ransacked our house for every email and note I could find about the mudslide and my “injury,” then spent the whole day assembling them chronologically with Bernadette’s emails from the FBI file. I knew that my more complete story would absolve Bernadette.

But from what? What had transpired in that meeting between Elgin and the psychiatrist? Was there a plan?

I returned to Soo-Lin’s at four in the afternoon. Lincoln and Alexandra were at swim team. Kyle, of course, was zombified, playing video games in the basement. I stepped in front of the TV. “Kyle,” I said, “if I needed to read Soo-Lin’s email, how would I go about it?” Kyle grunted and went upstairs to the linen closet. A dusty tower computer, giant keyboard, and boxy monitor were on the floor. Kyle set them up on the bed in the guest room and hooked the modem into the phone jack.

An ancient version of Windows loaded, with a turquoise screen, a strange blast from the past! Kyle turned to me. “I’m assuming you don’t want her knowing?” “That would be optimal.” Kyle went to a Microsoft website and downloaded a program that allows you to remotely take over another person’s computer. He had Soo-Lin’s password and ID sent to her email program on this computer. With that information, he entered a bunch of numbers separated by periods, and, within minutes, what Soo-Lin sees on her laptop at Microsoft appeared on the screen in front of us. “She’s away from her computer, it looks like,” Kyle told me, cracking his knuckles. He punched in a few more things. “She’s got a signature saying she’ll be out of the office for the night. You probably have time.”

I didn’t know whether to hug him or slap him. Instead, I gave him money and told him to wait outside for Lincoln and Alexandra and take them out for pizza. Kyle was halfway down the stairs when I had an even bigger idea. “Kyle,” I called, “you know how Soo-Lin’s an admin? Do you think we have enough information to take over, say, her boss’s computer?” “You mean Bee’s dad?” “Yeah, Bee’s dad.” “It depends,” he said, “if she has access to his in-box. Let me check.”

Warren, I’m not joking when I say that within five minutes I was looking at Elgin Branch’s computer. Kyle checked his calendar. “He’s having dinner with his brother right now, so he’ll probably be off-line for at least an hour.”

I furiously read correspondence between Elgin and Soo-Lin, his brother, and that psychiatrist. I discovered the plan for an intervention the next morning. I wanted copies of the documents to add to my new, comprehensive narrative, but there was no printer. After everyone was asleep (except Soo-Lin, who’d called to say she wouldn’t be coming home that night), Kyle opened two Hotmail accounts and taught me how to take something called a “screen shot” and email the image from one Hotmail account to the other… or something. All I know is, it worked. I printed them out from a computer at the Safeway.

The intervention was happening at Dr. Neergaard’s office. I didn’t want to interfere with an FBI investigation. But there was no way Bernadette was going to get hauled off to a mental hospital because of my lies. At nine a.m., I headed to the dentist’s office. On my way, on a hunch, I drove by Straight Gate.

There was a police car in the driveway as well as Soo-Lin’s Subaru. I parked on a side street. Just then, a familiar car zoomed by. It was Bernadette, behind dark glasses. I had to get this file to her. But how would I get past the police?

Of course! The hole in the fence!

I ran down the side street, climbed through the fence, and clambered up the naked hill. (An incredible side note: the blackberries had begun to grow back. All that work for nothing!)

I clawed my way across the watery mud until I reached Bernadette’s photinia. I grabbed the branches and hoisted myself up onto the lawn. There was one police officer at the far side of the house, with his back to me. I crept up the lawn to the house. I had no plan. It was just me, the manila envelope in the waist of my pants, and God.

Commando-style, I slithered up the grand stairway along the back of the house and onto the rear portico. Everyone was gathered in the living room. I couldn’t hear them, but it was clear from their body language that the intervention was in full swing. Then a figure crossed to the far side of the living room. It was Bernadette. I ran down the steps. A light turned on in a small side window, about twelve feet up. (The side yard slopes down steeply, so from the back of the house the first floor is the equivalent of several stories high.) Crouched down, I ran to it.

Then I tripped over something. I’ll be damned, but it was a ladder, lying across the side yard, as if God had placed it there Himself. From that point on, I felt invincible. I knew He was protecting me. I picked up the ladder and stood it against the house. Without hesitation, I climbed up and tapped on the window.

“Bernadette,” I whispered. “Bernadette.”

The window opened. Bernadette’s gobsmacked face was in it. “Audrey?”

“Come.”

“But—” She couldn’t pick her poison, coming with me or being locked up in a loony bin.

“Now!” I climbed down, and Bernadette followed, but not before she shut the window.

“Let’s go to my house,” I said. Again she hesitated.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Because I’m a Christian.”

A radio squelched. “Kevin, see anything?”

Bernadette and I made our break across the lawn, dragging the ladder with us.

We skidded down the muddy hill and into our backyard. The floor guys were quite surprised to see us mud creatures stagger through the door. I sent the men home.

I handed Bernadette my completed dossier, which also included a newly published article Kyle had found on the Internet about Bernadette’s architecture career. “You should have told me you won a MacArthur grant,” I said. “I might have been less of a gnat if I knew you were such a genius.”

I left Bernadette at the table. I took a shower, brought her tea. She read, expressionless, with furrowed brow. She spoke only once, to say, “I would have done it.”

“Done what?” I asked.

“Given Manjula power of attorney.” She turned the last page and took a deep breath.

“There’s still boxes of Galer Street gear in the living room if you’d like to change,” I said.

“That’s how desperate I am.” She peeled off her muddy sweater. Underneath, she was wearing a fishing vest. She patted it. Through the mesh pockets, I could see her wallet, cell phone, keys, passport. “I can do anything,” she said with a smile.

“That you can.”

“Please see that Bee gets this.” She slipped the documents back in the envelope. “I know it’s a lot. But she can handle it. I’d rather ruin her with the truth than ruin her with lies.”

“She won’t be ruined,” I said.

“I have to ask you a question. Is he fucking her? The admin, your pally, what’s her name?”

“Soo-Lin?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Soo-Lin. Are she and Elgie—”

“Hard to say.”

That was the last I saw of Bernadette.

I returned to Soo-Lin’s and reserved a space for Kyle at Eagle’s Nest.

I found out Bee was at boarding school. I confirmed it with Gwen Goodyear and sent the envelope of documents to Bee at Choate, with no return address.

I just now learned that Bernadette ended up going to Antarctica, and that she disappeared somewhere on the continent. An investigation was conducted and, reading between the lines, they want everyone to believe Bernadette got drunk and fell overboard. I don’t buy it for a second. But I am worried that she might have tried to get word to Bee through me. Warren, I know this is a lot to digest. But please go home and double-check to see if there’s anything from Bernadette.

Love,

Audrey