Where'd You Go, Bernadette(17)

This one was all glass, of course, white and ruffly and full of dripping tentacles. It glowed from within, a cold blue, but with no discernible light source. The rain outside was pounding. Its rhythmic splatter only made this hovering glass beast more haunting, as if it had arrived with the storm, a rainmaker itself. It sang to me, Chihuly… Chihuly. In the seventies, Dale Chihuly was already a distinguished glassblower when he got into a car accident and lost an eye. But that didn’t stop him. A few years later, he had a surfing mishap and messed up his shoulder so badly that he was never able to hold a glass pipe again. That didn’t stop him, either. Don’t believe me? Take a boat out on Lake Union and look in the window of Dale Chihuly’s studio. He’s probably there now, with his eye patch and dead arm, doing the best, trippiest work of his life. I had to close my eyes.

“Bernadette?” said a voice.

I opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep. This is the problem with never sleeping. Sometimes you actually do, at the worst times: like this time: in public.

“Bernadette?” It was Elgie. “What are you doing asleep in here?”

“Elgie—” I wiped the drool off my cheek. “They wouldn’t give me Haldol, so I have to wait for Xanax.”

“What?” He glanced out the window. Standing on the street were some Microsoft people I vaguely recognized. “What are you wearing?”

He was referring to my fishing vest. “Oh, this. I got it from the Internet.”

“Could you please stand up?” he said. “I have a lunch. Do I need to cancel it?”

“God, no!” I said. “I’m fine. I didn’t sleep last night and just dozed off. Go, do, be.”

“I’m going to come home for dinner. Can we go out to dinner tonight?”

“Aren’t you going to D.C.—”

“It can wait,” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Buzz and I will pick a place.”

“Just me and you.” He left.

And this is when it began to unravel: I could swear one of the people waiting for him outside was a gnat from Galer Street. Not the one who’s hassling us about the blackberries, but one of her flying monkeys. I blinked to make sure. But Elgie and his group had been absorbed into the lunch rush.

My heart was really thumping. I should have stayed and popped one of those Xanax. But I couldn’t stand to be in that compound pharmacy anymore, trapped with the icy portent. I blame you, Dale Chihuly!

I fled. I had no idea which way I was pointed, where I was even headed. But I must have gone up Fourth Avenue, because the next thing I knew, I was standing outside the Rem Koolhaas public library.

I had stopped, apparently. Because a guy approached me. A graduate student, he looked like. Completely nice, nothing mean or threatening about him.

But he recognized me.

Manjula, I have no idea how. The only photograph of me floating around was one taken twenty years ago, right before the Huge Hideous Thing. I am beautiful, my face radiating with confidence, my smile bursting with the future of my choosing.

“Bernadette Fox,” I blurted.

I am fifty, slowly going mad.

This can’t make sense to you, Manjula. It doesn’t have to. But you see what happens when I come into contact with people. It doesn’t bode well for the whole Antarctica thing.



*


Later that day, Mom picked me up. Maybe she was a little quiet, but sometimes that happens, because on the way to school she listens to “The World” on PRI, which is usually a downer, and that day was no exception. I got into the car. A terrible report was on about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and how rape was being used as a weapon. All the females were getting raped, from baby girls, six months old, all the way to eighty-year-old grandmothers, and every age in between. More than one thousand women and girls were getting raped each month. It had been going on for twelve years and nobody was doing anything about it. Hillary Clinton had gone there and promised to help, which gave everyone hope, but then all she did was give money to the corrupt government.

“I can’t listen to this!” I smacked the radio off.

“I know it’s horrific,” Mom said. “But you’re old enough. We live a life of privilege in Seattle. That doesn’t mean we can literally switch off these women, whose only fault was being born in the Congo during a civil war. We need to bear witness.” She turned the radio back on.

I crumpled in my seat and fumed.

“The war in Congo rages on with no end in sight,” the announcer said. “And now comes word of a new campaign by the soldiers, to find the women they have already raped and re-rape them.”

“Holy Christ on a cross!” Mom said. “I draw the line at re-raping.” And she turned off NPR.

We sat in silence. Then, at ten of four, we had to turn the radio back on because Fridays at ten of four is when we listen to our favorite person ever, Cliff Mass. If you don’t know who Cliff Mass is, well, he’s this thing me and Mom have, this awesome weather geek who loves weather so much you have no choice but to love him in return.

Once, I think I was ten, and I was home with a babysitter while Mom and Dad went to Town Hall for some lecture. The next morning, Mom showed me a picture on her digital camera. “Me and guess who?” I had no idea. “You’re going to be so jealous when you find out.” I made a mean face at her. Mom and Dad call it my Kubrick face, and it was a glowering face I made when I was a little baby. Mom finally screamed, “Cliff Mass!”