Where'd You Go, Bernadette(26)

Some nights I’d be asleep in bed. “Elgie,” she’d say, “are you awake?”

“I am now.”

“Doesn’t Bill Gates know Warren Buffett?” she’d say. “And doesn’t Warren Buffett own See’s Candy?”

“I guess.”

“Great. Because he needs to know what’s happening at the Westlake Plaza. You know how See’s Candy has a policy where they hand out free samples? Well, all those horrible runaways have caught on. So today I had to wait thirty minutes, in a line out the door, behind bums and drug addicts who didn’t buy anything but demanded their free sample, and then went to the end of the line for another.”

“So don’t go to See’s Candy anymore.”

“Believe me, I won’t. But if you see Warren Buffett around Microsoft, you should tell him. Or tell me, and I can tell him.”

I tried engaging her, tuning her out, asking her to stop. Nothing worked, especially asking her to stop, which would only tack ten minutes onto that particular rant. I began to feel like a hunted animal, cornered and defenseless.

Remember, for the first several years of living in Seattle, Bernadette was pregnant, or had recently miscarried. As far as I knew, these moods were hormonal swings, or a way of processing grief.

I encouraged Bernadette to make friends, but that would only trigger a diatribe about how she had tried, but nobody liked her.

People say Seattle is one of the toughest cities in which to make friends. They even have a name for it, the “Seattle freeze.” I’ve never experienced it myself, but coworkers claim it’s real and has to do with all the Scandinavian blood up here. Maybe it was difficult at first for Bernadette to fit in. But eighteen years later, to still harbor an irrational hatred of an entire city?

I have a very stressful job, Dr. Kurtz. Some mornings, I’d arrive at my desk utterly depleted by having to endure Bernadette and her frothing. I finally started taking the Microsoft Connector to work. It was an excuse to leave the house an hour earlier to avoid the morning broadsides.

I really did not intend for this letter to go on so long, but looking out airplane windows makes me sentimental. Let me jump to the incidents of yesterday which have prompted me to write.

I was walking to lunch with some colleagues when one pointed to Bernadette, asleep on a couch in a pharmacy. For some reason she was wearing a fishing vest. This was especially strange because Bernadette insists on wearing stylish clothes, in protest against everyone else’s terrible taste in fashion. (I’ll spare you the specifics of that delightful rant.) I hurried inside. When I finally roused Bernadette, she said quite matter-of-factly that she was waiting for a Haldol prescription.

Dr. Kurtz, I don’t have to tell you. Haldol is an antipsychotic. Is my wife under the care of a psychiatrist who’s prescribing Haldol? Is she obtaining it illegally? I haven’t the faintest clue.

I was so alarmed that I rescheduled my business trip so we could have dinner, just the two of us. We met at a Mexican restaurant. We ordered, and I immediately broached the subject of Haldol. “I was surprised to see you at the pharmacy today,” I said.

“Shhh!” She was eavesdropping on the table behind us. “They don’t know the difference between a burrito and an enchilada!” Bernadette’s face tightened as she strained to listen. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “They’ve never heard of mole. What do they look like? I don’t want to turn around.”

“Just… people.”

“What do you mean? What kind of—” She couldn’t contain herself. She quickly turned. “They’re covered in tattoos! What, you’re so cool that you ink yourself head-to-toe, but you don’t know the difference between an enchilada and a burrito?”

“About today—” I started.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Was that one of the gnats you were with? From Galer Street?”

“Soo-Lin is my new admin,” I said. “She has a son in Bee’s class.”

“Oh, boy,” Bernadette said. “It’s all over for me.”

“What’s all over?” I asked.

“Those gnats have always hated me. She’s going to turn you against me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Nobody hates you—”

“Shh!” she said. “The waiter. He’s about to take their order.” She leaned back and to her left, closer, closer, closer, her body like a giraffe’s neck, until her chair shot out from under her and she landed on the floor. The whole restaurant turned to look. I jumped up to help. She stood up, righted the chair, and started in again. “Did you see the tattoo one of them had on the inside of his arm? It looked like a roll of tape.”

I took a gulp of margarita and settled into my fallback option, which was to wait her out.

“Know what one of the guys at the drive-through Starbucks has on his forearm?” Bernadette said. “A paper clip! It used to be so daring to get a tattoo. And now people are tattooing office supplies on their bodies. You know what I say?” Of course this was rhetorical. “I say, dare not to get a tattoo.” She turned around again, and gasped. “Oh my God. It’s not just any roll of tape. It’s literally Scotch tape, with the green-and-black plaid. This is too hilarious. If you’re going to tattoo tape on your arm, at least make it a generic old-fashioned tape dispenser! What do you think happened? Did the Staples catalogue get delivered to the tattoo parlor that day?” She stuck a chip into the guacamole and it broke under the weight. “God, I hate the chips here.” She dug into the guacamole with a fork and took a bite. “What were you saying?”