Where'd You Go, Bernadette(37)
The motto of this city should be the immortal words spoken by that French field marshal during the siege of Sebastopol, “J’y suis, j’y reste”—“I am here, and here I shall remain.” People are born here, they grow up here, they go to the University of Washington, they work here, they die here. Nobody has any desire to leave. You ask them, “What is it again that you love so much about Seattle?” and they answer, “We have everything. The mountains and the water.” This is their explanation, mountains and water.
As much as I try not to engage people in the grocery checkout, I couldn’t resist one day when I overheard one refer to Seattle as “cosmopolitan.” Encouraged, I asked, “Really?” She said, Sure, Seattle is full of people from all over. “Like where?” Her answer, “Alaska. I have a ton of friends from Alaska.” Whoomp, there it is.
Let’s play a game. I’ll say a word, and you say the first word that pops into your head. Ready?
ME: Seattle.
YOU: Rain.
What you’ve heard about the rain: it’s all true. So you’d think it would become part of the fabric, especially among the lifers. But every time it rains, and you have to interact with someone, here’s what they’ll say: “Can you believe the weather?” And you want to say, “Actually, I can believe the weather. What I can’t believe is that I’m actually having a conversation about the weather.” But I don’t say that, you see, because that would be instigating a fight, something I try my best to avoid, with mixed results.
Getting into fights with people makes my heart race. Not getting into fights with people makes my heart race. Even sleeping makes my heart race! I’m lying in bed when the thumping arrives, like a foreign invader. It’s a horrible dark mass, like the monolith in 2001, self-organized but completely unknowable, and it enters my body and releases adrenaline. Like a black hole, it sucks in any benign thoughts that might be scrolling across my brain and attaches visceral panic to them. For instance, during the day I might have mused, Hey, I should pack more fresh fruit in Bee’s lunch. That night, with the arrival of The Thumper, it becomes, I’VE GOT TO PACK MORE FRESH FRUIT IN BEE’S LUNCH!!! I can feel the irrationality and anxiety draining my store of energy like a battery-operated racecar grinding away in the corner. This is energy I will need to get through the next day. But I just lie in bed and watch it burn, and with it any hope for a productive tomorrow. There go the dishes, there goes the grocery store, there goes exercise, there goes bringing in the garbage cans. There goes basic human kindness. I wake up in a sweat so thorough I sleep with a pitcher of water by the bed or I might die of dehydration.
Oh, Paul, do you remember that place down the street from the Twenty Mile House, on La Brea, with the rosewater ice cream and they’d let us have meetings there and use their phone? I’d love you to meet Bee.
I know what you’re wondering: When on earth do I find time to shower? I don’t! I can go for days. I’m a mess, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve gotten into a dispute with a neighbor—yes! again!—and this time, in retaliation, I put up a sign and inadvertently destroyed her house. Can you fucking believe it?
The tale of woe begins in kindergarten. The school Bee attends is wild about parental involvement. They’re always wanting us to sign up for committees. I never do, of course. One of the parents, Audrey Griffin, approached me in the hall one day.
“I see you didn’t sign up for any committees,” she said, all smiles and daggers.
“I’m not so much into committees,” I said.
“What about your husband?” she asked.
“He’s even less into them than I am.”
“So neither of you believes in community?” she asked.
By now, a gaggle of moms was circling, relishing this long-overdue confrontation with the sick girl’s antisocial mom. “I don’t know if community is something you do or don’t believe in,” I answered.
A few weeks later, I went into Bee’s classroom and there was a thing up called the Wonderwall. On it, kids wrote questions like, “I wonder what children in Russia eat for breakfast?” or “I wonder what makes an apple red or green?” I was bursting with cuteness when I came upon the following, “I wonder why all the parents except one volunteer in the classroom?” Written by Kyle Griffin, spawn of the trout.
I never liked this kid, Kyle. In kindergarten, Bee had one hell of a scar blazing the length of her chest. (It’s melted away with time, but back then, it was a beaut.) One day, Kyle saw Bee’s scar and called her “Caterpillar.” I wasn’t thrilled when Bee told me, of course, but kids are cruel, and Bee wasn’t even that upset. I let it go. The principal, who knew this kid was a bad seed, used Bee as cover and convened a bullying forum.
A year later, still miffed after the Wonderwall, I got over my bad self and actually signed up for my first volunteer job, as a parent driver for a school visit to Microsoft. I was in charge of four kids: Bee and three others, including this kid Kyle Griffin. We were walking past a bunch of candy machines. (Microsoft has candy machines everywhere, set so that without putting in money you can push a button and candy will come out.) Young Goodman Griffin, because his default is low-grade destruction, whacked a machine. A candy bar dropped down. So he just started banging the shit out of the machines, and all the kids joined in, including Bee. Candy and soda tumbled to the floor, the kids screaming, jumping up and down. It was too fabulous, something out of A Clockwork Orange. Just then, another group of kids, chaperoned by the principal herself, happened upon our mini-droog rampage. “Which one of you started this?” she demanded.