Where'd You Go, Bernadette(61)
As you know, we were all thrilled by Bee’s sudden arrival. We found her a room at Homestead, one of our more intimate dorms, and a roommate, Sarah Wyatt, a dean’s list student from New York.
Yet from Bee’s first week, I received reports that she was failing to thrive in the boarding school environment. Teachers said Bee sat in the back and never took notes. I watched her bringing food back to her dorm room instead of eating in the dining hall with the other students.
Then her roommate requested to switch rooms. Sarah complained that Bee was spending study hours watching Josh Groban perform “O Holy Night” on YouTube. Hoping this was a portal into Bee, I sent the chaplain to her dorm. He said he found her apathetic to spiritual discourse.
Yesterday morning I noticed a bounce in Bee’s step as she crossed campus. I was greatly relieved until Sarah burst into my office, quite distraught. She told me that a few days earlier she and Bee were in the student activities center getting their mail. In Bee’s box was a thick manila envelope with no return address. It was postmarked Seattle. Bee remarked that the writing was unfamiliar. The package contained a sheaf of documents.
Bee jumped up and down as she excitedly read them. Sarah asked what they were, but Bee wouldn’t say. Back at the dorm, Bee stopped watching YouTube and told Sarah she was writing “a book” based on these documents.
Yesterday afternoon, while Bee was away, Sarah snuck a peek at Bee’s “book.” Sarah was so shaken by its contents—in particular, FBI documents marked CONFIDENTIAL—that she ran straight to me.
Based on Sarah’s description, Bee has written a narrative connecting the contents of the envelope. They include: FBI documents involving surveillance of your wife, emails between you and your administrator, handwritten notes between a woman and her gardener, the same woman’s emergency room bill, back-and-forth from a Galer Street School fundraiser about a disastrous brunch, an article about your wife’s architecture career, correspondence between you and a psychiatrist.
My concern is Bee. As you may know, John F. Kennedy attended Choate. While he was here, the headmaster, Judge Choate, gave a commencement speech in which he uttered the immortal words, “Ask not what Choate can do for you. Ask what you can do for Choate.”
Even though it’s difficult, here’s what I can do for Choate. I can recognize when a student, even one as gifted as Bee, has come to boarding school at a time in her life when she should be home with family. I expect you will agree, and that you will immediately come to Wallingford and take your daughter home.
Sincerely,
Bruce Jessup
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19
Fax from Soo-Lin
Audrey,
WARNING: Aliens took over my brain yesterday! It’s been such a long time since I’ve been pregnant that I completely forgot how hormones can make you do crazy things, like run to Argentinean Internet cafés in the middle of the night and write wild, embarrassing emails to friends back home.
Now that I’ve got my brain back, I will attempt a more levelheaded update of the Bernadette saga. But I must warn you, if the events described in my last (incoherent) email seemed action-packed, they’re nothing compared to what transpired over the past forty-eight hours.
After arriving in the middle of the night, Elgie and I awoke in the dreary, wet, little town of Ushuaia. It was summer, but it was not like any summer I’d ever seen. The fog was thick and constant, and the air damper than even the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula. We had time to kill before Bernadette’s boat arrived, so we asked the gentleman at the front desk if there were any sights to see. He said their most famous tourist attraction was a prison. Yes, a prison is their idea of fun. It was decommissioned a while back and is now an art gallery. Thanks, but no thanks. Elgie and I walked straight to the dock to meet Bernadette’s boat.
Along the way, I did see some Icelandic poppies, lupine, and foxgloves, which reminded me of home. I took pictures and will send them to you if you’d like.
The dock stank of fish and was packed with the most unattractive fishing boats and vulgar dockworkers. In Seattle, we park our cruise ships far from the fishing vessels. Not in Argentina!
Elgie and I waited in the “immigration office,” four flimsy walls with a framed photograph of Michael Jackson and an X-ray machine that wasn’t even plugged in. There were three boxy, ancient-looking pay phones. Lots of international sailors waited in line to call home. It was like the Tower of Babel at that place.
To give you a sense of where Elgie was emotionally during the weeks leading up to this, he vacillated between believing Bernadette would come traipsing through the door and worrying that something terrible had happened. As soon as he learned Bernadette had skedaddled to Antarctica, leaving them all worried sick, well, he was furious. I can tell you, I found it a little strange.
“You don’t get mad at someone for getting cancer,” I said. “She’s clearly sick.”
“This isn’t cancer,” he said. “She’s selfish and weak. Instead of facing reality, she escapes. She escaped from Los Angeles. She escaped into her Airstream. She escaped from any personal responsibility. What did she do when confronted with this fact? She literally escaped. And now I’m fucking blind.”
Audrey, he isn’t blind. My father was blind, so I don’t have patience for exaggeration. Elgie just has to wear tape over his left eyeglass lens until his cornea heals, which will be soon.