Where'd You Go, Bernadette(78)
I tried to love Dad and not hate him for his fake cheer and the way he gets dressed. I tried to imagine what Mom saw in him back when she was an architect. I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who finds every little thing he does a total delight. It was sad, though, because the thought of him and all his accessories always made me sick. I wished I’d never made the connection about Dad being a gigantic girl, because once you realize something like that, it’s hard to go back.
Sometimes it was so great I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I got to be me. We’d pass icebergs floating in the middle of the ocean. They were gigantic, with strange formations carved into them. They were so haunting and majestic you could feel your heart break, but really they’re just chunks of ice and they mean nothing. There were ebony beaches dusted with snow, and sometimes there was a lone emperor penguin, giant, with orange cheeks, standing on an iceberg, and you had no idea how he got there, or how he was going to get off, or if he even wanted to get off. On another iceberg, a smiling leopard seal, sunning herself, looked like she wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she’s one of the most vicious predators on earth, and she’d think nothing of leaping up and grabbing a human in her razor teeth and pulling him into the freezing water and shaking him until his skin slid off. Sometimes I looked over the edge of the ship at the sea ice, like white jigsaw puzzle pieces that will never fit together, and passing through sounded like clinking cocktails. There were whales everywhere. Once, I saw a pod of fifty killer whales, mommies and babies, frolicking in a pack, blowing happily, and penguins hopping across the inky ocean like fleas, then propelling themselves to safety on an iceberg. If I had to choose, that would be my favorite part, the way the penguins pop out of the water and onto land. Hardly anyone in the world gets to see any of this, which put pressure on me to remember it especially well, and to try to find words for the magnificence. Then I’d think of something random, like how Mom used to write notes to put in my lunch. She’d sometimes include one for Kennedy, whose Mom never wrote her notes, and some were stories that would take weeks to play out. And then I’d get up from my seat in the library and look through the binoculars. But Mom was never there. Pretty soon, I stopped thinking about home, and my friends, because when you’re on a boat in Antarctica and there’s no night, who are you? I guess what I’m saying is, I was a ghost on a ghost ship in a ghost land.
One night, it was the evening recap and Dad brought me a plate of cheese puffs, then went back up to the lounge, and I watched it on TV. A scientist gave a presentation about counting penguin chicks as part of an ongoing study. Then it was time to announce the plan for tomorrow, which was going to Port Lockroy, to a British military outpost left over from World War II, which was now an Antarctic heritage museum where people live and run a gift shop and a post office. Where we are all encouraged to buy Antarctic penguin stamps and mail letters home!
My heart started doing gymnastics and I paced around wildly, repeating, Oh-my-God-Oh-my-God-Oh-my-God, waiting for Dad to burst through the door.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” came the voice through the speakers. “That was another wonderful recap. Chef Issey has just informed me that dinner is ready. Bon appétit.”
I flew up to the lounge because maybe Dad was sitting there stunned, but the gathering had broken up. A pack of people was shuffling down the stairs. I ran to the back and took the long way to the dining room. There was Dad, sitting at a table with some guy.
“Bee!” he said. “Would you like to join us for dinner?”
“Wait, weren’t you at the recap?” I asked. “Didn’t you hear—”
“Yes! And this is Nick, who’s studying the penguin colonies. He was telling me he always needs helpers to count penguin chicks.”
“Hi…” I was so scared of Dad in that moment that I took a step back and bumped into a waiter. “Sorry… hi… bye.” I turned around and walked as fast as I could out of there.
I ran to the chart room, which is a gigantic table with a map of the Antarctic Peninsula laid across it. Each day, I’d watch crew members mark our ship’s path with a dotted line, and afterward passengers would drop by and painstakingly copy it onto their maps. I pulled open a huge flat drawer and found the map of Mom’s journey. I placed it on top and followed with my finger the dot-dot-dot. Sure enough, her ship had stopped at Port Lockroy.
The next morning, Dad was at the gym, and I went out on deck. Plunked onto the rocky shore was a black wooden building, L-shaped, like two Monopoly hotels, with white window trim and cheery red shutters. Penguins dotted the landscape. The backdrop was a field of snow, looming over which was one big, pointy mountain rising above seven smaller scrunched-together ones, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Dad had signed up to go kayaking with the first group, then to Port Lockroy with the second group. I waited until he was gone, then ripped the tags off my red parka and snow pants and suited up. I fell in with the stream of passengers clomping, astronaut-like, down the stairs to the mudroom. It was full of lockers and had two huge openings on either side where floating docks were tethered. I headed down a ramp to a sputtering Zodiac.
“Port Lockroy?” confirmed a crewman. “Did you scan out?”
He pointed me to a stand with a computer. I scanned my ID badge. My photo popped up on the screen, along with the words ENJOY YOUR TIME ASHORE, BALAKRISHNA! I felt a surge of annoyance at Manjula, who was supposed to have made sure I got called Bee, but then I remembered she was an Internet bandit.