Where'd You Go, Bernadette(79)

A dozen red suits crammed into the Zodiac with Charlie at the motor. It was mostly women who had all seen enough penguins for one lifetime and felt the need to start shopping. They were bursting with questions about what there was to buy.

“I don’t know,” Charlie said with a tinge of resentment. “Tshirts.”

It was the first time I’d been out on the glassy water. Bitter wind attacked me from all sides. My whole being instantly shrank, and any time I moved, my skin hit a new cold patch in my snowsuit, so I became trapped in stillness. I turned my head the teeniest bit possible, just enough to see the shore.

The closer we got to Port Lockroy, the building strangely got smaller and smaller, which was the first time I got scared. Charlie gunned the engine and drove the Zodiac onto the rocks. I belly-rolled off the big inflated side and dropped my life jacket. I scrambled across the big rocks, avoiding the singing gentoo penguins guarding their rock nests until I reached a wooden ramp leading to the entrance. A British flag flapped in the cold gray wind. I was the first one there, and I flung open the door. Two girls, college-aged, kind of goofy and enthusiastic, greeted us.

“Welcome to Port Lockroy!” they said in British accents.

It was one of those miserable situations where it was just as cold inside as it was outside. I was in a room with turquoise-painted walls. This was the gift shop, with colorful banners hanging from the ceiling; tables full of books, stuffed animals, and postcards; and glass cubbies of sweatshirts, baseball hats, and anything you could embroider a penguin on. There were no signs of Mom, but why would there be? This was just the gift shop.

Across this room was an opening leading to the rest of Port Lockroy, but the English girls blocked it. I kept it together and acted interested in the bulletin boards while the other passengers trickled in and oohed and aahed at the swag. Even the sudoku lady had torn herself away from the library for this outing.

“Welcome to Port Lockroy,” alternated the girls. “Welcome to Port Lockroy.”

It seemed like we had been standing there for an hour already. “Where is everyone who lives here?” I finally asked. “Where do you live?”

“You’re looking at it,” said one. “Let’s wait for everyone to get in before we begin the lecture.” Then they started up again, “Welcome to Port Lockroy.”

“But where do you sleep?” I asked.

“Welcome to Port Lockroy. Is that everyone? Oh, we have some more coming.”

“Is there, like, a dining hall where everyone else is?”

But the girls looked right over my head. “Welcome to Port Lockroy. OK, it looks like we’re all here.” One of them began her spiel. “During World War Two, Port Lockroy was a secret outpost for the British military—” She stopped because the group of Japanese tourists had just entered, and with them, the usual low-grade confusion. I couldn’t take it anymore. I squeezed past the English girls.

There were two small rooms. I went left, into an old-fashioned command center with desks and rusty machines full of dials and knobs. But no people. At the far end was a door marked DO NOT OPEN. I passed a wall of decaying books and pulled at the door. Blinding light blasted me back: it led outside to a snowfield. I closed the door and backtracked to the other room.

“In 1996 the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust paid to turn Port Lockroy into a living museum,” one of the girls was saying.

This room was a kitchen, with rusty stoves and shelves full of weird food rations and British tins. There also was a door marked DO NOT OPEN. I raced to that and yanked it open. Again… eye-watering snow shock.

I quickly shut the door. Once my eyes readjusted, I returned to the main section and tried to figure things out. OK, there were only three doors. The front door where we came in, and these other two leading outside…

“During the war, Port Lockroy was home to Operation Tabarin—” the girls went on.

“I don’t understand,” I butted in. “How many people live here?”

“Just the two of us.”

“Where do you live live?” I said. “Where do you sleep?”

“Here.”

“What do you mean, here?”

“We roll our sleeping bags out in the gift shop.”

“Where do you go to the bathroom?”

“We go outside—”

“Where do you do your laundry?”

“Well, we—”

“Where do you shower?”

“This is how they live,” a tourist lady snapped at me. She had freckles, blue eyes, and a bunch of gray in her blond hair. “Stop being rude. These girls come down for three months and pee in a tin can for the adventure.”

“It really is just the two of you?” I said weakly.

“And the cruise ship passengers like you who come visit.”

“So nobody has, like, gotten off one of the ships to live with you…?” The sound of the words coming out of my mouth, and the whole idea that Mom would be here waiting for me, struck me as so babyish that all of a sudden I burst into the most babyish tears. Swirled into my humiliation was anger at myself for letting my hope gallop off so stupidly. Snot sheeted down my face and into my mouth and down my chin and onto my new red parka, which I had been excited about, because we got to keep it.

“Dear God,” the freckled lady said. “What’s wrong with her?”