Where'd You Go, Bernadette(87)
At lunch recess, Mr. Levy found me. He said he liked my book OK, but in his mind, it needed more work. He had an idea. For my spring research project, how about I complete it? He suggested I ask Audrey and Paul Jellinek and Ms. Goodyear and anyone else to provide documents. And Mom, of course, but she wasn’t going to be back from Antarctica for two weeks. Mr. Levy said he’d give me credit for the classes I’d missed so I could graduate with the rest of my class. And that’s what this is.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 7
The missing letter from Mom
Bee,
I write to you from a shipping container in Antarctica, where I’m waiting to have four wisdom teeth voluntarily extracted by a veterinarian. Let me back up.
Last thing you knew, I vanished while being chased around the living room with a butterfly net. Earlier that day, you’ll recall, I was at World Celebration Day. To avoid actual “celebration” with occupants of said “world,” I made busy at the coffee table, pouring, stirring, and slamming, in all, five cups of mud. The moment the performance was over, I hightailed it home (not to Dr. Neergaard’s to get my teeth pulled, which was truly an insane idea, even I had come to realize that) and intervened in my own intervention, rendered much more painful by the fact that I had to pee something fierce. I went into the bathroom, and, hark, cameth a tap, tap, tap.
You know how we thought Audrey Griffin was the devil? Turns out Audrey Griffin is an angel. She plucked me off the balcony and whisked me to the safety of her kitchen, where she presented me with the dossier of my truly terrible behavior, which you have by now received via snail mail.
I know it seems like I just took off, but here’s the thing: I didn’t.
For all I knew, Elgie was still planning to take you to Antarctica. He was very adamant about that in the intervention. The next morning, I headed to the airport so I could talk to you both in person. (Be warned. I will never, ever email, text, or possibly phone anyone again. From now on, I’m the Mafia, only face-to-face contact or nuttin’.) I asked if you had checked in, but divulging such information was strictly forbidden—those 9/11 hijackers just keep on giving—so my only option was to check in and board the plane.
As you know, you weren’t on the flight. I panicked, but then a pretty stewardess handed me a glass of orange juice over chipped ice. It tasted way better than it had any right to, so I took the trip to Miami, my mind on fire: a furious, injury-seeking missile. Elgie was the rat, I the misunderstood genius. The screeds I rehearsed were epic and airtight.
Stepping off the plane in Miami was like reentering the womb. Was it the welcoming voices of LeBron James and Gloria Estefan? No, it was the scent of Cinnabon. I ordered a large and headed down to a tram, which would deliver me to the ticket counter. There I’d buy passage home and accept my fate.
The Cinnabon wasn’t going to eat itself, so I sat. Trams came and went as I pulled apart the puff of deliciousness, enjoying every bite, until I realized I’d forgotten napkins. Both my hands were plastered with icing. My face, too. In one of my vest pockets was a handkerchief. I held up my hands, surgeonlike, and asked a lady, “Please, could you unzip this?” The pocket she unzipped contained only a book on Antarctica. I lifted it out and wiped my hands and, yes, my face, with its clean pages.
A tram arrived. The doors jerked open and I took a seat. I glanced down at the book, now on my lap. It was The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the few survivors of Captain Scott’s ill-fated attempt at the South Pole. The back read, “People don’t go to Antarctica. They’re called to Antarctica.”
We pulled into the main terminal. I didn’t get off. I went to Antarctica.
Of course, the first place you’d check for me would be the cruise company. They’d tell you I was on board and, therefore, you’d know I was safe. Added bonus: once I set sail, there was no way to communicate. It was what Dad and I desperately needed: a three-week time-out.
As soon as I boarded the Allegra—I’m still slightly shocked I wasn’t yanked off at the last minute by some authority—I was greeted by a naturalist. I asked how he was.
“Fine,” he answered. “As long as I’m headed back to the ice.”
“Didn’t you just come from the ice?” I asked.
“Three days ago,” he answered wistfully.
I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. It was ice. How much can you love ice?
Well, I found out. After two days of heinous seasickness, I awoke in Antarctica. Out my window, three times as high as the ship, and twice as wide, was an iceberg. It was love at first sight. An announcement was made that we could go kayaking. I bundled up and was first in line. I had to commune, up close, with the Ice.
Ice. It’s trippy, symphonies frozen, the unconscious come to life, and smacking of color: blue. (Snow is white; ice is blue. You’ll know why, Bee, because you’re knowledgeable about these things, but I had no idea.) It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it’s tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world’s fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman’s shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit’s cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black.