Where'd You Go, Bernadette(90)
She walked over with an open laptop.
On the screen was my Wikipedia page. In a window behind it, Artforum dot-com. (On a side note, the Internet here is faster than I’ve ever seen, because it’s military or something. The motto should be Palmer Station: Come for the Ice. Stay for the Internet.)
“It wasn’t cool, what you did,” Ellen said. “Stowing away on the Gould. I just didn’t want to get Becky more excited. That’s not good for morale.”
“I understand.”
“What do you want?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
“I need to get a letter to my daughter. Not an email, but a real letter. One that will arrive in Seattle by the seventeenth.” It’s imperative that you get this letter, Bee, before the ship returns to Ushuaia, so nobody will worry.
“The pouch goes out tomorrow,” Ellen said. “The letter will make it.”
“Also, I’d like a shot at designing the South Pole station. But I need to get there in person and catch a vibe.”
“Ah,” Ellen said. “I was wondering.”
Ellen launched into the utter impossibility of this: planes to the Pole depart only from McMurdo Station, which is 2,100 nautical miles from Palmer. Getting to McMurdo was relatively easy. Flights to the Pole were a different beast. They were strictly reserved for EP, essential personnel, and I gave new meaning to the term non-EP.
Halfway through this speech, it dawned on me that Ellen Idelson was a contractor. She was performing contractor Kabuki. It’s a ritual in which (a) the contractor explains in great detail the impossibility of the job you’ve asked him to do, (b) you demonstrate extreme remorse for even suggesting such a thing by withdrawing your request, and (c) he tells you he’s found a way to do it, so (d) you somehow owe him one for doing what he was hired to do in the first place.
We played our roles expertly, Ellen ticking off the enigmas, difficulties, me abjectly apologizing for such an irrational and thoughtless request. I nodded gravely and retired to my sanding chores. Five hours later, Ellen whistled me into her office.
“Lucky for you,” she said, “I’m partial to weirdos, enigmas, and geniuses. I got you a spot on a Herc from McMurdo to Ninety South. The plane leaves in six weeks. You’ll leave Palmer in five. You’ll have to stand up the whole three-hour flight. I’ve got it packed with weather balloons, powdered milk, and jet fuel.”
“I’m fine with standing,” I said.
“You say that now,” Ellen said. “One question, though. Do you have all your wisdom teeth?”
“Yeah…,” I answered. “Why would you ask?”
“Nobody with wisdom teeth is allowed at the South Pole. A couple years back we had to airlift out three people with infected wisdom teeth. Don’t ask me how much that cost. We instituted a rule: no wisdom teeth.”
“Shit!” I jumped up and down like Yosemite Sam, hopping mad that of all the reasons the South Pole would slip through my fingers, it’d be because I didn’t go to that goddamn dentist appointment!
“Easy,” Ellen said. “We can remove them. But we’ll have to do it today.”
My body gave a little jolt. Here was a woman who took can-do to an exciting new level.
“But,” she said, “you need to know what you’re getting yourself into. The South Pole is considered the most stressful living environment in the world. You’re trapped in a small space with twenty people you probably won’t like. They’re all pretty awful in my opinion, made worse by the isolation.” She handed me a clipboard. “Here’s a psych screening the overwinterers take. It’s seven hundred questions, and it’s mostly bullshit. At least look at it.”
I sat down and flipped to a random page. “True or False: I line up all my shoes according to color. If I find them out of order, I can turn violent.” She was right, it was bullshit.
More relevant was the cover sheet, which set forth the psychological profile of candidates best suited to withstand the extreme conditions at the South Pole. They are “individuals with blasé attitudes and antisocial tendencies,” and people who “feel comfortable spending lots of time alone in small rooms,” “don’t feel the need to get outside and exercise,” and the kicker, “can go long stretches without showering.”
For the past twenty years I’ve been in training for overwintering at the South Pole! I knew I was up to something.
“I can handle it,” I told Ellen. “As long as my daughter gives me her blessing. I must get word to her.”
“That’s the easy part,” Ellen said, finally cracking a smile for me.
There’s a guy here studying fur seals. He’s also a veterinarian from Pasadena, with a degree in equine dentistry. He used to clean Zenyatta’s teeth. (I’m telling you, there are all kinds down here. At lunch today, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist explained “the quilted universe.” I’m not talking about Galer Street pickup, with the parents standing around in their North Face. It’s a quantum physics concept where everything that can happen, is happening, in an infinite number of parallel universes. Shit, I can’t explain it now. But I’m telling you, for a fleeting moment at lunch, I grasped it. Like everything else in my life—I got it, I lost it!)
So. The veterinarian is going to extract my wisdom teeth. The station doctor, Doug, will assist him. Doug is a surgeon from Aspen who came here as part of a lifelong quest to ski all seven continents. They’re confident the extraction will be a cinch because my wisdom teeth have erupted through my gums and aren’t at funky angles. For some reason, Cal, a genial neutrino specialist, wants in on the tooth action. Everyone seems to like me, which has everything to do with the fact that I came bearing fresh produce, and the paucity of women. I’m an Antarctic 10, a boat ride away from being a 5.