Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel (13 page)
Read Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel Online
Authors: Maria Semple
Tags: #Fiction / Humorous, #Contemporary Women, #Humorous, #Family Life, #Fiction, #Fiction / Family Life, #Fiction / Contemporary Women
Receiving this recognition enabled Fox to let go of the Twenty Mile House and put it on the market.
JUDY TOLL:
Bernadette told me she wanted to list the house and look for another piece of property without a shared driveway. Having Nigel Mills-Murray next door was very good for her property values. I snapped some pictures and told her I’d run some comps.
When I got to my office, I had a message on my answering machine. It was from a business manager I worked with often, who had heard the house was for sale. I told him we wouldn’t be listing it for a couple of months, but he was an architecture buff and wanted to own the house that won the “Genius award.”
We ate at Spago to celebrate, me, Bernadette, and her darling husband. You should have seen the two of them. He was so proud of her. She had just won a big award and made a killing on the house. What husband wouldn’t be proud? During dessert, he took out a little box and gave it to Bernadette. Inside was a silver locket with a yellow photograph inside, of a severe and disturbed-looking girl.
“It’s Saint Bernadette,” Elgie said. “Our Lady of Lourdes. She had visions, eighteen in all. You had your first vision with Beeber Bifocal. You had your second vision with the Twenty Mile House. Here’s to sixteen more.”
Bernadette started crying. I started crying. He started crying. The three of us were in a puddle when the waiter came with the check.
At that lunch, that’s when they decided to go to Europe. They wanted to see Lourdes, home of Saint Bernadette. It was all just so sweet. They had the whole world ahead of them.
Bernadette still needed to get the house photographed for her portfolio. If she waited a month, it would give the garden time to fill in. So she decided to do it after they returned. I called the buyer and asked if this was acceptable. He said, Yes, of course.
PAUL JELLINEK:
Everyone thinks I was so close to Bernadette, but I really didn’t talk to her all that much. It was the fall and I
had a new group of students. I wanted to show them the Twenty Mile House. I knew Bernadette had gone to Europe. Still, I did what I always did, left a message to say I’d be stopping by the Twenty Mile house with my class. I had a key.
I turned off of Mulholland and saw that Bernadette’s gate was open, which was the first weird thing. I drove up and got out of my car. It took me a second to understand what I was seeing: a bulldozer was demolishing the house! Three bulldozers, actually, pushing into walls, breaking glass, crunching beams, just smashing and flattening the furniture, lights, windows, cabinets. It was so fucking loud, which made it more confusing.
I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t even know she’d sold the house. I ran up to one of the bulldozers and literally pulled the guy off and screamed at him, “What the hell are you doing?” But he didn’t speak English.
There were no cell phones back then. I had my students form a chain in front of the bulldozers, then I drove as fast as I could to Hollywood Boulevard, to the nearest pay phone. I called Bernadette and got her answering machine. “What the hell are you doing?” I screamed into it. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You don’t just go off to Europe and destroy your house!”
Jellinek wasn’t at the office two weeks later when Fox left the following message, which he still has, and he plays for me. “Paul,” says a woman’s voice. “What’s going on? What are you talking about? We’re back. Call me.” Fox then called her realtor.
JUDY TOLL:
She asked if anything was wrong with the house. I told her I didn’t know if Nigel had done anything with it. She said, “Who?” I said, “Nigel.” Again, she said, “Who?!” but this
time she shrieked it. I said, “The gentleman who bought your house. Your neighbor, Nigel, with the television show where they drop expensive things from a ladder and if you catch it, you keep it. He’s English.”
“Wait a second,” Bernadette said. “A friend of yours named
John Sayre
bought my house.”
Then I realized, of course, she didn’t know! While she was in Europe, the business manager had me transfer title over to Nigel Mills-Murray. I had no idea, but the business manager was buying it for his client, Nigel Mills-Murray. That happens all the time, celebrities buy houses in the names of their business managers and then transfer title. For privacy, you know.
“Nigel Mills-Murray was the buyer all along,” I told Bernadette.
There was silence, and then she hung up the phone.
The Twenty Mile House, which had taken three years to complete, had been demolished in a day. The only pictures that exist are the ones realtor Judy Toll took with her point-and-shoot. The only plans are the comically incomplete ones Fox submitted to the building department.
PAUL JELLINEK:
I know she’s considered the big victim in all of this. But the Twenty Mile House getting destroyed was nobody’s fault but Bernadette’s.
There was an outpouring of grief in architecture circles as word spread that the house had been demolished.
PAUL JELLINEK:
Bernadette went AWOL. I had a ton of architects sign a letter, which ran in the paper. Nicolai Ouroussoff
wrote a nice editorial. The Landmark Commission got serious about preserving modern architecture. So that was something good that came out of it.
I tried calling her, but she and Elgie sold Beeber Bifocal and left town. I can’t imagine. I just can’t imagine. It makes me sick to think about it. I still drive by the site. There’s nothing there.
Bernadette Fox never built another house. She moved to Seattle with her husband, who got a job at Microsoft. When the AIA made Fox a fellow, she didn’t attend the ceremony.
PAUL JELLINEK:
I’m in a weird position when it comes to Bernadette. Everyone looks to me, because I was there, and I never gave her the chance to alienate me. But she built only two houses, both for herself. They were great buildings, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s one thing when you build a house with no client, no budget, and no time constraints. What if she had to design an office building, or a house for someone else? I don’t think she had the temperament. She didn’t get along with most people. And what kind of architect does that make you?
It’s because she produced so little that everyone is able to canonize her. Saint Bernadette! She was a young woman in a man’s world! She built green before there was green! She was a master furniture maker! She was a sculptor! She called out the Getty on its wasteful ways! She founded the DIY movement! You can say anything you want, and what’s the evidence against it?
Getting out when she did was probably the best thing that could have happened for her reputation. People say that Nigel Mills-Murray destroying the Twenty Mile House caused Bernadette to go crazy. I think, Yeah, crazy. Crazy like a fox.
An Internet search produces no clues as to what Fox is up to these days. Five years ago, there was an auction item listed in a brochure for the Galer Street School, a private school in Seattle. It read, “CUSTOM TREE HOUSE: Third-grade parent Bernadette Fox will design a tree house for your child, supply all materials, and build it herself.” I contacted the head of school about this auction item. She emailed back: “According to our records, this auction item received no bids and went unsold.”
ONDAY
, D
ECEMBER
13
From Mom to Paul Jellinek
Paul,
Greetings from sunny Seattle, where women are “gals,” people are “folks,” a little bit is a “skosh,” if you’re tired you’re “logy,” if something is slightly off it’s “hinky,” you can’t sit Indian-style but you
can
sit “crisscross applesauce,” when the sun comes out it’s never called “sun” but always “sunshine,” boyfriends and girlfriends are “partners,” nobody swears but someone occasionally might “drop the f-bomb,” you’re allowed to cough but only into your elbow, and any request, reasonable or unreasonable, is met with “no worries.”
Have I mentioned how much I hate it here?
But it is the tech capital of the world, and we have this thing called “the Internet,” which allows us to do something called a “Google search,” so if we run into a random guy outside the public library and he starts talking about an architecture competition in L.A. inspired by let’s say,
oneself
, we can type that information into the aforementioned “Google search” and learn more.
You little rotter, Paul. Your fingerprints are all over that Twenty
Mile House redux. Why do you love me so? I’ve never understood what you saw in me, you big lunk.
I suppose I should be honored or angry, but really the word would be nonplussed. (I just looked that up in the dictionary, and you know what’s funny? The first definition is “so surprised and embarrassed one doesn’t know how to react.” The second definition is “not at all disturbed.” No wonder I never know how to use it! In this case, I’m using it in the latter context.)
Paul Jellinek. How the hell are you? Are you mad at me? Longing for me because life’s just not the same without me? Nonplussed, in either the first or second sense of the word?
I believe I owe you a return phone call.
You probably wonder what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years. I’ve been resolving the conflict between public and private space in the single-family residence.
I’m joking! I’ve been ordering shit off the Internet!
By now you’ve figured out that we moved to Seattle. Elgie was hired by Microsoft. MS, as it’s known on the inside. You’ve never seen a more acronym-happy company than Microsoft.
My intention was never to grow old in this dreary upper-left corner of the Lower Forty-eight. I just wanted to leave L.A. in a snit, lick my considerably wounded ego, and when I determined that everyone felt sufficiently sorry for me, unfurl my cape and swoop in to launch my second act and show those bastards who the true bitch goddess of architecture really is.
But then: Elgie ended up loving it here. Who knew that our Elgin had a bike-riding, Subaru-driving, Keen-wearing alter ego just waiting to bust out? And bust out it did, at Microsoft, which is this marvelous Utopia for people with genius IQs. Wait, did I say Microsoft is marvelous and Utopian? I meant to say sinister and evil.
There are meeting rooms everywhere, more meeting rooms than offices, which are all teeny-tiny. The first time I beheld Elgie’s office, I gasped. It was hardly larger than his desk. He’s now one of the biggest guys there, and still his office is minuscule. You can barely fit a couch long enough to nap on, so I ask, What kind of office is that! Another oddity: there are no assistants. Elgie heads a team of 250, and they all share one assistant. Or admins, as they’re called, accent on the “ad.” In L.A., someone half as important as Elgie would have two assistants, and assistants for
their
assistants, until every bright son or daughter of anyone west of the 405 was on the payroll. But not at Microsoft. They do everything themselves through specially coded portals.
OK, OK, calm down, I’ll tell you more about the meeting rooms. There are maps on every wall, which is perfectly normal, right, for businesses to have a map on the wall showing their territories or distribution routes? Well, on Microsoft’s walls are maps of the world, and in case you’re still unclear about their dominion, under these maps are the words: THE WORLD. The day I realized their goal was WORLD DOMINATION, I was out at Redmond having lunch with Elgie.
“What’s Microsoft’s mission, anyway?” I asked, wolfing down a piece of Costco birthday cake. It was Costco Day on campus, and they were signing people up for discounted membership, using free sheet cake as enticement. No wonder I get confused and sometimes mistake the place for a marvelous Utopia.
“For a long time,” Elgie answered, not eating cake because the man has discipline, “our mission was to have a desktop computer in every house in the world. But we essentially accomplished that years ago.”
“So what’s your mission now?” I asked.
“It’s…” He looked at me warily. “Well,” he said, looking around. “That’s not something we talk about.”
See, a conversation with anyone at Microsoft ends in either one of two ways. This is the first way—paranoia and suspicion. They’re even
terrified of their own wives! Because, as they like to say, it’s a company built on information, and that can just walk out the door.
Here’s the second way a conversation with an MS employee ends. (MS—oh, God, they’ve got me doing it now!) Let’s say I’m at the playground with my daughter. I’m bleary-eyed, pushing her on the swings, and one swing over there’s an outdoorsy father—because fathers only come in one style here, and that’s outdoorsy. He has seen a diaper bag I’m carrying which isn’t a diaper bag at all, but one of the endless “ship gifts” with the Microsoft logo Elgie brings home.
OUTDOORSY DAD:
You work at Microsoft?
ME:
Oh, no, my husband does. (Heading off his next question at the pass) He’s in robotics.
OUTDOORSY DAD:
I’m at Microsoft, too.
ME:
(Feigning interest, because really, I could give a shit, but wow, is this guy chatty) Oh? What do you do?
OUTDOORSY DAD:
I work for Messenger.
ME:
What’s that?
OUTDOORSY DAD:
You know Windows Live?
ME:
Ummm…
OUTDOORSY DAD:
You know the MSN home page?
ME:
Kind of…
OUTDOORSY DAD:
(Losing patience) When you turn on your computer, what comes up?
ME:
The
New York Times
.
OUTDOORSY DAD:
Well, there’s a Windows home page that usually comes up.
ME:
You mean the thing that’s preloaded when you buy a PC? I’m sorry, I have a Mac.
OUTDOORSY DAD:
(Getting defensive because everyone there is lusting for an iPhone, but there’s a rumor that if Ballmer sees
you with one, you’ll get shitcanned. Even though this hasn’t been proven, it hasn’t been
disproven either
.) I’m talking about Windows Live. It’s the most-visited home page in the world.
ME:
I believe you.
OUTDOORSY DAD:
What’s your search engine?
ME:
Google.
OUTDOORSY DAD:
Bing’s better.
ME:
No one said it wasn’t.
OUTDOORSY DAD:
If you ever,
once
, went to Hotmail, Windows Live, Bing, or MSN, you’d see a tab at the top of the page that says “Messenger.” That’s my team.
ME:
Cool! What do you do for Messenger?
OUTDOORSY DAD:
My team is working on an end-user, C Sharp interface for HTML5…
And then they kind of trail off, because at some point in every conversation, there’s nobody in the world smart enough to dumb it down.
It turns out, the whole time in L.A., Elgie was just a guy in socks searching for a carpeted, fluorescent-lit hallway in which to roam at all hours of the night. At Microsoft, he found his ideal habitat. It’s like he was back at MIT pulling all-nighters, throwing pencils into ceiling tiles, and playing vintage Space Invaders with foreign-accented code monkeys. When Microsoft built their newest campus, they made it the home of Elgie’s team. In the atrium of his new building, there’s a sandwich shop with the sign
BOAR’S HEAD FINEST DELI MEATS SERVED HERE
. The moment I saw that, I knew I’d never see him again.
So here we are in Seattle.
First off, whoever laid out this city never met a four-way intersection they didn’t turn into a five-way intersection. They never met a two-way street they didn’t suddenly and for no reason turn into a one-way street. They never met a beautiful view they didn’t block with a twenty-
story old folks home with zero architectural integrity. Wait, I think that’s the first time the words “architectural” and “integrity” have ever been used together in a discussion of Seattle.
The drivers here are horrible. And by horrible, I mean they don’t realize I have someplace to be. They’re the slowest drivers you ever saw. If someone is at a five-way stoplight, and growing old while they’re waiting for the lights to cycle through, and finally, finally it’s time to go, you know what they do? They start, then put on their brakes in the middle of the intersection. You’re hoping they lost a half a sandwich under their seat and are digging for it, but no. They’re just slowing down because, hey, it
is
an intersection.
Sometimes these cars have Idaho plates. And I think, What the hell is a car from Idaho doing here? Then I remember, That’s right, we
neighbor
Idaho. I’ve moved to a state that neighbors Idaho. And any life that might still be left in me kind of goes poof.
My daughter did an art project called a “step book,” which started with the universe, then opened up to the solar system, then the Earth, then the United States, then Washington State, then Seattle—and I honestly thought, What does Washington State have to do with her? And I remember, that’s right, we
live
here. Poof.
Seattle. I’ve never seen a city so overrun with runaways, drug addicts, and bums. Pike Place Market: they’re everywhere. Pioneer Square: teeming with them. The flagship Nordstrom: have to step over them on your way in. The first Starbucks: one of them hogging the milk counter because he’s sprinkling free cinnamon on his head. Oh, and they all have pit bulls, many of them wearing handwritten signs with witticisms such as
I BET YOU A DOLLAR YOU’LL READ THIS SIGN.
Why does every beggar have a pit bull? Really, you don’t know? It’s because they’re
badasses
, and don’t you forget it.
I was downtown early one morning and I noticed the streets were full of people pulling wheelie suitcases. And I thought, Wow, here’s a
city full of go-getters. Then I realized, no, these are all homeless bums who have spent the night in doorways and are packing up before they get kicked out. Seattle is the only city where you step in shit and you pray, Please God, let this be dog shit.
Anytime you express consternation as to how the U.S. city with more millionaires per capita than any other would allow itself to be overtaken by bums, the same reply always comes back. “Seattle is a compassionate city.”
A guy named the Tuba Man, a beloved institution who’d play his tuba at Mariners games, was brutally murdered by a street gang near the Gates Foundation. The response? Not to
crack down on gangs
or anything. That wouldn’t be compassionate. Instead, the people in the neighborhood redoubled their efforts to “get to the root of gang violence.” They arranged a “Race for the Root,” to raise money for this dunderheaded effort. Of course, the “Race for the Root” was a triathlon, because God forbid you should ask one of these athletic do-gooders to partake in only
one
sport per Sunday.
Even the mayor gets in on the action. There was a comic-book store in my neighborhood that demonstrated great courage by putting a sign in the window indicating that nobody with pants pulled below their buttocks would be allowed in. And the mayor said he wanted to get to
the root
of why kids sag their pants. The fucking mayor.
And don’t get me started on Canadians. It’s a whole thing.
Remember when the feds busted in on that Mormon polygamist cult in Texas a few years back? And the dozens of wives were paraded in front of the camera? And they all had this long mouse-colored hair with strands of gray, no hairstyle to speak of, no makeup, ashy skin, Frida Kahlo facial hair, and unflattering clothes? And on cue, the
Oprah
audience was shocked and horrified? Well, they’ve never been to Seattle.
There are two hairstyles here: short gray hair and long gray hair. You go into a salon asking for hair color, and they flap their elbows and cluck, “Oh, goody, we never get to do color!”
But what really happened was I came up here and had four miscarriages. Try as I might, it’s hard to blame that one on Nigel Mills-Murray.
Oh, Paul. That last year in L.A. was just so horrible. I am so ashamed of my behavior. I’ve carried it with me to this day, the revulsion at how vile I became, all for a stupid house. I’ve never stopped obsessing about it. But just before I completely self-immolate, I think about Nigel Mills-Murray. Was I really so bad that I deserved to have
three years of my life
destroyed for some rich prick’s practical joke? So I had some cars towed, yes. I made a gate out of trash doorknobs. I’m an artist. I won a MacArthur grant, for fuck’s sake. Don’t I get a break? I’ll be watching TV and see Nigel Mills-Murray’s name at the end. I’ll go nuts inside. He gets to keep creating, and I’m the one who’s still in pieces?
Let’s inventory the toy chest: shame, anger, envy, childishness, self-reproach, self-pity.
The AIA gave me that nice honor years back, there’s this 20 × 20 × 20 thing, an
Artforum
reporter tried to talk to me about some article. Those things just make it worse, you see. They’re booby prizes because everyone knows I am an artist who couldn’t overcome failure.
