Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel (25 page)

I’m tremendously proud of you. I’m at the house now. There’s no word from Bernadette. I’m sorry. Can’t wait to see you this weekend.

I got TORCHed at VAV. I am forbidden to return until I “WYP and Read It.” (WYP stands for Write Your Part, and it’s pronounced, “weep,” not “wipe,” which we think sounds scatological.) It’s an inventory we write, owning our part in our abuse. If I ever find myself slipping into victimhood, I have to TORCH myself. I spent the last three hours WYPing. Here it is, if you’re interested.

After I got off to a rocky start as Elgie’s admin, our working relationship flourished. Elgie would request the impossible. I would make it happen. I could feel Elgie marvel at my wizardry. It soon became a skyward duet of me doing the best work of my life, and Elgie praising me. I could feel us falling in love.

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: I was falling in love, not Elgie.)

Everything changed the day he asked me to lunch and confided in me about his wife. If he didn’t understand you don’t speak ill of your spouse to a coworker, especially a coworker of the opposite sex, I certainly did. I tried not to engage. But we had kids in the same school, so the line between work and our personal lives was already blurred.

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: The moment Elgie began speaking ill of his wife, I could have politely ended the conversation.)

Then Bernadette got tangled up in a ring of Internet hackers. Elgie was furious at her, and confided in me, which I interpreted as further proof of his love. One night, when Elgie was planning to sleep at the office, I booked him a room at the Hyatt in Bellevue and drove him there myself. I pulled the car up to the valet.

“What are you doing?” Elgie asked.

“I’m coming in to get you set up.”

“Are you sure?” he said, an acknowledgement, to me, that tonight we were going to finally act on our crackling sexual tension.

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: Not only was I completely deluded, I was preying on a emotionally vulnerable man.)

We took the elevator up to his room. I sat down on the bed. Elgie kicked off his shoes and climbed under the covers, fully dressed.

“Could you turn off the light?” he asked.

I turned off the bedside lamp. The room was blackout dark. I just sat there, coursing with desire, barely able to breathe. I carefully swung my feet onto the bed.

“Are you leaving?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

Minutes passed. I still maintained an image of where Elgie was on the bed. I could visualize his head, both arms over the covers, his hands clasped just under his chin. More time passed. He was obviously waiting for me to make the first move.

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: Ha!)

I jabbed my hand toward where I pictured his hands to be. My fingers plunged into something moist and soft, then sharp.

“Gaahh—” Elgie said.

I had poked my fingers into his mouth, and he’d reflexively bit me.

“Oh dear!” I said. “I’m sorry!”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Where’s your—”

He was groping in the dark for my hand. He found it and laid it on his chest, then covered it with his other hand. Progress! I breathed as quietly as I could and waited for a cue. Another eternity passed. I wiggled my thumb against the top of his hand, pathetically trying to manufacture a spark, but his hand remained stiff.

“What are you thinking?” I finally said.

“Do you really want to know?”

I went wild with excitement. “Only if you feel like telling me,” I shot back in my best kittenish banter.

“The most painful part of the FBI file was that letter Bernadette wrote to Paul Jellinek. I wish I could go back in time and tell her I want to know her. Maybe if I’d done that, I wouldn’t be lying here right now.”

Thank God it was pitch-black, or the room would have started spinning. I got up and drove myself home. I’m lucky I didn’t drive myself off the 520 bridge, accidentally or otherwise.

The next day, I went to work. Elgie was scheduled to rehearse his wife’s intervention with a psychiatrist off campus. Afterward, his brother was arriving from Hawaii. I went about my business, fixated on a corny fantasy of a bouquet of flowers appearing in my doorway, waving in midair, followed by Elgie, hangdog, professing his love.

Suddenly it was 4 PM, and I realized: Elgie wasn’t coming to work at all! Not only that, but tomorrow was the intervention. The following day he’d be off to Antarctica. So I wouldn’t be seeing him for weeks! There was no call, no nothing.

I had been configuring a tablet computer for Elgie to take on his trip. On my way home, I dropped it off at the hotel where his brother was staying, and where I had also booked a room for Elgie for the next two nights.

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: I could have had someone else bring it, but I was desperate to see him.)

I left the package at the front desk when I heard, “Hey, Soo-Lin!”

It was Elgie. Just hearing him speak my name made me swoon and filled me with hope. He and his brother invited me to dine with them. What can I say? At that dinner, everything flipped, in part due to the rounds of tequila that Van kept ordering on the basis of tequila’s “clear buzz.” I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard in my life as with the two of them telling stories of their childhood. My eyes would meet Elgie’s and we’d hold our glances for an extra second before looking down. After dinner, we all wandered into the lobby.

A singer named Morrissey was staying at the hotel, and a group of ardent young homosexuals had gathered, hoping for a glimpse. They were carrying Morrissey posters, records, boxes of chocolate. Love was in the air!

Elgie and I took a seat on a bench, but Van went upstairs to sleep. As the elevator doors shut on him, Elgie said, “Van’s not that bad, right?”

“He’s hilarious,” I answered.

“Bernadette thinks he’s a gigantic loser who keeps hitting me up for money.”

“Which is no doubt true,” I said, to which Elgie gave an appreciative laugh. Then I handed Elgie the tablet computer. “I can’t forget to give you this. I had Gio program it so it wouldn’t start until you watched a slideshow.”

The slideshow began. It was pictures I’d collected of Elgie during all his years at Microsoft. Him presenting his work in the theater, candid
shots of him with Samantha 1, throwing a football with Matt Hasselbeck at the executive picnic back when it was at Paul Allen’s ranch, receiving his Technical Recognition Award. Also there were photos of three-year-old Bee sitting in his lap. She’d just been released from the hospital, and you could still see the bandage peeking out the top of her dress. There was one of her in day care, in leg braces, because she’d spent so much of her early years lying in bed that her hips hadn’t properly rotated. There was the famous E-Dawg photo, with Elgie in gold chains and a big clock around his neck, making rapper signs.

“It’s important to me that you see that every day,” I said. “To know that you have another family, at Microsoft. I know it isn’t the same. But we love you, too.”

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: I cut Bernadette out of a few of those pictures. I also included one of me at my desk, which I Photoshopped to make it look like my face radiated light.)

“I’m not going to cry,” Elgie said.

“You can,” I said.

“I can, but I won’t.” We just looked at each other, smiling. He gave a laugh. I did, too. The future was glorious, and it was opening itself up to us.

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: Because we were drunk.)

And then it started to snow.

The walls at the Four Seasons are made of thin pieces of slate, stacked like French pastry, and an edge had ripped a hole in Elgie’s parka, releasing feathers, which swirled around us. The Morrissey fans waved their arms around theatrically and started singing one of his songs that went something like “through hail and snow I’d go…” It reminded me of one of my favorite movies,
Moulin Rouge!

“Let’s go upstairs.” Elgie took my hand. As soon as the elevator closed, we kissed. We came up for air, and I said, “I was wondering what that would be like.”

Sex was awkward. Elgie obviously wanted to get it over with, and
then he fell asleep. The next morning, we hurriedly got dressed, looking at the floor. He’d given Van his car, so I drove him home. That’s when Bernadette walked in on her intervention.

Bernadette is still out of the picture, and I am pregnant. That sorry night in the hotel was the first and last time we ever had sex. Elgie has promised to take care of me and the baby. But he refuses to live with me. Some days I think all I need to do is give him time. He loves presidential biographies? I named my son Lincoln, after a president. He loves Microsoft? I love Microsoft. We’re totally compatible.

(TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: Elgie will never love me because I fundamentally lack his intelligence and sophistication. He will always love Bee more than our unborn child. He’s trying to buy me off with this new house, and I should damn well take it.)

I went to VAV to read my WYP and I got TORCHed. Again! Not since Frankenstein has such an angry mob descended on a poor suffering creature.

I thought my WYP was pretty frigging honest. But everyone said it was full of self-pity.

In the course of defending myself, I explained that because I was pregnant I was being revictimized by Elgie. That was a mistake. Because in VAV there’s no such thing as revictimization: if we’re revictimized, it’s because we’re
allowing
ourselves to be victimized and therefore there’s a new abuser, which is our self, so technically no revictimization has taken place. But I pointed out that my baby was being victimized by Elgie, which would mean a new victim, same perp. They actually said it
was
me
victimizing my baby. I could almost buy that, but then someone pointed out that because the baby was Elgie’s, it was actually
me
victimizing
Elgie
.

“What kind of support group is this?” I exploded. “I’ll tell you who’s the victim here. It’s
me
, and the abusers are you, you church-basement sadists!” I stormed out and got ice cream and cried in my car.

That was the high point.

I returned home and realized it was the one night of the week Elgie comes for dinner. He was already there, helping Lincoln and Alexandra with their homework. I’d made lasagna ahead of time, and the kids had put it in the oven and set the table.

These family dinners are something Elgie resisted at first, but now he actually seems to enjoy them. Listen to this: Bernadette didn’t cook, she just ordered take-out. And when they were finished eating, she couldn’t be bothered to wash the plates. No, there were drawers in the dining room table, like desk drawers, so Bernadette’s big idea was to just open the drawers, pile in the soiled plates and utensils, and shut them. The next day, the maid would empty the dirty dishes from the drawers and wash them. Have you ever heard of such a way of life?

As I was dumping the lettuce into the salad bowl, Elgie whispered, “I forwarded you the captain’s report and the lawyer’s letter. Did you have time to read them?”

“Why would you ask me?” I slammed the salad and bottle of dressing on the table. “You don’t care what I think.”

The front door flew open. In hurtled Hurricane Bee, waving Mr. Harmsen’s letter and captain’s report. “You wish Mom were dead?!”

“Bee—” Elgie said. “Where did you get these?”

“They came in the mail to the house.” She stomped her foot and pushed the back of Elgie’s chair. “I could take everything else! But all anyone cares about is proving Mom is dead.”

“I didn’t write that,” Elgie said. “That’s lawyerspeak from a guy who doesn’t want to get sued.”

“What happens when Mom comes home and finds out you’re eating dinner with people she hated, all
la la la?
”

“If that happens, then
she’ll
be the one with the explaining to do,” I said. I know, I know, wrong thing.

“You gnat!” Bee spun around and screamed at me. “You’re the one who wishes she were dead so you can marry Dad and take his money.”

“I’m sorry,” Elgie said to me. “She’s just grieving.”

“I’m grieving over what a jerk you are,” Bee told Elgie. “And how you’ve fallen under the spell of Yoko Ono.”

“Lincoln, Alexandra,” I said. “Go to the basement and watch TV.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t mean it that way,” Elgie tried to assure me.

“Oh, just keep stuffing your face,” Bee hissed at me.

I burst into tears. Of course, she doesn’t know I’m pregnant. But still, I told you how terrible the morning sickness has been, Audrey. For some reason, French toast hasn’t been enough. I woke up the other night with a craving to put Molly Moon’s salted caramel ice cream on it. I bought a carton and started making salted caramel and French toast ice-cream sandwiches. Believe me when I say I should trademark them and start a business. Yesterday Dr. Villar said I’d better watch out, because the baby will be born made of sugar, like a Peep. Who can blame me for crying? I ran upstairs and threw myself on the bed.

After an hour, Elgie appeared. “Soo-Lin,” he said. “Are you OK?”

“No!” I howled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry about Bee, I’m sorry about Bernadette, I’m sorry about the baby.”

“You’re sorry about the baby!” I launched into a whole new round of convulsive sobs.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “It’s just all so sudden.”

“It’s only sudden to
you
because Bernadette had all those miscarriages. When you’re a healthy woman, like me, and you make love to a man, you get pregnant.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Elgie spoke. “I told Bee we could go to Antarctica.”

“You know I can’t travel there.”

“Just me and Bee,” he said. “She thinks it will help her get some closure. It’s her idea.”

“So of course you’ll go.”

“It’s the only way Bee will let me spend time with her. I miss her.”

“Then by all means, go.”

“You’re an amazing woman, Soo-Lin,” he said.

“Gee, thanks.”

“I know what you want to hear,” he said. “But think about what I’ve been through, what I’m still going through. Do you really want me saying stuff I’m not sure I mean?”

“Yes!” I was done with dignity.

“The last trip of the season leaves in two days,” he finally said. “There’s room on the ship. We have a credit that would otherwise expire. It’s a lot of money. And I owe it to Bee. She’s a good kid, Soo-Lin. She really is.”

So that’s it. Elgie and Bee leave tomorrow for Antarctica. The whole thing is completely tragic, in my opinion. But what do I know? I’m just a Seattle-born secretary.