Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel (26 page)

We arrived in Santiago at six in the morning. I’d never flown first-class before, so I didn’t know each seat was its own egg and when you pushed a button, it became a bed. As soon as my seat went totally flat, the stewardess covered me with a crisp white comforter. I must have smiled, because Dad looked over from his seat and said, “Don’t get too used to this.” I smiled back, but then I remembered I hated him, so I plopped on my eye pillow. They bring you this kind that is filled with flaxseed and lavender, which they microwave, so it’s toasty warm and you breathe in relaxation. I slept for ten hours.

There was a massive immigration line at the airport. But an officer waved over Dad and me, and unhooked a chain so we could go straight to an empty window reserved for families with small children. At first, I was annoyed because I’m fifteen. But then I thought, Fine, I’ll do cutsies.

The guy wore military fatigues and took forever with our passports. He kept looking at me, in particular, then at my passport. Up, down, up, down. I figured it was my stupid name.

Finally, he spoke. “I like your hat.” It was a Princeton Tigers baseball hat they sent Mom when they wanted her to give money. “Princeton,” he said. “That’s an American university, like Harvard.”

“Only better,” I said.

“I like tigers.” He placed his palm over both of our passports. “I like that hat.”

“Me, too.” I stuck my chin in my palm. “That’s why I’m wearing it.”

“Bee,” Dad said. “Give him the hat.”

“Whaa?” I said.

“Very much I’d like the hat,” the guy said, agreeing with Dad.

“Bee, just do it.” Dad grabbed my hat, but it was hooked on my ponytail.

“It’s my hat!” I covered my head with both hands. “Mom gave it to me.”

“She threw it in the garbage,” Dad said. “I’ll get you another one.”

“Get one yourself,” I told the guy. “You can order them on the Internet.”

“We can order you one,” Dad added.

“We will not!” I said. “He’s a grown man with a job and a gun. He can do it himself.”

The man handed us our stamped passports and gave a shrug, like, It was worth a try. We collected our bags and were funneled into the main part of the airport. A tour guide immediately identified us by the blue-and-white ribbons we tied to our luggage. He told us to wait while everyone else in the group went through immigration. It would be awhile.

“There’s no free lunch,” Dad said. He had a point, but I acted like I didn’t hear him.

Others with blue-and-white ribbons started appearing. These were our fellow travelers. They were mostly old, with wrinkled faces and wrinkle-free travel clothes. And the camera equipment! These people were circling one another like khaki peacocks, presenting their lenses and cameras. In between the preening, they’d pull out cloudy Ziploc bags of dried fruit and tuck little pieces into their mouths. Sometimes I’d catch their curious glances, probably because I was the youngest, and they’d smile all friendly. One of them stared so long I couldn’t resist, I just had to say it: “Take a picture. It lasts longer.”

“Bee!” Dad puffed.

One thing that was funny: beside a random windowless room, there was a sign depicting a stick figure on its knees under a pointy roof. This was the universal sign for church. Janitors, lunch-counter workers, and taxi drivers would go in and pray.

It was time to board the bus. I waited until Dad found a seat, then sat somewhere else. The highway into the city center ran along a river, which had trash scattered on its bank: soda cans, water bottles, tons of plastic, and food scraps just dumped. Kids were kicking a ball among the trash, running with mangy dogs among the trash, even squatting to wash their clothes among the trash. It was totally annoying, like, Would one of you just pick up the trash?

We entered a tunnel. The guide standing in the front of the bus got on the PA system and started rhapsodizing about when the tunnel was built, who won the contract to build it, how long it took, which president approved it, how many cars go through it every day, etc. I kept waiting for him to reveal its greatness, like maybe it was self-cleaning, or made out of recycled bottles. Nope, it was just a tunnel. Still, you couldn’t help but feel happy for the guide, that if things ever got really bad, he’d always have the tunnel.

We went to our hotel, which was a swirling concrete column. In a special conference room, an Austrian lady checked us in.

“Make sure there are
two beds
in our room,” I said. I was horrified when I had found out Dad and I would be sharing a room for the entire trip.

“Yes, you have two beds,” the lady said. “Here is your
wowcher
for the city tour and transfer to the airport.”

“My what?” I asked.

“Your
wowcher,
” she said.

“My
what?
”

“Your
wowcher
.”

“What’s a
wowcher?
”

“Voucher,” Dad said. “Don’t be such a little bitch.” The truth was I didn’t understand what the lady was saying. But I was being a little bitch in general, so I let Dad have this one. We got our key and went to our room.

“That city tour sounds fun!” Dad said. You almost have to feel sorry for him with his taped-over lens and desperate attitude, until you remember this whole thing started because he tried to get Mom locked up in a mental hospital.

“Yeah,” I said. “Do you want to go on it?”

“I do,” he said, all hopeful and touched.

“Have fun.” I grabbed my backpack and headed to the pool.

Choate was big and majestic, with ivy-covered buildings and jewels of modern architecture dotted on huge expanses of snowy lawn crisscrossed with boot paths. I had nothing against the place itself. It’s just that the people were weird. My roommate, Sarah Wyatt, didn’t like me from the start. I think it’s because when she left for Christmas break, she was living in a double all by herself. And when she got back, all of a sudden she had a roommate. At Choate, you talked about who your father was. Her dad owned buildings in New York. Every single kid, I’m not kidding, had an iPhone, and most of them had iPads, and every computer I saw was a Mac. When I said my dad worked at Microsoft, they openly mocked me. I had a PC and listened to music on my Zune. What is that thing? people would ask in the most offended way, like I had just taken a huge stinky poop and stuck earbuds into it. I told Sarah my mother was a famous architect who had won a MacArthur genius award, and Sarah said, “She did not.” And I
said, “Sure she did. Look it up on the Internet.” But Sarah Wyatt didn’t look it up, that’s how little respect she had for me.

Sarah had thick straight hair and wore expensive clothes, which she liked to explain to me, and any time I said I hadn’t heard of one of the stores, she’d emit a little grunt. Marla, her best friend, lived downstairs. Marla talked all the time, and she was funny, I suppose, but she had angry acne, smoked cigarettes, and was on academic probation. Her father was a TV director in L.A., and there was lots of jabber about her friends back home who had famous people for parents. Everyone would gather at her feet as she yakked about how cool Bruce Springsteen is. And I’d think, Of course Bruce Springsteen is cool, I don’t need Marla to tell me that. I mean, Galer Street smelled like salmon, but at least the people were normal.

Then one day I went to my mailbox, and the manila envelope arrived. It had no return address, strange block writing that wasn’t Mom or Dad’s, and no letter saying who it was from, just all the documents about Mom. Then everything was better, because I started writing my book.

I knew something was up, though, one day after classes, when I got back to my room. Our dorm was Homestead, which was a creaky little house in the middle of campus where George Washington had once spent the night, according to a plaque. Oh, I forgot to mention that Sarah had this weird smell, like baby powder, but if the smell of baby powder made you feel sick. It couldn’t have been actual perfume, and I never saw any baby powder. To this day I still don’t know what it was. Anyway, I opened the front door and I heard some scurrying footsteps overhead. I went upstairs, but our room was empty. I could hear Sarah in the bathroom, though. I sat down at my desk, opened my laptop, and that’s when I smelled it. That gross baby-powder scent hung in the air over my desk. This was especially weird
because Sarah had made a big point about dividing the room in half, and there were strict orders not to cross the invisible line. Just then, she darted behind me, through our room, and downstairs. The door slammed. Sarah was out on the corner, waiting to cross Elm Street.

“Sarah,” I called out the window.

She stopped and looked up.

“Where are you going? Is everything OK?” I was worried that maybe something had happened to one of her dad’s buildings.

She acted like she couldn’t hear me. She headed up Christian Street, which was weird, because I knew she had squash. She didn’t turn to go to Hill House, or the library, either. The only thing past the library was Archbold, which is where the dean’s offices are. I went to dance class, and when I got back, I tried to talk to Sarah, but she wouldn’t look at me. She spent that night downstairs in Marla’s room.

A few days later, in the middle of English, Mrs. Ryan told me that I was to immediately report to Mr. Jessup’s office. Sarah had English with me, and I instinctively turned to her. She quickly looked down. I knew then: that weird-smelling, yoga-pants-wearing New Yorker with the big diamond earrings had betrayed me.

In Mr. Jessup’s office, there was Dad, telling me it was for the best that I leave Choate. It was hilarious watching Mr. Jessup and Dad dance around each other, with every sentence starting with “Because I care so much about Bee” or “Because Bee is such an extraordinary girl” or “For the good of Bee.” It was decided that I’d leave Choate and they’d transfer my credits so I could go to Lakeside next year. (I’d apparently gotten accepted. Who knew?)

Out in the hallway, it was just me, Dad, and the bronze bust of Judge Choate. Dad demanded to see my book, but there was no way. I did show him the envelope that came in the mail, though. “Where did this come from?” “Mom,” I said. But the writing on the envelope
wasn’t Mom’s, and he knew it. “Why would she send this to you?” he asked. “Because she wants me to know.” “Know what?” “The truth. It’s not like you were ever going to tell me.” Dad took a breath and said, “The only true thing is now you’ve read things you’re not old enough to possibly understand.”

That’s when I made the executive decision: I hate him.

We took a charter plane from Santiago really early in the morning and landed in Ushuaia, Argentina. We rode a bus through the little plaster city. The houses had Spanish-style roofs and mud yards with rusty swing sets. When we arrived at the dock, we were ushered into a kind of hut, with a wall of glass dividing it the long way. This was immigration, so of course there was a line. Soon the other side of the glass filled up with old people decked out in travel clothing and carrying backpacks with blue-and-white ribbons. It was the group that had just gotten
off
the ship, our Ghosts of Travel Future. They were giving us the thumbs-up, mouthing, You’re going to love it, you have no idea how great it is, you’re so lucky. And then everyone on our side started literally buzzing. Buzz Aldrin, Buzz Aldrin, Buzz Aldrin. On the other side was a scrappy little guy wearing a leather bomber jacket covered with NASA patches, and his arms were bent in at the elbows like he was itching for a fight. He had a genuine smile, and he gamely stood on his side of the glass while people in our group stood next to him and took pictures. Dad took one of me and him, and I’m going to tell Kennedy, Here’s me visiting Buzz Aldrin in prison.

When I got back to Seattle after leaving Choate, it was a Friday, so I went straight to Youth Group. I walked in on the middle of some
stupid game called Hungry Birdies, where everyone was divided into two teams and the mommy birds had to pick up popcorn from a bowl using a piece of red licorice as a straw, then run it over to the chicks and feed it to them. I was shocked that Kennedy was playing something so babyish. I watched until they noticed me and then it turned quiet. Kennedy didn’t even come over. Luke and Mae gave me a big Christian-style hug.

“We’re so sorry about what happened to your mother,” said Luke.

“Nothing happened to my mother,” I said.

The silence got stiffer, then everyone looked at Kennedy, because she was my friend. But I could tell she, too, was afraid of me.

“Let’s finish the game,” she said to the floor. “Our team is up, ten–seven.”

We got our passports stamped and emerged from the tent. A lady said to follow the white line to the captain, who will welcome us onboard. Just hearing the words “the captain” made me run along the splintery dock so fast I knew it wasn’t my legs but my excitement carrying me. There, at the bottom of some stairs, stood a man in a navy suit and a white hat.

“Are you Captain Altdorf?” I said. “I’m Bee Branch.” He had a confused smile. I gulped some air and said, “Bernadette Fox is my mother.”

Then I saw his name badge.
CAPTAIN JORGES VARELA.
And under it,
ARGENTINA.

“Wait—” I said. “Where’s Captain Altdorf?”

“Ahh,” said this false captain. “Captain Altdorf. He’s before. He’s now in Germany.”

“Bee!” It was Dad, huffing and puffing. “You can’t just run off like that.”

“Sorry.” My voice cracked and I started crying in my mouth. “I’ve seen so many pictures of the
Allegra
that it’s making me feel a lot of closure.”

That was a lie, because how can seeing a ship give you closure? But after Choate, I quickly learned that in the name of closure Dad would let me do anything. I could sleep in Mom’s Airstream, not go back to school, and even come to Antarctica. Personally, I found the concept of closure totally offensive, because it would mean I was trying to forget about Mom. Really, I was going to Antarctica to find her.

When we got to our cabin, our bags were waiting for us. Dad and I each had two: one suitcase with normal clothes, plus a duffel with our expedition stuff. Dad immediately started unpacking.