Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel (7 page)

Who cares about Elgin Branch? I care about you. I’m so proud of everything you’ve overcome since the divorce. Finally, you’re getting the recognition you deserve.

My day is going dandy. A machine is ripping out all the blackberry vines from Bernadette’s hill. It has put me in such soaring spirits that I am able to laugh off an incident at Galer Street that otherwise might have landed me in a snit.

Gwen Goodyear grabbed me this morning and asked to speak privately in her office. Who was sitting there in a big leather chair with his back to me? Kyle! Gwen shut the door and went behind her desk. There was a chair next to Kyle, so I sat down.

Gwen opened her drawer. “We found something in Kyle’s locker yesterday.” She held up an orange pill bottle. It had my name on it—it was the Vicodin prescription I got after Our Lady of Straight Gate tried to plow me over in her car.

“What’s that doing here?” I said.

“Kyle?” Gwen said.

“I don’t know,” said Kyle.

“Galer Street has a zero-tolerance drug policy,” Gwen said.

“But it’s
prescription
medicine,” I said, still not understanding her point.

“Kyle,” Gwen said. “Why was it in your locker?”

I did not like where this was going. Not one bit. I told her: “I went to the emergency room thanks to Bernadette Fox. I left
on crutches
, if you remember. I asked Kyle to hold my purse, and the prescription medicine. Good Lord.”

“When did you realize your Vicodin was missing?” Gwen asked.

“Not until this moment,” I said.

“Why is the bottle empty? Let Kyle answer this, Audrey.” She turned to Kyle. “Kyle, why is it empty?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle answered.

“I’m sure it was empty when we got it,” I said. “You know how understaffed they are over at the UW Medical. They probably forgot to
fill it. Are we done yet? Maybe you haven’t heard, but I’m hosting a party tomorrow for sixty prospective parents.” I got up and left.

Now that I write this, I’d like to know what
Gwen Goodyear
was doing in Kyle’s locker. Don’t they have locks on them? Isn’t that why they’re called lockers?

It was the first time I had been downtown in a year. I immediately remembered why: the pay-to-park meters.

Parking in Seattle is an eight-step process. Step one, find a place to park (gooood luuuuck!). Step two,
back
into the angled parking space (who ever innovated
that
should be sentenced to the chokey). Step three, find a ticket dispenser that
isn’t
menacingly encircled by a stinky mosaic of beggars/bums/junkies/runaways. This requires step four, crossing the street. Oh, plus you’ve forgotten your umbrella (there goes your hair, which you stopped worrying about toward the end of the last century, so that’s a freebie). Step five, slide your credit card into the machine (small miracle if you’ve found one that hasn’t been filled with epoxy by some misguided malcontent). Step six, return to your car
(passing aforementioned putrid gauntlet, who heckle you because you didn’t give them money on the way there—oh, and did I mention, they all have shivering dogs?). Step seven, affix the ticket to the proper window (is it passenger-side for back-in angle parking? or driver-side? I would read the rules on the back of the sticker but can’t because WHO THE HELL BRINGS READING GLASSES TO PARK THEIR CAR?). Step eight, pray to the God you don’t believe in that you have the mental wherewithal to remember what the hell it was you came downtown for in the first place.

Already I wished a Chechen rebel would shoot me in the back.

The compound pharmacy was cavernous, wood-paneled, and home to a few poorly stocked shelves. In the middle of it sat a brocade sofa, over which hung a Chihuly chandelier. The place made no sense at all, so already I was pretty much a wreck.

I approached the counter. The girl was wearing one of those white headdresses that look like a nun’s hat without the wings. I have no idea what ethnicity that made her, but there are tons of them here, especially working at rental-car places. One of these days, I really need to ask.

“Bernadette Fox,” I said.

Her eyes met mine, then flashed mischief. “One moment.” She stepped onto a platform and whispered something to another pharmacist. He lowered his chin and examined me severely over his spectacles. Both he and the girl descended. Whatever was about to happen, they had decided beforehand it was a two-person job.

“I received the prescription from your doctor,” said the gentleman. “It was written for seasickness, for a cruise you’ll be taking?”

“We’re going to Antarctica over Christmas,” I said, “which requires crossing the Drake Passage. The statistics about the speed of the swirling water and the heights of the swells would shock you if I told you. But I can’t, because I’m hopeless when it comes to remembering numbers.
Plus, I’m trying really hard to block it out. I blame my daughter. I’m only going because of her.”

“Your prescription is for ABHR,” he said. “ABHR is basically Haldol with some Benadryl, Reglan, and Ativan thrown in.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Haldol is an antipsychotic.” He dropped his reading glasses into his shirt pocket. “It was used in the Soviet prison system to break prisoners’ wills.”

“And I’m only discovering it now?” I said.

This guy was proving resistant to my many charms, or else I am without charm, which is probably the case. He continued. “It has some severe side effects, tardive dyskinesia being the worst. Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by uncontrollable grimacing, tongue protrusion, lip smacking…”

“You’ve seen those people,” the Flying Nun gravely added. She held a contorted hand up to her face, cocked her head, then shut one eye.

“You obviously don’t get seasick,” I said. “Because a couple of hours of that is a day at the beach by comparison.”

“Tardive dyskinesia can last forever,” he said.

“Forever?” I said weakly.

“The likelihood of tardive dyskinesia is about four percent,” he said. “It increases to ten percent for older women.”

I blew out really hard. “Oh, man.”

“I spoke to your doctor. He wrote you a prescription for a scopolamine patch for motion sickness, and Xanax for anxiety.”

Xanax, I had! Bee’s battalion of doctors had always sent me home with Xanax or some sleeping pill. (Have I mentioned? I don’t sleep.) I never took them, because the one time I did, they left me nauseous and not feeling like myself. (I know, that should have been a selling point. What can I say? I’ve grown accustomed.) But the problem with
the Xanax and the hundreds of other pills I had squirreled away was this: they were currently jumbled together in a Ziploc bag. Why? Well, once, I was thinking about OD’ing, so I dumped the contents of every prescription bottle into my two hands—they didn’t even fit, that’s how many I had—just to eyeball to see if I could swallow them all. But then I cooled off on the whole idea and dumped the pills in a baggie, where they languish to this day. Why did I want to OD? you’re probably wondering. Well, so am I! I don’t even remember.

“Do you have some kind of laminated chart of what the pills look like?” I asked the pharmacist. My thinking was, maybe I could figure out which ones were Xanax and return them to their proper container. The poor guy looked baffled. Who can blame him?

“Fine,” I said. “Give me the Xanax and that patch thing.”

I removed myself to the brocade couch. It was murderously uncomfortable. I put my leg up and leaned back. That was more like it. It was a fainting couch, I now realized, and wanted to be lain upon. Hovering over me was the Chihuly chandelier. Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They’re everywhere, and even if they don’t get in your way, you can’t help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them.

This one was all glass, of course, white and ruffly and full of dripping tentacles. It glowed from within, a cold blue, but with no discernible light source. The rain outside was pounding. Its rhythmic splatter only made this hovering glass beast more haunting, as if it had arrived with the storm, a rainmaker itself. It sang to me, Chihuly… Chihuly. In the seventies, Dale Chihuly was already a distinguished glassblower when he got into a car accident and lost an eye. But that didn’t stop him. A few years later, he had a surfing mishap and messed up his shoulder so badly that he was never able to hold a glass pipe again. That didn’t stop him, either. Don’t believe me? Take a boat out on Lake Union and look in the window of Dale Chihuly’s studio. He’s probably there now,
with his eye patch and dead arm, doing the best, trippiest work of his life. I had to close my eyes.

“Bernadette?” said a voice.

I opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep. This is the problem with never sleeping. Sometimes you actually do, at the worst times: like this time: in public.

“Bernadette?” It was Elgie. “What are you doing asleep in here?”

“Elgie—” I wiped the drool off my cheek. “They wouldn’t give me Haldol, so I have to wait for Xanax.”

“What?”
He glanced out the window. Standing on the street were some Microsoft people I vaguely recognized. “What are you wearing?”

He was referring to my fishing vest. “Oh, this. I got it from the Internet.”

“Could you please stand up?” he said. “I have a lunch. Do I need to cancel it?”

“God, no!” I said. “I’m fine. I didn’t sleep last night and just dozed off. Go, do, be.”

“I’m going to come home for dinner. Can we go out to dinner tonight?”

“Aren’t you going to D.C.—”

“It can wait,” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Buzz and I will pick a place.”

“Just me and you.” He left.

And this is when it began to unravel: I could swear one of the people waiting for him outside was a gnat from Galer Street. Not the one who’s hassling us about the blackberries, but one of her flying monkeys. I blinked to make sure. But Elgie and his group had been absorbed into the lunch rush.

My heart was really thumping. I should have stayed and popped one of those Xanax. But I couldn’t stand to be in that compound pharmacy anymore, trapped with the icy portent. I blame you, Dale Chihuly!

I fled. I had no idea which way I was pointed, where I was even headed. But I must have gone up Fourth Avenue, because the next thing I knew, I was standing outside the Rem Koolhaas public library.

I had stopped, apparently. Because a guy approached me. A graduate student, he looked like. Completely nice, nothing mean or threatening about him.

But he recognized me.

Manjula, I have no idea how. The only photograph of me floating around was one taken twenty years ago, right before the Huge Hideous Thing. I am beautiful, my face radiating with confidence, my smile bursting with the future of my choosing.

“Bernadette Fox,” I blurted.

I am fifty, slowly going mad.

This can’t make sense to you, Manjula. It doesn’t have to. But you see what happens when I come into contact with people. It doesn’t bode well for the whole Antarctica thing.