Where'd You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

I was, like, Go Mom! Because here’s the thing. No matter what people say about Mom now, she sure knew how to make life funny.

Bernadette Fox is walking around Seattle in the middle of winter wearing a fishing vest.

“Oh, Bee,” she said. “This song reminds me of you.” She had tears in her eyes. “Mom!” This is why I didn’t want her to come to the first-grade elephant dance. Because the most random things get her way too full of love.

Seattle is the only city where you step in shit and you pray, Please God, let this be dog shit.

Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.

I felt so full of love for everything. But at the same time, I felt so hung out to dry there, like nobody could ever understand. I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time.

He knew Bernadette best. He realized that she needed to create.” “Or she’d become a menace to society,” I said. “That’s where I really failed your mom,” he said. “She was an artist who had stopped creating. I should have done everything I could to get her back.” “Why didn’t you?” “I didn’t know how. Trying to get an artist to create… it’s gigantic. I write code. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. You know, I’d forgotten, until I read that Artforum article, that we used Mom’s MacArthur money to buy Straight Gate. It was like Bernadette’s hopes and dreams were literally crumbling around us.”

My heart started racing, not the bad kind of heart racing, like, I’m going to die. But the good kind of heart racing, like, Hello, can I help you with something? If not, please step aside because I’m about to kick the shit out of life.

I’ll miss the afternoons when I’d go out on our lawn and throw my head back. The sky in Seattle is so low, it felt like God had lowered a silk parachute over us. Every feeling I ever knew was up in that sky. Twinkling joyous sunlight; airy, giggling cloud wisps; blinding columns of sun. Orbs of gold, pink, flesh, utterly cheesy in their luminosity. Gigantic puffy clouds, welcoming, forgiving, repeating infinitely across the horizon as if between mirrors; and slices of rain, pounding wet misery in the distance now, but soon on us, and in another part of the sky, a black stain, rainless. The sky, it came in patches, it came in layers, it came swirled together, and always on the move, churning, sometimes whizzing by. It was so low, some days I’d reach out for the flow, like you, Bee, at your first 3-D movie, so convinced was I that I could grab it, and then what—become it. All those ninnies have it wrong. The best thing about Seattle is the weather. The world over, people have ocean views. But across our ocean is Bainbridge Island, an evergreen curb, and over it the exploding, craggy, snow-scraped Olympics. I guess what I’m saying: I miss it, the mountains and the water.