Where'd You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

“I love you, Bee,” Mom said. “I’m trying. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

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.

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.

I’d rather ruin her with the truth than ruin her with lies.”

Sometimes it was so great I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I got to be me. We’d pass icebergs floating in the middle of the ocean. They were gigantic, with strange formations carved into them. They were so haunting and majestic you could feel your heart break, but really they’re just chunks of ice and they mean nothing.

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.