Where'd You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

Just because it’s complicated, just because you think you can’t ever know everything about another person, it doesn’t mean you can’t try.

(You people don’t just think outside the box, you think outside the dictionary!)

the first stop on this crazy train is Kindergarten Junction, and nobody gets off until it pulls into Harvard Station.

doesn’t exist as far as the Internet is concerned. Which, these days, is quite an accomplishment in itself.

I would laugh at the whole thing, but I’m too bored.

film canisters—yes, film, it was that long ago.

Whoops, did I say Big Brother? I meant Microsoft.

made me believe I could actually be happy making a life for myself in this Canada-close sinkhole they call the Emerald City.

No wonder the only Canadians anyone’s ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don’t understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such.

“You went to boarding school,” I said. “If you didn’t want me to, you shouldn’t have made it sound so fun.”

Whatever it takes, as long as it doesn’t literally involve swine.

I feel like I am living in cuckooville.

I suppose I should get out more.

I went to Choate. It was nothing but brilliant kids, Grateful Dead concerts, and innovative ways to prevent your dorm room from reeking of bong water: what wasn’t to like?

So I have no choice but to cowboy up and not make this all about me.

Bernadette and I had no interest in the gifted-child industry.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it’s boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it’s on you to make life interesting, the better off you’ll be.”

I got out the teapot and threw myself a pity party,

information for a fellow who “abates” blackberry vines. (Can you believe there’s such a thing?!)

find a ticket dispenser that isn’t menacingly encircled by a stinky mosaic of beggars/bums/junkies/runaways.

The place made no sense at all, so already I was pretty much a wreck.

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.

The real “flash update” is that you’re starting to realize that God is driving the bus.

The day of the PPB has come. Unfortunately, our biggest get, the sun, is going to be a no-show.

before getting stuck on the words “epic fail,”

Mom’s voice kind of barfed out the words.

Mom and I share a fascination with what we call happy-angry people. This display of Audrey Griffin’s had just become the best version of that ever.

See! Only a woman could do something like that.

Why do you love me so? I’ve never understood what you saw in me,

Longing for me because life’s just not the same without me?

No wonder I get confused and sometimes mistake the place for a marvelous Utopia.

Even though this hasn’t been proven, it hasn’t been disproven either.)

then they kind of trail off, because at some point in every conversation, there’s nobody in the world smart enough to dumb it down.

The moment I saw that, I knew I’d never see him again.

I think that’s the first time the words “architectural” and “integrity” have ever been used together in a discussion of Seattle.

He gets to keep creating, and I’m the one who’s still in pieces?

Failure has got its teeth in me, and it won’t stop shaking.

he makes life look so damn simple: do what you love.

It was just so obvious.

It’s a horrible dark mass, like the monolith in 2001, self-organized but completely unknowable, and it enters my body and releases adrenaline.

People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.

C: Confirm their reality. R: Reveal our own abuse. U: Unite them with VAV. S: Say sayonara to abuse. H: Have a nice life!

Intermittent Explosive Disorder (which was never diagnosed, but which I’m convinced he suffers from),

I had been talking a lot about myself and VAV, which I have been known to do.

The sky was black, except for a brilliant white cloud patch where rays of sunshine broke through. We rode in a darling neighborhood of little bungalows cuddled together.

I held my hand out and whooshed it through the thick, healthy air. What other city has given birth to the jumbo jet, the Internet superstore, the personal computer, the cellular phone, online travel, grunge music, the big-box store, good coffee?

Let everyone else travel all over the world. What they’re searching for in Los Angeles and New York and everywhere else is something I already have right here in Seattle. I want it all to myself.

Do you think I woke up this morning and drank a big cup of stupid?

“So you communicated in sign language?” “Only when I was feeling cruel,”

If you’re so hell-bent on placing blame, I suggest you look in the mirror.