Where'd You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

I don’t give a fig about Ted. I don’t know who he is and I don’t care what he says during this talk you refuse to shut up about.

someone stands up and TORCHes them by yelling, “Time Out, Reality CHeck!”

“Whoop-de-doo, it’s my word against his. Who is a judge going to believe? The wife of a DA or the crowned king of the pig hole?”

“Sometimes it’s nice to do things in person.”

he was the man in the TEDTalk! The one where you stick a computer chip to your forehead and you never have to move a muscle for the rest of your life. It’s an extreme version of what I find an alarming trend toward reality avoidance.

🎵....your arms are hangin' limp by your side, your legs got nothin' to do, some machine's doing that for you...🎵("In the Year 2525"--summer of '69)

I realized that these people, “churchy” people, as Mom called them, were actually oppressed, and only now could they open up because they were safely among other churchy people.

All those people I didn’t even know, I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup if I had to, but they had worked their whole lives to get the knowledge that ended up saving my life.

I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time.

You’re a Seattle-born secretary and you have no place in this house!

Rock bottom is death. This is to raise the bottom for Bernadette.

The reason we chose Utah is because it’s the only state that by law essentially allows you to kidnap your child,

I looked around at the other mothers, and I thought, My son is going to kill one of your children.

I have come to accept that my life has become unmanageable.

“She’s selfish and weak. Instead of facing reality, she escapes. She escaped from Los Angeles. She escaped into her Airstream. She escaped from any personal responsibility. What did she do when confronted with this fact? She literally escaped.

“Whose responsibility is this? Who’s in charge?” The answer, it turns out, is nobody.

represented families of persons who’d gone missing from cruise ships (who knew that’s an industry unto itself?),

We’d be the hillbillies of Madison Park.

those gorgeous pictures I promised of the poppies from Ushuaia. I’m late for a VAV meeting, and boy do I need it.

I wish a camera had been trained on me, because it would show what it looks like for a woman to be awakened to the truth.

She couldn’t pick her poison, coming with me or being locked up in a loony bin.

The floor guys were quite surprised to see us mud creatures stagger through the door.

“I can do anything,” she said with a smile. “That you can.”

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

I got TORCHed at VAV. I am forbidden to return until I “WYP and Read It.” (WYP stands for Write Your Part, and it’s pronounced, “weep,” not “wipe,” which we think sounds scatological.)

I’m lucky I didn’t drive myself off the 520 bridge, accidentally or otherwise.

A singer named Morrissey was staying at the hotel, and a group of ardent young homosexuals had gathered, hoping for a glimpse.

Not since Frankenstein has such an angry mob descended on a poor suffering creature.

“What kind of support group is this?” I exploded. “I’ll tell you who’s the victim here.

I bought a carton and started making salted caramel and French toast ice-cream sandwiches. Believe me when I say I should trademark them and start a business.

Do you really want me saying stuff I’m not sure I mean?”

“He’s a grown man with a job and a gun. He can do it himself.”

They were mostly old, with wrinkled faces and wrinkle-free travel clothes.

Galer Street smelled like salmon, but at least the people were normal.

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,

I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn’t fall, because Mom was in the world.

a voice sliced into my ears.

My stomach was filled with the wobbly chrome eggs Dad had on his desk.

It’s pretty obvious to me now that you can’t say that to somebody and expect them to be fine with it.

A pulsing aura of energy attacked the right side of my face. It was emanating from

With each word, my icy breath knifed the inside of my lungs.

once you realize something like that, it’s hard to go back.

Sometimes it was so great I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I got to be me.

I was a ghost on a ghost ship in a ghost land.

a rusty can of Quaker Oats where the Quaker Oats guy is a young man,

“So basically,” I said, “your life is ruined.” I’m sorry, but something in me made me smile.

in my whole life I’ve never seen two people happier.

I was at World Celebration Day. To avoid actual “celebration” with occupants of said “world,”

(This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russian Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.)

The effect was like heroin (I think),

but, mainly, I was.