Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Part 2 opens with a press release from the Green Builders of America and the Turner Foundation (an environmental philanthropy organization) announcing the “20 x 20 x 20” (107) architectural competition. The competition honors the 20th anniversary of Bernadette Fox’s creation of the Twenty Mile House, an early experiment in sustainable architecture. The press release notes that the Twenty Mile House no longer stands, few photographs exist, and that Bernadette Fox is rumored to have destroyed the plans. 

The press release is followed by an email from Professor Paul Jellinek to his student, Jacob, who spotted Bernadette in Seattle. Jellinek notes that Bernadette “has obviously made a choice to get lost” (108). He also forwards a profile of Bernadette written for an upcoming issue of Artforum. The PDF of the Artforum article occupies 20 pages and relates Bernadette’s story in the form of an oral history made up of excerpts from interviews with various people involved in Bernadette’s early career. 

The profile begins with comments from Ellie Saito, one of Bernadette’s fellow students at Princeton, and with Michael Graves, a celebrated architect in real life who appears in the novel as Bernadette’s early mentor. Both note Bernadette’s intense focus on the practical and technical aspects of architecture. Ellie Saito remembers Bernadette interrupting her presentation on a design for a Japanese teahouse by asking where people would store their shoes. Saito describes how Bernadette would knit during classes, and Graves claims jokingly that he hired Bernadette because he liked the sweaters she made for him. More seriously, he praises her willingness to immerse herself in hands-on tasks most architects shunned.

Graves describes how he sent Bernadette to Los Angeles, where she discovered that she preferred the freedom of the local architectural scene compared to that in New York. Bernadette also met and married Elgin Branch, then a young computer animator. Real estate agent Judy Toll describes how Bernadette came to create her first major domestic project after Toll took the couple house hunting. Toll showed them an abandoned factory in Venice Beach, the former Beeber Bifocal Factory, thinking they might be interested in building on the site. Instead, Bernadette decided to make something from the existing building and its contents.

Excerpts from interviews with Paul Jellinek and David Walker, a contractor, relate how they met Bernadette at a dinner party the night the Branches closed on the Beeber Bifocal Factory, and how Bernadette immediately seized on Walker as a colleague and collaborator. Walker describes how Bernadette reused and purposed items found on the site; in one example, she drew on her craft skills to knit old metal bifocal frames together with wire to create a kind of chain mail screening, which she then used for interior walls. Walker notes that it became “kind of a game” (115) to use only materials found on the site. Paul Jellinek, who helped with Beeber Bifocal as well, contrasts Bernadette’s pragmatic, materials-based approach to other architect’s increasing focus on technology. He also praises the ingenuity with which the navigated the complex and bureaucratic permitting process.

Judy Toll relates how, after the completion of Beeber Bifocal, she helped Bernadette and Elgin find a piece of land off Mulholland Drive. Here Bernadette built her second significant building, Twenty Mile House, so-called because all materials had to originate, or have been found as salvage, within 20 miles of the site. The Twenty Mile House project caught the attention of the MacArthur Foundation, which makes “genius grants” to outstanding individuals in various fields. David Walker recalls how the “MacArthur guys” visiting the site rolled up their sleeves and helped Bernadette pour concrete: “That’s when I knew she’d won it” (126).

However, the lot adjoining the Twenty Mile House had been purchased by British TV personality, Nigel Mills-Murray for the construction of a mansion dubbed “the White Castle” (121). While Bernadette at first sees the new building as a fresh source of castoff materials, relations between the two quickly soured. Mills-Murray’s lawyer, John L. Sayre, provides his client’s view of events to Artforum, describing Bernadette as a crazy neighbor digging through the garbage and her appropriation of castoff materials as theft. After winning a MacArthur “genius grant,” Bernadette decides to sell the Twenty Mile House, largely to get away from Mills-Murray.

Judy Toll describes how she unexpectedly received an offer for the house before it was even listed, supposedly from an admirer of Bernadette’s work. She describes a celebratory lunch with Bernadette and Elgin, at which Elgin gave Bernadette a locket depicting St. Bernadette, the French peasant girl whose visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes inspired generations of pilgrims and seekers. Elgin told Bernadette she had had two visions so far—Beeber Bifocal and the Twenty Mile House—and that the locket represents his faith that she will have many more, as St. Bernadette did. Judy Tolls says the two were inspired to plan a trip to Europe, beginning with a visit to Lourdes. Shortly after they left, the Twenty Mile House was demolished by its new owner, now revealed to be Mills-Murray. 

Paul Jellinek describes how he found bulldozers destroying the house when he arrived with a group with students and attempted to stop the demolition by having them form a human chain. Jellinek wrote a letter protesting the demolition, later signed by numerous prominent architects. He notes that Bernadette never built another building after the Twenty Mile House, instead moving to Seattle with Elgin and disappearing from the world of architecture. While acknowledging her genius, Jellinek questions whether Bernadette had the temperament for a sustained career in architecture: “She didn’t get along with most people. And what kind of architect does that make you?” (130). Jellinek notes that the destruction of the Twenty Mile House and Bernadette’s subsequent disappearance have given her and work an aura of myth.

The Artforum profile ends by noting that the most recent reference to Bernadette is in a brochure for a fund-raising auction for the Galer Street School. Bernadette offered to build a custom treehouse for the highest bidder, but the offer received no bid.

Following the Artforum profile is a long letter from Bernadette to Paul Jellinek. After learning from Jacob, Jellinek’s student, about the 20 x 20 x 20 competition, she has concluded that Paul Jellinek is behind it and is moved to contact him, though she seems deeply conflicted about her own motives for doing so. Bernadette tells Jellinek that she hates Seattle and the weirdly cultish world of Microsoft, but that Elgin was immediately at home in both: “Who knew that our Elgin had a bike-riding, Subaru-driving, Keen-wearing alter ego just waiting to bust out?” (133). Bernadette describes the purchase of the former Straight Gate school and her intention to turn it into a family home. She then reveals the toll taken on her and her marriage by the series of miscarriages which preceded Bee’s birth. Bernadette also tells the story of how she came to name her daughter Balakrishna (later shortened to Bee) after the blue-faced Hindu deity, “incarnation of Vishnu, the creator and destroyer” (141). 

After Bee was born, the initial surgery on her heart defect was “botched” and the doctors did not believe she could survive another. The first time Bernadette saw her, Bee was in an incubator, hooked up to a wall of monitors, and the hospital had already scheduled an appointment with a grief counselor; Bee’s blue face reminded Bernadette of the infant Krishna. Left alone with her daughter, she held the locket of St. Bernadette given her by Elgin and promised God she would never build again if he would allow Bee to survive. 

Bernadette concludes her letter to Jellinek by describing the social isolation she has drifted into and the origins of her long-running feud with Audrey Griffin, who decided that Bernadette did not “believe in community” after she refused to sign up for any committees at Galer Street School.

Part 2 ends with a terse response from Paul Jellinek, who tells Bernadette: “People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society” (147).