by Jodi Picoult
But it is when they get upstairs that things begin to get interesting. My parents’ bedroom is directly over the living room where I am watching TV. I can hear shouting. Then I hear very distinctly the thud of something being dropped. And something else. I jump up and throw my baseball cap down on the couch. I tiptoe up the stairs, hoping I can catch the tail end of this.
“I’ve had it,” my mother shouts. She has a big cardboard box, the kind my father keeps his research files in. She lifts it with all her strength—she’s not so big—and chucks it into the hall. I think she sees me on the staircase, so I duck. Then my father walks out into the hall. He takes the box my mother has thrown and rights it. He lifts it by its handles and sets it back inside the door.
For reasons I don’t understand, my mother is faster than my father. A wall of cartons builds up so quickly that I cannot see much of anything at all. They have blocked off the access to their bedroom. “Jane,” my father says. “That’s enough.”
I cannot see what my mother is doing. This makes me angry. So many days of the year I put up with them ignoring each other; the moments they connect, even fighting, are so rare. Anything, to watch them together. So I creep to the second floor of the house and shove the cartons a certain way. I push and rearrange them gently so that I don’t make too much noise but I create a peephole. I see my father standing in a pile of loose papers and graphs. He looks helpless. He moves his hands in front of him, as if he can still catch them falling.
Then he grabs my mother’s shoulders. I think maybe he is hurting her. She struggles back and forth, and with a force I didn’t realize she had, she breaks away.
My mother lifts one of the cartons still out there and holds it over the banister. She rattles it like a maraca.
My father comes charging out of the bedroom. “Don’t,” he warns. Then the carton breaks. Slow-motion, I can see white bones in Ziploc bags, sharp strands of baleen, ribbons of charts and observation logs, all falling. Just like that, I stop breathing.
This is when, out of the blue, I remember the plane crash.
My father hit my mother once, when I was a baby. And she took me and flew to the East Coast. That’s how the story goes. My father insisted she bring me back, so she put me on a plane headed to San Diego. But the plane crashed. I tell it like this, matter-of-fact, because I do not remember it. I was, as I say, a baby. What I know of the crash I have learned from reading newspaper articles, many years later.
I don’t think about this crash much—it was a long time ago—but I believe that it has crossed my mind now for a reason. Maybe it is the thing that gets me to stand up and turn away. Maybe it is the reason I walk into my bedroom and pull out clothes and underwear, stuffing them into a small bag. Don’t get me wrong, I have no master plan. I keep my face turned away from my parents when I run out of my room and into the bathroom. I grab some dirty clothes of my mother’s from the hamper, and then I run down the stairs. My heart is pounding. All I want to do is get away. I hear my father say, “You bitch.”
When I was around twelve I thought about running away. I suppose all kids do at some point. I got as far as our backyard. I hid underneath the black vinyl cover of the barbeque, but it took my parents four and a half hours to find me. My father had to come home early from work. It was a big deal when my mother lifted up the vinyl cover. She hugged me and told me I had scared her half to death. What would I do without you? she said, over and over. What would I do without you?
Sneakers. I grab mine from the living room, my mother’s from the hall closet. They are what she calls her “weekend shoes.” So I am packed. Now what do I do?
When the plane crashed, I was brought to a hospital in Des Moines. I was in the pediatrics ward, of course, and all I can really remember is that the nurses wore smocks with smiley faces. And hair nets with Ernie and Bert on them. I didn’t know where my parents were, and all I really wanted was to see them. It took a while, but they came. They came in together, I remember. They were holding each other’s hands, and that made me so happy. The last time I had seen them my mother was crying, and my father was yelling very loud. It had been very scary, the crash. But it was what had to be done. It brought my parents together again.
Just as I am thinking about this, I hear the sting of a slap. It’s a sound you can recognize from any other, if you have heard it before. It brings tears to my eyes.
I slide the front door open on its hinges. I run to my mother’s car, parked at the edge of the driveway. She has a clunky old station wagon that has been around forever. I perch on the edge of the passenger seat. They say history repeats, don’t they?
My mother comes out of the house like a lost soul. She is looking into the sky and she is wearing nothing but her underwear. As if it is a magnet, she is being drawn towards this car. I am sure she doesn’t see me. She holds some clothes in her left hand. When she gets into the car she slides them on the seat between us. She has red welts on her wrists from where he grabbed her. I don’t know where he hit her this time. I put my hand over hers; she jumps in her seat. “I have everything,” I say. My voice sounds too high and thin. My mother is looking at me as if she is trying to place the face. She whispers my name, and sinks back against the seat. So do I. I take a deep breath; wonder how long it will be before I see my father again.
72 JANE
The human body can withstand so much. I have read accounts of people who have survived extreme cold, brutality, bludgeoning, terrible burns. I have read the testimonies of these survivors. They all make it sound so simple, really, the ability to keep on living.
We all stand on the upper part of the driveway, where the gravel is a little thin. Sam has just carried Rebecca to the car. Oliver is standing a respectable distance away. Joley stands in front of me, holding my hands, trying to get me to look at him. Hadley is not here, and I cannot forgive myself.
It is a beautiful day by any other account. It’s cool and dry, with a see-through sky. All the apple trees have fruit. I don’t know where the birds have gone.
Joley smiles at me and tells me for the hundredth time to stop crying. He lifts my chin. “Well,” he says, “under any other circumstance, I’d say, ‘Come back soon.’”
My brother. “Call me,” I say. I don’t know how to tell him the things I really want to say. That I couldn’t have lived through this without him. That I want to thank him, in spite of the way this has turned out.
“Tomorrow,” Joley says, “go to the post office in Chevy Chase, Maryland. There are two. You want the one in the center of town.” He makes me laugh. “That’s better.” I don’t mean to, but just knowing Sam is in the foreground, my eyes dart over to his. Joley hugs me one last time. “This is my going-away present,” he whispers. He takes several steps towards Oliver. “Hey, I don’t think you’ve had a chance to see the greenhouse here, have you?” He claps his arm around Oliver’s shoulders, and pushes him, forcefully, down towards the barn. Oliver turns around once or twice, reluctant to leave us like this. But Joley isn’t about to let him off the hook.
So then it is just Sam and I. We move a few feet closer but we do not touch. That would be dangerous. “I’ve packed something for you,” he says, swallowing. “In the back seat.”
I nod. If I try to speak, it’s all going to come out wrong. How can he look at me? I have killed his best friend; I have broken all my promises. I am leaving. I can feel my throat swelling up at the bottom. Sam smiles at me; he tries. “I know we said we weren’t going to do this. I know it’s just going to make it worse. But I can’t help it.” And he leans forward, wraps his arms tight across my back, and kisses me.
You don’t know what it is like to touch him like that, our skin pressed together at the thighs, the shoulders, the cheeks. Everywhere Sam is, I feel a shock. When he pushes me away, I am gasping. “Oh, no,” I say. He holds me at a distance, and that is supposed to be the end.
I have to stop shaking before I remember where I am. The little MG we bought in Montana is sitting next to
the blue pickup truck. We are leaving it with Joley. Joley is leaning into the window of Oliver’s Town Car, speaking to Rebecca. I am not sure she is up to traveling. I would have liked to give her one more day. But Oliver feels she ought to be home. She ought to recuperate where she doesn’t have to think of Hadley every time she looks at something, and in this he is right.
Just then I am sure I will faint. I can’t feel my knees anymore and the sky begins to spin. Suddenly Oliver is beside me. “Are you all right?” he asks, as if I can answer that in one simple sentence. “Okay,” he says. “Then this is it.”
“This is it!” I say, repeating his words. I can’t seem to come up with any of my own. As I slide into the passenger seat, Joley gives Oliver directions back to Route 95. I unroll my window.
Oliver starts the car and puts it into gear. Sam moves so that he is standing across from my window, at just the distance where it is easy for us to look at each other. I do not let myself blink. I concentrate on his eyes. We are imprinting each other, etching an image so that when we meet again—ten months, ten years from now—we will have no choice but to remember. The car starts moving. I crane my neck, unwilling to break first.
I have to turn around in my seat, looking over Rebecca’s head through the lines of defogger tape, but I can still see him. I can see him all the way past the welcome sign for this orchard, past the mailbox.
Then I realize how it will be. Like metal pounded to a thin foil, spreading in distance but not compromising its strength. It has simply changed shape, changed form.
Oliver has been talking but I haven’t really heard what he’s been saying. He is trying so hard; I have to give him credit. I open my eyes, and there is my daughter. Rebecca stares at me, or maybe right through me, I cannot tell. She pulls a blanket back from the floor of the car. Apples. Bushels and bushels of apples. This is what Sam wanted me to have. I find myself silently mouthing the names of the different fruits: Bellflower. Macoun. Jonathan. Cortland. Bottle Greening. Rebecca takes a Cortland and bites hard into its side. “Oh,” Oliver says, looking in the rearview mirror. “You took some with you, did you?”
I watch Rebecca with this apple. She peels back the skin with her teeth and then sinks into the white flesh of the cheek. She lets the juice drip over her chin. Just watching her, I can taste it. When she sees me looking, she pulls the fruit away from her mouth. She offers the other half to me.
As I take the apple from her our hands touch. I can feel the ridges of her fingertips brush against mine. They seem to fit together. I raise the apple to my mouth, and take a huge bite. I take another bite, not having finished the first. I stuff my cheeks with the meat of this apple as if I have been starving for weeks. That’s why he sent them. Even after Sam’s apples are gone, they will remain part of my body.
As Rebecca watches, I toss the core onto the road, staring at the hand that so easily let it go. It is missing a wedding band. I left it at Sam’s. Of all the things for him to have.
I wonder what Oliver and I will do when we get home. How one goes about getting back on track. We cannot pick up where we left off. I will not be able to put Sam out of my mind entirely when I am with Oliver. But then, did I ever really forget about Oliver when I was with Sam?
I was in love with Oliver once, when I was a different person. I did not know then what I know now. I saw him standing waist-deep in a pool of water and I pictured a life together. I had a child with him; remarkable proof of being in love. She is the best of both of us. Which means that there is a very good strain in me. And a very good strain in Oliver.
You can take dead trees in an orchard, and bring them back to life. You can take two different strains of apples and they will bear fruit on the same tree. Grafting: the science of bringing together the unlikely; of bringing back what is past hope.
Oliver squeezes my hand, and I squeeze his back. This surprises him; he turns to me and smiles hesitantly. Rebecca is watching all this. I wonder what she sees when she looks at us together. I roll up my window and turn sideways in my seat. I want to be able to see both Oliver and Rebecca.
Oliver slows at a toll booth. Already we have reached a highway. I smile confidently at my husband, and at my daughter. Rebecca breathes in deeply and reaches for my free hand. Oliver turns west towards California. Rebecca and I are both passengers this time, and together we follow the jagged, winding line of trees on the highway. I turn to watch her taking in the change of scenery. It is the first time I can remember having my eyes wide open while I look at my future.
SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE
Jodi Picoult
A Readers Club Guide
Introduction
Jodi Picoult’s richly literary novel Songs of the Humpback Whale tells the story of a fragile family and one woman’s voyage toward self-discovery. When an explosive argument with her husband, Oliver, prompts Jane and her daughter, Rebecca, to abruptly leave their California home, the two head east armed with little other than a few dollars, the clothes on their backs, and their love for each other. Traversing their way across the United States, following the directional clues provided to them by Jane’s brother Joley, Jane and Rebecca inch their way toward Massachusetts while Oliver, an expert whale tracker, follows close behind.
When Jane and Rebecca arrive at a Massachusetts apple orchard, they both meet new people who will challenge them and force them to reconsider their life choices. Sam, a small-town apple farmer, pushes Jane to unveil the secrets of her past, finally enabling her to open her heart in the present. When Rebecca witnesses her mother and Sam’s burgeoning love affair, she finds solace in Hadley, who offers her the support and nurturing she has so often yearned for from her own parents. Once Oliver arrives at the orchard to reclaim his family, Jane must finally decide whether to abandon her newfound love in order to return to California and fulfill her responsibilities to her husband and her daughter. Only after a tragic accident can the Jones family finally return home, together again but forever changed.
Questions and Topics for Discussion Warning: Spoilers Ahead
1. Discuss the novel’s structure. How did the alternating voices enhance or detract from the reading experience for you? Did you find that the characters’ differing accounts of the events of the novel added to the dramatic tension, and how so? Similarly, Rebecca is the only character to narrate the novel’s events backward chronologically. How does this affect the reading experience?
2. So much of the novel is about voice and people finding themselves through their voices: Jane is a speech therapist, Oliver tracks whale songs, Joley’s words guide Jane and Rebecca across the country. Which relationships in the novel are founded on spoken connections and which are based on something other than language? How are these relationships different? How do these different relationships affect the characters?
3. When mentioning his research, Oliver proposes that the personal histories of whales—“who the whale is, where he has been sighted, with whom he has been sighted—tell us something about why he sings the way he does.” Discuss how each of the characters in the novel is shaped by his or her past.
4. The relationship between Jane and Rebecca is one of the most complex in the novel. Although Jane is Rebecca’s mother, it often seems that Rebecca is the more mature person—Hadley even tells Sam that Rebecca “takes better care of her mother than the other way around.” Rebecca similarly comments that she and Jane are “more like equals.” Discuss their relationship. Why do you think they relate to each other this way?
5. Although it is Rebecca who packs up, gets in the car, and urges her mother to run away from Oliver, she also misses her father and her home while she and her mother are traveling across the country. Speculate on what Rebecca really wants for each of her parents. Do you think she wants to return to California? Why or why not?
6. The relationship between Joley and Jane is one of the most meaningful in the novel. Although Jane spent most of her childhood protecting Joley, it is Joley who cares for Jane in her adult l
ife. Discuss the bond between them. What is it based on? Does Joley’s love for Jane seem illicit at times? Why or why not?
7. Joley tells Jane and Rebecca that he will write them across the country, sending them “to places he thinks they need to go.” Discuss the different geographic locations of their voyage. Why do you think Joley sends them to each place? How does each location affect them?
8. Sam comments that “if you leave things to their natural course, they go bad.” Discuss Sam and his life choices. In what ways has he struggled against the natural course of his life, and in which ways has he accepted that he is living the life he was destined to?
9. When Sam and Jane first meet, each assumes certain things about the other—Jane assumes that Sam is a simple farmer, and Sam assumes that Jane is no different from other wealthy Newton girls. In what ways do Sam and Jane live up to each other’s assumptions, and in what ways does each defy the other’s preconceived notions?
10. Chapters 39, 40, and 41 offer Rebecca’s, Jane’s, and Oliver’s perspectives on the plane crash. Although these chapters all begin the same way—“Midwest Airlines flight 997 crashed on September 21, 1978, in What Cheer, Iowa—a farming town sixty miles southeast of Des Moines”—each offers a different perspective on the same event. Discuss these perspectives. What do the differences and similarities reveal about each character and the impact that event had on the rest of his or her life?
11. At the site of the plane crash, Oliver finally finds Jane and Rebecca. Though he is sitting close enough to touch them, he finds that he cannot bring himself to announce his presence. What is Oliver thinking? How does this moment motivate him to change? By the end of the novel, has he successfully transformed himself?