Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

by Jodie Picoult

  “I live here,” Hadley says. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was eavesdropping. Did you hear them?”

  Hadley nods. He picks a stalk from the hay bales lining the wall and puts it between his front teeth. “I was hoping for a knockout in the first round.”

  “You’re awful,” I tell him, but I laugh. In this light, he looks taller than usual. And his lips, the way they come down so far in the front. I hold out my hand. I want to touch him. Embarrassed, I pull away. “Did you get all your stuff done?”

  “What stuff?”

  “Dinner. What you were saying to my uncle.”

  “Oh,” Hadley says. He shuffles his boots on the loose hay. “That.”

  He doesn’t say anything for such a long time I think something might be wrong. I turn around and stare at him. “What’s the matter with me?”

  “There’s nothing the matter with you,” Hadley says. “You’re a very pretty little girl.”

  “I’m not a little girl.” I hold my chin higher.

  “I know how old you are. I asked Joley.”

  So much for that. “Well I don’t get it. I was having a really good time with you the other day, and then clear out of the blue you act like I have the plague.”

  “I just can’t spend a lot of time with you.” He paces back and froth in the little square of light the moon makes on the floor of the barn. “I get paid for this, Rebecca. This is my job, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know. I don’t know about jobs at all, but I have a pretty good idea of the way you’re supposed to treat a friend.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” Hadley said.

  I clench my fists at my sides. Do what ? I haven’t done anything at all.

  He takes a step closer and my heart jumps, just like that. I take a step backward.

  Pressed up against the stack of hay bales, I start to hyperventilate. I’m breathing in all this awful dry grass and it is getting to my lungs. Hadley leans in close to me, and I see my face reflected in his eyes.

  I push my hand against his chest and walk to the other side of the barn. “So you have to get rid of the weeds, is that it? That’s what you were talking to Sam about. When do those apples drop- September?” I talk a mile a minute about a subject I do not know. “What are you going to do tomorrow? I was thinking, maybe I’ll walk into Stow Center tomorrow. I haven’t been there yet and Uncle Joley says there’s this record store I’d really like with a lot of neon and stuff. Did I ask you what you’re going to do tomorrow?”

  “This,” Hadley says, and he wraps his arms around my waist and he kisses me.

  I used to think that the best feeling in the world was flying on my bicycle down a hill that I had worked so hard to climb, flying faster than the speed of sound, with my arms and my hair waving. I’d cup one hand and try to catch the air and when I got to the bottom, after all that, there was nothing in my hand.

  I think of this in the moments that Hadley is pressed up against me and I keep my eyes wide open, afraid that I’ll find nothing there when I am so convinced. He sees me, at one point, and smiles with my lips still touching his. “What are you looking at?” he whispers.

  “You,” I tell him.

  23 JOLEY

  My father died three years before my mother. The doctor said it was a heart attack but Jane and I had our doubts. It had yet to be proven that my father had a heart at all.

  Jane was living in San Diego by then, and I was in Mexico. I had been doing research on Cortèz, which turned into research on the the Holy Grail, which turned into research about I don’t know what. Jane was the only person who knew where I was-in a little village near Tepehuanas that was so small it didn’t have a name of its own. I lived with a pregnant housekeeper named Maria and her three cats. I dug a small excavation site in the wilds of the mountains. I found nothing, but I told that to nobody but Jane.

  My mother, of course, called Jane first. She would have called me, I imagine, but she didn’t know my address, or how to dial an international call. She said that just like that my father had dropped dead. The hospital kept asking her if he had complained of gas or made sounds during the night, but my mother did not know. She got used to sleeping with earplugs many years ago to combat my father’s snoring, and she always went to bed before he did.

  “Do you think,” Jane said noncommittally on the flight to Boston, “they have had sex during this decade?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t know what they do.”

  Did I mention this all happened the weekend before Easter?

  When we arrived at the house my mother was sitting on the front lawn. She was wearing a familiar purple bathrobe and Dearfoam slippers, although it was past noon. “Mama,” Jane said, rushing into her arms. My mother hugged Jane the way she always did: looking over her shoulder at me. I wondered, and I still do, if she looked at Jane when I was in her arms. For Jane’s sake, I always hoped so. “It’s over,” Jane said.

  And my mother looked at her as if she was crazy. “What do you mean it’s over?”

  Jane looked at me. “Nothing, Ma.” She pulled me aside as we climbed up the steps to the house. “What is it with her?” Jane said. “Or is it me?”

  I wouldn’t know. I was the only person in that household my father did not inflict violence upon, thanks largely to my sister’s interference. Jane had given up her childhood for me, really, so what else could I say? “It’s not you,” I told her.

  Jane and I were sent out to get a party platter for the guests after the funeral. Daddy’s body had been set on ice for three days now; no church would hold a service because of Easter. But now, with the funeral set for Monday, preparations had to be made. Jane and I went to Star Market’s deli counter; it was the closest and honestly neither of us cared about the caliber of the food. “Hey, honey,” said the burly man at the counter. “You having relatives over for Easter?”

  While my mother went through the ritual of crying, pulling at her hair and stroking old photos, Jane and I sat upstairs in what used to be our rooms. We talked about everything we could remember that might help us put it all behind. I touched the places on Jane where there used to be bruises. I let her talk about the very worst time, but she only hinted at what had happened that night she was driven to leave.

  We slept in our respective beds the night before the funeral, with the doors open in case Mama needed us. A little after three Jane came into my room. She shut the door, sat on the edge of the bed, and then she handed me a picture of the two of us, one she had found trapped between the headboard of her bed and the wall. “I’ve been thinking there’s something wrong with me,” she whispered. “I don’t feel anything. I’m going through the motions, you know, but I couldn’t care less that he’s dead.”

  I held her hand. She was wearing an old nightgown of our mother’s. I found myself wondering what she wore at night, next to Oliver, in her own home. She would never sleep naked like I did. She did not like the feeling. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Considering the circumstances.”

  “But she’s crying. She’s upset. And he was worse with her than he was with me.” She let those last words run together and then she got into bed beside me. Her feet were very cold, and the strange thing was, they stayed like that the entire night.

  At the funeral, the reverend talked about how my father had been such a pillar of the community. He mentioned that he was a doting husband and father. I held Jane’s hand. Neither of us cried, or pretended to for the sake of decency.

  It was an open casket. My mother wanted it that way. Jane accepted everyone’s condolences and I kept my arm around my mother’s shoulders, holding her up most of the time. I brought her juice and biscuits and did everything my maiden aunts suggested, to help her through such a difficult time.

  By the time all our relatives and assumed friends left for the graveyard it was mid-afternoon. The funeral manager gave Jane the bill and then she disappeared. When I asked him where she had gone he pointed to the
anteroom, the place they had the coffin on display. I watched her standing over his image, this wax mask that carried none of the terror and the power I knew. She ran her finger over the silk that lined the box. She touched my father’s blue ancient matter tie. Then she raised her arm. Her wrist was shaking when she whipped her hand through the air, the hand that I caught before she struck a dead man.

  24 SAM

  If you look real carefully, you can see the scars on my eyes. I was born cross-eyed, and the first operation was done when I was so young I cannot remember. Medically speaking, the procedure involved tightening up the slack muscles that let my eye wander. Invisible stitches, I guess. There’s hardly anything there now, twenty-four years later, except a thin line of film in each eye, like a yellow eyelash. You can see this when I look out the corner of my eye.

  Until I had the second operation I wore thick Coke-bottle glasses; round ones that made me look something like a bullfrog or a lawyer. I did not have many friends, and during recess I’d sit alone behind the swings and eat the sandwich my mother had packed in my lunch box. Sometimes the other kids came up, called me four-eyes or crossed their eyes to make fun of me. If I came home from school crying, my mother would bury my face in her apron-it smelled of fresh flour-and tell me how handsome I was. I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t. I took to looking down at my shoes.

  My teachers began to say I was shy, and they called up my mother, concerned. One day my parents told me I was going to have an operation. I would stay in a hospital, and I would have patches on my eyes for a while, and when it was all over my eyes would look just like everyone else’s. Like I said, I do not remember my first operation, but the second is very clear. I was scared it would change the way I’d see things. I wondered if when the bandages were removed, I would look the way I thought I looked. If the colors I saw would be the same.

  The day after the operation I heard my mother’s voice at the foot of the bed. “Sam, honey, how do you feel?”

  My father touched my shoulder and handed me a wrapped package.-“See if you can tell what it is.” I ripped off the paper and ran my hands along he soft leather folds of a soccer ball. Best of all-I knew exactly what it would look like.

  I asked to hold the soccer ball when my bandages were removed. The doctor smelled like aftershave and told me what he was doing every step of the way. Finally he told me to open my eyes.

  When I did, everything was fuzzy, but I could make out the black and white boxes of the soccer ball. Black was still black and white was still white. As I blinked, everything started to come clear-clearer than it was before the operation, in fact. I smiled when I saw my mother. “It’s you,” I said, and she laughed.

  “Who did you expect?” she asked.

  Sometimes when I look in the mirror now I still see my eyes crossed. I’ve dated ladies who tell me how nice my eyes are: the most unusual color, reminds them of the fog in summer, things like that. I let the words roll right off my back. I’m no more handsome than the next guy, really. In a lot of ways I’m still four-eyes, eating lunch behind the swings at school.

  My mother burned all the photos she had of me with my eyes crossed. Said we didn’t need a reminder of that around the house, now that I had the operation. So at this point all I have left is this faulty perception, from time to time, and the scars. I also have that soccer ball. I keep it in my closet, because I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you should ever get rid of.

  25 JANE

  Oliver is the only man who has ever made love to me. I know, I grew up during the generation of sex and drugs and peace, but I was never like that. I’d met Oliver when I was fifteen, and dated him until we were married. We built up a repertoire over the years, but we always stopped at a critical point. I talked about sex with my friends and pretended I had done it. Since no one ever corrected me, I assumed I was saying the right things.

  As for Oliver, he did not really pressure me. I assumed he had slept with other women, like all the other guys I had known, but he never asked me to do anything I didn’t want to. The perfect gentleman, I told my friends. We would sit for hours on the docks downtown in Boston, and all we’d do is hold hands. He would kiss me goodnight, but perfunctorily, as if he were holding back much more.

  My best friend in college, a girl named Ellen, told me in excruciating detail about all the sexual positions she and her boyfriend Roger had mastered in the cramped quarters of a VW bug. She’d come into class early and stretch her legs out in front of her seat, complaining how tight the muscles in her calves were. I had been dating Oliver for five years, and we never came close to the unbridled passion Ellen discussed as casually as she talked about her pantyhose size. I began to think it was me.

  One night when Oliver and I went to a movie, I asked if we could sit in the back row. The movie was The Way We Were . As soon as the opening credited rolled on the screen, I handed Oliver the popcorn and began to trace my thumb along the inseam of his jeans. I thought, if that doesn’t get him excited, what will? But Oliver took my hand and clasped it between his own.

  I tried once more during the movie. I took a deep breath and started to kiss Oliver’s neck, the edge of his ear. I did all the things I had heard Ellen talk about that I thought might work in a public theater. I unbuttoned a middle button of Oliver’s oxford shirt, and slipped my hand inside. I rubbed my palm over his smooth, olive chest, his strong shoulders. The entire time, mind you, I was staring at the movie screen like I was really watching.

  Oh, Oliver was gorgeous. He had thick blond hair and a smile that ruined me. His pale eyes gave him the air of being somewhere else. I wanted him to really see me, to stake a claim.

  During the scene where Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand take a walk on the beach and discuss names for the baby, Oliver grabbed my hand and withdrew it from his shirt. He buttoned himself up again and gave me a sidelong look. He pulled me out of the theater.

  Oliver didn’t look at me. He waited for the popcorn attendant to turn the other way. When she did, he slipped up the stairs to the balcony, which was closed for the night.

  The balcony was empty and cordoned off with golden silk ties. Oliver pressed against me from behind. He had removed his shirt and was silhouetted against the satin wall of the theater. “Do you know what you do to me?” Oliver said.

  He unbuttoned my cotton blouse and ripped the zipper of my jeans. When I was standing before him in my bra and panties, he took a step back, and just looked. I began to worry about the people below us, if they would turn around and see this show instead. And like he could read my mind (which I think he could do back then), Oliver pulled me down to sit on his lap.

  We sat on the aisle seat in the back, me straddling him and blindly facing the projection booth; him glassy-eyed, facing the movie. He lowered my bra straps from my shoulders and held my breasts in his hands, like a scale. He held them very lightly, like he didn’t quite know what to do with them. He let my bra fall to my waist and then he unbuttoned the fly of his jeans. With some acrobatics, we pushed his pants down around his ankles, and I didn’t even have to stand up. In the background I heard the characters talking.

  “Do you love me?” I whispered into his neck, unsure if he would hear.

  Oliver looked at me, absolutely looked at me, the first time I was sure I had one hundred percent of his attention. “Actually,” he answered, “I think I do.”

  I started to do the things that Ellen told me about, pressing against him and rocking my hips slowly, then faster. I felt the crotch of my panties becoming damp. The tip of Oliver’s penis peeked through the fly of his boxers, swollen pink. Gingerly, I brushed it with my index finger. It jumped.

  When Oliver touched me I thought I would faint. The back of the chair in front of us supported me, otherwise I am sure I would have fallen. He pulled aside the crotch of my underwear and then with his free hand pushed himself through his shorts. I was riveted; I watched this pulsing, knotted arrow and completely forgot that it was attached to Oliver.
I watched the entire time while Oliver positioned himself and then lifted my hips and in an awful siren of pain I saw him disappear inside of me. Ellen did not tell me that this would hurt. I didn’t scream, though, or cry, because of all the people below. I kept my eyes wide and stared at the satin curtain of the back wall. Only then did Oliver say, “Have you ever done this?”

  When I shook my head I expected him to stop but by then it was too late. Not sure of what I was doing, I moved with him in a primitive sort of dance, a bump and grind, and I watched Oliver’s eyes close in disbelief. At the last moment he grabbed at my hips with the force of Atlas and pushed me off. He crushed me against his chest, but not before I saw him, red and slick, distended, quivering. He ejaculated in a fountain of heat, a sticky glue that matted our stomachs together and made a rude noise when I tried to sit back.

  I managed to walk out of the movie theater that night but I was sore for several days. I stopped asking Ellen about her dates with Roger. Oliver started to call me two or three times a day, when he knew perfectly well I was in class.

  We bought condoms and began to do this regularly, enough so that it stopped hurting, although I did not think I had had the orgasm that Ellen told me about. We did it in my dorm room, in Oliver’s car, on the grass near the Wellesley pond, in the locker room of the gym. It seemed the more illicit we got, the more fun we had. I saw Oliver every night, and every night we had sex. I started to tell Ellen about things we had done.

  One night Oliver did not make a move to take off my clothes. I asked him if he was feeling all right, and he told me yes, he just didn’t feel like doing it. That night I cried. I was certain this heralded the beginning of the end of our relationship. The next night I wore the dress that Oliver liked best, even though I knew we were going bowling. In the car that night, I didn’t give Oliver a chance to refuse me. I unzipped his fly as we were driving back to the dorm and made him pull over onto a dark sidestreet. No matter what I did, however, Oliver did not get involved. He was going through the motions. Finally I asked him what the problem was. “I just don’t feel like it tonight, Jane. Do we have to do this every night?”