Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

by Jodie Picoult

  “Mom.” Rebecca tugs on my T-shirt. Standing in front of me is a bookish man with a goatee and the thinnest eyebrows I have ever seen on a male.

  “I can’t believe this,” the man says. “I can’t believe I’m standing here face to face with you.”

  “Well, I haven’t done anything, really. I don’t work with whales at all.”

  The man smacks himself on the forehead. “I’m such a jerk. My name is Alfred Oppenbaum. It’s an honor-an honor!-to meet you.”

  “Do you know Oliver?”

  “ Know him? I worship him.” At this, Rebecca excuses herself and ducks behind a tank of zebra fish to laugh. “I’ve studied everything he’s done; read everything he’s written. I hope-” he leans forward to whisper, “-I hope to be as prominent a scientist as he.”

  Alfred Oppenbaum cannot be more than twenty, which tells me he has a long way to go. “Mr. Oppenbaum,” I say.

  “Call me Al.”

  “Al. I’ll be happy to mention your name to my husband.”

  “I’d like that. Tell him my favorite article is the one on the causality and sequence of themes in humpback songs.”

  I smile. “Well.” I hold out my hand.

  “You can’t leave yet. I’d love to show you the exhibit I’ve been creating.”

  He leads us into that panel of the wall that masquerades as a door. Behind are twenty-gallon tanks filled with crustaceans and fish. Several nets and small receptacles hang from the sides of each tank. From this angle we can also see the backs of the tanks that are displayed in the aquarium.

  Everyone wears white coats that turn faintly blue under fluorescent lights. As we pass by, Al whispers to his colleagues. They spin around, their mouths agape. “Mrs. Jones,” they all say, like a line of servants as royalty passes by. “Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones.”

  One of the bolder scientists steps forward, blocking my path. “Mrs. Jones, I’m Holly Hunnewell. And I wonder, do you know what it is Dr. Jones is researching now?”

  “I know that he was planning to track some humpbacks on their way from the East Coast of the States to the breeding grounds near Brazil,” I tell her, and there is a resounding, Oh. “I don’t know what he’s going to do with the research,” I say, apologetically. Who knew Oliver had such a following?

  Al leads us to a blinking set of tubes. “Doesn’t look like much, does it? It works under black light.” With a nod to a colleague, the room goes dark. Al pushes a button. All of a sudden his voice fills up the room, a commentary over the yips and churrs of humpback whales. The frame of a whale appears out of nowhere, neon blue, and unfurls its fluke. “In the 1970s Dr. Oliver Jones discovered that humpback whales have the capacity, like humans, to develop and pass down songs from generation to generation. With extensive research, Dr. Jones and other colleagues have used whale songs to identify different stocks of whales, have used the songs to track the movement of whales over the oceans of the world, and have speculated about the changes these songs undergo yearly. Although their meaning still remains a mystery, it has been discovered that only the male whales sing, leading the foremost researchers in the field to believe that the songs may be a way to woo mates.” Fade out of Al’s voice, crescendo the ratchets and oos of a whale.

  “Oliver would be proud,” I say finally.

  “Do you really think so, Mrs. Jones?” Al asks. “I mean, you’ll tell him about it?”

  “I’ll do more than that. I’ll tell him he has to fly here to see it himself.”

  Al almost passes out. Rebecca puts down a small box turtle she’s been tickling and follows me back into the exhibit hall.

  When we are safe in the dark aquarium, I sit down on one of the marble benches that spot the floor. “I can’t believe it. Even when your father isn’t here, he manages to ruin a perfectly good day.”

  “Oh, you’re just cranky. That was really kind of neat.”

  “I didn’t know people in the Midwest knew about whales. Or cared about whales.”

  She grins at me. “I can’t wait to tell Daddy.”

  “You’re going to have to wait!” I say, a little too sharply.

  Rebecca glares at me. “You did say I could call him.”

  “That was back then. When we were closer to California. He’s not home now anyway. He’s on his way to find us.”

  “How come you’re so sure?” Rebecca asks. “He would have found us by now, and you know it.”

  She’s right. I don’t know what is taking Oliver so long. Unless he is jumping the gun by flying to meet us in Massachusetts. “Maybe he went to South America after all.”

  “He wouldn’t do that, no matter what you think about him.”

  Rebecca sits back down and scuffs her sneakers on the edge of the bench. “I bet he misses you,” I say.

  Rebecca smiles at me. Behind her I can make out the silver fins of a paper-thin fish. Oliver would know its name. For whatever it is worth, Oliver would know the names of all of these.

  “I bet he misses you too,” Rebecca answers.

  44 OLIVER

  The first time I ever saw Jane I was waist deep in the murky water at Woods Hole. She did not know that I was observing her on the ferry pier, jackknifed over the rotten railing, with the fine madras print of her sundress blowing against the curve of her calves. She did not know that I witnessed her watching me; if she had known this, I’m sure she would have been mortified. She was very young, that much was evident. You could see it in the way she chewed her gum and traced patterns with the toe of her sandal. I was studying tide pools at the time, but she reminded me of a gastropod; a snail in particular-remarkably vulnerable if removed from its external casing. I was overwhelmed; I wanted to see her exposed from her shell.

  Because I wasn’t very good at those sorts of social overtures, I pretended that I hadn’t noticed her at all; that I hadn’t seen her glance back at me when she boarded the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. As simple as that I assumed she had tripped through my life, and I would never cross her again. But I stayed at the docks recording observations two days longer than was necessary, just in case.

  I knew that the purse that floated by me was hers before I even opened it. Still, I was shaking when I popped the snap and retrieved the dripping identification card. So, I thought, her name is Jane.

  At that time in my life I was driven by my goal: to dedicate myself to the study of marine biology. I had gone through an accelerated program at Harvard that graduated me in three years with a baccalaureate degree as well as a master’s, and at twenty, I was the youngest researcher at Woods Hole.

  I did not have many friends. I did not distinguish weekdays from weekends; it always surprised me when I saw the crowds at the Woods Hole ferry, embarking on their forty-eight hour holidays. I spent days on end in a blue wetsuit, reaching for starfish and mollusks and arthropods that lived in hollow pockets on the bottom of the ocean. I did not date.

  And so I was surprised that something as mundane as a laminated identification card from this slip of a girl could move me so violently. As I showered and dressed in preparation for the long drive to Newton, I kept track of the odd physical reactions I was undergoing. Palpitations. Perspiration. Nausea. Vertigo.

  The Liptons lived on Commonwealth Avenue in Newton, in one of the smallest mansions that in today’s market sell for several million dollars. I pulled into the driveway and rang the doorbell, which roared like a lion. I was expecting a maid, but Mary Lipton herself answered the door- Jane’s mother, I assumed, remembering her from the pier. She was a small, fragile woman with auburn hair wrapped into a French knot. Although it was July, she was wearing a wool sweater. “Yes?” she said.

  It took me several minutes to remember the English language. “Oliver Jones,” I said. “I’m with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.” I assumed, incorrectly, that having a title would award me a certain amount of prestige in a situation like this. “I found this purse and thought I would return it.”

  Mary Lipton took her daugh
ter’s purse and turned it over in her small hands. “I see,” she said, measuring her words. “You drove all the way up here?”

  “I was passing through.”

  She smiled then. “Won’t you come in, Mr. Jones,” she said. “The children are in the backyard.”

  She led me through the parlor: carved oak paneling bordering the marble floor, a fresco on the ceiling. On impulse I turned around and looked back at the door; a large stained glass window filtered diamonds of light onto the cool marble. I had grown up in Wellfleet, on the Cape, in a home that was large and expensive by the standards of the summer tourists, but that could not hold a candle to Bostonian finery such as this. As we walked, Mary drilled me on my breeding, my profession, and my education. She led me past a library, a sitting room, and through French doors into the backyard.

  We stopped on the porch, which overlooked a small hill of grass that shaded into a thicker forest behind. Two bright red towels stained the lawn like blood. A boy and a girl sat upon them: Jane and, presumably, Jane’s brother. They looked up, almost instinctively, when their mother approached the wooden railing. Jane was wearing a bikini, yellow. She pulled a T-shirt on and ran up to the porch.

  “Mr. Jones brought back your purse,” Mary said.

  “How kind of you,” Jane replied, as if she had practiced the phrase.

  I held out my hand. “Please, call me Oliver.”

  “Oliver, then,” Jane said, laughing a little. “Can you stay a while?” When she laughed, her eyes brightened. They were a remarkable color, like a cat’s.

  Mary Lipton called to the boy on the lawn. “Joley, help me get some lemonade.”

  The boy came closer, and even at eleven he was easily the best-looking male I’d ever seen. He had thick hair and a square jaw, a quick smile. “Lemonade,” he said, brushing Jane as he passed by us. “Like she can’t carry it herself.”

  “I can stay a little while,” I said. “I have to get back to the Cape.”

  “You work there?”

  It returned, the vertigo. I leaned against the cool wood of the porch. “I’m a marine biologist.”

  “Wow. I’m in high school.”

  Perhaps if I had known better I should have ended it then and there. Age differentials tend to become less pronounced as one grows older, but during adolescence, five and a half years is an entire lifetime. I saw Jane looking at me, well, like I was old. As if her eyes had played a trick on her at Woods Hole; as if she had been seeing through a haze someone who turned out to be not at all what she had expected. “I’m twenty,” I said, hoping to make her understand.

  She relaxed, or at least I perceived her relaxing. “I see.”

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I was not accustomed to interfacing with people; I spent most of my time beneath the surface of the ocean. But Jane drew me out. “What were you doing at the ferry dock?”

  So I told her about tide pools, about the hearty crustaceans that survive such adverse living conditions. I told her I was going to study them for several years, and write my dissertation. “And then what?” she asked.

  “And then what?” I had never even considered what might happen after. So much hinged on that final step.

  “Will you move to something else? I don’t know, flounder, or swordfish, or dolphins maybe?” She grinned at me. “I like dolphins. I mean, I don’t know anything about them, but they always look like they’re smiling.”

  “So do you,” I blurted out, and then closed my eyes. Stupid, stupid, Oliver. I opened one eye at a time, but Jane was still there, waiting for me to answer her question. “I don’t really know yet. Maybe,” I said, “I’ll study dolphins.”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” I repeated, as if my fate had been settled. “I have to go now, but I’d like to see you again. I’d like to go out sometime.”

  Jane blushed. “I’d like that,” she said.

  At those words, I felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted. It was similar to the euphoria I had experienced when, as an undergraduate, my first scholarly article had been published. The significant difference was: that time, the euphoria left me pondering me -where I would go from here? Now, as high-spirited as I felt, all I could think about was Jane Lipton.

  A man came out to the porch. Of course I know better now but back then I attributed to imagination my sense of Jane stiffening. “Jones?” The man said, a big, cavernous voice. “Alexander Lipton. Wanted to thank you for bringing back Jane’s wallet.”

  “Purse,” Jane whispered. “It’s a purse.”

  “It was nothing,” I said, shaking her father’s hand.

  He was a large, overbearing man with tanned skin and narrow eyes. His eyes, in fact, disturbed me even then: jet black. I could not see where the iris ended and the pupil began. He was dressed for golf. He walked over to Jane and put his arm around her. “We don’t know what to do with our Jane,” he said.

  Jane squirmed out of her father’s embrace and murmured something about seeing what had happened to the lemonade. She opened the door to the house so quietly it didn’t even swing on its hinges. She left me outside, alone with her father.

  “You listen to me, Jones,” Alexander Lipton said. His face metamorphosed into that of a hard-line criminal lawyer, unwilling to give an inch. “When Jane turned fifteen I told her she could date whomever she’d like. If she likes you, that’s her business. But if you do anything to hurt my daughter, I swear I’ll string you by the balls from the Old North Church. I know your kind-I was a Harvard man, too-and if you so much as lay a hand on her before she turns seventeen, let’s just say I’ll make your life miserable.”

  I thought, this man is psychotic. He doesn’t even know me. And then, as if it were a passing thunderstorm, Alexander Lipton’s face softened into that of a middle-aged man of means. “My wife tells me you’re a marine biologist.”

  Before I had a chance to answer, Jane and her mother came through the door with a tray of glasses and an icy pitcher of lemonade. Jane poured and Mary handed out a glass to each of us. Alexander Lipton drank his lemonade in a single chugging gulp and as soon as he was finished, his wife was at his side to relieve him of the glass. He excused himself and left, and Mary followed behind him.

  I watched Jane drink. She held the glass with both hands, like a child. I waited until she was done and then repeated that I really had to leave.

  Jane walked me to the car. We stood in front of the old Buick for a moment, letting the sun beat onto our scalps. Jane turned to me. “I threw my purse into the water on purpose.”

  “I know,” I admitted.

  Before I got into the car I asked if I could kiss her goodbye. When she acquiesced I took her face in my hands, the first time I ever touched her. Her skin sprang back at my touch, slightly greasy with suntan oil. Jane closed her eyes and tilted her head back, waiting. She smelled of cocoa butter and honest perspiration. There was nothing I wanted more than to kiss her, but I kept hearing the voice of her father. I smiled at my good fortune; and, thinking I had all the time in the world, I pressed my lips against Jane’s forehead.

  45 JANE

  Dear Joley-

  If Daddy could see me now. I spent the morning with Rebecca at the Indianapolis Speedway, at an auto museum filled with Nascars and racing paraphernalia. Do you remember when we used to watch all five hundred laps with him, every year? I never understood what it was that made auto racing such a biggie for him-it’s not like he ever tried the sport himself. He told me once when I was older that it was the absolute speed of it all. I liked to watch for crashes, like you. I liked the way there’d be a huge explosion on the track and billows of ebony smoke, and the other cars would just keep a straight course and head right for the spin, into this sort of black box, and they’d come out okay.

  I practically had to drag Rebecca onto a bus that drove right along the speedway. I closed my eyes, and I tried to imagine that speed that enchanted Daddy. It wasn’t easy, lumbering along at 45 mph, on a track that’s
meant for 220 mph. When we got off the bus, we were each handed a card signed by the track president: “I hereby certify that the bearer of this ticket has completed one lap around the Indianapolis ‘500’ Mile Speedway.” I laughed. It isn’t much, you know? But Daddy would have hung it over his desk, on the SAE fraternity bulletin board Mama was always trying to take down.

  This is the best part, though: after we got that card, I thought about all the things I could do with it. I certainly wouldn’t hang it up on the refrigerator, or on any bulletin board, and I didn’t care enough to keep it in my wallet. I considered taking it to Daddy’s grave when I got to Massachusetts. And no sooner had I thought that very thought, than my fingers just released the card-just let go, like they belonged to someone else’s body-and the wind carried the card up to the clouds. It was a beautiful day, today, too-those big puffy clouds with ironed-flat bottoms, like you were looking at them from underneath a glass table where they had been arranged. The card crept higher and higher towards the sun, and when I realized I wasn’t going to see it again, I started to smile.

  I don’t know why I felt it was important to tell you this; I suppose this letter is part-this and part-apology for the way I sounded when I called you the other day. Sometimes I act like it’s your fault Daddy never went after you, and I’m the martyr. Maybe it’s the way I try to make sense of it.

  There are things that happened that I’ve never told you about, at least not in so many words, that I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. And there was a reason I never did tell you. When he started to come into my room at night, even though it was only once a month or so, I thought I was going crazy. Daddy was so incredibly nice to me when it was all happening. He told me over and over what a good girl I was, and I believed him. Still, when he turned the doorknob my fingers would curl around the edges of my mattress and my blood would run thick. It got to a point where the only way I could let him do the things he did was by pretending this wasn’t me at all. I would pretend to be in some other part of the room, like a corner or a closet. I’d watch. I could see everything that happened, which wasn’t nearly as bad.