Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

by Jodie Picoult

  He jumps off the ladder and folds me into his arms. “How are you doing,” he whispers into my neck.

  I blink back tears. I’ve waited so long.

  Joley holds me at arm’s length, passing his eyes gently over my face and my shoulders and my hips. Still holding onto one of my hands, he walks over to Rebecca. “Looks like you survived the trip,” he says, and kisses her on the forehead. She bends in close, like she is receiving a benediction. He grins at Sam and Hadley. “I assume you’ve all met.”

  “Unfortunately,” I murmur. Sam glowers at me, and Joley looks back and forth between us but neither of us will say a thing.

  Joley claps his hands together and locks his fingers. “Well, it’s great that you’re here. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

  Sam, in a stroke of unexpected kindness, gives Joley the afternoon off. We stand in front of each other, just staring, until everyone else disappears. My baby brother, I think. What would I do without him?

  Joley walks me over to a fat stunted tree with low branches. From the looks of the tree, which is blackened and leafless, it is not going to make it. “I’m doing my best,” he says, “but you’re right. I’m not sure about this one at all.” He straddles one of the bent arms and pats the space beside him for me to do the same. We look at each other and both begin to talk at the same time. We laugh. “Where are we going to start?” Joley says.

  “We could start with you. I want to thank you for getting me here.” I smile, thinking about his reflective letters, on yellow ruled paper, words written without margins, precipitous, as if they would have fallen right off the page without the adhesive structure of sentence. “I certainly couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t have to. You look great. You’re prettier than you’ve ever been.”

  “Oh, that’s a crock,” I say, but Joley shakes his head.

  “I mean it.” He smiles at me, and he holds one of my hands, kneading it with his fingers as if that is the way to start resuscitation.

  “Are you happy here?” I ask.

  “Look at the place, Jane! It’s like God just dropped down this gorgeous hill and lake, and I have the good fortune to work here. If you can call this work. I fix the unfixable. I bring trees back from the dead.” He looks into my eyes. “I’ve become mythic. The god of second chances.”

  I laugh. “Sounds right up your alley. No wonder I’m here.”

  “Which brings us to you.” Joley looks at me, waiting for me to start talking.

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Start anywhere,” Joley says. “It’ll come to center.”

  “I can tell you this.” A nervous laugh. “I didn’t leave because I had thought long and hard about it. I left on impulse. Just like that.” I snap my fingers. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

  “What made you hit Oliver, then?” Joley smiles. “Don’t get me wrong. Not that I don’t think it was a wonderful idea.”

  “You know the textbook answer to that. Abused child grows up to be an abuser herself. I’ve been thinking so much about Daddy lately. It’s classic, isn’t it? The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children?”

  Joley stretches my hand out on the leg of his jeans. “Do you think he’s on his way here?”

  “I give him ten days at most.” I twirl my wedding band, which I am still wearing, to my own surprise. “Unless of course he just decided to take off to South America like he had planned. In which case I get a grace period of a month.”

  “I hate to admit it myself, but you used to love him.”

  Joley comes to the heart of the matter faster than anyone I know. “I loved the idea of being in love with him,” I say, “but that can be a poor substitute for a life.” I stare at my brother. “I already told you this isn’t about Oliver. It’s about me. I just snapped when we were having that fight. I mean, we were arguing about whether shoe boxes or files should go in my closet. That doesn’t ruin a marriage.” I look into my lap. “I’m scared. I’ve spent fifteen years cutting up fruit the way Oliver likes it, folding his laundry, wiping clean his messes. I’ve done everything that I was supposed to. I don’t know what made me hit him that day. Maybe it was just a way out.”

  “Is that what you’ve been looking for?”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for.” I sigh. “I got married young. I had a baby young. So when people asked me who I was, I’d answer by saying ‘a wife,’ or ‘a mother.’ I can’t tell you at all what I’m like, what Jane is like.”

  Joley’s eyes do not leave my face. “What is it you want?”

  I close my eyes, and try to picture it. “Oh, Joley,” I say, “I’ll go home and be the ideal wife, the perfect mother. I’ll do everything I’ve been doing and I won’t ever bring this up again. I’ll live the most ordinary life there ever was, just as long as you promise me that I’ll get five minutes of wonderful before it’s all over.”

  50 SAM

  From the beginning there’s friction. I know she’s coming, but I’m not looking forward to it, and sure enough she shows up just when I’m in the middle of shearing. So I see her get out of the car with the little girl, but I pretend I haven’t heard her drive up. I am working the ram when she comes into the pen. I can’t tell much about her because I am facing the sheep, except that she has pretty good legs. I try to concentrate on running straight rows of fleece, on peeling the wool back from the sheep’s side like filleting a bass. Good wool is seventy-five cents per pound these days, belly wool goes for something cheaper. When my mother was alive she’d card and spin it, and then knit something out of it: a sweater, an afghan. But these days we just sell the fleece to the town pool. From time to time, I’ll buy one of the blankets they weave from everyone’s sheep.

  She’s stepping around on the hay like it’s a mine field. For Christ’s sake, it’s just manure. Half the vegetables she eats at the supermarket have probably been mulched with the stuff. She asks me if I know Joley.

  Maybe I shouldn’t give her such a hard time. After all, I don’t really know her. What I’m going on is an assumption. Still, I can’t resist. Just because I want to watch her out of her element, I ask her to help me get the next ewe, and she follows me into the barn. I’m figuring on a good laugh, and then I’ll tell her who I am.

  She follows my actions, digging into the fleece like she is knotting her fingers into a net, and we walk slowly, hunched, with the sheep between us. She follows me out to the ledge where I’ve been doing the shearing. I steal a look at her, then, impressed. She isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, at least. She has a high forehead and a little nose that goes up at the end, like it’s too small for her face. I wouldn’t call her a knockout, but she’s all right. In a fresh, just-washed way. Of course, I’m not seeing her all done up. Back where she’s from, she probably wears all that makeup and chunky jewelry and suits with crazy angles.

  I have to keep myself from smiling: she’s doing a good job. I let go of the sheep to grab the razor and all of a sudden the ewe bolts, heading straight for the girl. “What are you doing!” I yell, the first thing that comes to mind. “Catch her!”

  The girl-Rebecca, that’s her name-dives for the sheep but it runs in the opposite direction. I turn to Joley’s sister. I absolutely can’t believe someone would be stupid enough to let go of a sheep before shearing.

  “I thought it would just stay put,” she says.

  All it takes is common sense, for God’s sake. She looks up at me with this apologetic gaze and when she sees that isn’t going to work she runs after the sheep herself. She lunges for the ewe, but doesn’t see the manure heaped onto the hay. Naturally, she falls, smack in the middle of it.

  I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen, honest. I expected to have a little fun with her, make the ol’ Newton girl see what a working farm is really like, and then I was going to take her down to Joley. But now that it’s happened, really, it’s a riot. To keep myself from laughing, I catc
h the sheep and throw all my attention into shearing her. I rub the shears up the belly, across the hinds, between the legs, around the neck. I use my legs and knees to pin her on her side while I run the shears over her flanks, letting the wool roll off like a carpet of snow. It’s perfect, from the inside, white with only a few spots of lanolin. It springs back at the touch, crimped with natural oils from the skin. In a few minutes when I am finished with the sheep, I slap her lightly on her hind leg. She springs up, looking back at me once, a little angry. She bolts away, down into the field with the other sheep.

  I walk over to where Joley’s sister is rubbing her back up against the split rail. She’s doing everything she can to keep from touching the stuff. That does it for me; I laugh in her face. She smells awful; even her hair is encrusted with manure. “Tough break,” I say. What I really mean is: I’m sorry.

  She looks so out of place and incredibly miserable that I rediscover my conscience. I’m about to tell her who I am, and how I didn’t really mean for this to happen, when she undergoes this transformation. It’s a physical thing-her shoulders square up and her chin lifts and her eyes get very dark. All of a sudden she has this attitude. “I’m sure this isn’t appropriate behavior for a field hand,” she tells me. “When I tell Joley about this, he’ll report you to the person who runs the place.”

  “I’m not too worried about that,” I say dryly and I tell her who I am. I hold out my hand, and then on second thought, take it back. The girl introduces herself. She’s laughing, which makes me think she’ll turn out all right. “Come on,” I say. “You can get cleaned up at the Big House.”

  I show them their rooms, figuring it’s the least I can do after that fiasco, and tell Jane she’s welcome to the clothes my mother left in her closet. They’ll be big, but she can figure it out. She near about slams the bedroom door in my face, and I walk downstairs to Rebecca again, who’s peeking into each of the drawers of an antique apothecary chest that came from my mother’s mother. “Nothing in there,” I say, catching her in the act.

  She jumps a few feet into the air. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to be doing that.”

  “Sure you did. It’s okay. This is your house now. For a while, anyways.” I pull open one of the drawers myself, and take out an Indian head penny, 1888. I wonder if she knows that means good luck.

  Rebecca starts to wander into the other rooms: the parlor and the blue tiled kitchen and the library, with wall-to-wall books, mostly on exotic places, that I’ve picked up over the years. “Wow,” she says, lifting a coffeetable book on the Canadian Rockies. “You’ve been to all these places?”

  I walk into the library behind her. “You know what a mental traveler is?”

  “It’s what I was before this summer.” She smiles at me, real open, like she’s got absolutely nothing to hide. I like her.

  “I’m just going to sit outside. You can check out anything you’d like.” I leave her staring at an antique sextant propped over the mantel. “It’s for navigation,” I say, on my way out. She moves closer after I turn away, the old floorboards sigh under her weight.

  It’s warm out, but not oppressive: it’s been that kind of a summer. I stare at my watch, impatient, which isn’t fair. It’s only been about four minutes since I left Joley’s sister, and she has to wash off anyway, and when you get right down to it it’s my fault she’s filthy. I glance over the orchard, which you can pretty much see in total from the Big House, trying to find Joley or Hadley or someone else who can take them off my hands. I’m not much good with visitors; I never know what to say. Especially in this case; I don’t expect a California woman to understand my life any more than I could make heads or tails of hers. My eyes run over the roads that separate the different stocks in the orchard, noticing which groups of trees need to be sprayed, which need to be pruned. I’m staring at these even rows, but I keep seeing her. Standing in the closet, pulling off her shirt. I jam my hands into my pockets and start to whistle.

  When she comes downstairs, she’s wearing my mom’s madras sundress. It’s all these crazy peach colors, like a hot muggy sunset, and Dad gave her so much trouble about it being an eyesore she left it behind when she moved. It’s true, it looked too showy across her wide hips, but on Joley’s sister it’s almost elegant. It pinches at the waist where she’s wrapped it with an old handkerchief-can that possibly fit around her? Her arms, which are kind of thin for my tastes, peek out pale from the too-big cap sleeves. And those peach colors show up again in her cheeks, which makes it all seem to match.

  She’s holding all the dirty clothes. “What should I do with these?”

  My voice is not my own. It’s hoarse and it comes out uneven. “Wash them,” I say, and I turn and walk down the path before she notices the way I sound.

  They catch up quick enough, and I try to keep from holding a conversation by telling them about the orchard. As Lake Boon comes into view at the foot of the orchard, I tell Rebecca it’s great for swimming, and just in case she fishes, I let her know there’s bass. I catch Jane looking around at the thick older trees in this section of the orchard-the McIntosh stock-and then taking note of the pond. When I walk past her I can smell lemons and fresh sheets. Her skin, even this close, reminds me of the inner edge of a crab apple blossom, flawless.

  “Hadley!” I say. He steps off a ladder behind a tree he’s been pruning.-When I introduce him, he does everything I didn’t do at the barn. He takes Jane’s hand and pumps it up and down; he dips his head towards Rebecca. And then he gives me this look, like he knows right there and then he’s already outdone me.

  He immediately drops behind to talk to Rebecca-it figures, Hadley’s a pretty quick judge of character-leaving me to hold a conversation with Jane. I think about just walking the next ten acres without saying a word, but I’ve been rude enough today. Well, Sam, I tell myself, they’ve just come from across the country. Surely you can think of something pertaining to that. “So,” I say, “I hear you’ve done quite a bit of traveling.”

  She jumps, just like Rebecca did when I caught her looking in the apothecary chest. “Yes,” she says, sort of guarded. “All across the country.” She looks at me as if she wants me to evaluate what she’s said, and then that look comes over her again, that haughty I’m-leagues-beyond-you look. “Of course I’ve also been to Europe and South America with my . . . my husband’s research.” That’s right, Joley’s told me about the whale guy, and why Jane left in the first place. “Why?” she asks, “Do you travel?”

  I smile and tell her I’ve gone all over the place, at least in spirit. But I can’t tell what she thinks of that, until she asks me flat out why I don’t just take a real trip. I try to explain why running an orchard is different from running any other business, but she doesn’t understand. Not that I’d expected her to.

  “Where would you really like to go?” she asks, and right away I have an answer. I’d love to go to Tibet, just because of what I could bring back. I know technically it takes months to import agriculture products, and I’d never clear customs with a tree, but if I got a small enough series of grafts I could hide them in my luggage without a problem. Can you imagine what it would be like to bring back an original Spitzenburg, or an even older stock, and make it come alive again?

  I realize I’ve been doing way too much talking, and I turn to find her staring right at me. I’m caught off guard, and like an idiot, I say the first thing that pops into my mind. “Joley tells me you’ve run away from home.”

  All the blood goes out of her cheeks, I swear. “Joley told you that?”

  I mention I think it had something to do with her husband. I don’t mean anything by it, but her eyes get violent, all the light parts filling in black like a cougar’s. She straightens up and tells me it’s none of my business.

  God, she has some attitude. It’s not like I’ve mentioned some big secret. I’m just retelling what her own brother told me. If she wants to get all pissy, she should take it out on Joley, not me.

/>   I don’t have to take this, not on my own land. I should have known better to begin with. Nothing’s changed between the likes of her and the likes of me: certain trees just cannot be grafted; certain life-styles just do not mix.

  She folds her arms across her chest. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, ” I say, almost hollering now. “Let’s just leave it at that. You want to come here to visit your brother, that’s fine. You want to stay a while, okay.” I can feel the sweat starting to run down the sides of my face. “Let’s just say I’ll do my thing, and you can do yours.”

  She jerks her head, so a strand of her ponytail lands across her mouth. “Fine.”

  “Fine.” That settles it. I have a policy with Joley and Hadley: whoever they want to bring up here as a visitor is their business, and they’re more than welcome. So if Joley wants his sister to stay a while, I’m not going to cross him. But I’m sure as hell not going to babysit her.

  “I want to know why you didn’t help me up back there.”

  “In the manure?” I say, and then I grin, satisfied. Because of all the times your friends pointed at me when I was in high school. Because of that party, where I was just a kid and a girl just like you was using me. Because I could look but I wasn’t allowed to touch. “Because,” I tell her, “I knew exactly who you were.”

  Triumphant, I walk off in the direction of the commercial section. Then I hear her voice, fluted like a cardinal’s. “Joley!” she cries. “It’s Joley!”

  It’s remarkable to watch them from this distance, this guy I’ve come to trust like a brother and this woman who has done nothing but give me grief from the moment she’s arrived. Joley doesn’t hear her at first. He’s got his hands pressed around a tree he’s been grafting; his head bent almost reverently, willing it to live. A second later, when he lifts his head in that way he has, kind of dazed, he sees Jane and jumps off the high rungs of the ladder to meet her. He picks her up and swings her around and she wraps her arms around his neck and clings to him like she’s been drowning and just found a sure call for safety. I’ve never seen two people so different fit together so perfect.