Eye of the Whale

by Douglas Carlton Abrams

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Six months later

  September 5

  Russell Senate Office Building

  Washington, D.C.

  ELIZABETH LOOKED at her very pregnant belly. Through everything she had endured at the hands of Skilling and in the freezing ocean with the shark, her baby had been well protected in its own watery world. Now, at thirty-six weeks, the only place that Elizabeth wanted to be was in a warm bath where her body was buoyed up from the unrelenting weight of gravity.

  How did I let Connie talk me into this? she wondered as she glanced up at the dark wood-paneled walls of the congressional hearing room. Frank was being surprisingly supportive and had even agreed to accompany her. He’d said he could deliver the baby on the plane if necessary. Elizabeth rocked from side to side in the hard wooden chair, trying to get comfortable, knowing that the ligaments of her pelvis were opening and the bones were softening for the approaching birth.

  Although they were in the largest hearing room in the Russell Building, it was already full, and a crowd of people spilled out the door into the hall. The wooden table reserved for press was full, and a bank of television cameras was arrayed in the back. Connie had told her that many would be there for her, insisting that she brought some supposed celebrity status, but Elizabeth knew that environmental issues were generating their own interest.

  Professor Ginsburg must have seen the nervousness on her face, because she patted Elizabeth on the arm and smiled warmly. Elizabeth wondered whether she should really say it the way she had planned. It was provocative, but it would get the senators’ attention. Half a dozen gray-haired men were taking their seats around the long U-shaped wooden table. In the middle was the sole female senator. As the chair of the committee, she exuded confidence and professionalism. She looked over her reading glasses at Elizabeth and smiled. The senator was from California and had invited her to testify after the whale rescue. She was also a mother of two and was perhaps empathizing with Elizabeth’s near-term discomfort.

  To Elizabeth’s side was a large screen on which she would show graphs of the rise in birth defects and childhood cancer, as well as the precipitous decline in fertility among men and women. The chairwoman called the meeting to order and invited Elizabeth to address the committee.

  Elizabeth spoke into the microphone to make sure everyone could hear her as she began her testimony. “Every man in this room is half the man his grandfather was.” There was a murmur of surprise and shock. “As you can see on this chart, sperm counts of men in the United States and twenty other countries have fallen over the last half century—by as much as 50 percent.” Elizabeth turned to the chairwoman. “Senator, as women, we are equally if not more affected by environmental pollution. As just one example, no matter what we eat or where we live, our breast milk will pass on to our children a frightening array of toxins.” Elizabeth presented a number of the facts that she had discovered, but celebrity status or not, she was eager to turn the microphone over to Dr. Ginsburg. “I’d like—”

  “Isn’t some level of environmental pollution,” one of the senators asked, “an inevitable part of progress? It could take generations to know if there are lasting effects.”

  “We don’t have generations to wait, Senator. Humans run the risk of becoming the newest species on the endangered animals list.”

  “Are you saying this is about extinction?”

  “Like the dinosaur…and the dodo bird,” Elizabeth said as a chuckle fluttered around the room. “In truth, Senator, this is about more than extinction. This is about species extermination, including our own. To explain these threats more fully, I’d like to introduce Dr. Gladys Ginsburg.” Elizabeth began to get up.

  “One more thing, Dr. McKay, before we let you go.” It was the female senator from California again. “I’d like to know if you really think that you were able to communicate with the whale—with Apollo?”

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. The room was very quiet as everyone eagerly awaited her answer. “I wish I knew, Senator. As a scientist, I must say that any hypothesis about the cause of the whale’s entrapment and its decision to swim back out to sea would be purely speculative.”

  “Do you believe that the whale was truly telling us that our children are in danger?”

  “Whether we hear the warning from Apollo or from Dr. Ginsburg, Senator, the dangers we face are the same.”

  “Thank you, Dr. McKay.”

  Elizabeth decided not to mention that she was still not yet a Ph.D. She got up, using both arms of the chair to assist her.

  Professor Ginsburg began by saying, “I would like to publicly thank Elizabeth McKay. We might never have gotten this hearing if it hadn’t been for her and that charismatic whale.”

  “Dr. Ginsburg, what is it that you most want the committee to know?” asked the chairwoman.

  “I want to begin with the good news, Senator. So many of the diseases that plague our world and that we thought were inevitable are actually environmental illnesses that are in fact preventable. Today’s epidemics include hormone-related cancers such as breast and prostate cancer, autoimmune disorders, learning disabilities, autism, degenerative diseases, preterm birth, obesity and diabetes, asthma, and infertility. As we stop putting these endocrine disruptors and other toxins into our environment, we will be able to save millions of men, women, and children from untold amounts of suffering.”

  As Professor Ginsburg continued her testimony, Elizabeth saw Professor Maddings by the door. He had come to be there for her and was beaming like a proud parent. She made her way toward him through the crowd, and together they slipped out of the hearing room.

  “Brilliant, my dear,” he said. “You were absolutely brilliant. And look at you.” He gestured toward her full belly.

  Elizabeth smiled. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for all the blue whales in the world. I’m just glad to see you in one piece after what you’ve been through. Now, tell me, what I don’t understand is why the whalers and that environmental consortium were working together.”

  “They weren’t. Their interests just aligned, and both were willing to pay Skilling for his help. He had friends in all the wrong places.”

  “Well, that Skilling got his just deserts,” Maddings said with satisfaction.

  Skilling was not the only one who had. Elizabeth knew that the Japanese government was launching a formal investigation into the toxicity of whale meat and those who might have attempted to cover it up. The Environmental Stewardship Consortium had been disbanded, but Bruce Wood’s article had helped launch a class-action lawsuit against the companies responsible for setting it up, and their collective stock value had been cut in half by negative press. One of Frank’s patients, a former chemical company executive, was the star witness for the prosecution.

  “And that white shark,” Maddings continued, “must have been quite a monster.”

  Mother’s breach attack flashed to mind—the power, the violence, and the grace. “No, not a monster,” she corrected. “Really, just another hungry mother.”

  Frank opened the hearing room door, having managed to elbow his way through the thick crowd. He hugged Elizabeth over her big waist and kissed her on the lips. Frank shook Maddings’s hand warmly.

  “I want to tell you both the good news,” Maddings said.

  “Good news?” Elizabeth asked. Frank put his arm around Elizabeth, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

  Maddings visibly struggled to contain his excitement as he clasped his hands together in triumph, grinning from ear to ear. “I got a call from the president of our university, who saw you on the telly and then called me. I was telling him about you, and he has some donors who will fund a state-of-the-art cetacean language research vessel for you.”

  “A boat?”

  “A hundred-foot one, I should think. You could travel all over the world,” Maddings said enthusiastically, clearly not noticing Elizabeth’s downcast eyes. �
��And study the whales and the dolphins…”

  She considered this offer of a lifetime, which would mean never being home, and then put her hand on her belly. “Maybe the donor would buy a fifteen-foot wooden boat for my research assistant in the Caribbean, and you could just give me back my old office at Woods Hole.”

  Maddings gazed at her in confusion, then must have noticed her head on her husband’s shoulder. He finally understood Elizabeth’s hesitation. “Maybe I can talk him into giving the money for a research lab for you at Woods Hole.”

  “You are forgetting that I don’t yet have a Ph.D.”

  “I think I can talk the university into accepting the dissertation you’ve written. Perhaps we can consider that you’ve been on suspended leave. They do these things for pregnant mothers.”

  Elizabeth’s face lit up. “I need to change some of my conclusions and can send it off to you before the baby is born.”

  “We’ll accept it if I have to sign as all three members of your committee!”

  Elizabeth embraced him. As they separated, her hands came to rest, as they often now did, on her belly, which stuck out like a comfortable armrest. The smile evaporated from her face as she had what she was sure was a Braxton Hicks contraction. There were still four weeks to go.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Four weeks later

  Sacramento

  THE HOSPITAL had obviously tried to make the birthing room look less sterile, but had only partly succeeded. There was a cushioned green slide rocker and a maroon sleeping chair. Even the bed was wide and had a headboard, like in a hotel. The problem was that everything did need to be sterile. Birth was messy and potentially dangerous, and only so many of the risks could be controlled.

  Elizabeth sat up on the white sheets, which were spotted with red drops where the blood of her baby’s birth had seeped through the gauze pads. On the counter was the pink basin where the baby had been washed. Elizabeth was propped up on several pillows, and to her side was a rolling tray table with a plate of cold scrambled eggs and potatoes. She poked the yellow mound unenthusiastically with a fork.

  Frank was lying next to her on the bed, and in his arms he cradled their tiny baby girl, Hope. He was gazing down at her rose lips, tiny nose, and red, puffy cheeks that peeked out from under a yellow infant hat.

  The newborn looked up at him with blinking blue eyes that were just beginning to adjust to the shocking brightness of life. Frank was enraptured with his daughter as he smiled at her and gently stroked each of her ten wrinkled, inch-long fingers and ten even tinier toes.

  Hope let out a thin, reedy cry, and Frank lifted the baby into Elizabeth’s arms and toward her mother’s swollen pink nipple. Hope latched on with a power so intense that Elizabeth gasped. Her breast felt warm, and a primal feeling of contentment flooded through her body.

  Frank fell asleep, his head resting on a pillow. Elizabeth’s familiar longing for her mother to be there began to ache in her chest, but this time she realized that in some irreducible and immeasurable way, her mother was there, in a long cellular line of motherhood. It was at that moment, with her child at her breast, that she felt the bond of sacrifice and surrender linking a thousand generations before her. If humans were lucky and wise, it would continue for thousands of generations more. It was not just a cell line from human mother to human mother; it was countless threads of mothers in countless species, a tapestry of intricately woven and shimmering life.

  Hope’s eyelids began to close, leaving a tiny slit of sight. Her rhythmic sucking became softer, and her tremulous lower lip twitched. As she dozed off, she startled herself awake and began to suck all the more for fear of losing the nipple.

  Elizabeth closed her own eyes and imagined the branching mammary glands like tributaries to a stream, gathering sustenance from her body. She felt like she was pouring love into her child. Every drop of this life-sustaining serum was distilled from her cells and everything that had made its way into her body through the air she breathed, the water she drank, and the food she ate. A new terror and protectiveness filled her, squeezing out the contentment. How could she protect her child? Why did she have to wonder what toxins would accompany her love and nourishment?

  Hope wormed her arm out of the swaddling blanket and rested her palm on her mother’s chest. Elizabeth thought about how much had been lost to her daughter and how much more there still was to lose. It was all so terribly fragile, like the infant in her arms, and she realized for the first time that what might be lost was not just a species, or hundreds of species, or even human life, but the very possibility of motherhood.

  And fatherhood.

  And family.

  Her mother and father, despite death, despite distance, despite everything, had given her the greatest gift possible—life—in its endless cycle of destruction and restoration, and with all its embracing kindnesses and inevitable cruelties. And she wanted it for her daughter and her daughter’s daughter and for every child and every creature that longs for a chance to live. Elizabeth felt like the door of a cage that had surrounded her heart was being pried open by Hope’s delicate, nursing lips.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her desire to protect her daughter and the world that would feed her, hold her, and sustain her came not from guilt or fear but from love. She now understood that life did not need saving—it needed loving—and this, to her amazement, she knew how to do.

  Elizabeth looked down through her tear-kissed eyes at the precious world of life and longing she held in her arms: Hope.

  THERE WAS A KNOCK at the door. It was Connie, dressed in black boots, miniskirt, and red sweater. She smiled at Elizabeth but seemed nervous, since she knew nothing about hospitals, or birthing wards, or motherhood. When she saw Hope in Elizabeth’s arms, she smiled and bit her lip. Embarrassed, she held out a gift that she hadn’t had a chance to wrap. It was a sing-along children’s cassette player with a built-in microphone.

  “She can start making sound recordings as soon as she’s able to press the buttons,” Connie said. Elizabeth laughed gently, not wanting to wake Hope. Frank was still sleeping soundly, exhausted from the all-night birth.

  “Dr. Lombardi.” Dorothy, in her purple scrubs, was at the door. Frank quickly blinked himself awake. How many times, Elizabeth thought, had Frank been wrenched from sleep to help someone’s child? “I’m sorry to interrupt the holy family, but there’s a preemie on a vent in the NICU who’s in distress.”

  “Can’t the man have a little time with his own baby?” Connie demanded. “Is he the only doctor in the entire hospital?”

  Dorothy glared back at Connie as she said to Frank, “I paged Dr. Lavorsky and Dr. Ramanujan, but no one’s answering.”

  Frank looked at Elizabeth, not wanting to abandon her or their baby, but he knew what he needed to do. Elizabeth sensed his hesitation and said, “It could have been ours.”

  “You’re right,” Frank said as he got up from the bed. Elizabeth thought of the whales’ song and wondered if Frank was thinking about it, too. At the door, Frank said, “I won’t be long.”

  Elizabeth smiled, at peace.

  Connie put a lullaby tape into the children’s cassette player. The sounds that filled the room were of violins and cellos accompanied by the ancient and mysterious calls of whale song.

  OUTSIDE THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE, Apollo began slapping his tail rhythmically against the surface—

  He was heading south again—back to the breeding grounds—

  The tide spilled out of the bay as he rode its current—

  Then he dove down deep and turned upward in a graceful arc—

  His mighty flukes thrust back and forth—

  At last he burst through the surface in an enormous breach—

  Apollo hung in the sky—his back arched in abandon—white foam falling—his tail stalk an axis on which he rotated—

  And then his head fell back into the water—waves rippling for miles—

  A giant cloud of white bubbles stirred by hi
s bulk started to scatter—

  Moments later, his thrusting tail launched him again skyward—

  Leaving the life-giving waters—a silvery spray falling from his outstretched and eloquent body—

  EPILOGUE:

  REALITIES

  ON SUNDAY, JUNE 18, 2006, the International Whaling Commission overturned a twenty-year-old ban on commercial whaling. Many believe that it is just a matter of time before commercial whaling will begin again.

  FROM 1973 TO 1999, childhood cancers increased by 26 percent, making cancer the greatest health threat to children. Acute childhood lymphocytic leukemia is up 61 percent; brain cancer, 50 percent; and bone cancer, 39 percent.

  THE BELUGA WHALES in Hudson Bay are so full of chemical pollutants that when their dead bodies wash up onshore, they must be handled like toxic waste.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  EACH OF MY NOVELS arises from a question to which I desperately want to know the answer. My first novel, The Lost Diary of Don Juan, resulted from exploring the question of whether it is possible to marry desire and love—passion and compassion—together for a lifetime. Eye of the Whale came from a very different question, one that is global as well as deeply personal. It is a question that many of us are increasingly asking: Can we survive as a species? And if we can, what might be stronger than ignorance, greed, and despair? Through writing this story, I found an answer to this question and a measure of hope. But as I learned from my research, there is shockingly little time to make changes that will preserve the health of our children, our grandchildren, and all intelligent life on our planet. I hope that for you this will not be the end of the story, but the beginning.

  You can learn more about the research and the discoveries on which this novel is based at www.DouglasCarltonAbrams.com. You will also find a list of some of the organizations that are working effectively to protect us, marine mammals, and the world we share. Together, our actions will determine the ending of the unfolding story of life.