Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

“We can’t do that. What if she comes back home? Someone has to be here. You have to be here.”

  Jane sinks back down on the bed. She crawls under the covers,and turns onto her side. “She sleeps like this,” Jane says. “With her mouth open and her hand curled up on the side. She even slept like this as a baby, when all the other infants in the hospital were on their stomachs with their rear ends sticking in the air. You know when they brought her to me, after I had her, I was terrified. I didn’t think I’d know how to hold a baby. But she was the one who let me off the hook. She was this little wiggling mess of arms and legs,” Jane says, smiling. “But Rebecca looked up at me, and she seemed to be saying, Relax. We’ve got a long way to go. ”

  I do my best to listen, because I know that’s what she needs.

  Jane suddenly sits up very straight. “Rebecca was my tradeoff,” she says. “I didn’t meet Sam earlier; or marry him, even though I was meant to. Don’t you see? It was one or the other.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “She’s my daughter . As much as I say Sam is a part of me, so is she. She knows me just as well. She loves me just as much, in a different way.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t have Sam my whole life. Instead, I was given Rebecca.”

  I am going to hate myself for saying this, I know. I look out the window, to where the field hands are gathering near the barn. Someone has to tell them what to do today. “If you didn’t have Oliver,” I point out, “you wouldn’t have had Rebecca. She’s part of him, too.”

  Jane follows my gaze out the window. In the distance the lambs are bleating. There are all these things to do. “Oliver,” she says. “That’s true.”

  66 S AM

  We come to a quiet understanding, Oliver and me. We don’t talk too much in the car on the way to the White Mountains. Oliver drives, and I fidget with the cigarette lighter button and the power window controls. I keep my space, and he keeps his.

  From time to time I get to study his face. I do it in a curious, kind of jealous way. You know: What has he got that I don’t have? He’s very dark, tanned, I guess, but I work outside as much as he does and I don’t look like that. Maybe it’s the salt water. It’s cut lines in his face, around his eyes and mouth, that make him look so tired. Or determined. It depends on the angle. He’s got hair like Rebecca’s and vacant blue eyes with tiny little pinpoint black pupils. I try, really, I do-but I cannot picture Jane with him. I can’t even think of him standing next to her, without the picture looking all funny. She wasn’t meant to be with someone like him; someone so stuffy, with his head up in the clouds. She was meant to be with someone like me.

  I’ve got my eye on him when the car starts to choke. We’re on 93. I think I remember passing Manchester, but I can’t be sure. About all I know for certain is that we’re running out of gas.

  “Shit,” Oliver says, maneuvering the car onto the shoulder of the road. “I didn’t even notice I was low.”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “Don’t suppose you have a gas can?”

  Oliver turns to me and smirks. “As a matter of fact I do. And we’re both going for a walk down the highway with it.”

  “Someone should stay with the car. You don’t want to come back and find it towed. This isn’t even really a shoulder, here. You can’t just leave it.”

  “You’re not staying here,” Oliver says. “I don’t trust you.”

  “You don’t trust me. What am I going to do with a car like this?” But Oliver isn’t listening. He’s popped the trunk, and he takes a blue plastic gas can out. He sticks his head inside my window and tells me to get a move on.

  We walk along the highway. It’s hot, and there are bugs everywhere. “So,” I say, as friendly as I can, “how’s work?”

  “Shut up. I don’t want to carry on a conversation with you. I don’t even want to believe that you exist.”

  “Believe me,” I say, “hanging around with you isn’t up there on my list of things to do.”

  Oliver mutters something I can’t hear, what with an eighteenwheeler zooming by. It ends with: “. . . you should tell me what exactly prompted my daughter to leave.”

  So I tell him about Hadley, and about what Jane said. He takes this all very well, kind of weighing the information before he comes to any early conclusions. I finish the story about three miles down the road, when we reach the exit. Then I look at Oliver to see his expression.

  He looks up at me. “Are they sleeping together?”

  “How the hell should I know? I doubt it.”

  “I thought you’d know everything that goes on under your roof,” Oliver says.

  “He’s a good person.” I point up the road at a Texaco. “He’s a lot like me, actually.”

  The second after I say it I realize it was the wrong thing to say. Oliver looks at me with disgust. “I’ll bet.”

  At the service station Oliver fills up the gas can while I buy a Mountain-Dew from a vending machine. Next to Jolt cola, it’s got the most caffeine out of any soft drink and I figure I’m going to need it. I sit on the curb at the edge of the road and count the cars that go by. When I close my eyes, I get this picture of Jane: last night, when I came to her, and she was a blue silhouette against the white curtains in the window. She was wearing that slinky silky thing with thin straps, you know what I mean. Those sexy nightgowns. I don’t know where she got it; God knows my mother didn’t leave any behind in her bedroom. But Jesus was she something. When I touched her the fabric spilled through my fingers, and to my surprise, her own skin was even softer.

  I open my eyes and jump up about a foot. Oliver’s face is inches from mine, purple and angry. “You’re thinking about her,” he shouts. “I don’t want you doing that.”

  Like he could possibly stop me. I could pommel this guy to a pulp in a matter of minutes; I’m restraining myself because Jane would fall apart, and besides, he may be instrumental in getting Rebecca away from Hadley. “Did it ever occur to you that this didn’t develop just because of me? Did it ever occur to you that Jane wanted to be with me too?”

  Oliver raises his free hand, probably to punch me, but I stand up. I’m a good four inches taller than him, and both of us know that now I’m awake I could kill him. He puts his hand down. “Shut up,” he says between his teeth. “Just shut up.” He walks a few feet in front of me all three and a half miles back towards the car. He won’t speak to me, and frankly I don’t care. The sooner he’s out of here, the sooner Jane and I are alone again, the better.

  It costs Oliver sixty-five bucks to get his car released from the garage where it’s been towed. We’ve had to walk another five miles because of this, in the other direction. It sets us back about another two hours. It is after three when we leave, having cleared the ticket with the police station in Goffstown. The attendant is an old guy with white hair that sticks up in tufts all over his head. He rubs his palm up against the windshield, which is filmy with dust. “Looks like you’re outta gas,” he says. “I’d do something about that if I were you.”

  Oliver pushes past the man. He empties the can he’s been hauling around most of the day into the gas tank. It chugs, like it’s gulping down a good imported beer. When he finishes he throws the can into the back seat and stares at me. “What are you looking at? Are you going to get in or what?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” I say. “You ought to let me drive.”

  Oliver leans across the hood of the car. “Give me one good reason.”

  “So we can find Rebecca tonight. We’re going to be getting off the major highways really soon, and I barely know where to go. I can do it by feel but I couldn’t really direct you.” I shrug; it’s the truth. I want this to be over with as soon as possible, so that I can call Jane and hear her voice on the other end of the line. Hear her tell me to come home.

  We reach Carroll, Hadley’s hometown, just after dinnertime. I’m driving,-like I suggested. I take a couple of wrong turns, but I get us to the Slegg house. “Why, hello, Sam!” Mrs. Slegg says when she answers the door. “It sure is nice to see you. Hadley’s enjoying his vacation.” She gracefully sweeps her arm towards the hallway. “Won’t you come inside?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, Mrs. Slegg. This is my-this is Oliver Jones. We’