Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

At lunch my mother completely forgets to serve Hadley and pretends that it is an accident. Then, she makes a big deal about giving him a beer, and not giving one to me. “Some of us,” she says, staring at me, “are still too young to drink.”

  Hadley gives me half of his anyway when my mother gets up to go to the bathroom. Uncle Joley tells me to ignore her when she gets like this.

  After lunch, my mother insists on cleaning up the picnic. She double-bags the garbage and rearranges the leftovers. She refolds used napkins. She shakes the towels off to get rid of crumbs. Sam, who has been waiting for her, jumps into the pond and swims the perimeter twice while she is doing all this. Apparently she said she would go in after lunch.

  Finally Sam comes over to the oasis she’s created. She is standingin front of it trying to find something else to do. Uncle Joley, Hadley and I kneel in the shallow end, waiting to see what will happen. Hadley has his hands spread across my rib cage, pressing me back against the floating pockets of his bathing suit.

  Sam picks my mother up in his arms and begins to carry her towards the shallow end. She is still wearing her shorts.

  “No,” she says, laughing at first. She kicks her heels, and people-around the pond smile, thinking this is some kind of joke. I lean against Hadley and wonder when she is going to snap.

  “Sam,” she says, more insistent. They have passed the edge of Second Dock; they are almost at the edge of the water. “I can’t.”

  Sam stops for a moment, serious. “Can you swim?”

  “Well, no,” my mother says. Big mistake.

  Sam’s feet hit the water and my mother begins to shout. “No, Sam! No!”

  “Good for him,” Uncle Joley says, to no one in particular.

  Sam begins to wade deeper. The water hits my mother’s shorts, spreading like a stain. She stops kicking when she realizes it only makes her more wet. At one point I think she has almost resigned herself to what is going to happen. Sam, a man with a mission, continues to walk into the water.

  “Don’t do this to me,” she whispers to Sam, but we can all make out the words.

  “Don’t worry,” Sam says, and my mother clutches her arms tighter around him. He stares directly at her, like he has blocked out the rest of the watching world. “If you don’t want to go- really don’t want to go-then I’ll take you back. Now. Just say the word.”

  My mother looks terrified. I am starting to feel sorry for her.

  “I’ll be with you,” Sam says. “I’m not going to let anything happen.”

  She closes her eyes. “Go ahead. Maybe this is what I need after all.”

  With measured steps, Sam inches farther into the water until it reaches my mother’s chin. Then, telling her to focus on his eyes, right here -he says- my eyes -he ducks under the surface.

  It seems like a very long time. Everyone on the shore of the pond is watching. Several industrious kids with scuba masks swim out closer and peek underwater to see what is going on. Then my mother and Sam burst out of the water in unison, gasping for air. “Oh!” my mother cries. “It’s so wonderful!” Her eyelashes blink back water, and her arms make wide circles in front of her, with ripples that reach us. Sam is triumphant. He winks at Uncle Joley and stays beside her, a personal lifeguard, fulfilling his promise to my mother. Nothing is going to happen, after all, as long as he is there. Well it’s about time, I think. Hadley and I, bored by all the theatrics, check into taking a canoe out onto the larger pond. As we go, my mother is doing the crawl.

  At one point my mother and I are the only two awake. We lie on the towels on our backs and try to find pictures in the clouds. I see a llama and a paper clip. She sees a kerosene lamp and a kangaroo. We both look for a chameleon, but there is none to be found.

  “About Hadley,” my mother says, “I’ve been thinking.”

  I feel my shoulders tense. “We have a lot of fun together.”

  “I’ve noticed. Sam says Hadley likes you a lot.”

  I lean on one elbow. “He said that?”

  “In not so many words. He said he’s a very responsible person.” She picks grass absentmindedly with her left hand.

  “Well he is. He takes care of just about everything on the farm that Sam doesn’t. He’s his right-hand man.”

  “Man,” my mother says. “Exactly. You’re a kid.”

  “I’m fifteen,” I remind her. “I’m not a kid.”

  “You’re a kid.”

  “How old were you when you started to go out with Daddy?”

  My mother rolls onto her stomach and pushes her chin into the sand. I can barely understand her. I think she says, “It was different then.”

  “It’s not different. You can’t just keep yourself from falling for a person. You can’t turn off your emotions like a faucet.”

  “Oh, you’re an expert?”

  I think about saying, Neither are you, but decide against it.

  “You can’t keep yourself from falling in love,” she says, “but you can steer yourself away from the wrong people. That’s all I’m trying to say. I’m just warning you before it’s too late.”

  I roll away from her. Doesn’t she know it’s too late already?

  Sam, awake, sits up between us. To keep up a conversation we’d have to talk across him. My mother, probably against her better judgment, gives me a look. We’ll continue this later, she is saying.

  They decide to go fishing in the metal rowboat, and leave me to watch over Uncle Joley, Hadley and the cooler. I take out a nectarine and eat it slowly. The juice drips down my neck and dries sticky.

  My mother doesn’t know what she is talking about. I don’t believe I have a thing for “older men.” I think I have a thing for Hadley. I reach down and swat a fly from his ear. He has three birthmarks on his lobe, three I hadn’t noticed before. I count them, twice, fascinated. When I am with him, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know and I don’t care; it must be someone wonderful because he seems to be having such a good time. And he holds me the way I used to hold china dolls as a child. They were so beautiful, their painted faces, that I only let myself take them off the shelves in my bedroom for minutes at a time.

  Uncle Joley doesn’t snore, but he breathes heavily when he sleeps. It drives me crazy. It’s a raspy noise that comes in currents. You get into a rhythm listening to him, and then all of a sudden he alters the pattern, and you find yourself hanging, waiting for him to complete what he’s started. After about three minutes of listening to this I stand and stretch. I walk around the pond, dipping my toes in the water and writing my initials in the sand. H.S. + R.J. I realize there won’t be any tide to wash this away.

  On the far end of the pond are a thatch of reeds and cattails. They are wheat-yellow and as high as I am. The area is off-limits, a swamp. When the lifeguard isn’t looking I step behind the first row. Once I do this, I am hidden. I take a last look at Hadley; I sift through the reeds with my arms.

  The ground is a sponge that closes up around my ankles. I keep walking. I want to know where I will end up. Somewhere, there must be water.

  The cry of a cormorant tells me I have reached the edge. I can’t actually see a shore; I have to part the thickest growth here with my hands. I have come to a part of Pickerel Pond that I couldn’t see from the swimming area. It is an inlet shaded by willow trees. In the middle is a rowboat, my mother and Sam.

  My mother has just caught a fish, I have no idea what kind it is. Its spine is a series of spikes that grow shorter and shorter; the hook seems to be caught in its cheek. My mother holds the fishing line while Sam smoothes the spikes of the fish and gently removes the hook. As he does this I hear a faint pluck. He holds the fish into the water and they both watch it swim away at an amazing pace. I myself did not know fish could move that quickly. When I look up at my mother and Sam, they seem quite pleased with themselves.

  Sam has propped the oars on my mother’s seat. She has her hands on the gunwale of the rowboat and is leaning back slightly. Sam, balancing, comes forward and catches his arms around her waist. When she sits up she doesn’t look startled. She leans forward and kisses him.

  I feel my heart beating fas