Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

But the two branch offices have no mail for me either. I think about throwing a tantrum but that won’t do anyone any good. Instead, I pace the anteroom of the post office, then I walk out onto the blazing sidewalk, where Rebecca stands, accusatory.

  “Well,” Rebecca says.

  “It should have been here.” I look up at the sun, which seems to have exploded in the past minute. “Joley wouldn’t do this to me.” I feel like crying and I am weighing the consequences when I look at the sun again and, hissing, it comes hurtling down at me and my world turns black.

  “She’s coming around,” someone says, and there are hands; hands with cool water pressing against my neck and my forehead, my wrists. This face, too big, looms into view.

  Oliver? I try to say but I can’t remember where my voice is.

  “Mom. Mom.” It’s Rebecca, I can smell her. I open my eyes wide and see my daughter leaning over me, the ends of her hair grazing my chin like silk. “You fainted.”

  “You hit your head, Mrs. Jones,” says the displaced voice I heard before. “It’s just a cut, no stitches needed.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re in the post office,” that other voice says, and then a man squats in front of me. He smiles. He is handsome. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Okay.” I turn my head. Three young women with washcloths are on my right. One of them says, “Now don’t sit up too fast.”

  Rebecca squeezes my hand. “Eric was nearby when you collapsed. He helped me carry you in here, and his wives helped you cool off.” She looks frightened, I don’t blame her.

  “Wives. Oh.”

  One of the women gives Rebecca a little jar and tells her to hang onto it in case this happens again. “The heat is dry here,” Eric tells me. “This happens to visitors a lot.”

  “We’re not visiting, we’re just passing through,” I say, as if it matters. “What did I do to my head?”

  “You fell on it,” Rebecca says, matter-of-fact.

  “Maybe I should go to the hospital.”

  “I think you’ll be fine,” says the middle wife. She has long black hair woven into a French braid. “I’m a nurse, and Eric’s a doctor. A pediatrician, but he knows about fainting.”

  “You picked a lucky bunch to fall in front of,” Eric says, and the women laugh.

  I try to stand up and I realize my knees aren’t up to it. Eric grabs me quickly and loops my arm around his neck. The sky is spinning. “Sit her down,” Eric commands. “Listen,” he turns to Rebecca. “Let us take you to the lake. We’re on our way anyway, and it might do your mother some good to cool off.”

  “Is that okay, Mom?” Rebecca says. “Did you hear?” She is shouting.

  “I’m not deaf. Fine. Great.” I am lifted to my feet by Rebecca, Eric and two wives. The third carries my purse.

  In the back of Eric’s minivan are rubber floats and towels that get pushed out of the way for Rebecca and me. Eric positions me lying down, with my feet propped up on an inner tube. From time to time I take sips of cold water from a thermos. I have no idea where this lake is and I’m too tired to find out.

  But when we stop at the shores of the Great Salt Lake I am impressed. You can see across it for miles; it might as well have been an ocean. Eric carries me to the lake down a steep embankment, surprising for someone who is relatively slight. There are many people swimming here. I sit on the sandy bottom of the lake, in a shallow spot that wets my shorts and half my T-shirt. I beg not to go in farther than this; I don’t like to swim, or to feel that my feet cannot reach the bottom.

  I am wondering how my clothes will ever dry, when it occurs to me I keep floating up to the surface. I have to bury my arms in the sand to keep sitting. This takes all the energy I have. Eric and two wives paddle past me on a raft. “How do you feel?” he says.

  “Better,” I lie, but I am beginning to cool off. My skin no longer feels like it is raw and splitting. I duck my head under the water to wet my scalp.

  Rebecca runs past me, splashing. “Isn’t this excellent!” She dives and surfaces like an otter. I’ve forgotten how much she loves to swim, since I hardly ever take to the water.

  Rebecca moves a little farther out and says, “Hey Mom, no hands.” She sticks her arms and legs into the air, buoyant on her back.

  “It’s the salt,” Eric tells me, gently helping me to my feet. “You float better than you do in an ocean. Not bad, for a landlocked state.”

  Rebecca tells me to lie on my back. “I’ll swim you out. I’m a lifeguard, remember?” She wraps her arm across my chest and vigorously scissor-kicks. Because I am in her arms, her care, I don’t try to protest. Also because I am still feeling fairly sick.

  After a second, when I have the courage to open my eyes, I see the clouds passing by, lazy and liquid. I listen to the way my daughter breathes. I concentrate on being weightless.

  “Look, Mom,” Rebecca says, dancing in front of me. “You’re doing it by yourself. Yourself!” She is no longer holding me. In the center of this great lake, forces I can’t even see keep me afloat.

  22 REBECCA July 21, 1990

 

  “What’s the matter with you!” I shout at Hadley. He walks down the hill out of my range of vision. For the life of me I cannot figure out what I have done.

  This is the way it has been all day. Hadley was already out when I woke up. He was with the sheep, feeding them. Sheep grain, Hadley said, is made of oats and molasses and corn and barley. Stick your nose in the bin, he said, it smells great. So I held my head in the cool metal storage trough and I breathed in this honey smell. When I lifted my head, Hadley had gone without saying goodbye.

  Just now I came upon him on the hill drinking from an army canteen. All I did was put my hand on his arm, real light, so I wouldn’t startle him. But Hadley jumped a foot and spilled water on his shirt. “For Chrissake,” he yelled, and he shook his arm away. “Can’t you just leave me be?”

  I don’t understand. He’s been so nice to me the three days we’ve been here. He was the one who offered to take me on a tour of the orchard. He showed me what the different types of apple were. He let me wrap grafting tape around his hand to practice at it. He showed me the way to make cider. I didn’t even ask, and he did all this for me.

  Yesterday when he took me out on the tractor I told him about my father. I told him the kind of work he does. I told him what my father looks like when he talks about his work. His lips twitch and his cheeks flush. When he talks about me, it is like he is talking about nothing at all.

  During our talk, Hadley had said, “I’m sure you can remember when you had a good time with him.” So I thought. But I could only remember when he had bought me a bicycle. He came with me into the street to show me how to ride it. He told me how to pedal and what balance was, scientifically. A couple of times he ran down the street beside me, yelling, You’ve got it! You’ve got it! Then he seemed to fall back. I kept pedaling and pedaling but I reached a hill I could not manage. I kept thinking, I want Daddy to notice me, how well I do. When I fell off the bicycle I watched it roll down the hill, dented and busted, and I did not notice I was bleeding. I needed stitches in my wrist and forehead that Christmas. My father had gone inside to take a business call.

  Hadley didn’t say anything at all when I told him that. He changed the topic. He told me if you handle apples like eggs and pack them just right, they will not bruise.

  I tried to talk about it again. Once I had gotten started, there was no stopping me. I told him about the time Daddy hit my mother, and about the plane crash. He stopped the tractor in the middle of the field to listen. I told him that I didn’t love my father.

  “Everyone loves their father.”

  “Why,” I had asked. “Who says that they’ve got that coming to them?”

  And Hadley started the tractor again and didn’t say much for the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t eat dinner with us. And now this.

  He thinks that I am a spoiled brat. That there is something wrong with me. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe you are supposed to love your parents, no matter what.

  It is easier with my mother; it has to do with th