Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

I kick her under the table. It isn’t any of her business.

  “Apples take a lot of time and effort.” I get the feeling he has been asked this before.

  “But couldn’t you make more money if you diversify?”

  “Excuse me,” Sam says quietly, “but who the hell are you? You come in here and two days later you’re telling me how to run things?”

  “I wasn’t-”

  “If you knew a damn thing about farming maybe I’d listen.”

  “I don’t have to take this.” My mother is near tears, I can tell by the thick of her voice. “I was just making conversation.”

  “You were making trouble,” Sam says, “plain and simple.”

  My mother’s voice gets husky. I remember a story she likes to tell, about when she worked placing classified ads for the Boston Globe as a college kid, and one man fell in love with her voice. He sold his boat the first week but he’d keep calling her to hear her talk. He placed his ad the entire summer just so he could listen to my mother.

  “Sam.” Uncle Joey touches my mother’s arm. She stands up and runs towards the barn.

  The three of us-Sam, Uncle Joley and me-sit in silence for a moment.

  “Want any more chicken?” Sam offers.

  “I think you overreacted,” Uncle Joley says. “Maybe you could apologize.”

  “Jesus, Joley,” Sam sighs, leaning back. “She’s your sister. You invited her here. Look. She just doesn’t belong in a place like this. She should be wearing high-heeled shoes and clicking along some marble parlor in L.A.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protest. “You don’t even know her.”

  “I know plenty like her,” Sam says. “Would it make it all right if I went out there and apologized? Shit. For a little peace and quiet.” He stands up and pushes away his plate. “So much for a happy little family dinner.”

  Uncle Joley and I finish the zucchini. Then we finish the potatoes. We don’t say anything. My foot taps on the linoleum, fast. “I’m going out there.”

  “Leave them alone, Rebecca. They’ll work it all out. They need to.”

  He may be right but this is my mother we are talking about. I have visions of her like a hellcat, clawing at Sam and leaving him with raw scratch marks on his cheeks and arms. Then I picture Sam’s strength getting the best of her. Would he do that? Or is that only my father?

  I hear their voices long before I see them, behind the shed that holds the tractor and the rototiller. Because Uncle Joley may be right, I decide I should not interfere. I slouch down and feel splinters crack through my shirt.

  “I told you I was sorry,” Sam says. “What more can I do?”

  My mother’s voice is farther away. “You’re right. It’s your house, your farm, and I shouldn’t be here. Joley imposed on you. He shouldn’t have asked you to do something like this.”

  “I know what ‘imposed’ means.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t mean anything the way you take it. It’s like every sentence I say goes through your head the reverse of the way I intended it.”

  Sam leans against the wall of the shed so heavily I think he may be able to feel me there. “When my father ran this place he was real haphazard about it. A stock here, another stock there. Commercial trees mixed right in with retail. Since I was eleven I told him this wasn’t the way to run an apple orchard. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, and no matter how much schoolwork I did on the subject I didn’t have as much experience running the place as he did. How could I? So when he retired to Florida, I dug up the younger trees and replanted them the way I wanted them. I lost a couple, and I knew I was taking a hell of a risk. He hasn’t been up here since he retired, and when he calls I pretend the place still looks the way it was when he left.”

  “I get your point, Sam.”

  “No, you don’t. I don’t give a shit if you think this orchard should grow watermelons and cabbage. Go tell Joley and tell Rebecca and whoever the hell you want. And the day I die if you can convince everyone else, go ahead and replant the place. But don’t you ever tell me to my face what I’ve done so far is wrong. This farm-it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s like-it’s like me telling you your daughter is no good.”

  My mother doesn’t answer. “I wouldn’t plant watermelons,” she says finally, and Sam laughs.

  “Let’s start over. I’m Sam Hansen. And you’re-?”

  “Jane. Jane Jones. God,” my mother says, “I sound like the most boring person on earth.”

  “Oh, I doubt it.” I hear, quite clearly, the sound of their fingers pressed into a handshake. It is quiet as night.

  Their footsteps come in fours, and they get closer to where I am sitting. In a panic I crawl to the other side of the shed, away from their voices. The only place to go is into the barn. I try to be quiet when my sneakers scratch against the hay. I press my belly to the floor and pull myself in on my fingertips.

  When I sit up the first thing I see is a bat. It is dark and folded into the corner of the hayloft. I consider screaming but what good would that do me?

  The bat screeches and flies past me. I put my hands up to shield my face and something catches my wrists. When I turn around, it is Hadley.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, terrified.

  “I live here,” Hadley says. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was eavesdropping. Did you hear them?”

  Hadley nods. He picks a stalk from the hay bales lining the wall and puts it between his front teeth. “I was hoping for a knockout in the first round.”

  “You’re awful,” I tell him, but I laugh. In this light, he looks taller than usual. And his lips, the way they come down so far in the front. I hold out my hand. I want to touch him. Embarrassed, I pull away. “Did you get all your stuff done?”

  “What stuff?”

  “Dinner. What you were saying to my uncle.”

  “Oh,” Hadley says. He shuffles his boots on the loose hay. “That.”

  He doesn’t say anything for such a long time I think something might be wrong. I turn around and stare at him. “What’s the matter with me?”

  “There’s nothing the matter with you,” Hadley says. “You’re a very pretty little girl.”

  “I’m not a little girl.” I hold my chin higher.

  “I know how old you are. I asked Joley.”

  So much for that. “Well I don’t get it. I was having a really good time with you the other day, and then clear out of the blue you act like I have the plague.”

  “I just can’t spend a lot of time with you.” He paces back and froth in the little square of light the moon makes on the floor of the barn. “I get paid for this, Rebecca. This is my job, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know. I don’t know about jobs at all, but I have a pretty good idea of the way you’re supposed to treat a friend.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” Hadley said.

  I clench my fists at my sides. Do what ? I haven’t done anything at all.

  He takes a step closer and my heart jumps, just like that. I take a step backward.

  Pressed up against the stack of hay bales, I start to hyperventilate. I’m breathing in all this awful dry grass and it is getting to my lungs. Hadley leans in close to me, and I see my face reflected in his eyes.

  I push my hand against his chest and walk to the other side of the barn. “So you have to get rid of the weeds, is that it? That’s what you were talking to Sam about. When do those apples drop- September?” I talk a mile a minute about a subject I do not know. “What are you going to do tomorrow? I was thinking, maybe I’ll walk into Stow Center tomorrow. I haven’t been there yet and Uncle Joley says there’s this record store I’d really like with a lot of neon and stuff. Did I ask you what you’re going to do tomorrow?”

  “This,” Hadley says, and he wraps his arms around my waist and he kisses me.

  I used to think that the best feeling in the world was flying on my bicycle down a hill that I had worked so hard to climb, flying faster than the speed of sound, with my arms and my hair waving. I’d cup one hand and try to catch the air and when I got to the bottom, after all that, there was nothing in my hand.

  I think of this in