Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

Oliver didn’t look at me. He waited for the popcorn attendant to turn the other way. When she did, he slipped up the stairs to the balcony, which was closed for the night.

  The balcony was empty and cordoned off with golden silk ties. Oliver pressed against me from behind. He had removed his shirt and was silhouetted against the satin wall of the theater. “Do you know what you do to me?” Oliver said.

  He unbuttoned my cotton blouse and ripped the zipper of my jeans. When I was standing before him in my bra and panties, he took a step back, and just looked. I began to worry about the people below us, if they would turn around and see this show instead. And like he could read my mind (which I think he could do back then), Oliver pulled me down to sit on his lap.

  We sat on the aisle seat in the back, me straddling him and blindly facing the projection booth; him glassy-eyed, facing the movie. He lowered my bra straps from my shoulders and held my breasts in his hands, like a scale. He held them very lightly, like he didn’t quite know what to do with them. He let my bra fall to my waist and then he unbuttoned the fly of his jeans. With some acrobatics, we pushed his pants down around his ankles, and I didn’t even have to stand up. In the background I heard the characters talking.

  “Do you love me?” I whispered into his neck, unsure if he would hear.

  Oliver looked at me, absolutely looked at me, the first time I was sure I had one hundred percent of his attention. “Actually,” he answered, “I think I do.”

  I started to do the things that Ellen told me about, pressing against him and rocking my hips slowly, then faster. I felt the crotch of my panties becoming damp. The tip of Oliver’s penis peeked through the fly of his boxers, swollen pink. Gingerly, I brushed it with my index finger. It jumped.

  When Oliver touched me I thought I would faint. The back of the chair in front of us supported me, otherwise I am sure I would have fallen. He pulled aside the crotch of my underwear and then with his free hand pushed himself through his shorts. I was riveted; I watched this pulsing, knotted arrow and completely forgot that it was attached to Oliver. I watched the entire time while Oliver positioned himself and then lifted my hips and in an awful siren of pain I saw him disappear inside of me. Ellen did not tell me that this would hurt. I didn’t scream, though, or cry, because of all the people below. I kept my eyes wide and stared at the satin curtain of the back wall. Only then did Oliver say, “Have you ever done this?”

  When I shook my head I expected him to stop but by then it was too late. Not sure of what I was doing, I moved with him in a primitive sort of dance, a bump and grind, and I watched Oliver’s eyes close in disbelief. At the last moment he grabbed at my hips with the force of Atlas and pushed me off. He crushed me against his chest, but not before I saw him, red and slick, distended, quivering. He ejaculated in a fountain of heat, a sticky glue that matted our stomachs together and made a rude noise when I tried to sit back.

  I managed to walk out of the movie theater that night but I was sore for several days. I stopped asking Ellen about her dates with Roger. Oliver started to call me two or three times a day, when he knew perfectly well I was in class.

  We bought condoms and began to do this regularly, enough so that it stopped hurting, although I did not think I had had the orgasm that Ellen told me about. We did it in my dorm room, in Oliver’s car, on the grass near the Wellesley pond, in the locker room of the gym. It seemed the more illicit we got, the more fun we had. I saw Oliver every night, and every night we had sex. I started to tell Ellen about things we had done.

  One night Oliver did not make a move to take off my clothes. I asked him if he was feeling all right, and he told me yes, he just didn’t feel like doing it. That night I cried. I was certain this heralded the beginning of the end of our relationship. The next night I wore the dress that Oliver liked best, even though I knew we were going bowling. In the car that night, I didn’t give Oliver a chance to refuse me. I unzipped his fly as we were driving back to the dorm and made him pull over onto a dark sidestreet. No matter what I did, however, Oliver did not get involved. He was going through the motions. Finally I asked him what the problem was. “I just don’t feel like it tonight, Jane. Do we have to do this every night?”

  I didn’t see why not. As far as I was concerned, sex was love. If you had sex you had love. If Oliver didn’t want me all of the time, there was some problem. I told Ellen that he was getting ready to break up with me and when she asked how I knew I told her why. She was shocked. She said all guys wanted to have sex, all the time. I locked myself in my dorm room and cried for two days, in preparation.

  What Oliver returned with, however, was a diamond ring. He got down on one knee, just like in the movies, and he proposed. He said he wanted me with him forever. It was a half-carat, and nearly flawless, he said. We set a date for that summer, the day after graduation. Then, on the rough carpet of my dorm room (with my roommate due back momentarily) we made love.

  I do not know how many months into it I started to realize that sex did not equate with love. Oliver and I, once married, had different schedules. We went to sleep at different times and he was reticent about having sex in broad daylight. Sometimes the patterns of our lives kept us apart for a couple of months, and then we’d have sex again and drift our separate ways. Rarely did we both want to make love at the same time. Things had changed so much since college; Rebecca was conceived on a night when I was wishing Oliver would just leave me alone so that I could sleep.

  When I told Rebecca about sex I made sure I mentioned it was something you do when you are married. It was not said to be hypocritical. Rather, it was a way of ensuring that she might feel this fire in marriage, and not just the heat of its ashes.

  26 REBECCA July 19, 1990

 

  The sign for Hansen’s orchard-a white one with hand-painted apples as a border-is on the left hand side of the road. My mother sees it without me having to point it out. We turn into the driveway and our tires creak against the gravel. Lining the path are two stone walls, imperfect enough to let you know they were crafted by hand. There are pits in the driveway, filled with rainwater.

  We drive to the top of a hill, and everywhere I look there are neat rows of apple trees. Well, I know they are apples because of Uncle Joley, but I wouldn’t be able to tell otherwise. Most are almost bare and scrawny. Far away, on just one tree, I think I can make out tiny green apples. Somehow, I expected to see fruit on every single one, all at the same time.

  My mother parks on a mound of grass that looks just big enough for a car. Several hundred yards away is a garage with an old station wagon that looks like our old one, and a big green tractor. There are all kinds of machines and gadgets in there that I do not recognize. Opposite the garage is a large red barn. On the hayloft is a Pennsylvania Dutch Hex sign.

  “I don’t know where Joley is,” my mother says. “I mean, we’re on time.” She looks at me, and then at the unbelievable view. Below the barn, below the acres and acres of apple trees, is a field of tall grass that comes right to the edge of a lake. Even from up here, you can tell how clear the water is, how sandy the bottom.

  On the crest of the hill is a huge house, white with green trim. It has a double porch and a hammock swing and factory doors with wavy glass. From its outside I just know it has a long spiral staircase inside. There are four windows on the second floor alone. “I don’t see why we don’t take a look around,” I suggest, and I make a move towards the house.

  “Rebecca, you can’t just walk into someone’s house you don’t know. We’ll walk around out here, and see if we can’t find Joley.” She links her arm through mine.

  We walk down the slope of the hill to the back side of the barn, and as we get closer there is a buzzing sound. I unlatch the hinge of the fence that leads into this penned-in area. There are little pellets everywhere-you don’t have to be a genius to know manure. Under the ledge of the barn is a man with a power tool of some kind, which is attached by a cord to an outlet somewhere above him. He has a sheep sitting like a human, on its rear end