Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

Hadley and Rebecca are standing in the more shallow water. He swims underneath her and puts her feet on his shoulders, and then stands so that she towers like a giant and dives. She surfaces, and slicks her hair back from her face. “Do it again!” she cries.

  Before I know it Sam has me standing ankle deep in the water. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

  It is warmer than I expected. I shake my head. I stare down at the blue-tinted water and this is when I see them.

  If I didn’t know better I would say my ankles were surrounded by a million squiggling sperm. I nearly jump out of the inch of water I’m standing in, and Sam pushes me back. “They’re just pollywogs. You know. They turn into tadpoles.”

  “I don’t want them near me.”

  “You don’t have a choice. They were here first.” Sam lowers his hands to the water. “When we were little we used to take tadpoles home in a bucket. We’d try to feed them lettuce but they always died.”

  “I’m not one for frogs,” I say.

  “Just worms?”

  “Just worms.” I smile.

  “Frogs are remarkable, you know,” Sam says, taking my hand. “They breathe air and water. They breathe through their skin. Experts say that frogs are the missing link in evolution. They say humans came from the seas, and frogs make the transition between water and earth.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Sam shrugs. “I pick it up here and there. I read a lot.” In the background, I hear Rebecca scream. Instinctively my head jerks up, and I find her safe on the floating dock, where Hadley is trying to push her over the edge. Sam watches this, and then turns to me. “It must be incredible being a mother.”

  I smile. “It’s pretty incredible. You find that you have this raw animal instinct. I could pick out Rebecca’s scream from any other kid here, I bet.” I watch Rebecca gracefully bellyflop off the dock.

  Sam lets go of my hand and points to the water. I find that I am standing in it again, this time up to my thighs. I hadn’t even noticed we were walking in. I jump a little, but we are so far away from the edge of the beach that there’s really nowhere for me to go. “That was a dirty rotten trick,” I say.

  Sam grins. “I suppose, but it worked.”

  I can feel him looking right through me, so without glancing up I turn away. “I’m going to finish setting up the towels. You go ahead in.”

  It doesn’t take long to set up six towels, however, so I sit on the corner of one and watch them all horse around in the pond. Hadley and Rebecca are working on finding her center of balance. It is somewhere near her hips; I could have told them that. Rebecca takes a running start in the shallow water towards Hadley, and then he lifts her high into the air, trying to hold her up by her pelvis, and then inevitably one of them breaks and they both collapse into the water. Joley is doing a lazy backfloat, his favorite summer stroke, pursing his lips and spouting a fountain. And Sam is showing off. He runs down the length of one of the wooden docks, springing into the air, tucking his taut, tanned form into a double somersault. He’s just like a kid, I think, and then I remember that he is a kid.

  He pulls himself onto the dock and takes a bow. Everyone, even the lifeguard, claps. Sam dives into the water again and swims the entire length of the pond underwater. He comes towards me on the towel, and shakes his hair out all over me. It feels nice, being wet. “It’s no fun in there without you. Come on in, Jane.”

  I tell him the story about Joley, and how he almost drowned, and how I haven’t gone under water since then. Every now and then when it gets very hot I’ll take a dip into a pool, or let the ocean run over my ankles. But since Joley, I will not- cannot -go beneath the surface. I won’t risk the consequences.

  Sam stands up and cups his hands around his mouth. “Hey Joley!” he yells. “Do you know you’re the reason she won’t go in?”

  Rebecca and Hadley are on the dock, sunning themselves. I wonder-how they can possibly be comfortable on the hard wood, without a towel of a T-shirt under their heads. I see them partially obscured through Sam’s legs, but when he sits back down to dry off I have a clear view of my daughter. She is so thin her ribs are raised against the red fabric of her bathing suit. Her feet point sideways, a hereditary trait. And her hand, on the dock, smoothly covers Hadley’s.

  “Sam,” I say, pointing this out. “Is there something going on I should know about?”

  “No. Rebecca’s just a little kid. And Hadley’s no fool. Look at them-they’re fast asleep. They probably don’t even know they’re doing that.”

  I could swear I see Rebecca’s eyes slit open then, slick and green, but maybe I am mistaken.

  I forget all about this and sit on the edge of the beach, vicariously swimming through Sam. He has me call out a stroke, and then he does it. Midway I’ll call out another stroke, and he’ll switch. When he looks like he’s having too easy a time of it, I call out the butterfly. I watch his arms crest out of the water, and his torso emerge, his mouth round and gasping for air.

  When lunch is over, Sam dives into the water, and I think this means he’s forgotten about me. But after he gets wet, he walks back out to the beach. “You made me a promise,” he says. “After lunch, you said.”

  “Oh, Sam, you’re not going to make me do this.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “What does that have to do with it?” I say, starting to fight him.

  “Do you?”

  I am forced to look up at him. I would walk through coals, I would dance in fire. “Yes,” I say.

  “Good!” Sam scoops me into his arms, as if he is going to carry me over a threshold.

  I am so fascinated at first with the feel of his skin against mine that I do not pay attention to where we are going. Up until now only our hands have brushed, but now, all at once, I can feel his arms, his chest, his neck, his fingers. With the exception of Oliver, I have never been this close to a man. Sam takes long, high steps towards the water. I am losing control, I think. I have to get away from him. “Sam,” I say. “Sam. I can’t,” I say. I start panicking: I will drown. I will die. In another man’s arms.

  He stops so abruptly and speaks so casually I forget for a moment where we are; what we are doing. “Can you swim?”

  “Well, yes,” I admit, getting ready to explain. Well yes, but . Sam’s feet hit the water. “No!” I shout.

  But he will not stop. He clutches me tighter and moves steadily. The water reaches my toes. I stop kicking when the water begins to splash up in my face.

  What I see in those last few moments is my brother, flailing in the tide at Plum Island, caught in a dragging undertow. “Don’t do this to me,” I whisper.

  Somewhere, as if it is happening across a long distance, I hear Sam telling me not to worry. He tells me I can go back if I say the word. He tells me he will not let go. And then I feel this heavy water pressing in around me, changing the shape of my body. At the last minute I hear Sam’s voice. “It’s me,” he says, “I’m not going to let anything happen.” He fills my lungs with those words and I go under.

  55 JOLEY

  When Jane and I were very small, before the swimming accident at Plum Island, we used to build cities in the sand. Jane was the engineer; I was the slave labor. We fashioned pagodas and English castles. She’d form the furrows and I’d come after her with a bucket of ocean water. “The waterfall,” I’d announce. “ Construction of the waterfall ready to begin!” Jane did the honors, pouring the water in for the moat, or digging rivulets that ran right into the ocean, a permanent source. We drew windows with light pieces of driftwood, and we edged gardens made of stones and shells. Once we made a fortress so big that I could hide inside and toss tight-lipped mussels at people walking by. Even after we were finished playing, we left our buildings standing. We swam in the waves and we bodysurfed, keeping an eye on the slow destruction of our handiwork.

  This is what runs through my mind, like a grainy home movie, as Sam lifts my sister and brings her into the pond. This, and how slowly things change, and how malleable are boundaries. He picks her up and she is fighting, like we all expected.

  I may be the only person in this world who unders