The Music of the Deep: A Novel

by Elizabeth Hall

  Maggie put the paper on the desk. It was the Seattle Times. The headline read: “NINTH ORCA BABY BORN THIS YEAR.” Alex exhaled and lowered her head to read the story about the scientist farther up the coast, who had spotted a ninth new baby in the Southern Resident Killer Whales. “Wow. This is great news.”

  Maggie stood at the window, a cup of coffee in her hand. “Yes, it is.”

  “Is that unusual? To have so many babies in one year?”

  Maggie shrugged. “It’s happened a few times. I don’t remember there ever being nine in one year. But considering there were no new babies at all in 2013 and 2014, this is a good sign. Means they have found enough to eat, at least for a while.”

  Maggie took a swig of her coffee. “In the entire population of Southern Residents, there are only two dozen reproductive females. The window for having babies is pretty narrow, and this population is fragile. Every whale is important. And so is every single baby.”

  The ringing of a bell rose up from the streets of town, and they both turned toward the sound. It was a little like a church bell, only less significant, the note higher-pitched and not as resonant. Alex stood and moved to the window.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Whale bell. Whenever someone sees a whale out in the strait, they yank on that bell, so everyone can run out and take a look.” Maggie’s face held the closest thing to a smile that Alex had yet seen. “Not necessarily orcas. Could be a gray whale or who knows what. But grab your stuff. Let’s go look.”

  They hopped into Maggie’s truck, “just in case we have to keep driving,” and Maggie steered it the three blocks downhill to Main Street.

  Next to the Strait Up Tavern was a tiny park, with steps that led down to a wooden deck and railing, looking out to sea. A man stood there, ringing the whale bell. People were trickling out of houses and businesses, many of them in pajamas and slippers and coats thrown on over. It was nine in the morning, and moving fast did not seem to be on anyone’s agenda.

  Maggie pulled the truck to the curb, and they hopped out, moving downhill to stand next to the clusters of people who had gathered in the park and were filling up the observation deck.

  “Orcas. It’s orcas,” the man at the bell called out. “And a baby with them,” he bubbled, watching through binoculars.

  Everyone strained to see, and those who had binoculars were sharing them with others. Maggie stared out through her own glasses, and Alex stood, trying to get a good view. “Looks like part of Granny’s clan,” Maggie said, her voice bubbly. “And let’s see—a couple of her grandchildren.”

  Maggie handed the glasses to Alex, so that she could take a look.

  “She doesn’t have any children that are still living. Granny is believed to be over one hundred years old. I can’t see her, yet, but maybe she’s out there. After all these years, seeing J Pod—any of the Southern Residents, for that matter—is like seeing family.”

  “Will this be enough to take them off the endangered list?” Alex asked.

  “Oh, God, no! The odds are that half of these babies won’t make it through the first year. We don’t yet know if any of these calves are females. And then we have to worry about the babies, and their parents, finding enough to eat. There are so many things that can go wrong. Even with all these new babies, there are still less than eighty of the Southern Residents. That’s a precariously low number to try and keep a population going. Imagine if there were only seventy-eight humans left in the world.”

  Her eyes still glued to Maggie’s binoculars, Alex stared out to sea, where she could see a group of six or seven orcas. They swam close together, one or two coming up for air, pushing a huge spray of water into the sky. The exhalations caught the light, turning into miracle explosions of color and sparkle. Those blackfish would curve back into the water, and behind them, a few more would rise in graceful arcs, taking in the air.

  And there, just between two larger orcas, came the new baby, rising up next to her mother. While the older fish were black and white, the baby’s coloring included a faded yellowish brown.

  A cheer went up from the people standing in the park. The sight brought smiles and laughter and louder voices to everyone who stood watching, as if that baby orca were spreading a germ of happiness to everyone who witnessed the youngster. Alex felt a surge of energy, an excitement, and she stood on tiptoe, breathing in the magic of the air on that cold December morning. Beside her, Maggie Edwards did the same, a smile lighting her face, crinkling her eyes behind her glasses.

  The crowd watched as the orcas swam past, heading farther south.

  Maggie turned to Alex. “Let’s head down to Lime Kiln Point, see if we can get another look. Maybe they’ll stop for breakfast. Might be salmon there.”

  “Sounds great,” Alex said, turning to follow Maggie to the truck.

  Emmie Porter stood at the back of the crowd of people, slightly removed from the rest of the group. She had a dog on a leash, milling around the grass at her feet, sniffing. She was staring out to sea, at the group of orcas moving past, the tiny new baby in their midst.

  Alex had never actually seen Emmie smile. She was smiling now, her face glowing as she watched those orcas. Her eyes were a deep brown; her features were well spaced, with high cheekbones. Alex had not noticed it before, but as she looked at Emmie smile, there could be no doubt—the woman had once been quite beautiful.

  Emmie turned, and their eyes met. She looked at Alex without making any indication that she knew her, without saying hello. Her eyes traveled down the length of Alex’s body, stopping at the stomach area. She stared, as if she could see through the coat and layers of clothing that Alex wore. Alex unconsciously brought her arm across her middle. Emmie looked up, meeting her eyes, and the smile drained from her face.

  SEVENTEEN

  Alex sat at a chair by the front window, the small spinning wheel in front of her on the floor. She started the treadles and began pulling fibers out of the nest of roving in her left hand. It was becoming a habit with her. Almost as soon as she came home from Maggie’s every evening, as soon as she had eaten a bowl of soup, she sat down at the wheel. The spinsters were right. The gentle sounds of the wheel turning, the motions of moving her hands and feet, the concentration of trying to make the yarn even, totally absorbed her attention. It was like dropping into a zone of quiet, a place so deep inside that she had not known it existed. This was a place of total peace, a place far removed from all the horrors of her past. After a few minutes of spinning, she stopped, her eyes coming to rest on the window as another long-buried memory floated to the surface.

  For someone who was a supposed expert on categorizing and sorting and organizing information into patterns, Alex had completely missed the cycle of abuse that was happening in her life with Daniel. Each incident was handled separately, as a completely unrelated occurrence. Each incident required adjustment, required learning the new limitations imposed on her existence. But she approached each one as if it were an isolated event—just one more thing that she needed to deal with. Adjust. Normalize. Move forward.

  She had not begun to see the patterns, repeating again and again and again, until now—now that she was two thousand miles away. Now, after eleven years of abuse had already happened. Now, when it was too late to change anything, when it was too late to enjoy her mother’s company.

  Her mother had seen those patterns. As quiet as Frances Turner could be, as much as she worked to keep her opinions to herself, they were evident in the look in her eyes. Almost like looking into the eye of that orca a few days ago, the memory curling up from the depths of her psyche like the mist that was rising from the graves of the dead in the cemetery outside. Her mother had had that same look in her eye—as if she saw everything. As if she understood everything.

  They had been married six years when it happened. Alex opened her eyes to unfamiliar surroundings. There was an IV dripping into her arm; she was lying in a hospital bed with the railings up. She could hear the noises
of nurses talking, people moving around, the sounds of televisions in other rooms. Alex turned her head, intense waves of pain flooding over her, and found her mother sitting in the chair next to the bed.

  She looked in her mother’s eyes, and Frances let out a sigh of relief, dropping her rosary into her lap. Snippets of memory from the night before came rising to the surface. Alex remembered being in an ambulance, blood pooling on her legs and thighs and stomach. She had a flashback of the look on the face of the EMT who was monitoring her blood pressure on the way to the ER. She vaguely remembered the lights in the ER, too bright, almost painful to look at, and she had closed her eyes. She could hear Daniel, his voice full of concern and fear, telling the doctor that Alex had fallen on the stairs in their condo, trying to carry a box from upstairs.

  “All the way to the bottom,” she remembered him saying.

  Alex remained mute, shut off behind her closed eyes and the need to turn it all off—the lights, the noises, the voices of the doctors and nurses as they clustered around her. She remembered the oxygen mask; she remembered the doctor telling Daniel he would have to wait outside.

  When she woke, with no idea how many hours had passed, she was in a hospital bed, in a semiprivate room. Her mother sat in a chair, the sun from the window behind her gilding Frances’ hair to bright silver, like a Christmas angel. Daniel was nowhere to be seen.

  Alex met her mother’s eyes. Every inch of her body ached. She swallowed, her throat painful and scratchy. “My baby?” she whispered.

  Her mother looked at her for a moment, her eyes full of pain, and then shook her head.

  Alex turned her head away, tears flowing into the pillow.

  They released her four days later. Her body was a mass of bruises; she could manage walking to the bathroom, but not much farther. Daniel was there, playing the concerned husband, pushing her wheelchair down the hall and into the elevator, to the front doors of the hospital. Her mother walked alongside, carrying the flowers sent by Alex’s colleagues at the University library.

  They had all agreed that Alex would stay with her mother for a week or two, until she could get her strength back. The stairs to the bedroom in the house that she shared with Daniel were out of the question, and Alex was secretly relieved that she did not have to go home with him.

  He wheeled her to the passenger door of Frances’ Subaru and helped Alex maneuver into the front seat of the car. And then he knelt down, squatting on the pavement beside her, and took her hands in his. “I have that job in Las Cruces, so I’ll be gone a few days. But if you need anything . . .”

  Alex nodded. She wanted, more than anything, to jerk her hands away from him. She could not bear his touch; she could not stomach the smell of the hair cream that he used to tame his thick curls. She looked at the top of his thick brown hair as he bent to kiss her hand, and all she could think of was grabbing that hair and yanking hard. She wanted to kick him, to watch the surprise blossom on his face when he fell backward onto the sidewalk. Instead, she took a deep breath and swallowed her feelings. Swallowed the hatred. Swallowed the anger. And nodded once again.

  She moved into the bedroom that she had had since the fifth grade, sleeping under the quilt that her grandmother Edna had made when she was little. She ate chicken tortilla soup and pumpkin bread—at least she made an attempt to eat, since her mother was trying so hard to provide all of Alex’s favorite foods. But mostly, she lay curled in a ball, in the fetal position, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing.

  She’d been five months into the pregnancy, and for the first time in a long time, Alex had felt excited, hopeful even. The baby was the answer, and she could feel it in every fiber of her being. Daniel would ease his grip on her life, once he had a child to look after. And she would have something to call her own, someone who needed her and loved her and wouldn’t dress that love in jabs and punches and sarcastic comments that cut to the bone.

  Now her hope was gone. Her excitement for the future had drained away, just as the blood of their child had drained onto the floor of their home. The doctors had told her there was little hope that she could conceive again with all her internal injuries.

  Her respite lasted ten days. She was starting to move again; she and her mother were spending time on the little patio in the backyard that Frances had filled with geraniums and pansies and petunias. Her appetite had returned, and she was eating more than just a few bites.

  And that’s when he showed up again. As if he had a radar for the exact moment when she might be finding her strength. As if he had a radar for the exact moment she was secretly pulling away, preparing herself to leave. There he was, knocking on the door of her mother’s small house, bearing a huge bouquet of yellow roses.

  “You’re looking better,” he said.

  Alex nodded, just barely. “I’ve been resting a lot. And my mother has been cooking.” She did not want to see him, did not want to talk to him. All she really wanted was for him to go away, to leave her alone, to let her find a little peace.

  Daniel looked up at Frances, who took the flowers from his hand. “That’s good. I know how you love her cooking.”

  Alex looked at him, wondering what he was up to. She knew him well enough, or maybe she was just cynical enough, to believe that compliments always had something attached; they were always a part of some scheme, an attempt to oil the machine as he marched ahead with his own agenda.

  He nodded at Alex. “But I imagine Frances is getting a little tired of all the work, don’t you?”

  Frances came into the living room, bearing the vase of yellow roses. “Never. I like cooking. And it’s so much nicer to have Alex to cook for. Somehow it never tastes the same when I’m cooking for myself.”

  He looked at Frances. Her words were pleasant; her face was calm and composed. A flicker of anger flashed in Daniel’s eyes as he watched her. He nodded. “Good, good. I’m glad. But everyone needs a day off now and then. What do you say, Alex?” He bent down on one knee, just in front of her chair. She shifted her knees to avoid him. “How about lunch at Rio Seco? Give your mother the afternoon off?”

  It was a show, a part he was playing. Alex didn’t buy it anymore, and she was certain that her mother didn’t either. Daniel was the only one of the three of them that still believed his acting was real.

  “I know how you love the chicken mole enchiladas. Maybe some flan for dessert?”

  Alex stared at him, a flicker of interest flashing briefly in her resolve. It was her favorite restaurant, her favorite meal. She loved sitting by the fireplace, looking out the windows at the town of Albuquerque below them. And other than going out on the patio, she had not been out of the house since the accident. Alex looked at her mother. Frances said nothing; she gave no movement or sign about how she felt. But there was a look in her eyes, a plea. Alex turned away from it.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” Daniel continued. “The two of us.” He pressed on, as if he could sense her willpower dissolving, like a boxer who senses his opponent may be tiring.

  It was just one lunch—just an hour, no more. They did have things to talk about. And she fell into the trap that had caught her so many times in the past. Some part of her wanted to believe that he would change, that he would do the right thing. Some part of her wanted to believe that he truly was sorry. When he was like this, it was hard for her to ignore. Despite the war going on in her own head, she still wanted to believe that it would all turn out well.

  “All right,” she murmured. “But just for lunch.”

  Behind Daniel’s shoulder, she watched her mother’s face fall.

  They never made it to the restaurant.

  Instead of turning left, heading back into town and the lunch that Alex had agreed to, he turned his work truck right, at the end of her mother’s block. There was a nature preserve down this way, a five-mile path that wound through reeds and cottonwoods and junipers, a favorite spot for birders.

  Alex sat up straighter in the seat. “Where are we goin
g?” She turned to look at him.

  Daniel’s jaw was hard as rock, clenched as if he were fighting the urge to punch a wall. He pulled into the small dirt parking lot of the preserve. There was one other car parked there on this Wednesday at lunchtime, the occupant somewhere along the five miles of trails that began here.

  Daniel cut the engine. He turned and looked at her, wrapping his hand around hers, rubbing his thumb over the top. “Oh, Alex. I know it’s been tough lately. I know this has been . . . hard. But I need you, Alex. I really do. You believe me, don’t you?”

  Alex said nothing; she did not pull her hand away from his.

  “Don’t you think it’s about time for you to come home?”

  She turned away from him, staring out the windshield. Words deserted her, just as they always had in his presence. She did not want to go home with him, that part she knew absolutely.

  She and her mother had been talking about it, in the quiet afternoons on the patio. They had talked about the social workers who came to visit Alex in the hospital and had left a stack of papers about domestic violence. Alex had not wanted to read those papers, not in detail, but she had glanced at them, had absorbed pieces from the lists of warning signs. They had talked about finding an attorney, getting a restraining order. Alex would move back in with her mother, at least for the time being. But as she sat there in the truck with him, Alex could not begin to think how to tell him this. She was petrified to tell him this.

  He watched her for a moment, staring straight ahead, not looking at him. He let out a long sigh, and leaned forward slightly, reaching under his seat. When he sat back again, he had a small cloth bag on his lap.

  Alex turned her head and watched as he took a pistol from inside the bag. Her stomach dropped. Her mouth went dry; her heart slammed against her rib cage.

  Daniel sighed heavily and took a rag from the console between their seats. He began to rub the stock of the gun, small circles that polished the metal until it gleamed.

  “I guess I just wondered when you were going to come home,” he said quietly. “Seems like you’re feeling better now. Eating better. Walking better. I’d say you’ve spent long enough at your mother’s house. Don’t you think, Alex?”