Chasing at the Surface

by Sharon Mentyka

It’s Tal, Dad’s boss. He’s standing to my left, peering out at the water from under a bright blue cap with the compass logo of Seattle’s baseball team. He rocks back and forth on his heels, his hands in the pockets of his hiker shorts. The binoculars hanging around his neck bounce up and down with each move.

  “I’d say there’s close to fifty boats out there and that’s just as far as I can see,” he continues, as if I’d answered. “Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s three times that number on up to Silverdale.” He takes off his cap, scratches his almost-bald head, then sets it right again. “What they ought to do is get a National Fisheries patrol boat out here. Keep people in line.”

  I can’t tell if he sees me or he’s just talking out loud to himself. Either way, he doesn’t seem to care that I don’t answer.

  “This keeps up, there’s gonna be trouble. Couple of years ago, up in the San Juans, I saw a guy try to smack a gray whale with an oar. And another bozo tried bouncing over the back of an orca on a water sled.”

  Finally, he looks at me and squints.

  “I’m flummoxed, so what would that make me?”

  “Umm, confused? Or … worse than confused. Kind of like, unsure what to do next,” I say, glad this one was easy but also grateful for the distraction.

  “Sentence?”

  “Okay,” I pause. “She was flummoxed by her friend’s questions.”

  “Marisa, Marisa, Marisa,” Tal says with a grin. “I’m seriously going to have to ramp up the level of difficulty.”

  Just then, a big gray and white dog ambles down from the row of houses above the beach. He greets Tal like he knows him, his curved tail wagging.

  “Is this your dog?” I ask, surprised. I’ve never seen Tal bring a dog with him down at Mud Bay.

  “Yep, this is Mut,” he says. “He’s quite old. And yes, he’s a mutt, but we spell it with one ‘t’ like the Germans do. Not that you’ll be writing him any letters.” He bends down and tugs at Mut’s wiry little beard. “Are you trying to finagle something from me, you silly dog?” Tal looks up at me questioningly, but I frown. “One to look up,” he says, smiling.

  “I always wanted a dog, but my mom is allergic.” I bend down to scratch Mut behind his soft ears. “I had a great cat though. Her name was Blackberry. But she got lost when we moved. Or ran away. We’re not sure. My dad thinks maybe she got scared and then couldn’t find her way back to a new place. Or she might’ve snuck into somebody’s garage and couldn’t get out when they closed it.”

  I’m doing that thing when you’re nervous and you talk too much.

  “We put up signs. I looked for her for a long time. Now sometimes I forget what it was like having her around at all.…”

  My voice trails off and an awkward silence settles between us. Why am I telling him all this? It’s not even what I’m really feeling, which is that if Mom hadn’t left, we’d never have moved and Blackberry would still be around.

  “I know what that’s like,” Tal says, his voice low.

  I brush the sand off my jeans and straighten up, surprised. He’s listening, taking me seriously. And suddenly, I have an urge to tell Tal everything—about Mom leaving, about how I’m so angry at Dad for not stopping her, how I feel so lost, and how nobody else seems to think any of it is strange. It makes no sense.

  “Can I walk Mut sometime?” I ask on a whim.

  “Anytime you like,” he says. “He needs more walks than he gets.”

  He cocks his head backwards, toward the row of houses facing the inlet. “We live up there in that monstrosity.” I turn to look, and there’s no mistaking which house he means.

  Rising high up from the sandy beach road is a large three-story Victorian house with two circular turrets, its roof covered in colored shingles, gables facing in all directions. Everybody in town knows this house, not so much for the style but because it’s painted purple and white, with a little bit of lilac thrown in for good measure.

  “I’ve seen houses like that,” I tell him, which is a pretty lame thing to say.

  “Me too!” he laughs, “but they’re in San Francisco or Switzerland. It sticks out like a sore thumb here.” Tal sighs. “Never would’ve guessed my wife would want to live in an old Victorian. But you pick your battles.”

  Looking at the house, I remember the summer we helped our landlord build a fence in front of our house on East Sixteenth Street. When we finished, Mom and Dad told me I could pick the paint color. I spent hours poring over paint chips and finally picked purple. Somehow, our landlord approved and sure enough, we painted the fence purple. I wonder now if it was because I’d seen this house.

  “Fact of the Day,” Tal says, turning to me. “The Boeing Aircraft Factory in Everett, Washington, is the largest building in the world, measured in volume. Number one in the world!”

  I bend down to offer one last pet to Mut. His grayish fur feels warm from the sun.

  “Well, goodness, Marisa, don’t you want to know how many cubic feet?”

  “Sure, Mr. Reese,” I grin, “how many?”

  “Four hundred and seventy-two million cubic feet of useable space.” He shakes his head in awe. “Right in our own backyard.”

  Finagle. I have to remember to look that one up. And for the first time in a long while, I feel myself smile.

  ––––

  I hurry home along the eastern perimeter of the inlet, skirting Lions Field to avoid the crowds, and taking the residential streets instead. Just past the park, I head down toward the water again. The wind has picked up and big puffy clouds blow across the sky. Scenes and conversations from this morning keep coming back to me. I run through them, again and again, like when you’re watching a movie and you hit rewind a couple of times to try to figure out what exactly happened in the scene. In my replay, insulting Harris and running from Lena feel wrong now and I have this sudden urge to make them both right.

  I’m not really looking where I’m going when I suddenly feel something brush against my leg. I stop, just catching myself from tripping over a rope somebody has strung across the beach road, stretching all the way from the water’s edge up to the house that faces the beach. Without thinking much about it, I lift the rope and bend down to scoot under.

  “Hey!” a loud voice yells. “Can’t you read the sign?”

  I look up. It’s Grace, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap with the word Cruiser, the name of her father’s boat, on it. Her family owns and rents out this whole row of houses. When she sees it’s me, she sprints down the front steps of the porch.

  “Beach access. Five dollars,” she demands, pointing to a handwritten cardboard sign swinging from the rope divider.

  I stare at her, not understanding. “What?”

  “Five dollars.” she repeats. “To cross our beach if you want to see the whales.”

  I snort. “I’m not here to watch the whales, Grace. I’m on my way to the bridge.” Why am I even bothering to explain? I can’t believe she has the nerve to try this. “Anyway, you can’t charge people to walk on the beach. It’s a public right-of-way.”

  “My dad says that’s just a courtesy,” she says, ready with an answer. “Owners can decide whether or not to allow free access. And we’re not.”

  She’s standing in front of me now, blocking my way, her hand stretched out like she actually expects me to lay down a five-dollar bill, which is crazy really when you think about it, because Grace’s family is one of the richest in the inlet. Lena says her house is huge. Besides these rentals, her father also owns the biggest marina over at Phinney Bay, plus a lumber store on the peninsula. I’m debating how much I want to fight this, when a screen door slams and Grace’s father appears on the porch.

  “Everything all right?” he calls down.

  Grace turns back toward the house with an irritated look. And an uneasy feeling comes creeping up inside me. When the whales first arrived, we treated them like guests. Now, they’re just a novelty, something for people to exploit, make money from because of their visi
t.

  Grace is still staring at me, waiting. I force myself to swallow my words as I make a quick about-face and storm off, making sure to kick back as much sand as possible. But I can’t shake the feeling that this whole situation is just going to get worse and worse.

  CHAPTER 8

  I take the long way home, thinking about what a disaster the day has been. Up ahead looms the Warren Avenue Bridge, the larger of the two bridges that cross the Narrows. I sprint up the concrete steps to the walkway and in a millisecond a line of speeding cars buzzes me on the left, their engine noise amplified by the sound of rubber tires on metal. Halfway across, a fender-bender blocks the right lane. A driver speeds by, laying on his horn, making me jump. I pick up my pace and breathe a sigh of relief when I finally reach the other side.

  Back home, I kick off my shoes and sink down onto the couch. It feels like days have passed instead of only hours since Dad dropped me off at the inlet. I try to read and do some homework, but after a few feeble attempts I give up. The next sounds I hear are pots clattering and running water. Late afternoon light streams into the window, and the smell of Dad’s cooking drifts my way.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” Dad says. “Busy day?”

  I stretch and rub my eyes as he comes into my line of vision.

  Garlic and herbs. The aroma reminds me of all the dinners Dad has cooked since Mom left. I realize I’ve never offered to help, not even to heat up leftovers. I’ve let Dad do it all. He probably didn’t feel much like cooking either, but he never said a word. I feel such a rush of shame, my eyes fill with tears.

  “Marisa?”

  Dad sits down next to me on the couch and puts his arm around me, and I lose it. The next minute I’m bawling, crying like a three-year-old and I can’t seem to stop. Dad just keeps holding me.

  Since Mom left, I’ve felt like one of those razor clams we used to try to rouse out of hiding on our family trips to the coast. The minute you get near, and they sense your touch, they pull in their bodies so quick, it’s like they’re hiding something.

  Finally, I take a deep breath and my tears stop. “Dad?”

  “Umm?”

  “Don’t you miss her?” I whisper. There. I asked it.

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “Of course I do,” he whispers. “You know that, Marisa.”

  “Is she … is she really coming back?”

  “I hope so. I think so.”

  Dad moves even closer. My hands are cold and he starts rubbing them between his warm palms. “There’s something you need to know, Marisa.”

  A rush of fear courses through me. I look at Dad, thinking how I’ve done my best to avoid reading Mom’s letters and now he’s going to tell me the worst of it anyway.

  “When we married, your mother asked me to promise never to ask about her past. Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed, but at the time I was so crazy in love that I didn’t think a thing of it. We had our future together and that was all that seemed to matter, not the past.”

  I stare at Dad, unbelieving.

  “You guys … never talked about her childhood or anything?”

  Dad shakes his head. “I made a promise.”

  “But … that’s crazy! Why would she make you promise that?” I pull away, tucking my legs underneath me. Then something dawns on me. “Is that why she’d never answer my questions about her parents, or tell me about growing up? I thought it was just me!”

  The only reason I even knew Mom had grown up in California was because of all the rain here. She always said she missed the California heat.

  Dad leans back and sighs.

  “I do know a few stories,” he admits, and I wait, holding my breath.

  “She grew up in Southern California, somewhere down in the San Gabriel Valley. That you already know. But it wasn’t days of California-dreamin’ beaches and the Rose Bowl Parade. This was a place with pig sties, car-wrecking plants, and people whose only financial plan in life was hoping to win at the racetrack. Her street dead-ended into a dairy farm, which sounds fun but apparently wasn’t. The cows passed their days in pens on cement slabs. When the workers hosed down the cement, rivers of mud and cow dung ran off into her front yard.”

  Already, this is more than I’ve ever heard and I have to bite my lip not to interrupt.

  “Your grandmother hated living there, and she drank. A lot. I wormed it out of your mother once because it bugged me that she would never take even a sip of wine.” He pauses. “I never met either of her parents, but I suspect this isn’t about them. This is something else your mother has been running from for a long time.”

  Dad stops, and I can tell he thinks he’s already said too much.

  “That’s all I know. The stories stop when she gets to high school, and I honored my promise not to ask. We focused on making our own stories, new ones, together.”

  Dad gets up and walks over to the window facing the inlet.

  “Your mom is a keen observer of human nature, Marisa. That’s why she’s so good at her work. The only person she keeps at arm’s length is herself.” He turns to me. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  No! I want to scream, I don’t understand.

  “Why keep everything a secret?” The tears start up again. I try to hold them in but can’t. “Did she think people were going to hate her or something?” My eyes squeezed shut, I feel Dad moving closer, then the warmth of his arms encircling me again.

  “Why do any of us keep a secret?” Dad asks. “Because we’re afraid. Once we tell someone the truth, there’s no other way but to face it ourselves.”

  “But it all feels so wrong.” I can feel my voice rising but can’t control it. “She always said it’s okay to ask for help,” I say, remembering that night outside the shelter. “And then she just left. Why didn’t she stay and let us help her?”

  I think Dad’s going to tell me not to worry but when I open my eyes he’s smiling!

  “What?” I ask, surprised.

  “That’s very good thinking, Marisa.” He sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  “I think there is a way that you can help her. Think about it. What are letters, if not stories?”

  And for some crazy reason my heart leaps. Dad’s right. I wipe my eyes and make a decision. Even if it makes no sense, or even if her letters say she committed some horrible crime years ago and the only way I’ll ever see her again now is to visit her in jail—

  Or even if all she says again is “be good,” I make myself a promise.

  The next letter Mom sends—I’m reading it.

  ––––

  Sunday morning, I’m the first one down at Lions Field, ready to go. Kevin from the Whale Research Center arrives, and together we load the rafts in silence, as the sky slowly lightens. Finally, other volunteers start trickling in. Standing on the wet wood of the dock, I make Lena wait while I apologize for running off. There’s somebody else I need to find too, to make things right, but Lena says Harris never came back yesterday, and I suspect he won’t be back today, so that will have to wait until next week.

  Just past nine o’clock, we push off from the dock. The morning is breezy and warm, all the early threats of bad weather seem to have blown away.

  “Great day for whale watching,” Kevin says. He scans the skies, frowning. “Let’s hope it clouds over and keeps people home.”

  Our vessel is called Wave. It’s one of two twelve-foot-long inflatable research rafts that SoundKeeper has sent to the inlet. Wave is bright orange, with two bench seats and a gas motor mounted on the rear that Mr. O’Connor is manning. Once all of us are settled—me, Lena, Kevin, and Naomi, a graduate student working with Kevin—our knees practically touch.

  The floor of the raft is cluttered with a megaphone, a couple of hydrophones for listening to the sounds the whales make underwater, radios, backpacks, sacks of SoundKeepers’s “Better Boater” flyers to distribute to whale watchers, and water bottles. Flying from a small mast is a yellow flag identifying our craft as a researc
h vessel, which means we’re allowed to get closer to the whales.

  We motor slowly out, scanning for any sign of the pod. The inlet is already starting to fill up with boaters, and once we clear the shoreline, it’s easy to see up and down its whole length. I look to the south, and there in the distance, just entering under the bridge are two big whale watching boats. Lena spots them at the same time I do.

  “Whoa! They’re humongous,” she says. “Remember being on one of those at camp?”

  I do remember. It was almost as big as the ferry that runs to Seattle, with two full walk-around upper and lower decks, even a snack bar.

  “Any of the cities big enough to send out tour boats like that are at least an hour and a half away,” Naomi says, as we all watch the boats steam closer. “The news must be spreading.”

  Just then a short, sharp whale call rings out close by—Aiiiieeee—and we hear the unmistakable hissing sound of whales coming up to breathe.

  Pfoosh—Pfoosh. Pfoooooshhhhhh.

  Lena gasps and I swivel around. There in the water, parallel to our raft, and no more than a hundred yards away, five black, glossy dorsal fins glide by, all at slightly different heights.

  Seeing them here, so close, a little thrill runs through me. Then, a huge fin—probably five feet high—heads straight toward us! At the last minute the whale dives under, and I can see its black-and-white patterned body glide by just a few feet away. A little ways off, two whales spyhop simultaneously, their heads poking up through the flat calm of the water. A second later they’re gone, and when they surface again they’re swimming side by side, the head of one pressed against the fluke of the other. We all watch, mesmerized, as each whale raises a pec fin, almost as if in greeting, then rolls and dives in unison.

  Then there’s a rush of excitement in the boat as everyone suddenly has a job to do.

  Mr. O’Connor kills the motor as one of the orcas glides close by again, the exhale of its breath sending a plume of mist rising over the raft. Pfoosh—Pfooooosh. The other whales race back and forth. Naomi quickly lowers one of the hydrophones into the water, securing it to the raft. She hits the record button, and the air comes alive with the voices of the orcas. Clicks and pops, whistles, squeals, and screeches echo and roll over us, reverberating in the open air.