Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

by Jodie Picoult

  I look from Hadley’s face to Oliver’s He’s got this look in his eyes that I didn’t see even yesterday morning. I have never seen it on a human. It’s the way raccoons get, when they’re rabid. They walk right up to you, even though normally they’re scared shitless of people, and they just attack, scratching and biting and clawing. It’s like they have no idea where they are, or how they got there. They’ve just absolutely gone crazy. “Hadley,” I say real slowly, trying not to set Oliver off, “I think you’d better let Rebecca come home with us. And I think you’d better stay here for a while.”

  Hadley glares at him, a vein in his temple pulsing angrily. “You know me,” he says. “You’ve known me forever. I can’t believe . . . I cannot believe that you’d doubt me.” He walks towards me, so close I could reach out and just touch him, tell him it’s over. “You’re my friend, Sam,” he says. “You’re like my brother. I didn’t tell her to come here. I wouldn’t do that.” He swallows; I think he’s about to cry. In all the years, I’ve never seen him do that. “I’m not going to turn my back. I’m not going to let you take her away.” He looks at Rebecca. “Jesus, Sam, I love her.”

  He takes a step backwards, towards the chasm, and I lean forward, worried about his safety, but Rebecca lurches forward between us and throws her arms around Hadley’s knees. Hadley crouches, holding her and brushing back her hair.

  It is at this moment that Oliver loses control. “Let go of her, you bastard!” I grab his arm and pull him back. “Let go of my daughter!”

  I kneel, eye-level with Rebecca and Hadley. “Give her to us, Hadley,” I whisper. “Give her to us.”

  Rebecca’s face is pressed into Hadley’s shoulder. He talks to her quietly,and from the words I catch over the calls of circling hawks, I think he is trying to convince her to come to us.

  “You have to go with them,” Hadley says. He lifts her chin with her finger. “Don’t you want to make me happy? Don’t you see?”

  I start to wonder if this is going to turn out all right. Oliver stands with his fists at his side, watching Rebecca as if there is a wall between them. I imagine it is next to impossible to see your child grow up; even harder when it comes in a matter of minutes.

  Rebecca and Hadley are struggling. She clutches him, and Hadley is trying to push her away. Watching them, I have started to believe. I think I am on their side, now. In spite of Oliver, in spite of Jane. For the last time, Hadley looks at me, and he’s begging for just five minutes. Five lousy minutes.

  Because I am looking into the sun to give them privacy, I don’t really know what happens next. All of a sudden, Rebecca and Hadley tear apart. In the effort to push her towards me, he falls. I see all this through blind orange sunspots, my own fault. And then Rebecca is in my arms, tiny and hot with sweat, reaching back towards the cliff as Hadley falls over the edge.

  I will remember many things about that day in years to come, but the thing that will stick with me most vividly is Rebecca. Just that second her eyes clear, and she begins to scream. It isn’t a scream, though, not really; it’s the howling of an animal. I recognize it as the sound of death, and it never surprises me that it comes from her throat instead of Hadley’s. I will remember that noise, and the way Rebecca looks over the edge of the cliff when none of us have the nerve. She rips the shirt she is wearing at the buttons and rakes her nails over her chest. All three of us-three men-just stand there, not doing anything; not knowing what we are supposed to do. We are speechless. She tears at her flesh, scoring her legs and her arms. We all watch the blood from the marks she’s made seep into the earth.

  67 JANE

  They bring her back to me swathed in bandages. Her eyes are open but she isn’t looking at anything. Even when I stand right over her, she doesn’t see me. From time to time she says things about fire and lightning. She stood up during the second night, screamed at the top of her lungs, and got out of bed. She walked around the room, stepping over obstacles that were not there, touching her hand and shrieking from the burns. Then she sat on the floor, crouched, her head bent over her lap. When she looked up she was crying. She was calling for me.

  Sam and Oliver drift in and out of the room at different times. They have both tried to get me to leave her side, but how could I do that? What if she chose that minute to regain consciousness, and I weren’t there?

  When Sam comes in, he sits behind me and kneads my shoulders. We don’t say much to each other; he is just a presence for me, and that’s plenty. When Oliver comes in, he sits on the opposite side of the bed. He holds Rebecca’s other hand. As if she completes the circuit, when we are like this we can talk. I tell him what I feel for Sam, and it doesn’t hurt so much to reveal the truth. I tell him how it makes me feel to be in love like this. I do not apologize; it’s too late for that. And as for Oliver, I have to say he does not accuse. Instead he accepts what I have to say, and he weaves tales for me. He has become an expert storyteller. He reminds me of mishaps that occurred when we were dating; of escapades on our honeymoon to retrieve lost luggage, to find long-dormant hostels. He tells me together we can survive anything.

  Oliver is in the room when she comes to. I have been tracing the hand-painted design on the edge of the walls, wondering what Sam’s mother is like, when Rebecca’s fingers move in my hand. Oliver looks up at me; he has felt it too. Rebecca opens her eyes, bloodshot and crusted, and coughs violently. “What’s the matter with her?” Oliver says. Anxious to do something, I press a towel against Rebecca’s forehead. Oliver holds tissues against Rebecca’s chin, catching the phlegm.

  Finally, thankfully, Rebecca stops. She sighs-actually, it is more like she deflates. Oliver strokes her arm gently. “Baby,” he says, smiling down at her. “We’re going to go home. We’re getting out of here.” I do not say anything. I don’t care what he says. I will do anything-if Rebecca comes back whole.

  Rebecca makes a motion to sit up, and I quickly stuff a pillow behind her back for support. “Tell me this,” she says. “Hadley’s dead?”

  I don’t think Oliver has come to terms with this; with Rebecca’s ability to fall in love. I would not have believed it either, but I was there to witness it. Oliver looks at me, and then he gets up and leaves the room.

  I don’t know why she has asked. Does she know for sure? Is she just looking for a corroborating witness? “Yes,” I say, and just like that, all the light drains out of my daughter’s face. I am afraid I am going to lose her again. Once you make the decision you want to die, nothing can bring you back. I start to cry, and I apologize to her. I’m sorry for thinking she was too young. I’m sorry for sending Hadley away. I’m sorry, just sorry, that it had to come to this.

  I bury my face in the quilt on top of my daughter, thinking: this is not the way I wanted it to be. I was hoping to be the strong one, the one who would be there to help her stand again. But Rebecca holds her hand against my cheek. “Tell me everything you know,” she says.

  So I recount the horror of Hadley’s death, his broken neck, his bravery. I tell her he felt no pain. Not like you, I think. I do not tell her that under slightly different circumstances of fate, Hadley might have lived. The rangers said the drop was but one hundred feet- not far enough to ensure death. What killed Hadley was the spot where he happened to land, the rocks that severed his spine. I do not tell Rebecca that inches away was the forgiving cushion of water. I say that Hadley’s funeral is tomorrow. It took this long to raise his body from the narrow chasm.

  “This long?” Rebecca asks. I tell her three days have gone by. “What have I been doing for three days?”

  She has pneumonia and she has been sedated most of the time. “You were gone when your father first arrived here. He insisted on going with Sam to find you. He didn’t like the idea of Sam staying here with me.”

  I help her lie back down and tell her she ought to rest. She fights me, struggling to sit up. “What does he mean, ‘We’re going home’?”

  “Back to California. What did you think?”


  She blinks many times, as if she is trying to clear her mind, or remember, or possibly both. “What have we been doing here?”

  She catches me so off guard that I don’t stop her in time from pulling the quilt back from her chest. When she sees her sores on her chest, arms and legs, she gasps. Her hands, trembling, reach out for something. They find me. “When Hadley fell, you tried to climb down after him. You wouldn’t stop.” I take a deep breath, feeling my voice catch. “You kept saying you were trying to tear your heart out.”

  Rebecca turns her face so that she is looking out the window. It is dark now, and all she will see is the reflection of her own pain. “I don’t know why I bothered,” she whispers. “You’d already done that.”

  I used to think, before this whole incident, that parental love was supposed to be unconditional. I believed that Rebecca would naturally be tied to me because I had been the one to bring her into the world. I didn’t connect this with my own experience. When I could not love my father, I assumed there was something wrong with me. But when they carried Rebecca in here from the stretcher of the ambulance, I came to see things differently. If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.

  Suddenly I am dizzy with guilt. “What do you want me to say, Rebecca?”

  Rebecca will not look at me. “Why do you want me to forgive you? What do you get out of it?”

  Absolution, I think, the first word that comes to my mind. I get to protect you from what I went through. “Why do I want you to forgive me? Because I never forgave my father, and I know what it will do to you. When I was growing up my father would hit me. He hit me and he hit my mother and I tried to keep him from hitting Joley. He broke my heart, and eventually he broke me. I never believed I could be anything important. Why else would my father hurt me?” I smile, wringing her hand. “Then I forgot about it. I married Oliver and three years later he hit me. That’s when I left the first time.”

  Rebecca pulls her hand away. “The plane crash,” she says.

  “I went back to him because of you. I knew that more than anything else I had to make sure you grew up feeling safe. And then I hit your father, and it all came back again.” I swallow, reliving that scene on the stairs in San Diego. The whale papers fluttering around my ankles. Oliver cursing at me. “This time it was part of me,” I say. “No matter how far I run. No matter how many states and countries I cross, I can’t get it out of myself. I never forgave him, because I thought that way I would have the last laugh. But he won. He’s in me.”

  When she tries to sit up gain, I don’t stop her. I start to tell her about Sam. I let her know what it was like to give the stars we saw from the bedroom window the names of our ancestors. How he could finish the very thoughts I was thinking. “I didn’t believe anyone else could feel the way I did. Including- especially my daughter.”

  I move to the edge of the bed, pulling the quilt back over her chest. I take her hand, counting her fingers. “I did this when you were a baby. Making sure there were ten. I wanted you to be healthy. I didn’t care if you were a boy or a girl. At least I said I didn’t. But it mattered. I used to hope I’d have a little girl, someone just like me. Someone I could go shopping with, and teach to wear makeup, and dress for the senior prom. But I wish now you hadn’t been a girl. Because we get hurt. It happens over and over.”

  We stare at each other for a long time, my daughter and me. In the dim light of a sixty-watt bulb, I start to notice things about her that I have never seen. Everyone has always told me she looks like Oliver. I even thought she looked like Oliver. But here, and now, she has my eyes. Not the color, not the shape, but the demeanor- and isn’t that the most remarkable feature? This is my child. There is no denying it.

  When I am looking at her, all of my decisions come clear. Love, I think, has very little to do with Sam, with Oliver, with Hadley. What it all boils down to is me. What it all boils down to is Rebecca. It is knowing that the memories I pass down to her will keep me from feeling pain the next time. It is knowing that she has stories of her own for me.

  “Sometimes I cannot believe you are only fifteen,” I say. I pull back the quilt from my daughter’s chest and peel off the strips of gauze. In some places she starts to bleed again. Maybe this is good. Maybe something needs to be let out. I hold my hands across her chest, over her breasts. Her blood slips between my fingers. I want so much to heal.

  68 OLIVER

  I have one strong lasting image of you, Jane. It was the morning after our wedding night, and you looked lost in the large, king-size bed at the Hotel Meridien in Boston. I awakened before the five o’clock wake-up call just for the chance to watch you with all your defenses down. You have always been so lovely when you stop resisting. It is your face that I remember the most: alabaster, honest, the face of a child. You were a child.

  You had never been abroad, do you remember? and you were so looking forward to Amsterdam, Copenhagen. But then came the phone call from Provincetown, about several beached whales that were stranded on the shores of Ogunquit. When the telephone rang, you rolled towards me. “Is it time?” you whispered, twining your arms around my hips, playing at this world of adults.

  I decided to simply tell you the truth. Perhaps in retrospect I see that I embellished the plight of these whales to be in more dire straits than could be considered strictly truthful. But you surprised me. You did not frown, or sigh, or show evidence of regret. You began to get dressed in an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt- not at all the pretty pink suit of which you’d been so proud, your going-away outfit. “Come on, Oliver,” you said to me. “We’ve got to get there as soon as we can!”

  Driving to Maine I stole glances at you, checking once again for signs of self-pity. You exhibited none. You kept your hand covering mine for the entire trip, and you did not comment on our forgotten honeymoon or the missed flight. We reached Ogunquit the same time that our plane was scheduled to depart.

  You worked beside me that day, and the next, ferrying buckets of water up from the ocean, massaging the crusted fins of these whales. You and I were a team, united in purpose. I had never felt so close to you as I did on the beaches of Ogunquit, separated by the huge frame of a whale, and yet still able to hear the song of your voice.

  We told you to step aside when it came to moving the whales. You refused. You worked directly beside me, pushing where I told you it was necessary, stepping back delicately when common sense told you you were too small to do any good. You knew the clear danger of being so close to such a powerful mammal. You heard the stories of broken limbs, and worse, of bring crushed. We saw three whales swimming back out into the ocean that day-two females and a baby. The baby had to be redirected several times; it kept trying to swim back to shore. But we watched them go free. It took my breath away, seeing success right before my eyes. I wanted to tell you this but you were not there. I had to look around to find you in the cheering crowd. You were crouched near the one whale we could not save. Already the sun had cracked and bleached the skin on its back, and you were splashing bucket after bucket of water upon it. “It’s gone, Jane.” I tried to pull you away. You leaned against the still side of the whale near the hot and blistered eye, and you cried.

  I do not know how it happened; the way we drifted apart. I am happy to assume the blame for it if it can be left in the past. I woke up one morning, greying at the temples, engrossed in the pursuit of my research, and discovered that my family had disappeared. I must confess to you that even as I began to search for you and Rebecca, I did not have a clear goal in mind. The object was to stop the nonsense, to bring you back as quickly as possible and resume the life that had been interrupted. But when I saw you in Iowa-yes, I was in Iowa at the same time, just across the cornfield-when I saw you with Rebecca, I realized there was much more going on than I had allowed myself to recognize. Here was this amazing woman with whom I had constructed the fragile s
hape of fifteen years. Here was this child who came back from the edge of death for something .

  I understand you have undertaken many changes yourself during-this trip and although I cannot pretend this does not hurt, I will not blame you. I brought it upon myself. I drove you to find someone else. But you have to see, Jane, that I’m a different man. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction: imagine how different our lives could be. Oh, I want you back. I want you and I want Rebecca, and I want for once to act like a family. I will bend over backwards; I will give you both all I have. I know you have your own issues to sort out, but don’t you see? I need you, Jane. I love you. I know that the only reason I have become successful in other areas of my life is because of you-at your expense. And I still feel the way I did the day you willingly postponed your own honeymoon. I want you by my side.

  It would be too much to ask you to believe in me. But I know you believe in second chances. You can’t throw this all away. At the very least, all the basal elements are still there: you, me, Rebecca. We could tear down everything, yet we would still have those building blocks. And my God, Jane, imagine the little world we three could create.

  69 JOLEY

  In all the years you’ve been coming to me for advice, I’ve never been able to get you to do something you didn’t already have your heart set on doing. There: my secret’s out. I’m not the sage I pretend to be; the fact is, Jane, you’ve got a mind of your own, and you only need me to pull the answers out from inside you. So I think you know what you are going to do. I think you understand, in this case, what would be the right thing.