Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

9 JANE

Instead of fighting when we were growing up, Joley and I went through a ritual of saving each other. I was the one who lied for him when he first ran away from home and surfaced again in Alaska, working for an oil rigger. I was the one who bailed him out of jail in Santa Fe, when he had assaulted a traffic cop. When research in college convinced him the Holy Grail was buried in Mexico, I drove him to Guadalajara. I talked him out of swimming the English Channel; I answered all his calls, his letters. During all the time Joley tried to find a corner of this world in which he felt comfortable, I was the one who kept track of him.

And in return, he has been my biggest fan. He believed in me with such faith that at times I began to believe in myself too.

Rebecca is inside the 7-Eleven, getting something to eat. I told her to be sparing, because the bottom line is, we don’t have a lot of cash, and there’s only so far we can go on Oliver’s credit cards before he cancels them. The operator makes a collect call to Stow, Massachusetts, which is accepted by someone named Hadley. The man who has answered has a voice as smooth as syrup. “Jane,” he says. “Joley’s mentioned you before.”

“Oh,” I say, unsure how to respond. “Good.”

He goes out to find Joley, who is in the field. I hold the receiver away from my ear and count the holes in the mouthpiece.

“Jane!” This welcome, this big hello. I pull the receiver close.

“Hi, Joley,” I say, and there is absolute silence. I panic, and press the buttons-numbers one and nine and six-wondering if I have been disconnected.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” my brother says, and if it had been anyone else but Joley I would have asked him how he knew.

“It’s Oliver,” I begin, and then I shake my head. “No, it’s me. I left Oliver. I took Rebecca and I left and I’m in a 7-Eleven in La Jolla and I haven’t the first idea what to do or where to go.”

Three thousand miles away, Joley sighs. “Why did you leave?”

I try to think of a joke, or a witty way to say it. It’s already a punch line, I think, and in spite of myself I smile. “Joley, I hit him. I hit Oliver.”

“You hit Oliver-”

“Yes!” I whisper, trying to quiet him, as if the entire nation between us can hear.

Joley laughs. “He probably deserved it.”

“That’s not the point.” I see Rebecca come up to the counter inside the 7-Eleven, carrying Yodels.

“So who are you running from?”

My hands start to shake, so I tuck the phone into the crook of my neck. I don’t say anything, and I hope that he will fill in the answer for me.

“I need to see you,” Joley says, serious. “I need to see you to help you. Can you get to Massachusetts?”

“I don’t think so.” I mean it. Joley has traveled the whole world, its caverns, rolling oceans, and its boundaries, but I have never been far from suburbia on the East or the West Coast. I have lived in two pockets disconnected from a whole. I have no idea where Wyoming is, or Iowa, or if it takes days or weeks to travel across the country. I haven’t the slightest sense of direction when it comes to things like this.

“Listen to me. Take Highway Eight east to Gila Bend, Arizona. Rebecca can help you, she’s a quick kid. In the morning, go to the post office in town and ask for a letter in your name. I’ll write and tell you where to go next, and I won’t give you more than one step at a time, and Jane?”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were listening. It’s all right,” he says, and his voice caresses. “I’m here, and I’m going to write you cross-country.”

Rebecca comes outside to the phone booth and offers me a Yodel. “I don’t know, Joley. I don’t have faith in the U.S. Postal Service.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

No, and because he hasn’t, I start to cry. “Talk to me,” I say.

So my brother begins to talk, endless and lovely and interconnected. “Rebecca will love it here. It’s an orchard, a hundred acres. And Sam won’t mind that you’re coming-he owns the place- awfully young for a controlling farmer but his parents have retired to Florida. I’ve learned a lot from Sam.” I motion to Rebecca to come closer, and when she does I hold the phone between us so that she can hear. “We grow Prairie Spys, Cortlands, Imperials, Lobos, McIntosh, Regents, Delicious, Empire, Northern Spy, Prima, Priscillas, Yellow Delicious, Winesaps. At night when you go to bed, you hear the bleating of sheep. In the morning when you lean out your window, you smell cider and sweet grass.”

Rebecca closes her eyes and leans against the gum-studded phone booth. “It sounds terrific,” I say, and to my surprise, my voice is no longer quivering. “I can’t wait to see you.”

“Take your time. I’m not going to chart your course by the fastest highways. I’m going to send you to places I think you need to go.”

“What if-”

“Oliver won’t find you. Trust me.”

I listen to Joley’s breathing on the other end of the line. The atmosphere changes in La Jolla. The salt in the air turns molecular; the wind reverses its course. Two boys in the back seat of a Jeep sniff at the night sky like bloodhounds.

“I know you’re scared,” Joley says. He understands. And with that admission, I feel myself slip, limp, into the careful hands of my brother.

“So when we get to Gila Bend,” Rebecca says, “Uncle Joley is going to meet us?” She is trying to work out the particulars; she is that kind of girl. Every fifty miles or so, when she can’t get anything but static on the AM radio, she asks me another logistical question.

“No, he’s going to send us a letter. I guess we’re going to see the sights on the way to Massachusetts.”

Rebecca slips her feet out of her sneakers and presses her toes against the front window. Frost halos form around her pinkies. “That doesn’t make any sense. Daddy will find us by then.”

“Daddy will look for the shortest distance between two points, don’t you think? He wouldn’t head for Gila Bend, he’d head for Vegas.” I am impressed with myself-Vegas was a shot in the dark for me, but from Rebecca’s face I can tell I have given a more direct location.

“What if there’s no letter? What if this takes us forever?” She scrunches down in the seat so that her neck folds into several chins. “What if they find us, weeks from now, dying of dysentery or lice or heartworm in the back seat of a Chevy wagon?”

“Humans don’t get heartworm. I don’t think.”

I catch Rebecca staring at my wrists, which rest against the large steering wheel. They have flowered into bruises, saffron and violet, like big bangle bracelets that cannot be removed. “Well,” I say quietly, “you should see what his cheek looks like.”

She slides across the seat and cranes her neck to see the driver’s perspective. “I hope I never have to.” She is beautiful at almostfifteen. Rebecca has straw-straight yellow hair that springs to the crest of her shoulders; her summer skin is the color of hazelnuts. And her eyes are the strangest combination of Oliver’s blue and my grey-they are a violent sort of green, like the hue of a computer screen, transparent, alarming. She is in this for the adventure. She hasn’t considered what it means to leave your father behind, for a little while or forever. What she sees is the drama-the explosion, the slamming doors, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live out the plot of a youngadult novel. I cannot say I blame her, and I cannot condone bringing her along. But leaving her behind was not a viable alternative.

I’m crazy about her. Since day one, she has depended on me, and, remarkably, I have yet to let her down.

“Mom,” Rebecca says, annoyed. “Earth to Mom.”

I smile at her. “Sorry.”

“Can we pull over?” She looks at her watch, a leather and gold Concord, a gift from Oliver several Christmases ago. “It’s only ninethirty, and we’ll be there by midnight, and I really need to pee.”

I don’t know how Rebecca has figured on midnight, but she’s been calculating with a ruler and a little road map she found wedged in the back seat. Geography, Mom, she told me. We all have to take it in Social Studies.

We pull aside when the road develops a shoulder and lock up the car. I go with Rebecca into the woods to go to the bathroom- I’m not about to let her out on the side of the road in the middle of night. We hold hands and try not to step on poison ivy. “Nice out,” Rebecca says, as she is peeing. I’m holding her forearms for balance. “Isn’t it warmer than usual?”

“I forget you’re a California girl. I have no idea if it’s warmer than usual. Usual on the East Coast is fifty-five degrees at night.”

“What am I going to use?” Rebecca says, and I look at her blankly. “Toilet paper?”

“I don’t know.” She reaches for leaves on the ground and I grab her wrist. “No! You don’t know what that stuff is; it could be sumac, or God knows what, and that’s the last thing you need: not to be able to sit on a driving trip cross-country.”

“So what do I do?”

I will not leave her alone. “Sing,” I tell her.

“What?”

“Sing. You sing and I’ll run up to the car for a tissue and if I hear you stop singing I know you’re in trouble.”

“That’s stupid,” Rebecca says. “This is Arizona, not L.A. No one’s out here.”

“All the more reason.” Rebecca stares at me, incredulous, and then begins to sing a rap song. “No,” I tell her, “sing something I know, something where I know the order so I won’t get confused.”

“I don’t believe this. What’s in your repertoire, Mom?” She loses her balance for a moment, and stumbles, cursing.

I think for a moment, but there is little we have in common in the realm of music. “Try the Beach Boys,” I suggest, figuring that after fifteen years in California something has to stick.

“Well, the East Coast girls are hip,” Rebecca warbles, “I really dig those clothes they wear . . .”

“That’s great,” I say, “and the northern girls?”

“With the way they kiss . . .”

I sing with her, walking backwards as far as I can, calling on her to raise the volume of her voice as I get farther and farther away. When she forgets the words, she sings syllables, da-da-da. When I can see the car I break into a run, and find a tissue that I’d used to blot lipstick, and bring it back to Rebecca.

“I wish they all could be California girls,” she says, as I run up to her. “You see? No one came near me.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

We lie down on the hood of the Chevy, our backs on the slope of the windshield. I try to listen for the bends of the Colorado River, which we passed several miles back. Rebecca tells me she is going to try to count the stars.

We pass the last Yodel between us like a joint, taking smaller and smaller bites at the end so that neither one of us will be accused of finishing it. We argue about whether or not a helicopter’s lights are a shooting star (no) and if Cassiopeia is out at this time of year (yes). When the cars are not passing us, it is almost quiet, save for the hum of the vibrating highway.

“I wonder what it is like here during the day,” I say aloud.

“Probably a lot like it is now. Dusty, red. Hotter.” Rebecca takes the Yodel out of my fingers. “You want it?” She pops it into her mouth and squashes it against her front teeth with her tongue. “I know, disgusting. You think it gets really hot here, hot like in L.A., where the roads breathe when you step on them?”

Together we stare at the sky, as if we are waiting for something to happen.

“You know,” Rebecca says, “I think you’re taking all this really well.”

I lean up on one elbow. “You think?”

“Yeah. Really. I mean, you could be falling apart, you know?

You could be the type who doesn’t stop crying, or who won’t drive on highways.”

“Well I can’t be,” I say, honestly, “I have to take care of you.”

“Take care of me? I can take care of myself.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say, laughing, and I’m only half joking. It is easy to see that in two or three years this daughter of mine will be a knockout. This year in school she read Romeo and Juliet, and she told me pragmatically that Romeo was a wimp. He should have just taken Juliet and run away with her, swallowed his pride and worked at some medieval McDonald’s. What about the poetry, I asked her. What about the tragedy? And Rebecca told me that that’s all very well and good but it isn’t the way things happen in real life.

“Please,” Rebecca says, “You’re getting that weepy cow look again.”

I would like to lie here for days with my daughter, watching her grow up in front of me, but since I am running away from my own problems I don’t have that luxury. “Come on,” I say, nudging her off the hood of the car. “You can hang your head out the window while we drive and finish counting.”

By the time we reach the signs for Gila Bend the soil turns brick red, veined with night shadows of cacti. The sides of the road level around us so that it seems we should be able to see the town and yet there is nothing but dust. Rebecca twists around in her seat to double-check that we have read the green sign correctly. “So where is this place?”

We travel several miles without seeing traces of a civilized town. Finally I pull to the side of the road and turn off the ignition. “We could always sleep in the car,” I tell Rebecca. “It’s warm enough.”

“No chance! There are coyotes and things here.”

“This coming from the girl who was willing to go to bathroom with all the lunatics hiding in the woods?”

“May I help you?”

The sound startles us; for three and a half hours we have heard only the patterns of each other’s voices. Standing beside Rebecca’s window is a woman with a tattered grey braid hanging down her back. “Car trouble?”

“I’m sorry. If this is your property, we can move the car.”

“Why bother,” the woman says, “no one else has.” She tells us that we have come to the Indian Reservation in Gila Bend, the smaller one, and points out furry lavender shapes in the distance that indeed are houses. “There’s a larger reservation about six miles east, but the tourist traps are here.” Her name is Hilda, and she invites us to her apartment.

She lives in a two-story brick building that smells like a dormitory--federally subsidized housing, she explains. She has left all the lights on, and it is only when we are inside that I realize she has been carrying a paper bag. I expect her to pull out gin, whiskey-I have heard stories-but she takes out a carton of milk and offers to make Rebecca an egg cream.

On the walls are woven mats in all the colors of the southwestern-rainbow, and charcoal drawings of bulls and canyons. “What do you think of her,” I ask Rebecca, when Hilda is in the makeshift bathroom/kitchen.

“Honest?” Rebecca says, and I nod. “Well, I can’t believe you’re here. Have you lost your mind? It’s midnight, and some person you’ve never seen in your life comes up to the car, and says, Hey, come to my place, and she’s an Indian to boot, and you just pick up your things and go. Whatever happened to never taking candy from strangers?”

“Egg creams,” I say. “She hasn’t offered us candy.”

“Jesus.”

Hilda comes out with a wicker tray that carries three foamy glasses and ripe plums. She holds one up and tells us they are grown locally by her step-brother. I thank her, sipping at my egg cream. “So tell me how you came to be on Dog Forked Road at midnight.”

“Is that what we were on?” I turn to Rebecca. “I thought it was Route Eight.”

“We turned off Route Eight,” Rebecca says. She turns to Hilda. “It’s a long story.”

“I have all the time in the world. I’m an insomniac. That’s what I was doing on Dog Forked Road at midnight. Milk’s the only thing to soothe my heartburn.”

I nod sympathetically. “We’ve come from California. I guess you could say we’ve run away from home.” I try to laugh, to make light of the situation, but I can see this woman whom I hardly know staring at the bruises on my wrists.

“I see,” she says.

Rebecca asks if there is some place she can lie down, and Hilda excuses herself to fix up a fold-out couch in the other room. She collects pillows from one closet and sheets colored with Peanuts characters from the kitchen pantry. “Get some sleep, Mom,” Rebecca says, sitting beside me on the loveseat. “I worry about you.” Hilda ushers her into the bedroom, and from my angle I can see Rebecca slip in between the sheets, sighing the way you do when you run your ankles along all the cool spots. Hilda stands in the doorway until my daughter falls asleep, and then she steps back and presents me with Rebecca’s face, in profile, lit silver and traced with the grace of the moon.