Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

30 REBECCA July 18, 1990

The people wearing white T-shirts marked CREW ask us to join the line of cars. It stretches like a snake along the dock in Port Jefferson. While we are waiting my mother makes up stories about the people she passes in surrounding cars. A woman with a baby beside her is going to visit her long-lost aunt in Old Lyme, the one for whom the baby is named. A businessman is really a government spy, checking on the U.S. Coast Guard. Sometimes I wonder about my mother.

“This way,” a man yells. My mother puts the car into gear. She rolls it up a side ramp and into the hinged mouth of the ferry. It is like we are driving right into the jaws of a great white whale.

We are beckoned by another crew member and told to park the car halfway up a steep ramp on the side. There are two symmetrical ramps, and cars are parked on them and beneath them. I had been wondering how they would fit us all in.

It is a one-hour-and-fifteen-minute ride. We spend it on the upper deck, lying on our backs on the compartment that holds life jackets. Between this and the convertible I am starting to get some color. Even my mother is looking tan.

“Well,” she announces, “we’ll be in Massachusetts first thing in the morning. We should get to Uncle Joley’s by noon.”

“It’s about time. It feels like we’ve been gone forever.”

“I wonder what it is he does on an apple orchard?” my mother says. “We didn’t even have a garden as kids. Well, we tried, but everything kept dying. We blamed it on the New England soil.”

“How did he get it?”

“Get what?”

“The job. How did he get a job, without any experience farming?”

My mother flips onto her back and shields her eyes against the sun. “He didn’t quite tell me. Something to do with a visit, I think, and this guy hired him. The guy who runs the place. Supposedly he’s younger than Joley, even. He took over from his father.” She sits up. “You know the types. The real ambitious ones, who’ve wanted to be farmers ever since they were knee-high to a beetle.”

“A grasshopper. Knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“Whatever,” my mother sighs.

“How can you pass judgment,” I say to her. “You don’t know the man, and you don’t know anything about growing apples.”

“Oh, Rebecca,” my mother laughs. “How hard could it be?”

The ferry is gushing a backwash and slowly turning 180 degrees. That way, when we dock, we can drive right off. From what I can see, Bridgeport does not look like someplace to write home about.

It seems as if every other line of cars gets to drive off before we do. Plus, since we are halfway up a ramp we cannot see if the line is moving. We cannot see anything but the Ford Taurus in front of us. It is very dusty and someone has etched “WASH ME” on the back window. Finally a man wearing a CREW shirt points to the car and motions that we can move ahead. But the Taurus in front of us, instead of pulling forward, has shifted into reverse. It slams us squarely on the front fender. I can hear the metal crunch.

“Jesus Christ,” my mother says. “It figures.”

“Well, aren’t you going to stop?” The man in the CREW shirt is yelling something I can’t hear. The overall gist of it is: Move, lady. My mother pulls off the boat with the fender hanging half on and half off. She drives to a spot out of the way, on the right, where the Taurus is waiting.

She gets out of the car and walks in front to see the damage. “We can drive. We just won’t look very pretty.” She tries to bend the fender back into place with her bare hands. “I suppose you can’t ask for much when you’ve paid five hundred dollars.”

The driver gets out of the Taurus, which hasn’t been damaged. “Oh, dear,” he says. “I’ll certainly pay for this. I can give you cash, right now, if you like. Or we can exchange licenses.” He wrings his hands in front of himself, so upset that it is almost funny.

“Well,” my mother says, “it would probably cost at least four hundred dollars to fix. Don’t you think so, honey?” she calls to me.

“At least. And the car being brand new, and all.”

“Brand new?” the man gasps. He doesn’t notice all the rust spots, apparently. “I am so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. I didn’t mean to put it into reverse. Stupid, stupid me.” He bends down over our twisted fender and smooths his fingers over it. “I don’t have the money on me, but if you follow me I can get it. And I don’t mind giving the cash up front, not at all. Less points on the old insurance, after all.”

“We really don’t have a lot of time,” my mother says.

“Oh, it’s just up the road. I’m Ernest Elkezer, the curator for the Barnum Museum on Main Street here. It’s after hours, but I’ll let you look around while I open the safe. It’s the least I can do.”

My mother gets into the driver’s seat and starts the ignition. “Can you believe this? The car was free, and now we’re getting a bonus four hundred dollars.” She turns her face toward the sun. “Rebecca, baby, the gods are smiling on us today!”

The P. T. Barnum Museum is next door to a modern city building.It is strange, walking up to this huge door which is locked and being let inside. I feel like I am doing something I shouldn’t. “You know Bridgeport was the birthplace of General Tom Thumb,” Mr. Elkezer says. “Full-grown he was only twenty-eight inches tall.”

He switches on the lights-one, two, three-and the dark hall comes to life. “Make yourselves at home. Plenty of interesting circus memorabilia here. You won’t want to miss the third floor.”

The third floor is almost entirely covered with a miniature display of a big top. Three red rings sit in the sawdust center. Suspended over one is a net for the trapeze artists. There are heavy drums tucked into the corners for the elephants to stand on. A thick, knotted tightrope is stretched overhead. “If it was a little bit larger, I’d try it out,” my mother says, one foot already in the display. When I close my eyes, I can see the audience. Red flashlights on lanyards, circling over the heads of kids.

I leave my mother and walk around the perimeter of the mock circus. There is a display about Jumbo the elephant, whose skeleton (it says) is on display in the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Now that would be something interesting. I lean closer to see the photograph taken of the huge skeleton, which has a man standing beside it as a reference measure. The man is Ernest Elkezer himself. Just as I am reading the caption, Elkezer approaches with a wrinkled manila envelope.

“Jumbo was my favorite,” he says. “Came over a century ago, on a ship called the Assyrian Monarch . Barnum paraded him up and down Broadway, with a big brass band and all the fanfare you could imagine.”

My mother walks over, and Elkezer hands her the envelope absentmindedly. “Back then, most people had never seen an elephant. So it wasn’t really that he was so tremendous, but that he was here . And then three years later he was hit by a speeding freight train. Other elephants that were crossing the tracks got knocked out but survived. Jumbo, though, well, Jumbo didn’t make it.”

“He was hit by a train?” I say, stunned. “

You lived through a plane crash,” my mother points out.

“Barnum carved up the beast and gave pieces to different museums. He sold the heart, even. To Cornell University, for forty dollars. Can you imagine?”

“We’d better be going,” my mother says.

“Oh, all the money is there,” Elkezer says. “You can count it if you like.”

“I’m sure that isn’t necessary. Thank you.”

“No, thank you .” We leave him standing on the third floor, lightly touching the photo of Jumbo.

As we close the heavy door of the museum behind us, my mother rips open the envelope. “We’re rich again, Rebecca,” she sings. “Rich!”

We get into our car and pull out of the parking lot. The fender scrapes like a rake against the pavement. We pass little boys playing handball and a fat woman with skin the color of molasses. We pass a deal going down on a street corner: a man in a leather cap unfolding a small wrinkled square of paper. In spite of this I can still picture the heavy dance of a motorcade, the oompah of a tuba, the slow-foot sashay of those elephants down Main Street.