Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

44 OLIVER

The first time I ever saw Jane I was waist deep in the murky water at Woods Hole. She did not know that I was observing her on the ferry pier, jackknifed over the rotten railing, with the fine madras print of her sundress blowing against the curve of her calves. She did not know that I witnessed her watching me; if she had known this, I’m sure she would have been mortified. She was very young, that much was evident. You could see it in the way she chewed her gum and traced patterns with the toe of her sandal. I was studying tide pools at the time, but she reminded me of a gastropod; a snail in particular-remarkably vulnerable if removed from its external casing. I was overwhelmed; I wanted to see her exposed from her shell.

Because I wasn’t very good at those sorts of social overtures, I pretended that I hadn’t noticed her at all; that I hadn’t seen her glance back at me when she boarded the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. As simple as that I assumed she had tripped through my life, and I would never cross her again. But I stayed at the docks recording observations two days longer than was necessary, just in case.

I knew that the purse that floated by me was hers before I even opened it. Still, I was shaking when I popped the snap and retrieved the dripping identification card. So, I thought, her name is Jane.

At that time in my life I was driven by my goal: to dedicate myself to the study of marine biology. I had gone through an accelerated program at Harvard that graduated me in three years with a baccalaureate degree as well as a master’s, and at twenty, I was the youngest researcher at Woods Hole.

I did not have many friends. I did not distinguish weekdays from weekends; it always surprised me when I saw the crowds at the Woods Hole ferry, embarking on their forty-eight hour holidays. I spent days on end in a blue wetsuit, reaching for starfish and mollusks and arthropods that lived in hollow pockets on the bottom of the ocean. I did not date.

And so I was surprised that something as mundane as a laminated identification card from this slip of a girl could move me so violently. As I showered and dressed in preparation for the long drive to Newton, I kept track of the odd physical reactions I was undergoing. Palpitations. Perspiration. Nausea. Vertigo.

The Liptons lived on Commonwealth Avenue in Newton, in one of the smallest mansions that in today’s market sell for several million dollars. I pulled into the driveway and rang the doorbell, which roared like a lion. I was expecting a maid, but Mary Lipton herself answered the door- Jane’s mother, I assumed, remembering her from the pier. She was a small, fragile woman with auburn hair wrapped into a French knot. Although it was July, she was wearing a wool sweater. “Yes?” she said.

It took me several minutes to remember the English language. “Oliver Jones,” I said. “I’m with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.” I assumed, incorrectly, that having a title would award me a certain amount of prestige in a situation like this. “I found this purse and thought I would return it.”

Mary Lipton took her daughter’s purse and turned it over in her small hands. “I see,” she said, measuring her words. “You drove all the way up here?”

“I was passing through.”

She smiled then. “Won’t you come in, Mr. Jones,” she said. “The children are in the backyard.”

She led me through the parlor: carved oak paneling bordering the marble floor, a fresco on the ceiling. On impulse I turned around and looked back at the door; a large stained glass window filtered diamonds of light onto the cool marble. I had grown up in Wellfleet, on the Cape, in a home that was large and expensive by the standards of the summer tourists, but that could not hold a candle to Bostonian finery such as this. As we walked, Mary drilled me on my breeding, my profession, and my education. She led me past a library, a sitting room, and through French doors into the backyard.

We stopped on the porch, which overlooked a small hill of grass that shaded into a thicker forest behind. Two bright red towels stained the lawn like blood. A boy and a girl sat upon them: Jane and, presumably, Jane’s brother. They looked up, almost instinctively, when their mother approached the wooden railing. Jane was wearing a bikini, yellow. She pulled a T-shirt on and ran up to the porch.

“Mr. Jones brought back your purse,” Mary said.

“How kind of you,” Jane replied, as if she had practiced the phrase.

I held out my hand. “Please, call me Oliver.”

“Oliver, then,” Jane said, laughing a little. “Can you stay a while?” When she laughed, her eyes brightened. They were a remarkable color, like a cat’s.

Mary Lipton called to the boy on the lawn. “Joley, help me get some lemonade.”

The boy came closer, and even at eleven he was easily the best-looking male I’d ever seen. He had thick hair and a square jaw, a quick smile. “Lemonade,” he said, brushing Jane as he passed by us. “Like she can’t carry it herself.”

“I can stay a little while,” I said. “I have to get back to the Cape.”

“You work there?”

It returned, the vertigo. I leaned against the cool wood of the porch. “I’m a marine biologist.”

“Wow. I’m in high school.”

Perhaps if I had known better I should have ended it then and there. Age differentials tend to become less pronounced as one grows older, but during adolescence, five and a half years is an entire lifetime. I saw Jane looking at me, well, like I was old. As if her eyes had played a trick on her at Woods Hole; as if she had been seeing through a haze someone who turned out to be not at all what she had expected. “I’m twenty,” I said, hoping to make her understand.

She relaxed, or at least I perceived her relaxing. “I see.”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I was not accustomed to interfacing with people; I spent most of my time beneath the surface of the ocean. But Jane drew me out. “What were you doing at the ferry dock?”

So I told her about tide pools, about the hearty crustaceans that survive such adverse living conditions. I told her I was going to study them for several years, and write my dissertation. “And then what?” she asked.

“And then what?” I had never even considered what might happen after. So much hinged on that final step.

“Will you move to something else? I don’t know, flounder, or swordfish, or dolphins maybe?” She grinned at me. “I like dolphins. I mean, I don’t know anything about them, but they always look like they’re smiling.”

“So do you,” I blurted out, and then closed my eyes. Stupid, stupid, Oliver. I opened one eye at a time, but Jane was still there, waiting for me to answer her question. “I don’t really know yet. Maybe,” I said, “I’ll study dolphins.”

“Good.”

“Good,” I repeated, as if my fate had been settled. “I have to go now, but I’d like to see you again. I’d like to go out sometime.”

Jane blushed. “I’d like that,” she said.

At those words, I felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted. It was similar to the euphoria I had experienced when, as an undergraduate, my first scholarly article had been published. The significant difference was: that time, the euphoria left me pondering me -where I would go from here? Now, as high-spirited as I felt, all I could think about was Jane Lipton.

A man came out to the porch. Of course I know better now but back then I attributed to imagination my sense of Jane stiffening. “Jones?” The man said, a big, cavernous voice. “Alexander Lipton. Wanted to thank you for bringing back Jane’s wallet.”

“Purse,” Jane whispered. “It’s a purse.”

“It was nothing,” I said, shaking her father’s hand.

He was a large, overbearing man with tanned skin and narrow eyes. His eyes, in fact, disturbed me even then: jet black. I could not see where the iris ended and the pupil began. He was dressed for golf. He walked over to Jane and put his arm around her. “We don’t know what to do with our Jane,” he said.

Jane squirmed out of her father’s embrace and murmured something about seeing what had happened to the lemonade. She opened the door to the house so quietly it didn’t even swing on its hinges. She left me outside, alone with her father.

“You listen to me, Jones,” Alexander Lipton said. His face metamorphosed into that of a hard-line criminal lawyer, unwilling to give an inch. “When Jane turned fifteen I told her she could date whomever she’d like. If she likes you, that’s her business. But if you do anything to hurt my daughter, I swear I’ll string you by the balls from the Old North Church. I know your kind-I was a Harvard man, too-and if you so much as lay a hand on her before she turns seventeen, let’s just say I’ll make your life miserable.”

I thought, this man is psychotic. He doesn’t even know me. And then, as if it were a passing thunderstorm, Alexander Lipton’s face softened into that of a middle-aged man of means. “My wife tells me you’re a marine biologist.”

Before I had a chance to answer, Jane and her mother came through the door with a tray of glasses and an icy pitcher of lemonade. Jane poured and Mary handed out a glass to each of us. Alexander Lipton drank his lemonade in a single chugging gulp and as soon as he was finished, his wife was at his side to relieve him of the glass. He excused himself and left, and Mary followed behind him.

I watched Jane drink. She held the glass with both hands, like a child. I waited until she was done and then repeated that I really had to leave.

Jane walked me to the car. We stood in front of the old Buick for a moment, letting the sun beat onto our scalps. Jane turned to me. “I threw my purse into the water on purpose.”

“I know,” I admitted.

Before I got into the car I asked if I could kiss her goodbye. When she acquiesced I took her face in my hands, the first time I ever touched her. Her skin sprang back at my touch, slightly greasy with suntan oil. Jane closed her eyes and tilted her head back, waiting. She smelled of cocoa butter and honest perspiration. There was nothing I wanted more than to kiss her, but I kept hearing the voice of her father. I smiled at my good fortune; and, thinking I had all the time in the world, I pressed my lips against Jane’s forehead.