Jodie Picoult - Songs of the Humpback Whale - A Novel in Five Voices

Hadley didn’t say anything at all when I told him that. He changed the topic. He told me if you handle apples like eggs and pack them just right, they will not bruise.

I tried to talk about it again. Once I had gotten started, there was no stopping me. I told him about the time Daddy hit my mother, and about the plane crash. He stopped the tractor in the middle of the field to listen. I told him that I didn’t love my father.

“Everyone loves their father.”

“Why,” I had asked. “Who says that they’ve got that coming to them?”

And Hadley started the tractor again and didn’t say much for the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t eat dinner with us. And now this.

He thinks that I am a spoiled brat. That there is something wrong with me. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe you are supposed to love your parents, no matter what.

It is easier with my mother; it has to do with the way we both think. I feel I must be following in her footsteps, because every time I turn around she knows exactly where I stand. She doesn’t really judge me like my friends’ mothers do; she just takes me the way I am. Sometimes she really seems to like that, too. We’re more like equals, I suppose. She listens to me, but not because she’s my mother. She listens to me because she expects me to listen to her.

When I was little I used to pretend my father had a pet name for me. He called me cookiepie and he would tuck me in at night, every other night, alternating with my mother. I believed in this so hard that I would shut my eyes tight under the covers until I heard footsteps, and someone stuffing the sheets under the mattress. Then I’d peek, and it was always my mother.

As I got older I tried to see what held his interest. I’d snoop through the drawers in his study, holding charts this way and that. I’d steal his whale tapes and play them on my Walkman. Once I spent a week looking up all the words I didn’t get in an article he’d written. When he came home from his trip and saw that I had gone through his drawers he called me into the study. He made me bend over his knee and he spanked me. I was twelve.

I went through a period then where I tried to see what other things might possibly hold his attention. I watched the way he moved around my mother. I expected to see it-love-but it was strange. They lived in the same house and could go for an entire day without saying anything to each other. I tried to see what I could do to make him notice me. I wore skirts that were too tight. I insisted on wearing makeup to school. I had my best friend’s older sister buy me a pack of cigarettes and I left them on top of my textbooks, right where my father would see it, but in the end he said nothing to me at all. In the end, it was my mother who grounded me for a month.

There is only one time that I can remember my father in command of a situation. When I was five we sailed to Bermuda as a family-my father for work and my mother and I for pleasure. We visited many tourist attractions and we roasted hot dogs on the beach. We went out on my father’s rented boat to record the whales one day. My mother held onto the rail and I held onto my mother. My father ran around the boat, calling to the men who worked for him to change course and to raise the speed to so many knots. He paused only for a moment at the bow with his binoculars and when he saw what he was looking for he smiled so wide. He smiled like I had never seen him smile. I got scared and buried my face in my mother’s side.

Without Hadley around there’s nothing for me to do at this orchard. Uncle Joley has gone to town with Sam and I don’t know any of the other workers by name. They are polite, but they don’t take time to explain.

I’ve been walking aimlessly, and to my surprise I find my mother in the commercial section of the orchard. My mother, who doesn’t know and doesn’t care about farming at all. It’s a lazy kind of day. “You can feel the heat just hanging here, can’t you,” she says when she sees me. “It’s enough to make you want to go back to California.”

She is sitting with her back pressed against a tree, one that I know has been sprayed recently. It will make her pretty cotton skirt smell like citronella. I don’t mention this, though. It is already too late. “Where have you been hiding yourself at this wonderful Club Med?”

“Not much to do, is there? I was off with Hadley but he’s ignoring me today.” I try to sound nonchalant. “Acting like a big shot with Sam gone.”

“Oh, please,” my mother says. She lolls her head backwards so that her chin points into the breeze. “Don’t even mention his name.”

“Sam?”

“The man is a fool. No social graces whatsoever. And rude-” she rubs her neck with her right hand, “-rude like I can’t tell you. I was in the bathroom this morning, and you know the way there’s no lock? Three guesses who comes waltzing in when I’m in the shower. And he has the audacity to stand in front of the mirror and lather his whole face with shaving cream before I can say, Excuse me. So when I do he turns around-turns around!- and looks at me. He gets all pissed off and says he isn’t used to having women around who spend half their lives in the bathroom.”

I think this is hilarious. “Did he see you?”

“Of course he saw me.”

“No,” I say. “Did he see you?”

“How should I know? And why should I care?”

“Uncle Joley says Sam’s a really good businessman. He’s made the place three times as profitable as it was when his father was around.”

“He may be a great businessman for all I care, but he’s a lousy host.”

“We didn’t exactly come here invited.”

“That’s not the point.” I want to ask her what the point is, but I decide to let it be.

My mother stands up and twirls the cotton skirt. Citronella. She doesn’t seem to notice. “What do you think?”

She had been raiding a closet in the room she’s sleeping in- Sam’s mother’s, I assume, all her extra clothes she didn’t take to Florida. The two women are not the same size; my mother has been wearing most things with a belt of Sam’s that she added another hole to.

“Mom,” I ask, “why do you and Sam hate each other? You don’t know him well enough for that.”

“Oh yes I do. Sam and I grew up with these stereotypes, you know? In Newton we used to make fun of all the tech kids who couldn’t get into colleges-not even state schools. It seemed every mechanic and carpenter had come from Minuteman and was proud of it, and we couldn’t understand it; you know the value of a good education. There’s no denying that Sam Hansen is an intelligent man. But don’t you think he could do a lot better than this-” She sweeps her arm out over these one hundred acres, green and wild and polkadotted with the heads of early apples. “If he’s so smart, why is he happy running a tractor all day?”

“That’s not what he does all day,” I protest. “You haven’t even walked around this place. They work so hard! And it’s all orchestrated, you know? Season by season. You couldn’t do it.”

“Of course I could. I just don’t want to.”

“You have got some chip on your shoulder. Honestly.” I roll over onto my stomach, breathing clover. “I don’t think that’s why you hate Sam. My theory is you hate him because he is so unbelievably happy.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“He knows exactly what he wants, and he goes and gets it. You may not want the same thing, but he’s still a step ahead of you.” I stare up at her. “And that is driving you crazy.”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud.” My mother sits down on the cool grass and hugs her knees to her chest. “I’m not here to see Sam. I’m here to see Joley. And we’re having a wonderful time together.”