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

“Sam,” my mother says, “Joley says you have one hundred acres?”

Sam nods, but you can tell from the look on his face he doesn’t want to talk about it. I wonder if it is the subject, or my mother. “You know anything about apples?” he says, and my mother shakes her head. “Then it wouldn’t really interest you.”

“Sure it would. What varieties do you grow here?”

Sam ignores her, so Joley and Hadley take turns reeling off the names of the different apples growing at the orchard.

“And what are these?” My mother reaches out to the tree we are passing and picks one of these early apples-a Puritan, Hadley had said. It all happens very fast, the way she holds it to the sun to observe and then lowers it to her teeth, ready to bite into it. Suddenly Sam, who is walking behind her, throws his arm over her shoulder and knocks the apple out of her hand. It rolls on the clipped grass and settles under a different tree.

“What in God’s name is your problem ?” my mother hisses.

Sam’s eyes darken until they are the color of a thunderstorm. “They were sprayed today,” he says finally. “You eat it, you die.” He pushed past her and walks ahead of us toward the Big House. As he passes the fallen apple he steps on it with his work boot. My mother holds her throat. For several seconds we stare at the pulp of this apple, ruined.

I have never been to Salt Lake City, which worries me. What if this impromptu trip was motivated by my own subconscious desires, rather than tapping into the quality of Jane? What if Jane and Rebecca are well into, or through, Colorado by now? If I miss them in Colorado, I will catch up with them in Kentucky. Or Indiana, wherever. As long as I reach them before they get to Massachusetts; as long as I have a chance to offer my side of the story before Joley begins brainwashing Jane again.

Joley Lipton, the bane of my existence. We have never really understood each other. Even after I had won over Jane’s parents- a twenty-year-old dating their teenaged baby-I never got her brother’s approval. Not then, not years later. He almost refused to attend the wedding, until he saw his stubbornness was literally wasting Jane away. So he did come, but sat in a corner throughout the ceremony and the reception. He belched loudly (I assume it was he) when we were pronounced man and wife. He did not offer me congratulations; he never has. He spread a rumor that the salmon mousse was rancid. And he left early.

In my opinion he is terribly in love with his sister, beyond the usual parameters of a brother-sister relationship. He has always been a drifter, and Jane has always been fiercely loyal to him. I don’t find him deserving of such support; I have heard about their childhood and it seems he was the one to get off the proverbial hook. Yet, there is something about him. Perhaps he annoys me because of this: I cannot pin down my emotions about him. He instigates. He fills Jane’s head with ridiculous notions about the institution of marriage-he, whom I have never seen with a woman. He calls at the wrong times and shows up unexpected. If Jane gets to Joley before I reach her, she may never come back. She will have been conditioned otherwise. She will most certainly not listen to me.

This blinding whiteness hits me quickly, a desert of salt. Suddenly I am in its midst, driving, a blot against this expanse. I know better; it is not colorless. White is all the colors in the rainbow, reflected at once.

I pull the car into the shoulder of the road, where several other tourists have stopped to take photographs. The terrain is flat and sweeping. If not for the record heat, I could easily be convinced I am seeing snow. A woman taps me on the shoulder. “Sir, would you mind?” She waves a camera in my face and motions where I have to push the button. Then she runs to the guardrail where her traveling companion-an elderly man in green overalls-is already sitting. “One, two, three, ” I say, and the flash cube goes off. The man has no teeth, I see this when he smiles.

I have always wanted to see the Great Salt Lake because of its incongruity. The idea of it: saltwater in a landlocked state, an ocean away from the ocean. I have heard that it is so large it may as well be an ocean (a small one, anyway). I look at my watch- 5:20. There is not much I will do today, anyway. I can go to the lake, take a look around and check into a motel for the night. If I must travel across America, I might as well enjoy myself.

I try to avoid the route through the city, since there might be a rush hour; if Mormons have rush hours. Instead I skirt the perimeter, bordered on both sides of the road by white earth. From time to time a breeze or a passing truck blows salt onto the asphalt, which swirls in front of the car like a wailing ghost. There are no signs for the lake and I do not want to waste the time to ask at a service station, so I follow the other cars on the road in front of me. Surely one of them, maybe more than one, will be going to the Great Salt Lake. I pass cars earnestly, searching the windows for children or watermelon floats or shining inner tubes, the telltale symbols.

The seventh car has someone in a bathing suit. From my point of view, the passenger is young, female, and wearing a red suit criss-crossed in the back, much like Rebecca’s GUARD suit. It is a station wagon just like Jane’s-same color, same dent in the fender. I try to pull alongside the car because my blood begins to beat in my ears. Who is the driver? I cannot tell, but as I advance I see that the girl has long blond hair, wrapped into a knot of some kind at the back of her neck. Rebecca. I accelerate, my foot pushing hard against the floor of the car, weaving around a slower car in front of me. I pass them, and then swerve into their lane, relying on the rearview mirror. When I lift my eyes, I expect to see Jane, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel, her sunglasses slanted and reflective. Instead I see a burly man with a black beard and a tattoo on his chest that reads COME TO MAMA. The girl is not Rebecca at all, and the driver honks at me for cutting him off.

They are, however, going to the Great Salt Lake, and I follow them until I can see the lake from the car. Then I drive another halfmile down its edge, so that I will not have to face them in person. I park the car in a no-parking zone and walk to the edge of the water.

As far as the eye can see there is water. Deep and calm, marbleblue, with the tiny waves one finds on the Great Lakes. Well, it could be the ocean. I sit on the shore and pull off my shoes and socks. Leaning back on my elbows, I try to imagine a whale surfacing in the center of this lake, black and white, like a picture show. Then I listen to the wind and imagine instead it is that tearing sound whales make as they break through the water’s surface, and then the hollow moan through the blowhole, clearing. The sun, on its way down, beats a steady rhythm. What a day, I think. What a day.

I have second thoughts about it but I roll up my pants and take off my shirt, leaving it with my shoes and socks on the banks of the lake. Then I wade in, letting the water mat my underwear against my thighs. I dive underneath and swim as hard as I can to the spot where I pictured that whale.

Amazing, the salt content of this lake. It tastes like the ocean, feels like the ocean, buoys like the ocean. In some places it probably reaches great depths. Children play along its edges, but there is hardly anyone where I stop and tread water. I shake my hair from my eyes and survey the shore. People are starting to leave; it’s dinnertime. I should go too, and rent a room somewhere, so that I can get an early start tomorrow. To wherever it is that I am supposed to be going.

I float face down in the water and then jackknife at the waist, plunging headfirst towards the bottom of the lake. I would love to see what is there: fire coral or anemone or even white-bellied sharks and continental ridges. I kick my feet vigorously until the pressure of the depth threatens to break my eardrums. At this point all I can see is a milky black. I pivot and begin to swim to the surface, breaking with the force of a whale and embracing the air with a skeletal gasp.