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

I argued with you about whether or not I should drive up to California (I could just about make it by the time the flight arrived) to intercept Rebecca before Oliver got her at the airport. You told me I was being ridiculous, that Oliver was after all the baby’s father and it was none of my business. I am pretty sure that you knew how hard it was for me to put calls through from Mexico, but you slammed the phone down and hung up on me anyway.

This is what I figured out: At the moment we were talking, Rebecca’s plane was exploding over the cornfields of Iowa. And it is my hypothesis that the very reason she is still alive today is because you and I were fighting about her. Only souls that are at peace can go to Heaven.

I tried to call you when I heard about the plane crash that afternoon. But like I said, it was almost impossible to put calls through to the States and anyway, you were on your way to Iowa. I heard through Mama that you and Oliver had arrived at the hospital at the same time. The next time I spoke to you, everything was fine. “We’re back to normal, Joley,” you told me, and you didn’t want to discuss Oliver, or if he apologized, or the fact that he hit you in the first place. You shut me out. You acted just like you did when this kind of thing first happened, when we were kids.

I decided to let sleeping dogs lie. And this is why, Jane: because this time, you had Rebecca to consider. I know that when you were a kid you kept quiet about Daddy because of me, but this wasn’t Daddy and this wasn’t me. Oliver was different; even the way he hurt you was different. More important, Rebecca was different. I kept hoping, silently, that you would want to save her like you hadn’t been able to save yourself.

I have waited years for you to see that you had to get away. I know you think that because you threw the first punch you are at fault, but I believe in histories, and Oliver was the one who started this a long, long time ago. So this is why Rebecca survived that plane crash: she was spared twelve years ago so that she could save you now.

When I first came back from Mexico, before I went to visit either you or Mama, I stopped in What Cheer, Iowa, to see the remains of Rebecca’s plane, and I realized why that farmer had never bothered to remove the wreckage. It had nothing to do with posterity, or tribute. It was simply that the ground was dead. Nothing will ever grow there again.

I don’t expect this will be easy for either of you to see. But it means that you have come more than halfway, that you will be at the apple orchard before you know it. Take Route 80 to Illinois, to Chicago, to the Lenox Hotel. As always, there will be a letter.

With love,

Joley

Midwest Airlines flight 997 crashed on September 21, 1978, in What Cheer, Iowa-a farming town sixty miles southeast of Des Moines. Newspaper reports I have read say there were 103 passengers on the plane. There were five survivors including me. I do not remember anything about the crash.

You get the feeling that anybody in What Cheer would be able to direct us to Arlo van Cleeb’s farm. This is the place where the plane crashed and in fact it was Rudy van Cleeb, the man’s son, who took the famous picture of me running away from the plane and waving my arms. He is also the one who drove me to the hospital. I would like to thank him but it turns out he is dead. Killed in some accident that involved a combine.

Arlo van Cleeb is very surprised to see me. He keeps pinching my face and telling my mother how nice I grew up. We are sitting in his living room, and I am listening to my mother tell him the story of my life. We are only up to age eight, when I played a molar in a school play about dental hygiene.

“Excuse me,” I say. “I don’t mean to be rude but maybe we should just go on out there.”

“The good Lord loves patience,” Mr. van Cleeb says.

Seventy million years later, my mother stands up from the flowered couch. “If you don’t mind.”

“Mind!” Mr. van Cleeb says. “Why would I mind! I’m flattered that you’ve come.”

Corn is a funny thing-it’s much higher and thicker than I’d expected. When you drive through Iowa, you have to inch out at the intersections because cars coming in the other direction can’t see you through the thatch of stalks. I can see why we didn’t decide to just wander out here on our own. Most likely, we never would have found our way back. Mr. van Cleeb turns and cuts through the corn like there are actually paths. Then he spreads the final wall of stalks.

It is a wide open area about the size of a football field. The ground is jet black. In the middle of this is a rusted frame, cracked at the middle and the seams like a lobster. One wing sticks out like an elbow. There are several sections, too, sitting here and there: a row of seat skeletons, the huge fan of an engine, a propeller the size of my body.

“May I?” I ask, pointing to the plane. The farmer nods. I walk up to it, touching the rust and rubbing it between my fingers. It comes off orange and powdered. Although it is broken into pieces, it still looks like a plane. I crawl through a gash in the body and walk down what is left of the aisle. There are weeds wrapped around the metal.

It still smells like smoke. “Are you okay?” my mother yells.

I count down the holes where windows used to be. “This is where I sat,” I say, pointing to a hole on the right side. “Right here.” I step down into the place where the seat used to be. I keep waiting to feel something.

I walk the rest of the way down the aisle. Like a stewardess, I think, only the passengers are ghosts. What about all those people who died? If I were to dig through some of the twisted steel at my feet would I find carry-ons, jackets, pocketbooks?

I cannot remember anything about the crash. I do remember being in the hospital, and the nurses who sat with me and read me nursery rhymes. Jack and Jill went up the hill, they’d say, and they’d wait to see if I could finish the rest. I slept for a long time when I got to the hospital and when I woke up both my parents were there. My father had brought a yellow teddy bear, not one from home but a new one. He sat on the edge of the bed and my mother sat on the other side. She brushed my hair and told me how much she loved me. She said the doctors wanted to make sure I was just fine and then we would all go home and everything would be better.

Because it was a special circumstance, my parents were allowed to stay overnight in the hospital. They slept on the little bed next to mine. A few times during the night I woke up to make sure they were there. At one point I had a nightmare; I don’t remember about what. I had lost that yellow bear because my arms relaxed in sleep. But I woke up terrified and looked over to the other bed. There wasn’t much room there so my parents had curled into a little ball. My father’s arms were wrapped around my mother, and my mothers lips were pressed against my father’s shoulder. I remember staring at their hands, at how they were locked together. I had been asleep and I couldn’t hold onto that stupid bear, so I figured this was something truly special. My parents were holding onto each other. It just looked so, well, solid, that I closed my eyes and forgot about my nightmare.

I cannot remember anything about the crash. I crawl out from another gash in the metal and sit on the edge of the wing. I close my eyes and try to imagine fire. I try to hear screams, too, but nothing comes. Then there is a wind. It sings through the metal like a giant flute. The corn begins to whisper and when it does I know where all those people are, all the people who have died. They never left here. They are in the earth and wound around the frame of the plane. I stand and run away from the wreck. I press my hands over my ears, trying not to hear their voices, and for the second time, I outdistance Death.