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

I have believed in Jane for so long, and I have loved her so. I could never find anyone that measured up to her, which is why I’ve kept from marrying. What is the point of love unless I can have the ideal?

Take her, I find myself whispering to my friend Sam. The water closes in over their heads. I tell myself I am the lucky one, to have given Jane away twice. I wonder why, this time, it hurts so much more.

And then we burst through the surface of the water, gasping, and I’m still holding Jane tight. “Oh!” she cries. “This is so wonderful!” She looks at me, blinking water from her eyes. Her hair is sticking up in the back; her T-shirt is plastered to her body. She tentatively takes her right arm away from around my neck; then her left arm, and just like that she’s treading water. “I can do it,” she says, and she dives under the water again, coming up about eight feet away.

Some of the people on the shore are clapping, having watched the whole ordeal. I wave to them while Jane tries out her sea legs. I follow her around-just in case-while she goes through all the antics a kid would the first day of summer at the beach. At this rate, I think, she’ll be doing a back flip off the dock by the end of the afternoon. She tells me she really likes swimming underwater the best, then jacknifes to touch the bottom.

I go under, too. She’s got her eyes wide open, trying to see through the murky blue dye they’ve added here for health reasons. Basically, it keeps you from seeing anything farther away than five inches. I lean in close to Jane, letting her hair swim around my head like a mermaid’s. God, I’m close enough to kiss her. Her skin is translucent, nightmare blue. But then there is a flood of bubbles between us-I think I hear the muffled, deaf-man’s sound of Jane saying my name-and the moment’s gone by.

I’ve fallen asleep on the towels, but I drift in and out of consciousness enough to know that Jane and Rebecca are whispering about Hadley. In spite of what I’ve said to Jane about Hadley’s good intentions, she doesn’t believe me. She keeps telling Rebecca he’s up to no good, and that she’s too young. I’m tired and sun-dazed, but I try to do the calculations in my head. There are ten years between Hadley and Rebecca. There are ten years between Jane and me.

“I’m fifteen,” Rebecca whispers. “I’m not a kid.”

“You’re a kid.”

“How old were you when you started to go out with Daddy?”

I want to hear this. I open my left eye a slit. “It was different then,” Jane says. Well, isn’t that something, I think. The old proverbial apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. I try to imagine Jane at fifteen, but it’s hard. First off, I know she didn’t look anything like Rebecca, so that’s that. Second, when she was fifteen is ten years earlier than when I was fifteen. She lived through the early Beatles and civil rights. I watched the soldiers come back from Vietnam. She was in fourth grade before I was even born.

Rebecca’s voice starts to get louder. I wonder if Hadley is asleep, or if he’s faking it too. “You can’t just keep yourself from falling for a person. You can’t turn off your emotions like a faucet.”

“Oh,” Jane says. “You’re an expert?”

I consider sitting up here, before somebody gets hurt. But I wait until Jane finishes talking. “You can steer yourself away from the wrong people. I’m just warning you before it’s entirely too late.”

I make a big act of stretching and yawning before I sit up. I rub my eyes with my fists. “So,”I say, grinning from Rebecca to Jane, “what did I miss?”

“Nothing.” Rebecca stands up to take a walk. “I’m going somewhere.”

Jane calls after her. “Don’t worry about her,” I say. “She can’t go all that far without the keys to the truck.” I reach lazily for her hand, the one with the splinter from this morning. “How’s your war injury?”

Jane laughs. “I think I’ll live.”

“The rowboat’s back at the dock. We can take it out, if you’re up for a little more fishing.”

Pickerel Pond is glacial, formed by a massive chunk of ice that carved the valley. It’s bordered by two orchards, competitors, and the fertilizer they use has run into the lake, making lily pads spring up all over the place. In about ten more years, they’ll choke the pond. For right now, though, they’re the best bets for fishing. I hand Jane the fishing rod. “Ladies first.”

Jane picks out a shiny Mepps spinner and threads it on the end of the line. I never did ask her how she knows about fishing, but I’d assume it has to do with her husband, and his interest in the ocean. And right now, I don’t much feel like bringing him up. She casts and gets tangled in a fallen log, and has to tug to free the line. “I’m sorry,” she says, reeling in. She casts again, a good one, landing just where I would have placed it in the dark shadow of a cluster of lily pads.

“Are you mad at me for taking you swimming?” I ask.

“No. I should have done that a long time ago.” A cormorant cries, and a flock of starlings, frightened by the noise, dart out of a willow tree. Jane reels in and casts again, the same spot.

“I was hoping we could talk,” I say. “Even though I’m not one for talking much.” I stare over the edge of the rowboat to a rock several feet ahead that rises out of the water with such pride you’d think it was a tiny mountain. “I wanted to bring up what we were discussing on the way over here.”

“Boston radio DJs?”

“Not quite.” I look up at her, she’s smiling. “This isn’t real easy, you know.”

“We don’t have to talk. Why ruin a good thing?”

We both stare at the purpled weeds that have swallowed the gold hook. We stare as if we are expecting some miracle to happen. “Look,” I say.

Jane interrupts me. “Don’t. Please. I’ve got a home to go back to.” She looks at me for only a second, then turns away. “I’ve got Oliver’s daughter.”

“She’s your daughter too.”

“Sam, I like you. I really do. But that’s where it ends. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.”

“The wrong idea,” I say, getting my guard up. “What did you think I was talking about anyway?”

A wave, coming out of nowhere, tenderly swings the boat. “Sam,” she says, her voice cracking.

I don’t know what she has planned to say, because at that moment her line begins to run back and forth in front of the lily pads and underneath us. “It’s a sunfish,” I say, forgetting everything in the thrill.

“What do you think of that?” Jane says, swinging the rod in my directionso that I can release the fish. “I’m two for two.”

“You’re luckier than I am, even on a good day. I should take you out with me more often.” I don’t look at her when I say this; I smooth my free hand over the spiky scales of the sunfish until it stays limp on the hook. Then I quickly pull up and out and hold it over the edge of the rowboat, watching it leave faster than my eye can follow.

Jane leans against the bow of the boat, watching me. I don’t think she’s noticed that fish at all. “You don’t want to get involved with me, Sam. Everything is going so well for you now, and I’d only be trouble.” She looks down, twisting her wedding band around her finger. “I don’t know what I want. Please don’t push me, because I don’t know how strong I can be. I can’t even tell you what I’m going to do tomorrow.”

I move closer. “Who’s asking for tomorrow? All I wanted was today.”

She pushes me off with her hands. “I’m an old lady.”

“Yeah,” I say, “and I’m the Pope.”

Jane is still holding me at bay. Inches. “Is it adultery if you just kiss?” she whispers. She presses her lips against mine.