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

I watched her standing in front of me, and I knew how she felt. I remembered what it was like to crawl into the safety of Jane’s bed, under the covers, and listen to the screaming going on downstairs between my mother and father. Nothing seemed so loud, or so awful, if I had Jane’s arms around me.

Even my father started to go to Jane’s room at night. At first I thought it was for the same security that I went there for. I figured everyone has something he is afraid of, something he needs to forget about, even Daddy. I began to piece together the differences slowly, and by the time I understood, Jane stopped letting me come into her room. It was right at the time when she started to change; when Jane sprouted breasts and I began to notice the hair under her arms and vined on her legs. She wouldn’t let me in the room when she was dressing. She wouldn’t let me under the covers. Instead we would sit primly on the bedspread and play Hearts.

It killed me when she went to college. She left me home alone. She’d visit, almost every weekend, but it wasn’t the same. I always expected that she’d come back to me, but instead, she married Oliver Jones.

What I told Rebecca this morning is that Jane was always meant to be a mother. Look at how young she started taking care of me. But right now Rebecca would have to be the logical one. “Your mother will come around,” I told her, but she winced as I said it. She wanted to know how long it would take. She wanted to know how many people would have to be hurt. Most of all she asked why Jane was the one who got to make the final decision.

What decision? I asked Rebecca.

To throw it all away, she cried. Can’t you see that’s what she’s trying to do?

I tell my sister all this, and she nervously winds her hair around her finger.

“I don’t get it, Joley. You spend your whole life as my biggest cheerleader. You’re always there to tell me I’m not paying enough attention to myself; that I deserve better. So after fifteen years I finally take your stupid advice and you tell me I’d better slow down. Make up your mind,” she says. “I’m not going to lie to Rebecca. I’m going to tell her everything; I’m just not going to do it today. Give me a little time. I’ve never asked for anything my whole life. I’ve given and given and given. So can’t I just get this one small thing?”

“No,” I say, too quickly, and Jane explodes.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Come to me. I’ve always wanted you to come to me.”

“I can’t hear you,” Jane says irritably.

I clear my throat. “I said I wanted you to come to me.”

She throws her hands up. “I did come to you. I traveled three thousand miles to come to you. And all I’ve gotten is a lecture.”

The day that Jane married Oliver, the day that she kissed me on the cheek and told me she was happier than she’d ever been, something happened to me. Quite concretely I felt my chest swell and then contract, and that’s when I understood that you can clearly feel a broken heart. I turned away without saying anything to her, but she didn’t notice, engulfed in a flood of guests. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let myself get hurt like this again.

I have never stopped looking after Jane, but I have kept my distance. Almost immediately after she got married I started to travel, bouncing from college to college and then across the United States, into Mexico, to Bangladesh, Morocco, Asia. I put as many miles between us as I could allow, assuming this was the easiest way. I have always wanted the best for her because she means so much to me. So, when all this was beginning with Sam, I gave my blessing. I wanted him to have her. If it could not be me.

She puts her arms around me, and for a minute I’m back where I used to be, where love could be tucked in a pillow fold. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

I used to think about dying and being cremated. I wanted my ashes placed in a leather pouch and I wanted Jane to wear it around her neck. I used to imagine her pulling on layers of clothing in the winter, turtlenecks and sweaters and bulky down parkas, knowing that I was the thing that came closest to her heart.

This is the most it will ever be, I think. “Don’t worry about me.” I smile at her. “I’ve always had trouble adjusting to your boyfriends.”

Jane holds me at arm’s length. She opens her mouth to say something-what?-but she closes it again, silent.

Just then Rebecca and Hadley swing into the kitchen. Hadley is giving Rebecca a piggyback ride, and she kicks the door open with her foot. They just make it over the threshold before Hadley loses his hold on Rebecca and half drops, half tumbles her onto the floor. They are both laughing so hard it takes them a minute to realize that I am in the kitchen, that Jane is in the kitchen. “Did we interrupt?” Hadley says, goodnatured and grinning, dusting off the legs of his jeans.

“No,” Jane says. “Not at all.” He is staring at Rebecca, who has deliberately taken a good deal of time to get to her feet. Funny, she is exactly as tall as Jane.

You should have seen the look on her face when that guy came onto the television. I mean, she just shriveled up inside. I could tell from the way she almost fell out of the chair. She kept saying his name: Oliver.

I would have given anything then to tear her away from that TV. Give her a sedative, a stiff drink, I don’t know what. Maybe I could just hold her. But seeing her like that knotted up my gut. I had to do something. And I couldn’t very well just kneel down next to her, with her goddamned husband larger than life, swollen in technicolor. So I chickened out. I left; said I had something to do in the field. Instead, I’m taking a walk through the woods that border the orchard.

The mosquitoes are awful this time of year, and the land is swampy. Part of the woods has become a makeshift dump, even for neighboring farmers. There’s an old enamel bathtub and a few dead washing machines at a certain point on the trail. But it’s quiet, so quiet you can hear your mind snapping as it jumps from one idea to another.

I walk for quite a distance, because I come to the foundation of a house that must have burned to the ground. It’s a small ring of stones with a crumbling fireplace at one end. My father used to say it dated to the 1700s.

When Hadley and me were kids we’d come out here a lot. When we were about nine, we made this our secret clubhouse, and we lugged beams and old boards from the barn all the way here, trying to hammer together some kind of enclosure. We had a password: Yaz, after our favorite player on the Red Sox. We’d meet every day at sunset, just so we could hear our mothers hollering from different edges of the woods, calling us to supper.

I’ve been hanging around with Hadley since we were seven. That’s eighteen years. That’s longer than Rebecca’s even been alive. Under any other circumstance, I’d stand behind him. He’s my best friend. He knows what he’s doing; he wouldn’t take a fifteen-year-old on a joy ride. But I know as sure as I know the boundaries of my orchard, what is happening to me now comes once in a lifetime. I can’t stand to see Jane upset, and for selfish reasons: it hurts me to see her like that.

By the time I get back to the Big House, I’ve missed dinner. Joley’s doing the dishes; he tells me Jane’s upstairs. “Where’s Hadley? I’ve got to talk to him.”

“I think he went out on the back porch with Rebecca. Why?”

But I don’t have time to answer him. I stroll out the back door, immediately feeling that I have interrupted something. Rebecca and Hadley are on the swinging bench, and when the door creaks open they fly to opposite ends. “Hey,” I say, noncommittally. “You busy?”