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

When I am looking at her, all of my decisions come clear. Love, I think, has very little to do with Sam, with Oliver, with Hadley. What it all boils down to is me. What it all boils down to is Rebecca. It is knowing that the memories I pass down to her will keep me from feeling pain the next time. It is knowing that she has stories of her own for me.

“Sometimes I cannot believe you are only fifteen,” I say. I pull back the quilt from my daughter’s chest and peel off the strips of gauze. In some places she starts to bleed again. Maybe this is good. Maybe something needs to be let out. I hold my hands across her chest, over her breasts. Her blood slips between my fingers. I want so much to heal.

I have one strong lasting image of you, Jane. It was the morning after our wedding night, and you looked lost in the large, king-size bed at the Hotel Meridien in Boston. I awakened before the five o’clock wake-up call just for the chance to watch you with all your defenses down. You have always been so lovely when you stop resisting. It is your face that I remember the most: alabaster, honest, the face of a child. You were a child.

You had never been abroad, do you remember? and you were so looking forward to Amsterdam, Copenhagen. But then came the phone call from Provincetown, about several beached whales that were stranded on the shores of Ogunquit. When the telephone rang, you rolled towards me. “Is it time?” you whispered, twining your arms around my hips, playing at this world of adults.

I decided to simply tell you the truth. Perhaps in retrospect I see that I embellished the plight of these whales to be in more dire straits than could be considered strictly truthful. But you surprised me. You did not frown, or sigh, or show evidence of regret. You began to get dressed in an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt- not at all the pretty pink suit of which you’d been so proud, your going-away outfit. “Come on, Oliver,” you said to me. “We’ve got to get there as soon as we can!”

Driving to Maine I stole glances at you, checking once again for signs of self-pity. You exhibited none. You kept your hand covering mine for the entire trip, and you did not comment on our forgotten honeymoon or the missed flight. We reached Ogunquit the same time that our plane was scheduled to depart.

You worked beside me that day, and the next, ferrying buckets of water up from the ocean, massaging the crusted fins of these whales. You and I were a team, united in purpose. I had never felt so close to you as I did on the beaches of Ogunquit, separated by the huge frame of a whale, and yet still able to hear the song of your voice.

We told you to step aside when it came to moving the whales. You refused. You worked directly beside me, pushing where I told you it was necessary, stepping back delicately when common sense told you you were too small to do any good. You knew the clear danger of being so close to such a powerful mammal. You heard the stories of broken limbs, and worse, of bring crushed. We saw three whales swimming back out into the ocean that day-two females and a baby. The baby had to be redirected several times; it kept trying to swim back to shore. But we watched them go free. It took my breath away, seeing success right before my eyes. I wanted to tell you this but you were not there. I had to look around to find you in the cheering crowd. You were crouched near the one whale we could not save. Already the sun had cracked and bleached the skin on its back, and you were splashing bucket after bucket of water upon it. “It’s gone, Jane.” I tried to pull you away. You leaned against the still side of the whale near the hot and blistered eye, and you cried.

I do not know how it happened; the way we drifted apart. I am happy to assume the blame for it if it can be left in the past. I woke up one morning, greying at the temples, engrossed in the pursuit of my research, and discovered that my family had disappeared. I must confess to you that even as I began to search for you and Rebecca, I did not have a clear goal in mind. The object was to stop the nonsense, to bring you back as quickly as possible and resume the life that had been interrupted. But when I saw you in Iowa-yes, I was in Iowa at the same time, just across the cornfield-when I saw you with Rebecca, I realized there was much more going on than I had allowed myself to recognize. Here was this amazing woman with whom I had constructed the fragile shape of fifteen years. Here was this child who came back from the edge of death for something .

I understand you have undertaken many changes yourself during-this trip and although I cannot pretend this does not hurt, I will not blame you. I brought it upon myself. I drove you to find someone else. But you have to see, Jane, that I’m a different man. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction: imagine how different our lives could be. Oh, I want you back. I want you and I want Rebecca, and I want for once to act like a family. I will bend over backwards; I will give you both all I have. I know you have your own issues to sort out, but don’t you see? I need you, Jane. I love you. I know that the only reason I have become successful in other areas of my life is because of you-at your expense. And I still feel the way I did the day you willingly postponed your own honeymoon. I want you by my side.

It would be too much to ask you to believe in me. But I know you believe in second chances. You can’t throw this all away. At the very least, all the basal elements are still there: you, me, Rebecca. We could tear down everything, yet we would still have those building blocks. And my God, Jane, imagine the little world we three could create.

In all the years you’ve been coming to me for advice, I’ve never been able to get you to do something you didn’t already have your heart set on doing. There: my secret’s out. I’m not the sage I pretend to be; the fact is, Jane, you’ve got a mind of your own, and you only need me to pull the answers out from inside you. So I think you know what you are going to do. I think you understand, in this case, what would be the right thing.

Let me tell you a little something about love. It’s different every time. It’s nothing more than a chemical reaction, an arrow over an equation, but the elements change. The most fragile kind of love is that between a man and a woman. Chemistry, again: if you introduce a new element, you never know how stable the original bond is. You may wind up with a new union, with something left behind. I believe that you can fall in love many times with many different people. However I don’t think that you can fall in love the same way twice. One type of relationship may be steady. Another may be fire and brimstone. Who is to say if one of these is better than the other? The deciding factor is how it all fits together. Your love, I mean, and your life.

The problem is that when you’re old enough to really find a soulmate, you’re already carrying around all this extra baggage. Like where you grew up, and how much money you make, and whether you like the country or the city. And sometimes, most of the time, you fall really hard for someone who you just can’t squeeze into the limits of your life. The bottom line is: when your hearts sets its sight on someone, it doesn’t consult with your mind.

Most people don’t marry the loves of their lives. You marry for compatibility; for friendship. And Jane, there’s a lot to be said for that. It may not be a kind of relationship where you can read each other’s minds, but it’s comfortable, like a familiar warm spot on your favorite chair. That’s just another kind of love, one that doesn’t burn itself out, one that lasts in the real world.