Piper (11 page)

“Not too smart.”

He laughed. “Depends on what's down there, I guess. Moby Dick was a sperm whale.”

“I thought Moby Dick was fictional.”

“The ones we're going to see are Orcas.” Passing through the cabin, I'd seen a picture of an Orca swimming upside down under water with a baby whale riding its stomach. They were sleek, two-toned animals, with an ivory lower jaw and belly and the rest of them rubber black. “The females suckle each other's young,” Dad said. He looked wistfully across the water and blinked several times to clear the tears that were building in his eyes. “The families bond for life.” He turned away, wrestled his arm under the rain slicker, and fished a handkerchief out of the back pocket of his pants. The words
for life
still weren't something that rolled easily off his tongue. The pod represented what we could no longer have, maybe never had. The bond. The fidelity.

We went inside the cabin with everyone else for hot cocoa. Two tables were secured to the floor by a thick pipe and their tops were nicked with the ravages of time, probably by ordinary folks like us who'd sliced their apples and sandwiches there. In the video that played continuously from the overhead monitor, there was an Orca with its mouth clamped onto a seal struggling for its life. Nature was innocent only in the abstract.

The biologist whose name tag said “Nadine” took the seat across from us. Her rough brown hair was gathered by a rubberband into a ponytail, and the weight of the megaphone pulled a pink cord taut between her breasts. “First time on the
Pequod
?”

Dad looked at me. “Yes, it is,” he said. “For both of us. We'd heard about your expeditions.”

She chuckled and I noticed that one of her front teeth was chipped. “I'm not sure it's an expedition.”

“Trust me,” Dad said. “For us, it is.” I knew what he meant. We hadn't managed to leave the house together for a common purpose since Mom died. If an expedition was something rare and fraught with uncertainty, this was an expedition.

“They're sure an elegant creature, “I said, pointing to the video, trying to show my allegiance to the cause.

“That's a female,” she said proudly. “They're sexually dimorphic.”
Oh, God
, I thought, wasn't there anyplace I could escape it? She must have seen my panic because she chuckled, the same way Mom would have. “That just means they're built differently. The males are larger than the females and they have those huge dorsal fins on their back. Sexy, huh?”

I laughed politely.

Dad changed the subject and fell into his journalist's habit of asking questions. She explained how they knew every member of the pod we were searching for. They'd assigned names to them. Some of them were marked for tracking purposes. But Dad couldn't control the direction of her answers anymore than he could control the migratory paths of the Orcas.

“The men leave the pod temporarily to mate outside of their natal group,” she said, bending a stick of gum into her mouth. “They form bachelor schools and head to cooler waters. Sound familiar?”

I looked over at Dad and he moved the corners of his mouth upward, but it wasn't a smile.

Nadine made an announcement that we were getting close to them and everyone put their headbands and parkas on and went out on deck. The pilot slowed the engines and we cruised the western shore of San Juan Island. At the slower speed, the smell of the diesel was more pronounced and I thought how presumptuous it was for us to think the whales would trust this hunk of human machinery, no matter who owned it. I leaned over the rail and tried to train my eyes past the glare on the surface and into the depths, but the best I could do was detect a subtle change in the coloring of the water from blue to inky green.

We cruised all the way to English Camp at the north end of the island without a sighting. Dad had warned me on the way up how much of a gamble this was. Nadine had resorted to describing the features of the shoreline. “You can still see the old lime quarries carved into the hillsides. Someday, they'll probably be part of a subdivision.”

Dad paced the starboard deck with his gaze forward. “It's all right,” I told him on one of his turns. “I've learned something about whales anyway.”

“I wanted you to see them. Until you see one in the flesh you won't feel it.”

I wandered up to the bow, climbed over the anchor, and leaned into the wind. The front of my jeans was pressed against the insides of the boat and the gunwale hit me at the beltline. I felt like a gargoyle. What had Nadine called it, dimorphic? I was taller than half the boys my age and flat-chested. If I were a whale, maybe I'd have a dorsal fin and swim to cooler waters with the boys in their bachelor schools. And if I didn't play by nature's rules, they'd probably chew me up and spit me out like the hapless seal.

I was near the spot where Dad was standing when he'd wept earlier and I was feeling a strong sense of estrangement. His attempt to patch together a substitute family with me and Willard was valiant, but problematic. We were different generations, different temperaments. Dad and Willard weren't sucklers. I couldn't tell either of them that I didn't want what I was supposed to want, that instead of salvaging Mom's reputation I was going to further shame it.

“Starboard, thirty degrees!” Nadine yelled.

At first I couldn't see anything. The horizon was flat, wet, and unbroken. Then Dad came up behind me. The chocolate on his breath was pleasant and reassuring as I followed the imaginary extension of his index finger out across the water.

“They're like smooth rocks,” I said.

“There's six of them.”

Then another one surfaced closer to the
Pequod
and snorted water into the air. “My God,” I yelled, “look at that dorsal fin!” It stuck up like an erection.

Dad was leaning into me, pressing me harder into the gunwale. “He must be the bull.”

“What if he decides to capsize us?”

“Seeing them makes you believe there's a God, doesn't it?”

We locked in on their speed and followed them south, staying about a hundred and fifty yards back. The boat was alive with murmurs and gasps. Nadine, who could recognize them by their flukes, counted nine as they arched and breached and slapped their tails to entertain us. People along the rail ran their video cameras nonstop. One man had a telescopic lens that was so hefty that he had to brace his elbow against his chest to hold it steady. Nadine walked along behind us with a huge smile across her face. No need for the megaphone now. The mammals were speaking for themselves and I was in awe. I could feel the power of that bond. They were fearless, and they were flaunting it. Now I understood why the men who pursued the whales became tribal leaders. The whales were gods.

When we lost them near American Camp, everyone went inside the cabin and finished their sack lunches, played cards, and talked excitedly like they'd always known each other. Dad made the rounds like he'd gone to college with them, laughing easily, talking politics, making jokes. He ended up sitting with Nadine and they became engrossed in a conversation about sperm whales and grays. Dad knew something about everything. “It's a survival skill,” he told me once. “What if you're stranded in an elevator with a total stranger?” It was times like these that drove home the reality I wasn't really his daughter, nor Mom's. I had none of their softness with other people, none of that desire to befriend every member of my species. I found a place on the floor in the corner of the cabin where there was a decent light and pulled
Giants of the Sea
off a nearby shelf.

It was dusk when we reached the dock. People shook hands and congratulated each other like we'd circumnavigated the globe together. I was surprised to see Dad give Nadine a kiss on her cheek. When she hugged me, I could feel the full measure of her breasts. They were her softest part and she let go before I did.

Dad had to get back for a meeting, so we ordered dinner from a squawk box in a drive-thru on the way home. I was kind of disappointed. In my fantasy, we were going to continue this expedition into the evening, sit in front of the fireplace and play Scrabble, then go for a walk with Willard. I'd have the courage to tell him what had happened to Dirk and get his advice. And if that went well, maybe we'd talk about how to negotiate my way across the canyon in my chest that had opened when Mom died.

We passed the oil refinery across the bay, every building and tank ornamented with red and white lights like a carnival grounds. A plume of orange flame flared out one of the stacks and, even with the windows closed, I could smell something like creosote. It was a miracle that the same hydrocarbons could smell so deliciously intoxicating when they turned into gasoline fumes at the pump. Dad dimmed his brights for oncoming cars. Click off. Click on. We were whales, communicating through clicks like Morse Code.

“You've become such a loner,” Dad said out of the blue. “I'm worried about you.”

I'd slouched down in the seat and straightened myself up to respond. “Me? I'm busy, what with senior year and everything.” In truth, school had become a bust. I hadn't had homework in months. The teachers had slowed the pace of the classes to match guys like Jesse Little who still stumbled on his multiplication tables. To Dad's consternation, I'd quit yearbook staff. Every yearbook was so canned, the same mug shots of students, pictures of the one play the drama club managed to stage, guys dodging tacklers along the sidelines, and the obligatory hi-jinks shots of boys in dresses and cats drinking out of the water fountains.

“You need to get involved. Make new friends.”

“I can barely keep up with the ones I have.”

“And go out.”

My groan was audible. Mom used to beg me to talk about the guys in my class. If I said anything the least bit complimentary, like he's read
Catcher in the Rye
, she'd seize on it. “Sit with him at lunch,” she'd say. “Ask him on a study date.” It was that ridiculous and unrelenting. Mom would have done cartwheels if I'd lost my virginity. “Don't make the mistake of waiting until you marry,” she said. Fortunately, Dad lacked Mom's follow up.

“How'd you like a job at the paper?” he said. “We could use a good copy editor.”

I was stunned. The only job I'd ever aspired to at the
Herald
was driving the delivery truck, which was really an old black hearse with no door on one side. For a lark, Les Showalter used to let me ride with him and fling bundles of papers out the door for the carriers. The paperboys would give me the finger and yell at me if I didn't get the bundles all the way to the sidewalk. He'd even let me empty the money from the metal newsstands and slide the new issues in. “Didn't you just lay off some people?”

“It was a budget-cutting measure.” That meant it was John Carlisle's idea. Dad would never lay anyone off. He'd pay them out of his own pocket first.

“I'd work for free?”

He laughed. “Of course not. It's part-time. If it works out, maybe you can even do a little reporting.” There was a gleam in his eye, the same gleam when he told me I could become editor-in-chief of the
Hoofprint
, the yearbook.

“You mean sports?”

“If you want.”

“Dad, I was kidding.”

“Come on, Piper. It'd be a chance to meet people.”

I bit my tongue before I said something I'd regret. After all, the paper was who Dad was. It was what he had to give. If I didn't take that, when would there come along something else? “It's a generous offer.”

Because he had to pick up some papers at the office, I walked home, taking the street. There was little or no traffic in Stampede once the shops closed and the chance of two cars passing each other at the same time was about as likely as an eclipse. I thought of Dad giving that peck on the cheek to the marine biologist. The stories Seamus had told me about him, how he was so crazy about women when he was young, seemed possible and not particularly offensive in theory, but seeing him kiss someone besides Mom jarred me. Maybe it was some kind of Oedipus complex.

The overweight tabby cat who sat in the window at Monkey Shines Antiques followed me along the boardwalk, probably hoping to be petted. Everyone wanted to be petted. Why not? I waited under the streetlight for the cat to catch up, but as soon as I stopped it stopped. Screw it. I tried.

Willard was flat on his back on top of the bedspread and snoring when I looked in on him. A few of the dogs beat their tails softly against the cement in recognition of my presence. I felt around the foot of the bed for the spare blanket and, trying not to wake him, I opened it and spread it over him. When his snoring hiccupped, I froze, but then he licked his lips and let out a long breath. I waited until the cadence of the snore returned before leaving.

Dad had said make new friends, but I didn't want any new friends. I couldn't effectively handle the one I had, and the only other person out there who interested me was out of bounds. Maybe I was becoming a little daffy myself, but I decided Willard's choice of dogs was brilliant. Who in my universe of people could match Freeway? Dogs overflowed with affection. They forgave readily. And sex wasn't a big issue.

I read until after midnight, but I still wasn't sleepy, so I turned on the radio and doused the light. Sometimes the talk shows lulled me to sleep if I listened to the voices but tuned out the words. It was my headache. That's what was keeping me awake. There must have been MSG on the burgers. Mom used to be able to make my headaches go away by finding the “trigger points” in my neck and shoulders and massaging them until they melted and floated away in the tributaries of my lymph system. I missed the touch of her fingers and the purr of her voice, the way she'd turn the lights down and talk to me in the dark about how it was going to be.

When I heard Dad come in, I leaned over and looked at the clock. He didn't usually work this late.
Come on, Piper. You're not his mother
.