I’ve told Rebecca she can plan whatever she’d like for our day in Chicago. Me, I don’t much feel in the mood. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and because I screamed through the nightmare, neither did Rebecca. When I woke up she had her arms around me. “Wake up, wake up,” she said over and over. When I came around I did not tell her what my nightmare was about. I said it had to do with the plane crash. And then, in the morning when she was showering, I called Joley.
After speaking to him I was inclined to drive straight through to Massachusetts. To hell with Joley and his letters; to hell with my problems charting direction. We could be in Massachusetts by tomorrow morning, according to the legend of the U.S. map. In the car, I asked Rebecca what she thought about this. I expected her to jump at the chance: I’d seen her counting the states left to cover when she thought I wasn’t looking. But Rebecca looked at me and her mouth dropped. “After all this, you can’t just quit halfway!”
“What’s the big deal?” I said. “The point all along was to get to Massachusetts.”
Rebecca looked at me and her eyes clouded. She settled into her seat, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Do whatever you want.”
What could I do? I drove to Chicago. Even if we decided to drive straight through, we still had to go to Chicago.
My first choice would have been the Art Institute or the Sears Tower Skydeck, but Rebecca opts for the Shedd Aquarium, an octagon of white marble on the edge of Lake Michigan. The brochure Rebecca picks up on the way inside boasts that it is the largest indoor aquarium in the world.
Rebecca runs ahead to the huge tank in the center of the aquarium, the Caribbean coral reef complete with rays and sharks and sea turtles and eels. She jumps back as a sand shark lunges at a piece of fish in the hand of a diver. “Look at its belly. I bet they always keep it full. Why bother to eat when you aren’t hungry?”
The shark rips its teeth into the fish, biting it in half. As it takes the second part, it is more gentle. The diver strokes the shark on its nose. It seems to be made of grey rubber.
Rebecca and I walk through the saltwater exhibits, where fish congregate in bright splashes like kites against an open sky. They come in the most incredible colors; I have always been amazed by this. What is the point of being fuchsia, or lemon, or violet, when you are stuck under the water where no one can see you?
We pass polka-dotted clownfish and blowfish that puff up like porcupines when the other fish come too close. There are fish here from the Mediterranean and the Arctic Ocean. There are fish here that have traveled the world.
I am stuck in front of a magenta starfish. I have never seen anything so vivid in my life. “Come look at this,” I tell Rebecca. She stands beside me and mouths, Wow. “Why do you think that leg is shorter?” I ask.
A passing woman in a white lab coat (marine biologist?) hears me and leans over the small tank. Her breath fogs the window. “Starfish have the power of regeneration. Which means if a leg gets cut off or ripped in some way, they can grow a new one back.”
“Like newts,” Rebecca says, and the woman nods.
“I knew that,” I say, primarily to myself. “It has to do with their habitat, tide pools. In a tide pool, waves come and destroy the marine equilibrium every few minutes, so nothing ever really gets a chance to settle.”
“True,” the woman says. “Are you a biologist?”
“My husband is.”
Rebecca nods. “Oliver Jones. Do you know him?”
The woman sucks in her breath. “Not the Oliver Jones. Oh, my. Would you mind very much if I brought someone here to meet you?”
“Dr. Jones isn’t with us on this trip,” I tell her. “So I don’t know as I’d be all that interesting to one of your colleagues.”
“Oh, you most certainly are. By association, if nothing else.”
She disappears behind a panel that I didn’t realize was a door. “How did you know about tide pools?” Rebecca asks.
“Rote memorization. They’re all your father talked about when we were dating. If you’re a good girl I’ll tell you about hermit crabs and jellyfish.”
Rebecca presses her nose up to the glass. “Isn’t it awesome, that someone in Chicago would know Daddy? I mean, it kind of makes us celebrities.”
In the oceanic community, I suppose she is right. I hadn’t even associated this aquarium with Oliver, at least not on a conscious level. These delicate fish and quivering invertebrates are so different from the hunkering whales Oliver loves. It’s hard to believe they exist in the same place. It’s hard to believe that a whale wouldn’t take up all the space, all the food. But then again I know better. These tropical fish are in no danger from the humpbacks, which are mammals. Whales don’t prey on them. They screen plankton and plants through their baleen.
I have a vision of a sample falling two stories in a Ziploc bag, smashing against the blue Mexican tiles of the foyer in San Diego. Baleen.
“Mom.” Rebecca tugs on my T-shirt. Standing in front of me is a bookish man with a goatee and the thinnest eyebrows I have ever seen on a male.
“I can’t believe this,” the man says. “I can’t believe I’m standing here face to face with you.”
“Well, I haven’t done anything, really. I don’t work with whales at all.”
The man smacks himself on the forehead. “I’m such a jerk. My name is Alfred Oppenbaum. It’s an honor-an honor!-to meet you.”
“Do you know Oliver?”
“ Know him? I worship him.” At this, Rebecca excuses herself and ducks behind a tank of zebra fish to laugh. “I’ve studied everything he’s done; read everything he’s written. I hope-” he leans forward to whisper, “-I hope to be as prominent a scientist as he.”
Alfred Oppenbaum cannot be more than twenty, which tells me he has a long way to go. “Mr. Oppenbaum,” I say.
“Call me Al.”
“Al. I’ll be happy to mention your name to my husband.”
“I’d like that. Tell him my favorite article is the one on the causality and sequence of themes in humpback songs.”
I smile. “Well.” I hold out my hand.
“You can’t leave yet. I’d love to show you the exhibit I’ve been creating.”
He leads us into that panel of the wall that masquerades as a door. Behind are twenty-gallon tanks filled with crustaceans and fish. Several nets and small receptacles hang from the sides of each tank. From this angle we can also see the backs of the tanks that are displayed in the aquarium.
Everyone wears white coats that turn faintly blue under fluorescent lights. As we pass by, Al whispers to his colleagues. They spin around, their mouths agape. “Mrs. Jones,” they all say, like a line of servants as royalty passes by. “Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones.”
One of the bolder scientists steps forward, blocking my path. “Mrs. Jones, I’m Holly Hunnewell. And I wonder, do you know what it is Dr. Jones is researching now?”
“I know that he was planning to track some humpbacks on their way from the East Coast of the States to the breeding grounds near Brazil,” I tell her, and there is a resounding, Oh. “I don’t know what he’s going to do with the research,” I say, apologetically. Who knew Oliver had such a following?
Al leads us to a blinking set of tubes. “Doesn’t look like much, does it? It works under black light.” With a nod to a colleague, the room goes dark. Al pushes a button. All of a sudden his voice fills up the room, a commentary over the yips and churrs of humpback whales. The frame of a whale appears out of nowhere, neon blue, and unfurls its fluke. “In the 1970s Dr. Oliver Jones discovered that humpback whales have the capacity, like humans, to develop and pass down songs from generation to generation. With extensive research, Dr. Jones and other colleagues have used whale songs to identify different stocks of whales, have used the songs to track the movement of whales over the oceans of the world, and have speculated about the changes these songs undergo yearly. Although their meaning still remains a mystery, it has been discovered that only the male whales sing, leading the foremost researchers in the field to believe that the songs may be a way to woo mates.” Fade out of Al’s voice, crescendo the ratchets and oos of a whale.
“Oliver would be proud,” I say finally.
“Do you really think so, Mrs. Jones?” Al asks. “I mean, you’ll tell him about it?”
“I’ll do more than that. I’ll tell him he has to fly here to see it himself.”
Al almost passes out. Rebecca puts down a small box turtle she’s been tickling and follows me back into the exhibit hall.
When we are safe in the dark aquarium, I sit down on one of the marble benches that spot the floor. “I can’t believe it. Even when your father isn’t here, he manages to ruin a perfectly good day.”
“Oh, you’re just cranky. That was really kind of neat.”
“I didn’t know people in the Midwest knew about whales. Or cared about whales.”
She grins at me. “I can’t wait to tell Daddy.”
“You’re going to have to wait!” I say, a little too sharply.
Rebecca glares at me. “You did say I could call him.”
“That was back then. When we were closer to California. He’s not home now anyway. He’s on his way to find us.”
“How come you’re so sure?” Rebecca asks. “He would have found us by now, and you know it.”
She’s right. I don’t know what is taking Oliver so long. Unless he is jumping the gun by flying to meet us in Massachusetts. “Maybe he went to South America after all.”
“He wouldn’t do that, no matter what you think about him.”
Rebecca sits back down and scuffs her sneakers on the edge of the bench. “I bet he misses you,” I say.
Rebecca smiles at me. Behind her I can make out the silver fins of a paper-thin fish. Oliver would know its name. For whatever it is worth, Oliver would know the names of all of these.
“I bet he misses you too,” Rebecca answers.