The morning harbor was calm and windless, yet Polly put her hand to her hair as if it were being blown around wildly. The girls grinned. “A whale watch, Nan! Your very favorite!”
“Oh, how wonderful!” Polly hugged them all.
* * *
On the boat—a large catamaran—Agnes suggested they sit in the cabin until they were out to sea, but the girls cajoled her up the steps to the open top deck. Just as they were settling, a member of the crew came along—a handsome young man, if a bit too bearded—and suggested they go back down and spend the long trip out to the whaling grounds below deck.
“You can get really burned facing the sun. On the way in, the sun will be at our backs. That’s a better time to sit up here.”
The girls had their faces tipped up to him like a bouquet of pansies. They did as he said, and all trooped back down. They commandeered a spot, and Maddie pulled out a couple of decks of cards.
“Who said to stay below?” Agnes teased.
“Sorry, Aunt Agnes,” the girls chorused.
“What shall we play, Nanny? You choose.”
“Go Fish, of course,” Polly said. Again they all went into gales as if no one had ever said anything as funny.
They played for a while until the girls got bored. Agnes wanted a word alone with Polly. “Come on. Let’s go check out the snack bar.”
Polly hopped up. The girls asked them to check for various items. Cracker Jack!
“I guess we really do have to check out the snack bar,” Polly sighed, when they were at a distance. “My face hurts from grinning. How about you? I can’t believe you’re actually doing this, though. What got you out of your lair?”
“Maeve told me not to be a dull boy. She had a point. I am all work, and all rage since Robert.” They got in line. “How was Dick’s birthday party?”
“It was fine. Dick made a great observation—everyone likes his or her own feet.”
“That’s a known fact!” Agnes made a face. Polly was always positioning Dick as being a singular sensibility.
Polly sighed. “It would be easier if you could approve of him just a little.” She fixed her blue eyes on Agnes and gave her a patient look. “I’ve heard that about feet before, too, but the girls loved it. They slipped off their shoes and studied their feet. Dick showed them his and they gave gratifying screams.” Polly smiled. “It was an old-fashioned night.”
They hovered in front of the snack bar, examining the offerings. A group of tourists muscled up and moved Agnes and Polly aside.
“It was a nice break for Dick. He’s writing to Robert every day.”
The boat glided smoothly beneath them, moving them up and down enough that they had to keep their stance wide and shift their balance in response. They both loved the feeling. No seasickness.
“I keep imagining Seela crowing in glee, thinking she was right,” Agnes said. “I really hate her.”
“Don’t hate,” Polly said automatically, having said it to children a thousand times. “Wait—I take that back.”
“Don’t you hate her, too?”
Before Polly answered, the young woman behind the counter leaned forward. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t know, can you?” Agnes said.
The girl dropped her jaw, startled. Was she going to cry?
“You should say may I. You are asking for permission. It is assumed you can help. How else would you have gotten this job?”
“I applied to work on the boat in general. This is what I was given.”
Agnes sized her up. A pushover, if she ever saw one. “What did you really want to do?”
“To teach about the whales.”
“Do you know a lot about the whales?”
The girl nodded.
“All right. I’m going to order a few items, and every time I ask for one, you tell me a fact about a whale.”
“I feel funny.”
“Which is exactly why you don’t have the job. Prove that you can do it. I’d like four boxes of Cracker Jack.”
“Whales eat eels.”
“Good one. Keep it up. Four potato chips.”
“Minke whales average eighteen feet in length.”
“Six bottles of water, please,” Polly said.
“Right whales consume enormous gulps of seawater and filter out the krill through baleen plates in their mouths. Krill are an excellent protein source.”
“And six Cokes,” Agnes said.
“They’re called right whales because they were considered the right whales to catch. The females give birth to one calf every three to five years.”
“And a pack of M&Ms.”
By the time Agnes and Polly had finished their transaction, Emily—they’d traded names along the way—had offered them and the people in line behind them a crash course, and everyone was talking and laughing.
“Who’s your manager?” Agnes asked. “I’m going to put in a good word. Everyone, let’s put in a good word for Emily!”
When they walked away, Polly said, “You’re the life and soul. I forgot you can be charming.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. Charm is a bad sign.”
“All right. But you did a nice thing.”
Maddie came running up. “We’re supposed to go out on the bowsprit now. The whales are close.”
“Coming!” Polly said. Polly turned to Agnes. “Dick keeps agitating to see Robert. This morning he was particularly insistent—”
“Naturally. Because you are doing something beyond his control today.”
Polly gave a small wave, clearing the remark. “Do you think I should take him?”
“No. Robert doesn’t want anyone to see him there. He made me promise.”
“Dick doesn’t believe that.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“No. I’ll figure something out. He’s not himself these days, he still hasn’t—”
The girls swarmed around and pushed them outside.
The sun stunned them at the door, and they scrambled to put their sunglasses on, then filed behind one another along the deck and out onto the right side of the hull. The captain spoke over the microphone, guiding them to spot the distant whales all around them, teaching them how to look for spouts, and the whole boat pointed here and there, exclaiming triumphantly at each geyser of a blow. The pontoons sliced quietly through the water and the bow rose and fell. The girls repeatedly asked Agnes if she were okay; she repeatedly reassured them, yes, yes, more than okay! The wind took all but single words and tossed them overboard.
“Look starboard!” the captain called.
All heads turned, and all jackets billowed like sails. A hundred feet away the water parted. The whole boat gasped as the curved lunar back of a whale broke the surface. “Oh, they’re just getting started!” the captain said. “You are in luck!”
The crew knew all the whales and introduced them by name as they appeared. A few came close and communicated with the boat, soaking up the admiration of the oohing and clapping audience. Over and over, a patch of water swirled and imploded, then sucked back from its center to make way for a huge bright body to leap into the air, streaming from head to tail gallons of the sparkling sea. The whale lofted and, airborne, paused, miraculously defying gravity so easily that the watchers invented a fresh hope that the great creature with its huge staring eye might live among them, like a cow or an elephant, so they could encounter each other at leisure rather than in brief and unpredictable flashes. Or maybe it was she, Agnes, alone who could easily be persuaded of a different possible outcome to the same old story.