Eye of the Whale by Douglas Carlton Abrams Page A

dress with spaghetti straps, and Frank was wearing a blue suit, but it was the looks on their faces that interested her. They were proof positive of their estrangement. She held up the two photos. Like time-lapse photography, they revealed the death of a marriage. Both of their gazes looked vacant, distracted, and lonely. Frank had big bags under his eyes from exhaustion, and Elizabeth was staring away from the camera, clearly wanting to be somewhere else. There was space between their bodies, and his arm was behind her back not out of intimacy but out of formality.
    The phone rang cheerfully. Elizabeth looked over as it continued to ring. The number “6” blinked red on her answering machine. She needed to call Professor Maddings back, but she could not bring herself to tell him that she was about to be kicked out of her program and that Frank had left her. Professor Maddings had been at their wedding.
    Finally, the answering machine picked up. After a moment’s pause, she could hear the message through the tinny speaker: “Elizabeth, it’s Maddings again, calling you from Chile, where I’ve found the aggregation grounds of the blue whales. They are gathering by the dozens. I’m ringing you on a sat phone—must be costing the university a fortune…”
    Her hand ached to pick up the phone.
    “Elizabeth, you were right about the song change. It’s been recorded in half a dozen other locations around the globe. I mobilized a team of graduate students, and they’ve time-mapped its diffusion…the radiation dynamics are classic—it’s beautiful—like ripples of water in a pond. Elizabeth, what I’m trying to say, in my long-winded way, is that it all began with you in Bequia—”
    Elizabeth lunged for the phone. Her heart was pounding. She got the handset to her mouth, her fingers trembling. “Professor Maddings.”
    “Elizabeth.” Maddings uttered her name with such warmth thatit was as if he were greeting his own daughter. Her whole body relaxed. “I knew that if I prattled on long enough, you might just pick up the phone and talk to me.” Elizabeth smiled. He always could see right through her. “We also witnessed bizarre gatherings and breaching behavior at the breeding grounds off Socorro. And I’ve heard from three colleagues that these kinds of behaviors are being observed in other populations around the world—Elizabeth, I can tell something’s wrong. You haven’t given up on your music, have you?”
    “Wrong? Why do you think something is wrong?” Professor Maddings was always after her about her music.
    “I haven’t heard you gasp with excitement once or interrupt me with your own even more brilliant ideas. So all I can think is that you have been neglecting your violin.” Professor Maddings had often told her that music would get her through the low points that accompany any career dependent on the vagaries of discovery.
    “It wasn’t just my violin I was neglecting,” Elizabeth said, looking down at the photo.
    “If I have to tell you again, I will—don’t give up on your music. It will lead you into the heart of whale song. Now tell me what is wrong.”
    “Frank left.”
    “Left? You? Good Lord, what has gotten into him? You are the best student I’ve ever had. Doesn’t he understand the first-class mind he’s dealing with?”
    “I guess he wanted a wife with more than a mind.”
    “What on earth does that deranged husband of yours—I know he’s a good man and only temporarily certifiable for leaving you—but what does he want?”
    “A family.”
    “Oh…” Professor Maddings said, realizing the evolutionary depth of the problem. “Well…we are no different than the rest of the animals in that desire. That’s a hard one, but don’t give up on thewhales. They need you. We need you…Oh dear, my battery’s running low, but I’ll be watching you and that wonderful wayward husband of yours. Just show him that you want him—that’s all we men, weak as we are, need