People That Dream, Whales That Dance

PEOPLE THAT DREAM, WHALES THAT DANCE / John Dufresne JULIAN SAYS HE'S looking for something. Julian's my father and we've been living here in Cabin #7 at the Harbor Lights Motor Inn since early May. These three months in Provincetown are the longest time we've stayed in one place in quite a while. We came here after a rainy month at the Silver Horseshoe Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Before that Julian was a sign painter in Eureka, Kansas, and we lived at Falconetti's Motor Lodge until a twister lifted the corrugated roof off the Lounge. Julian and I have travelled through 45 states and have lived in 17 in just the last 4Vi years. Julian's not sure what it is he's looking for, but he says he'll know it when he feels it. Fernando—he's the boy I'm going to tell you about—is the first friend I've ever had who is my own age. Usually, it's been just me and Julian, or just me and some rickety television, or me and a full-length mirror on a bathroom door. I never stayed in one school long enough to make a friend I could tell stories to or run away with. Before we came here, when Julian would be at some job, I'd have to sit in the motel room and make up people to play with. We'd play games like "School Social Worker." You can play. It's easy. In "School Social Worker" you pretend that you don't know me, but you want to know my case history. And I pretend I don't want to tell you. Then you tell me to go with my feelings, and you give me a reassuring hug. And then you ask me my name. My name is Chloe Marie Martel-McDermott, I tell you. You act surprised at such a long name, and you make a joke about it. You say you hope I don't marry a boy named Jesse Hames Lennon-McCartney and decide to give our children both last names. Think of it, you say. It's always the children who suffer, you say. I pretend not to understand your joke or yourx painful slip of the tongue. You pretend to cough. You ask me my age. Twelve. That was easy. Father's name? Julian Martel. Mother's name? Oh no, you've asked the wrong question. I begin to cry. But now we're here in P-town, and Julian's tending bar at the Foe'sie on Commercial St., and I've made a friend named Fernando Augusto. I told Julian that we should stop moving because if we drive any further east we'll fall right off the beginning of the country. Julian laughed. Our cabin sits back from the road and is surrounded by sand and twisted dwarf pines. It's the closest cabin to the ocean, and all night we can hear the waves slapping on the rocks. A blue wooden table and two blue metal folding chairs stand in the middle of our room. The brown linoleum floor is always a little gritty from the sand that blows through The Missouri Review · 7 the bruises and cuts in the old screen door. Julian's single bed is by the bathroom and mine is across the room by the closet. We have a small square fridge underneath a two-burner stove. Next to the sink, on the small Formica countertop, are a pop-up toaster and a Juice-O-Matic orange squeezer. I tacked up the 16 picture postcards of our 17 homes on the knotty pine wall over my bed. The Sahara Motel in DeWitt, Arkansas, didn't even have postcards. Julian placed his photograph in its foldout cardboard frame on a shelf over the sink. It's a hand-tinted color graduation picture of my mother. My mother has eyes as blue as motel swimming pools and hair as red as neon. I got my name from my mother. I have Julian's sandy hair, his green eyes, and his long, thin nose, but I got my high...