LIKE WAVES ON ROCKS
Lisa McMann

I am spending my last months in Maine, in a snowy ocean-side village, in a nursing home as far away from my life as I can find. It is a place where I am a wrinkle in a sea of aged faces, in a town whose people sail on summer Sundays, in a region of politics and wealth and merriment. It is a world where no one blinks at my name, the Reverend Edward Hingus.

My new home is Room 17 in Winterhaven Care Center, and I hide here awaiting the end of life with anticipation, hoping only to find peace in anonymity within this refuge. Anonymity, along with comfort—if not for myself, then for others. I have learned I cannot ignore those who surround me. I am cursed to be a Listener, a Secret Keeper, which leads to Caring, and that vulnerability spreads up and down my spine like lashings.

Nan’s been working at Winterhaven for three months or so. The staff changes so often, I figure she won’t be here long. The last nurse I liked told me she dreamed of dead puppies at night. She said goodbye a week later, promising to visit, but I knew she wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. The revolting smell of death mingles with urine and menthol and brings waves of nausea even to the seasoned nurses. I can see it in their lips, pinched tight as if to stop something.

Nan is striking. Not beautiful, but unique. Her eyes are bright blue, pondering and secretive like the Virgin Mary’s, as if something big is about to happen. Her hair is black as oil. No streaks, no variation. Black as my wife’s hair, back in the sixties when she loved me. Wiry, like you could bend it and it would stick that way. Pipe cleaner hair. Nan is the image of my wife, Anna, in a different life thirty years ago.

She asks me questions about my life and she tells me about hers. Many nights when her shift is over, she stays and visits with me. We play cards, work puzzles. I like her. But I don’t like liking her. Because she’ll leave soon too…I can feel it in her icy fingertips when she salves my bedsores, leaving a chill in my hip bones that makes them ache.

Nan isn’t the first one to sit next to my bed and spill her secrets to me. Nothing surprises me anymore. I think Nan senses that. Like I said, I am old and safe. I have no one, and I will die soon, so many secrets wrapped tightly in a shroud and buried with me.

One night Nan sits by me after she’s done with her shift at eleven, and she says she can’t stand it much longer. “It’s hard working with death,” I say, but she shakes her head.

“My son,” she says simply, and she waves her hand like a fan by her face, as if that has the power to stop tears. Then they tumble out like dice and bounce around my pillows and blankets.

“Tell me about your son, Nan,” I say.

She reaches for my hand and says, “Oh, Edward.” When Nan says, ‘Oh, Edward’ I know it will be a lengthy visit, and I am thankful for my catheter. But I have nowhere else I need to be. With a jumbled mess of stops and restarts about her son who is with grandparents and about her ex-husband who awaits a trial, she begins her story. I nod, but don’t understand until she takes a deep breath and whispers, “I’m in the witness protection program, Edward.”

All is silent. I don’t know what to say except, “Go on,” and she does. She tells me about her ex-husband, whom she discovered was selling crack cocaine from the bedroom where their son Rob slept on his weekend visits.

“Rob is nine, now,” she says. “He doesn’t understand why I’m not with him. But he is safer in Canada with my parents.” She shakes her head. “I’ve never told anyone this, Edward.”

“I know,” I say. Her words are raw. Unrehearsed. I know.

She checks her watch and scrambles, apologizing. “I shouldn’t say any more—I’m not supposed to. Rob will be calling early in the morning. I need to go.” Her eyes darken, as do her cheeks, and I am again reminded of Anna. Without a word she grabs her coat and tote bag and leaves, closing my door. I watch through the window for her; she reaches her jeep and slips on the ice, the contents of her tote fly haphazardly under the glow of the lights in the parking lot. A plastic lunch container bounces and rolls in circles like a flipped coin.

I don’t sleep well. I miss my books…they don’t have the right books here on the metal cart. I long for my library, mourning the loss of that room that awaits my death. My will says the books will go to the Philadelphia Public Library, anonymously. I wish I could borrow some of them until then. But I’ve no one to fetch them, so there they sit.

Instead I think about the past. A pastor who turns away from the church late in life is not revered, though I still hold the title ‘Reverend.’ So many times I’ve listened. Countless times. People think that because you have a title, you are a jack-of-all-trades: counselor, teacher, writer, sociologist, listener, extrovert…secret keeper. Indeed it’s true.

My first instinct is to help Nan, but she didn’t ask for that. I don’t think I can do anything but listen, anyway, and I wonder how it feels to shed a secret like that. Her story wakes a part of me that’s been dead for years.

The witness protection program is foreign to me. I want to know more. I am struggling because my brain wants to go immediately to the computer room—they have one here, which makes me laugh since no one uses it but the nurse’s aides during the midnight shift when they do their homework. But my body doesn’t always agree with my brain, and often the nurses are too busy to spend the time hauling my body over there. I will wait and see if Ellen is on duty tonight. She’ll help me. She is a good one, who separates real life from her job. I can see the life in her warm fudge eyes. They give me comfort.

I try to sleep. The nurses scowl at me if I don’t, so I fake it. How I long for a flashlight, like when I was a child, to read deep into the night, in secret rebellion against bedtime. Instead, I lie in the dark, remembering things I wish I could forget, opening and closing files in my mind, grasping at phrases, quotes, verses…something to soothe my anxious brain, which is shocked at the body that won’t respond. Sometimes I wish my brain were the dying part.

Nan pokes her head in my doorway every weekday when she starts her shift, a little after 3 o’clock, as if she wants to be sure of me. And I am still hanging on to life. At one point in my youth, I would have seen my failure to die as God calling me to accomplish something else. Now, I think he’s simply overlooked me.

“Hey, Rev,” she says today when she pops in. She drops a donut in my lap.

“Now I’ve got something to praise God for,” I say. I think she warmed it up for me. Did I mention I like this woman? She’s got her fingertips wedged between my ribs, and I don’t want her to let go.

On her lunch break, Nan eases into the chair again and peels my orange. I wasn’t going to eat it, but I will now. As she peels, she makes small talk, asking about my family and friends, both of which are nonexistent. Well, I guess I have one friend. The man who brought me here. My lawyer. But he gets paid to be my friend, so I don’t think that counts.

“I’m in hiding, too,” I tell her. And she nods, like she understands. What relief that brings, because I am tired.

I want her to talk. I want to know why she needs government protection. Curiosity and concern have pricked me since our last discussion, but she is not one to be pushed. Finally I say, “Tell me more about you and your son.”

She sighs, and says, “My son and I watched my ex-husband stab a woman to death because she owed him drug money.”

“It was his weekend to have Rob,” she says. “I pulled into the driveway to drop Rob off, and there he was, inside the garage, plunging a knife over and over into her neck and chest…she wasn’t moving anymore. Black blood pooled like an oil spill on the cement. I drove away as soon as I could think, but he saw me. I called the cops, he ran, but he didn’t get far, I guess. They found him in the washroom at 7/Eleven, diluted blood spatters on the sink, trying to shave his beard with a shoplifted Lady Bic.”

I am again at a loss for words, but I manage to shake my head and say, “So his drug friends are looking for you while you wait to testify.”

She nods.

“But what about Rob,” I say. “Isn’t he in danger too?”

“He’s with his Grandparents…my mother and father, in…in Canada,” she says. “Across the border. He is safer there. God, I miss him so much.”

My old eyes get misty and I reach for her hand. It is cool and smooth, and again she reminds me of my wife, Anna. I am fighting a losing battle. Why can’t I stop caring?

When Ellen, the night nurse, says hello, I smile. She likes me. A month ago she sat in my chair by the bed and cried too. She lost her father last year. She told me about him—his work as a doctor, his passion for vegetable gardens, his dedication to his family, so often overlooked by others in his field. She said I reminded her of him. How I wish I had lived a life of honor as Ellen’s father had.

She sees I am awake, and comes in. “Quiet here tonight,” she says. “Can I get you a book, Edward?”

I struggle to raise my rebellious body to a sitting position. “I’m up for an adventure tonight, Ellen. Can you help me get to the computers? Please?” I say. A concerned look shadows her face as she purses her lips. I’m supposed to stay in bed now; my body is wracked, and I know the bedsores could split open if I bend too much. “I take full responsibility.”

She puts her hands on her hips, her eyes like slits. Then she unfolds my wheelchair, unhooks my catheter and helps me in. “Let’s go, then, you old geezer,” she says.

I have never known such freedom like the movement of air on my face. I close my eyes as Ellen pushes me and I am young again, speeding across the glorious ocean with the two people I loved. I breathe deep until I cough from the dryness in my throat. When I realize we have stopped, my mouth is wide open.

Ellen grins at me when I open my eyes, and dishevels my hair as if I am a boy. “It’s the little things, isn’t it, Edward.” She settles the keyboard on a pillow on my lap. “Use the arrow keys, the mouse won’t reach.” She is wise. It is my arm that won’t reach, my gnarled right hand that won’t cooperate.

Researching is pure joy to me. It is also pure pain, in a physical sense but also emotionally. Before I am through looking up information on witness protection, I will search my own name and hometown in the public records. It’s time to see what has become of me.

The information I find on witness protection is not nearly as glamorous as the networks would have you think. People forced into situations they never dreamed about, families broken apart and deposited in far away cities, lives changed forever in a matter of days. Children calling parents from payphones. Ghosts, mirages, noises around every corner. Shadows in blue tagging along on the worst days.

I search Nan’s name, but am not surprised to find nothing relating to her story. Of course she must use a fake name now.

When Ellen taps my shoulder at 2:30 a.m., I soil my gown, but am only slightly mortified—not nearly as embarrassed as Ellen is. Next time she’ll want to put a diaper on me. “Five more minutes,” I say, not asking.

I peck the words ‘Edward Hingus, Philadelphia’ into the search bar. I close my eyes and breathe deep while awaiting the results.

I sleep late on Saturday, awaking satisfied for the first time in weeks. I’ve given my brain new food, and I think about what to say to Nan when she returns to work on Monday. Or perhaps I’m only here to listen. Long ago, God gave me direction on these things. But after the crash, my spiritual senses dulled and never returned. God disappeared.

From the drawer in my nightstand, I pull two stacks of paper—articles I printed the night before. I set the first stack aside, reach for the second, and stare into my own eyes. I’m ready to face this before I die.

“Pastor Charged in Reckless Boating Accident; One Dead, One Injured.” How desperate my eyes look in that photo. My wife was still alive that day, in a coma.

I thumb through the other articles, reading headlines:

“Charges Dismissed in Tragic Drowning Case: Preacher Released.”

“Exonerated Clergyman Loses All.”

“Swept Away: Congregation Noncommittal.”

My stomach churns. I am afraid God won’t let me die until I settle this account.

Nan doesn’t come to work Monday afternoon. I miss her. I can’t concentrate on the news, or my book. My hips hurt. I hope she is ok. By Tuesday, I am worried. A new nurse comes to greet me, but knows only that Nan is gone and she is the replacement. “Where is she?” I ask Betty, the receptionist, and Ellen.

I ask every nurse, every adult who walks past my room. They look at me and shrug. By Thursday they keep walking, and my ribs ache. “Just stop it, Edward,” I chide myself. I know better than to get close to people—at least, I should have known better. If only Nan didn’t look so much like Anna. Nan looks just like my wife’s obituary photo still etched in my mind. Now they are both gone.

Friday morning I catch a twenty-second blurb on CNN. A woman—missing. I strain to hear her name. Jennifer McCloud, says the anchor, a single mom from Minneapolis and the crucial witness in a huge drug dealing and murder case, with trial scheduled to begin next month. Missing since Sunday. They show a photo of Nan.

“Newspaper!” I croak. I can’t breathe. I press my red button and the new nurse comes running. “Newspaper,” I say again. “Please. USA Today, or any national paper.” She probably thinks I’m crazy, this new one. I wish I were. Again I curse the God I once adored. I have failed to prove my worth to him, and he continues to torture me for my sins.

When I can’t sleep at night, I read the news articles and I’m lost in the 1960s again, by the sea with Anna and Ben.

Ben Raines was my best friend. He took over his father’s business at age 22 and retired a millionaire at 40. One day he came to my office at the church. “Come on, Edward,” he said. “Let’s go fishing.”

We drove to Northern Ontario, no short journey from our homes in Philly. The water was icy and clean, and the fish were willing. I worked on my sermons and Ben gave me feedback.

“Tell me how this sounds, Ben: ‘Often we focus on the negatives of the Bible. We base our lives on the Thou shalt nots, when God is waving his hand in front of our eyes, saying, Hey, I think you’re groovy, I love you.’”

Ben picked up a wriggling fish and slapped me with it. “Have a beer, Edward. God wants you to.”

I took a dip in the chilly waters and he downed a few beers. He was my sounding board, my confidant, my mentor of sorts. When Sunday came I delivered sparkling sermons and then grilled fish for dinner with Anna.

“Welcome back, boys,” said Anna. “Nice of you to show up for church, Edward.”

I loved her. I did. I think she loved me—at least she did at one time. She was a strong woman, outspoken. Political. And I was, of course, a pastor. She fought for women’s rights, and for her own, and I admired her for that. Her bitterness toward life in ministry became more apparent as the years dragged on. She wore the label of ‘preacher’s wife’ like a heavy yoke. “I should have never married a clergyman,” she said. “I’m not nearly righteous enough.”

She resented my work, though she faked support in front of parishioners. She even played the piano, not with fondness, but out of a sense of duty. It was important to her that she looked good in the eyes of the community. She saved her anger and venom for my ears only, and occasionally for Ben’s.

Eventually, Ben purchased a vacation home in Maine. “You must come and share it with me,” he said, and we visited often. The home was spacious and simple, set high on a cliff overlooking the sea. Both Anna and I missed Ben when he began living there during the summer months; each of us for different reasons, although I didn’t know it for a long time.

Anna grew more distant, but Ben never changed. I didn’t want to know about them, together. She pushed me away; I buried myself in books and church. And I lost her.

Now I wonder why I didn’t pull her back. Why didn’t I talk to her more? Why didn’t I tell her that her hair looked remarkable with a few silver strands mixed in, and that it complemented her eyes? I should have held her hand when she talked to me. I should have fought for the causes she was involved in. I should have voiced my political beliefs in support of her, no matter what the congregation thought. But at the time I didn’t see it.

Day after day, I watch the news for signs of Nan. The story soon was forgotten, pushed aside with all the other folks who go missing. Most don’t get the airtime Nan did. I’m grateful that her story made the news at all. Otherwise I’d probably still be wondering.

I worry about her boy Rob, how he’s handling this. I don’t know children, much. I hope the grandparents are good people. Strong. I hope he has a place to play. A lake to explore. Hills to climb. I wish him a mind that can forget.

I desperately want a mind that can forget, but mine is stuck on ‘replay’. I want to forget Anna. I want to forget Ben, and I want to forget what happened that summer thirty years ago.

If only I had admitted to myself that things were suspicious, if only I could have seen through her quickening heart…if only I had been the source of her sudden happiness, thirty years into a marriage. If only they hadn’t treated me like I were some ignorant animal that doesn’t observe the edge of the cliff in front of him, perhaps I would have been able to handle it in a dignified way.

They always were friendly to each other—hugging, kisses on the cheek. We were like family, the three of us. Women came and went in Ben’s life, but no one stayed for long. “I haven’t found the right girl yet, but I’m still looking,” he said.

He was still looking—looking at Anna when he said those words. I saw his eyes betray his feelings for her. I glanced at Anna. Her blush revealed more than words ever could. But I turned away, wounded, putting dishes away in the cupboard. “Nice night to take the boat out, what do you say?” I asked them.

“Look what came!” Ellen says. “You have a girlfriend in Albuquerque? Is that what you do on the Internet all the time, Edward?”

She winks and shuts my door. So very wise, that Ellen.

This is only the second piece of mail I’ve received in the year I have been at Winterhaven; the first was from my lawyer. This one is quite different. My hands shake as I open it.

“I am fine, it’s nearly over. I hope you are well. I am sorry I had to leave like I did.” There is no signature.

I clutch the paper to my chest, as choking sobs heave themselves up and over thirty-year-old walls, crashing like waves on rocks.

I poured each of them a drink while I waited. Anna wanted a quick shower, and Ben grabbed towels and a blanket in case the night air got cool. I filled the ice chest with vodka shot bottles and ginger ale and sandwiches. When I brought Anna her drink in the bathroom, she said, “Out!” curtly, just as I knew she would. My mind raced. I needed to know certain things for sure. When she emerged, she wore the perfume I gave her for Christmas, the perfume she always wore when she went out evenings ‘with the girls’. The girls. What a fool I was.

“I’ll take the wheel, if you’d like, Ben,” I offered. He was more than agreeable, since I insisted we stop for a drink at the marina before setting out. Anna and Ben sipped martinis and laughed while I swizzled a glass of tonic water and made my plans.

Out on the water, I feigned interest in every sight around us but the one I’d been too stupid to see in front of me for years. Ben and Anna drank and laughed, and Anna continually touched him. His knee, his arm...she sidled closer to him as the sun began to set and the air cooled, her arm draped across his thigh. She wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. We meandered near a cay a short distance from the marina.

“Whew! I’m getting a little bit tipsy, I think.” Anna said. I touched the gas slightly, and she lurched into Ben, who grabbed her round the shoulders to steady her.

His hand held on longer than it needed to. He slid his arm down her back, resting his hand in the hollow of it. When she leaned into him and sighed, he closed his eyes tightly for a moment.

“Why don’t you take her down into the cabin, Ben? Looks like she could use a nap. It’s getting dark—I’m heading back.” Ben looked at me full on for a moment, his eyes glazed. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Glad to, Cap’n,” said Ben. “Come, Anna.” He held his hand to her, as if he were the King.

I looked away, seething. That bastard—I wanted to kill him. I steered the boat in the right direction and sped up. As they bumped past me and descended into the cabin below, I spied the reef.

I shut the cabin door behind them, taking one last look at my bride. She was smiling. But not at me. “Goodnight, Anna,” I said. She didn’t answer.

How could I be such a fool? How could the only two people I love do this to me? In anger, I pressed the accelerator and instinct had me grabbing at a life preserver just as the last sliver of sun sank behind the rocks. I expected we’d all die, but I was crazy enough to think I had a chance. Now, for the past thirty years, I’ve been paying the price for living.

Slamming into the reef at forty knots sent Ben’s head through the cabin wall. The coroner said his neck was broken. Anna couldn’t escape. The cabin filled with water immediately, trapping her inside.

I cleared the windshield and the reef on impact. Broken glass shredded my right arm. The rest of my body was unharmed, unless you count my soul.

The Coast Guard was on the scene in minutes, spraying down the flames that licked the rudder, which hung awkwardly askew in the air like a badly broken bone. They hacked at the cabin to get to the others. Finally they hauled the bodies of the lovers to their boat before they heard my calls for help from the shadows.

“We’re here for you, Pastor Hingus.” The church rallied around me at first, even with the rumours that I was to be charged with manslaughter.

“Can we stop by? Bring dinner? Talk?”

I stopped responding. Over time, their visits became more infrequent as my withdrawal from the church and from God became clear. When the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, the whispering began in earnest. I never preached again; never set foot in the church again. God was nowhere to me.

When Ben’s lawyer called, I was not surprised. “I need to see you, Reverend Hingus.”

Likely there was a lawsuit. “I’ll be there.” I took the familiar journey back to Maine, alone this time.

What I never expected, when I got there, was to be told by Ben’s lawyer that I was a millionaire.

“He left his company to you, Edward. He said you’d take care of it.”

My muscles turned to rubber.

“And his beach house on the cliff, Edward...he left it to Anna, so…” He was silent.

“So…? What do you mean, ‘so’?” I said. And then I realized what he was saying. I shook my head. I couldn’t bear it. “Oh no. Oh my God.”

I left it sit vacant all these years.

As I lay here dying, Nan’s letter nestled in the hollow of my chest, I call my lawyer and arrange for him to come. There is some unfinished business I must take care of before I die. Is this what God is waiting for? I sleep my most peaceful night in thirty years.

When morning breaks, my lawyer arrives with a donut, per my special request.

“Nan would have warmed it up,” I say.

“I’m not Nan.” He says. So much for humor in a man’s dying days.

I hand him a letter, then arrange to be cremated when I die, my remains scattered over a reef at the base of a cliff in Maine. Atop the cliff is a simple, spacious house, soon to be owned by a nine-year old boy.

It’s time.

I am having trouble breathing now. I tell Ellen it will be soon, and the tears that form in her eyes make me happy. “Here,” I say, my voice sounding strange to me, “if you ever see Nan again, would you give this to her?”

Ellen takes the envelope and hugs me carefully. “Of course, dear. What is it?”

I close my eyes. My breath comes in rasps. I am floating—or the room is, I’m not sure which. I don’t really care.

“It’s a secret,” I tell her. “My last good deed.”

I think about the sea, and regret now that I never went back again. Not going back was never penance enough to free me from the guilt. I shiver, and I am there in the dark waves again.

“Could I have more blankets please? It’s so cold here in the water.”

She brings them, arranges them snugly around me, and is gone. I clutch the blankets, sealing all my secrets inside, preparing my shroud. I am ready to sleep.

Time passes and sparkling waves dance before me—visions of a clear cool lake in a fishing boat with a friend. The voice of a child, and I am standing on a cliff overlooking the sea again. I open my eyes and the Anna I fell in love with is standing over me, her black wiry hair hanging down, and she has new, tender eyes. I reach out to her, touch her sun-warmed cheek, and she doesn’t turn away. “I’m so sorry, Anna,” I say.

In the distance, a shadow of a boy playing by the sea, his hearty laughter that can only come from peace, and I know they are home.

“Oh, Edward,” Nan says. Her cool fingers splash my hand.

© Lisa McMann 2005

Lisa McMann (lisa@lisamcmann.com) lives and writes in the mountains near Phoenix. Her work has been published in dozens of magazines and anthologies on-line and in print. Her short story, The Day of the Shoes, was a Power of Purpose Award winner in 2004. Many of her stories can be found on her website, www.lisamcmann.com.

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