The Last Wave

For Mom, Dave, and Kerri

The best Bests.

And for the artist Richard Stone,

who put a novel in his painting

and read the first draft on the installment plan.

THE LAST WAVE

John, 2014

I reached out for my wife and my hand touched the place where her shoulder should have been. I buried my face in her pillow and felt a few stray grains of sand brush against my cheek. Her body was absent, but I knew exactly where her hips should lie.

I did not know where she was, but it was easy enough to guess. She always did prefer the seabed.

The mental snapshots I kept of her were full of water. Her hair was never dry, damp towels always covered the radiators, and for an hour or so after a swim, her nose dripped as though the seawater was trying to get back to its rightful place.

The swimming costumes — all dark, all practical — the bathing caps, and the lanolin to keep the chafing down followed her wherever she went. She only deigned to swim in the sea: never a pool and never heated. The sea is alive, expansive; a pool is dead and confining. The sea is freedom. There is nothing in a pool: no current, no tide, no waves, and most of all no history. Antiseptic and cold in their perfection, swimming pools. Horrible things.

She swam at every opportunity, regardless of weather or temperature. On the coldest days, I worried if she was gone too long, because hypothermia had once forced her back onto the land. If it was too cold, in the depths of winter, to keep herself from going mad she sat shivering on the beach, staring out at the froth, desperate to be engulfed in it.

She would say: The sea has always been here. It’s seen everything.

Martha, I called.

Downstairs, the sink was full of dishes, cups and crumbs covered the counter, and I thought to myself that this was a bit much even by her standards. Her dedication to the water rarely prevented her from keeping a clean house. I piled the rest of the dirty crockery into the sink and brushed the crumbs onto the floor as Webb loped over. The window was open and the wind was up; the flowered curtains snapped like the lifeguard flags at the beach in summer, threatening to push the shells off the windowsill.

Webb budged my leg with his head and I patted his head. Good boy.

We’ll miss the tide, I said to the closed bathroom door.

Webb barked and I gave him half a slice of stale toast from the countertop, which he gobbled down, barely slowing to chew. He grinned at me, drool oozing from the sides of his mouth.

Come on, Martha, I said. You won’t have time to eat. I waited at the door for a reply, but she was silent, so I looked through the pantry for the porridge she ate each morning. I couldn’t find it.

A gust blew through the window again, and as I turned around I saw the old tea box where I kept my tobacco on the top shelf. I took it down, and just as I was ready to roll the paper up tightly, another whoosh of wind came through the kitchen and the unmade cigarette flew onto the floor. Webb sniffed around my feet.

No, I said, moving his snout away with my foot. Bad dog. But he was relentless and I had to shove him harder, which caused him to lose his balance. He fell down yelping and I felt like a beast. He was older than me and had a harder time of it, balancing on three legs.

I rolled it up again but it was a struggle: my fingers were not as limber as they had once been.

Martha, we’ll miss the tide, I said to the closed bathroom door.

It was early September, but the weather was closer to November and the sky was dull like wedding silver that hadn’t been used in years.

I went out into the front garden to have my fag and saw the neighbour, Henry. A real curtain-twitcher. He waved but I didn’t. Martha would say I’d been rude, but I did not want to get involved in a conversation with him. He had too many questions and I was not interested in answering any of them.

I gave up on the cigarette and went upstairs to our room to find Martha, who should have been getting her swimming kit sorted. But there was no sign of her.

As I passed the window I saw the front gate was open, though I’d thought it was closed when I was outside moments earlier, and I rushed outside to look for her. It was then that I realized I was in my slippers, the rain coming down in earnest.

Who would go swimming on a day like this?

Martha.

But there was no sign of her. I walked to the gate and strained to see through the wet, past the bend in the road, which was the route she always took down to the sea.

Henry shouted to me from his window and I asked, Have you seen Martha?

He replied but it got lost between the window and my ears, the rain pounding the ground and mist dampening the sound of his voice. These days, most things sound as though I am underwater.

Good, Martha would say. That’s how I ought to sound.

Henry stood in the doorway, his track jacket collar flipped up against the weather. John, he said. Are you all right?

I worried about him: no wife, no children, a middle-aged man living by himself. There was an eagerness to help that was off-putting. Henry was the type of man you saw checking his hair in the reflection whilst he pumped the petrol, the sort of man who was either on the brink of a midlife crisis or in the midst of one, I could never be certain.

Fine, I said, shutting the door quickly. He was in the habit of inviting himself over for a cup of tea, and though I disliked rudeness, I did not have the time to deal with him.

Martha? I shouted. Darling? I called, opening the bathroom door. My love? I said as I went upstairs.

But she wasn’t there. Her dresses had been laid out across the white duvet: black with long sleeves, navy with a fuller skirt, and green tweed. I could not picture her wearing any of them; they were not the sort of thing she wore every day. They lacked a certain practicality.

I heard knocking at the door and expected to see Martha standing on the front step, sheepishly admitting she had forgotten her keys and ready to apologize for leaving without Webb and me. I was hoping she would regret trying to steal a bit more time in the sea by going without us.

But when I leaned out the window, it was Henry. I ducked back in quickly.

John, he called. Open the door.

I slammed the window shut and pulled the curtains closed, hoping he’d take the hint. I had never met someone so pushy. How had Martha managed to slip past him? If he’d seen her, she would have felt obligated to invite him in and they’d still be in the kitchen, Henry prattling on about the leaks in his roof, or foxes or badgers.

The hinges on our front door creak in a distinctive way and have done since the day we bought the house. I would know the sound that door made anywhere.

John, he called from inside our house.

Go away, I shouted.

Henry’s footsteps on the stairs sounded confident, as if he believed he had a right to do as he pleased and enter our house as though it were his own.

What’s going on? He stood at the edge of our room, where the hardwood flooring in the corridor meets the dove grey carpeting in our bedroom, with one hand in his pocket and the other resting on the doorframe. It was the sort of pose one might take at a pub while trying to affect an air of nonchalance.

I turned my back to him. Do you make a habit of home invasion?

John, he said.

I turned my head in his direction, and as I did I glanced at the wardrobe and that’s when I saw it: the case I always brought along for her attempts. This was not its proper place. I kept it downstairs next to her swimming bag. Martha must have moved it during one of her cleaning sprees.

I picked it up and ran my hands over its worn leather, creased and cracked from frequent exposure to salt water. It was the size of a briefcase and soft, with no hard edges — and though the clasps had lost their shine and there were the beginnings of a hole in one of the corners, it was perfect. Some things get better with age, their history eclipsing the shine of shop-bought virtue.

I opened it to make sure everything was in the right place: the jar of pebbles, the maps and charts, the tide table, the tins of grease. A flask for chicken broth and a half a packet of stale biscuits. Had Henry not been hovering over my shoulder I would have opened the pebble jar. There is something tenacious about the smell of the sea; it seeps into everything it touches, including stone, and on days when she wanted to go in but couldn’t, the smell took her there instead. When she inhaled the scent, she always did so with her eyes closed.

Webb, I called, pushing past Henry in the doorway. I went downstairs and the dog met me in the kitchen, where I found a piece of rope to tie to his collar for appearances’ sake.

I heard Henry coming down the stairs and picked up my pace. Case in one hand, dog in the other, I threw the front door open and set out down the path. But he was behind me.

Please, John, you’ll regret it.

I looked over my shoulder and met his gaze, giving him a moment to explain himself. He was silent. Webb and I carried on.

As we passed through the front gate, I felt his hand clamp down on my shoulder.

Get your hands off me! We’re late enough as it is.

Late for what, John?

Every day it was the same thing. Where are you going? What are you doing? Care to come over for supper? Can I come round for a cuppa later? Do you need any help? Always snooping around, too, in the cupboards, the refrigerator. He thought I didn’t notice.

It’s a training day, I said.

Training for what?

It was like talking to a three-year-old.

It’s raining, he said. Why not leave it for today?

I was standing in the rain so I knew it was raining. He must have thought I was an idiot.

Have to get moving, I said, turning toward the road. Mustn’t keep her waiting.

Webb barked his agreement. He was irritated by Henry’s intrusiveness too.

I pictured her in the sea: strong arms churning through the water, elbows raised high, and glimpses of her face — masked by goggles — when she turned to breathe as she swam parallel to the shore. It was better when she swam across and not out because I could go with her then, in a way. I was her lighthouse, but rather than protecting her from harm I was what called her back to the land.

John, I don’t think you should go.

I turned and he was behind me. Frankly, Henry, I’m not at all interested in what you think.

He put his hand firmly on my shoulder again. She isn’t there.

How would you know? Are you psychic now?

Why don’t you come over? I’ll put a fire on. There’s a bit of Battenberg cake left that my sister brought at the weekend.

How kind, I said through gritted teeth.

John, she passed away.

The rain clouded my glasses but I saw the pity in his face. Why would you say something like that!

I yanked Webb’s makeshift leash and we walked off as Henry’s shouts became lost in the rain.

When we arrived, I noticed two things: that the wind was offshore, which meant that Martha would have to fight the currents as well as the air, and that I was still wearing my slippers. I squinted to see her yellow swimming cap.

Though it was mid-afternoon it looked like dusk, but that was all right. Martha preferred overcast days for swimming. The sun turned the water into a mirror. I want to see under the surface, she said. I want to know what I’m getting into.

Ever since we were young I had watched her disappear into the foam and the froth, returning two or more hours later, utterly spent. I would wrap my arms around her as we sat on the pebble beach while she gave me her numbers: first half-hour, breathing every five strokes; second half-hour every three; breaststroke for twenty minutes. It was mathematical, calculated, and repetitive. She said it was meditative, the endless counting. One, two, three, breathe. Kick, pull, glide, breathe. Focus. Don’t think about how cold it is, how far there is to go, the aching in your shoulders, or the stinging of the salt. Just swim.

It was difficult watching her out there in the sea, as she was pummelled by waves breaking over her. I wanted to keep her with me on dry land, but I knew that to try would only push her toward the sea. Instead I looked forward to the moment she emerged from the water, enjoyed watching her figure arise from the deep and walk straight to me. And were it not for her aquatic adventures, I would not have had the pleasure of wrapping my arms around her as she leaned back, her wet hair soaking me through. I was glad to be included in some way, to have a job: what the sea took from her, her heat and strength, I gave back.

On the beach the pebbles were cold and hard; the rain, too. The place was deserted except for a group of teenagers halfway down, shielded by an outcropping of rock. They were all anoraks, cans of something, and tinny music muted by the wet.

I sat on the ground, and as Webb barked in circles I tried to work out where Martha could be.

Cut it out, I said. He wasn’t usually like this.

I looked at the teenagers and there was something familiar about the scene. I felt I’d been here before, with a group of people, but perhaps closer to the pier. I felt an echo — nothing as solid as a memory — of miserable weather, Marmite, and cheese.

The motion of the sea was calming in a way, even though the wind was blowing the tops of the waves off into mist, and I thought perhaps that was why I couldn’t see her, that the water was hiding her, keeping her from me. I scanned the horizon, looking out toward France, my eyes open and unblinking, but she wasn’t there.

But if she wasn’t there and she wasn’t at home, where was she? Those were her places. She could be counted on to be in either one of them at almost any given moment. It was unlike her to miss a swim, and even more unlike her to disappear.

Walking in the direction of the teenagers, I continued to search. What if something had happened? What if she had overestimated herself? Underestimated the conditions? What if she needed help?

Have you seen her? I shouted. My wife, Martha? Was she here?

A girl about fourteen years old walked over and smiled, as though she recognized me.

You again?

Have you seen her? Short bob, about five and a half feet tall. Yellow bathing cap.

She looked at the ground. Not today.

That’s impossible. She has to be here.

Are you sure?

Why would I have come if I wasn’t?

She took her hood down as though she were looking for something, but I wasn’t sure what it might be. I’ve seen you here before.

Martha comes every day. She’ll attempt the Channel again in early September.

It’s nearly October, she said.

I looked inland. The point where spectators stand is an outcropping covered in matted-down grass. I wouldn’t have ever had cause to be up there because if Martha was swimming then I was in the support boat, but I could picture the view from up there, or rather I felt what it was like to stand there.

And then I was sitting at home with the three dresses laid out and there were people with me in our bedroom. Our daughter, maybe. I blinked and I was standing in the rain listening to Henry. Everything was now and then, before and after, past and present all jumbled together, crashing into one another.

The pebbles made me wince as I tottered over them in my slippered feet, my toes numb from the cold. I knew then where she was. I dropped to my knees and opened the case. Everything that was Martha was there: the grease, the earplugs, the bathing caps, old goggles, and the pebbles. I counted them, ten in total. One for each attempt.

I stared at them in my palm and they were the same as the rust-coloured ones I was kneeling on, speckled with whirls of white and slate grey. I traced my finger over them as Webb rushed toward me, bounding out of the sea.

His fur, which was the same colour as some of the pebbles, was drenched, and when he shook himself off, sandy water covered everything. I pushed him away as he tried to lick my face, but he sensed something wasn’t right and kept nudging me until I spilled the pebbles.

I shouted at him and tried to pick the right ones up again, but there was no way to tell which ones were hers and which ones weren’t.

I looked in the case. It was all that was left of her now. It was everything and nothing. Webb barked at me from the shoreline, and with the case in my hand I chased him into the sea. It was the only place left where we could find her and the only place we could be with her.

The water was so cold it burned. The sea was in motion. It was a living thing, she used to say. More alive than any of us.

It was unsettling. The rocky bottom shifted with each wave and the currents pulled me forward and backward until I lost all balance and plunged under water. My arms and legs flailed as I tried to right myself, and I lost my grip on the case getting my head above water. I cried out when I saw the case floating away.

I gasped for air but got a lungful of water. I couldn’t swim. It was foolish to live so close to it and never have learned, but it was my personal superstition: for her to swim well, I could not.

It felt as though the sea would take me to her if I let it, and then I felt arms around me and barking. I was being dragged to shore and once I was on land again I sat with my head between my knees, coughing, gasping, spitting out water. The girl was beside me, soaked through.

What are you trying to do? she said. Kill yourself?

I saw her looking at the case.

Leave it. It belongs to her.

Who? she asked. There’s no one out there, she said gently.

There is, I said.

I turned away and looked at the outcropping and bits came back to me. She had requested a burial at sea and I had promised. I pictured my daughter or my son, and remembered something about danger, about wandering off, things being close enough.

I had thrown her ashes into the waves, shining like mackerel scales.

The girl sat on my right and Webb settled himself at my feet and we looked out across the Channel.

I thought of Martha’s voice, the way she used to say my name. The words had all become crumpled in my mind, heavy like wet towels. I tried to remember the first time I had heard her say it. Was it as she stood straddling her bicycle when I had introduced myself? I wasn’t sure, but I could picture it as though it had happened yesterday. John, I heard her say. It was like so many other things that I couldn’t remember, that I just felt. I knew exactly what it felt like to hear her say it. I had never thought hearing my own name could have thrilled me so much, but it did. How her different tones told me everything I needed to know. Short and clipped when she was cross; lengthened in the middle when she was being tender.

The harder I tried to hear it again, the further away it receded, like the tide.

Did she ever get there? the girl asked.

Where?

Across.

Cap Gris Nez, I said.

In the support boat I had poured chicken broth into a cup attached to a long pole and tried to hold it steady for her while she struggled against the waves. She had trod water, propelling herself up above the chop. No good drinking the sea, she’d said. The power in her legs was undeniable. I saw the sores on her shoulders, around her neck and under her arms, chafing from the salt. She had joked that if the officials wouldn’t have been upset she would have swum naked.

Why’d she do it? the girl asked.

To see, I said.

Webb lifted his head as though he were about to bark, but instead managed a muffled ruff, and I looked over toward the cliff where the girl’s friends were motioning to her.

She squinted into the distance, which, given the weather, wasn’t far. There wasn’t much to look at: the muddy water sloshing in and out, the white horses the icing on the edge of horizon line, everything in motion, frothing and churning.

She stood up and walked toward it, head held high and her chin up against the weather. She didn’t hesitate when she stepped into the water. She took a few steps out, only up past her knees, and reached down, fishing the case out before turning back.

The distance between us was ten feet, maybe fifteen, and my eyesight was not bad. It could have been anything: the way she walked, her purpose, her confidence, or just seeing her holding the case. It could have been so many other things besides.

There are moments when why no longer matters. Why do we fall in love? Why do we live and why do we die? There comes a moment when we know the point is simply that we are: in love, alive, or even dead. The young are gifted the luxury of why, the old the wisdom to realize why doesn’t matter in the end.

You can’t leave it. No littering, she said as she placed the case next to Webb.

How was the water? I asked.

She blinked. Wet.

I smiled despite myself and thought of the bathtub, the cold water, and the salt I’d brought for her. You can’t deny me this, Martha had said.

Shouts came from her friends in the distance and she turned to look at them. The girl’s hands were jammed into her pockets, her teeth chattering and stray pieces of hair stuck to her cheeks.

I’ll be fine, I told her, releasing her from her perception of obligation, but she didn’t leave.

Why are you looking at me like that? she asked.

I wanted to say that she looked like my wife. The way she stared out at the sea, squinting slightly when she scrutinized something intently, and the way her wet hair was plastered to her cheeks. I wanted to say that she was unintentionally teasing me and that through no fault of her own she was making the hollow feeling I kept with me now grow. I often forgot the cause of that feeling, and when I was reminded of it, it was as sharp as the first time. It was a feeling that sucked the breath out of my lungs, a feeling that felt like drowning.

Go, I said. Please.

When she was far enough down the beach, I turned to where she had been sitting and dug a small hole in the sand underneath the pebbles. When it looked big enough, I opened the case and took what was left: the biscuits, the maps and charts in it. I poured the pebbles I had saved from Webb’s exuberance on top and then at the last minute reconsidered. I gathered up the ones I thought were hers and added a few more so that there were ten.

Ten for as many swims.

I looked at the handwriting on the map. There was a note about the currents and Martha had added the words Strait of Dover at the narrowest point between England and France.

Our kitchen table had often been covered in these maps. When planning an attempt, Martha would trace the route she wanted to swim endless times with her finger — small grains of sand caught under her nails lent them an egg-speckled veneer — running over the course, adding the smallest details gleaned from frequent chats to fishermen. Rocks here, seaweed blooms there. Everything had been noted in plain blue ink and her precise, joined-up script, the same writing that was on the cards she gave me for birthdays, anniversaries, and non-occasions — surprise reminders of her affection. Her cursive was on endless lists and reminders, notes scribbled on the backs of envelopes or left on the table, and when I thought of them what I saw was Dear John. John, dear.

I clawed at the sand and the pebbles and threw handfuls at the hole in the ground. I kicked more sand and pebbles onto what was left of her, blocking her out.

You have to stay here, I said.

When I stood up, Webb followed my lead and we walked home together. I didn’t bother retying the rope to his collar; we were two old men trudging home in the rain.

It was nearly dark when we turned onto our street, and Webb barked impatiently as I stood in front of the door, searching for the keys. They weren’t in my coat or trouser pockets and I wondered how I had managed to go out without them. And then I looked down and saw that I was still in my slippers.

Slippers: slippery, slipping.

I looked next door and prayed that the lights would be on and that Henry would have a spare set. The idea of having to engage in conversation exhausted me, but I had no other choice; it was that or I would have to sleep in the garden.

The pale blue flickering light of the television was on, accompanied only by a faint glow from somewhere in the kitchen.

I rang the bell and when he answered the door all I said was, Keys?

Come in out of the rain, he said, stepping aside. Go through to the living room, John, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.

I did not want to sit down, nor did I want a cup of tea, but Webb seemed keen on the offer of a warm, dry room in which to settle and he pushed past me into the dark. Though our houses were laid out in the same way, there was a lightness in our house that was not shared with Henry’s: his rooms gave the impression that even on the brightest days they would still feel dark. It was that kind of place: cramped, cold, and uncomfortable.

I looked but found no pictures of a wife, children, or other proof of familial ties. There were no photographs at all. Martha made sure that the faces of our family were never far away. Henry had a large mirror over the mantelpiece where I caught sight of myself. I was more hunched than I had remembered. If I thought of myself, I pictured my face as a combination of when Martha and I were first married and when the children were still in school, but the reflection told me otherwise: my eyebrows had taken on a life of their own, springing up over my spectacles like unruly hedgerows; the few hairs left on my head were plastered down on my scalp from rain, and the natural slimness I had always had now made my face look gaunt and hollow.

Henry came into the room with a tray full of tea things and set it down on the side. He looked at me expectantly.

Let me take your coat, he said, moving toward me as though to help me out of it.

Leave it, I’m fine.

It’s soaked right the way through.

He was right, but I didn’t have the strength to take it off myself and I wasn’t about to let him help me. I sat in an armchair and he sat on the sofa.

I take it you made it to the seaside, then, he said.

I must have looked puzzled because he pointed to my slippers, which were covered in sand. It is one thing to embarrass yourself, but quite another to do it in front of someone like him.

Done it myself, Henry said. Walked to the little shop during halftime to get a couple more cans. Wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t stepped in gum. Nearly ruined the carpet, but at least Arsenal won.

The way he laughed made me think he’d made it up. I did not want to sit there in his house. I couldn’t. I had the feeling there was something pressing I had to do. I gripped the arms of the chair as the room closed in on me.

Stay, he said.

I have to go.

Why’s that?

There’s something I need to do.

Which is?

I sputtered, searching for the right words that would release me from his clutches. Martha needs me.

Henry poured two cups of tea and added milk. Sugar?

I made no reply and he offered me a mug.

John, he said. She’s not… He sighed and leaned back on the sofa. Drink your tea.

I’m sure she’s got our dinner on the stove by now. I straightened my tie. I’m needed at home.

I don’t want to have to tell you again.

Tell me what? How dare you speak to me like this.

He put his tea down and rubbed his face with both hands as though I had given him a headache. As if I was hard work.

I didn’t demand to be dragged in here to keep you company.

You weren’t dragged in here. You knocked on my door. You’ve locked yourself out again.

If I have misplaced my keys, which is not at all like me, then my wife will let me in. I stood up and clapped my thigh, signalling for Webb to follow. The room