The Lifeguard (22 page)

It’s him, out there before me.

The tall, rangy physique. The straw-colored hair grazing his golden shoulders, board shorts clinging to his lean hips.

Only he has company.

Adriana.

They’re not sitting on his blanket watching the waves, the way we did. And they’re not talking. They’re knee deep in the surf, his arm loosely around her waist. She leans against him, her platinum hair covering her shoulders like fine-spun gold. They’re a fairytale snapshot of serenity and unimaginable beauty, facing the sea. They were born to be together, the fairy tale prince and princess.

As slowly as I arrived, I retreat, stepping back, catlike, as if despite the blowing wind, the waves lapping against the shore, and their total absorption in each other, they still might be able to make out my footsteps, the stray cat who has come upon their private oasis.

I pedal as fast as I can to get as far from this beach as quickly as is humanly possible. What was I thinking? Why did I want to come here, of all places? It’s his beach, I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere near him ever again. Did I think I was the only one in his life? He’s the most perfect looking male in the universe, so that’s a totally absurd thought. I feel sickened, betrayed.

I head back to the safety of Antonio’s beach. He might still be there; it’s only seven. So what if he’s Pilot’s grandfather? I need his comforting presence. I need to lean on him, be sheltered by him. He takes me in, all-knowing, protective, accepting, no matter what.

Only he isn’t there.

He must have packed up early or had something else to do. He meets friends for dinner sometimes at a little restaurant at the end of the beach. I may go riding past to see if I can spot him there.

I know so little about Antonio. Where does he live when he’s not outside painting? Where does he go off season? So many people come for the summer and then vanish for months at a time.

Aunt Ellie gives me a strange look when I get home.

“Are you okay, Sirena?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know you just seem…pale.”

Aunt Ellie’s upset, I can tell. I want to ask her if she’s ever had her heart torn apart. Or what you do when you feel betrayed by someone and hurt so badly that you feel you can’t live in your skin and you’ll go out of your mind? I want to ask her if she’s ever cared about somebody with every cell in her body and if there’s any way you can make the stabbing ache go away when you find out they’re in love with someone else.

But why? Nothing she or anyone else could say would make a difference. I force myself to sound normal.

“I was looking for Antonio. He gave me a paintbrush as a gift.” I take it out of my bag and hold it out to her. She examines it carefully. “He left it at the hospital for me but I didn’t find out about it until today.”

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “It looks so old.” She smiles. “It goes with the easel.”

“Was that his?”

She nods. “I told him you were coming and he offered it.”

“I always had a feeling about it…about the person who owned it before me…Now I know where those thoughts came from.” I shake my head. “Anyway, I wanted to thank him, but by the time I got the beach, he wasn’t there anymore.”

“There’s a birthday party for his gallery owner tonight,” she says. “Just a small party, but he’s hosting it. I saw him leaving the beach early to get ready.”

Mark comes over for dinner and we eat grilled scallops, baked potatoes, and salad. He works hard at making conversation with me, undeterred by my one-word answers. He reminds me of a stand-up comic who keeps on with the one-liners, even when he knows the audience isn’t with him. When we finally finish and Aunt Ellie gets up to clear the table, Mark opens the back door.

“Want to get some air?” he says.

I shrug and follow him outside. There are two wooden chairs on the patio and we sit facing each other. He sips a glass of red wine and stares at me, smiling over the rim.

“What is it, Sirena?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you by now,” he says, in his warm, gravelly voice. I look out at the water and then back at him. He fixes me with his warm, brown eyes and waits.

“People hurt you sometime, you know?”

“Yeah,” he nods, looking off, shaking his head slightly. He turns back to me and holds my gaze, waiting.

“I mean, maybe they don’t mean to, they don’t do it intentionally, but that’s how it feels.”

He grins. “I used to feel like I was a punching bag. I got beaten up by life all the time.”

“That’s how I feel.”

He puts the glass on the arm of the chair and leans toward me. “Who hurt you, Sirena?”

I shake my head, my eyes full of tears. I shouldn’t tell him, I know, but I have to tell someone. “Pilot.”

He leans his head to the side, narrowing his eyes. “How?”

“He’s got a girlfriend, Mark, and I can’t stand it. I thought he liked me, but then I saw them together. They didn’t know I was there. Do you know how much that hurts?”

“Oh, baby,” he says. He’s silent as he looks at the ground, thinking about what to say. “Did he tell you he doesn’t want to see you anymore?”

“Not really.”

“Then screw the girlfriend.”

I want to laugh but start crying instead.

“If he lets a beautiful babe like you get away, then he’s out of his gourd.”

He hands me a tissue and I blow my nose. “You think so?”

“Any sane guy would fall at your feet,” he says. “Don’t forget that.”

“Mark?”

“What?”

“Do you miss your wife?”

His face changes. “Sure, I do,” he says. “Sure. But you take the punches, and you go on. You can’t stand still, Sirena. And you can’t feel sorry for yourself, there’s just no point to it, you know? There’s a lot of good stuff out there and you have to move on, you have to find it. Life’s one big treasure hunt.”

The screen door opens and Aunt Ellie pokes her head out. “Are you guys ever coming in for dessert?”

“What are we having?” I ask.

“Lobster ice cream,” Mark says.

“Are you kidding?” I’m not crying anymore.

“Had you going.”

After dinner I go upstairs and take out paper and paints. I open the navy blue cylinder and turn it upside down. Antonio’s brush slides out of its hiding place. I’ll do a quick still life of my bed and the table next to it with the inky blue bowl of chalk-white seashells. I work quickly with the brush, each stroke clear and sure. My hand is expert with the paint. The brush glides smoothly over the paper as if it’s in tune with an internal rhythm. As if the brush is painting by itself.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, everything in my head is traveling through my hand and coming out on the paper. Twelve o’clock, one, then two. I stay up longer than I expected, working with an intensity and purpose. At close to three in the morning I stop. I drop on the bed without washing up.

The dreams start as soon as I close my eyes. There’s a dark curtain rising on another universe, some vast, unknown space like a strange, unexplored planet where no human has ever gone before. Antonio is there looking at me. His mahogany eyes are darker and more penetrating than I have ever seen them.

“Sirena,” he intones, in his deep, full voice, like an off-stage narrator. He’s watching me, seeing me paint. Everything that I painted swirls around me, all the colors of the universe bleeding onto a giant canvas. But it is Antonio’s presence, his soul that fills the stage. He’s touching my hands, holding them. His skin is warm like Pilot’s, overheated. It’s a healing warmth, an energy. A golden, beneficent heat spreads over me as he infuses me with his strength and power. I see a vision of him holding the paintbrush, his fingerprints pressing it, leaving behind his DNA, his genetic prowess. He’s transferred all that to me along with the paintbrush.

Our creative link.

It’s the same feeling I got when Aunt Ellie gave me the easel, only more so. I’m the direct recipient of Antonio’s talents, his gifts, his vision, his worldliness, his confidence.

It’s my destiny to paint, to create. The world around us is a giant canvas, and the sky is a palette smeared with swirls of every vivid color—magenta, citron, lavender, and acid green for me to play and experiment with. There’s a magnetic field around me and everything buzzes with electrified life, clarity and possibility. Every color is in its freshest, purest form. The bluest blue I have ever seen. The duskiest pinks, the most orange-red coral. Deep stormy grays and charcoal blacks. My senses have been flooded with the spectrum and the possibilities of where to put the colors. My hands are the instruments and I’m a giant puppet who will paint and keep painting until I’m too tired to hold the brush anymore. My eyelids flutter, my breathing is so intense that my heart quivers nervously in my chest like a captive butterfly. I wake up with a start—soaked with sweat. I sit up in bed and a flood of tears come.

I know what happened. I understand the dream.

Only I’m powerless to change it.

P
ilot comes to the house to tell me. Aunt Ellie couldn’t bear to. He’s wearing a pressed white shirt and dark pants. He stands as tall and straight as a sailboard mast. He doesn’t have to utter a word. My heart sinks.

Antonio.

“God, Pilot…What will we do without him?”

He shakes his head and touches my shoulders, gently pulling me toward him. He stares hard out the window, afraid to speak, I think. He takes in a deep breath and waits.

“After the service we’ll spread his ashes over the water,” he says, haltingly. “He loved that beach more than any other place in the world so he’ll always be there, a part of it from now on. We’ll see him in the ocean. We’ll feel him there with us forever. We won’t lose him…We can’t.”

His words hang in the air between us.

My heart will break at the service. I can’t face it. But; go? I have to. My mind anchors me by stubbornly fixating on the smallest abstract details—the way the water darkens as the clouds shift, the slant of the sun, the soft feel of the sand shifting under my feet. Things in nature that change, but never leave.

The clouds are low in the sky. In the distance there’s a rumbling of thunder. A storm is moving in. The end of the summer is closing in. Hurricane season is here and everything will change in the weeks to come.

For me it already has.

A big crowd gathers on the beach for the funeral. A dark gray cloud of mourners huddle together. There are so many faces I’ve never seen before. Aunt Ellie and I stand together, to the side. Antonio touched so many people in a personal way. He opened his heart to everyone he met, welcoming every new person and experience. At the very least, people knew him through his paintings, if not his reputation.

Adriana stands close to Pilot, her head held high. She’s wearing a dark, flowing dress. Sunglasses shield her eyes. No outward attempt to look glamorous, only she can’t help it, her mane of golden hair blowing in the breeze over her tanned, lean shoulders. She has the aura of a celebrity, a regal bearing. Antonio probably had lots of special friends our age. I flash back to the sting of seeing her on the beach together with Pilot, so close they were almost breathing with one breath.

A local priest, a friend of Antonio, leads the service. Edna is crouched at his side, her head down, her moist eyes fixed on the distance as if she’s wondering what she’s going to do for the rest of her life without him, her life’s companion. There’s something so stoic about her bearing that I stifle a deep cry in my throat.

I stare out at the beach while I listen, numb with stabbing sadness, imagining him sitting there looking out, the delicate paintbrush in his oversized brown hand, his easel in front of him with swirls of brilliant colors, the brown cardboard box of chocolate chip cookies for energy and sweetness. His props are displayed there now. The thermos of water and lemon. A book of poems nearby for when he stopped painting and wanted inspiration from the written world. He was always so attentive to others. He’d be narrowing his eyes, listening while he painted. Pilot laughed one day and said, “Antonio can’t concentrate without a paintbrush in his hand.”

If Antonio were here right now he’d wave aside all the praise and shrug his broad, heavy shoulders. He’d throw back his head of dark, thick hair and laugh his deep, throaty laugh because everyone was making such a ceremony of a man who died in his sleep as peacefully as he lived, during his early evening nap, Edna resting next to him, her snoring like soothing white noise.

“Beloved?” he’d scoff. “I was a man, that’s all. A painter. Sometimes good, sometimes not.” I remember him holding his hands out to the side. “When it works, it’s wonderful,” he said. “And when it doesn’t…” He gestured helplessly, not finishing the sentence. He was accepting, able to handle what came his way.

Did it take eighty years to become that way? Or was he just lucky?

The temperature is dropping, the air growing thinner and cooler. I didn’t think to bring a sweater. I’m always shivering but now, to my surprise, even though I’m wearing a sleeveless dress, I’m not cold.

Aunt Ellie and I stroll back to the house together after the service. “Such a touching remembrance,” she says, her voice trailing off.