The Lifeguard (3 page)

But now Aunt Ellie wants to go walking on the beach. She’s sun-phobic, so she only goes at sunrise or sunset.

“So wear sunblock.”

“That doesn’t
stop
the damage,” she says.
It’s obvious she’s been over this before
. “It just slows it down. Anyway, I like the beach after everyone has gone home.” She slips on prehistoric Keds and reaches for the straw hat hanging inside the door. “Want to come?”

Seven o’clock—he’d be off duty. I put on running shoes and go with her. The only people we pass on the beach are a woman asleep on a checkerboard towel and a couple under an apple-green umbrella with a sleeping baby book-ended between them. Will walks with us, every now and then stopping to sniff things on the beach. Aunt Ellie does that too, in her own way. Every so often she kneels down and unearths something like an archaeologist—a chunk of frosted sea glass, a glistening rock or an odd shell—then she holds it up to study it, deciding whether or not it has “the provenance”—she says with a small smile—to make it worth keeping.

Her prize shell, which she keeps in a black lacquer box on the coffee table, is called a spider scorpion shell. It’s a twisted shell with a bumpy surface, mostly white with brown mottling. It’s bigger than my entire open hand. But what makes it unusual isn’t its large size. It has eight horny brown legs that extend outward, from top to bottom like twisted tentacles or an old person’s crippled fingers. It looks like half sea shell, half sea monster.

“Kids find it scary,” Aunt Ellie said when she saw me examining it.

“It reminds me of an expression we learned in French:
“Jolie laide.”

She nodded. “That’s right. Pretty-ugly—something that’s attractive despite its ugliness.”

Something in the water catches Will’s eye, or maybe his nose. He runs in searching for it, but when the waves come back in he darts out, as if he’s afraid of their power.

“Do you swim, Aunt Ellie?

“Almost every morning, if the weather’s good.”

“I want to start swimming in the ocean, too.”

I have to get over my nervousness about going out past the waves. I’m a decent swimmer now, it’ll just take practice.

As we walk along I turn to Aunt Ellie. I don’t know that much about her. What I remember most are the postcards she’d send us with foreign stamps from places around the world she visited, like Kathmandu, Jaipur, and Samos. I’d tack them to my bulletin board and then search the globe, pretending it was a board game and I had to figure out where in the world she was off to.

Now that we’re out together, it’s easier to ask her about herself.

“How come you don’t work in an office like my mom?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head.

“Not the office type,” she says. “I used to work as a nature teacher and talk to kids about different forms of life. We’d go on field trips to the park and I’d teach them about edible plants. I’d show them how to recognize scallions in the wild, rosemary, mint, all kinds of things,” she says. “Then we’d make salad with the plants they learned about.”

“I bet you could survive in the wilderness.”

“I did, at least for a few days.”

She took an Outward Bound trip, she says, and was part of a group that learned rock climbing and survival skills. Then everyone went off on their own to camp out in remote areas to test themselves.

I think about scorpions and snakes. “Weren’t you scared?”

“At first and that’s the point,” she says. “But you learn to rely on yourself and it gives you a chance to discover your hidden strengths. If you’re never challenged, you don’t find out what you’re capable of.”

“I’d die of fear first.”

“We surprise ourselves,” she says.

As we walk, the giant apricot sun sinks lower in the dusty blue sky, like the world is a painting in motion. “I write books full-time at home now,” she says. “I don’t have to teach anymore because some of the science books did well.”

“Just science books?”

“Science and lately science-fiction.”

That reminds me of the ghost in the house. It didn’t scare me, I was just curious. “So the…ghost…the one who whispers. Is that science or science fiction?”

A faint smile crosses her face. “Ah, good question.”

But before she can answer, we run into Will, who’s spotted something dead and rotting on the beach. He drops on top of it, rolling his back over it like he’s doing an upside-down dance. It dawns on me that he’ll bring the smell up to my room where he now sleeps.

“EEWW, Will, what are you
doing
?” He finally gets back on his feet and I throw water on his back to rinse off the dead, fishy smell.

Aunt Ellie shrugs. “It’s the way he picks up the scent of his prey to hide his own scent,” she says, “so if he goes hunting, they won’t recognize him as an outsider…That’s one theory, anyway. Another says rolling in vile stuff lets his pack know what he’s found.”

“He’s the scent messenger.”

“Sort of.”

Since they learn about the world with their noses, that seems logical. I’m about to keep walking when Aunt Ellie suddenly crouches down and examines what Will rolled over. There’s a concerned look on her face.

“What is it?”

“Hmmm,” she says, almost to herself. “Strange.” She lifts up a piece of what looks like a spear.

“What do you mean?”

She holds it out to show me. I reach for it, but she pulls it back. “It’s sharp,” she says. “Careful.”

“What is it?” Very lightly I touch the ragged edge.

“It looks like a piece of the tail of a stingray, but you don’t find them in these waters.”

“So how did it get here?”

She shakes her head. “No idea.”

We walk along and when I glance down at the sand by my feet I see something odd. It looks like a trail of droplets of blood. I lift my finger and that’s when I see a razor-fine cut.
When did that happen? I didn’t feel anything.
I put it in my mouth and suck on it, pressing hard, until finally, the bleeding stops.

As we walk, the sun edges closer to the water until it’s about to be swallowed up by the sea. A small boy kneels by the shore. He’s playing with an inflatable snake. He hides it under the water, then jerks it out and shakes it in the face of his sister.

“Stop it,” she shrieks. “Stop it.”

He laughs at her, enjoying the game. “Baby,” he says, taunting her. “Baby.”

“Has there ever been a shark attack here?”

“A long time ago.”

“What happened?”

“It was near sunset and the swimmer was close to shore.” She scratches the back of her head. “We usually hear when there’s a sighting in the area, but that time it happened out of the blue.”

We walk along silently. Aunt Ellie looks like she’s thinking about putting a scene like that into one of her books.

“Maybe if somebody had been watching closer, it could have been avoided.”

“The lifeguards watch out all the time.”

I work at keeping a straight face.

“And Antonio is usually out there. If anybody would have spotted it, it would have been him. He has this sixth sense.”

“Antonio?”

“I forgot,” Aunt Ellie says. “You haven’t met him. He’s a former fisherman. He was born in Brazil near the Amazon jungle. His father was a doctor, but he’s lived here for most of his life. Ever since he retired and sold his boat, he spends most of the day on the beach, painting. A gallery in town sells some of his work.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

“I’m sure he’d like to meet you. He’s eighty and still very handsome,” she says. “And he has a weakness for pretty blue-eyed blondes.”

T
he beach is off-limits.

I drift around town and down double lattes at a coffee bar until I’m bug-eyed. I look at houses and gardens trying to imagine living in my dream home with my dream boyfriend. I stare into cars to see what people leave behind inviting break-ins; buy camouflage printed flip-flops as if there’s a reason to, and then beaded bracelets made by eight-year-olds who sit on the street with a pathetic, crayoned For Sale sign; and end up on a swing in the playground for so long that the local mothers must be convinced I’m a victim of arrested development.

If Aunt Ellie thinks it’s strange that I haven’t gone near the water, she doesn’t say. But one week goes by and another begins and hel-
lo
, why am I punishing myself?

Girl with closed eyes who almost landed on a sea urchin sentences herself to beach ban and total boredom.

Head check. He was the one who wrenched me off the ground. Was I supposed to know what he was doing? I mean a
sea urchin
? That has to be rare. How do I know he didn’t plant it there, like boys in school who think it’s amusing to wait until girls go to the bathroom and then leave dead bugs on their seats to gross them out. Maybe he enjoys freaking girls out, or has some sick need to play savior, like firemen who start fires.

Whatever. It was time to move on. By now he had to have forgotten the whole thing—and me. Girls probably did stupid things around him all the time to turn his head.

So I go.

Blanket, sketchbook, pencils, sunblock, and lip gloss, all in a backpack slung over one shoulder. Overcast sky, no blinding brightness. Easier to work. There are fewer people than usual on the beach and I stake my ground.

Then I glance up.

The lifeguard chair is empty, so maybe it’s his day off. Whoever has taken his place must be off somewhere. I’m relieved, I can’t help it. I settle in the swimming area, far to the side of his chair, spreading out Aunt Ellie’s pink Balinese blanket. I prop my sketchbook against my bent legs and start sketching. The whole beach is my figure modeling class and I’m obsessed with drawing all the different poses. Bent legs, half-buried feet. Arms shielding eyes. I fill page after page. What I want is to draw figures that breathe—that look alive, like they could get up off the page and move—not flat, lifeless caricatures. The quickest way to judge how good an artist is is to look at his figures.

Only what I hate is when you work harder and harder on something, and the more you try, the worse it comes out. I see now that what I’ve done is total and complete junk. One by one I rip out the pages and crumple them up, hiding the evidence in my bag.

I need a break. Sweat is prickling my underarms so I get up and head for the water. Then I turn back and cover my arms and legs with sunblock and dot my forehead. When I’m tan my eyes look bluer, my hair lighter.

Thunderstorms are predicted later in the day so the water’s rougher than usual. The waves crash against me, the trespasser, trying to shove me out of the water, but I stand my ground easing in. I go in waist-high at first, then deeper, just past where the waves break. I bob up and down, like an inflatable ball and I relax. You can do it, I tell myself.

I start to make my way back to shore, but my arms ache. I lie back letting the water carry me like a baby in a giant swing.

Flashback to summers with my parents on the beach, one on either side of me, holding my hands. They’d pull me up when the waves came, airlifting me from harm. I miss that, I miss them. Will I ever get over that? Now all I have is a voice in my head that warns me to go back. No mother, only Mother Nature, and what does she care?

A whistle blows. It blows again harder and longer. Someone is farther out than I am. The warning is for him. Hands motion for him to come back in. Instinctively I swim toward shore too, taking deep breaths and swimming parallel to the surf until I’m in shallow water. I run back to the blanket. As I lean over to pick up my towel I look up.

My eyes are drawn to the lifeguard station like the tides to the pull of the moon.

And there he is.

Male centerfold.

Perfect as a retouched photo, only there’s nothing about him that needs to be airbrushed or altered in any way. Nothing to erase, hide, or even improve on, no matter how gifted the artist. He’s flawless.

He rests back easily against the chair, one leg bent for support. Within arm’s reach is a surf board, a rescue buoy, and a first-aid kit.

Ready to save a life.

What would it feel like to be pulled in by him? To be tethered to him by his rescue buoy, or next to him on the surf board? S-O-S, I want to shout. A smile rises in my throat. Good thing he can’t hear my head.

I watch him watch the beach through binoculars; a baseball cap shades his face. A black leather cuff is wrapped around his wrist. He’s ripped, yet as lean as a long-distance runner. I want to draw him, I want to get him down on paper to study, to know. I glance around, surprised that any eyes are closed. Are they all blind?

He lowers the binoculars for a few seconds to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand and I study him face forward, struck again with how fiercely beautiful he is. The straight, narrow nose, the finely angled bone structure. An artist’s model of perfect proportions. He looks wary, self-absorbed. I try to imagine how his face would change if he laughed, or at least smiled. I don’t imagine that comes easy to him.

Do you see me studying you?

As if in answer, he lifts the binoculars and peers through them in my direction. There’s no one else in his line of sight.