The Lifeguard (7 page)

I follow the arrow down the corridor, past a nurse pushing a cart holding orange plastic bottles of pills and white pleated cups. Just before I get to the front desk, I stop short.

That’s when I see his back.

My heart senses him before my brain does. Broad shoulders, a narrow waist. White letters: EMS on the back of a navy T-shirt. Low-slung jeans.

What is he doing here?

He’s talking to one of the doctors, and I watch as he lifts a hand to the back of his neck. He’s considering something—I can read his body language now. He shifts from one foot to the other, his slow dance of impatience.

I slip back into the hallway out of view like I’m in the frame of a movie spinning in reverse. I don’t want look like I’m lurking so I duck down and tighten my shoelace. Casually, I glance around the corner and watch him heading down the corridor. A young nurse turns to him and smiles. He stops to talk. Jealousy stabs me.

When he turns away, I jump up and follow his long-distance shadow. I step out of his line of vision in case he turns as he waits for the elevator. I’m good at this—he doesn’t know I’m there. Once he’s inside and the doors close, I slip through the exit door, skipping down the three flights of stairs. My heart is punching at my chest. Will he be gone? Does it matter? What the hell am I doing? All I know is, I can’t help it.

He’s going through the outside doors as I reach the lobby. I follow him out and duck behind a post. He climbs onto a black motorcycle and revs up the engine, reaching into his back pocket for sunglasses and then the helmet behind him on the seat. The idea of sitting behind him on his Harley with my arms around him completely blows me away. He glances behind, starts to back up, but then stops when a girl calls out:

“PILOT.”

She’s about my age, or a little older. Blond. Denim cut-offs. A white tank top. A tan so perfect she might have been dipped. She makes a megaphone with her hands: “Wait up.”

He turns toward her and I reach for my cell.

Click. I have his picture.
Have I stolen your soul?
My hand tightens around the phone.

I stand back hiding as he waves to her. She runs to him, her ash-blond ponytail swishing back and forth over her narrow hips. She kisses his cheek and hops on the back of his bike, closing her arms around his waist. She’s at ease wrapping herself around him like a snake. They exchange a few words before he revs up the engine and they ride off together. I lurk in the shadow of the doorway longer than I have to. A scared little kitten, afraid to come into view.

H
ow was the hospital?”

I look up abruptly from
Teen Vogue
. “Oh…okay.”

“What did you do?”

“They showed me the pediatrics floor and I went to the library and picked out books to read.”

Aunt Ellie waits, expecting more. She gives up. “So when do you go back?”

“Tomorrow, I guess, in the morning.”

“I have an appointment, otherwise I’d drop you, but you can take one of the bikes in the garage. It’s a quick ride.”

I like the idea of getting around by myself. I nod and go back to the models in fall clothes. The übercool with überlooks. Hundreds of dollars per hour just to show their faces. No decisions to make. They were set for life.

And me? One more year of high school, then college, and I’m not sure how far away to go. I can’t help thinking now of camp visiting day when my parents came up—together. What would happen now? Would it feel awkward and depressing for them to visit me at college together when they weren’t a couple anymore?

I read a book about a girl with divorced parents who grew up in the fifties. It said she came from “a broken home.”

Now that’s me.

Broken home, broken life, broken spirit. Like a Looney Tunes Ophelia, my head starts to sing,

Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

couldn’t put Sirena together again.

Aunt Ellie glances over at me. I pretend not to see. She shakes her head, finishes drying the dishes, wipes her hands on the towel and goes into her office. I go upstairs carrying milk and two doughnuts, the unhappy girl’s default snack. I take out my hot pink stationery box so I can write to Marissa. I bought it two years ago just before camp. I remember standing in Target trying to decide which I liked better, the paper with the red hearts or the one with the borders of curly pink ribbons, as if things like that truly mattered in the world.

Now for the first time in six years, only Marissa is away for the summer. “I’m in a totally great bunk,” she said in her first letter. “And guess what? I already have a part in the camp play.”

YES, whoopee!

She’s obviously fine without me. She’s a CIT and it’s her last year unless she goes back as a counselor. We thought we’d be together, that we’d end our six-year tradition at the banquet at the end of August with plastic wine glasses of “champagne.” I had a fake ID and we even talked about sneaking into town for a six-pack—something real to toast with.

I make a lame effort to sound enthusiastic:

Hey BF, camp sounds so cool—and wow, the freaky mayor’s wife part in Bye Bye Birdie!!—OMG, congrats!

Things here are close to comatose. Let’s see. No socials, but there’s a fairly hot—no, strike that—incendiary lifeguard at the town beach. Only don’t get excited, he’s already taken, and anyway, even if he wasn’t, he’s so high on himself and uninterested in me—long story; I’ll save it. Otherwise…I started volunteering at the local hospital.

I put the pen down. Should I tell her about today? As soon as I start writing, everything I wanted to forget pours out.

I was in the hospital—my first day, Marissa—and, while I was there, just on my way downstairs to get a soda, a man holding a small boy in his arms rushed through the doors. His clothes were soaked with blood—it looked like he was shot. Then I saw the boy’s head. He couldn’t have been more than six or seven. Blond curls hung off the side of his face—encrusted with blood. I felt like I couldn’t breathe when I saw him.

Between deep breaths the father, who was so upset he could barely get the words out, explained that his son, Cody, was riding his mountain bike without a helmet. When he tried to race a friend he lost control, fell off his bike, and was thrown down a hill. He landed hard on some rocks. His parents were wild when they brought him in. His father kept repeating, “It was his birthday present, it was his birthday present,” as if how could fate be so cruel as to turn on an innocent kid enjoying his birthday present? As if everything else in the world made sense, except that.

The head wound was so terrible, and he was unconscious. The doctors weren’t sure how bad it was. They had to do tests, they said. They rushed the boy onto a gurney and wheeled him into the emergency room. I don’t know what happened after that. I just stood there frozen. Later on I was riding up in the elevator with two doctors. One leaned over to the other. “How’s the kid doing?” he said. The other doctor just shrugged. “We don’t know yet.”

I freaked, Marissa. Only, I don’t know why. Was it that it was a little kid in critical condition? Blood everywhere? His parents’ faces? Or the kid being wheeled off to a room where they pulled the curtains closed fast, as if from then on, everything was so bad that they had to hide it from you?

There are so many things in the world that scare me. Are you like that too? I feel like such a baby. I’m almost seventeen and I should be able to handle things like this. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling apart. I’m all alone here without my parents and you, and the people you love are the glue that keep you together.

Sorry to be such a downer telling you all this—especially when everything for you is so perfect—but if I can’t tell
you
…You know? My aunt wants me to volunteer for the summer, but if this is what I’m going to be seeing, I don’t know if I can handle it.

A little voice in my head tells me to toughen up, only I haven’t figured out how to do that.

Other than needing head work…The beach here is the most perfect place to spend the summer. I’m going to start going on long swims like my aunt. I want to get into better shape so I can try out for the swim team in the fall. In the meantime, write and tell me more about camp. I want some of the normalcy in your life to rub off on me and get me through the next two months, so send good karma!

Love you and miss you terribly,

Sirena

I put a stamp on the envelope and sit with it in my hand. I think about Cody’s accident and I’m crazed by the realization that in just a few seconds, everything about your whole life can change because you did something stupid. Cody was this happy, normal kid one minute, and then, because of a split second of bad luck when his parents weren’t watching, everything changed and might never go back.

I get up finally and mail the letter. Aunt Ellie’s garage is crowded with tools, picture frames, odd planks of wood, garbage cans, a dead washing machine, and old bikes. I find a mountain bike that’s in better shape than the others and I take it out for a ride. After I’m nearly down the street, it hits me—
I can’t believe I did that
—I’m not wearing a helmet. I go back and grab one.

I ride on the bike path along the beach. The color of the blue-gray ocean changes from every angle, at every hour of the day. It would be almost impossible to capture it on a canvas. I wish I had my camera. It would help to work from pictures so the light couldn’t trick me. The sky looks like rain now and the water is as silvery as an icy pond in winter. I stop and lean the bike under a tree, taking off my helmet and wiping my forehead with my hand. I take a long drink of water and sit down. My shirt sticks to me.

I look over at the beach and see the painter Aunt Ellie told me about. That has to be him. He’s sitting in front of an easel with a palette next to him. A big umbrella in a dark green-and-orange African print shades him from the sun. A black dog, big as a bear, with a thick, glistening coat naps contentedly next to him.

I wish I had my sketchbook.

He’s wearing a loose Hawaiian shirt in yellow and orange. There’s no missing him. He’s this…presence.

His skin is very brown, as if he spent all of his life in the sun. He seems to sense I’m there because he turns his head and smiles. I smile back. Why don’t I feel embarrassed? I leave my bike and cross over to him. “Antonio?”

He nods.

“I’m Sirena, Aunt…uh, you probably know…Ellie’s niece.”

“You’re an artist, too.”

“Well, I…”

“Sit down.” He gestures to the dog. “Meet Edna,” he says, leaning down to pat her head. He reaches into a brown paper bag and takes out a box of chocolate chip cookies. Edna opens her eyes, as if on cue. “Not for you, Edna,” he says. “They can’t eat chocolate,” he says. “Sad, eh?” He holds the bag out to me.

I nod and take a cookie. The chips are slightly melted. I smile at him.

“Mmmm.”

Antonio looks the way I imagined him. Thick, dark hair mixed with gray and eyes the color of cocoa. He’s not sad like some older people, with a lost look in their eyes. He’s vibrant and so handsome that he looks like an actor. There’s a contradiction about him, though. His eyes look like they’ve seen and lived everything, but his private face seems used to keeping a world of things inside.

I can’t help being drawn to him like a wise teacher. I sit with him for a while just watching him paint, feeling no need to talk or fill the silence. His brush looks old, like an antique. The handle is ivory and it’s delicately carved. He takes a long time between brush strokes, as if each one represents a separate decision.

“You’ve been a painter for a long time.”

“Since I was a little boy—six years old.”

He says it like it was an eternity ago. “Did you teach yourself?”

He nods. “And you?”

“I can’t remember not drawing. But I started taking art classes after school, during fifth grade.”

“It’s wonderful, no, to draw, to paint?

“Yes…but…it’s not always easy, at least for me. Sometimes everything just comes out awful, like total garbage.” I sink my toes into the sand. “It’s so hard, you know?”

Antonio keeps painting. Did he pay attention to what I said?

“The struggle,” he says, finally. “That’s so big a part of it. You work, you work harder. It takes everything inside of you…all your energy…your soul.” He makes a fist and pushes it in toward his stomach. “You have to struggle to make art. It consumes you. But art chooses
us
, and in the end, the pain is worth it, no? There are the small… glorious…triumphant moments.” He holds up a fist.

His face softens as though he’s remembering some-thing personal and special to him. Then he looks in my eyes.

“To make art is to be
alive
, Sirena.” He narrows his eyes. “It’s like to love.”

I pick up a pink shell in the sand and study its smooth, fluted surface, closing my hand around it. “Well, I’m not… there yet.”