Lifeguard

by Deborah Blumenthal

  Aunt Ellie has the final say in convincing them to let me finish the summer with her. She trusts me, in spite of everything. On top of that, it’s hard to argue for going back to swampy Houston in August when the temperatures hit a hundred, and a machete couldn’t cut through the humidity.

  So the beach wins out. And so do I.

  My dad rarely shows emotion, but I swear that tears well up in his eyes when he kisses me good-bye at the airport. “Allergies,” he comes up with, out of nowhere. “Take care of yourself,” he says. “No stupid stuff, okay?”

  Stupid stuff? Does that mean going swimming when there are riptides, following lifeguards to deserted beaches, or all of the above? Not sure, exactly, but to make it easier for my dad, I don’t ask for clarification.

  “Promise.” He needs to hear that.

  “Be careful,” is all my mom says. The umbrella advice. “Take care of yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry, please.”

  My mom holds out her hands. “Me not worry? It’s in the genes,” she says, studying me as if it’s for the last time.

  Aunt Ellie and I wait at the gate until they both disappear down the jetway to the plane.

  “That was easy,” she says, as we head to the car.

  When I hear her voice on the phone it throws me. “Marissa?”

  She starts to laugh. “Did you forget already?”

  “Omigod, how did you get to use the phone?” In a rush, I realize how much I’ve missed her.

  “I made up a story, at least I think it’s a story. I told them my best friend nearly drowned.”

  There’s silence on the line.

  “Oh God, you did,” she says, her voice dropping. “Are you okay now? You’re scaring me to death, Sirena.”

  “I’m okay, I am,” I say, my voice cracking. “But…there’s so much to tell you. “It was just…so scary. I got pulled out by a riptide…” I leave it at that.

  “I knew something was wrong. I knew it. It was the first time that you didn’t write. And you sounded so down.” She pauses. “What happened?

  “The water was rough and it pulled me out.”

  “Why did you go in? I mean, don’t they keep everybody out when they know it’s dangerous?”

  “I thought I’d just cool off…It was hot.”

  “He was the one who saved you?”

  “He heard me calling for help.”

  “You were testing him,” she says.

  “What?”

  “You were making him prove himself to you.”

  “It was the riptide, Marissa…”

  “I know you, Sirena.”

  “I didn’t mean for anything to happen,” I whisper. “I had no idea…”

  “It’s over,” she says. “Thank God you’re safe.”

  Aunt Ellie has a library with a wall of science books. I get on a ladder and reach to the top for a book about sea life. I turn to the index: Stingrays.

  “Stingrays are most often found in shallow coastal waters of temperate seas,” it says. No mention of Rhode Island. It goes on to talk about the types of stingrays and how they’re shy and nonaggressive, unless they’re threatened—in my case, pounced on. Reflexively, they lash out with their serrated tails, causing a jagged laceration from the teeth of the spine. To make it worse, the underside of the tail injects a venom that immediately causes excruciating pain and can be fatal to humans.

  Now I understand.

  The unimaginable pain, the paralysis. That was the last thing I remember as I sank to the bottom.

  “Unlike most other fish toxins,” the book goes on, “the venom of stingrays can be broken down with high heat.” The wound should be immersed in very hot, but not scalding water for up to ninety minutes, it says. Any bits of the bony spine should be removed.

  I think of Pilot and how his hands sent deep, penetrating heat surging through me. Not only did he pull me out of the water; he detoxed me. I close the book and put it back up on the shelf. The pieces of the mystery are coming together, only one question remains. There aren’t any stingrays in Rhode Island.

  So how did that one get there?

  I take a bath before I go to bed, drying myself and then smoothing lavender scented cream over my legs. The marks where they took out the stitches are barely visible. The pink, jagged scar is so faint it’s hard to see anymore. I put more cream on the hurt leg, caressing it with my hand because it ties me to Pilot. I need to see him again, to learn more about him.

  But before I do, I want to go to the beach and find Antonio. I’m convinced that he played a role in saving me, but I can’t help wondering why he didn’t come see me in the hospital. He’s old and it’s probably hard for him to get around, but I thought he’d visit. I thought he’d be there. I haven’t seen him in almost two weeks.

  Even though I’m still a little stiff, I put on my helmet and take the bike. It’s more of an effort than I expected, but I keep going, determined to build myself up again. When I manage to get to the spot where Antonio usually sits, I see his chair is there as usual and he’s in it. The umbrella is opened up next to him, but under it is someone else—someone I’m stunned to recognize. The hair first. Then the body. And when she turns toward me, her face.

  The blonde.

  I know it’s stupid, but the first thing I feel is jealousy. I’ve been replaced. I get ready to start pedaling away. He has other company, he doesn’t need me around. I’m crazy, I know, but I can’t help it. He’s eighty years old. Still, I wonder if she’s drawn to Antonio the way I am. Before I can turn, Antonio senses me there and waves.

  “Sirena,” he calls. “Come, sit with us.”

  I stare back and stand still, caught. Not knowing what else to do, I drop my bike on its side and take off my helmet.

  I try to hide that I’m disappointed to share him. I can’t be as open as I usually am. I sit down next to Edna and stroke her back, casually ignoring the girl.

  “You look wonderful,” Antonio says. “The color, it’s back in your cheeks.”

  Did he see me when it wasn’t? I can’t ask if he visited me in the hospital, or if he didn’t, why not, so I just smile and shrug. “I’m so much better. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

  “Bravo,” he says. He gestures for me to sit on the blanket next to him. “Do you know Adriana?”

  I shake my head.

  “You’ve never met?” Why is he so surprised?

  “Pilot told me about you,” she says. “I’m glad you’re better.”

  I narrow my eyes. Does she really mean it? “Thanks,” I say softly.

  I look over at Antonio and see something I’ve never seen before. A purple bruise in the crease of his arm.

  “What happened to you?” He’s never been sick, he said. There’s never anything wrong with him, so what is that?

  “Ah, that, it’s nothing.” He waves his hand in the air, dismissively.

  “That’s where he gave blood,” Adriana says, like a little child who can’t keep a secret. “Why don’t you tell her?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “He gave his blood to you,” Adriana says. “So did Pilot. More than he should have. I don’t think it was safe. Why didn’t you tell her?”

  “Is that true?”

  Antonio nods. “You lost so much, querida. We wanted to help.” He shakes his head. “We did what we could.”

  “That was so good of you, so kind. How come no one told me?” The tears start to blur my sight.

  “Don’t cry,” Antonio insists. “Please, Sirena, you’ll make me sad. It’s over now. Be happy. Now we are like one.” He reaches for my hand and holds it firmly in his. His hand is twice the size of mine. “And the gift that I left for you in the hospital—did you get it?”

  “Gift? No. I…I didn’t even know you were there.”

  “Go back and ask about it at the desk,” he says. “I left it with the nurse. They’re still holding it for you, I’m sure.”

  I know I shouldn’t ask, only I can’t h
elp it. “What is it?”

  “Something special…You will see.”

  I don’t look forward to going back there. I’ve alienated half the staff, I think, by going AWOL. Aunt Ellie got calls from the hospital looking for me. They were annoyed that I left without checking with the doctors and getting discharge papers. But Aunt Ellie and Mark smoothed it over.

  Still, how could I resist picking up a gift from Antonio?

  “Sirena,” one of the nurses on the floor calls out to me. I wait for her to lecture me, but instead she watches me walk and shakes her head. “You’re our best advertising.”

  “Well…” I leave it at that.

  “Antonio said he dropped off a package for me…before I left, I guess.”

  “Let me look.” She pokes through the drawers beneath her desk and finally comes up with a box of candy. “This?”

  Candy? I feel a sinking disappointment. “I don’t know,” I say, taking the box from her. I turn it over and finally make out someone else’s name scrawled on the bottom. “No, that’s not it…”

  “Oh,” she says, still searching.

  Just when I think she’s going to say she doesn’t have anything, she slides a narrow cylinder covered in navy blue silk out of a cabinet. There’s a dark blue ribbon around it that holds a note card. What could possibly fit inside, a pair of chopsticks? Another figa?

  I take it from her and go outside into the sunlight. I don’t want anyone else to be around when I open it. Whatever it is, I know it will be special. And different. I sit on a bench and two girls walk by. As soon as they pass, I open the small envelope, working hard not to tear it.

  “To Sirena, fine artist and my treasured friend: My vision and a part of my soul—now in your hands.”

  I open the tube and turn it upside down. A narrow, red silk bag slides out. I open the flap and take out a paintbrush. Sable bristles and an intricately carved ivory handle, slightly yellowed with age. I imagine wearing it on a silk cord around my neck, like a piece of jewelry.

  Only this isn’t a piece of jewelry, even though it could be. I’ve seen this brush in Antonio’s hand so often that I think of it as a part of him. I close my hand over it and remember how he used it. Now it’s mine and I can’t imagine living up to it. I slide it back into its red silk bag and put it into the tube, slipping it into an inside pocket of my bag.

  I have to go thank him—now—but before I go to see Antonio, I want to sit by myself and think about his gift and what it means. How could he have given me something like this? It’s such a special brush, a part of him, like a writer’s favorite pen, or a magical talisman that an artist keeps nearby for inspiration. This isn’t just a gift. He’s sharing a part of himself with me.

  I turn my bike around and take a path parallel to the water. The sky is blindingly blue and there’s a light breeze. I stare down at my legs pumping effortlessly now as if nothing had ever happened and the accident was a dark dream. I look around at cars going by and people walking. None of them would believe what has happened to me.

  I’m not sure of how to get to the beach. I wasn’t paying much attention to the road when he drove. I didn’t know where we were going and it didn’t matter anyway. He could have headed to California and I would have said it was fine.

  I remember a right turn, I think, but which one? Does Antonio know about the beach? He might even go there sometimes to paint. I think of his picture of the sky. That beach, that expanse of sand and water with no one on it, might have been his inspiration.

  There are several streets that lead to the water. Which did we take? I wish I didn’t get so lost in my thoughts and in my daydreams. I should learn to pay attention, to watch out. I make the first turn I see, but it ends at a private road ending at a gray shingled house on the water. There’s a sign on the closed gate. “No trespassing.”

  I head back to the bike path and keep going until I come to another road. Only this one stops before the water. Wrong again. I stop, wipe the sweat off my foreheads and try to get my bearings.

  After another quarter mile or so and there’s another turn-off. That must be it. There are no cars along the road. I ride along the sandy path feeling the wind picking up, mounds of blown sand beneath the tires loosening their grip. I cross a bumpy patch and then up ahead, and the ocean appears. I drop my bike in the sand when I get to a fence. “Parking with beach stickers only,” a small, white-weathered sign says. I make my way along the narrow path with tall, celery-colored sea grass on either side of me, swaying in the wind.

  A strange sensation takes over me as I walk closer and closer.

  I’m entering Pilot’s private world.

  Trespassing.

  thirty-four

  I walk to the end of the path and there it is before me: the magical stretch of pristine beach.

  How do I know?

  Not the way the dunes slope gently to the sea. Not the house with the porthole windows, like a stationary ocean liner blown off course. Or the home nearby with the balcony and the pale green rocking chairs, so close to the water that it could all be swallowed by a giant wave. And not the abandoned blue pail and shovel, still poking out of the sand almost a week later, like markers of a toddler’s turf.

  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 le
ft 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?”