The Lifeguard

by Mary Morris

  Then the tourists ate sandwiches while the Indian poked the alligator, who flipped over and walked back into its pit. We each gave the Indian a dollar for his work. As we peered into the Indians’ thatched huts, where I was sure they did not live, I asked my mother, “Is this what you do? Is this where you go when you used to come alone?”

  “Why, of course, dear.”

  My father overheard me, “Where d’you think we’d go?” Then he snapped at me. “Nothing ever satisfies you, does it? You never appreciate anything. Nothing we do is ever right.” Then he turned his eyes back toward the swamp.

  There wasn’t much to steal there, but I did take some postcards of an Indian wrestling an alligator to the ground, but in the postcards the alligator seemed very fierce, its mouth opened in rage.

  That night we went to the Fontainebleau, where my parents bought drinks at the bar—coconut-flavored drinks they drank out of a pineapple with a straw and a little oriental umbrella peeking from the side. My mother’s umbrella was pink and my father’s green. We got cocktails called a Shirley Temple and a Davy Crockett and our parents gave us the little umbrellas as if we were still small children. My parents drank and laughed. Then some people they’d met one day on the beach came over and sat with them.

  Their names were Herb and Iris Miller and they lived in Toledo. Herb Miller was in the shopping center business, so they had a good deal to talk about. And the Millers had adolescent children, so they talked about this as well. They talked about how difficult it was to have children, even as we sat right there, as if we were invisible and couldn’t hear a thing.

  Herb and Iris’s boys suddenly appeared. Their names were Pete and Scott. Pete was fourteen and Scott was my brother’s age, and all our parents seemed relieved that we now had friends. When the band struck up, my father asked my mother to dance beneath the bending palms, under the muted lights, and they waltzed, my mother resting her head on my father’s arm as she gazed into space, an ocean breeze blowing through their hair.

  While our parents danced and drank, I drifted off with Pete. He was in his first year of high school and his parents had been bringing them down to Florida for years. We bought Cokes at the bar and headed to the beach. I waved good-bye to Sam, and Pete gave a little salute to Scott. We walked along the shore where the moon was bright and suddenly Pete flung me to the sand and threw himself over me, just like I’d imagined from the movies. He kissed me, my head pressed against the sand, sending sand into my socks, my underwear, my shirt. He kissed me until he seemed desperate and finally I pulled away. “I’d better get back,” I said. “My parents are going to wonder where I am.”

  But when we returned, our parents were still dancing, just as they had been before, except that now my father was dancing with Iris and my mother was in Herb’s arms. My father seemed to dance with Iris exactly as he had with my mother, as if it didn’t really matter who was in his arms, and my mother danced with Herb much as she had with my father, that same distant look in her eyes. Then they switched partners again and my parents were back together once more. My mother gazed past his shoulder as if she were looking for something in the night, and my father held her high across her back just as he’d held Iris, his eyes half-closed.

  “Come on,” Pete said, “let’s go back to the beach.” I didn’t want to, but there was no reason to stay here. “They’ll never notice,” Pete said, “they won’t even know we’re gone.”

  The moon was high, but this time Sam and Scott followed us, though Pete kept shooing his brother away. “Can’t you get rid of him?” Pete said.

  “Get lost,” I said to Sam. “I want to be alone.”

  Sam stopped in his tracks, then let me go. We walked back down the beach, where once more Pete flung me down, but this time my eyes stayed open, staring at the moon, as if it were happening to someone else.

  After a while I got up and left. When I was walking down the corridor to our room, I ran into my father. My hair was disheveled, my clothes a mess. I held my shoes in my hand. “So,” he said, “did you have a good time?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I did.”

  “Well, that’s good.” He yawned. “So, see you in the morning.”

  “Dad,” I said, “I’m not tired. Would you like to take a walk?”

  “At this hour? I’m beat.” He did look tired, his eyes bloodshot. “Tomorrow, okay?” He ruffled my hair.

  When I walked into our room, Sam didn’t say a thing. He didn’t say anything when I went into the bathroom to undress either, though when I emerged, I thought he looked a little sad. Then he went into the bathroom, came out and stared at me, already in bed. I pulled up the sheet, covering my nightgown. “Who the hell brought in all that sand?” was all he said.

  On the last day of our trip my father played golf with Herb, my mother had lunch with Iris, and I went into a small shop on the Strip, where I stole again. I stole a dead baby alligator embossed in plastic. It was a tiny, pathetic little thing. I tried to get the shopkeeper to notice me.

  I made a lot of noise. I fondled paperweights of flamingos rising in flight, beach scenes, which I let down with a thud, I even dropped pencils, but the shopkeeper, who must have been deaf, hardly looked up. As I stole it, I thought about what it would be like to get caught. Even as I snuck out the door, letting it clang, its bell ringing wildly, he didn’t look up. I kept thinking someone would run after me, someone would see.

  For years I kept all the souvenirs in the scarf in my closet and I’d take them out from time to time. I even added what I picked up here and there. Nothing that ever mattered much. Things nobody would miss. I’d take them out, listening for sounds in the house that would come, sounds that would make me think I’d better hurry and put these things away.

  But it was always silent. No one rushed in. No screams. No shouts. It always seemed to be quiet when I took out my souvenirs. I’d lay them on the bed. The thoroughbred horse, the paperweight beach scene, the embossed baby alligator. There is not much I recall from that trip to Florida. It is all becoming rather a blur in my mind. Most of what I remember is what I stole.

  Emily woke at daybreak to the sound of Paul’s pickup, pulling into the driveway. She always heard him come in, no matter what time she’d gone to bed, no matter what kind of a night she’d had. Some nights she hardly slept. On those she gazed out the window. If there was a moon, she could see the mountain. The mountain was a startling blue in the moonlight and she loved to look at it when she couldn’t sleep. Magic Mountain, it was called, a name that had once made her laugh, as if she were living at the foot of a sanatorium and not a famous ski slope.

  When Emily looked at the mountain, she thought about Paul. She imagined she could see his tiny form as he checked the trails, measured the snow. He scanned for rough spots, the slick places where ice built up. Sometimes even though Emily could not see him, she could see the whorls he made as he moved up the mountain. Snow devils, they called them. Paul took care of the mountain. He waded in snow waist-deep at night. He worked twelve hours and when he came home he told her what it was like to be alone where no one was. What it was like to be alone with just the sound of the wind.

  She heard him shift down and turn off the truck. Then she listened as he clumped the snow off his boots—that thumping sound he made just before he walked in. It used to comfort her—the sound of a man coming home. If they were to see one another during the winter season, it was in this hour when her sleep ended and his began. But now it disturbed her.

  The door to their bedroom opened and a cold breeze blew in. Emily snuggled under the covers. With her eyes shut, like a blind person, she read every sound. The boots coming off. The shirt being unbuttoned and draped over the chair. Teeth being brushed; water splashed on his face. Then he sighed, always that sigh, as if something had taken his breath away. Then the covers came back, letting in a chill, as he eased his body in beside hers. She shuddered as his arms reached around her. “It’s me,” he said as if it could be someone else, “I’m home.
”

  ———

  After they made love, Emily sat at the edge of the bed in her nightshirt, shivering. Beside her, Paul slept, his breathing growing deeper. The sky was turning crimson and she had a clear view of the mountain. It was pristine. Nothing on it moved though Paul said that he saw things move. Elk and deer. A few times he came home saying he’d spotted a bear. Last week he claimed to have seen a wolf, though no wolf had been sighted in the White Mountains in decades.

  Men alone on the mountains see things from time to time, but no one considers these sightings reliable. But Paul came home and said he’d seen a wolf. His face looked odd, slightly perverse as he told her—an ecstatic look on his face. He described silvery eyes fixed upon him, the dusty gray coat. He said the wolf had stared at him, but when he clapped his hands, it had vanished into the woods. “Maybe it was a dog,” Emily said. But Paul said no dog looks like that.

  The story of the wolf had made Emily wonder. Perhaps he was just exaggerating, though it wasn’t like Paul to exaggerate. He’d always seemed direct, honest. It was one of the things she liked about him. Maybe for some reason he was trying to impress her. Perhaps he sensed she was growing bored with her life. Or he wanted her to think he was in danger when he wasn’t. But if he was making this up, what else was he inventing? Other winters he had spent only three nights a week on the mountain, but this season he was spending four, five. Was he really spending them there? She stared at the mountain, white, smooth, and rounded. She had never wondered about this before. But now she did.

  The roads were icy as Emily made her way around the hairpin turns. Her wheels slid as she struggled to stay in her lane. Just an hour before, she had eased her way out of bed, unwrapped Paul’s limbs from hers where they always fell after making love. She was amazed at how cold his touch felt after a night outdoors, his skin freezing as if he were—frozen solid. Emily didn’t do well on slippery roads.

  She preferred living here in summer when she’d sit on the porch. In winter she felt old, like a hibernating animal. But in summer she’d sit outside after work and sip Diet Cokes. She’d hike in the woods or work out with Julie. Julie was her friend who worked with her at school. Julie taught physical education, which used to be called gym, and Emily taught language arts—remedial English, composition, writing skills, grammar. She was the only language teacher for the lower grades at the Long Trail grammar school in West Sudbury.

  As she drove, Emily thought about the first time she and Paul had seen the house where they’d lived for the past five years. It had been in summer at dusk. They’d driven up and for a moment she’d thought the stars had come to earth. It was fireflies. A million fireflies that illumined the valley. Emily said to Paul, “This is where I want to live.” She’d never seen the fireflies again. Then winter settled in and the cold had stunned her. “I had no idea,” she said to Paul one morning. “How can you stand it?” He just shrugged. He loved it, he told her. It was his life.

  As Emily drove into town, people stopped to wave. Often they were strangers she hardly knew, certainly not by name. She was late for school but she waved back, smiling like a politician. On holidays baskets of food, baked goods appeared at her door. She received cards from the owner of the general store, a man she’d never met. It was after all “the season.”

  The seasons here made no sense to her. No one said summer, fall, winter, spring. They said foliage, mud, avalanche, and “the season,” the way New Yorkers said “the city.” As if everyone should know. Foliage wasn’t bad, but “the season” was when the tourists came. In summer everyone, except Emily, got depressed. They didn’t know how they’d make ends meet. Restaurants had to live on what they made during “the season.” Grocery stores, video rentals barely got by. It was snow they wanted and lots of it. The locals almost all worked in the ski business and its support industries, servicing the tourists. Snow was essential to their lives and to them Paul was a kind of local hero, the man who made the snow.

  As she took a turn, smiling at this thought, her wheels spun. Her tires lost their traction as she went into a spin. Turn into the direction of your skid, Paul had told her, but it always seemed wrong. Her impulse was to pull away from the direction she was slipping. She turned the wheel and somehow the car straightened itself out. She found herself on the wrong side of the road, facing the mountain. A shopkeeper rushed to make certain she was all right. A hand went up to stop traffic. Other faces peered at her, nodding, wanting to be sure that she could drive on to her job. She gave them all a thumb’s up and they smiled. After all, she was a kind of celebrity too, important in her own way. She was the snowmaker’s wife.

  Julie was settled into the teachers’ lounge, a cup of coffee in her hand, when Emily walked in. Her legs folded under her in her black leotard and skirt, Julie sat nestled like a cat. Sweat was on her brow. She had just taught a gymnastics class. “You’re late,” she said, tossing back her head of ash blond hair. “Anything wrong?”

  “The roads are slick,” Emily said. “God, I hate this place in winter.”

  “Season’s what makes this place,” Julie said.

  Emily just shook her head. She watched Julie pour cream and sugar into her coffee, stirring it with a stick. “How can you drink that stuff?” Emily said. She wondered how Julie kept her figure. She ate French fries and hamburgers without flinching. She never bothered with frozen yogurt, but made her way straight to the Ben & Jerry’s chocolate chunks. She did nothing to contain herself. Yet she was willowy.

  “It’s the way I like it,” Julie said. “Besides, I burn it all up.” Julie was hot to the touch. Emily had noticed that once when they’d hugged on a cold night. Her skin had burned as if she had a fever. “Are you all right?” Julie asked. “You don’t look well.”

  “I just went into a skid.” Emily looked at Julie as she put her books away, her coat in her locker, and settled down with her coffee. She had a few minutes before her first class. “It’s a difficult winter. Paul’s on the mountain so much.”

  Julie shrugged. “At least he’s somewhere.” Julie swore that if she got jilted by one more ski instructor (a Frenchman named René had brought her to Magic in the first place), she’d move to the Caribbean. Where you’ll get jilted by scuba instructors, Emily had said.

  “It just seems harder this year.”

  Julie leaned towards her and Emily could see her sharp features. A crease ran across her forehead that Emily had not noticed before. She wondered how Julie survived up here alone. “It’s like this every winter, Emily, don’t you remember? It’s life on the mountain.”

  “No,” Emily said, trying to recall because this year seemed different. “I don’t.”

  As she drove home after work, Emily knew that she was afraid of the mountain. She couldn’t explain it. It had come upon her gradually, but she was afraid. It was a sprawling, misshapen mountain, like the body of a person collapsed by the side of the road. From their house on days when she didn’t teach she watched the skiers. Then the mountain appeared to her like a toy, a board game, the way the skiers zipped down, the way they fell, picked themselves up, and went on.

  Once Emily had gotten lost. She had been skiing when a blizzard began and she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. The slope became impassable. She began to make her way down on the side paths, but soon she found herself on trails that were unfamiliar, service roads Paul used. It was dark and still snowing when she’d reached base lodge and Paul had rushed to meet her. “I can’t feel anything below my ankles,” she’d said. Inside he’d packed her feet in ice and the pain was unreal, as if needles were being driven into her flesh. In her mind freezing would always be preferable to thawing.

  Every year there were accidents, though fortunately not many. Paul took the accidents personally, as if they were his fault. If the slopes were properly covered, if every jagged rock and root were coated in white snow, nothing should happen. Still no one could be blamed when a girl ran into a tree, cracking her spine in two. Or the older man
who sailed over the mogul, his skull shattering against a rock off the trail. But mostly there were the ordinary injuries—legs twisted in odd ways, arms dangling limp at someone’s side. Avalanches were few and no one had been killed in one in years, but there were warnings every spring at the time when the mountain could break up.

  Emily’s fear had grown slowly, starting as a healthy respect, but it was more than that now. When she skied, it was on the slopes far below her ability. Paul teased her about this. “I take care of the mountain,” he told her. “I know where you can go.” But still Emily was afraid.

  She knew the rumors, the legends. One was about the Indian woman from the tribe that had once inhabited the White Mountains. She had been shunned by her lover when he had taken another woman as his wife who brought riches and position to his father’s family. It was merely a marriage of convenience and though he continued to see the woman he loved, she could not stand the betrayal.

  She lured him into a cave and killed him with poison she had brought for him to drink. Then she mauled his body with a bear claw to make it look as if a wild thing had done this. But she could not live with what she had done so she disappeared onto the mountain. A blizzard came and no one ever saw her again, though men lost are said to have been led to safety by a beckoning figure. Others about to freeze to death but later rescued claim that the wind around them seemed to be crying. Still others have been led to their doom. The missing of the mountain, they were called, such as those two boys who thought they saw someone waving and wandered off, never to be found, not even during the spring melt. Or that couple on their honeymoon who were buried alive, their bodies never recovered.