Lifeguard

by Deborah Blumenthal

  “He’s inhumanely cold and unfeeling. Tear up the drawing, or better yet, burn it. The stupid blonde can have him.” I stashed Antonio’s painting at the bottom of my suitcase, facedown.

  Hey Marissa,

  I now know it’s pointless to even think about liking anyone, ever. If you do, you doom yourself to misery and complete despair. Although if you happen to be a goddess with waist-length hair and a body like a fitness instructor, maybe that’s not the case. Then life offers you everything you could dream of and more. The most frustrating thing is, I can’t figure out what I did to deserve getting snubbed, but clearly there was something that turned me into a bottom feeder in his eyes. I want to ask him what. I do. I really want to know; only I’d never humiliate myself that way and give him the satisfaction.

  You don’t know how much I wish I was away in the mountains with you. Life makes sense there. It’s normal and predictable and even boring is better than this. There’s a regular schedule, things to do and yes, I’d welcome the stupid pranks we used to play on everyone. But most of all, I’d have friends in the bunk—especially you!

  Write soon—no, sooner.

  Love,

  Sirena

  twenty-four

  God, Sirena,

  I totally cannot figure out what happened. I wish I had been with you, so I could have seen his face and the look in his eyes. Does he have a gigantic attitude now because you nearly drowned? Does he blame you? Is he annoyed that he had to go out after you? That’s so ridiculous. Really, that’s what I altogether hate about boys. They’re never direct. They never tell you what’s on their minds. You have to pry it out of them or spend huge amounts of time trying to figure out their stupid Rubik’s cube brains, and really in the end, they seem to actually think and feel much less than we do, so overall you totally wasted all that time and effort.

  Things here are interesting. So on-again-off-again Geoff definitely seems to like me now. I like him back, except for the teeth thing, which is totally obsessive and obnoxious, I know, but I can’t help it. (At least teeth are something you can fix, right?) Can’t believe the summer is half over. Glad your swimming is getting better and you’re spending time doing art. You will definitely win a scholarship to wherever you want to go. Write immediately and try to keep it together!

  Love,

  Marissa

  I have to get out of the house. It’s been over a week and while my mind isn’t normal, my temperature has been for two days straight. I need to go back to the hospital— or at least someplace else—because I’m going insane from boredom.

  “Give it another day or so,” Aunt Ellie says. “You won’t be helping anybody there if you go back before you’re completely over it.”

  So I take my sketchbook and walk to the beach. I’ll hide myself in some quiet part far from where he is so he’ll never know I’m there. I’m glad to be outside anyway, even though the water is rougher than usual because of the thunderstorm.

  I cross the street to the beach and stop. Something is weird. It’s quiet and empty. It’s a perfect day, so why isn’t anyone on blankets and chairs, the way they usually are? This makes no sense. Where is everyone?

  That’s when I spot a crowd down at the edge of the water. An alarm sounds in my head and my heart goes into panic mode. I turn to the lifeguard chair.

  It’s empty.

  I drop my things and run down to the water, easing my way through the crowd. A man is stretched out on the beach. Pilot’s crouched over him, his yellow hair curtaining the man’s face as Pilot compresses his chest and then does mouth-to-mouth breathing.

  “What happened?” I whisper to a girl standing next to me.

  She shrugs. “Nobody knows if the guy just swam out too far or had like a heart attack or something.”

  From somewhere behind me, a tall, balding man with a gut elbows his way through the crowd, head high.

  “I’m a doctor,” he announces, striding over to Pilot, waving him away. Pilot holds up a hand, but the doctor wants to take over. “Did anyone call an ambulance?”

  Pilot stops and turns to him. “They’re on their way.” He stands up and steps back, letting the doctor take over. It looks like he’s doing the same things Pilot did, leaning over him, breathing into his mouth, then pushing down on his chest with one hand over the other.

  The doctor stops and looks up at Pilot. He asks for something that sounds like a defib.

  “We don’t have one,” Pilot says.

  The doctor turns back to the man. “C’mon,” he says, as if he’s impatient with him. “Breathe.” He tries again and again, but the man lies there motionless, his skin waxy and pale, one arm outstretched in a helpless gesture. I stare at him, waiting for him to stir. The doctor reaches up and places his fingers on the side of the man’s neck. He shakes his head and gets to his feet. “He’s gone.”

  Pilot looks back at him silently. He squats down. “Let me try for a few more minutes.”

  The doctor turns to him in disbelief. “He’s gone,” he says again. He turns to the crowd holding up his hands.

  “Back off, please,” he says. “Show some respect.” He turns and steps a few feet away.

  Pilot ignores him, beginning the artificial respiration again, trying over and over. The doctor shakes his head and then turns and walks away.

  But Pilot goes on, consumed, as if he refuses to accept death. I’m filled with pity for him, at the same time struck by his desperate, repeated attempts and his insistence to keep fighting and fighting, not giving up even when there’s obviously no hope at all. Almost methodically he keeps trying to get air into the dead man’s lungs, then he compresses his chest. “Breathe,” I hear him whisper imploringly. “Breathe.”

  The man doesn’t budge.

  How long is he going to keep this up?

  Finally he crouches closer and presses his forehead against the man’s chest. I watch in fascination as he places his hands around the man’s head as though he’s trying to bring some life force from his own body into the man’s skull. I’m hypnotized by his movements, the intensity in his face, the energy I can almost feel that he sends out from his body. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I’ve never seen anyone like him before. I don’t understand it all, but something about it makes me afraid. I forget where I am as I watch this healing rite, or whatever it is, without taking my eyes off Pilot.

  I’m unable to turn away from him. I watch in wonder, filled with the oddest sensation that I’m witnessing something surreal, outside of myself that I can’t take in. What I’m seeing is unknowable, my mind says, which makes no sense.

  Most of the crowd has turned away and gone back to their chairs, their books, their music, the drama over. But I stay locked in place.

  What is he doing? Praying? Chanting? His eyes are closed. He’s breathing hard. I hear a humming sound like an energy force from deep inside him. His face is flushed, his forehead and upper lip glistening with sweat. He’s talking to the man or communicating with him in some unspoken way, but his lips don’t move. Next he’s blowing at the man’s head. He’s so intense, so animated, I expect smoke and mystical visions to fill the air around him as if this is an ancient healing rite, something Antonio would know from his father, the rainforest shaman, the healer who Antonio swears could cure cancer and save people close to death. My eyes are fixed on him and out of nowhere what takes shape before me is otherworldly. A white, opaque mist or cloud of some sort rises up between the man and Pilot. I rub my eyes to make sure it’s not something clouding my own vision, or a puff of cloud from the moist ocean air. This isn’t the Amazon. He’s not a rainforest healer.

  Nothing in front of my eyes makes sense.

  He works on the man more and more. How long before he lets go, before he gives up? I keep watching, powerless to turn away, but for his sake, I don’t want to be seeing his desperate efforts to defy death. I force myself to look away. I focus on a broken pink sea shell at my feet, a smooth piece of blue sea glass in the sand gl
istening in the sun.

  From the corner of my eye there’s a flash of movement.

  Was I imagining it?

  I look up again. The man hasn’t moved. He’s lying there, dead.

  I imagined it.

  Only a moment later his chest seems to rise. A leg jerks. Seconds later his head turns to the side and he begins to cough. Pilot slides a hand behind the man’s neck and lifts his head as water pours from his mouth.

  “Jesus, did you see that?” somebody behind me yells. “HE’S ALIVE!”

  My mouth opens and closes without a sound. Whatever just happened here in broad daylight eclipsed normal, everyday life.

  The loud wailing of a siren drowns out all other sound as an ambulance screeches up. The back doors are flung open hard. Two EMS techs run toward us with a stretcher.

  “He’s breathing now,” Pilot says, immediately composed, wrapped in a veil of calm. He’s back from wherever he was. He’s the lifeguard again, just a person who works at the beach pulling people out of deep water.

  Word spreads across the beach. “What’s going on?” I hear a voice shout. I turn and see the doctor running back to Pilot. “What’s going on?” he repeats.

  “He’s breathing,” Pilot says, lifting his chin. The faintest glimmer of triumph crosses his face.

  The doctor studies him and shakes his head, the color leaching out of his skin. “What in the world did you do, man?”

  twenty-five

  I haven’t seen Antonio since I was sick. He’s my anchor. I’ve missed talking to him. I let Aunt Ellie know where I’m going and I bike to his favorite patch of beach. When I spot him he turns and waves. I think we share a sacred connection.

  “Sirena,” he calls out in his deep, musical voice. “Are you better?”

  I go over and sit in the sand by his feet. “Yes.” How did he know?

  Edna catches my eye and I smile at her. That’s all the encouragement she needs. She rolls onto her back.

  Antonio peers into my eyes, making his own diagnosis.

  “Did Aunt Ellie tell you I was sick?”

  He shakes his head. “Pilot.”

  “How did he know?”

  Antonio shrugs. “I suppose from people in the hospital?”

  I look at him skeptically, but he turns and lifts his brush, concentrating on making short, fine strokes on the paper, filling in the white space.

  Maybe Pilot was modeling for him again and while he was posing Antonio asked about me. I don’t ask too much. I don’t want to seem like I’m obsessed with him.

  “So how did you get sick, Sirena?”

  “How?” I shrug. “I just did…I woke up that way. I caught a virus from someone in the hospital, I guess. I really don’t know.”

  “Sometimes we make ourselves sick,” Antonio says. “It’s our body’s way of expressing what’s inside our heads.”

  He doesn’t look at me when he says this. Does he know what happened? How could he? Did Pilot tell him how he completely blew me off?

  Antonio keeps painting.

  My first day of kindergarten, I can’t forget it. I was so nervous that after breakfast I threw up. It happened the next day too. Then I think of the headaches.

  I start telling Antonio about them and my voice won’t stop.

  “There’s something else…” I hesitate and look over at him.

  “Go on,” he says, gently.

  I rub the heel of my hand back and forth along the sand, smoothing it, like the runway for a toy plane. I look up and begin to tell him all the things I never told anyone else before, not even Marissa.

  “One day last year I was coming home from school. I was driving and I was alone in the car.”

  He listens closely, I can tell, because of how he holds his head and the way his eyes look out ahead of him, so serious.

  “I was supposed to go bowling, only our regular place was closed for a private party, so the team agreed to meet someplace else, about five miles away in another part of the city, a place I usually don’t go to.” I stop and stare out at the waves smashing against the shore and at how behind them, if you look out farther, you see new ones rising up to take their place.

  “Please,” Antonio says, inviting me to continue.

  “I was on the freeway…There wasn’t much to look at, just signs, cars, and then off to the side of a road…a small motel.”

  He shifts in his chair, turning to me. He places his paintbrush down in the narrow slot on the easel.

  “I don’t know why, but right away my eye picked out a truck in the parking lot of the motel. It was instantaneous, a kind of déjà vu. Without thinking, I got off at the next exit and drove back to the parking lot. I knew then why the car looked so familiar. Even though it was a pickup—the same black Ford pickup that everyone in the universe drives—it had one thing that made it different. Someone had dented the door and scraped off the paint, and it hadn’t been fixed yet.”

  “Querida,” Antonio whispers.

  “So…it was…my father’s truck.”

  I swallow hard and stare back at the waves. The sun is slowly sinking lower in the sky, getting ready to hide for the night. I take in a breath. I need more air. “I sat in the parking lot and an uneasy feeling spread through me.”

  Antonio looks at me with such compassion that my eyes fill with tears. He sits silently, watching me. “I don’t know how long I waited in the parking lot, but when it got close to supper time, I started to pull out.”

  He shakes his head slightly.

  “As I was leaving, I looked in my rearview mirror. He was coming out of one of the rooms. He was with a woman. His arm was around her waist. She was young, so much younger than him.”

  “Sirena,” he whispers, like an apology.

  “Maybe we do get sick for a reason.”

  We sit for a long time, neither of us speaking. Antonio paints, and I watch him. The air gets cooler as the sun starts to disappear. It’s almost dark when he finally puts down his paint brush.

  “Are you okay to get home by yourself?”

  I nod. “Thanks for listening, Antonio.”

  “I’m your friend, Sirena,” he says. He reaches out and covers my hand in his.

  I get to my feet finally and start to walk back to my bike. I feel stripped of body armor. It’s the same hurt as the day I saw him. I want to ask Antonio if there’s a special plant or medicine in the Amazon jungle, some pill or magic drink that I can swallow. Something that’s strong enough to make the pain go away forever, along with the memory. Before I get on the bike I stop and walk back to him. “Did you hear about the man who almost drowned today?”

  He nods.

  “I was there…Pilot saved his life. I never saw anything like that, Antonio. There was a doctor there who tried to save him, but he gave up. If Pilot didn’t keep working on him he would have died. I think he did die, but…”

  Antonio’s face breaks into a smile. “He’s good, he has learned.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is the keeper of the flame. The human spirit.”

  I pretend to understand.

  Aunt Ellie looks worried when I walk into the house. “I thought you’d be back earlier.”

  “When I talk to Antonio, I lose track of time.”

  “Well at least call, please.”

  She’s a science writer, so I ask her something that’s been bothering me.

  “Aunt Ellie…is Antonio psychic or something?”

  She tilts her head to the side. “How do you mean?”

  “Sometimes I get the feeling he knows things before they happen…or…I don’t know…he sees things.”

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “What I do know is that he sees more than most of us. And understands more. He’s got this…”

  She searches for the right word. “Depth.”

  “He said Pilot’s a ‘keeper of the flame.’ What did he mean?”

  “He’s a lifeguard,” she says. “Literally.”

  “What
do you mean?”

  “He saves people…except for…”

  “For what?”

  “Nothing,” Aunt Ellie says impatiently, getting up and going to the kitchen. “That was a long time ago.”

  twenty-six

  Aunt Ellie dangles a crystal charm on a thin gold chain in front of me. It looks like a fist clenched for victory.

  “Antonio dropped this off for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s called a figa,” she says. “It’s a good luck charm from Brazil that dates back to African myths from the seventeenth century. It attracts positive energy, they say, and protects you from evil. But it has to be a gift to work, Antonio said.”

  I fasten the tiny clasp behind my neck and look in the mirror. “So now nothing bad can happen to me—ever.”

  She purses her lips. “I’m not sure it’s that good.”

  I don’t usually go out alone at night. But the air is cooler now and I need to get out and run. The screen door bangs shut behind me and I sprint toward the beach. The ocean glows with an eerie yellow haze from the full moon.

  I keep going for a few minutes, slow down, then sprint again. Finally I kneel at the edge of the water to wet my face and arms and cool off. Above me is an endless expanse of night sky. I listen to my own breathing and the lapping of the waves—the only sounds in the uncut stillness that surrounds me like a blanket of darkness.

  I get to my feet and tighten my shoelaces. I stretch then take off again, building to a steady pace. My breathing is easier, I’m in better shape. I keep going, happy this outdoor world is mine alone.

  Then out of nowhere, it isn’t.

  I’m overcome with the odd sensation that someone else is out there, nearby. I look around me. Nothing stirs. No one makes a sound. I slow my pace.

  “Hello?”

  No answer and I feel silly. It could be a fluttering bird or small animal, something that belongs here more than I do. The tiny flash of a firefly dances by. Another sparkle to my left. Another past my ear. I swipe it away.