The Lifeguard (23 page)

I nod, afraid to speak.

“It’s so sad for Pilot and Adriana, too. He was their only family.”

I stop and turn to her. “
Their
only family?”

“Antonio took care of both of them. Pilot’s father died when he was small. I don’t know what happened to his mother. No one talks about her.

“And Adriana? She’s always with them.” I can’t keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Pilot must be so in love with her.”

“It’s not like that,” Aunt Ellie says.

“What do you mean?”

“Antonio spent a long time with her mother. I’m kind of fuzzy on all this—I never felt it was my business to ask—but I think her mother was Antonio’s girlfriend after his wife died. Adriana was almost like a daughter.”

“I always see her with Pilot. It’s obvious that he’s so close to her.”

“I don’t know how it is between them,” Aunt Ellie says. “I guess you have to ask him.”

Is it possible that I read it all wrong? I think about all my jealous feelings toward her. How I resent her. Could it be that she’s just…what…maybe like a sister to him? I have to ask him. I have to find out for sure. Only not yet. It’s the wrong time.

But just the fact that I might have been wrong…changes everything.

S
omewhere outside of my web of sleep I sense a faint rumbling. I open my eyes and turn toward the clock. Red digital numbers glow in the blackness: two AM. The sounds grow loud, coming closer, barreling through the wide silence of the night like an oncoming train. The roaring builds:

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes—then mysteriously stops.

Dead silence.

I sit up in bed, then walk toward the window. A single street lamp casts a gilded shadow on the dark street and there in the center of the pool of light is a motorcycle. The driver sits, legs spread wide, straddling it. Blond hair reaching his shoulders.

Pilot.

He sits completely still, like a messenger from some other galaxy carrying a secret I’m destined to intuit.

No helmet, so unlike him. I run downstairs, but just before I get there, he guns the engine and quickly takes off as if he abruptly changed his mind.

“Pilot! Pilot!” I call into the blackness, as my heart pounds faster and harder. There’s no way he could hear me, but I call him again and again, overcome with desperation. Then a window creaks opens in the house.

“Sirena, are you okay?”

Damn. Aunt Ellie. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I call back. She accepts that. I can’t imagine why.

I creep to the edge of the lawn, out of the view from her window, and wait, hugging my knees like a six-year-old. I don’t know what’s happening or what it means, but my body has registered high alert and my heart won’t stop slamming in my chest.

For no reason, I whisper his name, so softly it’s almost like praying.

“Pilot, Pilot.”

In the distance, the sound of his bike gets lower and lower until there’s nothing at all but a vast, encompassing silence. Still disoriented from being wrenched awake, I lean back in the grass and doze off, losing track of time. Finally, I get to my feet and head back to the house. I ease open the screen door to try to muffle its rusty whine. As it’s about to slam closed behind me, the rumbling begins to build again. I catch my breath and stand completely still. Very gently I ease the door back open and step outside, catching it before it slams behind me. Aunt Ellie has gone back to sleep, I’m sure.

I walk out to the road and wait in the darkness like a solitary hitchhiker.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

Four minutes.

The roar grows in intensity. I step back as the blinding beam of the headlight flashes on and off me as it follows the curves of the road and finally hits me directly. I raise my hand to shield my eyes as Pilot slows the bike and stops inches in front of me. The engine goes silent.

His hair is wild and windblown, his eyes red and rimmed with sadness. The stoic, repressed tower of strength has been replaced with a grief-stricken Pilot who looks as though life has turned on him.

There are no words to say. Nothing spoken that will change things, but his need for closeness is almost palpable.

If only, if only. I don’t let myself think what might be, I only think of what is right now. I climb mutely behind him on the bike as if it’s my rightful place and cling to him, my legs pressed against his, two bodies joined as one. I think of being behind him on the surfboard. This time it’s less clear who’s saving whom.

He steers the bike out to the road again and picks up speed, the power of flying down an empty road like a hallucinogenic drug. I rub my cheek back and forth against the softness of his shirt, over the hard muscles of his back and he leans into me.

I have no idea where we’re going—somewhere, anywhere, nowhere—it doesn’t matter.

He slows finally at a beach and we park. The water is strangely still. Pilot puts an arm around my waist and pulls me close to him. We walk one mile, then another as a stream of tears runs down his perfect face.

We stop at the water’s edge and he stares out, lost in thought. I want to say something, anything, to try to make him feel better. “You lost the closest person in the world…He was a miraculous man.”

Pilot looks at me directly and nods his head. He drops to the sand, pulling me down next to him. “He was exactly that,” he says. “Do you know what a shaman is?”

“Antonio told me, he told me about his father.”

“Well
he
was one too,” Pilot says, “even though he would never really admit it.”

We sit in silence. Pilot raises his head. It’s almost as though he’s listening to Antonio in his head.

“What?” I ask for no reason. “What are you thinking?”

“About how he saved people,” he says.

“Who did he save?”

He shrugs, running a hand through his hair.

“Tell me, please.”

“People here who were sick…and once…”

“What?”

He looks at me directly. “A girl on the beach,” he says, almost like a confession. “She was drowning. He swam out and saved her.”

“And?” I don’t know why, but I know there’s more. I look at his face and see something about it that pains him. “Where were you?”

He shakes his head back and forth slowly.

“It’s something I never told anyone,” he says. “It happened a long time ago.You asked me a while ago if I had ever
not
saved someone…” He bites the corner of his lip. “I didn’t tell you the truth…There was this girl…three years ago.” He stops again, reliving it. “She was…obsessed with me in some kind of sick way.”

“What happened?”

“She was crazy…I don’t know. She tried to get me to like her, to pay attention to her…”

I hold my breath, a knot in my gut.

“She swam out too far one day and pretended she was drowning. I pulled her out even though I knew it was a ploy.”

“So?”

“I didn’t say anything, but then just a few days later she did it a second time. I told her I knew she was faking it. I said if it happened again, I would ignore her. I told her she was putting other people’s lives at risk.”

I wait for him to go on.

“Except she did it one last time. Only this time I think she really was trying to kill herself. She did it just as I was walking off the beach at the end of my shift.”

He stands there, staring out at the water, as if he’s frozen.

“What happened, Pilot?”

“I heard her scream, Sirena. I was back at the parking lot. Too far to hear her, but I did. I heard her and I
ignored
it. I thought she was faking, I didn’t think she needed help. I didn’t want to play that game. Only I was wrong.”

“Did she drown?”

“She would have, but Tonio saved her. He was leaving the beach too and he heard her. He heard the voice in his head and he ran back and swam out to her. She was far out by then, way beyond where the waves broke. She never would have made it back, and I can’t ever forget what I did and what could have happened. If it wasn’t for Tonio…”

I reach out and take his hand. I can’t stand the suffering in his face.

“I didn’t do my job, Sirena…and then when you almost drowned—”

“You came as soon as you heard me…”

“But I couldn’t get there in time and you were in such terrible shape—I began to relive something I had tried to put out of my mind, something that haunted me. I thought it was some kind of divine punishment. And now there’s no Tonio anymore,” Pilot says, “no one to intervene. No one with that higher consciousness, or whatever you want to call it.”

“You can’t think that way. You have to make peace with yourself and go on.”

“I know,” Pilot says.

“And he left us so much.”

He rises to his feet and pulls me up with him. “More than you know,” he whispers.

I
wait for one week, then a second. He has to grieve, to go over everything in his mind. I need to give him time, but I also need to see him. And there’s still one thing that troubles me and I can’t keep it inside me any longer.

We agree to meet at the beach one morning before he’s on duty. The sky is overcast, and not many people are out.

Pilot can’t seem to stand still. He’s busy doing some kind of inventory of things around him, then going through the first-aid kit, checking supplies and finally waxing the surfboard with a strange surge of energy. I expect him to start vacuuming the sand next.

What I do know is that he’ll never talk about our midnight ride and our time on the beach. That was some surreal experience for both of us. It brought us closer, but how close?

Right now he’s very much back into form. The lifeguard, the healer, the guardian of other people’s lives and fates.

“Can you stop…for just a minute?”

Annoyance creeps up my spine. I need to get his attention, for him to just focus on
me
, but maybe that’s not fair. Now, with the tears behind him, Pilot’s way of dealing with the loss is to keep in motion, as though constant activity will push the thoughts of Antonio away and ease the pain. Finally he stops and turns to me. He drops down next to me on the blanket. After gazing out at the ocean briefly, he turns to me and narrows his eyes.

“What…What is it?”

Now that I have his attention, I’m afraid to speak. I don’t want it to come out wrong. I don’t want to sound like a stupid, jealous, insecure baby, but I have to ask him. I have to know that the night out on the bike meant something real. I have to know that he wanted to be with
me
, not just have a warm body behind him when maybe Adriana wasn’t there. I have to know that when he was at his lowest point he wanted
me
to be the one who tried to draw the sadness out of his heart with total surrender.

“It’s about Adriana,” I say, finally. I try to sneak in a breath without letting him know that what I’m about to ask him makes me need more oxygen. Maybe I’m prying into his private world, but I don’t care anymore.

“Do you love her?”

He looks at me curiously. “Of course, why? Why are you asking me that?”

I swallow, involuntarily. His words sting. I feel like I’ve been slapped. “I see you with her so much…I had to know…I had to know that she really
is
your girlfriend.”

“My
girlfriend?
”

“Jesus, Pilot, why are you making this even harder for me?”

“I’ve known Adriana since I was ten,” he says, a flash of impatience in his voice. “She’s lived with us for half my life.”

“But you love her, you just said it.”

“When I first met her, she was like a girlfriend,” he says, looking off. “Like a first love kind of thing.” Then he shakes his head. “But after a year, maybe less, her mother was sick and she came to live with us.” He runs a hand through his hair. “She became like a sister,” he says. “It’s been that way ever since.”

I look back at him and can’t help the smile that slowly spreads over my face.

“You were jealous?” he says, as if it is the most absurd thought. Then his face softens, enjoying this.

“Well…”

He tilts back his head and laughs.

Dear Marissa:

There are moments when I think I’ve totally lost it. There are things in front of me that I just don’t understand for what they are. Pilot’s “girlfriend,” it turns out, is not his girlfriend. Adriana has lived with him and Antonio since he was ten. Yes, he loves her, but more like a sister. And Antonio, who left my day world and slipped into my dream world, was more like a grandfather to her.

As for me and Pilot… oh, there’s so much to say and I have you see you in person to tell you.

But what I do see now is that Antonio left this world, but not without leaving me more than heartfelt memories. I paint with his brush now and ever since, something magical has happened on the canvas. I can capture changing light that I couldn’t see before—the iridescent colors of flower petals in the sunlight, the luminous sheen of the ocean as it darkens at the end of the day. It just comes to me as if a window has opened up and for the first time what comes in are a radiant light and fresh, clean new air.

Is that something one person can leave to another? It doesn’t seem possible. I’d be the first to deny it, but what other way is there to explain it? I’m dizzy with inspiration and I can’t stop painting. Is that passion or madness? Is there a difference?

I know you think I’m crazy. And as usual, you’re right.

Can’t wait to see you—and paint you!

My love,

Sirena

Sirena, my God, it seems like Antonio left you the ultimate gift, a paintbrush with a life and powers of its own! He must have loved you like one of his own children.

I laughed out loud when you told me about Adriana. How could you not tell they weren’t romantically involved? You always did have a blind side. Anyway, I couldn’t bear the thought of Pilot with another girl. You two seem destined to be together. I have to confess that I have a crush on him too. I love his looks and his mystery. He seems to exist on some other frequency. How could I not feel that way, after all you’ve told me about him? And that picture you sent. It seems alive!

Camp life is so completely dull and dismal compared to your world. We had the camp play. I got a great round of applause, blah, blah, blah. Geoff and I are totally over. He’s intensely weird and isn’t ready for a relationship, he says. I’m almost glad because I wouldn’t want to be crazed about leaving him at the end of the summer if we had something serious going on. I am now so glad this will be my last summer stuck away in camp. I’m ready to work, I’m ready to do something else. How long can you spend rowing, making clay pots and having relay races? It’s time for color wars to end and for real life to start, don’t you think?

See you in less than a week!

Love,

Marissa