Lifeguards
By Jon Serri
This day feels like the day before yesterday and very nearly resembles the Sunday of Cindy’s ballet recital when you spent five hours in the YMCA auditorium sitting on an unforgiving chair that caused a pain to rise up from your spine and settle in the right side of your jaw. No air conditioning. But here today at the Riverside Pool Club you watch the blond-haired one, the one you have determined must dye her hair, sit in the tall white lifeguard chair and tap away at her phone. When the screams get too loud or Charlie Stevens starts his run that ends with his “Big Splash” cannonball, she blows her whistle, stands upright, and looks down on the children with a slight bit of disdain that makes her somehow more alluring. You remove your headphones in the faint hope that she might reprimand Charlie, perhaps even gesture at the sign that in bright red type reads: “NO RUNNING, NO GLASS, NO SMOKING, and NO LOUD MUSIC.” But instead she picks up her phone and resumes typing plans for a keg in the woods and who exactly might have a wheelbarrow or shopping cart to transport said keg.
You look around and spot Cindy. Atop the jungle gym she resembles a weathervane and boy that does feel high from your angle. You were never the type at her age or any age to climb beyond the reach of a parent or sibling; monkey bars caused a special kind of anxiety that you would feel in your stomach. But in her recklessness you always see caution, so you simply offer a wave and she responds swaying her arms like a castaway on a deserted island.
Sandy, or at least you think that’s her name, bends down to test the chlorine levels in the kiddie pool, the same pool where Billy Jenkins’ son William Jr. dropped his pants and and peed last month, not actually getting any in the pool but just on the surrounding walkway. Dr. Henry Richards, the retired community college professor and pool club’s Old Testament authority, likes to say Billy resembled “a sort of grotesque cherubic statue.” Sandy (or is it Sally) holds the barometer up to the sun and you catch a glimpse of a neon green bathing suit under her red cut-off tee-shirt. Very 1980s. Reminds you of that model from the old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the magazine you used to sneak into the bathroom while you showered, a clandestine escape from homework checks, frozen vegetable medley, and goodnight kisses. You wave at Sandy (you’re sure that’s her name, in your mind you nicknamed her Springsteen to remember). You don’t want it to seem like you’re staring and a wave, as a gesture, conveys normalcy and nonchalance. She waves back and smiles.
You have a face that people recognize. They’ve seen you before but they can’t place where. Maybe they know you from high school or perhaps you went to sleepaway camp together and snuck cigarettes behind Cabin C. But that’s not right. They sneak glances or sometimes stare a little longer and then some recess of their brains offers up the answer: movies. Some remember you as sensitive jock Chad in the Babysitters Club 2K. Roger Ebert fans might recall the late critic referring to you as an “up and coming young talent in the vein of River Phoenix” after your turn as Lieutenant Jimmy Ruffins, a Gulf War soldier who recites Whitman and practices meditation while the other members of his platoon shotgun beers and pass around Playboys in Oliver Stone’s The Gulf Between Us. You try to downplay the pride you feel in knowing that you’ve entertained others, that they know you. That part of them admires you for doing something they can’t or never will do. And when they ask what you’re doing today or why they haven’t seen you in anything in so long, you smile and either point to Cindy or reference some project that you’re working on. But scripts stopped coming in long before Cindy and that project is a stack of papers in a folder that you lost in the move to the new apartment.
The perverse jingle of the ice cream truck approaches and with it a horde of children, including Cindy, flock to their parents, hold out their hands, and plead for money.
“Daddy, Dada, ice cream, ice cream!”
Others say she looks like her mother but you see yourself in her long legs and moodiness. She manipulates you like only a child can and you wonder what this skill will look like when she’s older. You hand her two singles and she clutches them in her hand before racing off to the truck. You reach into the cooler, letting your hand linger in the icy water filled with organic juice boxes, miniature bottles of water, and bags of sliced apples and carrots, before locating a bottle of Miller High Life. Some days you mix lemonade and vodka and sip the concoction from a thermos.
“How old is Cindy now?” asks the woman from the co-op admissions board with the flat-top haircut.
“Four,” you say, but in that moment you actually wonder if she might be five.
“I noticed you didn’t sign her up for a pool membership.”
You feel the need, though you don’t know why, to put down your beer and stand up before you explain that it makes more sense to pay on a per entry basis rather than sign up for the whole summer membership. You reference the inevitable weekend trips to the Shore, a vacation in Tuscany with the in-laws in August, and even add in a comment about unpredictable weather patterns as you point towards a dark cloud looming over the Hudson River.
“Got it,” she says and walks away.
You survey the grounds and catch Cindy reclining on the swing with a popsicle in hand. She extends her legs and tilts her head back as she soars into the sky before swinging back in the opposite direction. In your mind you connect this motion to the Newton’s cradle in your therapist’s office; however, you don’t in fact know that object is even called a Newton’s cradle. As you watch her you hear a voice not unlike your wife’s or maybe your mother’s caution, “Be careful she can choke doing that.” But you push this voice away into the recesses of admonishments and warnings that continue to accumulate at an exhausting rate. Your beer is nearly empty and what is left, the ass you called it in college, is warm.
Jimmy walks by swinging his whistle around his hand and says, “I got you today Mr. C.” Though you’ve told him to call you by your first name you respect his deference. When he brings you two joints later you might remind him again or instead just embrace the roles that time assigns everyone.
You reach into the cooler and grab another beer, probably the last one you should have this afternoon, and you wonder how there are only two bottles left.
“Got one for me?” Maeve asks.
You raise your eyebrows as if you’re appalled at this request and she laughs at the game of it. “Moving on to day drinking are we?” you say.
“Well nobody ever drowns around here. What else can a girl do?”
“Morbid.”
“That’s what keeps them coming back. Maybe I’ll see you later. I need an audience for that monologue.” And she turns around with this and you think even shakes her ass a little. Cotton shorts ride high up revealing tan legs, a little thick but in no way unpleasant. She gives a look back and you raise your bottle in cheers.
“Easy there, cowboy. No making it with the help.” It’s Mikey Mathews from 7C. He places a beer in your free hand and you gulp down what’s left of the previous one.
“What’s shakin’, chief?” he asks.
“Oh, you know,” you say
“I hear you. My knee, killing me. Been swelling up so it looks like I’m holding a couple of gorilla testicles in there. Doctor’s gonna drain it later today. I’ll bring you back some if you like.”
You smile and put your hands up in disgust and look over to Cindy climbing up the slide. Been doing that for as long as you can remember, just around two she almost toppled over but you caught her in one arm. Bigger now, and maybe it’s best to let them fall. The new padding they installed is forgiving.
“Barbecue contest tomorrow. You entering?”
“Maybe next year,” you respond knowing you’ll say the same thing on the same day next year when Mikey asks you the same question just as he’s done the previous two years.
“I’ve got a piece of meat so beautiful I’m thinking about sleeping with it instead of grilling it.”
The image causes you to laugh and Mikey slaps you on the back before he walks to his cabana. The one with the chili pepper lights and inflatable Corona bottle hanging above the doorway.
You reach for your phone and take a picture of Cindy in the distance. She swings from the jungle gym, hanging upside down, legs wrapped around the bar, fingertips inches from the ground. A smile spread across her face that encompasses something more than joy; it’s the smile of a life whose only heartbreak is when Mister Softee runs out of vanilla ice-cream. A text pops up on your screen: “Home in 5. Should I come down or workout? Looks like rain.”
You don’t respond.
You lie down and stare up at the cloud-covered sun, place a towel that smells of suntan lotion and sweat over your eyes, and think sleep would be pleasant but irresponsible so instead you focus on your breathing. A helicopter flies overhead, a woodpecker beats away at a tree, a day laborer mows someone’s lawn on the other side of the hedge line. Laughter and voices mingle around and above you and with each breath these sounds feel further away. The air feels cooler as a cumulonimbus cloudapproaches from the southwest and settles over the pool. You breathe in through your nose and let the air fill your lungs and linger for a moment before you exhale. Burning charcoal soaked in lighter fluid. It becomes a game to see how long you can hold your breath before it escapes. The type of game you played in your pool as a child and the type of game the sign in the changing room now warns kids against. The sound of your name called in the distance seems strange and unfamiliar; perhaps it’s just a dream and this world has fallen away. A giant sinkhole opened up right in the center of the pool and sucked everyone in eternally lost to coworkers, loved ones, and friends.
Cindy jumps on you and you awaken though you’re uncertain that you actually slept. Her cold, wet body sinks into the crevice between your arm and torso. Without opening your eyes you reach for a towel and cover her.
“So cold,” she says, so you hold her closer and listen to her teeth chatter.
Raindrops start to fall, slowly at first, but then you hear the sound of chairs closing and people hustling for the cover of their cabanas as the rain grows steady. Heavy drops sting your skin.
“Daddy, it’s raining.”
“I know,” you say, “I know. Everything is okay. It’ll be over soon.”
In room 314 of Johnson Tower, Jim Belushi stares at you with a dumbfounded expression on his face and “College” printed on his sweater. The same black and white image hung on the wall of your freshman-year dorm.
Maeve sits down next to you and hands you a shot of Fireball. “To the summer,” she says.
“To the summer,” you reply.
The cold brown liquid reminds you of the cough medicine you have to bribe Cindy with ice cream to take. Maeve puts her hair in a ponytail before pouring two more shots.
“My boyfriend,” she starts, picking up her glass, “graduated in May.”
You hear laughter from outside or maybe the room above you. Maeve takes her shot and you follow her lead.
“The thing about him,” she says before pausing to uncross her legs, “he like thinks we’re going to get married someday. Can you imagine? The first time we kissed was in the bathroom at O’Sheas and we’re going to get married.”
You nod and notice she’s not wearing a bra.
“What’s your wife like?”
You’re asked this question often but never know how to respond. To describe her feels like you’re trying to put together a puzzle without all the pieces.
“She’s beautiful,” you offer, “and smart.”
“I’m sure,” Maeve says. “My parents divorced before I can even remember. It wasn’t so bad. Double the holidays. Double the birthday presents. It was all one big cliché. My dad married this chick Becky a couple of years ago. She was the receptionist or the copy girl or maybe the VP—it doesn’t really matter right? She’s young. She always offers to take me for a Brazilian. Lucky guy. My mom basically raised me and my brother and resents us for it everyday. I don’t even think she knows what a Brazilian is.”
You nod and hope she’ll keep talking but instead she walks over to the refrigerator, opens the door, and crouches down. She decides on two cans of Coors Light and brings them over to the couch. She sits down and places one can between her legs and puts the other one against the back of your neck. Goosebumps form on your arms and you laugh.
“The humidity lately,” you say.
Maeve picks up her phone and texts someone, and you wonder why you’d even think about bringing up the weather.
“They’re still in the woods. Sandy says some guy passed out after doing a keg stand. Maybe we should go.”
You imagine yourself in the darkness, the moonlight filtered through the trees and the occasional glow of vape pens and fireflies. Conversations whirl around about summer jobs and who’s going where in the fall. You even know some of their parents.
“It’s too hot,” you say.
Maeve laughs and picks up her phone. You take a sip of your beer as she types; you try to glance at the upside-down words on her screen. She looks up at you and smiles.
“My boyfriend only has one testicle you know. His frat brothers call him One Nut Nick. Sometimes I think that’s why he wants to marry me. You know, that way he never has to have that fear of what someone might say who sees it for the first time.”
“Do you take One Nut Nick to be your husband till death do you part?” you say.
She laughs in a way that part of you recognizes but simultaneously understands you haven’t heard in a long time and this thought saddens you so you begin to laugh, as well. Maeve tilts her head back and laughs some more and then snorts and this causes you to laugh even harder and you put your head on the back of the couch and wipe tears from your eyes. Glow-in-the-dark star decals adorn the ceiling and you see what looks like a stain in the shape of a slice of pizza.
Maeve puts her Coors Light down on the table and says, “Do you mind?” But before she’s either finished her thought or you can respond she lays down placing her head on your lap so you can only see the side of her face.
“I’m going to lay here and rest my eyes until you need to go or whatever.”
Without the freedom of space between the two of you, your hands feel cumbersome. You place one arm on top of the couch and stroke Maeve’s blonde hair with your other hand. You will stay in this same position for almost an hour until you decide you should go home and leave Maeve on the couch. Before you go you will put a blanket on her. But for now you lean back and close your eyes and listen to the cicadas. You imagine yourself on the New England coast, somewhere on Narragansett Bay. Beer in hand you walk along the beach right before sunset, the sky a blood orange. All the families have left the beach to barbecue, prepare baths for sunburned children, and settle in for movie night. Maeve and Sandy and a girl you don’t know sit on the lifeguard chair. Maeve rolls a joint, while the other two make sure no one approaches but they see you and smile. You walk over and talk about last night’s bonfire and how you all felt like death this morning. The short one with the Sublime tattoo hands you the joint. You take a pull as the waves run up on shore and gather around your feet. Hermit crabs appear and then retreat into holes in the sand. Sunset is your favorite time of day.
THE END