Summer Temporary

The commercial came on during the eleven o’clock break between local news and whatever late-night movie they were running on Channel 8. Danny Kowalski sat in his recliner, the same brown corduroy one he’d bought at Goodwill when he first moved into the apartment on Elm Street twenty-three years ago, picking at a Salisbury steak TV dinner that tasted like fine cardboard. The sunscreen ad was nothing special, just beach scenes and families laughing, but the soundtrack hit him like cold water in the face.

Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind.

Twenty-six years to the day, and he still couldn’t hear that song without being seventeen again, sitting on the lifeguard chair at Millhaven Municipal Pool, believing the world was full of possibilities that included him. June 21st, 2025. The summer solstice. The longest day of the year, which used to mean something when days felt too short to contain everything he wanted to do. Now it just meant more hours to fill before he could sleep and start another shift at the water treatment plant.

He clicked off the television and sat in the sudden silence of his apartment, brown carpet worn thin in paths between kitchen and bathroom, between bed and recliner, between the places where a man could exist without anyone noticing he was alive. The air conditioner wheezed like it was giving up, which it probably was, along with everything else that had been held together with duct tape and Hail Marys since the millennium.

Danny closed his eyes and let the song carry him back to the summer when everything felt possible, even for someone like him.

June 21st, 1999. The grand reopening of Millhaven Municipal Pool after six months of renovation that had cost the city more money than it could afford but less than it would have cost to build something new. Danny arrived at five-thirty in the morning, thirty minutes before his shift started, because he’d been doing that every day since they hired him in May. Not because anyone asked him to, but because it felt good to have keys to something, to be trusted with opening up, to be the first person to see the pool each morning when the water was still and perfect and full of promise.

Danny tested the water chemistry first thing, the way Bill Henderson had taught him during training. pH levels, chlorine levels, alkalinity. Numbers that had to be exactly right or people could get sick, could get hurt, could die if you weren’t paying attention.

At six o’clock, Lisa Martinez arrived with her head lifeguard keys and her Ohio State University acceptance letter folded in her back pocket like a ticket to somewhere better. She was everything Danny wasn’t: confident, college-bound, the kind of person who made decisions look easy.

“Early again, Kowalski.”

“Water doesn’t test itself.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t. You know you don’t have to be here until six, right?”

“I know.”

But he couldn’t explain that being here early wasn’t about having to do something, it was about getting the chance to do it.

Jennifer Walsh arrived last, at six-twenty-five, five minutes before they opened to the public. She worked the concession stand, not technically part of the lifeguard crew, but close enough that they all ate lunch together and covered for each other when someone needed a break. She was quiet in a way that made people think she wasn’t paying attention, but Danny had noticed she saw everything: which kids needed extra help in swimming lessons, which elderly folks were struggling more than they let on, which teenagers were trying to sneak alcohol past the front gate.

At six-thirty, Danny unlocked the front gate and Millhaven Municipal Pool was officially open for business. The summer of 1999 had begun.

Flora, the owner of the local diner, showed up at seven with coffee for everyone, appearing like she always did when people needed something they didn’t know they needed.

“Figured you kids might need some fuel,” she said.

Danny took his coffee black, the way she served it, bitter and strong and honest about what it was. “Thanks, Flora. You didn’t have to do this.”

“But I wanted to.” Flora studied the pool, the fresh paint, the new equipment. “Good day to start something that matters.”

“Think this matters?” Danny asked, gesturing at the pool, the lifeguard chairs, the whole enterprise that felt both important and fragile.

Flora considered the question seriously, the way she considered everything. “Depends on what you make of it. Question is whether you think it matters.”

Danny did think it mattered. More than he could explain to someone like Lisa, who saw the job as a paycheck before college. Danny saw it as a chance to be responsible for something real.

At ten o’clock, the mayor showed up with a photographer from the Millhaven Gazette and a prepared speech about the pool representing the town’s commitment to family recreation and community investment.

“This pool represents what Millhaven can accomplish when we work together,” Mayor Henderson said, his voice carrying across water that sparkled in the June sunlight. “Today, on the longest day of the year, we’re not just opening a pool. We’re opening a door to summer memories that will last a lifetime.”

The small crowd applauded, mostly parents with young children who were already eyeing the water with the desperate need of people who’d been waiting since May for somewhere to cool off.

The day passed without incident. No rescues needed, no injuries more serious than a scraped knee on the pool deck, no crises that required anything more than a band-aid and reassurance. Danny began to understand that most lifeguarding was like most jobs: long periods of routine punctuated by moments when everything you knew mattered more than you could have imagined.

During his lunch break, he sat at the picnic table near the concession stand where Jennifer was reading a paperback novel and eating a sandwich that looked homemade. She glanced up when he sat down, marked her place with a napkin.

“Good first day?” she asked.

“Yeah. Quiet, but good.” Danny opened his own lunch, a bologna sandwich he’d made at five that morning. “You think this will last?”

“What, the pool? The summer? Us talking?”

Danny felt heat rise in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the sun. “All of it. This feeling like good things might happen here.”

“I think good things are happening here. Whether they last is a different question.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean maybe the point isn’t whether they last. Maybe the point is that they’re happening at all.” She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed thoughtfully. “Most places around here, nothing good happens. At least not anything you can see. But this?” She gestured at the pool, the families, the sound of children laughing. “This is visible good. That has to count for something.”

The afternoon brought more swimmers, more families, more responsibility. Danny rotated through different chairs, learning the angles and blind spots, the way the sun reflected off the water at different times of day, the patterns of movement that meant everything was normal and the disruptions that meant he needed to pay closer attention. By five o’clock, he felt like he’d earned his paycheck in ways that had nothing to do with the hourly wage.

As the evening shift began, the pool took on a different character. The families with young children headed home for dinner, replaced by teenagers looking for somewhere to hang out and elderly folks who preferred swimming when the sun was less intense. Danny found himself working alongside Jennifer more as the crowd thinned, their conversations picking up where lunch had left off.

“You ever think about leaving?” Jennifer asked during a quiet moment when the pool held only a handful of lap swimmers and two old men playing chess at a poolside table.

“Leaving the pool?”

“Leaving Millhaven.”

Danny considered the question. His brother Dave was five years older, had graduated in 1994 and never left town except for a semester at community college that didn’t take. Lisa and Brad talked constantly about their college plans, their escape routes, their futures that were somewhere else. But Danny had never felt the pull toward somewhere else that seemed to drive everyone his age.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I kind of like it here. I like taking care of things.”

“That’s not a bad thing to like.”

“But it’s not enough, is it? Like, for a life?”

Jennifer was quiet for a moment, watching an elderly woman doing slow laps in the far lane. “Depends what you mean by enough. My mom always says there are two kinds of people: the ones who leave and the ones who stay. Neither one’s better than the other, but you have to know which one you are.”

“Which one are you?”

“I think I’m a leaver. At least for now. But that doesn’t mean I think leaving is better. Just means it’s what I need to do.” She turned to look at him directly. “You feel like a stayer to me. In a good way.”

Danny thought about that as he locked up the pool for the night, turning off the lights that made the water glow like something magical, checking that all the gates were secure, that everything was ready for tomorrow. The first day of summer was ending, but it felt like a beginning of something he couldn’t name yet.

The summer passed in a rhythm that became comfortable before it became routine. Danny arrived early every morning, tested the water, set up the equipment. He learned the regular swimmers by name: Mrs. Patterson, who did water aerobics at seven-thirty every morning; the Reynolds kids, who had swimming lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays; Mr. Chen, who swam laps during his lunch break and never spoke to anyone but always nodded at Danny when he arrived and left.

His crush on Jennifer deepened slowly, built on shared lunch breaks and quiet conversations during the evening shift. She was planning to attend community college in Columbus, studying education because she wanted to teach elementary school. She talked about her future plans with the kind of certainty Danny envied, but she never made him feel small for not having similar clarity about his own direction.

“You’re steady,” she told him one evening in late July as they sat on the lifeguard platform after closing, feet dangling in water that still held the day’s warmth. “That’s not common. Most people our age, we’re all anxiety and ambition and trying to figure out who we’re supposed to become. But you already know who you are.”

“Do I?”

“You’re the person who shows up early and stays late. You’re the person who notices when someone needs help before they ask for it. You’re the person other people feel safe around.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “That’s pretty rare.”

Flora continued her regular coffee deliveries and her offers to help with cleanup, becoming an unofficial part of the pool’s daily rhythm. Danny began to look forward to their brief conversations.

“Any word on next summer?” Flora asked one evening in early August as they stacked pool chairs.

“What do you mean?”

“Budget meetings are coming up. Pool’s expensive to maintain. Town’s always looking for places to cut costs.”

Danny felt something cold settle in his stomach. “They wouldn’t close the pool. It just reopened. People love it.”

Flora didn’t respond immediately, just continued stacking chairs with the methodical patience she brought to everything. “People love lots of things the town can’t afford. Question isn’t whether they should keep it open. Question is whether they can.”

The rumours started circulating a week later. Nothing official, just whispers from parents who’d heard something at city council meetings, from employees who’d noticed line items being cut from departmental budgets.

Danny threw himself into the job with renewed intensity, arriving even earlier, staying even later, maintaining the pool with obsessive attention to detail. If he could prove that he was indispensable, if he could show that the pool was perfectly maintained and efficiently run, maybe they’d find a way to keep it open. Maybe his steadiness and reliability would be enough to save the thing he’d come to love.

“Can’t save a place by working harder,” Flora told him one evening as Danny scrubbed tiles that were already clean.

“But I have to try.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t, who will?”

Flora studied him for a moment. “Son, there’s no shame in caring about something more than it can care about itself.”

Jennifer got her acceptance letter to Columbus Community College in mid-August. She showed him the letter during their lunch break.

“Fall semester starts September 15th,” she said. “I’ll work here until Labor Day, then I’m gone.”

“That’s great,” Danny said, trying to mean it. “That’s what you wanted.”

“Yeah. It is.” She folded the letter carefully, put it back in her pocket.

The official announcement came on a Tuesday in late August. The city council had voted to close the pool permanently after Labor Day. Maintenance costs, insurance liability, budget constraints. The usual reasons for abandoning things that mattered to people who couldn’t afford them.

Lisa took the news with the resignation of someone who’d never expected permanence. “It sucks, but I’m leaving for college anyway. At least we had one good summer.”

But for Danny, there wouldn’t be other jobs like this one. Other employment, sure, but not other chances to be responsible for something that mattered to the community, not other opportunities to be the person people counted on for their safety and well-being.

Jennifer found him sitting alone on the lifeguard platform after closing that evening, staring at water that looked the same as it had all summer but felt completely different now that he knew its days were numbered.

“I’m sorry,” she said, settling beside him. “I know this meant more to you than just a job.”

“Did I do something wrong? Like, if I’d been better at it, if I’d worked harder...”

“Danny, no. This isn’t about you or anything you did or didn’t do.”

Labor Day weekend arrived with the weight of finality. The pool stayed open through Monday, one last chance for the community to enjoy what they were losing. Danny worked the weekend with the intensity of someone trying to stretch time, to make each moment last longer than moments were designed to last. He tested chemicals with scientific precision, maintained equipment that would soon be sold or abandoned, watched over swimmers with the dedication of someone who understood that this was his last chance to be essential.

Jennifer’s final day was Sunday. She worked her usual shift at the concession stand, served the usual snacks and drinks, read during the quiet periods when the pool held only a handful of dedicated swimmers. At closing time, she hugged each of the lifeguards goodbye, saving Danny for last.

“You’re going to do something important,” she said, holding him longer than a casual goodbye required. “I can tell.”

“Maybe. Maybe this was it, though. Maybe this was my important thing.”

“If it was, then you did it well. Take care of yourself, Danny Kowalski. Stay steady.”

Monday was Danny’s last day as a lifeguard, though officially the pool wouldn’t close until after the final swimmers left and he completed the shutdown procedures. He arrived at five-thirty as always, tested the water chemistry one last time, set up the equipment with the same attention to detail he’d brought to every morning all summer. At closing time, Danny performed the shutdown procedures with ceremonial care. Turning off the filtration system, covering the pool, securing all the gates. He walked the perimeter one last time, checking that everything was properly closed, that the pool was safe even in abandonment.

That night, he lay in bed listening to the sounds of Millhaven settling into sleep: air conditioners struggling against the heat, televisions murmuring through thin walls, the distant hum of traffic on Route 19 carrying people toward destinations that might or might not be better than where they started. Somewhere in Columbus, Jennifer was probably packing for college, preparing for a future that would take her to classrooms full of children who needed someone steady and patient and reliable.

Outside his window in 2025, Millhaven looked much the same as it had twenty-six years ago, just older and more worn down, like everything else that had survived the intervening decades. Through the glass, he could see the Dollar General that had been built where the pool used to be, its parking lot covering the space where he’d spent the best summer of his life learning who he was and what he was good at.

Danny finished his cardboard Salisbury steak and checked the clock. His shift at the treatment plant didn’t start until midnight, but he often went in early to check the systems, to make sure everything was running properly before the official start of his responsibilities. It wasn’t the pool, but people still depended on clean water. People still needed someone to pay attention to the chemistry, to notice when something wasn’t right, to care about getting the details correct.

He put on his work boots and grabbed his keys. The longest day of the year was ending, finally, the way all days ended whether you were ready or not. But Danny Kowalski was still here, still steady, still taking care of what needed taking care of. It wasn’t the life he’d imagined at seventeen, sitting on a lifeguard chair with the summer stretching ahead like possibility itself. But it was the life he’d built, day by day, shift by shift, summer after summer, until the seasons added up to something that might not have been a dream but felt, most days, like enough.