Free Bliss, Remembered by Frank Deford Page A

all the world to see—even if Carter was all the world that was looking at me at that particular moment —and I told her how Eleanor Holm herself belonged to the Women’s Swimming Association, and that next month when Mother and Mr. Foster were takin’ me up to Jones Beach for the national championships, I was gonna ratchet up my nerve and ask Eleanor if I could get into the Women’s Swimming Association.
    “You think you can?” Carter asked me.
    I got hold of my enthusiasm sufficient to restore decorum and laid back down on my stomach. “I’ll be honest with you, Car. I don’t see why not. I’m startin’ to understand how good I really am. I’ve only been serious about my swimming for a little while, but that time I made in the hundred down in Washington a couple months ago—Mr. Foster told me it was the ninth best in the country. In the country, Car!”
    “The whole country?”
    “That’s what I’m saying: the whole country, the United States, and I’m already ninth best. And if I just get a little better in the next year, if I’m third best, I can go to Berlin, to the Olympics, next summer, and even if I don’t make it, if I get to join the Women’s Swimming Association, I know I could be the very best by the ’40 Olympics. They give out gold medals if you win the Olympics, Car. I could get a gold medal in Tokyo.”
    “What’s in Tokyo?”
    “That’s what I’m tellin’ you. The 1940 Olympics are in Tokyo, Japan.”
    “Wow,” Carter said. She processed all that. “So, let me get this straight. If you join this Women’s Swimming Association, you’d live in New York?”
    “Yeah. I would. I’d get a job.”
    “In Jones Beach?”
    “No, that’s just where the nationals are. The Women’s Swimming Association is right in the city. They have their own pool and everything. You could come up from Baltimore on the Royal Blue”—that was the fancy B & O train then—“and stay with me in my apartment. I’d have my own apartment.”
    “Wow,” Carter said again. “But you gotta look out for the men in New York, Trix. Men in New York can’t be trusted.”
    “Come on, Car. Not all of them. There’s some good men everywhere, I’m sure.”
    Carter agreed I had a point. Possibly. She was silent for a long time, then. This was a lot for her to take in from her best friend, especially when she thought she was the one who was so daring, going off to big, cosmopolitan Baltimore. But after a bit, all of a sudden, do you know what she did? She sat up and said, “Come on, Trix, we’re halfway. Let’s go skinny dippin’.”
    If Carter Kincaid had suggested we rob the Queen Anne’s County Savings and Trust, I couldn’t’ve been any more shocked. “But, Car, it’s the middle of the day.”
    “There’s nobody around.”
    “Maybe Gentry Trappe.”
    “Well, then it’d just be his lucky day,” Carter said. Teddy, she’d made up her mind. She was already pullin’ her suit down over her thighs. I could see, there was no stoppin’ her. And you know what?
    “No, I don’t, Mother.”
    I went right along. In another minute, I was naked as a jay bird, too, and here we were, in broad daylight, runnin’ down to the river and out on the dock and divin’ in. And the water never felt better, Teddy. You’ve been skinny dippin’, haven’t you?
    “A time or two, yeah.”
    Doesn’t it feel just wonderful?
    I agreed that it did.
    Yeah, we splashed around and swam underwater some, just like little girls, and I remember, I came up and I was treadin’ water, and I said, “You know what the Women’s Swimming Association bathing suits look like?” It was sort of strange to think about a bathing suit when I didn’t have one on, but it came to me. Carter, of course, didn’t know. “There’s like a shield here,” I said, drawing it with one hand, right in the middle of my chest. “And right in here”—I pointed to my cleavage—“there’s this big S.”
    “S?” Carter asked.
    “Yeah, S