Bliss, Remembered Read Online Free PDF

“Rack.”
    Rack?
    “Yeah, like check out the rack on her.”
    Mom shook her head, both in wonder and some admiration, I thought. She said:
    I never heard that one, Teddy. And it’s usually in the plural. I’m just not up on the new lexicon. But I must say, it’s not unexpected. It’s amazing how you men always keep coming up with a new way just to say “tits.”
    “Well, Mom, I think it’s kinda like the Eskimos have a hundred different ways to say ‘snow.’”
    I don’t know if that’s a good analogy, Teddy. The Eskimos are surrounded by snow. You men just wish you were surrounded by tits.
    But, anyway, keeping with that train of thought, it was obvious that Frankie had an eye for mine, whatsoever you might call them. Neither did I particularly try to discourage these attentions. Somebody even called over, “Come on, Frankie, stop flirting with Chesty-town and take your mark.” Oh, it was very obvious. I was reveling in it. Reveling.
    “‘Chesty-town,’ huh?”
    Yeah, that made me blush, but tell you the truth, I kinda liked it.
    “Reveling?”
    Reveling.
    “Was Frankie the best swimmer of the boys?”
    No, no, just the cutest. And he could be comical, too. The best was a big, strong, tall boy named Carl. He won all the boys’ races, like I won all the girls’. And he was full of himself, Carl was. I won the backstroke next. And, you know, that was my best. That was an absolute rout. After the boys raced, Frankie asked me if I wanted a lemonade, and so we chatted awhile, and he said if ever I came back to Easton, he’d love to go out with me. And I said, well that was unlikely, but why didn’t he make the effort to come up to Chestertown sometime?
    It was all very flattering, and then came the grand finale, the long one, the ten laps freestyle. To be honest with you, Teddy, when I got goin’ in that, I was so far ahead, I eased up. I mean, by this point, I even showed some mercy to that awful Edna.
    So I got my fourth blue ribbon, and Mom was ready to leave, but I said I wanted to see the boys’ long race, too, although actually I was only interested in maybe having a little more of a tête-à-tête with Frankie.
    I don’t think I was fooling Mom any, but she was so proud of me, and she was so happy to see me happy again, so she let me stick around. Of course, Carl won the race, but when he got his blue ribbon, standing there all full of himself, Frankie called out, “Hey Carl, I’ll bet you can’t beat the girl.” And everybody looked over at me, and I blushed, but people began to clap and say, “Yeah, yeah,” and Carl got his dander up.
    “I’m not racing any girl,” he said, but Frankie came right back and called out, “You’re scared of her, aren’t you?” and all his friends hooted at him. “Carl’s scared of the girl!”—that sort of teen-age stuff. So Carl was a rat caught in a trap.
    The starter called out, “Shall we have a match race of champions?” And everybody cheered. Now nobody’d even asked me anything, and so Mother whispered, “Do you wanna do this, Trixie?” and I said, “Sure,” and Carl cried out, “I’ll give her a head start,” and that really frosted me, and so I stepped forward and said, “I don’t need any head start,” and everybody cheered some more. Carl might’ve been the hometown boy, but I was the underdog, and everybody roots for underdogs, even if, as in this case, they’re from faraway Chestertown.
    The starter said, “Well, we’ll give the young lady the choice of weapons. What stroke do you wanna swim, Trixie?”
    That’s what they call a no-brainer today. “Umm, the backstroke,” I said, playing dumb, you understand.
    “Like a fox.”
    Exactly, Teddy. So Carl nodded, and the starter said, “All right, what say we make it four laps—two hundred yards? Is that okay?” I said sure, and Carl agreed, all smug, and everybody moved closer to the pool. I mean, I guarantee you, nobody was leaving. Well, maybe Edna had gone. I’d