Bliss, Remembered by Frank Deford Read Free Book Online Page B

with Buzzy, that was fine, and I’d let him kiss me goodnight, but that was pretty much the extent of it.
    “Buzzy’d really like to neck with you, Trixie,” Carter told me. This came as no surprise to me whatsoever, but I told Carter it just wasn’t on my agenda. We didn’t say “agenda” then, but that was the idea. I think then we said: it isn’t in the cards.
    “Well, look, I’m not planning to settle down with Tommy Witherspoon either, but it is kinda fun, Trixie.”
    “I know, Car. But I guess I’m just too wrapped up in my swimming.”
    We were over at her farmhouse, in the parlor, having this conversation one Sunday after church. I remember it very distinctly. I can see the Kincaid’s parlor as plain as if it was right here in this garden, Teddy. But I’ll spare you the details. It’s just that I remember so clearly that Carter leaned forward in her chair, and with this really queer expression on her face, she said, “Trixie Stringfellow, what are you up to?”
    Well, I told you she was my best friend in all the world, and so, given that, I just told her flat out, “I wanna swim in the Olympics. That’s what I’m up to.”
    “The Olympics?”
    “Yeah.”
    If I’d said I’d just come down from the moon, she couldn’t have been any more surprised. “You mean the Olympics? The ones in Berlin?”
    I looked at Mom strangely. She’d said Berlin, like to rhyme with Merlin, King Arthur’s magician. She saw the expression on my face and laughed. Then she repeated it the same way:
    Berlin. Exactly. There was this town on the Shore down in Wicomico County, and everybody knew it, because the road went through there on the way to Ocean City, which was the big seashore resort. Everybody on the Shore went to Ocean City sometime, to the boardwalk and the beach, and they’d all go through Berlin on Route 50 over from Salisbury. And it was spelled just like the one in Germany—B-E-R-L-I-N—only it was pronounced the way I just did. Not Ber-LIN. But—
    “BURR-lin,” I said.
    That’s the way we said it on the Shore. So it threw me off when Carter mentioned Berlin. “Berlin?” I said, thinking she meant the one in Wicomico County. “No, not Berlin, Car. The Olympics. I think Los Angeles.”
    But, as I said, Carter was smart. She was well read. She didn’t know how to pronounce Berlin the way people did off the Shore, but she knew that’s where the next Olympics were. “No, Trix, they’re in the Berlin in Germany.” She said that as if people around the world were regularly mixing up the two Berlins. But at least she had the right info.
    “I didn’t know that. I just know they’re the summer after next, after we graduate.”
    “And you think you can actually go to Berlin, Germany and be in them?”
    “I think I got a chance. The man who kind of coaches me up at the college, Mr. Wallace Foster, he keeps my times, and he says if I keep getting better, maybe I can make it.”
    “Wow,” was all Carter said.
    Then I panicked. “But Carter, you gotta swear to me you’ll never tell a soul, not even Tommy. Nobody.”
    Carter nodded and stuck out her hand, and very solemnly, she said, “I promise, Trixie.” Then she just shook her head. “I had no idea. When did this come over you?”
    “Oh, just when I realized how fast I was.”
    “A girl doesn’t wanna be known as fast,” Carter smirked.
    “You know.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, when I found out, I thought that maybe to be real good at something, maybe even the best of all, that that was something not very many people could shoot for, and I’d be lettin’ myself down if I didn’t at least try. And I’d be lettin’ my Daddy down, too, if he knew.” And I misted up a little, and Carter came off her chair and put her arms around me and hugged me.
    “It’s okay, Trix. I didn’t realize you were amazing.”
    So I really cried some, thinking about Daddy, but after that, Teddy, after I’d actually told someone the way I felt, it