Bliss, Remembered (11 page)

Very good. And Mrs. Simms just swooned. As we used to say then, she didn’t know whether to spit or wind her watch, and everybody in the Empire Room was looking at her, figuring she must be somebody famous. Art Jarrett just laid it on thicker. “You’re the top . . .You’re Mahatma Ghandi, you’re Napolean Brandy—”

Teddy, you and I could give Art Jarrett a run for his money. But, trust me, it was a sketch, and I believe Mrs. Simms would’ve fainted dead away with the attention if Art Jarrett finally didn’t finish “You’re The Top”—

All right, all right. This is still my story. Because then he finished singing and turned to me and introduced me as—well, you can see this coming: “the princess of the backstroke.” Eleanor wasn’t going to let that go. So I had to actually stand up, and Art Jarrett took my hand and kissed it, which was absolutely the first time anybody had ever done that, and everybody cheered to beat the band, even if they didn’t know me from Nutsy Fagan. I sat back down and dove back into that champagne.

Lemme tell you, Teddy, a girl could get to like that stuff. So peace and quiet reigned at our table again, and the band played a couple more numbers, and then Art Jarrett took the mic once more, and he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve met the princess of the backstroke, who will be swimming at the Lake Shore Athletic Club this Saturday, but now we’re gonna raise the bar, and introduce you to the queen of the backstroke, a lady you know as the Olympic gold medalist named . . .”

Drum roll. And then he all but shouted, “Eleanor Holm . . . but whom I’m proud to call . . . Mrs. Art Jarrett.” The Empire Room exploded in applause. And here came Eleanor.

Teddy, she was all in white. She had on white high heels and a white bathing suit and a little white shawl kinda thing, and a huge white cowboy hat.

Ten gallons. Because you see, this was her signature opening number, “I’m An Old Cowhand From the Rio Grande.” It was pretty rousing. But as the wags would say: as a singer, she made a good naiad. Not bad, Teddy. Not all that bad. But let’s face it: I think it’s fair to say that it was the outfit that sold the song. I mean, the Empire Room, or any other respectable night club, was probably not used to having any girl singer dressed so skimpily. Gowns. You wore long, beautiful slinky gowns if you were a girl vocalist. If Ted Weems, for example, had brought out a girl vocalist dressed like a stripteaser, it would’ve been a scandal for sure, but since Eleanor was a swimmer, no one batted an eye. Especially the men. And she got rid of the hat and sang a couple more numbers. One was “On The Good Ship Lollipop.”

Exactly. And then “Up A Lazy River,” which allowed Eleanor to take off her little shawl and toss it into the band, when the lyrics went “throw away your troubles . . .”

And then she finished up with “The Isle of Capri.” It wasn’t a bad little act, and the crowd was very appreciative. Then, while Art Jarrett and the band resumed their musical stylings—that’s what they called them back then, “musical stylings”—Eleanor retrieved her little shawl and came over to our table. This time, I thought it was Mr. Simms who was gonna have a heart attack. He couldn’t even bear to look at her, he was so nervous being in the close company of such pulchritude. Eleanor chatted with them awhile, and since some people had begun to dance now, she told Mr. and Mrs. Simms that they had to. “If you don’t, Hilda . . .” That was Mrs. Simms name; it just came to me now. “If you don’t get up there with that good-lookin’ husband of yours, then I’m the one who’s gonna take him out on that floor and trip the light fantastic.” Well, Mr. Simms grabbed the missus pretty quickly then. I don’t think he was prepared to take Eleanor Holm into his arms. That would’ve been entirely too much for the poor man’s beating heart.

So Eleanor poured herself a glass of champagne. “Well, Sydney, whatdja think of my act?”

I said, “It was really swell. I didn’t have any idea you could sing that good.”

“I’m workin’ on it. Art doesn’t think I’m quite ready for ballads yet. Just the up-tempo stuff.”

“Well,” I said. “It really works swell.”

“Yeah, you’ll see, I do one chorus of a ballad. It’s a start. And once the Olympics are over, I’m gonna concentrate completely on my show business.” She nudged me. “Then you can win all the gold medals.”

I kinda rolled my eyes at that, Teddy. Eleanor looked down at my drink. “Hey, have some more champagne.”

“I dunno, Eleanor. I wanna stay in shape.”

Eleanor just roared at that. “Honey, I train on champagne and caviar. Don’t pay any attention to those blazers. They’d have us all living in a nunnery between races. A little champagne is not the end of the world.” I took a polite sip. She poured more into my glass. “I think the European swimmers drink this stuff for breakfast.” Then she picked up Mr. Simms’ pack of Lucky Strikes and took one out. “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet,” she said. That was the famous advertisement then. So she offered me a Lucky, too.

“No thanks,” I said.

Eleanor lit up. “Actually, I don’t smoke all that much. Just to be sociable, you know. And in the locker room. I can see the faces on all the other girls when I light up a coffin nail. They’re thinking: she not only beats us, she smokes, too. What could she do if she took care of herself? See, that’s the mental part, ’cause I’m playin’ around with ’em. Now don’t you let on.” She kinda nudged me and winked. I was not only the queen-in-waiting; now I was her confidant, too.

She went on: “You’ll see how much of a game the amateurs are, Sydney. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense at all. The Hollywood people want me to swim in the pictures, but I can’t do that because of the blazers. Especially that Avery Brundage—what a pompous jackass. He’s the worst. Of course, he can be, because he’s the boss—he’s the head of the AOA.”

AOA—I toldja, Teddy: that’s the American Olympic Association.

And Avery Brundage really did drive Eleanor nuts.

She said, “Brundage says if I just jump in some pool in a movie lot and swim to the other side with a rose in my teeth, then I’m a professional swimmer. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

I agreed that it was. Which, in fact, it is.

“But I can get up here and sing in a bathing suit, and that’s no problem. Even though I’m gettin’ paid for singin’ in a bathing suit, that doesn’t make me a pro. I can dance in a bathing suit. No problem with the blazers. I can act in a bathing suit. No problem. I swear, Sydney, Avery Brundage wouldn’t care if I came out and screwed in a bathing suit so long as I didn’t swim in a bathing suit. Well, you can’t screw in a bathing suit. So dry hump. Avery Brundage wouldn’t care if I dry humped in a bathing suit right here on the dance floor of the Empire Room as long as I didn’t swim in one.”

I agreed, Teddy. I just agreed. This was all a bit much for me. But Eleanor wasn’t finished.

“Of course, they expect us all to be good little girls. The blazers don’t like any of their girls being married like me, because that means I’m actually having marital relations! Well, since I married Art, you think that’s slowed me up any? As a matter of fact, I’m faster. My world record for the hundred—the hundred meters—is one-sixteen and three, but whaddya think I did in practice just a couple months ago?” I shook my head. “One-fourteen and six.”

“Good grief,” I said. I actually swooned at that. “That’s really fast.” It was, Teddy. That was unworldly.

Eleanor took one more drag on her Lucky Strike and squashed it out. “Tell you the truth, I like to make love the night before I swim a big race. Art and me’ll make love tomorrow night. I think it helps.”

“You do?”

“Sure. It relaxes you, and for goodness’ sake, it doesn’t take that long. Then you just have a cigarette and go off to dreamland. And all these other gals are lying in bed alone, tossin’ and turnin’, worryin’ their pretty heads about the race. Now you just tell me: who’s getting better preparation?” And then, as I pondered this, hoping it was a rhetorical question, Eleanor asked, “You have a boy friend, Sydney?”

Actually, Teddy, I’d been going out some with a sophomore at Washington College. He was a great improvement on Buzzy Moore, and I liked him enough, but he wasn’t anything special. “Well, not really,” I told Eleanor.

“Gee, someone as pretty as you should have a fellow. Now, I’m not asking you to do anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable about, but in the future, you remember what I said.”

“I will, Eleanor. I will.” That occasioned me to take a good long swallow of the champagne, and just about then Art Jarrett wrapped up the dance numbers. The dancers could tell the set was ending, because there was a flourish from the band, and that meant the show-offs on the dance floor did a lot of dipping, the women swaying back as their partners held them.

Eleanor drained her champagne glass and patted me on the knee. “Well, there’s my cue. I’m back in the saddle again.”

And that was when Art Jarrett grabbed the mic and began singing “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?” Only, of course, he kept looking over at Eleanor sitting next to me while he sang, and when they got to the second chorus, she stood up and threw that little shawl off again and started moving toward him, only like she was swimming.

No, she swam over freestyle. And I had to wonder what the blazers would think about that, if pretending to swim in a bathing suit on dry land made her a professional. But I guess not. Anyway, when she got to Art, they put an arm around each others’ backs and sang the last chorus together. That was the part of a ballad he let her sing—only, of course, she sang “Did you ever see a dream walking?” and he sang “Did you ever see a dream swimming?” It wasn’t a bad show, really. It really wasn’t.

Mom shook her head, smiling at the memory. Then she glanced over at the television set, but the gymnasts were still the attraction. They were on the balance beam now. “Aren’t they ever gonna get rid of those damn little imps and get the swimmers out here, Teddy? I’m an old lady, I wanna see Natalie Coughlin swim the hundred before I fall asleep.”

I looked at my watch. “It can’t be much longer now,” I said, “but come on, don’t leave me hangin’. How did you do when you raced a couple days later?”

“Actually, not bad. I told you, we were still swimming yards then in the United States, a hundred yards and two hundred yards, and I got my best times in both. But still, I was fourth. And not all the best girls were at the Indoors. If I was gonna make the Olympics at the trials in New York, I had to get third. I had to get a little faster.”

“How did Eleanor do?”

“Oh, my gracious, she not only set a new world record in the hundred, she did it by more than a second.”

“Wow.”

“Oh yeah, it made me think: Hmmm, if I can just figure some way to get laid in New York the night before the trials, I could make the Olympics.”

“Come on, Mother.”

“Oh, don’t be such an old woman, Teddy. Of course I wasn’t serious. I was still such a sweet little virgin then, I didn’t even know what a dry hump was. But . . .” She paused. “But, no, honestly, I certainly didn’t forget what Eleanor said. To make love to the man of your dreams, and then sleep in his arms and get up and beat all the other girls the next day and stand there on a podium with a gold medal round your neck and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ playing . . . well, Teddy, life couldn’t get any better than that. My gracious, queen of the backstroke . . .”

When I was a child, it seemed so strange listening to my parents talk about their lives before I was born. I mean, however irrational, in a way it just didn’t seem possible that they were around before I arrived on the scene. In my parents’ cases, too, it was even more difficult, because I grew up in Montana, and they’d both come from Back East, and for those of us from Out West, Back East might as well have been The Mysterious East. That made it that much more confounding to hear of times past that had transpired in such alien territory.