It promised to be a scorcher, the air heavy, humid. She balanced awkwardly on the rim of a deck chair, greasing her thighs and belly to protect her pale flesh from the first rays of the sun.
"Visiting the old lady?" a wisp of a girl in a scrap of bathing suit asked my first day home, still calling it home. He is rumpled, waddling-so accomplished a fat fool in his antics, America laughs till it cries. They make a run for the clattering wooden bleachers, pose for the picture while the vixen breaks away, away from the fun, and slowly, lips puckered, makes her way toward the famous clown who has been lolling all this time under a beach umbrella held aloft by a lackey. Pretty girls romp while the band struts its stuff to their tune. A palm tree and a cabana are set next to the bleachers. In the brittle sunlight, her voice rings out mellow and clear, "I am Isabel Maher." "Peachy." Then from the fellow sweltering in white linen, "What's your name?" Give me the eye." She pulls a sultry pout, sashays slowly through the sand. "Step down," the boater says to the pretty girl with the black curls. These men might be lawyers, bankers, Chamber of Commerce-any town, any bright summer day. The boss with the boater, cool in gray Palm Beach suit-vest, watch chain and all. He is wearing a linen jacket, sweat-stained at the armpits. Then a fellow in a floppy cap reaches for the buckle at her waist, tugs her out of the crowd of ten or twelve or thirteen pretty girls. "Jeez, Mack, there's five with curly black hair."įrom a crude stab of his cigar in her direction the girl knows she is that one and crosses her hands on her breasts, a saint in mock supplication. The clarinet bleeps to the end of a phrase. See them-window dressing, background, chorus-naughty and nice, harmless girls. Look again at the seductive wrapping on the package-bold stripes on the hip, molding of crotch, bouncing buns. So concealing we find it, these seventy, eighty years later. The soft cotton maillot caresses their breasts and thighs. Play ball, dash for the bleachers, pose in the jersey bathing suits that cling to their delicious bodies. Now they romp to the twanging beat of the music, which drowns out the grind of the camera. The Bathing Beauties have been rehearsing.
(The band, set to the side, an upright piano, clarinet, mandolin.) Silly girls laughing, smiling to beat the band. Their bathing suits, belted or sashed, are striped, a few checkered in harlequin patterns. Some wear brimless hats molded close to the head, a flirty curl or two escaping.
Some have ribbons round their bobbed hair. Arranging themselves for a still shot, arms and legs flutter, won't be tamed. They catch and throw flip-wristed, and for no reason at all dash to a rickety wooden bleacher set up on the beach. A show, a game? Beach balls in the bright air. We need not know what shimmering sea, what pure white sand.
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