Thursday morning, Winslow sat at the table and stared at the three peeled bananas on his wife’s plate. “What is that?”
“Breakfast.”
Last night she’d found a copy of the Wiener Diet in an old magazine. The food plan was simple and it was guaranteed to work. One woman quoted in the article had lost five pounds in two days! If Edith could match that, she’d be into that peach dress with time to spare before the wedding.
“You’re eating bananas?”
“Yep. Eat your waffles, Winslow, before they get cold.”
Ayuh, she was eating bananas today: three for breakfast, three for lunch, three for dinner. Tomorrow she’d switch gears and eat frankfurters, three at each meal. Win might complain about her cooking, but at least he liked hotdogs. On day three of this diet she would eat boiled eggs, three at each meal. And the pounds would fall off.
She knew she was ignoring Cleta’s advice (and Winslow’s and Dr. Marc’s), but the scale had coughed up another half pound this morning and boosted her confidence.
She bowed her head for a quick blessing of her breakfast: Lord, I know you love me as I am, but I so want to be slim by the twenty-eighth. I promise I’ll diet healthy after that if you’ll just let me get into that peach dress a week from today. Oh—and thank you for the bananas.
Reaching for the syrup, Winslow uncapped the bottle and doused his waffle in the sweet stuff. He shook his head. “I can’t imagine Pound Pinchers endorsing nothing but bananas for breakfast.”
“You can eat practically anything with Pound Pinchers, remember?” Edith picked up her fork, then sliced off a bit of banana. In only a few more days she’d be back to following the Pound Pinchers program. But if she told Win about the Wiener Plan, he would forbid her to continue, and she didn’t have the energy to argue.
For now, what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Later that morning, Edith glanced up from her reading when a knock came at the kitchen door. Laying her book aside, she wiped a stray hair out of her eyes and went to answer.
Her legs trembled as she walked. She felt awful this morning, queasy and weak. The bananas had upset her stomach.
She opened the door and found Stanley at the door, a toolbox in his hand. “Mornin’, Edith.”
“How be you, Stan?”
“Floyd said you all needed someone to look at your deep freeze.”
“Ayuh.” She lifted a hand to her throbbing head. “It’s in the basement—well, you know where it is.”
“Ayuh.” Stanley followed her to the basement stairs. She pulled the light on, then pointed downward.
“You say the light’s been blinking?”
Edith nodded. “Winslow thinks the freezer might have a short.”
“Ayuh.” Stanley shrugged out of his heavy pea coat, dropped it on a kitchen chair, then ducked his head and ventured down the stairs. “I’ll holler if I need something.”
“Thanks.”
Edith lingered in the kitchen, not wanting to leave Stanley completely alone. If she went back to reading in the den, she’d never hear him holler.
Spying the mop behind the back door, she decided to clean the floor. Too preoccupied with diets lately, she had let her housework slip.
She poured a healthy dose of Mr. Clean into her pail, then filled the bucket with hot water from the sink. A few minutes later she had swept the floor and stood the chairs on the kitchen table. Her arms felt like limp noodles—as if her internal engine were running on empty.
Moving in a hazy fog, she dunked her mop into the bucket and sloshed it over the vinyl floor. Back and forth, back and forth—wonder how many calories this activity would burn?
Beneath her, Stanley clanked around in the basement, the sounds of banging coming up the stairs. Why did a short circuit require banging?
She cleaned under the table, then dipped her mop in the sudsy water. She frowned when the scent of tobacco reached the kitchen. Stanley knew she didn’t like smoking in the house. She thought about stomping downstairs and jerking the cigar out of his mouth, but a pastor’s wife didn’t give in to such urges, however frequently they popped up.
She mopped harder, bearing down to erase a black scuff on the vinyl. Stanley’s crusty baritone drifted up the steps: “Listen to the folk singer, feelin’ kinda jaunty . . .”
Clang, clang.
Edith pushed the mop bucket with her toe, moving it toward the back door. They always tracked in mud here; the spot was impossible to keep clean.
“Edith?”
“Need something, Stan?”
“I’m gonna be working with electricity down here.”
“I know, Stan.” What’d he think she was, thick as a plank?
She bent low to scrub a particularly dirty spot. Amazing, how a floor could go from clean to filthy in the space of a few hours. Things got especially bad in mud season, a phrase she’d never heard until they moved to Heavenly Daze. The state of Maine had five seasons, the old-timers insisted, mud season being accompanied by fall, winter, spring, and July.
Backing up to her bucket, she nudged it with the heel of her shoe. When it stuck to the wet floor, she nudged it harder, sending a splash of gray water over the side but effecting no movement whatsoever. In no mood for bucket defiance, she turned and kicked the darn thing. The pail tilted for an instant, then fell, splashing a stream of sudsy water over the floor . . . and down the basement stairs.
She froze as Stanley’s warning came back to her: “I’m working with electricity down here.”
Oops.
“Fire in the hole!” Stanley shouted. “Aeeiiiiiieeeeeeee!”
Sounds of frantic movement rose from the basement— Stanley’s shouts, the splash of water, and the clunking sound of something heavy smacking the top of her clothes dryer.
Wading through the puddle, she approached the stairs and looked down. To the right of the staircase, Stanley crouched on the dryer, his face white and his cigar protruding from a pair of tightly clenched lips.
“Sorry, Stanley,” she said weakly. “I was mopping and the bucket tipped over.”
Stanley’s hand trembled as he reached up to remove the cigar from his mouth. “Confound it, woman! You could’ve boiled me like a lobster.”
“I said I was sorry!” Edith bit her lip, resisting the urge to burst into tears. Dieting was making her crazy! If she hadn’t been so testy and impatient she would never have spilled that bucket.
She dared to look into the basement again. “You did cut the power, didn’t you?”
“Not yet!”
“Oh. Just a minute, then.” Grabbing a towel, she moved down the stairs until she found the circuit panel on the wall. She quickly flipped the breakers for the basement, then ducked to give Stanley an apologetic smile. “Okay—and no harm done, right?”
Stanley gently eased himself off the dryer, then bent to gather his tools. Ramming the cigar stub back into his mouth, he gave her a look of wide-eyed wonder. “Not even Vernie’s ever tried to electrocute me. I’ll be back when the floor’s dry.”
“Okay. Thanks, Stan. I’m so sorry.”
He brushed passed her as he climbed the stairs, and as he pulled his coat from the chair on the table she heard him mumble something about dumb luck and fried handymen.
As the strength ran out of her legs, Edith sank to the steps and pondered what else could possibly go wrong.