Hearts at Home

by Lori Copeland

  Must have something to do with that internal furnace mechanism.

  Whatever it was, more power to it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Wednesday night at the Lansdowns’, Edith sat at the dining table and eyed the bowl of green beans and the steaming platter of spaghetti and meatballs next to it. According to the high-protein diet, she could eat a meatball (maybe two, if there were extra) and a little salad. No pasta, no sauce, and not one bean.

  When she glanced at the buffet, where Cleta and Barbara had set out two fragrant loaves of homemade garlic bread, a scolding voice in her brain chanted, “No refined carbohydrates, no sugar, white rice, white bread, or crackers.”

  She reached up and dotted her salivating mouth with her napkin.

  Breathless, Cleta took her seat at the table. “Well, now, shall we thank the Lord?”

  As the table occupants joined hands, Floyd cleared his throat. “Pastor? Would you bless the food?”

  Winslow leaned forward and shot a conspiratorial grin at their host. “I’d love to, Floyd, but I think Edith should offer thanks tonight.”

  Edith, who had lowered her head to half-mast, suddenly jerked her chin toward her husband. What was he doing? She could understand if he had deferred to Floyd (people always asked preachers to say grace, but Winslow liked to give others an opportunity), but to ask her?

  This wasn’t about being gracious—this was a mischievous poke at her diet.

  She looked at him, silently daring him to meet her gaze, but he had closed his eyes. Floyd, Cleta, Russell, and Barbara had bowed their heads, too. Everyone was waiting for her to ask a blessing for a tableful of food she couldn’t eat.

  She swiveled her eyes and stared at the green beans. She’d never been particularly fond of green beans, but tonight those little green slivers looked like they’d melt on her tongue in pure deliciousness.

  “Lord,” she began, lowering her lids, “we thank you for this day. We thank you for friends, for the beautiful weather, for the good health of our friend Salt Gribbon.” She swallowed, searching for words. Would Cleta notice if Edith conveniently forgot to thank the Lord for the food? One thing was certain—she couldn’t honestly thank the Lord for food she couldn’t eat.

  “I thank you, Lord, for the loving hands that prepared this meal. Help us be strong to do the work you have called us to do. Be with Floyd as he pilots the ferry, and be with Captain Stroble and Mazie down in Floridy. Be with Birdie and Salt as they plan their wedding; be with Annie as she decides what to do about Frenchman’s Fairest. Be with Butchie and Tallulah and Roxie. Bless the Klackenbushes and the Grahams, and help Babette and Charles as they try to teach Georgie some proper manners. Comfort Bea. Help Stanley and Vernie as they renew their commitment to one another. Thank you for Dr. Marc and his tender watchcare over us. Send our love to Olympia and Edmund and all those who have gone before.”

  Winslow cleared his throat. Ignoring him, she pressed on: “Loving Father, we ask that you would be with our president and national leaders. Give them wisdom and help them remember the important principles that guided our founding fathers. Remind America’s citizens that you are God, that you have a plan for this country, indeed, all countries and all men everywhere …”

  Beside her, Winslow cleared his throat again. She opened one eye and saw him whirling his finger in a “speed it up” gesture.

  Poor baby, his food was getting cold.

  “We ask all these things in the name of the altogether lovely One, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

  As heads lifted around the table, Floyd looked at Edith in outright admiration. “I didn’t know you could pray like that.”

  She shrugged off the compliment and lifted her teacup.

  Winslow reached for a basket of garlic bread and started it around the table. “How did fishing go today, Russell?”

  With a heavy heart, Edith watched the bread pass by, the warm scent of garlic wafting from the cloth-covered basket. As everyone around her talked and laughed and ate with hearty appetites, she picked at her meatball and salad. Toward the end of the meal, when the men had pushed back their chairs to allow for the expansion at their waistlines, she ran her index finger along the rim of her plate to scrape up the last drops of the tasty sauce. Closing her eyes, she licked her finger, savoring the flavors of tangy tomato, basil, and oregano.

  Silence crept over the table.

  She opened her eyes, appalled to see Cleta, Floyd, Barbara, Russell, and Winslow staring at her. Quickly swiping her finger on her napkin, she stood and lifted her plate. “Let me help you with the cleanup, Cleta.”

  Barbara pushed back from the table. “Sit down, Edith, you’re a guest. I’ll help Mom in the kitchen.”

  “Stay where you are, Barbara.” Edith gently pressed the young woman back into her chair. “You’re still recovering from surgery. You should take it easy.”

  “But I’m fine.”

  “Honey.” Russell threw an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Sit.”

  “Say, Floyd.” Patting his stomach, Winslow leaned back in his chair. “Would you have time to take a look at our freezer? It acts like it’s got a short—the light keeps flickering.”

  “I’ve been awful busy with the ferry, Pastor, but if I can’t manage, I’ll send Stanley over. The man’s been looking for things to do ’cause his bein’ underfoot is threatenin’ to drive Vernie crazy.”

  Winslow laughed. “That’ll work.”

  Edith carried a stack of dishes into the kitchen and Cleta followed. “Land’s sake, Edith, you ate like a bird tonight. Are you sick?”

  Edith shook her head. “I’m not sick.”

  “Then you’re dieting.”

  “Shh—I don’t want everyone to know. Women on diets tend to talk about food all the time. I don’t want to put everyone through that kind of misery.”

  Cleta paused, one hand coming to her ample hip. “What kind of crazy diet are you on?”

  Edith scraped the remnants of someone’s spaghetti and salad into the garbage disposal. “High protein is not a crazy diet. Why, most of the Hollywood stars choose low-carbohydrate diets when they want to shed a few pounds.”

  “Diets aren’t healthy.” Cleta put the lid on the butter and set the dish in the refrigerator. “Why in the world are you dieting? You look fine to me.”

  “I’m twenty pounds overweight. Practically obese.”

  “Hogwash. You look fit and healthy. Let’s face it, Edith. We’re not spring chickens anymore. As we get older, we get a little fleshier.”

  “As we get older we have to fight harder to avoid weight gain,” Edith corrected.

  Cleta shook her head. “You can’t fight mother nature.”

  Tears of frustration stung her eyes. “I can try, can’t I?”

  Sitting down, Edith dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. She could stop this diet any time, but she didn’t want to stop. All she had to do was hold on for eight more days, then her agony would end. She would go back to the Pound Pinchers plan and take the remaining weight off slowly.

  Cleta dropped into the empty kitchen chair next to her. “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “I don’t know—maybe this diet is driving me a little nuts. I never thought I’d see the day I’d kill for a green bean. I want so badly to fit into this peach dress I have— it’s really pretty, and I’ve never worn it on the island. I want to look nice for Salt’s and Birdie’s wedding.”

  “What a thing to say! Edith Wickam, you’re a handsome woman. You’d look nice if you came to the wedding in a gunny sack.”

  Laughing, Edith wiped her eyes. “Thanks, Cleta, but we both know that’s not true.”

  “Honey.” The innkeeper poured Edith a cup of hot coffee. “Liz Curtis Higgs, one of my favorite writers, likes to remind women that they often postpone joy until they are in that size eight or ten dress.”

  “That’s not me. I’m happy.”

  Cleta lifted a brow. “Are you?”

  The question struck Edith like an arrow.
She used to be happy … until she started dieting. Since then she’d spent nearly every other minute worrying or plotting or fretting. Her emotions had run the gamut from irritable to irrational… .

  She met Cleta’s soft gaze. “I used to be happy.”

  Cleta nodded. “Liz says that being thin doesn’t guarantee health or happiness. Every day a woman needs to be assured that she is of immeasurable worth and great beauty now, not when she’s reached some arbitrary goal. She doesn’t advocate giving up or living in denial. She just wants women to acknowledge their physiological differences and accept the bodies they’ve been given.”

  Edith looked away, digesting the profound thought. Could she go back to thinking of herself as a person of worth and beauty? Winslow had always made her feel beautiful, but lately she had been ignoring him and focusing on that silly peach dress.

  “Cleeeeeta!” Floyd’s voice whined from the dining room. “Where’s that chocolate cake and coffee?”

  “That man.” When Cleta got up and lifted the crystal lid of the dessert stand, Edith had to look away from the sight of rich chocolate frosting heaped on a devil’s food cake.

  Cleta rattled a utensil drawer as she searched for a knife. “I’m going to jerk a knot in the man’s tail one of these days. I swear, he gets like an old bear when it comes to his dessert.” She glanced up, her mouth drooping with apology as Edith’s gaze fixated on chocolate frosting.

  “I’m sorry, Edith.”

  Mustering a smile, Edith got up to search for creamer to pour into the pitcher. “Don’t worry—I’m fine.”

  “I have a can of peaches I can open.”

  “I’ll just have coffee.”

  Edith opened the refrigerator and found the creamer. She had made it through this meal successfully, but her nerves were coiled tighter than a Slinky.

  Eight more days … she could still lose weight in eight days. But the high-protein diet had to go.

  Chapter Fifteen

  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.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On day two of the Wiener Diet, Edith ate three frankfurters for breakfast and three for brunch, deliberately planning to plead that she wasn’t hungry when the other women brought out their casseroles and desserts. Vernie had called last night, announcing an emergency rice-bag-making session in the church basement, and could Edith come?

  Of course she could come, and she would—but she would not eat the goodies that always seemed to accompany these public service events.

  Wearing a pair of stretch pants and a heavy sweater, she paused by the full-length mirror on her closet door before slipping into her coat and heading out. She hadn’t lost much weight—only a few pounds—but she thought she could see a difference, especially in her face. Her jaw line seemed sharper now, her double chin a little less evident.