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It was Frieda who first saw the ad for the diet contest, which was natural because she saw it in The Ladies' Own Magazine and Horace wouldn't have been caught dead reading something full of mushroom-soup recipes and patterns for stuffed cows to hang on your wall and tips for getting pet stains out of your lampshades. Frieda was out on the front porch talking to little Mrs. Transom from next door, and Mrs. Transom was sympathizing with all the people in this world who seemed to have such terrible weight problems, when the mail arrived and there was The Ladies' Own.
It was the February, which is to say, post-holiday issue, and when Frieda opened it up the first thing she saw was a two-page notice about the diet contest. The idea was to see what couple could reverse the most personal growth by Easter. Frieda didn't show it to Mrs. Transom. She just excused herself and went inside to read it in peace.
"Dieting is most effective if you work as a team," the ad said. "You and your hubby can give each other support, talk over your diet problems, and cheer each other's successes."
Well, thought Frieda, I never thought of that before. Horace didn't even cheer dessert. "The couple that takes off the most total weight by Easter will win an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii!" the ad said. There was a color picture of two very thin people wearing the kind of clothes very thin people wear, which is to say, very tiny clothes, and they were lying right there on a beach in Hawaii looking relaxed to where they were about to drop their big pink drinks and have the little paper umbrellas
flip right into the sand. Frieda's head fairly spun.
That evening when Horace came home she was right after him with the ad. “What do you mean support?” said Horace. “I'm a good provider, you say so yourself, and I happen to know that of all the guys down at the Cave Inn I leave the least amount of money in the place on Friday. And I don't even play the bar dice much either.”
“This is moral support they're talking about,” Frieda said.
“Then what are diet problems?” said Horace. “The only problem with a diet I can see is that you don't get to eat anything but Rodent Chow.”
“The problems are what to eat, and when to eat it, and learning to like what you're allowed to eat,” Frieda said. “I guess people can talk each other into some of this stuff.”
“Oh,” said Horace. “Well, I'm not so sure I wanna go on any diet.” Horace figured his upholstery compensated him a little for the hair he didn't have any more.
“Wouldn't you like to see to see me nice and trim?” Frieda said.
“Shoot,” Horace said. He pointed to the picture in the ad. “I suppose you want to be like that – skin and bones.” Frieda didn't deny it because actually she did.
“Wouldn't you like the trip to Hawaii if we won?” she said.
“Home is just fine with me,” Horace said, but he didn't say it very loud. The beach and the food and the drinks in the picture looked pretty good to him to tell the truth, and besides, Frieda was sniffling a little by now.
“It would be so great if we won,” she said.
“Oh, all right,” Horace said.
The next day Frieda went shopping. She bought a brand new digital read-out scale in case the old scale wasn't working after twenty years in the back of the hall closet, and she got one with extra big numbers so they could be sure of what it said even if they didn't really want to. After the department store Frieda went to the supermarket and got a supply of carrots, celery, lettuce, and water-packed
tuna. She also picked up some salad dressing that was guilt-free because it didn't have anything in it you could taste, and some soda that was just as good as real water, and a new brand of diet bread that was sliced so thin you could have read the label through the heel of the loaf.
And she bought a large bag of chocolate chip cookies from force of habit. She was really peeved at herself when she got home and discovered that her hand had just whipped out and hooked those cookies while she was on her way down the aisle to the air bread. “Shoot,” she said. And she stuffed the bag of cookies as far to the back of the cupboard as she could. Frieda hated to throw out any food, so she was hoping the boxes of bran and nutshell cereal stacked in the front of the cupboard would hide the cookies well enough for her to forget them.
By the time Horace got home Frieda had put away the nice new groceries, planned a menu, and filled out the contest form except for their weights.
“We can do those right now before supper,” she said. Mrs. Transom said she'd come over. Horace gulped a little.
“Why?” he said.
“Rules,” said Frieda. “To keep it honest somebody else has to witness the weighing and sign that what I wrote down is true.”
“Why that particular witness?” said Horace.
“Because she's old enough not to mind me in my slip and you in your bathing suit,” said Frieda.
Horace winced. “Bathing suit?” he said.
“It's OK,” said Frieda. “I found it in that box in the attic. It's better than nothing. Besides, the witness can't be somebody who's in the contest.”
“Well, it's a cinch she isn't,” Horace said. “She's about the size of a starved Schnauzer.”
Mrs. Transom came over, and Frieda got on the new scale.
“Oh, my!” said Mrs. Transom. She put her hand to her heart and steadied herself against the door jamb. “You know, it’s been a long time since I was in school and I almost can’t remember how to write down such big numbers.” Frieda wrote down the number on the contest form. She wrote as small as she could.
Mrs. Transom said, “Now you, Horace.” She had a very big smile. “Oh, good Heavens!” she said. She fanned her face with the hand that wasn't gripping the door jamb. Frieda wrote the number down and Mrs. Transom signed the form.
“Well, good luck,” she said. “Don't both of you get on that scale at once, though. It looks expensive.”
When she was gone, Horace said, “She didn't need to shout out those numbers like that. Suppose somebody was going by the house?”
“Well at least it's over with,” said Frieda. “Let's have supper.”
Frieda had made them a really nice casserole with ham and cheese and whole wheat noodles and some green peppers and onions and celery, only she'd made it with cottage cheese instead of cheddar and left the ham out. Horace's eyes crossed a little when he tasted it and they crossed again when he got half an orange for dessert. But he ate everything he could get because Frieda had packed him a one-sandwich, no-dessert lunch as a way of breaking him in and since she usually packed him two sandwiches, a bag of chips, three pickles, two cupcakes and a banana, he had noticed the difference.
“There,” said Frieda. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”
“I'm gonna go watch TV,” Horace said.
Frieda washed the dishes and put the casserole dish to soak and looked up a recipe for white fish covered with thirteen kinds of herbs to a depth that if you added some lemon juice you could almost think there was sauce on it. The cookbook said this would really fill you up when accompanied by a lovely cup of butter-free spinach and four glasses of water. She figured she'd cook the fish the next day. Then she threw some carrot sticks, a small apple, some rye wafers and a six-ounce plain yogurt into a bag for Horace's lunch the next day. She ate one of the carrot sticks while she was doing this, but she didn't realize it.
When she went into the living room Horace was sitting in front of the TV with his normal plaster-cast expression, but the TV wasn't on.
“Thought you were gonna watch,” Frieda said.
“Do you have any idea how much those pizza and hamburger joints advertise?” Horace said. “In this
one evening so far I have seen four ads for hamburgers, the same for pizza, three each for tacos and seafood, and I've lost count of the ones for fried chicken and subs. It's no wonder eating out is
expensive with them putting millions into the TV stations just so that people who never did them one bit of harm can sit and watch food that's three times life size.” His voice had a little break in it that Frieda couldn't remember ever hearing before.
“Good Lord,” she said, “how are we gonna watch the news?”
“I'm not,” said Horace. “I'm going down to the Cave Inn.”
“Oh, no,” said Frieda, “no Cave Inn. You can't drink beer on a diet. I'll fix us a nice cold diet root beer.”
Horace said, “And then we can just sit here all evening watching food ads 'til we're eating the carpet.”
“No,” said Frieda, “there are diet tips in the Ladies' Own. They say we should talk about our progress and what meeting our goals will mean to us and why we haven't done this before.”
“We haven't done this before,” said Horace, “because neither of us showed any signs of being crazy before.”
Frieda picked up a pencil. “Well,” she said, “I guess we can check off that topic. Want to just try watching the news?”
Horace punched the remote control and the first thing that came up on the screen was a shot of
some beer-batter fish with French fries. Lots of French fries.
“We're having fish tomorrow,” said Frieda. She said it the way she would have said, My dentist is very good at extractions.
Horace said, “Oh, yeah? With the scales still on, right? Because we're supposed to eat real slow?”
They turned in then, thinking that while they were asleep they couldn't think about food. Horace dreamed about bacon cheeseburgers and Frieda dreamed about lemon meringue pie. Everything was in full color.
In the morning Frieda fixed each of them a nice grapefruit half and a slice of dry toast. They split a poached egg. Horace didn't say anything about it. He just took his lunch bag and left, holding the bag as if he kind of thought it would explode and kill him and kind of hoped it would.
Well, maybe the Ladies' Own had it right about dieting together, because Frieda and Horace did find it was easier if you had someone else warning you about turning on the TV and slapping magazines out of your hands and helping you avoid streets with restaurants on them and passing you glasses of special diet water. They couldn't talk much though, because they were less likely to talk about diet tips than tip steak, and nostalgia always made Frieda a bit weepy.
On Sunday they each got back on the new scale. Horace was two pounds heavier, in extra big numbers, and Frieda had gained a pound.
“Huh?” said Horace.
“Oh, Lord,” said Frieda. She went out and bought two new kinds of water and a bag of some cellulose biscuits that were supposed to swell up in your stomach and completely eliminate all agonies of
hunger. When she got back she found Mrs. Transom on the back stoop ready to drop in.
“Well, how's the diet going?” said Mrs. Transom. She had on a very innocent face, kind of like a baby vampire in the movies.
“Oh, just fine,” said Frieda. “We've both lost a little already.”
“Oh, really?” said Mrs. Transom, just barely glancing at Frieda's hips. “Well, just keeping you honest.” She started home, walking very carefully. “Oh my, this wind,” she said. “I'm surprised some of us don't just blow away.”
Mrs. Transom took to dropping in fairly regularly after that. It was the most Frieda had seen of her in years. She always asked how it was going and Frieda always said, “Oh, fine,” and then Mrs. Transom would tell her about how she'd gone shopping and just happened to notice the wonderful cheese cake the bakery had on special. Or she'd talk about the beautiful Valentine boxes that were starting to turn up in the stores.
“I suppose you and Horace will be getting each other some nice cards this year,” she said.
One day she brought a coffee cake with her. It was the kind with butter crème and cherry filling and
a streusel top. “Of course, it's not for me,” she said. “I don't know why, but this kind of thing always makes me feel as stuffed as a turkey. I'm taking it to my sister. She's more like you. Of course, I could take her half of it and leave the rest here. She wouldn't know the difference.”
Frieda counted ten, swallowed hard, and said that if Mrs. Transom didn't mind she had better go and lie down because for some reason she had the most awful headache that morning.
Mrs. Transom, said, “Oh dear, I hope you aren't undernourished. That can bring on headaches, can't it?”
That night Horace said, “Of course she doesn't eat coffee cakes. That woman lives on air, water, and knowing how far to stay away from me.”
Frieda said, “Horace, that's your stomach talking, but I agree with you.”
About the end of March Frieda got a form in the mail from the contest people. It was to fill in on Easter with their final weights, but there was a catch. This time the weights not only had to be witnessed by the same person as before, they had to be notarized.
“Mrs. Transom,” said Horace. “And a notary too.”
“Mrs. Transom's cousin is a notary,” said Frieda.
“A skinny notary, I bet,” said Horace.
“She'd bring him over,” said Frieda. Her voice trembled a bit. “I just know she'd bring him over.” She was thinking about how the last time they weighed themselves Horace had gained five pounds and she had gained four and Horace had said, well, he'd forgotten to shave that morning and she'd been wishing she'd taken time to pluck her eyebrows.
“We could just quit the contest,” Horace said.
“She'd find out,” said Frieda.
Horace said, “You could just lose that form somewhere and then we'd have to quit.” Frieda sighed.
Horace said, “I hear all they got to eat in Hawaii anyway is fish and wallpaper paste and some kinda purple fruit with spines on it.”
Frieda sighed again and then something came back to her and she gave a little scream and ran into the kitchen. She scrabbled the boxes of nut bran cereal onto the floor, and pounced on that bag of chocolate chip cookies and ripped through the top of it with her teeth. Horace heard the racket and followed her.
“Frieda, how could you?” he said.
“How could I what?” she said. Her voice was a little thick because of the cookies.
“Make me eat like a rabbit with no teeth, and all the time you're eating chocolate chips.”
“I wasn't,” said Frieda.
‘’What are those, then?” said Horace.
“I swear I forgot they were here, she said.
Oh, yeah?” Horace said. “Well, watch me forget it.” And he put four cookies in his mouth and chewed fast.
“Now look what you've done!” said Frieda. “And I've never lied to you. Never.”
With the cookies in him Horace was more like himself again, and he said, “I know. I'm real sorry.” Frieda dried her eyes and patted him on the shoulder. He patted her on the back.
“It's okay,” she said. “Actually, I'm glad it's over.”
“Yeah,” said Horace. “Me, too. You wanna go get a pizza?”
“Yeah,” said Frieda, “and let's have a couple beers, too.”
They were sitting down in the restaurant when Horace said, “Maybe we should have brought Mrs. Transom along.”
“You don’t actually think she’d eat pizza, do you?” Frieda said.
“Hell, no,” Horace said. “I’d just like to make her watch.”