Fit for You

by Cynthia Tennent

  “Hi.” Sarah nodded and returned to her original gripe. “I should just become an Uber driver. At least then I could charge a late fee for ungrateful little sisters.”

  I could have used her earlier.

  “You’re such a baby—”

  “Enough,” Louise said, cutting them both off. “As long as I pay for the gas, and the insurance, you two need to share the rides. Honestly, you girls should be grateful to have a car.”

  “Mine!” Ivy said, pounding her fist on the arm of her wheelchair. “I drive!” For a moment the room was quiet.

  “Sorry, Grandma,” Sarah said, coming over to give her grandmother a hug.

  Ivy moved her feet restlessly. “I pick up . . . the . . . one.”

  “Mom, you can’t do that anymore. Remember what the doctor said.”

  “Sh . . . sh . . . shove.” The older woman looked at me and then at my knee. We were both in the same boat.

  Louise turned back to the kitchen. “I hope you like spaghetti, Lily. Just like the old commercials, Wednesdays are spaghetti night around here.”

  She left me in the living room with Ivy, Olivia, and Edge.

  I was rusty with kids, old people, and men with dimples.

  “Are you the reason we have to clean our bathroom?” Olivia asked.

  Sarah called out from the dining room. “Olivia, you are so rude!” She grabbed the hand of each little boy and walked them down a hallway beyond the kitchen. The sound of water running and the toilet flushing reached the living room.

  I adjusted my knee. “Sorry to be such an inconvenience.”

  Edge sat down at the far end of the couch. “You’re not the inconvenience. My sisters are. Have been since they were born.”

  Ivy’s face bent into a hundred tiny lines. It took a moment to realize she was smiling. “Good . . . one.”

  “Thanks, Grandma.”

  The boys were back. They spotted Edge and flew across the room. I braced myself for a possible collision that would take my knee out. But Edge was faster. Which was surprising for his size. He jumped forward and caught them before they reached the couch. “Easy, boys. You’ve gotta go slower around Gram and Lily, here.”

  Edge settled down with both boys on top of him. Boy number one, as I labeled him, surveyed my knee brace with intense interest. “Is that a fake knee?”

  “No. I just injured it.”

  That disappointed him. Boy number two’s eyes lit up. “Did you get it caught in a shredder?”

  “What?”

  The other one leaned across Edge’s lap. “Or did you blow it up by a land mine?”

  “How old are you two?” I asked.

  “I’m six,” announced number one with only five fingers up. “And he’s ten minutes older than me.”

  I took a stab. “Justin?” One raised his hand. “Then you are Jason.” A second hand went up. I tried to look for some distinguishing feature that would help me tell the difference between the two.

  “Birthmark,” said Edge.

  “What?”

  “Justin has a birthmark on the left side of his nose. Jason has one on the right.”

  “Now all I have to do is try to remember Justin—left, Jason—right.”

  “Of course, if you are facing them, it would mean the opposite.”

  Jason, I think, dangled his head to the ground. “Or if we’re upside down . . .” Thinking about it made me feel dizzy.

  Justin was back to my leg. “Hey, Jason, maybe her leg got caught in the toilet.”

  “Ooo, gross!”

  I twisted my lips, not sure whether to laugh or stay serious. I should understand their humor. My brothers still acted that way. Instead of joking back, I usually just got mad. Or defensive.

  “Who’s talking potty talk up here?” The sound of a woman coming up the stairs prompted the boys to hide behind Edge’s back, giggling the entire time.

  A young woman carrying a computer case came into view.

  Edge threw himself backwards, smashing the gigglers into the couch. “Grandma! How many times do we have to say it. Enough of the potty talk.”

  Ivy shook her head and snorted. “Ha.”

  Edge waved toward the newcomer. “Lily, this is my sister Tracy. The mother of these two poopers.”

  The woman stood at the top of the stairs and sent me an apologetic look. “Sorry. My family has a weird sense of humor.” That earned him another cluster of giggles.

  Tracy came over and shook my hand, pretending not to notice the boys plastered against Edge’s back. When she saw my knee, she asked, “Are you a skier?”

  “She’s the new fitness instructor at the new community center,” said Edge.

  “Can I play with your crutch?” interrupted Jason.

  His brother squirmed from behind Edge. “Yeah! Let’s pretend we got our legs blown off in a bomb and we have to use it to walk.”

  “And there’s a secret gun inside!”

  “Yeah! Cool!”

  “Not today, SEAL Team Six.” Edge stood up and grabbed a boy in each arm, tucking them tightly against his side to keep them still as if they were two footballs. “Go see what you can do to help in the kitchen.”

  Tracy asked, “Is it spaghetti night?”

  “It’s poopy night,” Justin said, making the other boy laugh hysterically.

  I watched them stumble into the kitchen and wondered if it was too early to take another Vicodin.

  * * *

  The spaghetti was good, and I was hungrier than I thought I would be. I forced myself to move part of the pasta to the side and add more salad to my plate. Being a fitness and health instructor meant I was always “on.”

  When I tried on my old winter coat before coming, my mom said in her accented English, “You look like a snowman in that jacket. Ha. Be careful, you might blow up like one if you eat too much.” She was always joking about my awkward stage. Just like my brothers used to. The three of them had the same sense of humor.

  Edge seated me at the end of the table, where he could prop my knee up on a vacant chair. No one remarked about my knee again. Like potty humor, the Callahan family took handicap issues in stride.

  The dining room had long ago lost its battle with the family. The china cabinet was full to the brim with dishes and teacups in random arrangements. Stacks of paper sat on an empty chair. A laundry basket full of toys sat in the corner. A counter separated the dining room from the kitchen. It was strewn with a toaster, a coffeemaker, and canisters with cows on them.

  After we said grace, Louise nodded at the empty chair next to her and the one my knee inhabited. “We have two empty seats. My other son, Peter, is a sophomore at State. My husband left earlier this month. He works on a lake freighter and they just started running in the lower lakes this month.”

  “They haul iron ore,” Tracy added.

  I had little knowledge of the Great Lakes and the shipping industry. In fact, the only freighter I had ever heard of was the Edmund Fitzgerald. But I did know something about having an empty seat at the table. My own father had been gone since I was twelve years old. I mostly remember his gray hair and smiling eyes. And the way he cheered like a fool at my soccer games.

  “Grandpa is going to let me steer the freighter next time we visit him,” said Justin . . . I think.

  Jason, or the other twin, shifted to a kneeling position and decided to educate me. “Did you know that Grandpa steers from the front of the boat because it goes through the lakes. If it was an ocean freighter he would steer from the back.”

  “I never knew that.” I was changing my mind. Maybe the kids were kind of cute.

  Justin proudly let a noodle hang out his mouth before sucking it up with a whoosh. Not to be outdone, Jason did the same.

  “Stop,” Tracy told her sons. She shouldn’t reprimand them for my benefit. Slurping was normal in my half-Korean house. My mother would have outslurped them both. It was perfectly polite in Korea.

  “Where are you from, dear?” asked Louise as she po
ured a glass of milk for each of the twins.

  “Los Angeles. But I was born in Connecticut.”

  “Then you know a thing or two about winter,” she said.

  “I moved to L.A. when I was twelve, but I don’t remember Connecticut being as cold as this.”

  “Are both your parents from America—” Olivia started. She jumped as if she had been kicked under the table. Sarah sent her a dirty look. I remembered the nickname O-loud-ia, and understood now. It was about more than just the volume of her voice.

  I put her out of her misery. People were always curious anyway. “My mom moved from Korea to L.A. when she was fourteen. She’s a citizen now. She was working in Connecticut as a translator when she met my dad.”

  My father, eighteen years older than my mom, met her in a business meeting. Dad was the old guy in a young office. The kind of man everybody liked, but who was more comfortable watching television and putzing in his garden than socializing with large groups of people.

  Mom took one look at Dad and decided to make him her project. She cajoled him out to dinner with the rest of the staff, and by the time midnight rolled around Dad was singing the chorus at a karaoke bar. If the match seemed odd to anyone, they kept their mouths shut. Mom’s family liked the fact that Dad had a secure job. Dad’s family was beyond grateful to the tiny Asian girlfriend who pulled Dad out of oblivion.

  The Callahans were fast talkers. Olivia talked about the girls in her high school, Tracy mentioned a test she was studying for, and Louise reminded an unhappy Ivy to eat more. They passed the rest of the meal teasing, arguing, and interrupting at lightning speed.

  When the meal was finished, I told everyone I had work to do and headed toward the lift at the stairs. The girls were telling stories of their day, and I felt out of place. The heat of Edge’s gaze rested on me as the chair drifted down to my bedroom on the first floor. He was probably regretting his decision to have me stay here as much as I was.

  As the sound of the family faded, I swallowed past a lump in my throat. A remnant of my mood. And the drugs, of course.

  I closed the bedroom door and tried to ignore the muffled sounds of the Callahans talking. Occasionally someone laughed and voices rose. The atmosphere around the table tonight reminded me of the holidays with my mom’s family. Mom and her sisters would gossip in Korean. My brothers and cousins would leapfrog over each other, comparing their successful careers. And I would hide in the corner of the couch and watch sports on TV.

  I pulled a resistance band out of my suitcase and lay on the floor. Wrapping the band around the heel of my foot, I forced myself to do the exercises the physical therapist had taught me. He had been opposed to my insistence that I could handle my own rehab. But Lord knows I had rehabbed my other knee once already. I was practically an expert.

  “It isn’t the same when you rehab yourself,” he explained. But I argued that I had no choice. There were no physical therapists in Truhart. And driving a half hour to Gaylord was out of the question for me. He felt better when I promised him that every month I would make sure to check in with the orthopedic physician affiliated with Gaylord Central Hospital. In the meantime, I had a dozen earmarked pages of pictures and directions to help me strengthen my knee on my own.

  I tried to fire the quad muscle on my shrunken right leg. Compared to my left leg, it was feeble. As tired as I was, it was important to keep up with my exercises every day. I had no tolerance for people who gave up on their goals. Quitters were always losers. I had learned that for myself years ago. I hadn’t been a natural at sports, like my brothers. I was awkward and heavy. In fact, the first time I ran out onto the soccer field, I scored a goal . . . for the opposite team. Mom laughed at me on the car ride home. But Dad said a goal was a goal. It made him just as proud.

  When I first started working as a trainer at the local YMCA, I had clients who felt they would never succeed. I understood their frustration more than they knew. Those early years taught me the importance of fighting through the insecurity and self-defeating habits that kept people from reaching their goals. I missed those days. In some ways, they were the most satisfying times of my career.

  I ran my finger over the old scars on my other knee, and rolled down the compression stocking I wore to help with circulation during a long day of travel. Everything healed, given time. Even the ugly new scars and the swollen knee that was bigger than the quadriceps I used to be proud of.

  After a short shower, I lay in bed doing my best to ignore my throbbing knee, resisting the urge to take a Vicodin.

  Someone knocked on the bedroom door. “Lily?”

  Too tired to get up from where I had collapsed on the bed, I called out, “Yes?”

  Louise Callahan’s face appeared through a crack in the door. “We thought you might like a little ice on your knee.”

  I started to refuse, but she was already through the door with a box and hose in her hand. I almost cried in relief.

  Ice machines were one of the most useful aids for any knee after surgery. It provided a constant circulating coolness all night. Because of its bulk, I had decided to forgo bringing mine with me across the country. Mom said she would ship it if worse came to worst. But seeing the familiar-looking machine in Louise’s hands made me grateful that Mom wouldn’t need to go to the trouble.

  Louise stood beside the bed. “Tomorrow is going to be a big day for you. You’ll probably meet half the town. No need to start with a swollen knee.”

  “Half the town?”

  “The Triple C’s have been waiting for this day to arrive ever since they got the grant. Don’t let them overwhelm you too much. Especially my aunt Addie. God, I love that woman, but she is like a steamroller made of Jell-O. Now let’s see if we can get this on you.”

  I sat up and adjusted my leg. “You are an angel, Mrs. Callahan.”

  “Louise.” She unwound the cord and tube from the box, and moved toward the wall to plug in the machine. “With five kids in sports over the years, we’ve had our fair share of knee injuries . . . Some knees more than others.” She looked down at both my legs.

  “I—just . . .”

  “No need to explain, Lily. If there are war stories to be told, we can save it for another day. Right now, let’s get you comfortable.”

  I helped her wrap the cool padding around my knee and secure it with an ace bandage. Then I watched as she attached the hoses that ran from the padding to the ice chest. I could feel the immediate cool water running from the ice chest to the pad on my knee. I closed my eyes and sighed.

  “Better?” Louise asked.

  “Heavenly! I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Thank Edge. He’s the one who scavenged in the attic to retrieve this.”

  “He did?”

  “We hoped we would never have to use it again. But you know how it is when you get rid of things like this. It’s a jinx. Before you know it, you need them again. We figured if we kept everything, we’d never need it again. Ha! But here we are . . .”

  “Well, at least I’m not one of your kids, Louise.”

  I lay back and she patted me on the shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. It still hurts my heart to see anyone need one of these.”

  When Louise left, I closed my eyes and tried to forget about Edge and his gray eyes that saw more than they should. Even so, I drifted off to sleep, buried in a soft bed and fluffy comforter that made me feel like I was being hugged by a teddy bear.

  LESSON THREE

  Set Reasonable Goals

  The next morning I sat across the dining room table from Ivy, who stared at me as if we hadn’t met the day before. The girls had already left the house for school, yelling at each other about being late. And the twins were on the bus to elementary school.

  Louise placed an egg in front of me, even though I told her I was happy with just coffee. “We always have a big breakfast around here. It’s the one meal of the day I know my kids will eat. The girls are terrible about meals, and Edge is always on the run somewher
e. And Mom”—she nodded at Ivy—“I try to give her a good breakfast before we go to Lakeview every morning.”

  “Lakeview?”

  “The adult day care that I manage.” She ignored the grunt that came from Ivy. “In between nursing school classes, Tracy works there, too.”

  Ivy spoke up. “Don’t.”

  “Mom, I know you have fun when you are there. You heard music yesterday. And you love making flowers.” She nodded to an arrangement of paper flowers on the counter behind me.

  “Don’t. Like!”

  Louise shook her head and reached for the coffeepot on the counter behind her. She poured me a cup and explained, “Since Mom’s stroke, she’s lost a lot of mobility and some language skills. But she has no problem understanding.”

  Ivy fed a piece of her toast to the dogs.

  “Mom used to live across the street. Having her here makes life easier for both of us, right, Ma?”

  Ivy pinched her lips together. When Louise left to get dressed, Ivy lifted the remaining piece of toast to her mouth. She bit into it and then spit it back on the table.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Too . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Too hot?”

  She shook her head.

  “Too hard?”

  She dropped the toast for the dogs, who scrambled at her feet.

  I shifted in my chair and tried to make small talk. The weather was always safe. “Nice day. Have you had much snow this winter?”

  Ivy frowned at the table. Maybe she wasn’t a morning person.

  My mom’s parents were relatively young and healthy, but my dad’s parents passed away many years ago. My clientele were mostly under sixty. This type of interaction was new for me.

  I decided to focus on my egg and my plans for the day. A door downstairs opened, and the dogs barked. A few moments later, Edge pounded up the stairs wearing another flannel shirt, loose jeans, and a baseball hat.

  “Good morning, Grandma,” he said, giving Ivy a kiss on the cheek. She smiled at him and patted his jacket. The first smile I saw her give today.

  “Morning, Lily.” He waved, his eyes scanning my work clothes. I was wearing my yoga pants and a gray quarter-zip pullover. My hair was in a ponytail, and I had taken the time to put on mascara.