Fit for You

by Cynthia Tennent

  Marva O’Shea nodded, with both hands over her mouth as if she were in pain. Perhaps she was just realizing that making a change to her diet was not going to be easy.

  “I promise I can work with you to find something you like and something you will crave that is better for you than candy and ice cream.”

  The crowd was quiet now.

  But there was a strange tension in the air I couldn’t identify. I spotted Edge. He was no longer holding up the back wall with casual amusement. He was standing stiffly, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat.

  Mr. Teddy Bear looked like Mr. Grizzly Bear right now.

  I held the papers back up. “Don’t be afraid to make changes in your life. You will be amazed at the way you feel when you challenge yourself to do this. You deserve this. Your body deserves it!”

  I struggled for a final note, a rabble-rousing phrase to end my speech. Something that would make the walls shake and the crowd race to the front of the room to get their signature on a sign-up sheet.

  Marva pointed at Addie Adler. “Show them your T-shirt, Addie.”

  She hopped up from her chair and faced the crowd. “The Triple C’s had them made,” she said proudly.

  I stepped forward. “Addie is wearing a T-shirt that says everything you need to motivate yourself. If you sign up today you can all get a free T-shirt and start your journey to be the best you can be.”

  Several people stood up, ready to be first in line. I held up my hand. I wasn’t finished.

  “Remember these words and repeat them every morning and evening.” I put my arm around Addie Adler. “Help me, Addie.”

  She pointed to each line on her shirt. “Aim High! Work Hard! Don’t Quit!”

  “Can I hear everyone say it?” I was on a roll. “Come on. Stand up, everyone.”

  In a giant wave of people, the room stood up. My heart soared.

  “Aim High!”

  “Work Hard!”

  “Don’t Quit!”

  My heart beat so hard I could feel it in my throat when I said the last words. I couldn’t stop smiling when I stepped backwards and watched the room come to life as the people of Truhart lined up to put their names on a poster board and claim their T-shirt.

  This was going to work. Forget Just Lose It and my stale protein packets in Mom’s garage. If only my brothers could see me now. I had just galvanized a town. Success was in my grasp.

  I searched for Edge Callahan, hoping to get a thumbs-up of approval.

  But he was nowhere to be seen.

  Marva, Regina, Addie, and Elizabeth handed out T-shirts to everyone who put their name on the posters. I greeted people and listened as they told me about their struggles with weight. I encouraged several people to visit Dr. Manning before starting the program. I wrote down the names of volunteers who wanted to lead walking groups. We had a young mothers group, a grandparents group, and even a bridge club. I forgot all about my aching knee and my old grudges. This was what I was born to do. I couldn’t wait to start.

  Addie handed me a T-Shirt. “That’s everyone. We’re going to the fish fry now.” I bit my lip. There would be time for more food talk later.

  Marva and Elizabeth broke down the cardboard boxes that had held the T-shirts and stacked them against the door. “That went well, Lily,” Elizabeth said.

  “Thanks. I wasn’t sure people liked when I talked about making diet changes. But I think everyone was willing to consider it.”

  “Almost everyone,” Marva said. She and Elizabeth exchanged looks.

  “Sometimes people need time to adjust.” I shouldered my athletic bag. “Did you see Edge? I was hoping he would give me a ride back to the Callahans’.”

  “Yeah, um, he left. I’m giving you a ride home,” Elizabeth said, looking away from Marva.

  “I was surprised more people didn’t sign up for walking tomorrow,” I said.

  Elizabeth put a hand on my arm. “Sometimes people make plans and can’t change them.”

  Marva came to stand beside me. “The temperature is supposed to be over forty-five degrees tomorrow.”

  I nodded, wondering at the significance. “That’s good, I guess.”

  “Edge scoops when it gets warm.”

  “Scoops?” An earlier conversation I had heard about scooping and freezers came to mind.

  Elizabeth nodded to Marva. “See. I told you she didn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  Marva picked up a stack of boxes and leaned against the door. “You tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” And then it hit me. Freezers. Kiddos. Scoops. And Edge’s strange reaction every time I mentioned ice cream. I knew what was coming before Elizabeth said it.

  “Edge owns the Dairy Cow. He’s scooping ice cream for the Spring Thaw Grand Opening.”

  * * *

  The Dairy Cow must have been doing good business, because I didn’t see Edge the rest of the weekend. Sarah drove me to the gym to meet my first walkers on Saturday. And Elizabeth drove me home.

  After doing my exercises Sunday afternoon, I wandered upstairs. The boys were huddled on the couch, playing a video game while Ivy watched. Tracy sat at the dining room table working on her laptop, and I wandered in on my way to get a glass of water.

  Tracy raised her head when she saw me. “You look completely bored.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your work. I’m just not sure what to do with myself.”

  “You can come sit down and tell me how you are doing.”

  I sat down and adjusted my brace under the table.

  “Boys, turn the volume down,” Tracy called into the living room. She wasn’t fazed when they complained.

  I couldn’t imagine having two children at this point in my life. Or raising them on my own. Louise had mentioned an ex-husband who was out of the picture. Thank goodness Tracy had family nearby.

  Whenever I thought about having children, I felt overwhelmed. I could never be half as good a parent as Dad. Or even Mom, who showed her love in weird ways. She wasn’t the sentimental sort. Love to Mom was cooking lots of food. Teasing me. Nagging me. Mom was unemotional, even when I went in for surgery. Both times.

  Her joking words before they wheeled me into the operating room were, Make sure they get the right leg.

  When I cried after the second surgery, Mom left the curtained room and let me sob to a nurse, who gave me ice chips and patted my shoulder.

  Now I looked at Tracy and I wondered how she did it. She went to school in the evenings and worked at the adult day care during the day. And in between all that, she wiped noses, broke up fights, and put two little boys to bed.

  “Are you studying?” I asked.

  “Yes. I have a test next week and I swear I don’t even know where the digestive tract connects to the stomach.”

  “I remember that unit.”

  “With two boys, you’d think I’d already know all about the digestive tract. But the place where the food goes in and out are only a small portion of the system. The body is an amazing, complicated thing.”

  I lifted my leg onto the chair next to me. “Well, feel free to pick my brain when you study ligament tears.”

  She sat back. “Oh, we already know plenty about that in our house. Both Edge and Peter tore theirs.”

  “That explains why you had an ice machine.” I thought about Edge’s grim expression when he saw my other knee.

  “Yup. You name it, we have the equipment. Braces, crutches, ice machines, wheelchairs, blood-pressure cuffs. What do you think gave me the idea to be a nurse? I helped Mom patch injuries and nurse illnesses so often I figured I should get paid for it.”

  I totally related to a career built on personal experience.

  “So, how did the ACL tears and other injuries happen?” I wanted to find out more about Edge.

  Tracy leaned forward. “For Peter it was football. He never met a sport he didn’t like. But for Edge it was always skiing. The first time my grandfather took him to Boyne Moun
tain, he went down the bunny hill once and decided he was ready for a black diamond.”

  “Wow.” If I remembered correctly, that was the most difficult rating in ski talk.

  “Edge was born to ski. Before he was ten he was winning junior downhill ski races throughout the state. By the time he was seventeen he was competing in the junior nationals in Colorado.”

  I couldn’t imagine laid-back Edge competing in a serious competition. “What happened?” Before she could say anything, I caught myself. “Sorry. You don’t have to tell me. It isn’t any of my business.”

  “It’s no secret, Lily. Everyone in the skiing community knows what happened.” She looked in the living room and lowered her voice. “It feels like it was a long time ago, but I guess it was just that the boys weren’t born yet. Edge was training for the Olympics. He was favored to make the final cut. He had an accident.”

  I felt sick thinking about it. “ACL?”

  She shook her head. “Oh no. That happened when he was twenty. No. The accident happened when he flipped over a rough patch at the edge of the course. It took his helmet right off. It was his third concussion.”

  The thin scar on his temple must be a remnant of the accident. “Was it bad?”

  “Far worse than the first two. It was a TBI. Traumatic brain injury. He had to lie in a quiet room for months. No light. No music. No TV. Everything was painful for him. When he finally recovered, the doctor gave him an ultimatum. Keep skiing and risk permanent brain injury. Or stop. It almost killed him. He lost his favorite sport, a lot of his friends, and his fian—well, let’s just say some of his relationships fell apart, too.”

  Something sharp hit me below the solar plexus. I tried to picture Edge, tall and strong as he was now, forced to lie in bed for months. It made me reassess everything I had thought about him. With his oversize flannel shirts and silly sense of humor, he acted like life was one big joke. But it had been dead serious for him not too long ago. Edge had been a world-class athlete. A man with a goal and dream. I remembered the feel of his muscles under my fingertips when he lifted me into the truck. Somewhere hidden under all those layers of clothing was still an athlete’s body. Even odder was the thought that buried beneath all the joking was an athlete’s drive.

  “So, he owns an ice cream parlor now?”

  Tracy threw her head back and laughed, earning her the attention of her boys. “What’s so funny, Mommy?”

  “Just my twisted humor, boys.”

  They pinched their noses with their fingers and repeated the word kooties over and over.

  Tracy rolled her eyes at her boys. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at your question. It’s just that I saw the irony for the first time. Edge left the snow and ice for another kind of ice.”

  I laced my fingers on the table in front of me. “Did anyone tell you I kind of trashed the Dairy Cow at the meeting?”

  “Oh, I heard. Not from Edge. From Mom.”

  “Your mom probably hates me now.”

  “Oh gosh, if Mom got mad over little things like that, she would never have friends. She was fine with it. She agrees people might need to make fewer visits to the ice cream parlor and more to the salad bar.”

  “I don’t think Edge is too happy with me. I haven’t seen him since the meeting.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to see him get involved in this whole fitness challenge. He keeps busy coaching kids over at Boyne during the winter. And he substitutes for the gym teacher at the elementary school. He made a lot of money on endorsements and he invested well. It would be hypocritical of him not to care about physical fitness.”

  I was surprised. I assumed he only drove garbage trucks and scooped ice cream. Thinking of Edge around kids, though, seemed to fit. He had a way with his nephews. They laughed at everything he did, but they also snapped to attention when he gave orders.

  I left Tracy to her studying and made my way downstairs to watch the NCAA finals by myself in the Callahans’ recreation room. During the entire game, my brother texted me how great his team was. When his team won, he sent a picture of himself wearing a CHAMPION hat from courtside while the team cut the net!

  I kept hoping that Edge would wander in so I could talk about what happened at the meeting. But he never appeared.

  LESSON SIX

  Start Slowly

  Monday morning, I was greeted in the driveway by a late model Chevrolet pickup truck. Edge stood by the door, wearing a navy barn jacket that could have come from the fall issue of Esquire. I tried not to let him see how happy I was that he was still willing to talk to me.

  “Where is the teddy truck?”

  “Uncle Pete’s back is better. This is mine.”

  I wasn’t much of a car person. But even I could tell that the red truck with shiny chrome was high-end.

  “You look surprised.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Not only because he was talking to me, but also because he didn’t own a run-down beater with fuzzy dice hanging off the rearview mirror.

  He held open the door. “Are you pleased?”

  “Immensely.” Not only could I get in by myself, but I might be able to apologize now.

  Once out of the driveway, Edge gunned all eight cylinders. I clutched the seat to keep from falling toward his lap on a curve.

  “Edge, I want to talk about what happened the other day—”

  Without warning, music blasted from the impressive stereo system. Honestly, did the man ever drive in silence? This time the strains of Jimi Hendrix playing “Voodoo Child” shook the truck.

  “Edge? Can we talk?” I shouted.

  He bobbed his head up and down, and I was semi-sure one of the bobs was a yes to my question, so I kept talking.

  “I’m sorry for mentioning the Dairy Cow the other night.”

  He stared straight ahead, his bearded chin still keeping beat.

  “It was just the first thing that came to my mind.”

  We had reached the county road. As if I hadn’t just apologized, he raised a finger in the air. “Wait for this part of the song. You’re gonna love it.”

  I put my elbow against the window. “I know, I know, the guitar solo.”

  His head turned sharply. “Hey, you like Jimi?”

  “Of course! Delta blues and rock and roll.” My throat was getting sore from shouting.

  We stopped at a four-way stoplight, apparently the only traffic device in Truhart. The guitar riff was almost over.

  Edge stared at me with his mouth open as Jimi wailed on the wah pedal.

  “Don’t look at me that way. I do like music.” Just not at this decibel.

  He turned down the speaker with the button on his steering wheel. “But you know Jimi.”

  I smiled. It was always nice to impress men with my knowledge of music. “I know rock and roll.”

  Besides having brothers who blasted their stereos when Mom and Dad were gone, I had played bass guitar in a teen garage band. We were awful. But we had a lot of fun. I quit the summer before my junior year to concentrate on soccer. I rubbed my other knee, remembering how that went down.

  The look he gave me could have steamed up the inside of the truck. “There is absolutely nothing sexier than a girl who likes rock and roll.”

  “Certainly not a guy who plays air drum on the steering wheel.”

  He laughed. It was a good sign.

  “So am I back in your good graces?” I asked.

  He put his foot on the accelerator. “Knowing about Jimi helps your redemption.”

  For the rest of the trip, Edge and I shared our favorite songs and laughed about the lyrics we still didn’t understand. By the time we arrived at the gym, I felt a million pounds lighter. I opened the car door by myself and stepped out with no help.

  Edge waited by the door, probably ready to catch me if I fell, and handed me my crutch and my gym bag.

  “Have a great day, Lily.” He looked down at me with a twinkle in his eye, and I couldn’t help wishing for another arm-wr
estling competition.

  “Thanks for the ride.” I put the key in the lock and opened the door to the gym.

  “No problem,” he said, as I stepped through the doorway.

  I was about to turn around and tell him to have a great day, too, when I was attacked by a shower of black and white latex.

  “What the—?” Dozens of balloons fell from the ceiling, blocking my vision and my path. They bounced over each other and across the floor of the gym. I swatted them away with my crutch and wondered who had done such a thing.

  I picked up one of the balloons and looked at the picture printed on the front. It was a cow with ice cream cones under its udders. Big bold letters across the top said DAIRY COW.

  I turned around to see Edge leaning against his truck. His lips were curled in a huge grin and he waved. “Happy April Fools’ Day, Lily!”

  * * *

  When Edge picked me up in the afternoon, instead of getting angry, I made him take me to the grocery store.

  “Are you punishing me for this morning?”

  “Yes, I’m getting even,” I told him. “It took me fifteen minutes to pop all those the balloons.” And even then, I was still finding stray balloons in the corners of the gym.

  I made Edge push the cart up and down the aisles of the Family Fare while I grabbed what I needed for the nutrition class. I had asked my mother to mail me my NutriBullet blender and a box of my protein packets. My plan was to show everyone how tasty a morning breakfast smoothie could be, as well as create a few meal substitutions that would help lose the inches.

  “Just don’t make me go down the hippie aisle again,” Edge moaned while I wandered the fruit and vegetable department. The Family Fare had a very small organic food section. Edge had acted like a child being forced to eat spinach when I dragged him down that aisle.

  “Lots of people shop the organic section.” I placed a bunch of bananas in the cart.

  “Only if they want to eat grass seeds and mulch.”

  “You can say what you want, but it beats chicken nuggets and cheeze puffs.”