Read A Diet to Die For for Free Online

down the driveway. She looked as despondent as I felt.

THREE
    I drove back to the store and repeated the conversation I’d had with Maribeth, mentioning that I’d also met Gerald. Joanie was not impressed with my efforts. After a few minutes of communicating as much, she announced she had not yet abandoned all hope and that she was going to the Ultima Center to pick up information about the program and its cost. I warned her not to sign anything she couldn’t read without a magnifying glass and, with a small sigh of relief, watched her drive away.
    As predictably as the 1040 forms arrive the week after Christmas (ho, ho, ho), Caron and Inez stormed the store at four o’clock.
    “We have been to that health food store,” the former announced. The latter blinked in support.
    I closed the checkbook and aligned my pencil (red) beside it. “Were they running a special on kelp?”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mother,” Caron said in a tone meant to convey there were More Important Things on the agenda than obtuse remarks from her mother. “Do you know how much they want
for one little packet of yellowish-green stringy stuff that looks like dried dog hair?”
    “Your firstborn child?”
    “This is not funny.” Caron glowered at Inez; Inez nodded her head, realized that might not be the requisite response, shook her head, and finally gave up and stared at the floor. “They want an absolute fortune. I pointed out that it was just icky seaweed and that no one in his or her right mind would eat it unless going on a macrobiotic diet, and the guy got all snooty and said he ate it every morning for breakfast. On rice cakes. And drank goat’s milk.” She stopped to roll her eyes as she relived the repugnant scene. “Well, I told him that his store was a total rip-off and that he ought to be arrested for public indecency for having pornographic food right there on the counter where innocent children might see it.”
    I held up my hand. “And he threw you out of the store, and therefore you have no way to go on the macrobiotic diet. How am I doing?”
    It was obvious I wasn’t in contention for any popularity awards, or even a nomination. Caron mentally ran through her repertory and settled on the role of martyred teen-saint. “I was only trying to improve myself,” she said as her eyes filled with tears. “Today Rhonda told Inez that Louis Wilderberry, who’s so stupid he wears his IQ on his football jersey, said the guys were making me a cardboard crown and one of those stupid sashes. I could just die.”
    “It’s terrible,” Inez added in a sepulchral voice.
    Caron covered her face with her hands, either out of despair or a desire to win an Oscar. “When I grow up—if I decide to—I’ll probably end up like that Maribeth person. I’ll have to wear clothes made out
of polyester bed sheets and no one will let me sit on wicker furniture. I might as well call it quits while I can still fit into a prefab coffin.
    At this point whatever patience I had evaporated. “Now listen here,” I said angrily, “Maribeth has a legitimate problem, and she doesn’t whine nearly as much as you do. If you don’t want to be grounded for the next five years while you ponder the value of compassion, cut out that kind of thoughtless remark and stop this self-indulgent moaning and groaning. Give up pizza and sodas and chips and cupcakes for two weeks and you’ll lose a few pounds. Take the money you were going to use for seaweed and send anonymous boxes of Twinkies to Rhonda Maguire so she can be Miss Fabulous Flab or whatever.”
    “Miss Thunder Thighs,” Inez corrected me politely.
    Caron’s eyes narrowed to slits and her lower lip popped out like the plastic doneness indicator in a roasted turkey. “Come on, Inez, there are half a dozen more diet books at my house. We didn’t even look at the one where you mix up things in a blender.”
    I waited until the poor little bell jangled, then leaned back in