Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

exercise?” I said hopefully. “I’m pretty active. Won’t I need to eat more to offset

it?”

He roared. “Honey child,” he said, “do you know how far you would have to

hike to burn up one chocolate malt? Eight miles! It will help, but not much.”

“How long do I keep this up?”-I asked faintly.

“Until you reach the weight you want-or until your character plays out.”

I marched out with my jaw set. If a girl doesn’t have a figure or character

either, what has she got left?

Mother was home when we got there. Daddy picked her up and kissed her and

said, “Now you’ve got two of us on diets!”

“Two?” said Mother.

“Look.” Daddy peeled off his shirt. His arms were covered with little red

pin pricks, some redder than others, arranged in neat rows. “I’m allergic,” he

announced proudly. “Those aren’t real colds. I’m allergic to practically everything.

That one”- he pointed to a red welt- “is bananas. That one is corn. That one is

cow’s milk protein. And there is pollen in honey. Wait.” He hauled out a list:

“Rhubarb, tapioca, asparagus, lima beans, coconut, mustard, cow’s milk, apricot,

beets, carrots, lamb, cottonseed oil, lettuce, oysters, chocolate-here, you read it;

it’s your proble m.

“It’s a good thing that I went to the campus today and signed up for an

evening class in domestic dietetics. From now on this family is going to be fed

scientifically,” Mother said.

That should have been the worst of it, but it wasn’t. Junior announced that

he was training for hockey and he had to have a training-table diet-which to him

meant beef, dripping with blood, whole-wheat toast, and practically nothing else.

Last season he had discovered that, even with lead weights in his pockets, he didn’t

have what it took for a body check. Next season he planned to be something between

Paul Bunyan and Gorgeous George. Hence the diet.

By now, Mother was on a diet, too, a scientific one, based on what she had

learned during the two weeks

she had actually attended classes. Mother pored over charts and we each had separate

trays like a hospital, the time I broke my ankle playing second base for the West

Side Junior Dodgers. Mother says a girl with my figure should not be a tomboy, but I

said that a tomboy should not have my figure. Anyhow, I am no longer a tomboy since

Cliff came into my life.

Somehow, Mother found things that weren’t on Daddy’s verboten list-stewed

yak and pickled palm fronds and curried octopus and such. I asked if Daddy had been

checked for those too? He said, “Tend to your knitting, Puddin’,” and helped himself

to more venison pasty. I tried not to watch.

Mother’s own diet was as esoteric, but less attractive. She tried to tempt

Junior and me with her seaweed soup or cracked wheat or raw rhubarb, but we stuck to

our own diets. Eating is fun, but only if it’s food.

Breakfast was easiest; Daddy breakfasted later than I did-he had no lectures

earlier than ten o’clock that semester.

I would lie abed while our budding athlete wolfed down his Breakfast of

Champions, then slide out at the last minute, slurp my glass of tomato juice

(twentyeight calories), and be halfway to school before I woke up. By then it would

be too late to be tempted.

I carried my pitiful little lunch. Cliff started packing his lunch, too, and

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we picnicked together. He never noticed what I ate or how much.

I didn’t want Cliff to notice, not yet. I planned to make him faint with the

way I would look in my new formal at graduation prom.

It did not work out. Cliff took two final exams early and left for

California for the summer and I spent the night of the prom in my room, nibbling

celery (four calories per stalk) and thinking about life.

We got ready for our summer trip immediately thereafter. Daddy voted for New

Orleans.

Mother shook her head. “Impossibly hot. Besides, I don’t want you tempted by

those Creole restaurants.”

“Just what I had in mind,” Daddy answered. “Finest gourmet restaurants in