The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) Read Online Free PDF

evenings together, having a quiet dinner and a chat on the sofa. More often than not we’d take it from the sofa to the bedroom. Now there was nothing much left to take anywhere. The person I’d become, although I kept a roof over his head and food in his belly, had disappointed him.
    I hoped he was just going through a phase. Because I couldn’t stand it. And if I couldn’t stand by my man in his time of need, then we were toast. I’d promised to love and cherish him. For the sake of our marriage. For the sake of our children. I could deal with it. If I ran a leviathan like The Farthington, I should be able to do everything, including saving my marriage. Provided I still wanted to.
    Sometimes I wished I could just... wiggle my nose and make him disappear. Or at least make him change. But that was not happening. He’d spoken his mind. The die had been cast. It was lose weight or lose him, live in Boston or go to Tuscany on my own. But I was no longer sure I wanted to play by his rules anymore.
    “So, no doughnuts—are you saying Ira was right?” I challenged Paul.
    Paul rolled his dark eyes. “It’s not your looks or your sex appeal I’m worried about. It’s your health.”
    “I’m perfectly fine,” I assured him.
    “You are now. But what about when you get older? A fit body is a successful body. And it houses a happy mind.”
    A fit body houses a happy mind. Could he be right? Would I find happiness on the lower end of the bathroom scale? Would being lighter make me not only feel better, but more satisfied about my life? Technically, yes. I’d look better and feel better. Was it really down to being thin again? Yes—I remembered the looks I got when I was thin and it felt great.
    I remembered what it had been like, being slim. It had empowered me. There was no cartwheel I couldn’t (in my younger years—I haven’t tried lately) accomplish, no race I couldn’t win. I would wake up in the mornings thinking, ‘Wow, not only do I not feel like shit anymore; I actually feel good! ’ No headaches, no stomachaches, no backaches that would keep me twisting and turning in bed (“Thrashing like a pig on a spit”), according to Ira. I’d have to literally grip the bars of our wrought-iron bed to be able to turn over, my back was so bad.
    “You’re starting to sound like my mother,” I huffed. “How did we get from talking about your latest squeeze to me?”
    Paul shrugged. “Because for the last few years you’ve been miserable—and Carl’s boring the crap out of me. I’m thinking of a way to get rid of him. Speaking of which, tell me again how you killed Ira last night,” he giggled, suddenly more flippant, and I grinned despite myself. It was our little secret, a harmless game, really, but a real sanity-saver.
    They weren’t dreams, but open-eyed fantasies of getting rid of my husband once and forever in the funniest ways, like maybe shackling and squeezing him, big mouth and all, into a Tupperware box, lid on tight, his face and body assuming the shape of the container, sometimes round, sometimes square—you know, like in cartoons; his big eyes blinking, begging—no, demanding —in a muffled voice that I should let him out.
    I forgot all about the chocolate doughnut as the pleasant images caressed my mind, and I brightened up and stifled a giggle. “I hung him upside down to dry in the sun for days—like my Nonna Silvia’s ham joints,” I answered. “And when his carcass was ready, I made some real groovy leather bags.”
    Paul’s eyes flashed. “That’s still too light a treatment for Ira.”
    I don’t need to tell you that Ira and Paul weren’t bosom buddies. My husband was not tolerant of anyone different from himself. It was a wonder he married me, an Italian Catholic, when his family had always hoped that one day he would meet a nice thin Jewish girl.
    Paul always had something to say, and Ira tolerated him politely enough when he was around, but in the evening he’d sniff the