Your Roots Are Showing (26 page)

Ivana put down her diary. She took off her glasses. She stood up and held out her arms. Lizzie, taken by surprise, stood up too and took a couple of stumbling steps toward the woman. The next thing she knew, her nose was smooshed up against a woolly shoulder and Ivana was patting her gently on the back. Not the sort of back pat she’d been hoping for when she bounced into the office, but still.

“My poor girl,” Ivana was murmuring. “I will give you a piece of paper, yes, but this will not solve. Only talk will solve. You need to
talk
to this husband. You need to speak of the rage inside. The rage is normal, many women have the rage, many times it is part of the loving. Maybe this husband loves you still, maybe no. For sure, he thinks you love him no more. You need to tell him what is for real in your heart.”

Lizzie was sniffling and nodding, torn between acute discomfort because she could smell the garlicky, lavendery smell of this old woman who was more or less a stranger, and deep gratitude because her shoulder was so broad and accommodating.

The patting stopped and Lizzie straightened. Just for a moment, before she pulled out of Ivana’s grasp, her eyes fell on the open diary. She was able to make out the words “Exercise addiction” and an emphatic question mark.

That night, as Lizzie crept into the children’s room to tuck them in one last time, she couldn’t help but stand and gaze, struck by an unusual sense of how lucky she was to have these two small, impossibly demanding, impossibly lovable persons to care for.

After all, Ivana might think that she, Lizzie, was a desperate case lurching from protracted postpartum depression straight into outright exercise addiction, but to her children, she knew, she was all-powerful, all-knowing, and without flaw (well, if you discounted her inability to win fun runs).

Asleep, the twins looked blameless and helpless all at the same time. You couldn’t hold any grudge about pen marks on the new sofa or beheaded peonies in the garden when you stood watching them sleep. Instead, you started to go sentimental and think how grateful you were to Panda the panda for standing guard over them so faithfully all through the night.

One morning, Lizzie woke up and realized that she felt pretty good. This was strange and inexplicable, but it was true.

She still missed James the way you’d miss a limb, and she couldn’t imagine that ache ever going away. But other things had healed, and she was growing a little stronger every day, in spite of everything.

Besides, she now had a plan.

The plan was very simple. On the day of Maria’s wedding, Lizzie — looking thin and gorgeous — would dazzle James with her transformation. When the band struck up, she’d brazenly ask him to slow dance. She’d be bold out on the floor, running her fingers over his back, pressing herself against him the way she used to in the old days. He’d be intrigued, as much by her new attitude as by her new look. Later, when the moment seemed right, she’d push an envelope across the table to him. Inside would be the letter from Ivana, the letter certifying, in Eastern European syntax, that Elizabeth Buckley had been clinically depressed when she’d written the e-mail in which she said her quality of life would be improved if her husband just disappeared. Perhaps, if she had the courage, Lizzie would also tuck inside a letter of her own, a letter listing all the lovely things she’d like to do to him if he would only give her another chance to show her love.

She didn’t think she’d mention the rage inside. At least, not just at first. She’d save that up for when they were safely together again.

And when he’d read the note — love letter, really — he wouldn’t be able to hold out anymore. He would finally explain to her why he’d told her over the phone that time that he wanted this divorce at least as much as she did. (Well, obviously she didn’t want it at all, but he persisted in thinking she was desperate for it. Which meant he’d said
he
was desperate for it too. Which was bad, very bad, and possibly the major flaw in her brilliantly simple plan to get him back.)

Determined not to stray further into this gloomy aside, Lizzie gave herself a mental shake. Then, stretching slowly in bed — a real wooden bed with a headboard — she replayed the image of her thin and gorgeous self on the dance floor in James’s arms. They were waltzing — yes, all of a sudden she could waltz quite charmingly — and James was so close she could smell his familiar aftershave.

Lizzie stood up, went over to the window, and tied a knot in the sheet she still used as a curtain. Sunlight lay in bars across the dewy lawn and burnished the brash new bramble branches that were fingering their way through the fence again. Lizzie flexed her hands. Her plan wasn’t all that far-fetched — because the thing was, she really had changed.

She’d be able to offer James a totally renovated woman to fall in love with all over again! And nobody liked renovations more than James did.

The major change was that daily life had begun to make her happy again, not sad and resentful. For example, just looking out of the window today, she felt a quite uncomplicated joy because it was so plainly a day for gardening.

Strange that she should feel so much satisfaction at the simple prospect of walking out of her own door and pulling up rogue roots. By now, of course, she’d come round to Bruno’s philosophy. It was no use going for a quick fix and just hacking away at the foliage. The foliage was the least of your problems, really. You had to dig deep and excise the weeds at their source.

No more quick fixes in her daily life, either. No more turning to chocolate and ice cream when she felt blue.

Yes, she was changed on the inside as much as the outside. Or maybe it wasn’t so much that she’d changed as that she’d uncovered her long-lost happy self buried under the flab and woe of her post-baby persona.

Lizzie went over to her dressing table, a warped wicker one bought from the secondhand shop that delivered, and studied her pale face in the mirror. She picked up a brush and began to run it through her hair. Then she put her fingers to her cheekbones.

Yes, she was a lot happier in so many ways, these days — but something had been bothering her for ages.

Nobody, not one single solitary soul, had properly commented on her weight loss. Oh, now and then somebody would say something like, “Lost a pound or two, have you, Lizzie?” But nobody seemed to realize the full extent of things. Nobody seemed to notice that she’d lost
at least
the equivalent in body mass of Bruno’s collie, Madge.

It was all a bit discouraging, really. There she was, running her heart out every day, supposedly in the interests of health and well-being, but really with a view to getting rid of the stubbornest case of malingering baby bulge any woman had ever had to deal with — and all to no avail. Not even Tessa had patted her on the back. Not even inquisitive Ingrid had said more than a throwaway word or two. Bruno, who dropped by on a regular basis to help with the garden, hadn’t made any sort of crack about it at all.

As for the women at Chipstead Nursery, who more or less welcomed Lizzie to their bosom these days, not a single one of them had reeled back in amazement at her accomplishment. Nobody had demanded to know what diet she was on. Nobody had asked how on earth she’d managed it. Mrs. Kirker had once said that Lizzie was looking “very well,” and somebody else had wondered whether she’d colored her hair or whitened her teeth. “You look different, somehow,” the woman had said. “I just can’t put my finger on it.”

What was the use of slimming down, Lizzie wondered, if nobody could see the difference?

Still pondering the issue half an hour later, as she doled out cereal to the children, Lizzie began to wonder if she’d really lost any weight at all. Maybe her scale was lying to her? Maybe it was defective. Probably. It’d been the cheapest one she could find. Maybe she’d only lost her marbles.

Lizzie dropped a wad of milk-soaked paper towels into the bin and sprinted upstairs. (Amazing. She could now sprint upstairs without raising her heart rate or suffering shortness of breath.) Snapping the light on in her room, she began stripping off her clothes — her favorite frayed old jeans and a big sweatshirt, because the morning was chilly. In her underwear, she stood on her bed and peered at herself in the warped wicker mirror.

No matter which way she looked, she did in fact seem thinner. Also more muscular. There could be no doubt about it. The scale wasn’t defective. She
had
lost weight.

But why didn’t anybody
say
anything? They couldn’t all be in a conspiracy to demoralize her, surely?

Slowly, Lizzie climbed back into her clothes. Then she stood up on the bed to take a last look.

“Oh God!” She clapped her hand to her mouth in horror. Because suddenly she was fat again.

“Bloody hell! It’s the
clothes
!”

She was still wearing the clothes she’d thrown into her suitcase when she’d first left Mill House. These clothes had one thing in common. They were chosen to disguise her figure.

And they were doing exactly that.

They were disguising her new, trimmer, leaner, virtually flab-free body so well that nobody could even tell there’d been a change. Even her running clothes were bulky. Her “new” tracksuit, bought at the peak of her weight gain, had enough spare fabric about it to conceal a small watermelon in its folds. She never ran in Lycra shorts; she didn’t even possess a pair.

The size of her bust was no help. Since she was still wearing tentlike clothes, of which her current sweatshirt was a prime example, people were free to imagine that her stomach was somewhere out there in line with her breasts.

Well, by God, things were going to change. As soon as possible, she was taking herself to Bluewater for a skinny-me shopping spree.

At ten thirty the next morning Lizzie was standing in front of a proper full-length mirror. She was in a place she’d avoided for years — the harshly lit confines of a boutique fitting room. In a crumpled heap in the corner lay the clothes she’d arrived in — a pair of thick black leggings and a giant T-shirt that hung down to her knees. She’d realized just the other day that nobody
wore
leggings anymore. She must have been snoozing or maybe breast-feeding when they went out of fashion.

In place of her ghastly old clothes, she was wearing a black-and-white halter neck top (with built-in bra) above a pair of fabulously cut black bootleg pants. And she was crying.

She knew this svelte, well-dressed young woman looking back at her. For years she’d been able to see only her feet. But she’d have recognized her anywhere.

“My God, Lizzie Indigo,” she muttered with a catch in her voice. “Where the hell have you
been
for the last four years?” Then she sniffed and gave herself a pink-eyed smile. “You know what? You look better than ever. But for God’s sake, do something about the
hair
.”

The new Lizzie, the Lizzie who was going to bowl James over at Maria’s wedding, was finally beginning to emerge.

She left the boutique at top speed, the gorgeous halter neck top and black pants nestling in a glossy carrier bag. She wasn’t even going to think about how much the outfit had cost. But, out of respect for James’s bank account, she vowed to stick to cheap-and-cheerful shops for the rest of the morning.

Three days later, Lizzie had yet to wear any of the lovely new clothes she’d splurged on that morning in the mall. A strange shyness had come over her, and suddenly she didn’t feel up to bursting out dramatically in a new persona. Also, she was distracted by her nonsense verses — because, wonder of wonders, they were complete!

Buoyed up by young Sarah’s enthusiasm, she’d managed to force each and every one of them to a conclusion. Then she typed the lot of them up on the outdated old computer she’d brought from Mill House. She didn’t have a printer, so she took the disk over to Ingrid’s barn and printed the verses out there. Then she spent days combing through each verse, looking for errors and making eleventh-hour changes. Now, at last, she had a clean copy of the manuscript — and no idea what to do next.

She bought a book about first-time publishing in which she read that she couldn’t expect any respectable publisher to so much as look sideways at her unsolicited work. Far from being thrown onto a slush pile, her verses would be tossed directly into the recycling bin if she presumed to approach anybody without the proper preliminaries. And the proper preliminaries meant finding a literary agent.

The book advised her to network and attempt to meet agents face-to-face. Lizzie didn’t want to network and meet anybody face-to-face. While she was no longer the unwashed wreck she’d been a few short months ago, she still felt too raw and vulnerable to launch herself on the world as a one-woman silly-verse marketing machine. She preferred to deal with people on paper, through the Royal Mail, with a nice comfortable distance, both geographically and temporally, between herself and the unknown. So she went to the Sevenoaks library and perused a massive volume containing the names, addresses, and submission requirements of all the literary agents and publishers in the United Kingdom.

She was so confused by the number of agents claiming to represent children’s books that she ended up selecting a name on the basis that it sounded honest. Jemima Straight, literary agent, promised at least to
consider
unpublished writers, but rather sternly forbade multiple queries. Ms. Straight offered to take a commission of fifteen percent and stipulated that queries be submitted with complete manuscript, synopsis, bio/resume, SASE, and a vial of the writer’s blood, sweat, and tears.

Actually, the vial was optional.

Lizzie sat down and wrote a self-effacing little note about her poor, defenseless verses, rattled off a synopsis (“twenty barmy tales told mostly in iambic pentameter, always in silly verse, at least one of which caused my neighbor’s daughter to wet her pants in mirth”), and chewed her lower lip over her bio/resume.

She wasn’t worried so much about the first part of the resume. A bachelor of arts majoring in history and English literature didn’t look too shabby. And her London career with G.H. Brightman and Associates could be pumped up to sound rather impressive, even though poor old Brightman’s main client was a manufacturer of feed for hamsters, gerbils, and other domesticated rodents.