Queen of Babble (8 page)

Andy told me how much you love tomatoes, Liz. I hope this meal will make you feel right at home!”

Oh. My. God.

“Liz?” Mrs. Marshall, I realize, is looking down at me with concern on her rosy face. “Are you all right, dear? You look a little…peaked.”

“I’m fine,” I say. And take a big gulp of my milky tea. “It looks great, Mrs. Marshall. Thanks so much for going to all this trouble. You didn’t have to.”

“It was my pleasure,” Mrs. Marshall says, beaming as she takes a seat in a chair across the table from mine. “And please, call me Tanya.”

“Right. Tanya,” I say, hoping my eyes don’t look as wet as they feel. How can he have made such a mistake? Did he not even READ my e-mails? Was he not evenlistening that night of the fire?

“Who’s missing?” Mrs. Marshall asks, looking at the empty chair across from Andrew.

“Alistair,” Alex says, reaching for a piece of toast. Toast! I can eat toast. No, wait, I can’t. Not if I want to stay a junior size nine. Oh God. I’m going to have to eat something. The egg and tomato omelet.

Maybe the egg will drown out the taste of the tomato.

“ALISTAIR!” Mr. Marshall bellows.

From somewhere deep in the house, a male voice calls, “Oy! I’m coming!”

I take a bite of the omelet. It’s good. You can barely taste the—

Oh no. Yes you can, actually.

The thing is, it was an honest mistake. About the tomatoes, I mean. Anyone could get something like that
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mixed up. Even a soul mate.

And, I mean, at least he remembered I’dmentioned tomatoes. He may not have remembered what I actually said about them. But he obviously knows I saidsomething .

And it’s not like he’s not busy, teaching the children to read and all.

And waitering, apparently.

Seeing that no one is looking at me, I knock some of the omelet on my plate and down onto the napkin on my lap. Then I look over at Geronimo, who has left Mr. Marshall’s side, apparently sensing he’s not going to be scoring any scraps over there.

The collie meets my gaze.

Next thing I know, I have dog nose in my crotch.

“What’s this now?” A boy who must be Andrew’s second-youngest brother, Alistair, appears in the doorway. Unlike his mom and two brothers, Alistair’s hair is bright, coppery red—probably the same color his dad’s had been, before he lost it all…judging from his eyebrows, anyway.

“Oh, hullo, Ali,” Mrs. Marshall says. “Take your seat. We’re having a traditional English breakfast to welcome Andrew’s friend Liz from America.”

“Hi,” I say, looking up at the redhead, who appears to be just a year or two younger than me. He is dressed from head to toe in Adidas apparel…Adidas warm-up pants, jacket, T-shirt, and shoes.

Perhaps they’ve asked for his personal endorsement. “I’m Lizzie. Nice to meet you.”

Alistair stares at me for a minute. Then he bursts out laughing.

“Right!” he says. “Come off it, Mum. What kind of joke is this supposed to be, anyway?”

“It’s not a joke at all, Alistair,” Mr. Marshall says in a cold voice.

“But,” Alistair bleats, “she can’t be Liz! Andy said Liz is a fatty!”

Little is known about costume from the period of the second century until well into the 700s, thanks to barbarian invasions by the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, and Franks. We do know, thanks to these invasions, that few people had time to think about fashion, as they were busy fleeing for their lives.

It isn’t until Charlemagne came to rule in 800 that we have any sort of detailed description of wardrobe at the time, which included cross-gartered trousers that came to be known as braies, or breeches, that garment so well beloved by historical romance authors around the world.

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS

6

But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882),

U.S. essayist, poet, and philosopher

It takes five rings before Shari answers. For a minute I’m worried she won’t pick up at all. What if she’s asleep? I know it’s only nine o’clock after all, Europe time, but what if she hasn’t adjusted to the time difference as well as I have? Even though she’s been over here longer. She was supposed to have gotten to Paris two days ago, stayed one night in a hotel there, then traveled down to the château the next day.

But then again, she’s Shari—great at school stuff, not so good at everyday life stuff. She’s dropped her cell phone in the toilet more times than I can count. Who knows if I’ll even get through to her?

Then, to my relief, she finally picks up. And it’s clear I haven’t wakened her—because there is music blaring in the background. A song in which the refrain,Vamos a la playa, plays over and over, to a Latin beat.

“Liz-ZIE!” Shari yells into the phone. “Is that YOOOOOU?”

Oh yes. She’s drunk.

“How are yooooouuuuu?” she wants to know. “How’s London? How’s hot, hot, hot Andrew? How’s his aaaaaaaasssssssssss?”

“Shari,” I say in a low voice. I don’t want the Marshalls to hear me, so I’m running the water in the bathtub. I’m not wasting it. I really do plan to take a bath. In a minute. “Things are weird here. Really weird. I need to talk to someone normal for a minute.”

“Wait, let me see if I can find Chaz,” Shari says. Then she cackles. “Just kidding! Oh my God, Lizzie, you should see this place. You’d die. It’s likeUnder the Tuscan Sun andValmont combined. Luke’s house is HUGE. HUGE. It has a name—Mirac. It has its own VINEYARD. Lizzie, they make their own champagne. THEY MAKE IT THEMSELVES.”

“That’s great,” I say. “Shari, I think Andrew told his brothers I was fat.”

Shari is silent for a moment. I am urged once again toVamos a la playa . Then Shari explodes.

“He fucking said that? He fucking said you were fat? Stay where you are. Stay right where you fucking are. I’m getting on the Chunnel train thingie and I’m coming over there and I’m going to cut his balls off—”

“Shari,” I say. She is yelling so loudly I’m worried the Marshalls might hear her. Through the closed door. Over the TV and the running water. “Shari, wait, that isn’t what I meant. I mean, I don’tknow what he said. Things are just really weird. I got here, and the very first thing, Andrew took off for work. Which was okay. I mean it was fine. Because the truth is”—I can feel the tears coming. Oh, great—“Andrew isn’t working with children. He’s a waiter. He works from eleven in the morning until eleven at night. I didn’t even know that waslegal . Plus, he doesn’t even have his own place. We’re staying with his parents. And his little brothers. Who he told I was fat. Also, he told his mom that I like tomatoes.”

“I take it back,” Shari says, “I’m not going there. You’re coming here. Buy a train ticket and get over here. Be sure to ask for a youth pass. You’ll have to change trains in Paris. Buy a ticket there for Souillac. And then just call me. We’ll pick you up at the station.”

“Shari,” I say, “I can’t do that. I can’t justleave .”

“Like fuck you can’t,” Shari says. I hear another voice in the background. Then Shari is saying to someone else, “It’s Lizzie. That fucker Andrew works all day and all night and is fucking making her stay at his parents’ and eat tomatoes. And he said she was fat.”

“Shari,” I say, feeling a twinge of guilt, “I don’t know that he said that. And he’s not—who are you telling this to, anyway?”

“Chaz says get your far-from-fat ass on a train in the morning. He will personally pick you up at the train station tomorrow night.”

“I can’t go toFrance, ” I say, horrified. “My return ticket home is from Heathrow. It’s nonreturnable and nontransferable and non—everything.”

“So? You can go back to England at the end of the month and fly home from there. Come on, Lizzie.

We’ll have SO MUCH fun.”

“Shari, I can’t go to France,” I say miserably. “I don’twant to go to France. I love Andrew. You don’t understand. That night outside McCracken Hall…it was magical, Shar. He saw into my soul, and I saw into his.”

“How could you?” Shari demands. “It was dark.”

“No it wasn’t. We had the glow of the flames from that girl’s room to see by.”

“Well, then maybe you just saw what you wanted to see. Or maybe you justfelt what you wanted tofeel

.”

She’s talking, I know, about Andrew’s stiffy. I stare blindly down at the water splashing into the tub.

The thing is, I am generally a very happy person. I even laughed after Alistair said that thing at the table, about me being a fatty. Because what else are you supposed to do when you find out your boyfriend’s been going around telling people you’re fat?

Especially since the last time Andrew saw me, Ihad been fat. Or at least thirty pounds heavier than I am now.

Ihad to laugh, because I didn’t want the Marshalls to think I’m some kind of oversensitive freak.

I think I succeeded, too, because all Mrs. Marshall did was shoot her son an outraged look…Then, since I guess I didn’t appear to be offended, she seemed to forget about it. So did everyone else.

And Alistair turned out to be quite nice, offering to let me use his computer in order to start my thesis, which I then worked on for the rest of the day, until breaking for a “curry supper” from the “takeaway”

shop on the corner with the two elder Marshalls, the boys having gone out. We ate while watching a British mystery show, during which I only understood approximately one word out of every seven, due to
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the actors’ accents.

The thing is, I wasdetermined not to let the fat thing get me down. Because despite what my sisters might think—and they were always more than happy to let their feelings on the matter be known to me, growing up—weight doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. I mean, it does if you’re a model or whatever.

But in general being a few pounds overweight hasn’t ever kept me from doing what I wanted to. Sure, there were all those times I was the last one picked for volleyball in gym class.

And the occasional mortification of having to appear in front of a guy I had a crush on in a bathing suit at the lake or whatever.

And then there were the dumb frat guys who wouldn’t look twice at me because I was heavier than the kind of girls they preferred.

But who wants to hang aroundfrat guys ? I want to be with guys who have more on their minds than where the next keg party is. I want to be with guys who care about making this world a better place—the way Andrew does. I want to be with guys who know that what’s important isn’t the size of a girl’s waistband but the size of her heart—like Andrew. I want to be with guys who are able to see past a girl’s outward appearance, and into her soul—like Andrew.

It’s just that…well, based on Alistair’s remark, it seems like maybe Andrewdidn’t see into my soul that night outside McCracken Hall.

The tomato thing, too. I TOLD Andrew—or wrote to him, actually—that I hate tomatoes. I told him it’s the one single food I totally can’t stand. I even went on, at great length, about how horrible it was, growing up in a household that was half Italian, hating tomatoes. Mom was always brewing up huge batches of tomato sauce to use in her pastas and lasagnas. She had a huge tomato garden in the backyard that I was in charge of weeding, since I wouldn’t touch the ugly red things and so was no help in the picking or cleaning department.

Itold Andrew all this, not just in my reply to his question about what foods I liked, but that night we spent together as well, three months ago, me in my towel and him in his Aerosmith T-shirt—it must have been laundry day—and R.A. badge, under the stars and smoke.

And he didn’t listen. He hadn’t paid a bit of attention to a word I’d said.

But hehad managed to let his family know I was a—what was it again? Oh yes—“fatty.”

Is it possible I’ve made a mistake? Is it possible—as Shari once suggested—that the reason I love Andrew is not because of who he actually is, but because I’ve projected onto him the personality Iwant him to have?

Could she be right that I’ve stubbornly refused all along to see him for what he really is, because making out with him had been so much fun (and I’d been so flattered by his full stiffy) I don’t want to admit my attraction to him is merely physical?

I hadn’t spoken to Shari for nearly two hours after she said this, it had made me so mad, and she’d finally apologized.

But what if she’s right? Because the Andrew I knew—or felt like I knew—wouldn’t have told his
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brother I’m fat. The Andrew I know wouldn’t even have noticed I was fat.

“Lizzie?” Shari’s voice crackles over the phone I’m pressing to my cheek. “Did you die?”

“No, I’m here,” I say. I can still hear rock music booming in the background. Shari, it’s clear, isn’t a bit jet-lagged. Shari’s boyfriend isn’t at work. Or, rather, he is. But they’re working together. “I just…Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”

“Wait,” Shari says. “Does this mean you’ll be coming to New York with me in the fall after all?”

I hang up. It’s not that I’m mad at her, exactly. I’m just…

So tired.

I don’t even remember bathing or changing into my pajamas and dragging myself into bed. All I know is, it seems like it’s about a million o’clock when Andrew gently shakes me awake. But it’s really only midnight—at least according to the watchface he shows me when I groggily ask what time it is.

I never realized he wears a glow-in-the-dark digital watch. That’s kind of…not sexy.

But maybe he needs it. For telling time when he’s slaving away in that dark, candlelit restaurant…

“Sorry to wake you,” he says. He is standing beside my loft bed, which is just high enough off the ground that he doesn’t even have to stoop to whisper to me. “But I wanted to make sure you were all right. You don’t need anything?”