So I let it go.
I let it go so consistently that by the time I was standing in a fitting room on Bellamy Street, being told not to buy my own clothes, I had almost stopped being able to tell when something was wrong.
The box came on Tuesday the second of September.
Verrick’s box. Ribbon on it. It was, genuinely, a beautiful dress — navy, heavy crepe, cut properly.
It was four sizes too small.
Not “a bit snug.” Not “you could get away with shapewear.” I could not get it past my hips, and I stood in my bedroom for a while with it around my thighs, and then I sat down on the end of the bed with it still there.
I called her, and I gave her the out. I want that on the record too.
I said, “Vivienne, I think Verrick’s has sent the wrong size, I’ll get it swapped, no problem—”
And she laughed.
Not a snide little laugh. A proper one, delighted, the laugh of somebody whose joke has landed.
She said, “No, no, darling. That’s the size I ordered. The party’s two weeks away. It’s time for you to lose some weight!”
I said something like — I don’t remember exactly. Something about it not being possible.
And she said, “Well, now you’ve got some motivation, haven’t you. Perhaps it’s time to stop eating quite so much.”
I did not say anything back. Six years of training.
I said, “Okay, Vivienne,” and I hung up, and I put my face in a pillow so that Poppy wouldn’t hear the noise I made.
Here’s what I want to say about the weight thing, once, and then I’m going to move on with the story.
I had a baby in April. My body did what bodies do.
I did not go on a diet that fortnight. I want to be extremely clear about that, because when I’ve told this story out loud, somebody always asks, sort of hopefully, whether I “showed her.”
No. I ate normally. I fed my daughter. I worked four shifts that week including a night.
The idea that a woman five months postpartum should reshape her body in fourteen days so that her husband’s mother is comfortable at a restaurant is not a challenge. It’s not motivation. It’s just a thing somebody said to me because they wanted me to feel small, and I have decided that they don’t get to have that.
So. The dress went back in the box.
And when I picked the box up to put it on the shelf in the hall, the packing slip slid out of the side and landed on the floor.
I picked it up to put it in the recycling and I looked at it, the way you look at a receipt.
It said:
Verrick’s — Sold to: Mrs. Ivette Grantham. Account: Verrick’s Charge ***4419. Delivery: Vivienne Grantham (gift instruction).*
I read it three times.
I have never had a Verrick’s account.
I have never been inside a Verrick’s. I would not shop at Verrick’s if you gave me a Verrick’s.
I sat down on the floor of my hallway with a packing slip in my hand.
Now — I want to be honest about my first reaction, because it was not “fraud.”
