Not Quite A mom Read online

  From the wardrobe room, I can hear Renee’s opening monologue and the enthusiastic laughter of the audience. I know that I have about five minutes while she banters with the show’s DJ, Karl, until I need to be in my seat behind the desk. I grab another cup of coffee from the craft services table and test it against my lip to be certain it has cooled down considerably before chugging the entire cup, while awkwardly bending forward in order to avoid dripping on the jacket. Caffeine is my lifeblood, especially on two-show days. As I swish cold water from the Arrowhead cooler in my mouth to remove any coffee from my teeth I hear Renee.

  “And now let’s check in with the Fact Mistress, Elizabeth Castle.”

  “Shit,” I say wondering how the ridiculous banter session was over so quickly, spilling water out of my mouth while ripping my headset off. Hoping my hair doesn’t look too horrible, I dart to my desk while the audience is maniacally laughing at Renee’s stupid “fact mistress” joke. Before the gigglefest has ended I am seated in the black Aeron chair that lives behind my stage desk, which is covered with charming prop-desk trinkets and looks nothing like a desk that anybody would actually use. Camera three rotates around, and before I have totally caught my breath it is staring me in the face with a brightly burning red light.

  “Well, Elizabeth, what’s new and exciting?” Renee asks before taking a sip from The Renee Foster Show! coffee mug that I know contains room-temperature water (people have been fired over water that is too cold or too hot).

  “So much is going on in Hollywood, Renee. Everyone is all abuzz over Jack Flight and Auburn Smith’s recent engagement. Not to mention the drama on the set of Desperate Housewives!” I enthusiastically reel off a handful of information about Hollywood’s hottest stars before ending with, “and that’s the facts, Renee. Back to you.”

  “Wow!” Renee responds, and I am quite certain that she did not listen to a single syllable I have spoken. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”

  I smile once more and watch as camera three moves away from my desk before I stand up and head back to the wardrobe room to hang up the blazer and retrieve my headset. I replace it over my head and reattach the transmitter to my belt.

  “Hope,” I say into the headset, since I can tell by the audience warm-up guy’s voice on the stage’s PA system that the show is on a commercial break. “I’m off-air now and if you need me, I’ll be in the producer’s booth for the rest of the show.”

  A split second goes by before Hope replies, “Actually, Elizabeth, I need you up here now. Buck Platner is waiting for you in your office.”

  11

  While he waits for Tiffany to collect her belongings, Buck sits in his truck and fiddles with the stereo preset buttons until he finds a station without idiotic DJ banter or an annoyingly long commercial break. He had offered to accompany the teenager inside and would have graciously done so, but he was more than a little relieved that she preferred to go alone. Buck had laid out a plan for Tiffany that culminated in their arrival in Los Angeles. She had gone along with the plan, and now he had some major thinking to do.

  First, he has to figure out his professional and legal responsibility. His father’s instructions had been to summon Elizabeth Castle to Victory to sign papers and take custody of Tiffany. Buck’s conversations with her had clearly not gone according to plan, and Lizzie’s homecoming wasn’t happening. Instead, Buck’s new plan was to show up at Lizzie’s door with Tiffany in tow. He knew he was going to be blindsiding her and he hated to do it, but he really had no choice. The second thing to figure out was how he was going to handle himself when he saw Lizzie for the first time in so many years. His demeanor during their phone calls was never what he hoped it would be, and Buck was acutely aware of the risk that he would once again come off like an oaf when he was face to face with Lizzie.

  “Elizabeth…not Lizzie,” he reminded himself under his breath and then closed his eyes and laid his head back against the truck’s black leather headrest, listening to Billie Joe Armstrong’s voice.

  A split second later, the passenger door to the truck opened, startling Buck. He jumped to attention, turning down the radio volume and wondering if it was disrespectful of him to listen to music while Tiffany retrieved her things from her dead parents’ house. Too late to do anything about it, Buck confirmed that Tiffany was okay and she was polite enough to lie to him. He turned over the truck’s powerful engine and backed out of the driveway, being careful not to crush any of the Tathams’ dying plants under his tires.

  It was Sunday afternoon now and Buck suddenly saw a flaw in his plan. He and Tiffany weren’t scheduled to go to Los Angeles until the next day, and aside from avoiding his father, Buck didn’t have a clue what to do the rest of the day.

  “Are you hungry?” Buck asked Tiffany, who was gazing mindlessly out the window.

  “No, not really,” she answered without turning away from the window.

  “Me neither,” Buck confessed, still feeling the parts of the Mug’s breakfast he was able to get down sitting in his stomach in a pool of grease. “What about a movie?” he offered, seeing the benefits of sitting in darkness and not having to talk.

  “Nothing good is playing,” Tiffany informed him.

  Feeling at a loss, Buck tried again, “Is there anything you want or need to get done?”

  “Nope, not really,” she answered and then sat silently once more.

  Buck nodded slowly, racking his brain for ideas and coming up dry. They drove a few minutes in silence before Buck realized that the truck was heading back to his house. Not having any reason to fight it, they completed the route without exchanging a single word and too soon were sitting in Buck’s driveway under the huge oak tree whose roots caused his sinks to back up twice a year.

  Buck sighed to himself as he unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out. Tiffany followed him, without a word, onto the front porch and into the house. It was going to be a long, quiet night.

  Of course, as has always been the case for Buck, when he is unprepared for something, time flies at an alarming rate. If he has nothing to do on a weekend, the time drags on while he sits alone and watches ESPN. If he has something, like a court appearance to prepare for, Monday morning arrives before he has even had a chance to crack a file. So, the long, quiet night he was counting on to figure out exactly how to handle things in Los Angeles flies by. Buck and Tiffany watch TV and eat dinner, exchanging very few words, and yet it was not the horribly uncomfortable evening he had anticipated. It is a relief to Buck that she seems to enjoy the same television programs he does, laughs at the same stupid jokes and is willing to eat the same pineapple and pepperoni pizza that he loves and most others despise.

  Buck’s first impression of Tiffany had been that of a typical sullen and difficult teenager. Obviously, she deserved some space in light of the fact that her mother and stepfather had just been killed, but nonetheless, he didn’t think much of her. After last night, however, Buck is starting to realize that deep down, underneath the silly teenage clothes and the sulking demeanor, is a special kid. Now he just hopes that Lizzie will be able (willing) to see it, too.

  Buck awakes with a start on Monday morning, hearing footsteps in the hallway outside his room. It takes a second for him to remember his houseguest and more than a second for his heartbeat to slow down to its normal pace. A quick glance at the clock shows it to be after seven, and Buck sits up with a feeling of dread in his gut. Today is the day…the day that he will be face-to-face with Elizabeth Castle, and as much as he is anticipating their reunion he is also dreading it.

  He steps out into the hall and startles Tiffany as badly as she had startled him a few minutes earlier. They exchange awkward good mornings and then go their separate ways—she to the bathroom and he to the kitchen to make a much-needed pot of coffee. Their paths cross a handful of times until they both end up at the front door ready for the drive to Los Angeles.

  On her shoulder, Tiffany holds the duffle bag she had carried out of her house yesterday. Buc
k carries his briefcase as he would on any Monday morning, but unlike other Monday mornings, he is dressed casually in jeans and an untucked button-front shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Although his clothes look like something he might just throw on, a great deal of thought had actually gone into it and although he felt stupid changing his shirt three times, he feels confident about the blue stripes he has settled on because a girl in a bar had once told him that the stripes really brought out his blue eyes, and then she went home with him.

  “Ready?” Buck asks Tiffany, holding open the front door for her to walk through.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” the girl confesses, and Buck feels a sharp pang of sympathy for her, vowing to think a little less about himself than he has been. “Nice shirt,” she adds, and he takes one more second to think only about himself and feel pleased with his final choice.

  They pile into the truck and, after a quick stop for gas, are on the highway (really, they are on the highway all along, since it runs right through the middle of Victory—the signs simply change to “Main Street” and the speed limit is 30 miles per hour instead of 65, but it’s not like you take an exit or anything to get there). Buck had at least counted on traffic and more silence from Tiffany so that he could have ample time to gather his thoughts, but instead there are hardly any cars on the road and the teenager has suddenly become chatty.

  While they “shoot the breeze,” as his grandfather would have said, Buck learns that Tiffany is a cheerleader; didn’t care much for her stepfather, Chuck, although she does feel “real bad” he is dead; and always dreamed of getting out of Victory. She talks a little about her mother, and Buck feels a bit ashamed that he doesn’t have much to contribute, since his interaction with Charla since their high school graduation had been limited to vague nods and waves around town.

  Buck decides to take advantage of Tiffany’s new openness and see if he can gather some information about Lizzie that will help him when they arrive in Los Angeles.

  “Actually,” Tiffany tells him, “I don’t even ever remember meeting my aunt Lizzie! I don’t think she and mom had talked in ages.”

  The knot in Buck’s stomach grows larger. Lizzie is the guardian for a kid she’s never even met?!? Things are going from bad to worse, and they are barreling toward Los Angeles at 80 miles per hour.

  When they are just outside of town, Buck and Tiffany stop at a McDonald’s to grab some lunch. While Tiffany is inside getting Big Macs and chocolate shakes with the twenty-dollar bill Buck gave her, he places his second phone call of the day to the work number that Lizzie had given him on Saturday. The first time, he’d been able to sneak the call while Tiffany used a gas station bathroom, but he’d only gotten a secretary, who was unwilling to give him their address without Lizzie’s consent. Thankfully, this time the secretary was able to give him the location. After hanging up, Buck flips through the pages of his old Thomas Brothers Guide map and is both pleased and horrified to see that they are very close.

  Buck glances up and sees Tiffany walking across the parking lot with a big bag boasting golden arches, so he quickly stashes the map under his seat and greets Tiffany with a smile as she hands the food bag across the front seat to him before hoisting herself up into the cab.

  “We’re almost there,” he cautiously informs her, paying close attention to her reaction.

  “Awesome,” she replies, managing to sound completely confident and utterly terrified at the same time.

  Buck envies her being able to sound at all confident as he shovels in french fries at breakneck speed. Before he has even finished his lunch, the heartburn kicks in, and Buck pops a couple of antacids as he maneuvers the big truck around the few miles of overpopulated Los Angeles land between him and Lizzie. All too quickly, they are parking in a spot labeled “The Renee Foster Show! Guest Parking,” and he and Tiffany are climbing out of the truck and walking toward a large, almost industrial-looking building.

  Silently, they make their way through the chaotic offices until at last they reach a glass room surrounded by chest-high walls that make up a number of cubicles. There is a plastic sign stuck on the side of the door jamb that reads “Elizabeth Castle—Head Fact Checker,” and Buck can’t help but feel a swell of pride that Lizzie is doing so well. Before he has a chance to figure out what to do next, a pretty red-haired girl calls to him from her cubicle.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Oh, uh, yeah. We’re here to see Lizzie—Elizabeth Castle.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the girl, who only looks slightly older than Tiffany, asks while expertly opening a scheduling program on her iMac.

  “No, not exactly,” Buck admits. “I’m Buck Platner—”

  “Oh, right. Hi, Mr. Platner. I’m Hope, Elizabeth’s assistant. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

  “Oh, Hope…hi,” Buck says uncomfortably. There is a momentary pause while nobody says anything, so Buck asks, “Is she here?”

  “Elizabeth’s actually on-air right now. It’s a two-show day, so things are totally hectic.”

  “On-air?” Tiffany pipes up, finally showing some interest in the conversation.

  Hope looks at the teenager and then again at Buck, wondering who they are. They must be father and daughter…or brother and sister? Buck looks to be about Elizabeth’s age, so he’s probably too young for this girl to be his daughter. Hope secretly hopes that he’s not someone Elizabeth is involved with, because he is extremely good looking and she is feeling extremely single these days.

  “For her segment, ‘That’s the Facts,’ on The Renee Foster Show!” Hope explains to Tiffany, but her eyes seem stalled on Buck’s pecs. “Why don’t you have a seat in Elizabeth’s office and turn the monitor to channel 28. That’s the direct feed from the studio, so you can watch what’s going on.”

  Tiffany eagerly heads into Elizabeth’s glass office and Buck follows after nodding a “thank you” to Hope, which she returns with a flirtatious smile.

  12

  “Buck Platner is in my office? BUCK PLATNER IS IN MY OFFICE?!?” I ask myself over and over hoping that I misunderstood Hope completely; each time the question becomes more frantic. My lungs sting and my head feels like it’s in a beehive as I thunder up the metal stairs. Once on the office floor, I try (fail) to catch my breath as I make my way to my office. I can see the outline of Buck’s blond, buzzcut head through the glass wall and all attempts at composure are lost. From here he looks exactly like he did standing on my parents’ front porch waiting to pin a corsage on me, and I feel the same nausea.

  I slip into the office and close my glass door quickly behind me. Neither Buck nor the person he has brought with him realizes I have entered the room. They are staring at the television monitor, which is tuned to the direct stage-feed channel.

  “What are you doing here?!?” I gasp as my chest rises and falls. No hellos, no niceties…I have to get Buck and whoever this other person is out of here immediately.

  “Lizzie—Elizabeth,” Buck says, scrambling to his feet as quickly as he can, clearly caught off guard by my entrance. The girl, who looks around sixteen, stares up at me. She looks vaguely familiar and I wonder if she is a fellow Victory loser who is Buck’s assistant or maybe even an intern, since she looks so young. Probably his girlfriend, I think, feeling disgusted.

  “Hi,” she says quietly, but it’s clear that under normal circumstances she is a confident girl.

  I ignore her greeting and again look at Buck. “Well?” I ask tapping my foot with impatience.

  “Lizzie, you look great,” Buck says crossing my small office in two steps. “We saw you on the TV,” he says, motioning at the small Panasonic. I see that Renee is back on her cream sofa with Halle Berry’s dog sitting on her lap while the Oscar winner smiles from a floral chair strategically positioned to look the way the furniture in your living room might be arranged while ensuring that every celebrity’s “good side” is clearly visible to the three large cameras that roll back and forth across the stag
e floor.

  “Shit,” I say, “I’ve gotta get back down there,” knowing that if that show cuts to commercial and I’m not there to answer any stupid question Renee has about anything in the world that it will get ugly. “What are you doing here?”

  Buck looks slightly puzzled for a beat before turning back toward the teenage girl and saying quietly yet firmly, “This is Tiffany.”

  “Tiffany?” I peek around Buck’s lineman frame for a second glance at the girl. Now I know why she looks familiar. She looks like Charla—or more specifically, like a prettier version of the Charla that I vaguely remember from high school.

  “Hi,” she says again, adding a little wave and losing what little confidence she had in her first greeting.

  I straighten my body and look up, directly into Buck’s blue eyes. “I cannot do this now,” I tell him through a clenched jaw, then I hold my breath and wait for him to bulldoze me.

  Instead, he says—no asks, “We could come to your house tonight?” sounding as nervous as a high school nerd inviting a cheerleader on a date.

  “Perfect,” I say, relieved that this means they will be leaving my office now. “Hope will give you my address. Be there at eight,” I tell Buck as I turn toward the office door. Before he can respond, I’m heading down the hall feeling relieved.

  I enter the stage just as the voice from the booth booms, “THIRTY SECONDS!”

  I hustle over to Renee and ask, “Everything okay with you?” to which she answers, “Why wouldn’t it be?” while looking at me as if I just landed in a spaceship. Gee…maybe because it never has been in the history of this mindless show? “Just checking,” I say smiling like an idiot and walking away, simultaneously relieved that she wasn’t having a meltdown while I was upstairs, offended that I wasn’t desperately needed, and generally sickened about Buck’s visit to my office and his impending visit to my home.