Not Quite A mom Read online

  13

  My mind is a complete blur for the remainder of the show. My body stands in the producer’s booth like a lifeless wax statue while my mind runs a marathon. Buck Platner and Tiffany Dearbourne are going to be at my house tonight at eight…TONIGHT AT EIGHT. He’s probably going to make me sign these papers he keeps mentioning and those papers probably make me the legal guardian of Tiffany. And then what will happen? He’ll leave…walk out the door and leave me there with a fifteen-year-old kid? Again, my head feels like a beehive—but now the bees are swarming and my entire body buzzes with panic.

  As soon as the director yells “CUT!” I’m summoning Hope through my headset.

  “Hope? Are you there?” I ask, silently praying that she isn’t away from her desk. A split second later, I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “I’m here, Elizabeth.”

  “Thank God,” I say to myself, and, “I need you to get Courtney Cambridge for me,” to Hope. I know it sucks to make her connect me on a personal call, but this is an emergency. “Try her home, office, and cell,” I instruct.

  Before my call can be connected, though, I hear Renee calling, “E-liii-zabeth,” drawing out the second syllable of my name just long enough that it starts to sound like nails on a chalkboard.

  “Shit. Hope, find Courtney and tell her she has to be at my house at seven thirty tonight,” I quickly tell her. “Wait, no. Tell her to be there at seven. She has to be there.”

  “Sure thing,” Hope replies as cheerfully as ever.

  I take a deep breath. Hope will take care of it. She has to. Courtney has to be there because she is pretty much my only hope to get out of this mess. She was an attorney. She will find a legal loophole or an expired statute of limitations or something that will nullify Charla’s entire will. I take a deep breath and try to relax. If Hope tells Courtney seven o’clock, she’ll be there at seven thirty…that will give us thirty minutes to figure out a strategy before Buck shows up.

  “Please God, let us figure out a strategy,” I pray to myself as I hear Renee’s shrill, “E-liii-zabeth!” once again. “Coming,” I reply, gathering all my strength and adding a wish for patience to the holy request.

  The rest of my day is hectic enough that I am able to put my problems about halfway out of my head. I deal with Renee’s complaint that mentioning Prince Harry’s date with a pop star is “too political,” and her confusion over how to say Ralph Fiennes’s name, while watching the clock spin out of control toward eight o’clock and the doom that awaits me.

  At about six twenty-five I finally return from the stage to my office, where Hope confirms that she got in touch with Courtney, who has promised to be at my apartment at “seven, sharp.” I breathe a sigh of relief as I finally sit down at my desk and turn on the futuristic iMac that sits on top of it. The stack of folders I removed this morning has somehow regenerated, and my e-mail inbox mockingly flashes “48 new messages.” I breathe a sigh of resignation and glance at the clock on the desktop: 6:37 p.m. I dart my mouse toward the once-bitten blue apple in the upper left-hand corner of the screen and scroll down to “Shut down,” like a kid sneaking money from his mother’s purse. I hold my breath until the screen flashes to black, and then bend over to retrieve my bag from the spot where I haphazardly tossed it this morning. When I sit back up, Renee Foster is standing at my door with Hope standing behind her mouthing, “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not leaving, are you?” Renee asks in her I-work-twenty-four-seven-and-that’s-why-I’m-a-success voice.

  “Actually, I have something I need to take care of tonight,” I offer, trying hard to keep my voice strong. I cannot let her bully me into staying right now. I have to get home to meet Courtney. I sneak a glance at my wrist: 6:39 p.m.

  “Well, I really need to go over a few points for tomorrow’s show,” she says expectantly.

  I straighten my spine, hoping a taller posture will give the illusion of confidence. “We’ll have to do it in the morning. I cannot be late for this appointment,” I say hoping that if it sounds official enough, Renee will not question me.

  “Fine…be in my office at nine o’clock on the dot,” she says, and I silently rejoice. “What’s this super-important meeting?” Renee questions, and the rejoicing comes to a screeching halt.

  Not sure what to say, I pathetically explain, trying to sound like I really wish I could tell her, “It’s a personal matter.”

  “Anything to do with that darling little diamond you’re sporting?” she asks in a tone that would seem like girl talk if it were not so demeaning.

  My face flushes with anger and embarrassment at the way she has referred to my beautiful engagement ring, but I swallow it all and simply answer, “Unfortunately not,” even though the truth is that in a way tonight has everything to do with my engagement. If I do not get home and come up with a way to keep Tiffany Dearbourne away, my engagement, marriage, and entire life could be over.

  “See you in the morning,” Renee says coolly as she turns and walks out of my office.

  Relief floods me until I glance at my watch, which shows the time to be 6:42. Panic takes back over and the knot in my stomach tightens as I hike my bag a little higher on my shoulder and hustle out of the building. I keep my head down and my pace brisk until I reach my car. Once inside, I start the ignition and speed out of the parking lot as quickly as I can. Of course the speed doesn’t last long because two short turns later and I’m sitting in the rush-hour parking lot that Olympic Boulevard turns into nightly.

  “Come on,” I plead with the wall of cars I am facing. “Go!”

  Normally the traffic of my relatively short commute doesn’t bother me. Normally I am so exhausted from my workday that I almost enjoy sitting and staring mindlessly at thousands of shining red lights. Tonight, I don’t have time—or really the ability—to relax. With each red light, my blood pressure increases, and by the time I pull into my carport parking spot behind my apartment, I feel like I’m about to have a stroke. It’s 7:12.

  I know that I am not going to find Courtney waiting loyally at my front door, but I still can’t help but feel disappointed when I arrive and there is only a stack of supermarket circulars jammed halfway through the mail slot. I grab the junk mail and open the door, using the papers to flick on the light switch. The dome light above the entryway/dining room illuminates and I do a once-over of my apartment. My perfect apartment…

  I still remember the day I signed the lease like it was yesterday. It was the single most exciting day of my life (before getting engaged, of course), and even though that was two years ago, I still get a surge of joy every time I walk through the door. When I got promoted to head fact checker, I was finally earning enough money to get my own place. I had suffered through countless horrible roommates—my freshman year of college was only the beginning. The bad luck continued for years to come. There was the kleptomaniac who stole my Prada loafers, the refrigerator labeler who threw an apple at me for accidentally eating a container of her yogurt, and the nymphomaniac I caught having sex on my bed. Each one was more traumatic than the next, and finally being able to live on my own was tremendous.

  Besides the joy of solitude, the apartment is also a gem. The location, off Third and Fairfax, couldn’t be better, and the charming details like wainscoting and leaded glass won me over immediately. Plus, the girl who owns it was moving out to live with her fiancé, so I felt it had a good vibe or aura or karma or something like that (not that I really believe in any of it). At first the apartment was almost completely empty. Since I had always lived with a roommate, I didn’t own very much furniture, but I felt it was better to have nothing than to have something cheap and temporary. Over time, my savings grew, and eventually each room was filled with coordinated components I had selected from pages in the Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel catalogs.

  A wave of sadness washes over me as I think about leaving this apartment to live with Dan in his considerably smaller place off Doheny Drive. I quickly suppress the sad
ness, though, with a vision I often have of the home that Dan and I will buy after we are married. I take a deep breath…I cannot let that three-bedroom/two-bathroom dream slip away. Where is Courtney?

  I grab my phone off the breakfast bar and hit speed dial #4 to connect me to her cell phone. She answers after three rings and I hear the stereo in her Range Rover blaring Gwen Stefani before I hear Courtney’s voice.

  “I’m five minutes away,” she says, not sounding at all sorry or even aware that she is already fifteen minutes late.

  “Okay…hurry,” I implore her, relieved that I created the thirty-minute time buffer.

  “What’s all this about anyway?” she asks.

  “I’ll explain when you get here,” I tell her. I think doing this face-to-face is probably better, especially since Courtney’s driving is distracted on a good day and I really don’t have the time or energy for her to have another fender bender tonight.

  We hang up and I do what I always do when I’m anxious—I tidy. I walk around the apartment, changing the water for my flowers from Dan, fluffing pillows, and straightening pictures. The truth is that the water was fresh, the pillows were fluffy, and the pictures looked like a level was used to arrange them, but it’s almost a compulsion for me.

  Twenty—not five—minutes later I hear a roaring engine on the street and look out the window to see Courtney flattening a trash can in an attempt to parallel park. Finally she gets upstairs and I start explaining the reason for her emergency visit. Mostly, I am reiterating the information I have already shared—about Charla dying and leaving me her teenage daughter—and trying to impart to Courtney that this is not a good way to have a child without getting stretch marks. I haven’t even gotten to the part about Dan and the fact that he doesn’t want to have any children for years and years when I hear another car roaring down my normally quiet street. I look out the window and see Buck and Tiffany getting out of a black truck.

  “Oh my God, they’re here,” I almost shriek in panic.

  Courtney crosses from the kitchen, where she was searching through my almost empty refrigerator to the window where I am sitting.

  “Oh my God,” she echoes me and I feel a second of relief that she finally understands the severity of the situation. “That is the Victory attorney guy?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I confirm with disgust.

  “He is HOT,” she almost growls.

  I turn and look at Courtney, who is staring at Buck Platner crossing the street like a lioness hunting her prey.

  “I’d take the stretch marks to have his babies,” she says without taking her eyes off him.

  Despair washes over me. I’m done for; I’m a goner. Courtney was my only hope—my last resort; but now that her hormones have entered the scenario, they will take over. I am totally screwed.

  14

  Needless to say, the visit to Elizabeth’s office was almost a complete disaster. The only saving grace was that Buck managed to arrange to see her again at her home after work. As he and Tiffany sit in traffic on the 405 freeway, he replays the meeting again and again. They were sitting there watching the talk show Elizabeth works on and then suddenly she was in the room, obviously unhappy to see them. Nonetheless, Buck’s heart soared. She was everything he remembered and had aged as beautifully as he would have expected. Her light brown hair is blonder now, probably from living so close to the beach, but her green eyes are exactly the same. When she looked up at Buck, her glare so narrow she was almost squinting, his heart felt like it would leap free of his chest.

  She had practically thrown Buck and Tiffany out of her office…well, she had thrown them out, but somehow Buck had coordinated his brain and his tongue—with great effort—to arrange to meet again that night. Now he had the rest of the day to really pull it together. No more winging it. This time he was going to have a speech prepared—word-for-word—leaving nothing to chance and no space for anything to go wrong again. Not only would he take care of the custody situation he had come to town to resolve, he would win her over and show her what a catch he is.

  “What are we going to do all day?” Tiffany asks, snapping Buck back to attention. In his mind, he was standing in Lizzie’s home, delivering a cinematic legal speech and she was gazing at him in awe.

  “Oh, um…” he had been so focused on the evening’s plans that he failed to think about the hours to fill in between. “I don’t know. Anything you want to do?”

  “Go to the beach and get coffee from Starbucks,” Tiffany answers quickly while staring at a woman in a Hummer talking on a cell phone one lane away. She had clearly been thinking about this.

  Starbucks coffee is kind of a big deal in Victory. Needless to say, the coffee empire does not have a chain in the small town. Most of the town’s residents would be beyond outraged at the thought of having to pay upward of three dollars for their plain black joe and would be confused and repulsed by mochas, gingerbread lattes, and double espresso shots. For the younger, striving-to-be-hip residents, though (definitely the minority), Starbucks coffee is a sought-after commodity. Unfortunately, it’s quite a trek away and few people have gotten to experience it. Buck can’t help but smile that it’s right up there with seeing the Pacific Ocean for Tiffany.

  “Sounds like we’ve got ourselves a plan,” Buck says, smiling at the back of Tiffany’s head.

  “Does she look famous to you?” Tiffany replies, still staring at the woman in the Hummer.

  Buck glances to his right…the woman is tiny, or at least looks tiny behind the wheel of the enormous car. Her stripy blonde hair is pulled into a messy looped ponytail, and the sunglasses on her face are almost as big as the car. As he looks, she shuts a rhinestoned flip phone and lifts a Starbucks cup to her lips.

  “Oh my God—she’s drinking Starbucks,” Tiffany gasps. “She must be famous.”

  Tiffany stalks the woman for miles of bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go, until she finally exits the freeway.

  “Is that the exit for Beverly Hills?” Tiffany asks as she watches the tank-size car barrel down the off-ramp.

  “I’m not sure,” Buck admits as he tries and fails to squeeze his big truck over toward the 10 West, since the sign indicates it is the exit for Pacific Coast Highway.

  Eventually, Buck is able to fight his way off the 405 and onto the 10, which is moving slightly better. He carefully watches the signs and follows them to the end of the freeway, which turns into Pacific Coast Highway. There on their left is the Pacific Ocean. Even though he was born and raised in California, he has seen this ocean only a handful of times. Buck peers over the tops of the squished-together, rundown beach houses and through the tiny spaces in between the brand-new-looking beach mansions at the golden sand and blue-green water.

  The sand is scattered with people, and bouncing up and down in the water are surfers with wet blond hair and black rubber body suits. Buck stares for a second, feeling an uneasiness in his stomach that this is probably the kind of guy Elizabeth dates now that she lives in Los Angeles. He wonders about taking up surfing, but even only seeing them from the waist up as they sit straddled across their surfboards, Buck knows he isn’t built like these guys. He’s built to hold back an aggressive offense on a football field.

  “Have you ever seen the Pacific before?” Buck asks Tiffany without taking his eyes off the water.

  “Nope,” she admits.

  He breaks his stare for long enough to glance across the car at Tiffany, expecting to see a look of awe on her face. Instead, she is looking out the right side of the car toward a little outdoor shopping center.

  “A Starbucks!” she exclaims pointing up about one hundred yards.

  Buck can’t help but smile even though he feels a little disappointed that she isn’t as excited about the ocean as she is about the coffee shop. Nonetheless, he turns his attention back to the road and they quickly arrive at the Starbucks. Outside, there are four little black metal tables with two matching chairs at each table; only two of the tables are occupied: one
by an unshaven man in a tattered Lacoste shirt typing on an Apple laptop, the other by two teenage-looking girls both dressed in velour warm-up suits and suede boots with fur inside. One girl has a bubblegum-pink bag at her feet that says ”Juicy,” and from the top of the bag a tiny, almost rat-size dog is poking its head up to receive bits of blueberry muffin from its owner.

  Buck watches Tiffany gape at the girls as she enters the store. She tries to play it cool and act like she’s a regular, but she looks much more like a child entering a candy store with a “Free Candy” sign out front. Tiffany stares at each person seated inside the small establishment and Buck knows she is trying to see if anyone is famous. Her stare stops a particularly long time at a blonde girl in black sunglasses and a hat reading Us Weekly and is startled when the surfer-looking man behind the counter in the dark green apron asks, “Can I get something started for you?”

  Tiffany whirls around and stares at him shocked for a split second before regaining her composure and trying to play it cool.

  “Oh, um…” she fumbles, staring up at the menu of drinks with names like machiatto and Frappuccino. “What do the famous people get?” she finally asks the barista.

  He stares back at her for a split second, with a look that combines pity and amusement before smiling kindly and lowering his voice to say, “Courteney Cox comes in here a lot and she always gets a venti mocha.”

  “That’s what I’ll have,” Tiffany tells him confidently. “Buck, you want a venti mocha too, right?” she asks with a tone that says, “Anybody who’s anyone drinks a venti mocha.”