Not Quite A mom

by Kirsten Sawyer

  I wander into the kitchen to find some food and am spreading peanut butter on white bread when the phone rings again. I drop the bread and knife in mid-smear and trot to the phone, so confident that it’s Dan that I don’t even bother to look at the caller ID.

  “Hey,” I answer the phone, picturing Dan’s sweaty head under his plaid visor and his wide, toothy smile. Instead of hearing his warm voice, I hear the same stranger’s voice I heard last night.

  “Ms. Castle, this is Mr. Platner. We spoke last night regarding Charla Tatham,” he reminds me.

  Oh, so that’s who last night’s caller was. If memory serves, all the sons of the Platner family are attorneys in Victory. They are a strange family that for generations has left Victory to attend law school and then—here’s the strange part—returned to Victory to practice in the same dumpy office the generation before had used. I’m wondering which Platner this is. There was one a year above me at Victory High, but Buck Platner always seemed a little dense.

  “Is this Buck Platner?” I ask, unable to fathom the football playing meathead who took me to his senior prom as an attorney.

  “Yes, Lizzie, it is,” he says as if he doesn’t want to admit it, and my temper flares internally as he uses my childhood nickname.

  “It’s Elizabeth now,” I correct him, coolly, trying to quash a swell of anger, “or Liz.”

  “Oh, well, sorry about that Lizzie…I mean Elizabeth,” he stutters. “Look, Liz, you hung up so fast last night and your line has been busy ever since, except when there was no answer at all.”

  “Well, what is it Buck?” I snap as my concern that something is wrong with my call waiting is confirmed. I need to get off this stupid call quickly since Dan is probably trying desperately to get through.

  “Look, Lizzie…Liz…Elizabeth, Charla had a last will and testament. My father was actually the one who drew it up for her,” he drawls, and my mind goes back to Victory.

  I am 100 percent, or if it’s possible to be more than 100 percent certain, that’s what I am that Charla did not have any great fortune that she left to her long-lost best friend. In fact, I am pretty certain that all she had was a crappy old Victory house and maybe a crappy old compact car, and since the truck clearly would not be getting handed out to survivors I didn’t see any loot I’d be interested in.

  “Well, she named you guardian of her daughter, Tiffany Debbie Dearbourne.”

  Again he pronounces the name the way it’s spelled, and again I correct him, but this time with a bit less patience.

  “It’s Dearburn,” I bark. “You ought to know…you went to high school with her.”

  “Dearburn,” he repeats, without making any apologies for his mistake. “You’re her guardian.”

  I’m so focused on thinking about how even though he’s now an attorney it is clear that Buck Platner is still dense that I don’t hear him.

  “So we’ll need you to sign some papers,” he continues.

  “Sign what papers?” I ask, not getting over my annoyance easily.

  “The guardianship papers,” he explains, and then goes on in depth about some sort of process, but again, my mind is not with him.

  “Guardianship papers?” I ask, feeling that perhaps there is something wrong with my whole phone and not just the call waiting, since Buck and I seem to be carrying on two separate conversations.

  “Lizzie…Liz, I just explained that you are to be guardian of Tiffany,” he says sounding exasperated and probably thinking that I am the dense one.

  As his words finally penetrate, I feel a tightness in my chest and a spinning in my head. I can’t breathe well—short snips of air are escaping out of my chest, but I can’t seem to draw a good breath in. As my head grows lighter, I am somehow able to rationalize that this is a panic attack. I had one once before when my hairdresser and I had a major failure to communicate and I had to attend my college graduation with a permanent wave.

  “Relax,” I command myself, but apparently I say it out loud and Buck thinks the command is intended for him, which leads to more confusion between us.

  I grab an empty paper bag which was used to bring take-out moo shoo into my apartment yesterday and breathe in and out, hardly noticing the lingering smell of hoisin sauce. My heart starts to slow down, and suddenly my head rationalizes that “guardian” in this case obviously doesn’t mean what I think it means.

  “What do you mean by guardian?” I ask, eager to get the misunderstanding cleared up. “Doesn’t a person have to agree to be a child’s guardian? Wouldn’t I have had to sign some sort of legal document?”

  “Jesus, Lizzie,” he says, forgetting to correct himself, which is okay since I’m too distracted to notice his mistake, “I thought your folks said you went to UCLA.” He pronounces my alma mater in what I am assuming is his attempt at a hoity-toity voice. “By guardian I mean you are her legal guardian—you have custody. Charla is dead and her will states that if that happens, you raise her kid,” he finishes in a huff, forgetting his professional manner and not bothering to sugarcoat a thing.

  I have a horrifying flashback to a conversation in Charla’s dingy bedroom, shortly after she realized she was pregnant, where I wholeheartedly agreed to be the unborn child’s godmother. Does that hold up in a court of law?!?

  “But I can’t be a guardian,” I argue. “I’m only thirty-two years old!” I whine, sounding like a twelve-year-old.

  “Well, guess what, Lizzie, so was Charla,” he snaps. “Look, what do you want me to do about this? You are who she picked, which I assume means she thought you would be good…although it seems likely she hadn’t dealt with you recently,” he adds under his breath.

  His scolding shuts me up. “What am I supposed to do now?” I ask in a pout, my eyes filling with tears, and the panic attack that had subsided returning in full force. I am partially wondering what the legal procedure to come will be and partially wondering about my life.

  “You need to sign these papers ASAP, and then Tiffany will be yours,” he says it as if he has just sold me a new hatchback. Just sign these papers and a 2004 Honda Civic will be yours!

  “Okay,” I say, highly aware of the fact that I don’t have a choice. “Send the papers to my office on Monday,” I instruct, giving him the phone number to call to get the mailing address from my assistant.

  “Thank you, Ms. Castle,” Buck says, returning to his professional attorney persona. “Again, I am terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks, Buck,” I mumble, not wasting time or energy on being formal or polite—even bordering on cynical, before clicking the phone off and setting it on its base with shaking hands.

  3

  Another world away, Buck Platner hangs up his old beige phone before slamming his fists and then his head down on his scratched desk. That hadn’t gone anything like he had planned and neither had the night before.

  The night before, Buck had been sitting home alone with his golden retriever, Wildcat, when his own phone had rung. His nights were usually pretty quiet (boring) and so the ring had startled both Buck and Wildcat, who had been relaxing on the couch, Buck with a Hungry Man TV dinner and Wildcat with a fresh pig ear.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  “Son,” his father’s gruff voice boomed through the receiver. “We’re having a bit of an emergency situation down at the office. I need you here.”

  Buck quickly agreed and rose from the couch, not bothering to turn off the television or throw away the remains of his microwave meal.

  He stood almost six feet five inches in his bare size 13 feet. As if these kind of calls were the norm, which they certainly were not—he had never received one before—Buck slid his feet into a well-worn pair of Adidas sandals and brushed the crumbs off his belly before grabbing his shoddy, faux-leather briefcase and keys and heading out the door.

  Besides the tacky attaché case and in spite of the spots of Hungry Man gravy on his belly, Buck looked sexy in his Levi’s and white cotton T-shirt. His skin was tan
ned from spending time outdoors, his athletic physique was clear under his clothes, and his blond hair was neatly buzzed an inch from his scalp. Climbing into his new black F150, he rubbed his blue eyes and looked at the clock on his cell phone. He had definitely never been called to work at this hour before.

  The office was only a few blocks from Buck’s home, and within minutes he was parking next to his father’s Cadillac and climbing out of the truck. Hurrying inside, his stomach tightened with worry about the “emergency” inside.

  Once in the office, he found his father, the image of Buck but thirty-five years older, sitting at his desk, rubbing his own blue eyes. Sitting across from his father was a teenage girl dressed in what looked like pajamas, but these days what kids wore to school and to bed looked very similar. Her eyes were red, and clearly she had been crying.

  “Buck,” his father said glancing up and looking grateful to see his younger son, “This is Tiffany Dearbourne.”

  “Dearburn,” the girl, Tiffany, said miserably.

  “Hello,” Buck said stiffly, feeling as uncomfortable as he always did in front of clients of the legal practice.

  “You went to school with her mother, Charla,” his father went on to explain. “Sadly, Charla and her husband, Chuck Tatham, were killed in a bad car wreck earlier this afternoon.”

  Buck’s mouth fell open slightly in shock. Back in high school, he’d known Charla Dearbourne as the best friend of his senior prom date and the one girl he thought about consistently, even though it had been a dozen years since he’d seen her face.

  “Tiffany’s mother was a client of ours, I drew up her will many years ago,” Buck’s father, Larry Senior—called Larry S—continued. “There aren’t any real assets…a house here in town not worth too much, a 1989 Toyota compact. Obviously, the truck is no longer included. She assigned a guardian for her daughter here though, another gal you went to school with, so I thought maybe it would be best if you contacted her about all this. Let’s see, what’s her name?” Larry S asked himself as he shuffled through the manila file folder containing Charla’s papers. “Ah, here it is: Elizabeth Castle.”

  Elizabeth Castle? Buck’s heart skipped a beat—that was the girl.

  “Um, sure, Dad. I can contact her. Do we have a phone number?” he asked trying to play it cool with the same butterflies in his belly he’d felt before calling her and asking her to be his date to the dance.

  His father scribbled the number on a yellow Post-it note and handed it to Buck, who headed for his private office. Once inside, with the door closed, he sat behind the desk preparing what he would say.

  His heart was racing with anticipation—in just a few minutes he would be speaking with Lizzie Castle. He had taken Lizzie to his senior prom when she was a junior, but just a few weeks after that he had gone off to Arizona for football preseason practice. Because of the football schedule, he hadn’t gotten back to Victory for Christmas that year and had joined a bunch of guys at Lake Havasu for spring break. When summer finally rolled around, Buck had been eager to return home to see Lizzie but had learned that just days before his homecoming, she had headed to Los Angeles to get a jump on her freshman year at UCLA. She hadn’t returned to her hometown after that, but over the past years Buck had thought about her often.

  Lizzie was the only girl who had ever resisted Buck, and that intrigued him beyond belief. As an attractive athlete, Buck had never had to work hard with members of the opposite sex; it seemed that there were plenty of girls who wanted to go out with him—or just have sex with him—simply because he played football. Lizzie Castle was the only girl who had ever seemed immune to this. Buck had always found her lack of interest in him irresistible.

  Feeling ashamed that he felt excited to be placing a call of such a depressing nature, he carefully dialed 9 for an outside line, followed by 1-310, and then the phone number his father had scrawled out for him. She picked up quickly, and Buck figured that she must have been on the other line.

  Instead of saying what he had planned, the words that came out of his mouth sounded like they always did when he was trying to deal with clients—completely dense. The call was over in a matter of seconds, and only after he heard the dial tone return did Buck realize that not only had he failed to identify himself, he had also failed to impart any of the information he was supposed to.

  He thought about dialing her number again but thought again, deciding that he needed the evening to compose himself and would give her the night to collect herself as well before calling again in the morning. Dejectedly, he opened the door that joined his office to his father’s and walked back in where the aging Platner and Charla’s daughter sat uncomfortably. As he entered his father looked up, glad to see him.

  “Well, everything settled?” he asked, a little too eagerly. “Is she on her way here now?”

  “Not exactly,” Buck said, uncomfortably.

  “Are you driving her down to L.A.?” his father asked, his eyes narrowing as he motioned toward Tiffany.

  “Not quite. She just needed the evening to collect herself,” Buck offered, aware of how lame it sounded.

  He saw his father’s face flush slightly. “This girl’s a minor. She cannot spend the night alone, and her grandparents are out of town.”

  Buck felt the disappointment he always felt oozing out of his father whenever he tried to handle something around the office. The fact was that although he was a good attorney, Buck was horrible at handling anything to do with the clients or the business side of the practice.

  “She can spend the night at my place,” Buck offered pathetically.

  “Well, I guess there’s not really another option now, is there,” his father said, rising from the desk and closing a briefcase as ugly as Buck’s but much more worn. “Be sure to connect with this Ms. Castle first thing tomorrow so this girl can get down to L.A. Miss Dearbourne,” he said looking at the miserable young girl as he crossed his office, “I am sorry for your loss. Things will get straightened out in no time.”

  “I don’t want to go to L.A.!” Tiffany called out, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Well, I’m afraid there’s not much choice. We have to follow your mother’s wishes here,” his father said as he squeezed past Buck with a glare and stepped into the office’s small reception area.

  Before either Buck or Tiffany could say another word, his father was out the door and the two of them were alone in the office. The room was so still they could hear the quiet buzzing of the old copy machine that their secretary, Doris, had forgotten to turn off—again. The silence was only broken by occasional sniffles from Tiffany while Buck stared down his chest, unsure of what to do next.

  Seeing the gravy spots on his belly, he looked up. “Have you had your dinner yet?” he asked kindly.

  Although upon first appearance, Buck looked more like a fighter than a lover, he had a truly kind heart, which easily shone through his rough exterior as soon as he opened his mouth—as long as he wasn’t with a client. Tiffany, not looking up, shook her head no.

  “Well, come on, let’s go get something for you to eat.”

  4

  A few hours earlier, fifteen-year-old Tiffany Dearbourne had been pedaling her old purple bicycle as fast as it would go toward home. She’d been at her friend Laci’s house and hadn’t realized the time…her mother would be home any minute. Normally it wasn’t a big deal for Tiffany to get home after her mom, but right now she was grounded and shouldn’t have been out at all. After spending most of the weekend cooped up inside the stuffy house, Tiffany decided that if her mother couldn’t bother to stay in town and uphold the punishment that she didn’t need to obey it.

  It really was a stupid punishment anyway. Tiffany had returned home twenty-seven minutes past curfew the weekend before. Her mother, Charla, had gone down the warpath and had grounded Tiffany for the next three weeks. Obviously an overzealous punishment, but since her mother had gotten pregnant her senior year of high school, she was convinced Tiffany’s
fate would be the same.

  The ridiculous thing was that while Tiffany had been with a boy—her boyfriend of four months, Red Richley—she was not going to make the same mistakes her mother had. Instead, she was determined to follow in the footsteps of her Aunt Lizzie and get the hell out of Victory. Lizzie wasn’t actually Tiffany’s aunt, but rather her mother’s best friend in the whole world. Tiffany hadn’t seen Lizzie since she was a little baby because Lizzie had hit the road and attended college in Los Angeles, where she was now a successful career woman.

  Sure, Tiffany had been at the lake (dried-up lake bed) with Red in his father’s green Chevy, but she never had and never would let him move below her waistband. Unfortunately, Charla didn’t believe Tiffany’s pleas of innocence. Tiffany didn’t let the punishment get her too far down, though. She just kept counting the days until her high school graduation, when she could make her own exit from Victory. Until Sunday afternoon, that is, when the boredom had gotten to her and she’d ridden her bike the three and a half blocks to Laci’s house.

  The girls had just watched MTV and drunk Cokes—in actuality, all things Tiffany could have done from her own house. It was just more fun to do them with Laci. As her legs shook from the power required to move the old bike at the speed Tiffany needed to get home, hopefully unscathed, she seriously doubted how worth it the afternoon with Laci had been.

  As she rounded the final corner and was only a few houses from her own, Tiffany sighed with relief that her stepfather’s pickup wasn’t in the driveway. The relief lasted only a few seconds before she realized that a black-and-white police car was there instead. She was done for now…her own mother had called the police because she’d broken a punishment that was stupid to begin with?!?

  With each pump of her legs on the rickety old pedals, Tiffany prayed that the cops were there for some other purpose and that she would get away with her outing. As she curved into the driveway, one of them called out to her.