Not Quite A mom

by Kirsten Sawyer

  I open my eyes and do a double take at my reflection. In the short time I’ve been seated in front of them, the women have performed a miracle transformation. Gone are the greasy hair and baggy eyes. I look like a different person. My face is flawless and my hair is perfect. I move to stand up, just as one of the members of the wardrobe department dives underneath me with a pair of black Gucci sandals.

  “Just put these on,” she instructs. “Everything else is adorable—totally Jessica Simpson.”

  I look down and gasp in sudden horror that I am still wearing my almost transparent camisole with my gaucho pants.

  “I’m practically naked,” I plead.

  The wardrobe people are beyond fashionable and I often hear them bitching about the boring restrictions Renee puts on them. I don’t want them to feel the same way about me, but I also don’t want my debut hosting experience to be in the buff.

  “Fine,” she says stifling an eye roll. “Put this on,” she instructs handing me a white crocheted poncho almost as sheer as the item I am already wearing.

  I slip it over my head, careful of my hair and makeup, hoping that the two sheer fabrics together give me some sort of coverage. I glance in the mirror and see that the result is good enough. Actually, it looks great. I almost can’t believe it’s me. Something in the back of my head hopes that Buck will be watching, but I quickly scold myself and correct my emotion so that I hope Dan is watching. Then I quickly dial Tiffany to make sure that she is tuned in.

  I practically have to hang up on the teenager screaming with excitement as I hear, “ONE MINUTE!” and then Ryan’s voice in my right ear. I hadn’t realized the piece had been implanted and I jump.

  “Ryan, can you hear me?” I whisper.

  “Of course I can hear you…but I can’t see you. Get your ass in your seat,” he commands, and I quickly slip onto the stage and seat myself on the cream couch Renee always does her opening monologue from. It feels weird…beyond weird. I feel like I shouldn’t be there, like any second now Renee is going to walk up behind me and bitch me out for sitting in her spot. Before I can adjust, Ryan is in my ear counting down, the director is making hand gestures in my direction, and then a red light is blinking on all four cameras, which are all pointed in my direction.

  Without missing a beat I say, “Hello everyone, and welcome to The Renee Foster Show!” just as Renee always does. “As you can see, I’m not Renee Foster, I’m your favorite fact girl, Elizabeth Castle, filling in for Renee, who suffered a painful hiking accident this weekend. We have a great show for you today. Nicole Kidman is here to chat with us about her newest film, as well as Sarah Jessica Parker, who has transitioned from playing a writer on television to authoring her first book, Looking Sexy in Any City. But first, let’s check in on Renee and see how she’s feeling.”

  “Great job,” Ryan buzzes in my ear as the satellite feed of Renee, propped up on pink satin pillows, fills a huge screen behind me. I beam from his words, but before he says it, I already know it. As soon as that red light went on, something inside me clicked and every second felt so right. I am positively soaring as I act concerned and ask Renee about her horrible accident and painful recovery. This is the greatest day of my life.

  32

  Tiffany couldn’t deny the fact that living in Los Angeles was far more boring than she had anticipated. She had thought it was going to be as glamorous and star-studded as it appeared on television and in the magazines she used to spend hours poring over. Unfortunately, in a lot of ways it was even more boring than life in Victory. At least in Victory she had friends and a boyfriend to help pass the empty days. Here she had nothing. The celebrity sightings turned out to be few and far between, and without a car (or a license) she couldn’t really get to the right places at the right times even if she could figure out exactly where or when they were. Instead, her options were to sit in Lizzie’s apartment—which in fairness was far less cataloglike than it had been when Tiffany first arrived and felt like she couldn’t even sit on the couch—watching television, or go to work with Lizzie and watch Renee Foster tape her talk show.

  For the first few weeks, Tiffany had gone to the show almost every day. It did place her just a few feet away from some of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood. Lizzie had even managed to briefly introduce her to a few of her favorites, like Mischa Barton and Jared Padalecki. Although these quick hellos were majorly beefed up when relayed to her friends back in Victory during the long phone calls and even longer e-mails she focused on during the days she stayed home, they really weren’t thrilling enough to keep Tiffany getting up early and sitting in the freezing-cold studio the show taped in. In reality, these tapings were a lot like watching the show at home, except without the freedom to get up to pee when you had to, and having to cheer wildly when you really didn’t give a damn.

  Tiffany had sat through way more than her share of The Renee Foster Show! tapings and was glad to be sitting at home doing nothing while Lizzie completed the jury duty stint that was the failed Plan B. Little did she know as she sat at Lizzie’s once immaculate desk that the day wouldn’t turn out to be so boring. Tiffany logged onto her e-mail and was pleased to find seven new messages waiting for her. Three of them were from her boyfriend, Red; two of them from her best friend, Laci; one from her friend Katie; and the seventh from her grandmother, who was pretty new to e-mail and did annoying things like write in ALL CAPS and put explanations in parenthesis following symbols—like after colon, dash, end parenthesis she wrote (smiling face), as if Tiffany hadn’t been reading e-mail slang her entire life. Nonetheless, seven e-mails was enough to keep her busy through the morning and remind her how loved and missed she was back home…and was probably more fun than another taping of The Renee Foster Show!

  Halfway through reading Red’s first (and overly emotional) e-mail, the little message counter beeped and an eighth new message appeared. Tiffany clicked over, halfway through Red’s sentence about how every day without her felt like more than twenty-four hours, to see what the newcomer was. It was a funny forward from Buck, who entertained her a few times a week with silly images like fat kids dancing around with light sabers or cats turning on television sets. This forward was a page full of pictures of cats in sunglasses being compared to celebrities. As she studied side-by-side portraits of a tabby in Ray-Bans and a Material Girl–era shot of Madonna, the phone on the desk rang. Eyes still glued to the computer screen, Tiffany answered. The sad fact was that she got far more calls than Lizzie did.

  It actually was Lizzie calling, and Tiffany braced herself. She had expected a miserable Elizabeth to call as soon as she was given a break from jury duty and permission to use the phone. Instead of the despondent person she was expecting, an overly joyous caller greeted Tiffany. Lizzie quickly explained that Renee had taken a fall down a mountain and that she would be hosting the show in her place.

  “She really wants the network to play repeats, but they want me to do it,” Elizabeth reported.

  Tiffany was thrilled for Elizabeth, and more than a little upset that the one day she stayed home something of interest was actually going to happen on the talk show. Tiffany could hear the warning signs in the background that the show was about to start, so they hung up. She quickly went into the living room and turned the television on, forgetting about the half-read e-love letter from Red still sitting on the computer’s desktop.

  Moments later, there was Elizabeth sitting in the chair normally occupied by Renee Foster. Her hair and makeup looked incredible and something inside her seemed to glow while she was on-camera. She welcomed the audience to the show and then cut to an image of Renee, larger than life, on a screen behind Elizabeth. Renee sat propped up, looked into the camera, and told “her” viewers that the studio and network wanted to run encore episodes of some of her best shows, but she insisted that “her” viewers deserved first-run television and that the “fact girl” could fill in for a few days.

  Tiffany couldn’t help but roll her eyes at how obnoxi
ous the show’s host was, but she didn’t waste long dwelling on it because soon the camera was back on Elizabeth. Suddenly Tiffany realized that she needed to spread the word—she needed to call everyone and make sure they were watching The Renee Foster Show! right this very second. She pulled the cord of the old-fashioned phone in the hallway as far toward the television as it could possibly reach and started dialing. First, she dialed Courtney, whose number went straight to voice mail. Second, she called her grandmother, who she knew wouldn’t be far from Elizabeth’s mother and able to spread the word. Sure enough, the two women were together and both were excited to watch the show. She called a few of her girlfriends in Victory who she had done immense amounts of bragging to—this would only give her more bragging ammunition. Tiffany decided to try Courtney’s number once more, and this time she picked up. Tiffany gave her the news and promised to share Courtney’s congratulations with Lizzie. Courtney was getting on a plane at LAX to go to a gift show convention in Las Vegas for SparkleCourt.

  “Who next?” she thought. “Buck!” She decided the attorney-turned-friend would want to know.

  She dialed Buck’s number and he answered distractedly.

  “Buck,” Tiffany told him, “the normal host of the show Lizzie works on is sick and she’s filling in.”

  As soon as she said it, she doubted if she should have made the phone call. Did Buck actually like or care about Lizzie? Was she interrupting his busy day with information he couldn’t care less about? The weekend of the funeral, Tiffany thought she had sensed something between them besides the discomfort and disdain that had previously been at the forefront of their communications; but then the weekend Buck came down to Los Angeles he had spent the entire time with Courtney. Was Lizzie nothing more than a friend of his new girlfriend?

  “I know, she already called me. I’m watching right now,” he said.

  She already called him? Tiffany replayed his response in her head. Lizzie hadn’t called her best friend or her mother, but she’d called Buck Platner? This was interesting to Tiffany, as was Buck’s next comment, “She looks amazing.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” Tiffany agreed.

  They watched together, over the phone, in silence for a few seconds before another person popped into Tiffany’s head.

  “Do you think I should try to let Dan know that she’s on TV?” Tiffany asked Buck.

  He paused for a split second before answering, “No, I don’t think so,” in an odd and forced tone.

  Tiffany let it go and said good-bye to Buck so that she could focus on watching Elizabeth. She was sitting across from Nicole Kidman, and they were chatting like old friends.

  “Lizzie mentioned a visit up to Victory, so hopefully I’ll be seeing you soon,” Buck told Tiffany as he hung up his phone.

  Tiffany set the phone back on its cradle and tried to untangle the cord as best she could while a commercial for Tampax filled the screen. A tangled phone cord was definitely the kind of thing that the old Elizabeth would have freaked out about, but which the new Lizzie tried hard to ignore. She had not only called Buck to tell him about her television debut, she had also talked to him about visiting Victory?!? Tiffany couldn’t help wondering what was going on, but she didn’t have much time to ponder it because the Tampax was gone and there again were Elizabeth and Nicole, their heads huddled together in an adorable fit of giggles.

  33

  My week has been amazing. I can’t deny the fact that Renee’s unfortunate (extremely fortunate) accident has been a priceless gift to me. Much to Renee’s and a little to Ryan’s horror, the show’s ratings have been as good as or better with me as the host than Renee and—get this—I’ve been getting almost twice the fan mail she does. As I said, it’s been amazing. Unfortunately, I cannot completely sit back and bask in the glory of my dreams coming true since thus far all attempts to reunite with Dan have failed miserably. Besides the failed supermarket bump-into and the horrific jury duty volunteering, we can’t forget the bungled “Did you call me?” stunt as well as the radio station song dedication plot suggested by Tiffany and accepted after half a bottle of celebratory Veuve Clicquot (sent over as a gift from the studio!).

  Now I sit in the passenger seat of Courtney’s Range Rover in Friday night traffic as the three of us—Courtney, Tiffany, and I—drive to Victory for the promised-under-the-influence-of-exciting-news visit. I had mentioned a visit when I called Buck…a call I still can’t completely explain why I placed, (especially to Courtney), and then Tiffany got extremely excited about seeing her friends. So I was stuck. Then, when I made the mistake of complaining about the trip to Courtney, she eagerly attached herself to the journey, and that is how the three of us ended up on this excursion together. The truth is that I really, really didn’t want Courtney accompanying us to Victory—especially to Buck’s house, which is our planned destination—but I couldn’t figure out a good reason to leave her behind, so again I found myself stuck.

  The upside is that we are able to use the drive to work out the details of Plan C to get Dan back. At first Tiffany and Courtney urged me to resort to the original Plan B—the reverse-rear-end-bump, but once again I shot the idea down in favor of something (anything) else. The something else involves a Los Angeles Harvard Alumni event and a charity date auction. The plan is actually quite simple: 1. Attend the charity date auction; 2. Bid on Dan. 3; Win the date with Dan; 4. Go on date, where Dan sees how much he misses me and realizes how badly he wants to be with me. The tricky things are: 1. There isn’t currently a charity date auction planned by the Los Angeles Harvard Alumni; 2. I didn’t go to Harvard, and besides Dan, I don’t know anyone who did. These are the points that most of our discussion is focusing around.

  “Okay, it’s really not as difficult as you’re making it, Elizabeth,” Courtney says as she cuts off an extremely large gasoline tanker on the narrow highway. “You need to call the Los Angeles Harvard Alumni Association president and explain that you’ve recently moved here from—wherever—and you were really active in your old chapter and you’re eager to dive right in and you want to start by planning this charity event.”

  It is clear that Courtney thinks dealing with the Harvard alums is going to be as simple as planning a sorority social.

  “But Dan is a member of the association,” I protest. “He’ll find out what I’m doing and rat me out for not being a member.”

  “So you’ll use a fake name,” Tiffany pipes up from the backseat, where she is belted into the center seat.

  “Exactly,” Courtney agrees.

  “What name?” I ask, hoping that at some point I’ll stump them and they’ll come up with a different (and easier) plan.

  “What was it they called you back in Victory?” Courtney asks, more to herself than to me. “Betsy? Say your name is Betsy Platner. Buck won’t mind,” she adds, with an authority that I wonder how she got.

  “Lizzie,” I correct, not that it matters. “Lizzie Platner sounds like a total hick name, though.”

  For some reason, saying “Lizzie Platner” makes my cheeks flush hot and red, and I turn my head to look out the Range Rover’s window even though it is unlikely anyone could see into the dark car.

  “Actually, I think it sounds pretty cute,” Tiffany pipes up again.

  Her compliment causes another wave of prickles in my cheeks and adds one in my stomach. For the moment I give in, mostly because I fear that any more discussion of what my alias will be might cause an uncontrollable and unexplainable giggle to escape me.

  “Okay, so let’s say I can get membership to the association and they are willing to let me plan the event. Then what?” I ask, trying to get my eyes back on the prize.

  “You’re home free!” Courtney explains as she veers off the road. “Oh shit, this is the town, huh? I think I saw a sign.”

  I look up. I’d hardly been paying attention as we cruised along in the dark. It’s only around nine o’clock, but my new role on the show is much more exhausting that my usual “fact girl
” duties. From the backseat Tiffany gives Courtney the limited directions to take us from the highway/Main Street to Buck’s house.

  “My God, it’s good to be home!” Tiffany exclaims as we cruise past Mug’s and turn onto Buck’s street.

  I hate to admit it, but it does feel a little good. Plus, the arrival at Buck’s means a break from the Plan C scheming that is starting to cause a shooting pain behind my left eye. We cruise down the street, and even though it isn’t even ten o’clock—early by L.A. standards—the street is as quiet as if it were three in the morning. The car’s large tires crunch over the gravel that mysteriously finds its way onto Victory’s streets and rolls to a stop outside Buck’s house, one of the few that still has lights on.

  We park and climb out of the car, each of us toting a weekend bag—Tiffany’s old duffel, my outlet Coach bag, and Courtney’s pink-and green Juicy bag. Before we reach the porch, Buck opens the front door and steps into the jamb. My heart does a flip at the sight of him, dressed in mesh basketball shorts and a well-worn U of A shirt that clings to his defined pectorals and biceps. He looks straight at me and gives me a dimpled smile as he runs his hand over his freshly shorn hair. I can’t help wondering if he’s always had such a cute smile. His expression quickly changes, though, as Courtney grabs the back of his head and kisses him on the lips.

  “Surprise, sweetie!” she exclaims.

  Buck looks surprised…actually, shocked. My eyes widen for a second and I look at Tiffany, who is looking back at me with the same expression. Neither of us realized that Buck did not know Courtney was joining us. She had made it sound as though she had been invited, that he had insisted that she join us in Victory for the weekend.

  “Oh, uh, Courtney…what a surprise,” he fumbles for words. His face registers the kind of surprise you don’t like…like: surprise, you thought your car needed a new battery, but actually we have to rebuild the whole engine and it’ll cost you two paychecks. (That actually happened to me, so I know the face it causes.) “I didn’t realize you were joining the girls. Gosh…we’re a little tight on space,” he says, looking back at the couch where his big golden dog is clearly settled in for the night.