Castle?” the voice on the other end inquires. It’s obviously not Dan…it must be some stupid sales call.
“Speaking?” I reply in a clearly annoyed tone.
“Ms. Castle, I am calling in regards to your best friend.”
I am distracted thinking about how soon I will be Mrs. McCafferty instead of Ms. Castle and so it takes me a second to process what the caller has said.
“Courtney?” I ask after a lengthy pause.
“Oh, um, no,” I can tell the caller feels awkward, and my feelings of irritation begin to return. “Charla Dearbourne Tatham,” he finally says.
He pronounces the last name as it’s spelled, and instinctively I correct his pronunciation: “Dearburn.”
It’s like I’m instantly transported to the fifth grade, when Charla Dearbourne actually was my best friend and I had to stand up to every moron who pronounced her name incorrectly. At eleven years old, we were positive it was the people who were idiots and not the fact that her name was not pronounced the way it was spelled that was the problem. I probably haven’t thought about Charla for a dozen years. All at once, I’m flooded with memories of my childhood friend, quickly followed by the disdain I feel whenever I think of my hometown.
I grew up in a small (pathetically tiny) town in Central California called Victory. Of the town’s approximately seven hundred residents, 70 percent were rednecks and the other 30 percent were hicks. Basically the only thing Victory has going for it is that it’s a bump in the road on the way to a posh ski resort. Granted, there are nicer bumps on either side of it where most people take their rest stops, but occasionally a yuppie couple will miscalculate the distance and end up stopping in Victory to refuel their Range Rover and have lunch at one of the “quaint” (crappy) local eateries. My childhood dream was for a wonderful, childless couple on their way to a lavish ski vacation to fall in love with me, adopt me on the spot, and take me with them. This never happened, so the day I turned eighteen, I burned rubber out of Victory and never looked back.
Charla and I had been friends since the day we started kindergarten, and we pinky swore up and down that we would remain best friends until the day we died. By high school, we both knew we were growing apart, but we still vowed to keep our schoolyard promise. Then, at seventeen, Charla made a mistake very common among the girls at Victory High…she got pregnant the night of our senior homecoming dance.
While I helped her decide between Tiffany and Debbie (after the beloved ’80s pop stars Tiffany and Debbie Gibson) as the best name for her daughter, I also decided to make my life different. I kept my legs securely crossed while I anxiously filled out applications for every college I could get a scholarship to. In May, one month before graduation day, Tiffany Debbie Dearbourne was born (four other babies were also born to girls in our graduating class that month) and I announced my decision to enroll at UCLA for the fall and to get a jump on things by attending the summer session starting in just six weeks.
Charla was my biggest champion, and she promised that as soon as she got back on her feet, she and Tiffany would meet me in Los Angeles. We kept this dream alive until about halfway through my freshman year, when Charla informed me that her boyfriend, Clark Winters (not Tiffany’s father), wanted to marry her. Even though part of me knew she was never coming, I was so disappointed in her that I not only didn’t return home for her wedding, I never spoke to her again. I heard from my mother when three years later Charla went down to the courthouse with a black eye and filed for divorce. A few years after that my mother updated me that Charla was marrying Chuck Tatham, and while I didn’t care enough to send her congratulations I was happy for her because I remembered Chuck from high school and knew him to be a nice guy.
“What about Charla?” I ask the caller, wondering why this person, and not my own mother, is calling to share Charla gossip with me.
“I’m sorry to inform you, Ms. Castle, that Mrs. Tatham has passed away.”
At first his worlds don’t register or make sense. “Mrs. Tatham?” The only people in our small town who went by Mr. or Mrs. were teachers at the school. Mrs. Tatham wasn’t ringing any bells. Then it hit me like a bucket of ice water.
“Can you hold on a moment?” I politely ask and I hit the “flash” button on my phone before he can answer. “Court, I have to call you back,” I say, my mouth feeling filled with sawdust.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I reply without meaning it. “I’ll call you right back.” And then I click back over to the stranger waiting on my other line. “I’m back,” I tell him.
“I’m sorry to bring such bad news,” the caller apologizes. “Mrs. Tatham and her husband were driving home early this morning when their car swerved off the road. Unfortunately the style pickup that Mr. Tatham was driving had actually been recalled many years ago on account of the gas tank being underneath the passenger cab and the risk of explosion upon impact. They were both killed immediately.”
I can picture the kind of pickup they were driving as if it were sitting in my living room. The rusted old trucks are common in Victory—I think my own stepfather drives one.
Thinking of Russ and his hunk-of-junk car makes me think of my mother. I haven’t talked to her in some time, but I’m certain that she and Charla’s mother are still friends. Why didn’t she call me? Then I remember—my mother and stepfather are away at a bowling tournament this weekend. Russ is a big bowler in the Victory league and he and my mother often travel to compete. Charla’s parents are in the same league.
Suddenly my heart fills with sadness. For the first time since the day I loaded all my worldly possessions into my old green Datsun (a car I thankfully no longer own) and left Victory, I feel a pang of homesickness and a longing for my mother.
“When will the funeral be?” I ask, trying to focus on the details in an effort to avoid the pain.
“No arrangements have been made yet, Ms. Castle. Mrs. Tatham’s family is out of town at the moment—”
“Thank you for the call, I will keep in touch with family in Victory to get the details,” I say, cutting him off.
I hang up the phone before he can get another word out, and I immediately pull the cord from the wall. I wonder for a split second who the person on the other end was—he never did identify himself, but the truth is that I don’t care. I am flooded with conflicting emotions. This was the happiest night of my life and now the joy has come to a crashing halt. Suddenly I am heartbroken over the loss of a friend I haven’t even thought about since I was in my twenties.
“Humph, some friend,” I say to myself as I swallow four Nyquil with the glass of water that has been on my nightstand since yesterday. Still in my shiny pink robe, I curl up on the slightly tangled sheets left from my tryst with Dan and close my eyes tightly.
2
I awake the next morning with a mind-blowing hangover. It takes me a minute to remember that I got it from the four little green pills and not a night of fun. It takes me a second after that to remember why I overdosed on cold meds when I don’t even have the slightest sniffle. When I do remember, I roll over and plug the phone back into the wall. Then I return to my back holding the handset and dial my mother’s phone number. She answers on the fourth ring.
“Hello?” she says, and from the mumble I can tell a cigarette is pursed between
