crazy stuffing her face with junk food, but tonight she felt that the knot in her stomach was taking up any room that could have been used for food.
Tiffany and Buck sat on the living room couch—a couch Tiffany noted was extremely ugly but exceptionally comfortable—watching TV in silence for most of the night. Finally, at almost midnight, Buck suggested that he show Tiffany to the guest room.
Buck rose from the couch and led Tiffany down the hallway, where he opened the only door on the right. Inside was a perfectly comfortable guest room/home office combination. On one side of the room was a corner desk with computer gear and stacks of paper. On the other, a double bed with a plain black comforter. Like the living room, the only decorations were items that Buck had held on to from his football career.
“Sorry it’s not much,” Buck offered.
“No, it’s fine,” Tiffany said, realizing she should have been more polite but not having the energy.
“The bathroom is down the hall. There’s only one, so you go ahead and use it first.” Buck motioned to the door at the end of the hall.
Tiffany nodded and headed down the hall, nervous about what she might find. In her experience, men were not the nicest people to share bathrooms with…at least her stepfather, Chuck, was not. At home, the toilet seat was always up, with spots of pee along the rim. There were always globs of toothpaste in the sink, and short, dark, curly hairs along the edge of the tub. With great trepidation, Tiffany pushed open the door and turned the light on. Immediately she let out a sigh of relief. The bathroom appeared to be the one place where Buck was extremely neat. The toilet seat was down, the lid closed, and both the sink and the floor were clean. On one side of the counter was a single blue toothbrush and an electric razor, on the other, a bar of white soap sitting in a plain white soap dish.
It wasn’t until she was actually standing in front of the sink that Tiffany realized she didn’t have any of her own toiletries. She could see them sitting in the disgusting bathroom at home. She rinsed her face off, not even bothering to wait for the water to warm up, then dabbed it off with the black hand towel hanging on the bathroom wall.
As she quietly stepped out of the bathroom, Tiffany found an anxious looking Buck waiting in the hall for her.
“Are you all right?” he asked nervously.
“Yeah. I just realized that I don’t have my toothbrush or anything with me.”
“Oh,” he breathed a sigh of relief. “We can go over to your place tomorrow and get your belongings before we head to L.A.”
“Right, to L.A.,” Tiffany replied oddly before opening the door to the guest room and walking in. She avoided making eye contact with Buck as she shut the door behind her, mumbling “good night” as she did. She didn’t look at him because she didn’t want him to see her cry, but once alone in the guest room, Tiffany lay down on the bed and sobbed silently into the pillow. She only stopped for a second, holding her breath, as Buck tapped on the door and instructed her to wake him if she needed anything during the night.
Tiffany doubted she would be able to sleep at all, but much to her surprise her crying soon quieted into exhaustion, and before she knew it, it was morning. She woke up because she thought she heard the door to her room opening. Her mother, a chronic “morning person,” had a nasty habit of continually looking in on her all morning until she was finally awake. Tiffany opened her eyes expecting to see her mother’s face in the doorway. Instead the door was closed and it wasn’t her room. In an instant, the previous day’s event flooded back into her head and numbed her entire body. She decided to lie in bed as long as she could—no need to get a jump on the misery she knew lay ahead.
Buck’s night had not been as restful. He’d spent most of it thinking about what he would say when he talked to Lizzie. For hours, he had the conversation over and over in his head; and then when he was able to doze off, he dreamed about messing it up and woke up in a cold sweat. His anxiety over the impending conversation was compounded by the fact that soon they would be face-to-face.
At nine o’clock on the dot, Buck decided that it was a reasonable hour and picked up the phone beside his bed. Normally he would place a call like this from his office, but after sneaking a peak at Tiffany, he was relieved to find the teen sleeping peacefully. All his muscles tense with anticipation, he dialed the number from the yellow Post-it note, which was now crumpled beside the phone; busy signal. The letdown made his head spin for a second. Dejected, Buck headed to the kitchen to make coffee, pulling a pair of Arizona sweatpants over the boxers he normally wore around the house. Every fifteen minutes he hit the redial button on the phone and waited, paralyzed, hoping to hear ringing. For almost two hours, he only got beeping…and then suddenly, on his seventh attempt, it rang. The change of sound was enough to make his heart race as he lumbered back to his bedroom where his notes were laid out on the unmade bed.
As the phone rang, Buck went over in his head what he had rehearsed all night. Unfortunately, as soon as Lizzie answered the phone, he lost his train of thought and nothing came out right. Instead of the connection he had envisioned, where he said, “Lizzie, this is Buck Platner,” and she said, “Oh, Buck, it’s been way too long,” he once again fumbled his way poorly into “professional lawyer” speak and screwed up the whole thing. Like an idiot, he pronounced Charla’s last name wrong, again, then Lizzie—Elizabeth now—seemed confused about the whole guardian thing, causing him to get impatient, and finally—the cherry on top—he agreed to send the guardianship papers to her on Monday rather than arranging to see her today with Tiffany. The whole thing could not have gone worse—he didn’t do his job right and he didn’t handle his grand reunion with Lizzie/Elizabeth well either.
Things actually went even worse than Buck realized because Tiffany was standing silently in the hall outside his room the entire time, listening to the conversation. Although she heard only one side, she heard enough to know that her “Aunt Lizzie,” as her mom had always referred to her, wasn’t running to her rescue. In fact, from Buck’s end of the conversation, it didn’t sound as if she wanted anything to do with Tiffany at all. It was clear that the call didn’t go as Buck had intended, since upon setting the receiver down he quietly said “Shit” under his breath while shaking his head.
6
“Shit” I say as I set the phone back in its cradle. I quickly snatch it back up again and dial Dan’s cell phone number, pressing each digit as hard as I can and holding it down as if this will impart that this is an emergency and prompt him to answer the call. For the third time this morning, it goes straight to voice mail. I consider leaving a message, but what would I say?
“Dan, my childhood best friend who I haven’t had anything to do with in the entire time we’ve been together has sent us an early wedding present!” That doesn’t really explain things. “Dan, great news! We aren’t even married yet and we already have a teenager!” That would be ridiculous. “Dan, apparently my friend Charla doesn’t update her will very often because she named ME as the guardian of her daughter!” The truth sounds just as absurd.
“Oh, God,” I say as I set the phone down on the cradle and mindlessly return to the half-made peanut butter sandwich on the kitchen counter. I feel like vomiting, but I don’t know what else to do, so I complete the sandwich and stuff it in my face and then meticulously clean the entire kitchen, leaving no signs that the room has even been entered let alone used for food preparation and consumption. As I clean the knife, I consider taking my own life as an out but realize that it really isn’t feasible with a butter knife. This cannot be happening to me.
I had a plan. Getting out of Victory was step number one, but it wasn’t the entire plan. During
