She lived next to the Laundromat, which was the last building on the loop, closest to the highway. She worked there, too, although there wasn’t much for her to do. It seemed the location would bring business, but the cinder-block building was always empty. The perfect place to hide something.
In the darkness, I crunched through the ice and stopped when I found the breaker box and the mountain of a juniper that grew below it. Nobody else dared get close, burrow deep, but my jacket was as good as armor. I barely felt the pricks through my sleeves as I reached deep underneath, near the roots, and removed the typewriter case. Gray tweed that blended in with everything, an aluminum body that could withstand the elements. Most importantly, a lock. I kept the key in my leather jacket at all times. I was sure my mother had gone through everything I owned while I was gone, but the key remained, a tiny thing she had overlooked.
The key shook in my hand, and I didn’t know if it was nerves or the cold.
I flicked my lighter and examined my treasures. The pink cinder blocks of the Laundromat held the light, made it seem like something living, breathing. All around me, the quiet of an early spring night, dark so early. I could finally breathe, had been holding my breath since the court-appointed attorney dropped me off on the highway until now.
Inside the case were the things they didn’t catch. I was charged with misdemeanors, but this Smith-Corona case was where I kept my real felonies.
Three can openers, silver, brand new; the glow from the lighter made the metal look expensive, even though I knew they were from Shopko. The circular blades had never been used, the turnkey remained at exactly twelve o’clock, frozen from the day it was purchased.
The lighter grew hot in my hand. In the darkness, I waited for it to cool, and I held the case delicately, as if the things inside were breakable. I was the thief, and I knew better than that. These objects were sturdy, solid, unlike the people who had owned them.
I flicked the lighter once more and was comforted by the sheen of a small canvas, an oil painting, brushstrokes so thick that the light dipped in valleys and ridges. A blue man from a deft hand. I sniffed the air, and I swore there was a hint of turpentine, but in a trailer court of wood-burning stoves, I could have been mistaken.
The next item was nearly unrecognizable, wrapped around and around in yards of phone cord, bound tight with the power cable. Unwound, an answering machine would reveal itself, a quarter of a century old. The heart was still inside, an honest-to-god cassette tape, a message captured inside those ribbons for eternity.
I nearly dropped the lighter when it burned my thumb. I knew it would leave a blister, a scorch mark. I couldn’t steal lighters from the gas station anymore, so I had to ration the fluid, just in case I fell into a sinkhole or something. That kind of stuff happens around here.
One more flick, and I saw the envelope, so fat it could not close. I had never removed the contents of the envelope, not once, and I had checked the case once a week for the better part of a year. The weight of it assured me that it was all in place. It would be a relief if somebody had replaced what it contained, swapped it out with carefully cut paper. Twenty thousand, one hundred and thirty-seven dollars.
I closed the lid, and tucked it carefully beneath the juniper. I did not need to set a trap. I might have stolen these things, but they were my prisoners. I had my own charges—larceny, assault, intimidation—but the objects in this case were far more dangerous. I took these things before they could do harm, before they put on their own leather jacket.
* * *
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, DAVID WAITED outside of our house, wearing a coat my mother bought him and clutching the script in one gloved hand and a stack of papers in the other. He had read it all in one night.
“I made flyers,” he said. “I want to begin casting immediately.”
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you for supporting my project.”
“This town needs high art,” he said. “We also need reliable internet and cell phone service, but I can only do so much.” This was a true statement. For the last three years, David had written letters to the public service commissioner once a week, but his pleas for a cell phone tower were never answered, no matter how nice the stationery.
“High art,” I said, as we walked through the frozen trailer court, and turned right on the highway. “I never thought I would be capable of creating high art.”
“It was a figure of speech,” said David. “It’s juicy, it’s pulpy, it’s compelling. But Tennessee Williams, it is not.”
“I could add family secrets. Incest. I could add closeted homosexuals,” I said, and I immediately regretted it.
Of course, David changed the subject. “I’m going to put these on the locker of every girl in school. Except for those terrible homeschooled creatures.” He hated the kids that transferred to our high school after being homeschooled through junior high. They won all the spelling bees, and before they came, that had always been another of David’s glories.
At the end of first period, Bitsy stopped me in the hallway, which was unusual. Even after all the years of growing up together in the trailer court and in a tiny town, we didn’t chat. Our conversations had only been forced upon us for small group projects. Bitsy wasn’t the type for small talk anyway, and I had threatened to kill his mother. That’s not the topic for small talk.
“I want to help,” he said.
“I’m seeing a probation officer,” I said. “And I got lots of therapy. I appreciate the offer, though.”
“No,” he said. “With the play. I want to do the makeup.”
I wasn’t freaked out about the makeup part. I was more freaked out about spending time with him. “Talk to David,” I said. “I’m just the writer.”
“I’ve learned my lesson with him,” he said. “He tried to get me to raise a pig for 4-H.”
“I remember,” I said.
“We don’t have football anymore.” Bitsy leaned closer to me, and he smelled better than most teenage boys. “My mom is worried that I have too much free time. I think that’s your fault.”
“Probably,” I said. “I didn’t threaten your mother because I had too much free time.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons,” he said. “She’s a fucking nightmare. But I want to make monsters when I get out of Gabardine. For real. I want to move to Hollywood.”
“It’s a play about prostitutes in the Old West.”
“Rad,” he said. “I need experience. I’m also good at tackling things, so if you need security or something like that.”
“David is directing,” I said. “Violence is inevitable.”
“Thanks,” he said, and walked off down the hallway, unafraid to be seen talking to me. I was still radioactive to most of my peers, and probably on a terrorist watch list because of his mother.
* * *
* * *
TEN MINUTES INTO SEVENTH PERIOD, the trig/stats teacher was explaining random variables and possible outcomes. It seemed like science fiction to me, until Kaitlynn appeared in the doorway. She pointed at me for the second time, and I knew there was nothing random about it, and only one outcome.
“Excuse me, Mr. French. Principal Beaudin needs to see David and that girl in the leather jacket.” She was committed to pretending she didn’t know me, even though we’d been stuck together since kindergarten. She was lucky she didn’t know my fist.
He was waiting for us. After yesterday, he didn’t feel the need for any pleasantries.
“Absolutely not,” said Principal Beaudin. His response didn’t surprise me. “I saw all of those flyers you passed out.”
“This is an impediment to my education,” said David.
Principal Beaudin was not moved. “I’ve let you use school property for science club, debate team, pep club, and Future Farmers of America. All complete disasters. And every single t
ime, you came in here and accused me of impeding your education.”
“I’ve got school spirit,” said David.
“I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on your bake sales, young man. All those fund-raisers for clubs that never went anywhere.”
“That’s not true,” said David. “It’s not my fault. I blame it on attention deficit disorder. I can’t force kids to be interested in Future Farmers of America.”
“You promised you would clone a sheep,” said Principal Beaudin. “We don’t even have the resources for something like that.” He cleared his throat and looked at me evenly. “I read your script, Miss Templeton.”
“Really?”
“I skimmed it,” he admitted. “I had the secretary read the whole thing, but she took very detailed notes. She’s a professional.”
“Sure,” I said.
“The cafeteria is not the place for avant-garde theater,” he said.
“It’s not avant-garde,” said David. “I don’t think Tiffany is capable of writing something like that. We don’t have a budget. I don’t think we’d need lights or anything. But definitely makeup. I feel very passionate about that. I’m aiming for a November debut. It’s such a gloomy time of the year, and I believe theater is the best kind of antidepressant.”
“Not in the cafeteria,” said Principal Beaudin. “Not in the gymnasium. Nowhere on school grounds. I want absolutely nothing to do with it. I’m sure the school board would agree.”
“You don’t know that,” said David.
Principal Beaudin referred to a single typed piece of paper on his desk. From where I sat, I could tell that it was double-spaced, and I could see the bold dots of bullet points. His secretary really was a professional. “Eight prostitutes,” he said. “Three acts, zero moral value. Eight prostitutes sitting around and talking.”
“It’s like Waiting for Godot,” said David, even though I knew he hadn’t read that. Last year, the month after my father died, Janelle and David tried to cheer me up by getting a free month of HBO. I don’t really remember that month, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t watch Waiting for Godot.
“This is not existentialism,” said Principal Beaudin, and I have to admit, I was impressed at the depth of his theater knowledge. “This is unsavory and titillating.”
“It’s based on the truth,” I said. “It really happened. I have newspaper articles and I even have a bibliography. I cited my sources and everything.”
“Save it for a term paper,” said Principal Beaudin, then reconsidered. “Does this school require term papers?”
This was something he should know. He was supposed to oversee the curriculum. “Yes,” I said. “Senior year.”
“I’ve had mine done since I was a freshman,” offered David.
“Overachiever,” said Principal Beaudin. “As usual.” At most schools, this would be a good thing.
“Political subtext in Lady Gaga’s oeuvre,” said David. “Just the early albums, of course.”
“Of course,” said Principal Beaudin. “I stand by my decision. School property is not an appropriate place for your play,” he said. “I don’t want to argue about it. Don’t make me send this to the historical society. They might come at you with pitchforks and torches.”
“We don’t have a historical society,” said David. “We’ve got the opposite. People get drunk to forget everything that happened.”
“It’s accurate,” I said. “If you lived here, you would know that.” I hoped that stung. Principal Beaudin kept his home in Fortune, and my mother called him a carpetbagger.
David stood, and I prepared for his speech. Principal Beaudin didn’t flinch. He had attended the one and only appearance of the ill-fated debate team, knew a speech was inevitable.
“Colonialism,” said David, pointing his finger in the air. “Once again, our real history is being ignored. Controversy! You can’t just revise the history of our founding fathers.”
“Founding mothers,” I added.
“The ACLU would agree with me. This is censorship!” David narrowed his eyes, and I clenched my jaw, just knowing he was about to go too far. “This school should celebrate our past. We should not be part of the whitewashing!”
“All of the prostitutes were Caucasian,” said Principal Beaudin calmly. “We’re done here. End of discussion. If you want to contact the ACLU, that’s fine. Tell them to make an appointment with my secretary, and she will check my schedule.”
He waved us out of his office. David was already standing, so he turned on one heel and stomped away dramatically. I was embarrassed, and eased out of my seat, didn’t look at the principal as I slunk out of the office. As I passed the aquarium, I glanced at the goldfish, lethargic and fat at the bottom of the tank. I’m pretty sure Principal Beaudin overfed them. He seemed like the type of guy who insisted on feeding the fish but walked away from all the other responsibilities. Typical man, only concerned about dinner. The glass was spotless, because the secretary was a professional.
David was devastated. He never came back to trig/stats.
When I slid into my seat, Caitlyn raised her hand, and immediately offered an excuse for David, out of habit, well trained.
“Asthma,” she said. “He had to go home. He almost died.”
The teacher didn’t really care. I think he knew Statistics was something we would never use. Most of us would keep living in Gabardine after high school, and you could count on my mother to keep track of every number that mattered.
Chapter Five
I PULLED ON MY JACKET and once again headed into town. I stopped in front of Betty Gabrian’s house. The For Sale sign had fallen, and I didn’t want to prop it back up. I wanted Mrs. Gabrian.
I was in seventh grade when I first became aware of her power. I was at the gas station, perched on top of the safe, and my mother and I watched a Mercedes pull up to the pump and park. The Mercedes was rare enough, but the person inside turned off her car and waited there. For minutes. Finally, my mother decided she was a government agent, threw on her winter coat, and went outside for a confrontation.
I watched the whole thing from the window. It was confusing at first, watching my mother pump somebody’s gas, and I ran to the door and peered out, watched a white glove hand my mother a twenty-dollar bill.
“That was a lady,” reported my mother, after the Mercedes drove away. “A real lady.”
I thought she was being sexist. “Women pump their own gas all the time.”
“She moved here from Oregon,” said my mother. “Filthy rich and used to full service.”
Seventh grade was also the year I stopped wrestling boys. My body had started to change, which was expected, but after throwing one of the Sweet boys to the ground I felt his boner, which was not. I enjoyed wrestling, much more than punching, because pinning somebody down until they surrendered was a definitive win. Especially if you did it in front of other kids.
I stopped wrestling, and that’s when I really started writing, mostly short stories about the people who died in the slasher movies I watched. I gave them backstories. I wasn’t satisfied with just letting them be victims. Maybe it was because of how I grew up, where I grew up, everybody in Gabardine flattened into the roles I was accustomed to, and I could only see them in one dimension. I wrote stories about the lives of fake people, what came before they were just a dead body. I kept them to myself, because I knew they were absurdly violent, and because I was traumatized from English class that year and wanted to keep my dangling participles and tense changes private until I could get it right. I always wanted to get it right.
That year, in addition to dashing my creativity by diagramming sentences, our English teacher assigned us a thousand-word essay in which we were supposed to interview our parents about their childhood. I could do the thousand words, no problem, but my sharp-tongued mother and secretive father were not about to reveal an
ything important or interesting.
I chose the lady who would not pump her own gas.
My mother would be furious that I invaded the personal space of Betty Gabrian, but as I stepped onto the freshly poured cement walkway, I didn’t care. In every window, Betty Gabrian had hung curtains, and I knew I had made the right decision. She was the only person in Gabardine who actually pulled her curtains shut, even in the middle of the day.
She was a classy woman and knew how to entertain—even leather-jacket-wearing urchins who asked personal questions. I rang the doorbell (one of the few I had ever encountered) and she answered promptly, without her white gloves, offered me a seat on a leather armchair, and brought me a can of soda and a glass of ice, all before I even explained why I was there.
Betty Gabrian chose to retire in Gabardine, far from Portland, where people never pumped their own gas, and she picked our town because of the history. She’d read books on the famous Big Burn of 1910, but it was our Slightly Less Bigger Burn that truly piqued her interest. A brothel had burned, but Betty was not satisfied with the casual mention, knew a better story existed between the lines. The record keeper of the city, Mr. Francine, never questioned her requests to dig through the mountains of filing cabinets, and our public librarian surrendered the microfiche machine, probably delighted it was not another complaint about the content of Danielle Steel. She dug through files and squinted at microfiches and harangued the newspaper office until they gave her free rein of their archives. Betty Gabrian dove headfirst into that space between the lines, and swam around in the dust, most likely wearing her white gloves, until a story took shape.
“It was better than needlepoint,” she said. “Retirement is boring, my dear. I could never stand to read Agatha Christie. It was much more exciting to solve a real-life mystery. So few mysteries exist in this life. Before I die in this tiny town, I’m going to crack every case.”
The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton Page 4