“You can come sit down,” offered David.
“Or he can sit by me,” catcalled Betty Gabrian.
Disgusted, the nurse grabbed her crossword book and walked outside to wait in the van.
Instead, Waterbed Fred’s cowboy boots echoed through the fire station. The elderly women craned their necks to get a good view of his ass. He nodded as he passed us, and I swear David gasped. Waterbed Fred took the remaining lounge chair in the corner with the old men, seeking some sort of refuge.
* * *
* * *
DAVID STOOD IN THE OPEN bay of the fire station, and the sun poured through and lit up the dust like sparks. He always looked for the most dramatic lighting. To his credit, he always found it.
David addressed the row of women in lawn chairs. I sat behind the ladies, on a cold cinder block. Two of the old men had fallen asleep, but a pair had joined Waterbed Fred in examining a row of fire axes. “We are a troupe,” announced David.
“Like Girl Scouts,” declared Betty Gabrian, nudging another old woman, who was sleeping with her mouth open.
“Different spelling,” said David. “Actors are a family, and we take care of each other. The stage is frightening, and we must trust each other. We must have an investment in the success of the group, and we are only as strong as our weakest link.”
He stepped out of the circle of light, and crouched down in front of my cinder block. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “This is impossible. All these old ladies are exactly the same. I don’t know how we’re going to do this. I don’t feel right making them wear name tags.” He turned back to the women and spoke loudly, slowly, as if they were deaf. “I am looking forward to getting to know each and every one of you.”
I stared at the back of their heads, and every woman had the exact same wash-and-wear hairstyle, vaguely white, vaguely curly. Was this something that came with age? Did your hair give up, dissolve, and fade into the color of cornstarch, retreat, perch on your scalp like a starving barnacle? I shuddered. Maybe there was only one beautician that visited the nursing home, and she just lacked imagination. “We’re going to need wigs,” I said. “The Soiled Doves of Gabardine must have prostitute hair. There’s no other way around it.”
“We don’t have a budget for wigs,” said David, near tears. He turned away from them because he didn’t care if I saw him fall apart.
“Cheerleader car wash,” I said. “If they have different wigs, you might be able to tell them apart.”
“True,” he said. “But right now, I can’t remember their names. I can’t just call them Colostomy Bag and Lady with the Eyebrows Painted in the Wrong Place.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think they’d like that.”
* * *
* * *
OF COURSE, DAVID MADE ME do the most painful work. While he led the women through vocal warm-ups, I was dispatched out to the parking lot, David’s clipboard under one arm.
Just like the beautician, the nurse in the parking lot was lazy. She left the van running, blaring a Celine Dion CD from her open window, and I could hear that hateful song from Titanic.
The nurse seemed annoyed when I opened the passenger door, but ignored me until I jabbed the power button on the CD player. She sighed and jammed a cigarette in her mouth but paused before lighting. She turned around in her seat and examined the rows behind her.
“Gotta check for an oxygen tank,” she said, and seeing none, she inhaled, didn’t even bother to blow the smoke out of her open window.
“I need to ask you some questions.”
“No,” said the nurse. “Every goddamn teenage girl sees my uniform and they think I work for free. I don’t give a shit about your sex life. Go to Planned Parenthood.”
I clicked the ballpoint pen and tapped the clipboard. “The old ladies. We don’t know their names,” I said. “We can’t even tell them apart.”
“I know the feeling,” said the nurse. “It’s not worth it, really.”
“I need names and stuff like that. Probably food allergies, just in case.”
“Don’t feed them,” she said. “Never, ever feed them.” She was serious about this, like the old women were Gremlins or something. “Look, I’m from an agency. They swap us out every month. Nobody wants this gig. We take turns. I don’t get invested, and I don’t learn their names. I come back in a year and most of them have died.” This nurse had a terrible bedside manner. “Or maybe they didn’t die. I don’t know. I can’t tell them apart, either.”
The nurse tossed her cigarette out the open window. The disgruntled nurse couldn’t see the irony in throwing a lit cigarette at a fire station, which should be a safe place for such things, but our town had a habit of burning down. She knew all the words to Celine Dion, but nothing about emergencies. She reached beneath the driver’s seat and pulled out a stack of shiny purple folders, clasped together with a leopard-spotted alligator clip. This nurse did not believe in office supplies, only hair accessories. Mr. Francine would have had a heart attack.
“There,” she said. “A file for each of them. Everything is in there. Copy what you want, but give it back. Don’t write down any social security numbers. I’m pretty sure that’s against the law. There’s lots of big words, and we just ignore them. The thing you need to look out for is a DNR: do not resuscitate.”
“I don’t know CPR,” I said. “I guess that won’t be a problem.”
“Even if they beg,” she said. “Don’t perform any extraordinary measures. Trust me, they all change their mind at the end. Don’t fall for it. They may offer you money.”
“Okay,” I said.
* * *
* * *
INSIDE THE GARAGE, DAVID LED the women through stretches. When he saw my clipboard, he told them to rest, and the lawn chairs filled with stars and stripes.
“I know you haven’t started casting yet,” I said. “But I think this might help with your decisions.”
“At this point, it’s not about star power,” he said. “Not a thespian in the bunch. I think most of them are in the middle of assisted suicide.”
“My notes,” I said, and shoved the clipboard into his hand. “I organized them in order of medical fragility.”
“Thoughtful,” said David.
The women did as they were told, even though David was sixty years younger and the stress had caused a rash of pimples across both of his cheeks. It was now two o’clock in the afternoon, and between the sun in the cloudless sky and all of the drama (not from my script, but from David’s energy), it was hot in the fire station, and David mopped his glistening pustules with an embroidered handkerchief, purple, a cunning peacock. Another Christmas gift from my mother, but it didn’t seem particularly hygienic.
He directed them to stand in a row, and for two whole minutes, he swapped them out and made them change places until he was satisfied. The end result reminded me of a police lineup, if the criminals were dwarfed with age and curled with osteoporosis. I felt sorry for them. They were willing, however, and after another minute of deliberation, David shuffled through a deck of index cards, and carefully chose one for each of his actresses.
Line readings. I guess this was the real audition. In a lawn chair, I propped the clipboard against my lap, referring to my notes, scribbling down any casting decisions.
“When I point to you, I would like you to state your name, and then read the line as if your life depends on it. Not your real life, of course!” The medical information suggested otherwise. “I need you to practice your breathing, just like I taught you. Center yourself, and imagine the forest fire, feel the heat. Don’t forget to state your name.”
“You know our names,” said Betty Gabrian, the leader. “We introduced ourselves almost three hours ago.”
“Of course,” said David. “We are a family! It’s not for my benefit.” He waved his handkerchief at me. “My assistant is s
loppy. You can tell just by looking at her.”
He pointed at Betty Gabrian, and she stepped forward, and when she took a deep breath and tried to center herself, I heard an old man laugh from the back of the room.
“Betty Gabrian,” she said, even though I knew it, but I found her name on my list. No real medical issues, but occasionally suffered from dangerously low blood pressure, prone to fainting, just like one of those goats. Her stroke had been a singular occurrence, and despite what her terrible children thought, a neurologist confirmed it was a random event. Betty Gabrian pushed her hands toward an imagined wall of fire. “The flames! Oh my lord, the flames!”
“Fantastic,” he said. “I could feel it. I could feel the heat!” Betty Gabrian stepped back into the line. I wrote her name under the character of Miss Julie. Madam of the brothel, maybe a lesbian. My character description was bare, but I didn’t think these ladies were method actresses.
“Diana Whipple,” and the plumpest of the ladies stepped forward. In my notes, Diana Whipple was allergic to penicillin and shellfish, and exhibiting the beginning of dementia. She seemed alert as she held the index card up to her face, squinting at the line. “We will not run! We do not have the appropriate footwear!”
“Delightful,” declared David.
The most infirm of the women would play the three blonde sisters, who had been rescued by Miss Julie after being abducted by Indians. Each blonde suffered some sort of frostbite. Diana Whipple would portray Miss Joanna, who lost two fingers from frostbite, and her hand was off-putting to most of the patrons, so she only performed oral sex.
A solid, healthy woman cleared her throat, stepped forward without being asked. “Irene Vanek. I would like to address the young lady. I appreciate your artistic expression, and I realize that you have grown up in a sheltered environment. But I spent much of my life marching in the streets and fighting for women’s rights. I know you only see us as old people, but we made this world better for you. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that this script is sexist and racist. And trashy. Very, very trashy.”
“Inga!” David ripped an index card from the clutches of a frightened lady, and just like that, the roles were swapped. “You’re my Inga!”
“She doesn’t have any lines,” said Irene Vanek. “All she does is walk around and say uff-da.”
“Exactly,” said David, recoiling from her lecture. God bless David. “But Inga has spunk. Inga shoots guns. I’m pretty sure she’s a feminist.” The character of Inga Liszak was the prettiest whore in Gabardine but spoke no English. She was indispensable, however, shooting her rifle at anything that could be boiled on the cookstove.
“There is nothing feminist about a frightened immigrant forced into sex trafficking,” said Irene.
“She has short hair,” said David. “She was ahead of her time.”
“Or maybe she had lice,” offered Betty Gabrian.
Irene Vanek spoke the truth. Irene had no choice but to speak the truth. She was the client with the DNR. She meant what she said, and my feelings were a bit hurt, so I wouldn’t feel compelled to break the law and perform any heroic measures if her heart burst open or she suddenly stroked out, especially since I was already on probation.
“Could you say the line, please?” David asked this timidly, as if Irene was a sharpshooter in real life.
“Uff-da,” said Irene. She rolled her eyes and stepped back into the line. She didn’t even bother with a Hungarian accent, but I wasn’t about to point that out.
“Next,” said David, and a woman with a walker, decorated with red, white, and blue tassels, eased forward.
“Eileen Lambert,” she said. “I have Native American blood.” She was as white as Styrofoam, really white, could have stood in David’s bedroom undetected. “I would never get in the way of your artistic vision, but please stop referring to my people as Indians. My people do not worship Vishnu.”
David turned to me and pointed at my clipboard. “Write it down. Get rid of anything culturally offensive. I have a reputation.” I wrote it down, mostly to appease Eileen Lambert.
Eileen Lambert clutched the index card assuredly, and I shrunk down in my lawn chair, feeling like a white supremacist. Her stage voice was commanding. “No man shall save us from this cursed inferno! Only God shall save us, and you youngest whores better get to praying!”
“Holy shit,” said David, and then apologized for his language. “You are absolutely perfect for Miss Connie. Perfect! Write that down!” Again, I scribbled on my clipboard. Miss Connie was the oldest prostitute in the brothel, but the most popular, because her lengthy career had taught her the dirtiest of sex acts. In addition to the walker, Eileen Lambert had a colostomy bag and eczema. I was sure we could hide the colostomy bag with a hoop skirt, and stage makeup could cover any skin flares. The walker would be another issue entirely. Maybe we could make it a pony, but it would seem weird for her to be riding a small horse around a brothel.
I could have sworn the next woman had always been a dwarf, but I was beginning to understand that old age was cruel and dehydrated bodies, shrunk them like beef jerky. “Loretta McQuilkin,” she said. “Formerly Loretta Lang, formerly Loretta Lambert.”
“My brother,” announced Eileen Lambert. “No hard feelings. Trust me. My brother was a real turd.” I could identify with that.
Loretta McQuilkin had the shortest line, but struggled. I think she was trying to sound dramatic, but instead it was stilted and disinterested. “Where is the whiskey?”
“This is The Soiled Doves of Gabardine,” said David. “This is not Guiding Light. I’d like you to reread the line, but pretend your skirt is on fire. Right now, you’re reading it like you just found out you have a secret twin sister and she stole your credit card.”
“Got it,” said Loretta. “WHERE IS THE WHISKEY?!?”
“Yes,” said David. He nodded at me, and I consulted the clipboard. Loretta McQuilkin, formerly Lang and Lambert, was not only allergic to commitment, but apparently the entire environment. Pollen, peanuts, carpet, glue, animals with and without fur, cilantro. She really should be living in a bubble, not a nursing home. Miss Leslie was the drunk of the brothel, usually wasted and unusually limber. If she really committed to the character, stilted and disinterested could work, because the real drunks I saw at the gas station moved through life in a distant bubble, not the hypoallergenic kind.
Beatrice Smetanka (dementia, irregular heartbeat) and Ruby Bardsley (dementia, renal failure in 2015, glaucoma) proved to be terrible actresses, shy and demure, maybe because their dementia was far along, and they thought David was an angry police officer due to his demeanor.
Beatrice Smetanka could barely be heard, but that was okay, because my dialogue was pretty lame: “Damn this town! Damn the flapdoodle men of Gabardine!”
Ruby Bardsley, nearly blind, delivered her line to Waterbed Fred at the back of the room. “Fill every bucket! Fill every bathtub! Even the bathtub with the drunkard! He has not paid his bill!”
I didn’t need David to pencil in Beatrice and Ruby for the roles of Miss Neva and Miss Aimee, the other two blonde sisters. In my script, they had been saved from Indians, and there was no way I was going to change it to Native Americans. David got his happy ending, and that was enough. Frostbite claimed the tip of Miss Neva’s nose, and it was gray from the frigid trauma. Miss Aimee’s injuries had left her legs without any feeling, so she serviced the fattest of patrons.
“Erika Hickey,” and the tallest of the elderly women stepped forward, and David was suddenly crouching down at her feet.
“Heels!” He pointed excitedly, like they were stilettos or something. Erika Hickey’s black loafers had a kitten heel, but that was enough to send David into palpitations. Today, glamour was in short supply, the fire station’s only pops of color belonged to snaking orange extension cords.
Betty Gabrian cackled. “Wait until you see
her legs! We’ve got a saying at the nursing home. She’s got two great legs and five terrible boyfriends!”
“Betty, please.” Erika was embarrassed, but tugged at her knee to slide up a pant leg, and sure enough, it was gorgeous and finely muscled. The nurse had said nothing about sex, but apparently the nursing home had at least one randy grandma and five men who didn’t mind being part of a geriatric harem. She released the cuff and smoothed her slacks back into place. “Nature has cursed us, yet again! All this damnation! We have been cursed with beauty, and now we are cursed with impossible meteorological conditions!”
“Bravo,” said David, but I was humiliated, hearing my words spoken out loud for the very first time. This was terrible. Faces of Death had better dialogue, and that was just a bunch of snuff scenes strung together.
Erika Hickey was relatively healthy and perfect to portray Judith, the scullery maid with the cleft lip. According to my notes, Erika exercised every day, but she was a brittle diabetic, and her blood sugar spiked and plummeted, without warning. I didn’t think it would take much convincing to stack the front row with her five boyfriends, close to those incredible legs, ready to throw candy at their beloved in case of a diabetic reaction.
FROM THE DESK OF TIFFANY TEMPLETON
Even though Lou Ann Holland lived on the other side of the trailer court, my mother blamed her for the ants, convinced they crawled all the way from her flower bed next to the Laundromat. It wasn’t that big of a deal, really. For a few weeks during the summer, we had ants in our kitchen, but like most things, my father took care of them. Lou Ann cultivated peonies, hid the cinder-block foundation of her trailer house with giant bushes, some as high as her windows. I always thought they were ridiculous flowers, so top-heavy, bowing to the ground, the wilted petals flying around for months, rotting in the potholes. They bloomed for two weeks in June, and that was it. Not only did peonies bring this litter, but my mother swore they were an ant farm.
The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton Page 8