The reader board displayed 168. I didn’t know who else knew the magic number, the goal weight. One hundred and fifty-six. I had heard that number for so many years that it meant nothing to me. I lived with two obese people, and I stopped paying attention after so many failed diets, even when the bathroom scale was kept in the kitchen, important like a microwave or something. The prices for unleaded, premium, and diesel were rising, as summer approached, and traffic from Canada picked up. All of these numbers were on our side.
My mother usually saw through every attempt to butter her up, unless it was David, and his brand of butter could have powered the menacing popcorn machine.
“Is that a new blouse?” David reached across the counter and touched my mother’s shoulder. She would have punched anybody else.
“Yes,” my mother said and blushed. “I actually ordered three, all the way from Spokane. I had to go to the goddamn post office to pick it up.” She glared at me, and I grimaced. The post office was a quarter of a mile farther down the highway, not a real burden. “You know how hard it is to find decent clothes in this county.”
“The bane of my existence,” said David. “I want to burn Shopko to the ground. Big and tall shouldn’t mean shapeless and unfashionable.” They both laughed, and I was slightly sick to my stomach. David bought T-shirts in sizes too small. I guess this was his aesthetic. “Black is your color, Vy. It suits you.”
“It hides stains,” I offered.
“Not for you, Tiffany.” David pointed at my jacket. “It washes you out. Only your mother can get away with black. You should be wearing warmer colors. Warmer colors would distract from the dark circles under your eyes. Everybody thinks so.”
“Everybody?” They both looked at me, but did not respond. I took a deep breath, summoned my Dogwood training, reminded myself that I had a goal. And goals took work. Or bariatric surgery. “Maybe you and my mom could do my school shopping this year,” I said, imagining a junior year spent in red sweaters and orange slacks.
“Oh, really?” My mother was suspicious, for good reason. “What exactly do you want?”
David made his pitch, and I stood back. He knew what he was doing. He knew my mother would swing.
“Tiffany needs this,” he claimed. “I think it is imperative for her rehabilitation.”
“She already has a probation officer,” said my mother. “And I’ve memorized the recidivism rates. You’re wasting your time.”
I was standing right there, but I was used to their only two topics: my mother’s graces, and my lack thereof. Normally, I would have ignored it, busied myself with refilling the bun steamer, but I was still not allowed to touch anything.
“We don’t have a place for the community to gather,” said David. “Most small towns have potlucks, fund-raisers, quilting circles, and bar mitzvahs.”
“Bar mitzvahs?”
“The world is evolving,” said David.
“I am open-minded about faith,” said my mother. “Even though my son was brainwashed by a cult.”
“We don’t have a town square,” said David.
“We also don’t have sidewalks or streetlights,” said my mother. “Public safety should come first. There’s always a Sweet getting hit by a car. And now that my daughter’s back in town, we need to worry about a crime wave.”
“You are the most powerful woman in Gabardine,” said David. “Everybody knows that.”
“Not the Canadians,” said my mother. “Word hasn’t gotten across the border yet.”
Chapter Thirteen
NINE DAYS LATER, THE CITY council chambers were filled to capacity. David had choreographed yet another high drama. The four cheerleaders had been instructed to applaud. His mother had been instructed not to burn any sage to cleanse the tension in the air. Waterbed Fred and I sat together in the front row, along with the three old men from the play. There was not a van outside or a nurse lurking around, so I wasn’t sure how they got there. Given the history of Gabardine, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a secret tunnel.
My mother didn’t need a seat.
She didn’t even wait for public comment, stood in front of the table during the roll call and the Pledge of Allegiance.
She launched into her speech and listed her demands. They were used to this. Mr. Francine grasped his gavel so hard that his gray knuckles were white.
“I’ve got a quote from a contractor,” she said. “The garage is in decent shape. It has good bones. Good enough for a theater.”
The other councilmen nodded, but Mr. Francine peppered my mother with questions about liability insurance, dust from the gravel pit, and most of all, money.
“I will pay for the materials,” said my mother. “But I have my conditions.”
“Here we go again,” said one of the old men.
“Materials are one thing,” said Mr. Francine, his voice slightly quivering. “But labor is the real expense.”
At this, my mother squatted down and picked up her giant purse, plopped it on the table in front of the councilmen. She unclasped her purse, but didn’t have to dig for the piece of folded paper that still had scotch tape on the corners. She waved it in the air. We all knew what it was, and I swear I heard Waterbed Fred gasp. The Bad Check List, ripped right off the door.
“Maybe you should stop taking personal checks,” suggested one of the old men, genuinely trying to be helpful.
“Here’s your labor,” said my mother. “There’s at least twenty able-bodied men on this list, and a couple on fake disability. I’m giving them four months to fix up the garage, which is more than enough time. After that, we’ll call it even. A few months of hard labor and those knuckleheads will think twice about bouncing a check.”
“Blackmail,” called out an old man.
David leapt to his feet. “Out of order!” His mother reached for his sleeve and pulled him back down into the folding chair.
My mother’s neck swiveled, and she stared the old man down. “I expect you to waive any of your bullshit zoning.”
“You created the bullshit zoning,” said Mr. Francine. Over the years, my mother had terrorized the city council over zoning regulations. She did not believe in handicapped parking spaces.
Kaitlynn raised her hand. She leaned forward, pulled at her blouse to expose the rim of her black lace bra.
Mr. Francine pointed at her. “Yes?”
“We need civic pride,” said Kaitlynn, coached well as always.
The motion passed, four to zero.
* * *
* * *
IN THE QUONSET HUT, DAVID paced back and forth. Waterbed Fred and I watched him, but neither of us cared enough to stop him.
“I have one concern,” said David, clearly nervous.
“You created a monster,” I said. “You’re worried that my mother is going to ruin everything.”
“Yes,” he said. “Now we have to call her a producer.”
“I’ll do the talking,” said Waterbed Fred. I think he liked taking charge of this, a taste of his glory years. From what I’ve heard from my mother, nearly everybody who had owned a waterbed had also had a cocaine habit.
Five minutes after six, my mother arrived in her tilted car. Surprisingly, Waterbed Fred took her hand as she exited her car.
“I feel like I’m going to vomit,” said David.
Inside the Quonset hut, the weight of a front-end loader and two sanders had worn paths, parked during their decades of use. The fluorescent light did no favors. David was always preaching about overhead lighting, but this unforgiving industrial brightness made me respect his aversion. Waterbed Fred’s mustache stain was jarring, but even worse, I could see my mother had applied blush, and with a heavy hand.
“This will be a breeze,” said Waterbed Fred. “We aren’t going to have to do much building at all. Just a platform for the stage, really.”
“I wanted a bathroom,” said David.
“Dreams die hard,” said my mother. “I double-checked with the health department. A Porta-Potty is all we need, and all I’m paying for.”
“Of course,” said David. “The office will be our dressing room and our backstage. We will have mirrors, which I will pay for of course. And we will have lamps. The last thing we need is for those old ladies to see themselves in fluorescent lights. Horrifying. I don’t want that nurse back there with a defibrillator.”
“Electric,” said Waterbed Fred. “It’s not just the lamps. This whole place needs to be wired, Vy. That’s gonna be pricey.”
“I’ve got three electricians on the Bad Check List,” said my mother. “One is the slowest man I’ve ever met, and I still don’t know how he got certified.”
“Bill?” Waterbed Fred knew everyone. My mother nodded. “Head injury. Ex-wife threw a piece of firewood at him.”
“I always liked her,” said my mother.
“Whomever you get will rewire the place, and then we move into framing out the walls. The only place in this building with insulation is the office. The show is in November. We’re going to need to put in a barrel stove and a chimney. And then we come in with a contractor. He’s gonna blow spray foam insulation over the entire garage, even the roof. Four inches. It shoots out of a pack on his back just like Ghostbusters.”
“Ghosts,” said my mother. “I know what went on here. I don’t have the money for an exorcism.”
“Relax,” said Waterbed Fred. “He sprays it all over, and then it hardens, and boom, you’ve got new walls.”
David knew a lot of things, but general contracting was not in his arsenal. “It hardens? Is it smooth?”
“No,” said Waterbed Fred. “He blows it all over, and it shoots out and does the trick. Once it’s blasted all over, you walk away.”
“What color is it? Can we pick a color?”
“No,” said Waterbed Fred. “It’s all the same color. He’s gonna have to buy it in Fortune. They might not have enough, so he may need to go to Spokane.”
“What color?” David, as always, had a vision, and uneven spray insulation was not part of it.
“Oh, kind of yellow-brown, I guess.”
“Ochre?”
“I don’t know what color that is,” said Waterbed Fred. “It’s kind of like the color of a head cold, I suppose. A bad one. Not green like a sinus infection, though.”
“A snot cave,” said David. “This whole place is going to look like a snot cave.”
My mother touched David on the shoulder. “It’s going to be fine,” she said. “You’ll make the most of it. I have no doubt.” My mother would never have such kind words for me. Reassurance had always been my father’s job.
“It’s a steal,” said Waterbed Fred. “You got a good price, Vy.”
“I always do,” she said. Waterbed Fred knew this to be the truth. He had delivered enough Cheetos and beef jerky to fear her business acumen.
* * *
* * *
ON MAY 16, THE SWEETS were already in Kelly’s office when I arrived. I watched Rufus pick at the skin around his thumbnail until it started bleeding, and then watched as he wiped it on his pants.
The Sweets emerged, red Confederate flag shirts starting to show the wear and tear. Jimmy had a stain around his collar, and it looked like dried milk. I wondered if they only wore them for probation meetings, or if they had been clinging to their dirty backs for the last thirty days.
Rufus went in, and it was just me and TJ. I watched the clock, and I found comfort in the smell of the cough syrup.
“It’s been a year,” said Kelly. “The anniversary must be tough. How are you doing?”
“I miss him,” I said. “I still expect him to be on the front porch, or in the kitchen.”
“That’s perfectly normal,” said Kelly.
“He used to keep African violets,” I said. “I know it sounds weird, but I miss watching him pull the dead blooms. He was a big man, but he was so careful. He could spend twenty minutes on one plant.” He was a careful man, moved like a man who was used to breaking things. Furniture, car seats, and once an entire row at the movie theater in Fortune.
“He sounds like a tender soul,” said Kelly.
“I don’t know about souls,” I said. “My brother ruined me on religion. But he was the kindest man I ever knew.” I meant what I said. I forgot about it sometimes, but I think grief can change from hour to hour, minute to minute. Right then, it hit me like vertigo. My dad had been the part of my life that grounded me, and without him, I was left spinning.
“I visited the food bank,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was right next door.”
“I used to help him on Saturdays,” I said. “I guess I was doing my community service in advance.”
“You aren’t a bad kid,” she said. “Maybe you take after your father, more than you realize.” I said nothing, stared at her linen suit, and I couldn’t figure out how she drove all the way to Gabardine without wrinkling. “TJ says they used to call you Tough Tiff.”
“TJ drinks NyQuil right before he meets with you.”
“But when is the last time you hit someone? Hurt somebody?”
“Besides my brother?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.” I actually had to think about it. “Three years, I guess? Seventh grade? I think it was TJ, as a matter of fact.”
“It’s been three years since you physically assaulted somebody.”
“Yes.” This was true. “And I only gave Ronnie a flesh wound. He didn’t even need stitches.” I regretted that.
“The problem with nicknames is that they stick around forever,” she said. “Even when they don’t fit the person anymore.”
I wished that weren’t true. I wished that people could forget things, especially my mother. She had always judged me, but she was even worse with my father. When she lost seventy-five pounds, the bariatric surgery caused her to vomit, and she could never control when it happened. Little pukes in the kitchen sink or beside the car door. She took out her frustration on my dad, and he never fought back. She was still pretty fat, but she lectured him about food. I think he took it because he knew she was scared. There would always be a fat person inside of her, no matter how much weight she lost.
Tough Tiff was still inside of me, and no amount of work with Kelly would kill her forever.
I stood up and slid my pages across the table, and Kelly didn’t say a word, just let me go.
FROM THE DESK OF TIFFANY TEMPLETON
This is what I remember. My father’s funeral seemed like it took place underwater. After his funeral, I tried to swim back up to the surface. Unfortunately, when I broke through and breathed again, I was determined to drown everyone around me.
I’d always taken Waterbed Fred’s glorious mustache for granted until the funeral. In the church, the lighting was different, and after fourteen years, I finally realized it was dyed. I saw the stain around his mouth, a shadow, a bruise. He was drunk at the funeral, because it was on a Saturday and he wasn’t responsible for ferrying thousands of bags of corn chips. He watched me grow up in the gas station, ripping his boxes open with an X-acto knife, and I guess the nostalgia and the beer made him extra emotional. When he leaned in close, I could only focus on his breath, the Pabst Blue Ribbon he had probably shotgunned in the parking lot.
“I’m really very sorry,” he said, and put a hand on my shoulder, grasped on for support. That’s when I saw it.
“Your mustache,” I responded, because that’s all I could say. I was overwhelmed by grief, I was underwater.
“For fuck’s sake, Tiffany!” My mother, who was standing next to me in the receiving line, slapped away Waterbed Fred’s hand and pushed me out of the church and into the parking lot. She pointed at the first hopsco
tch box, spray-painted on the sidewalk. “You stand right here until you can behave yourself.”
“He dyes it,” I mumbled.
“People are shitty and they never tell the truth,” she said. “The sooner you know that, the better.”
“Dad told the truth,” I responded, still swimming, still holding on to the secret, like it would keep me weighted, submerged.
“Your dad lived in a bubble,” she said. “It was better that way.”
I was the tough girl, so I stayed on that hopscotch square just to prove a point. After the last mourner drove out of the parking lot, after my mother and Ronnie and the preacher came out of the church and locked the door, I stayed in that stupid box. I hoped my mother would notice. But she just brushed past me and sat in the car and smoked a cigarette, like it was a normal thing for me to loiter in front of a church.
It wasn’t just Waterbed Fred’s mustache. That day, the world ripped open and revealed itself, and I couldn’t look away. Instead, I looked deeper. That’s when I started spying.
Monday, I returned to school. Now I was the girl with the dead father, but nobody said a word. It was okay to call him fat, but not okay to call him dead.
I didn’t even make it through the first day.
We were still doing the Presidential Fitness Test in PE. David was sure that Coach Bitzche had added some requirements of his own, just to be sadistic. We had no choice. For the past three weeks, Coach Bitzche had counted our push-ups, forced us to keep going until we collapsed or vomited, or in the case of Kaitlynn, broke into fake tears. We ran the hundred-yard dash, the four-hundred, and the mile. We did sprints in the gym, dashing to the half-court line to pick up a chalkboard eraser, dashed back for another. We did the bench press, and although I had high hopes, Kaitlynn had beat me by ten pounds. I swear he saved the worst for that Monday.
The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton Page 10