The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton

by Richard Fifield

  “No,” I said. I felt a tinge of sympathy for my mom, and then I wanted to punch myself in the face. “She made him miserable. She made all of us miserable. She still does.”

  “You couldn’t stop what happened to your dad, either.”

  “I know,” I said. I was really starting to hate this appointment.

  “But you spent the next four months trying to control the universe.”

  “I’m not my mother,” I said. I nearly spit those words at her.

  “No,” said Kelly. “She’s one of a kind. That’s for sure.”

  “I wasn’t trying to control the universe,” I said. “I just wanted people to get what they deserved.”

  “You were in pain, Tiffany. And sometimes when you’re in pain, the only thing that makes you feel better is to give it to somebody else.”

  I gave Kelly my pages. She could have some of my pain.

  FROM THE DESK OF TIFFANY TEMPLETON

  It’s a good thing you only come to town once a month. If David ever met you, he’d probably handcuff himself to you. Not in a dangerous way. He likes pretty things and always has. His mother is the most beautiful woman in Gabardine, and David protects her like a museum exhibit.

  Janelle was the cool mom, the youngest in the trailer court. She was the first person I ever saw use a hair dryer, and the last person I’ve seen that used actual hair spray from a can. She was stuck in the heavy metal years of her youth, and then she got stuck in a bad relationship. More than one. The biggest bad relationship was with David’s dad, who just left in the middle of the night when David was nine. Normally, this would be a tragedy, but Janelle and David were the kind of people who thought the mystery was romantic. After they were abandoned, my mother began referring to David as a “disadvantaged youth.”

  Janelle was New Age, and she never stopped talking about it. She had powers, she had discovered them when a homeless person in Billings touched her forehead and said she was blessed. I’d never seen a homeless person, but I’d heard stories, so I was suspicious. Janelle’s first big spiritual project was selfish.

  “I can heal myself,” she said. “I just know it.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I can heal myself,” she repeated. “And then I can heal you.”

  “I’m not sick,” I said.

  “Everybody’s sick,” replied Janelle. “They just can’t see it.”

  At this, I nodded my head and wondered if Janelle knew about X-rays and CAT scans. She wasn’t very bright. I had figured this out on my own, though god knows my mother provided a nudge.

  “Dingbat,” my mother pronounced. “Harmless enough. But don’t believe that hippie shit.”

  “She’s not a hippie,” I pointed out. “She’s more like a witch.”

  “What’s the difference? I mean, really?”

  Janelle had dream catchers and crystals in every window, but we never got sun on that side of the trailer court, so the strings caught dirt and spiderwebs. Janelle had a giant piece of quartz that she rubbed on her forehead. Janelle had dried herbs she stirred into tiny pots of Vaseline and anointed herself. Janelle had a burgundy book that she wrote wishes in, and burgundy candles she found in Spokane that she lit to give the wishes some muscle.

  Janelle also had an answering machine, unconnected to their phone, saved from 2011. She saved the answering machine, but more importantly, she saved the cassette inside, and every night at eight o’clock, she drank a glass of white wine and pushed play. It didn’t matter who was in the living room. She wanted us to participate in her romance, I think.

  “It’s me. I’m not coming back. Don’t forget to change the furnace filter.”

  Every single time we heard that message, Janelle clutched at her throat, as if this was the most heartbreaking thing in the world. I didn’t see it.

  I admitted this to David. “I don’t get it. Is it some kind of code?”

  “He cares. It’s proof,” he said huffily. “You don’t understand.”

  When we were in junior high, David told me that he was sure of the reason that Dan had run off. Even as a child, David had been an obviously effeminate boy. David blamed it on himself. I think this was the first and last thing David ever blamed on himself, but it was sad, nonetheless.

  Last June, their power was shut off. This wasn’t shocking, since most everybody in Gabardine lived poor. Two weeks later, I caught Janelle in the Laundromat, the answering machine plugged into the wall. Listening to the message. Like most everybody else, she had not come to do laundry.

  “I need it,” she said, and I expected her to sound guilty. Dan’s voice echoed above the whine of the fluorescent lights, the end cycle of someone else’s clothes.

  When I spied on Janelle, I wasn’t expecting any secrets to be revealed, but I wanted to see how David was functioning without electricity. He was the definition of high-maintenance. When most people live in a brightly lit house, they cannot see anybody in the darkness. Since they had no power, the living room window was dim, lit with a single candle. I crouched down beside their porch to hide, close enough to see Janelle twirling around the living room, the useless answering machine clutched in her arms, held like a baby.

  The next day, I snuck in when I knew Janelle would be out. The impotent machine was carefully laid on a piece of purple velvet cloth, surrounded by pieces of quartz and all the cassette mix tapes that Dan had made for her while they were courting. Janelle hoped she could use magical things, create a shrine to make the machine whir to life.

  I stole it.

  Just so you don’t think I’m a complete monster, I made a point to sniff their furnace this winter. I don’t know if she changed the filter, but I know what scorching smells like, all too well. I would have warned them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ON SATURDAY, DAVID POUNDED ON the front door at eight o’clock in the morning. He’d read Our Town in the wee hours of the night, and according to him, it was a masterpiece. The Soiled Doves of Gabardine was destined for failure.

  Between his tears and gasping breaths, I agreed with him, even though I wrote the damn thing. I knew he was mostly concerned with the actresses, whom he still could not tell apart.

  “I will fix it,” I said. “But you need to go away.” I watched him walk across my mother’s perfect yard, wet with the summer morning. I hoped my mother would give the phone back soon.

  The reader board at the gas station displayed 161. Maybe my mom was on diet pills again, so desperate to hit the magic number. I didn’t like it when my mom took diet pills, because she chain-smoked and wanted to have conversations.

  I steeled myself and entered.

  “I need money for wigs,” I said.

  “Wigs,” said my mother thoughtfully. “I don’t know about that. The people in this town already think you’re a weirdo. And your hair isn’t bad, Tiffany. It’s just thin. You got that from your father. The only thin thing about him.”

  “My hair isn’t thin,” I said. “I like my hair.”

  “Wigs,” my mother repeated, and she chewed on the word, thinking. Within seconds, she spat out yet another suspicion. “Your spy games are over, young lady. No more lurking around. You can wear wigs and you can wear a fake mustache, but you will be caught. You will be prosecuted. This town is too small for disguises.”

  “It’s for the play,” I said. I really should have sent David to be the wig ambassador. If he asked, my mother would have collected real hair from the women on the Bad Check List. “It’s for David, really. He’s hysterical.”

  “I’ve only got a fifty-dollar bill,” said my mother, and I was shocked, assuming I would be given the usual rolls of change. “I want receipts, and I want the change. Don’t get any ideas. Don’t think that I’m just handing out cash willy-nilly. I can write this off on my taxes.”

  “Charity,” I said, vaguely familiar with tax laws, thanks t
o my father.

  “I despise that word,” said my mother. The purse sprung open, things glittered inside, contents a mystery. I was never the type of juvenile delinquent that swiped money from my mother’s purse. I grew up frightened of the thing, battered black leather double-stitched and stitched again, the seams thick and dangling with unraveling white thread. It wouldn’t surprise me to see her stirring the contents of her purse like a cauldron, using a giant spoon, green smoke collecting around her head. In a flash, she pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, crisp and folded exactly in half.

  “I’m also going to need the car,” I said, pressing my luck. “There are no wigs in Gabardine.”

  “Pay attention to things, Tiffany. There are wigs everywhere,” said my mother. “Go lurk outside of a church potluck. Fake hair everywhere. And that cashier at the grocery store has alopecia. She doesn’t even have hair on her arms, for god’s sake. Like a lizard person.” She stopped herself. “Sorry,” she said. “Someday your thin hair may all fall out. Maybe your father’s people in Pocatello are all bald-headed. There’s really no way of knowing.”

  “You could hire a private investigator,” I suggested.

  “Let’s wait until you lose your eyebrows,” said my mother. “I don’t think I can claim detectives on my taxes.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I’D FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES. My crimes had changed the air around me, a swarm of bees I didn’t see, but people prepared for the sting nonetheless. I just marched into the Ben Franklin, oblivious. Even though it was June, I knew the manager, knew he had already prepared for October, boxes of Halloween merchandise in the warehouse. I buzzed down the aisles, looking for an employee.

  Consequences. I didn’t recognize the first salesperson I encountered. He crouched down, hanging insulated socket sealers on a low-hanging peg. He stood as soon as he recognized me. Like I said, I knew the manager. Not in a good way.

  “Out,” Lionel said. “Get out of my store.” Fussy as always, he grabbed my shoulder and marched me to the exit doors. Maybe a fake mustache would have worked on another employee, but Lionel never forgot a former shoplifter.

  I stumbled out into the parking lot as he continued to berate me. I walked to the car, but he followed, waving an insulated socket sealer. To Lionel, I was a spark in a bad outlet. “I will call the cops! I will call the newspaper! I will call the corporate office!”

  “Why?” I spun around and found Waterbed Fred. His Frito-Lay truck was parked thirty feet away. Parked poorly, but that was not unusual. “Why would you call the corporate office?”

  Lionel collected himself and tucked the insulated socket sealer into his apron. “She’s a thieving little bitch,” he said finally. “I’m going to make a citizen’s arrest.” Lionel and the Meatloaf should become friends.

  “She’s just a girl,” said Waterbed Fred. “Apologize right now.”

  “No,” said Lionel. “I speak the truth. I communicate honestly and clearly. I was trained, you know.”

  “You manage a Ben Franklin,” said Waterbed Fred. “I dated two of your cashiers. I know for a fact that you only make a dollar more an hour.”

  Lionel got huffy. “I am a professional, and I will be respected.”

  “I have a truck full of snack foods,” said Waterbed Fred. “And today, Ben Franklin isn’t going to get so much as a Ding Dong.”

  Lionel realized the depths of this threat. In a blue-collar county, snack cakes were packed in every lunch box. “I’m sorry,” said Lionel. “I’m sorry I used that language. I would like to avoid this embargo.”

  I didn’t know what that word meant, but I accepted his apology.

  “I understand that she can’t go into the store. I’m not about to run afoul of the law,” said Waterbed Fred. “Tell me what you need, Tiffany. I’ll run inside and grab it.”

  I unfolded the fifty-dollar bill, and he palmed it. “Wigs,” I said. “All the wigs you can buy.” Lionel’s face lit up. I knew he was prepared. He was the type who waited to buy everything on clearance the day after a holiday, store it in the warehouse.

  “Jesus,” Waterbed Fred said. “Wigs?” He pushed Lionel toward the entrance, and I admired Waterbed Fred’s stern demand. “You’d better give me wholesale prices,” he said, and I watched them disappear into the store, the automatic doors swinging shut behind them.

  * * *

  * * *

  EIGHT HOURS AFTER HE APPEARED on my front porch, I carried my box into the trailer park. David was still despondent. I knew this, because he was outside. In the sun. I’d heard enough of his skin care lectures to the cheerleaders to know it was a cry for help.

  He brightened when he saw the box, probably thought it was another gift from my mother. He ushered me into his immaculate bedroom, still blindingly white on white. Even the handkerchief he clutched in his hand was white, but his eyes weren’t puffy from crying, so I think he held it for dramatic effect.

  The bed was perfectly made, and I purposely sat down on the white comforter, because I knew he hated the wrinkles, knew he smoothed out the quilted panels with his hands every time he passed.

  I loved making David wait. He lunged for the box on my lap, but I slapped his hand away.

  “Close your eyes,” I said.

  “I don’t trust you,” he said. “You have a history of violence. I will go wait in the hallway, and you can call me when you’re ready.”

  “Whatever.” The bedroom door closed behind him, and I could hear him pacing, the same creaking floor of every cheap trailer house. It took longer than I thought. All that cellophane, each wig individually wrapped, looking like small furry animals in colors so synthetic they would have been laughed out of the forest.

  I arranged all eight wigs in a precise row, along the length of the bed, and spaced them apart carefully, an exact spread of my palm. David was already despondent, and the wigs were tacky things, so I hoped that my careful presentation would ease the blow.

  “Now,” I called out and stepped back against the wall.

  He entered his bedroom, and gasped, not his theatrical gasp, but a real one. He threw the handkerchief to the floor.

  In Gabardine, we have birds that suddenly appear in the dead of winter, in hues and shades that burst out of all that whiteness. The wigs were just like that. In a room that was meticulously monochromatic, the wigs actually glowed, the shades incredibly vivid, the colors impossible and strange.

  Lou Ann Holland could have painted this. I shuddered to think of her, probably painting at that very moment, in her trailer house next to the Laundromat. I could almost smell the turpentine.

  FROM THE DESK OF TIFFANY TEMPLETON

  The problem with spying on Lou Ann Holland was that she didn’t care if anybody was watching. She lived her whole life like that.

  I started watching her in July, late at night, because the days were still so long. I leaned up against a concrete birdbath in her yard, hidden by hedges. Through her grimy living room window, I watched those canvases burst open like the damn peonies. I was mesmerized, and I hated that.

  Lou Ann painted people, but I never saw her working from a photo, and there was never somebody reclining on her couch, trying to hold a pose. Maybe they were people she had known in her past, but made unrecognizable. Monstrous, skin improbable colors, lime green or tomato red. A woman talking on the phone, her face a nectarine. A child staring at a goldfish in a bowl, but the kid was orange and scaled, the fish painted with pale flesh. An elderly man painted like a zebra, cleaning his eyeglasses with a dirty cloth.

  Lou Ann was fast, determined, occasionally frenzied. She could finish a painting in one night, and sometimes, I watched from start to finish. I’d climb back in through my bedroom window at three in the morning, exhausted, emptied, as if I’d been the one creating things. The colors swam behind my eyes when I tried to go to sleep.

  For a month,
I watched. One night in August, I sat down next to the birdbath, settled in with a box of raisins and a liter of Mountain Dew, ready for the show.

  Dark blue, at the end of a brush, whisked across the canvas and left behind a box. Curved lines, the box became foreshortened, became an armchair. A note rang out in my heart, calling me. This was something familiar.

  She continued with baby blue, and I watched her draw circles inside that chair, watched as she connected tiny circles to larger ones, until it was the shape of a man, made of marshmallows, the largest man you ever saw. I stopped breathing when the pose took shape, when the man leaned forward, chin in his hands, elbows propped up on the giant meat of his thighs. A man waiting in his beloved chair, waiting for his daughter to come home from school, waiting for the mail.

  I went completely rigid, but I stopped myself from bursting through her door and slapping her face.

  I jumped up and left my raisins and soda in her yard. Screw her, screw her, screw her. I ran home and crawled into bed. Shuddering breaths, eyes watering, I refused to acknowledge them as tears. I was tough, too tough for that.

  The next day, I knew that Lou Ann volunteered at the food bank. I waited in the Laundromat until I saw her pass by, her purse under her arm, her shirt covered in brushstrokes that faded at the end, like tails of comets. Lou Ann cleaned her brushes, but as far as I was concerned, the rest of her was filthy.

  I needed to see that finished painting.

  Her house smelled like cigarettes and turpentine. Empty cans of solvent were piled on nearly every surface, and it would have been so easy just to burn the whole place down. Instead, I carefully lifted the painting, propped up, drying in the corner of the room.

  My eyes stuck on his face, because the rest of him was unbearable. Grotesque, really. Shame lit up my face, hot, and I felt it swelling. I had watched her paint people, regular people doing regular things in regular clothes. For a month, I had spied on her, and this was the first time I saw a nude. The first time she painted somebody I knew. It was bad enough that she painted my father blue, but I couldn’t forgive her for painting him naked.