The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton

by Richard Fifield

  “That’s a side effect of painkillers,” said Diana.

  “I forgot how much I loved driving,” said Erika.

  “You also forgot how to use a blinker,” said Diana.

  “Enough,” declared Betty Gabrian. “Save all this bickering for the stage. It’s rehearsal time, ladies. This is important.” The women walked inside the theater, but Betty Gabrian waited outside. “We made an oath in the car. None of us are going to die before opening night. We will resuscitate each other, if necessary. No DNR will keep us from our theatrical debut.”

  “I have no doubts,” I said.

  “I’m glad you have faith,” she said. “Now we need to work on your taste. That young man needs to comb his hair.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I KNEW EXACTLY HOW MUCH my mother paid for the Quonset hut, but she chose to show up at play practice, just in case we needed a reminder.

  The actresses were running through a scene in which Inga had just shot a possum, and they were debating the best way in which to prepare it.

  David seemed startled to see my mother, but it was Sunday, and quality control was inevitable. Up against the wall, our tea party was still laid out, even though I had warned David to get rid of it, had to remind him that several of our actresses had dementia.

  My mother zeroed in on it immediately.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m not here to interrupt your artistic vision.” She moved toward the tea set, as if she had paid for it, too. My mother, as usual, weaponized her money. She had no idea that I had $20,137 in a typewriter case behind the Laundromat. I would never have offered her one red cent. David blocked her immediately, and as the actresses continued to run their lines, he grabbed her hand and dragged her to the darkest corner. I could hear him chattering about the woodstove, as the actress portraying Inga brandished a fake knife in the air. Someone was going to have to teach Irene Vanek what it looked like to skin a possum. I didn’t think David would be the right candidate.

  Onstage, Irene Vanek stirred an imaginary cauldron. Possum stew. My mother and David had moved on to other things. When he removed the red velvet curtains from the garbage bag, my mother whistled lowly. She was impressed, but had no idea that they came from the receptionist at the allergist’s office, who had offered them to us like they were no big deal. Maybe she was some kind of theater hoarder. Once again, Fortune had earned the name. The sight of red velvet was enough of a distraction for the actresses. They stopped the scene and broke character, and now everybody was admiring the curtains.

  I watched my mother in the corner, and an image flashed through my head. Her gasoline hands. After every shift, she washed her hands in a special industrial soap that smelled like oranges, the water impossibly hot, knuckles and nail beds bright red. My mother was the original tough girl. I guess I was inspired, because I walked to the front of the stage and yelled at the actresses.

  “Back to work!” I startled everybody in the Quonset hut.

  “I’m the director,” said David. “You don’t get to boss them around.”

  “Back to work,” repeated my mother. David’s jaw dropped, as my mother admonished them further. “It’s not like you ladies have never seen curtains before.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  OCTOBER WAS A WICKED MONTH in northwestern Montana. Gales of bitterly cold wind, frost in the mornings, a scrawny sun during the day that set much, much too soon.

  Bitsy waited for me in the parking lot, leaning against his battered red truck. This was where he usually was after school, in a group of dumb boys and girls who never dressed for the weather. But today, he was alone. I pulled my jacket tight around me as the leaves in the parking lot whipped in circles. I knew he was waiting for me, because he pointed. This was teenage romance.

  “Templeton,” he said. “Get in the truck.” In another world, maybe he would have held a bouquet of flowers.

  The passenger door creaked and protested as I slammed it shut into the frame. Bitsy’s truck had lost every demolition derby, but he was the only contestant.

  “It’s not that cold,” I said. “I can walk.”

  “Not today,” he said. “Caitlyn and Becky slammed me into a locker.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “They will bully anybody.”

  “It didn’t hurt,” he said. “They told me I was a bad boyfriend.”

  I was confused. I guess my mind was hung up on the visual image of two girls shoving Bitsy, overpowering him. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t the type to hit girls, but Caitlyn and Becky were probably taking caffeine pills from the gas station, so self-defense would have been justified.

  “That’s random,” I said. “I’m sure they were high. Talking nonsense. You’re lucky they didn’t shake you down for money. That’s what people on drugs do.”

  “Nonsense?” He looked over at me, and turned the key in the ignition. Of course, Bitsy’s battered truck did not have a functional heater. “I think they might be right.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry that they messed with your head. I’m freezing. Can we please go?”

  “I’m your boyfriend,” he said.

  My cheeks burned, and even though I was embarrassed, I welcomed the heat. “I guess,” I stammered.

  “And I’m apparently bad at it.” I knew immediately David had sent his emissaries. Sometimes, David does nice things. Sometimes, he just wants to create gossip. It can be hard to tell the difference.

  “You’re not bad at it,” I said. “I think you do okay.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’m taking you out on a date.”

  “Right now?”

  “I know it’s not romantic, but you have a curfew and stuff.”

  “Romantic? We’re in the wrong town for that. Even when it’s dark. I guess we could rent a movie or something. I could pretend to get scared and grab you on the couch.”

  “Ever heard of the Rocky Mountain Roller?”

  He yanked down on the gearshift, and we were backing out of the school parking lot, and suddenly I was terrified that my new boyfriend, my new bad boyfriend, was kinky. “I don’t think we’re ready for something like that. I mean, no offense, but we haven’t even gone all the way.”

  “Death trap for pack rats,” he said. “We’re going to build one.”

  “Very romantic,” I said. “You’re full of surprises.”

  As he popped the gearshift into first gear, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, which was chaste, but he had to keep his eyes on the road.

  * * *

  * * *

  IN THE THEATER, DAVID AND Betty Gabrian sat on the stage, scripts in hand, space heater connected to ropes of extension cords. I knew Betty’s hands got cold—I don’t think she always wore gloves for propriety.

  They didn’t seem surprised to see us, nor did they flinch at the bucket Bitsy held, loaded with supplies.

  “We’re running lines,” offered David. “Without the distraction of the other actresses.”

  “If you can call them that,” said Mrs. Gabrian.

  “There’s a reason you are the star of the show,” said David. “I told you the car would come in handy,” he said. I was still bitter, so I just stared back at him.

  “We’re honing my craft,” declared Mrs. Gabrian. “I’m just happy to be sprung from that place. It’s worth the gas money.”

  “They’re on a date,” David told her.

  “I’ve been on many dates,” said Mrs. Gabrian. “None that involved a bucket.”

  Bitsy was proud of his plans. “It’s the Rocky Mountain Roller,” he said.

  “Sounds like the nickname of one of your cheerleaders,” said Mrs. Gabrian. “Most likely the mouthy one with the terrible fan belt.”

  Bitsy ignored this, and I followed him into the darkest corner of the garage. This was not very romantic, but
I didn’t have much to compare it to. Onstage, Mrs. Gabrian recited her lines from the script.

  “Forty-seven days and forty-seven nights,” declared Mrs. Gabrian. “Not one drop of rain. God has cursed the town of Gabardine.”

  “You’ve been counting?” David didn’t bother pitching his voice to the heights of Diana Whipple.

  “I’m a thorough bookkeeper,” said Mrs. Gabrian. “I write everything down, my darling girl. Daily temperatures, expenditures, and the strange proclivities of our callers from Idaho.”

  “Where’s the whiskey?”

  “And now we face a bigger threat than buggerers from Boise.”

  “Uff-da,” said David.

  “Heat lightning,” said Mrs. Gabrian. “Surely, it is a wrath from God. No rain, only fingers of fire.”

  “I am known for my fingers of fire,” said David.

  “I apologize,” said Mrs. Gabrian. “You are correct.”

  “It’s a real moneymaker,” said David.

  In the dark corner, Bitsy ignored the high drama, concentrating on his contraption. It was simple, really. With a pocketknife, he dug out holes near the top of the bucket. He slid an empty, bottomless can onto a dowel, and then mounted the dowel through the holes. He spun the can, and was satisfied.

  I followed him past the stage, as he lugged the bucket and nearly tripped over the extension cord. Mrs. Gabrian stared at us as she pointed to her chest. “We have something stronger than President Roosevelt, my sweet girls. We don’t need his communist firefighting crew. We have good Christian hearts, and our faith has survived many a calamity.”

  “Mostly those men from Boise,” said David.

  Outside, Bitsy cranked the handle on the water spigot, and the bucket was filled three-quarters full. It was heavy, but he still had his football muscles.

  Inside the garage, the thespian and the director had taken a break from my ill-wrought melodramatics.

  “I hope he brought you flowers,” said Mrs. Gabrian.

  “There’s no place to get flowers around here,” said Bitsy.

  “If I had known, I would have brought some from Fortune,” she said. “Young love is a precious thing.”

  “Bitsy is a bad boyfriend,” said David. “I’m doing my best to change that.”

  “I have no doubt,” said Mrs. Gabrian.

  The three of us followed Bitsy outside, and around to the back of the Quonset hut. As he lugged the bucket to the corner, the can clattered against the dowel. I doubt he expected a crowd, but he said nothing, a good boyfriend. We watched as he leaned a two-by-four against the lip of the bucket, rested the other end of the board in the gravel, a gangplank. Bitsy unscrewed the lid of a jar of peanut butter, fingered a giant gob, smeared it across the can, obscuring the fact it had ever contained green beans. Mrs. Gabrian flinched as Bitsy licked the remaining peanut butter from his fingers.

  “Done,” he said, and stood back to admire his work.

  “I never want to see that contraption in my theater,” said David. “Whatever it is, I think it’s disgusting. And I’m pretty sure we’ve got two actresses with nut allergies.”

  “It’s the Rocky Mountain Roller,” said Bitsy. “Made famous right here in Gabardine.”

  “Famous?” David was incredulous. “We are only famous for incinerated prostitutes.”

  “Jesus,” said Bitsy. “You wanted dead pack rats.”

  “That sounds out of character,” said Mrs. Gabrian. “I’ve only known you for a few months, and I trusted that you had a gentle soul.”

  “Revenge,” said David.

  “I approve,” said Mrs. Gabrian. “Just make sure you wear gloves.”

  Bitsy explained how it worked. The rats walked up the plank, and leapt for the peanut butter on the spinning can, only to miss and drown in the bucket. If peanut butter was enough bait for the people of Gabardine, I would build a giant Rocky Mountain Roller in the center of town. Maybe I could scotch-tape lottery tickets to a can. “Every day, that bucket is going to be full of dead pack rats.”

  “Flowers would have been better,” said Mrs. Gabrian.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ON SATURDAY, I SHOWED UP at the Laundromat, another production meeting demanded by David. I was ten minutes early, so I had time to check on my stash. I reached beneath the juniper, removed the box, and examined the contents. The can openers, still impossibly new, no longer had any power. But I felt they should stay. I shut the lid on the typewriter case and slid it back beneath the bush. I guess I wanted the objects to remain as they were, just in case I died or something. Some kid could find it in one hundred years, a trailer park archaeologist, open my time capsule and bring it to school for show-and-tell, the strange hoard of a long-dead teenage girl. Maybe he would write a play about it.

  When I went inside, David wasn’t there, even though I was right on time. Unfortunately, Lou Ann was. We sat in silence for fifteen minutes, at separate tables, and the Laundromat was uncomfortably hot. Between us, a fishing tackle box, tubes of acrylic paint instead of shiny lures.

  “He did my taxes,” she said. “Your dad. They were really complicated. Artists have the most complicated taxes.”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “I don’t sell much,” she said. “I mean, it’s not like I make a living from selling art.”

  “You work here,” I said. “This is a real job. Some people don’t have any jobs. You’ve got two.”

  She nodded, and we continued to sit there in silence until she pushed her chair back, emptied lint traps, pulling out the giant trays from the dryers; even though they were empty, she made a show of tapping them into the garbage can. Some of the dryers had been broken for years. I watched Lou Ann spray the doorknob of the bathroom with Windex and stand back to inspect her work, no idea that a foot of concrete wall separated her from a box that contained her portrait of my father.

  “I don’t think they’re coming,” I said. David had promised to arrive at ten with two of the cheerleaders, a meeting of the “scenic department,” but the cursed wicker picnic basket had been waiting for us, perfectly staged on the counter that people were supposed to use to fold clothes. Nobody folded clothes here. People rarely even matched socks. When I saw the basket, I should have known.

  “Lou Ann?”

  “Yes?” She spun around to face me, the paper towel wadded in her hand, tinted barely blue, far from the colors she had chosen for my father’s body.

  “I’m pretty sure he left that for us.” I pointed at the basket, which she regarded with nonchalance, as if people left wicker picnic baskets at the laundromat all the time. Maybe this had happened before, and some other delinquent teenage girl had left her baby in a basket for Lou Ann to find, like baby Moses or something, and crazy Lou Ann just took it to the river and launched it from the reeds.

  Lou Ann gingerly opened the basket. Inside, two cans of spray starch, four crisp white top sheets, bleached and ironed. Underneath the sheets, a fleur-de-lis stencil cut carefully into an index card, the edges scotch-taped. According to his directions, written on another index card, two of the sheets would be hung on wires, simulating walls. The other sheets would be stapled around wooden frames, a perfect rectangle cut in the middle of each, where the window would be. Lou Ann removed yet another index card, the rough sketch of what he was looking for.

  “This is going to be hard for me,” said Lou Ann. “I don’t work like this.”

  I knew exactly how she worked. I said nothing, but pushed the tables against the wall. Four king-size top sheets would not fit on the linoleum floor of the Laundromat, and Lou Ann helped me heft the tables on top of each other, drag the plastic chairs outside.

  Maybe it was the fumes from the spray starch, or maybe it was the unspoken secrets between us, but Lou Ann was chatty, made hyperactive small talk. She babbled as she shook a can and tried to apply an even coat.
r />   “I always got a refund,” she said. “He was like a magician, I swear.”

  “Everybody gets refunds,” I said. The Bad Check List shrunk in February and March, as people made good. “All poor people get refunds.”

  We continued in silence, save for the rattling of the ball bearing inside the spray cans. Three sheets coated, and Lou Ann finally decided to squint at the directions on the back of an empty can. “Twenty minutes to dry,” she said. “Oh. Highly flammable. Contents under pressure.” I almost laughed at the irony. That pressure caused her to jump up and bolt to the door, prop it open with a piece of shale. “I guess we aren’t supposed to breathe the fumes.” She leaned against the open door, and lit a cigarette, as I finished spraying the last sheet.

  “Highly flammable,” I said, reminding her.

  “I’m an artist,” she responded. She smoked three cigarettes, one after the other, and another twenty minutes passed, as she blurted out standardized deductions. “Canvases.” Thirty seconds later: “All my paints, of course.” A minute. “My power bill, because my house is also my studio.” Two minutes. “Medications, even over the counter.” Ten seconds. “Turpentine.” Three full minutes. “Mileage.”

  “You don’t even have a car.”

  She stubbed out the cigarette and winced. “He was a magician,” she said. She brushed past me and began to dig through her tackle box.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal,” I said.

  “I’ve said too much,” she said, laughed nervously.

  As I sketched out the squares for the windows, Lou Ann crawled up the length of the sheet. She tossed a brush at me, and then a tube of cerulean blue. Brand new, fat with the stuff. She could have chosen any other color in the rainbow. I sighed, and placed the index card in the upper left corner, squeezed a glob onto the end of my brush.

  Before I finished stenciling the first fleur-de-lis, Lou Ann abandoned the directions and with a flourish of her hand, thick black lines appeared at the top of her sheet, and then curves that flicked away, curled up. Six, nearly identical. I stopped painting and watched her connect the lines. She was the real magician, had summoned a chandelier into being.