The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton

by Richard Fifield

  Like a good writer, I did my research. I drove to Fortune on Tuesday, as soon as school was over. I got the numbers I needed, and picked up Betty. As promised, she wore a slim velvet suit, black, no blouse. Her impressive cleavage was covered by ropes of pearls. Her wig was crooked, but we would adjust that before we got out of the car.

  “This should be an emergency meeting,” declared Mr. Francine, after the Pledge of Allegiance.

  “There needs to be public notice for emergency meetings,” muttered one of the old men. “It’s in the bylaws.” The three old men sat in their usual chairs, and I was growing quite fond of them.

  “We’ve got a gas crisis,” said Mr. Francine. “And I see Vy’s daughter is in the audience. Maybe she’s shown up with some sort of ransom.”

  I shook my head.

  Betty stood, wig straightened, and she smoothed her velvet trousers. “This is poppycock. Call for new business, and stop wasting our time.”

  “New business,” stated Mr. Francine.

  Betty remained standing. She popped open her black velvet purse with a pearl clasp. She was definitely the right choice for the job. She stepped forward, bulging envelope in hand, and thwacked it down in front of Mr. Francine.

  “I want to buy a streetlight,” she said.

  “This isn’t Monopoly,” he said. “You can’t just buy utilities.”

  “I checked,” she said. “Yes, I can. There is twenty thousand dollars in that envelope.”

  “Cash?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I want a receipt for every goddamn dollar. It hasn’t started snowing, so your city maintenance workers are free, unless they are day drinkers. If you can’t get it done in two weeks, I’ve got a contractor and an electrician in Fortune just waiting for my call.”

  “We should keep it local,” said the secretary. “We can’t have an outsourcing scandal on top of a gas crisis. Gabardine will become a ghost town.”

  “It already is,” said Betty. “Right now, I’m haunting you. Two weeks. I want your answer right now.”

  “Hold on a minute,” said Mr. Francine. “I need some more details.”

  Betty fished the Post-it note from the bottom of her purse. I had itemized everything, thanks to the city planner in Fortune, who was intrigued by my questions, and recognized my leather jacket as belonging to his brother-in-law, who pawned it to pay to have his front teeth capped. She read aloud, in the voice she had learned from David. She projected to the back of the room, unnecessary in such small quarters. The city council flinched. “The lighting rig is $5,432. A twenty-foot pole is $595.95, unless you want me to buy it from Fortune, but I know what strange pride you people have in your trees. It’s going to cost around $3,000 to set a new foundation, and $1,150 for the electrician, and you’d better not hire that dipshit that cheated on our best nurse. Grand total, $10,177.95, but I expect there to be problems, because I’m dealing with lazy cusses. I want the remainder to go to the food bank.”

  “This is a list of demands,” said Mr. Francine. “This is just like something Vy would do.”

  “Public safety,” said Betty Gabrian. “And you shall have the legacy of being the first city council to bring a streetlight to Gabardine.”

  Mr. Francine leapt from his folding chair and to his feet. Next to Betty, his suit looked shabby. “Who’s going to pay for the electricity?”

  “The City of Gabardine,” stated Betty. “Public safety.” At this, the old men applauded.

  “It’s not in our budget,” said Mr. Francine. “That’s a damn fact.”

  “I can do math as well as you,” declared Betty. “You can pass it on to the taxpayers. It comes out to fifty-four cents per year.”

  “Fine,” said Mr. Francine. “But if this is about public safety, I want that damn light to be installed outside this building. I’m the only person who has to deal with the criminal element.”

  “Teenagers on probation sit in your office once per month,” said Betty. “During daylight hours. You’re more at risk to catch hantavirus.”

  “There are no rats in my office,” said Mr. Francine.

  “Just one,” said Betty. “The streetlight will be installed in the center of the trailer court. Right next to the dumpster.”

  I guess this amends was a guarantee that my spying days were finished. Let some other kid sneak around the other parts of Gabardine, let some other kid peek in the windows of real houses built on concrete foundations. In my neighborhood, we would have no teenage spies. In our trailer court, no girl would ever be afraid of the dark.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  MY MOTHER NEVER DID ANYTHING small. I think she was incapable of it. She gained four pounds and created a fuel crisis.

  It was the topic of every conversation I stumbled upon as I walked through town, or overheard at the grocery store, and even in the halls of our high school, the fuel embargo was bigger news than any forest fire.

  I wanted to tell everybody to relax. They could still get gas, less than twenty miles away. Betty Gabrian predicted that the gas station in Fortune would raise their prices by a dollar, but that didn’t happen.

  I walked with my head down, avoiding eyes, but as I passed the gas station on Friday, I looked up. The panel that usually held my mother’s current weight had been covered by a dangling flag. I do not know the flags of the world, but thankfully, the flag maker had used a Magic Marker to scrawl “Saudi Arabia” across the bottom. It was made of cloth, which was impressive. Someone had really committed to this project; I doubted that any Gabardinians had Saudi flags in their attics. This level of arts and crafts suggested David, of course, but my mother was the center of his universe, so I ruled him out. Goddamn the Ben Franklin and their well-stocked arts and crafts section.

  My social studies teacher decided that this was a teachable moment, so all of a sudden, we were learning about OPEC in 1973. Admittedly, our textbooks were out of date and pretty racist and sexist, but they’d been published in the ’90s. Even with a thirty-year-old textbook, the historians had not thought the real fuel crisis was something worth including.

  “Your mother is basically an Arab,” said Kaitlynn, and this was so lame that I knew she thought of it herself.

  “My mother is clinically depressed. She is not an oil cartel.”

  “My parents said there is going to be a riot. The first thing I’m going to burn is your stupid leather jacket.” I reconsidered. Perhaps David had fed her this line after all.

  The most common question, the one I couldn’t answer: What is wrong with your mother?

  I had been asking myself this same question for sixteen years.

  I FELT BAD TAKING SUCH a nice car over such disastrous roads, but I drove slowly, and every time I heard the undercarriage bottom out I reminded myself that this was a life-saving mission, or at the very least, a chance to spy on the Meatloaf.

  I left the car parked on the road—I wasn’t going to risk dipping two wheels into a ditch. If there were any vehicles that needed to pass, they could attempt that maneuver.

  It was already bitterly cold by the end of October, but the hike made me sweat, and I removed my leather jacket. The problem with a giant vintage leather jacket is that you can’t just tie it around your waist or drape it over your shoulders. I hung it from a tree on the trail. My jacket was one of a kind. If somebody tried to swipe it, they would have to drive across state lines to wear it.

  Daylight, and the Meatloaf was at full vigil. In a milk crate beside him, his gun poked out, and I could see pepper spray, three cans of energy drinks, and a box of Kleenex. He was serious; he had Kleenex within arm’s reach for his seasonal allergies. Without the jacket, I moved silently. I sat fifty yards away and watched. He might have been taking his vigil seriously, but I could have easily executed an act of terrorism. This was day sixty-eight of his mission. I was expecting him to have stubble or something, but his face was hairl
ess. Maybe the threat of Satan-worshipping terrorists had traumatized the follicles in his face. I’ve learned from Kelly that we all process trauma differently.

  After ten minutes, I grew bored of watching the Meatloaf watching the tree line. I called out his name, but he still leapt for the milk crate.

  “I’m unarmed,” I announced.

  He stared at me as I approached—maybe he didn’t recognize me without the leather jacket. “I’d still like to check your pockets,” he said.

  Whatever. I stood still and let the Meatloaf pat me down. All I had in my jeans were the keys to the new car. Day sixty-eight, and he was slipping, for sure. He didn’t even ask why I had unfamiliar car keys, let alone a set that held a fob that could lock and unlock and remote defrost. Christ, there was even a panic button, which I thought was kind of cool, but probably useless in Gabardine. Who would respond to the panic button? Would Toyota send a plane? Would mechanics leap out with toolboxes, connected to parachutes?

  “Did you bring me supplies?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Did you come to relieve me?” If the Meatloaf thought I would care about the National Christmas Tree, or could be trusted to protect such a treasure, he was definitely losing his edge.

  “No. It’s Mom.”

  “If she’s dead, I can’t handle that right now. I’m sorry for your loss. Come back in December and tell me again. I’ve been prepared to be an orphan for a few years now.”

  “Jesus, Ronnie. She’s depressed. She shut down the gas station.”

  He ignored this. “Last week, I woke up, and somebody left me a meatloaf. I was so excited. In a casserole dish and everything. Tinfoil on top. I almost stuck a fork right in it, but I have better training than that.”

  “You don’t have any kind of training,” I said.

  “My suspicions were right. My suspicions are always right. Some motherfucker had baked a pack rat inside.”

  Wow. That was some next-level revenge. I didn’t think David would have gone that dark. It had to be Kaitlynn. And that was impressive. I’d witnessed her incompetence in home ec.

  “I need your help with Mom. We’ve got a fuel crisis.”

  “No,” he said. “I have a job to do.” He paused. “Wait. A fuel crisis? Did we get invaded?” The Meatloaf obviously did not have many visitors or keep up on current events.

  “She gained four pounds. She shut the gas station down.”

  “Four pounds?” He popped open an energy drink, and I knew it was warm, so I gagged a little bit when he took a deep swallow. “I’ve got Satan worshippers and people trying to poison me. Those are real problems.”

  “I just want you to talk to her,” I said. “We both know that you are her favorite.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not leaving. Maybe I’ll write her a note or something. Maybe you could come back with a Get Well Soon card for me to sign. Just don’t stab anybody to get it.” He took another slug from his energy drink. “Four pounds?” I watched him consider this, his hairless face scrunched with the math. “Maybe it’s menopause.”

  I recoiled. I had not thought about that. How in the hell did my knucklehead brother come up with a legitimate answer? How did he even know about menopause? Maybe it was the energy drink.

  “I will suggest that,” I said. “But I’m not coming back here. If you want to write her a note, you’re going to need to give it to me now.”

  “It’s not worth it,” he said. “I need to save every milligram of ink. I only brought three pens, and documentation comes first.”

  “What are you documenting? Seriously. What are you waiting for?”

  “How’s Lorraine?”

  “Fine,” I said, and this was true. I didn’t tell him that she had gone back to the Sweet compound at the end of September. He would return to his trailer without a job, a family, or a flat screen. Maybe he would crawl inside my mother’s nest. I watched him pound the rest of his energy drink, and then crush the can with his bare hand. He belched, and I stood up to leave. “Thanks for nothing, Ronnie. As usual.”

  “Someday you will get a calling,” he said. “Someday you will understand. When you get a calling, you don’t have a choice.”

  “I’m not expecting a calling,” I said. “I still can’t use the phone.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “THIS TRAILER PARK IS LIKE the Bermuda Triangle,” said Bitsy. “I don’t get it. All these dads just disappear.” We sat on the top of the sand hill and looked down on the lights of the trailer court.

  I considered this. Twenty-two houses, but only one father. The McGurtys had the only dad in the entire loop, but he was still just a kid himself. Six kids, starting at age fifteen, and I was there the day he brought in his driver’s license and waved it in my mother’s face, finally legal to buy beer. (Of course, the minute he drove away, triumphantly, with a cheap six-pack of Miller, my mother told me that it was Mrs. McGurty who really deserved the beer, six kids in six years, and who cares if she was breastfeeding. Her womb could really use a drink.)

  “My dad didn’t disappear,” I finally said. “He died. That’s different.”

  “I just think it’s weird,” he said. The sand was cold against my jeans, the last days of October, and the moon rising just after dinner. It was only eight o’clock, but dark like the middle of the night, the hours when people finally slept deeply. I rarely spied at three o’clock in the morning, but when I did, the stars were so sharp that I wanted to wake everybody up, just to take a look. Come see what you’re missing. Take a look at that sky. Come with me in your pajamas and watch Lou Ann paint throughout the dead hours.

  Bitsy pointed at the trailer park, the windows lit all along that sloppy loop, the black sky broken only by the moon on the mountains, by the windows of single mothers. I lay on my back on the cold sand and looked at Bitsy’s finger, silhouetted against the moon. “Statistically, I mean. There shouldn’t be that many single mothers in one place.”

  “Economics. All trailer parks are full of single mothers. It’s what they can afford.” I closed my eyes, and I stretched out, but the sand was unyielding, my body so rigid I swore I could feel every individual grain of sand. In the summer, you could surf on this hill, but in the winter, it clumped together. The sand never froze, not even in the most frigid stretches of winter.

  I kept my eyes closed, and it was so quiet that I could hear him breathing.

  “My dad was going to buy a house,” he said, and I heard his breathing change. “He was a man with a plan.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “You don’t know.” I squeezed my eyes as tight as I could. I did know his dad, the worst parts of him, the secret parts. “My dad made things happen. Like football. He created a whole football team.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Tell the truth. Be the toughest Tiffany, for real this time.

  “He ran away,” said Bitsy. “You’re the first person I’ve ever been able to say that to. Nothing bad happened to him. That’s why we didn’t look for him. We only pretended.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said.

  “Whatever,” he said. “He took off because he was selfish. You don’t get to take credit for this one. You can’t wreck people. You’re not your mom. The only person you’re good at wrecking is yourself.”

  I didn’t respond, and once again, his breathing changed, quicker, the hyper boy I’d grown up with, body galloping ahead without him. I swear the heat inside him traveled through the frozen sand. I heard the flick of the lighter, and then I could smell the smoke from his cigarette. I straightened my back, just to make the sand dig a little deeper, just to feel it all.

  “My dad couldn’t handle being an adult. He didn’t want to be a husband or a dad. He just wanted to coach football.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “He didn’t run away to get away from you. He r
an away because he got caught.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. I watched you, Bitsy. Just like I watched everyone. You didn’t think it was weird that random people just walked into your house all the time?”

  “Stop,” he said.

  “Your dad sold drugs,” I said. “You knew. You and your mother knew the whole time.”

  He was silent, and I watched his face illuminate from a deep draw on his cigarette, a sizzle I could actually hear, the glow revealing a stare I had never seen before. Almost an X-ray, like he was seeing through things. He exhaled, and the smoke covered his face, and those eyes, lost in a cloud of his own making.

  At that moment, I knew he would always find a way to hide the truth. He would keep this secret forever, no matter the cost. I knew the real expense of secrets, all too well. He stubbed his cigarette into the sand, and the stillness was broken as it hissed, extinguished. I wanted to know the truth about us, and on that sand hill, looking out at the twinkling lights of all those homes and all their secrets, I knew I had nothing to lose. “Why did you go out with me?”

  He didn’t answer my question. He had been caught, and I knew what desperation did to people. Finally, he spoke. “You can’t tell anybody.”

  “He used my brother as a drug mule,” I said. “He nearly killed Lou Ann Holland.”

  “That’s not my fault,” he said.

  “I didn’t turn him in to the police. I broke into your house and took all of his money and all of his drugs. He took off that night.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at him. I clenched my entire body, just waiting for him to hit me. That’s what I would have done.

  “Don’t ever talk to me again,” he said.

  I listened as the sand crunched as he stood. I waited to hear him walk away, waited to hear him run, dash down the hill to jump in his truck and crash it into something.