Debbie the Dumb Gold Digger

"Your book looks real interesting," Debbie said, looking at the children's book Josh carried. "It looks real educational too."

Amy glanced at Kelly, seeing the slightest hint of disapproval playing about the girl's mouth. Kelly believed in pushing her religious beliefs upon everyone who happened to cross her path, and her way of achieving this with her boyfriend's much younger brother was to buy the little boy a series of bible-based picture books as a Christmas gift. But to Kelly's disappointment – and Amy's smug satisfaction – Josh did not warm to the bible story books, and reacted to them with complete indifference.

Pleased by Debbie's interest, Josh opened his book to the first page, pointed at the letter A and said, "A," before turning to the next page and saying "B," then turning to the next page, "C," and so on.

Debbie was very impressed, and turned to Warren and Fran. "He can say the alphabet?"

"Yes," said Fran. "We taught Amy and Seth to read and count before they started kindergarten, and we are teaching Josh too."

Seth, who looked for any chance to bring Kelly into any conversation, added, "By the time Kelly was four, she knew the names of all the books in the bible, and what each of them was about." Kelly preened at the praise of her boyfriend.

"Wow, you must read real good," said Debbie. She turned back to Josh. "So, are you looking forward to starting kindergarten, Josh?"

"Yes," said Josh.

"You know Josh, when I was a little girl I was very lucky," said Debbie. "I really liked kindergarten, and then one day my Mom said I was such a special girl that I was chosen to have another year there, and I would get to have more fun and meet a whole lot of new friends. I was so pleased."

Amy turned and stared at the wall, trying hard not to laugh. That she had been left back a year in kindergarten seemed to be totally out of Debbie's comprehension. But from Amy's experience of Debbie since she arrived on the scene last year, it was not a surprise.

"Would you like me to read your book to you?" Debbie asked Josh.

"Yes please," said Josh.

"Okay then, let's have fun with your book," said Debbie, leading the boy to the couch, where he sat alongside her. Debbie opened the book and looked at Fran. "What's the book about?"

"It's about a pig who goes on vacation with all his other animal friends," said Fran.

"Right," said Debbie, staring at the page where the letter 'A' was prominent across the top, with colorful illustrations of the pig and the animals starting with A. She stared at the page, and began to read aloud. "Once upon a time – three – there – was a pig called Pat-rick. He was going on vay-cay-teon with his an-nee-mal fiends - friends. First he went to co-lect the an-nee-mals who start-ted with A, Ad-dam the ant-tel-lopee, Ally-son the –allie-gay-tor, and Amy the ..."

Debbie turned to Amy. "Hey Amy, there's an animal with your name here."

Amy, who had read the book to her brother many times with far greater competence than Debbie, managed to stammer out, "Yes, that's right."

Debbie looked back at the book, clearly mystified. "What type of animal is Amy? An A-Aradvarak?"

"An aardvark," said Amy, still trying to avoid laughing.

"Oh right," said Debbie, before turning the page. "Billy the bee-are, Bob the buff-far-low ..."

Amy could take Debbie's atrocious reading of a children's book no longer, and the laughing teenager made a hasty departure for the kitchen, surprised to see her grandfather at the bench. Somehow, Stan had returned inside through the back door and while Debbie was clearly negligent allowing such a frail old man to climb up and down from the boat on his own, obviously nothing bad had happened.

What was of concern to Amy was that her grandfather was using an electric jug to fix himself a cup of tea. Electricity and boiling water were a bad combination where her grandfather was concerned. He looked up at his granddaughter as she entered the kitchen. "Hi April!" he said.

"It's Amy," said the teenager, used to her grandfather mixing up her name. "Are you okay there, Grandpa? Can I help you with that?"

"Fine thanks Alice," said the old man, before he looked into his cup with dismay. "I don't like the teabags Debbie buys very much."

"What's wrong with the teabags?" Amy asked.

"They don't taste like tea, and they soak up all the water," complained the old man.

"Let me see that," said the puzzled girl. Amy walked over to the bench, and stopped short as she saw the tampon her grandfather was dangling in the cup by its blue string, the white cylindrical object swollen to a massive size from absorbing the boiling water.

"You see, the teabags Debbie buys are really strange," commented Stan.

Amy took hold of the cup, and threw the saturated tampon into the kitchen trash. "How about I make you a nice cup of tea, Grandpa?" the teenager suggested.

"Are you going to use Debbie's teabags?" Stan wanted to know.

"No Grandpa, I'll make you a proper cup of tea you'll really like," Amy assured her grandfather, getting a fresh cup and a proper teabag, setting the jug to boil again.

"Thanks Emily," said Stan, again forgetting his granddaughter's name.

From the living room, the semi-literate Debbie was continuing to stutter and stammer her way through the children's book, with the only two animals she pronounced correctly first time in 'C' and 'D' cat and dog.

Going to get some sugar for her grandfather's tea, Amy paused and looked down at the two credit card statements in the name 'Debbie Rhodes' and thought how the girl could not have had a less appropriate surname. The last person in the world to be offered a Rhode's Scholarship to England's prestigious Oxford University would be Debbie.

On top of each credit card statement was a check with the drawer Stan Jenkins to pay the full – and substantial amounts – of each. The child-like printing and the fact that the word 'thousand' was spelled 'tousand' suggested Debbie had written out the checks, but the spider-like scrawl of a signature was that of her grandfather, the infirm man barely able to hold a pen without shaking.

Amy shook her head in frustration. Again Debbie spent money on herself, and again her grandfather paid the bills with no idea of what he was signing. Obviously Debbie hadn't paid for classes for adults to improve their reading skills Amy thought as she went back into the living room with her grandfather, where the bemused blonde asked why there was a sheep on the 'G' page, Fran explaining that the animal was in fact a goat. With painful slowness, Debbie struggled through the children's book, confused on the last page where there was an X, but no animal starting with this letter to go with the yak and the zebra. Young Josh gave first Debbie, then his parents and then his older brother and sister a strange, confused look, having never heard his favorite book read like that before.

Typically, this branch of the Jenkins family were still the only ones there, Stan's other adult children and their respective spouses and families always put off arrival to the very last minute, not enjoying spending time with a senile old man whose time on Earth was drawing to a close, and the vapid vulture enjoying what she could now and who would no doubt enjoy even more when Stan's time finally came.

As many times as she had seen it before, Amy could never acclimatize to seeing her grandfather sitting alongside a pretty young blonde rather than her late grandmother, and it always felt odd. The rest of the family seemed equally ill at ease, as Stan slurped at his tea and space-cadet Debbie sat next to him staring vacantly into space. Amy could never decide what was worse with Debbie; when she said stupid things or when she was too stupid to think of anything to say so said nothing at all.

Finally, Warren spoke up not expecting an intelligible response from his father. "So Dad, another birthday today. One year off until the big eight-zero."

Stan stared blankly at his son. "Whose birthday is it?"

Debbie giggled her girlish giggle. "It's your birthday silly."

"Is it?" the confused Stan asked. "Oh that's right. I went to Australia for my birthday today."

"You went to Australia?" asked the dumb-founded Warren.

"Yes, I drove there," said Stan. "And I saw a kangaroo, an emu, a koala, a crocodile and a really big lizard."

"You drove to Australia today?" Warren confirmed, not for the first time wondering what his father was talking about.

"Sure did," said Stan. He finished his tea, and looked at Amy. "Thanks Agnes, you made a much better cup of tea than the tea from Debbie's white teabags."

"White teabags?" the bemused Debbie asked, before Amy hastily stepped in to avoid embarrassment.

"How did you drive to Australia, Grandpa?" Amy asked.

"I got in my car and went there, it wasn't very far," said Stan.

"Please tell me he didn't drive his car out on the road – on his own?" the dismayed Warren asked Debbie.

Debbie shrugged. "He insisted."

"Debbie, I think it's better for everyone if you do all the driving," said Warren. While Debbie was a terrible driver, her out on the roads was a far better prospect than Stan driving.

"But I can't drive his car," Debbie protested. "It has this weird stick thingy and a crutch."

Amy once more had to cover her mouth to prevent laughing aloud, while Warren corrected Debbie. "You mean it has manual transmission and a clutch. And just take him in your car."

"Talking about cars and driving, this really strange letter arrived from the DMV saying that Stan had to take his driving test," said Debbie. "It must have been a mistake, Stan's had his license since he was sixteen so why would he need to take a driving test?"

"Debbie, people of Dad's age need to re-sit their driving tests," Warren explained. "What did you do with the letter?"

"I threw it in the trash – I assumed it was a mistake," said Debbie. "Oh well, no harm done, we'll just say we never got it. I hope they don't make me take my driving test again. Eight times is enough." She looked at Amy, Seth and Kelly. "Didn't you just hate having to go for your driving tests all those times?"

The three teenagers looked at each other. "We all passed first time," said Seth.

"Wow, you must be real good drivers," said Debbie, clearly impressed. "My best friend Vanessa got her license first time, and I always thought Vanessa was like some driving genius or something."

"My driving test was very hard," said Kelly. "The examiner picked this really tight spot at the side of the road, and told me to reverse park into it. I was so nervous my hands were sweaty, but then Jesus gave me the strength and I got in there first time with no problems at all."

"I hate reverse parking, so sometimes when Stan and I go out together, I let him take over and park my car for me," said Debbie.

The despairing Warren put his head in his hands. Until several years ago, his father could drive any vehicle competently but now the thought of Stan parallel parking a car was a nightmare.

Sitting beside her husband, Fran was still pondering about her father-in-law's insistence that he had been to Australia that day given he had never been to the country, and was determined to get to the bottom of this. "So Dad, you were saying you went to Australia today. Where did you see all those Australian animals?"

"They were standing by the side of the road in a line," said Stan. "And there was a big sign with Australia on it too."

Fran thought for a moment, and realized what must have happened. About 20 miles away there was an Australian-themed wildlife park which kept kangaroos, wallabies, emus, koalas, dingoes, crocodiles, Australian snakes, lizards and frogs, cockatoos and Tasmanian Devils. A number of statues of Australian animals were at the front entrance, along with a large sign that read 'Welcome to Australia'. Her father-in-law must have driven past the wildlife park and become confused, which was a worry given it was such a busy road.

"The Australiana Wildlife Park, of course," said Fran, her husband and teenage kids realizing what had happened too.

"I didn't know that Australians drive on the same side of the road as we do now," said Stan.

"They do?" the cynical Warren asked.

Stan nodded. "That's right. I thought they drove on the left hand side of the road like they do in England, so as soon as I got to Australia I thought I'd better change to the left side too. But as it turns out, they drive on the right hand side too." The old man looked at his son. "The Australians aren't all that friendly, in fact they're really bad tempered. They were shouting and swearing at me, honking their horns and flashing their headlights, and some of them shook their fists at me too."

Warren did not know what to say, the man simply burying his face in his hands in despair. Debbie, oblivious as usual, said, "I'd really like to go to Australia. I'd love to go to Melbourne so I can see the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Opera House."

Amy saw her parents grimace even more, and once more the teenager had to suppress laughter. Debbie must have had a lot of academic shortcomings when at school, but her geography teacher most probably had committed suicide rather than face teaching a girl who thought that the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Opera House were located in the Australian city of Melbourne rather than in Sydney. Amy's task of keeping her laughter under control was made even more difficult when Debbie said, "And the Australian girls look so pretty in their frilly dresses." Amy wondered if Debbie thought Brisbane was located somewhere close to Vienna, given she obviously could not tell Australia and Austria apart.

"So Debbie, how did you and Mr. Jenkins first meet?" Kelly asked.

"It's a real interesting story," said Debbie. "I was doing volunteer work for a Senior Citizen's Center where Stan goes and we got to talking and we really liked each other and that was it. Maybe it's because we're both Aries."

Or maybe because Stan had four million dollars in his bank account, the cynical Amy thought as she looked at the pretty barefoot blonde. And Debbie was not doing volunteer work at the Senior Citizen's center out of the goodness of her heart, she had been ordered to do so by a judge due to her inability to park legally and her failure to pay the many resultant fines. Still, Amy could not be sure whether Debbie was lying by omission knowing that saying she was ordered to do community service work by a court would look bad, or whether the dim-witted young woman sincerely thought she was doing volunteer work rather than community service imposed by a judge.

Amy glanced at Kelly, seeing the girl's disapproving, but tightly controlled expression as Debbie mentioned the zodiac. Kelly thought any such thing was against the will of God and as bad as dabbling in the occult to summons dark forces with an Ouija board. However, as usual she maintained her politeness with Debbie. Amy knew why that was. Kelly had been programmed from a young age by her religious family to try and indoctrinate anybody who crossed her path to the fundamentalist Christian teachings she followed. No doubt Kelly saw dim-witted Debbie as an easy target for indoctrination. But what Kelly hadn't realized was that Debbie was actually too stupid to be brain-washed.

"You had a birthday recently too then?" Kelly asked.

Debbie nodded. "Yeah, on April first." Again, she looked puzzled. "One thing I could never work out when I went to school was how I was born in April, but I was always the oldest kid in all my classes. I asked my friend Vanessa about it once, and Vanessa told me to work it out for myself. I guess Vanessa didn't know why either."

Once more, Amy had to keep her laughter under control. Debbie, with the most suitable birthday imaginable, could not work out that the reason she was the oldest in the class was that she was kept back a year in kindergarten.

Kelly, missing any humor in Debbie's birthday and the most obvious aspect of her personality said, "Well, April seems to be a popular month for birthdays. My grandmother is turning 75 on Sunday, and we're having a lunch to celebrate. Seth, Amy, Josh and Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are all coming. Why don't you and Stan come along too?"

"Why thanks Kelly, Stan and I would love to come, wouldn't we sweetheart?" Debbie said.

Stan stared vacantly back at his girlfriend. "Whose birthday is it on Sunday? Is it my birthday?"

Amy thought how Debbie would be in for a big surprise as soon as she stepped into the Crane residence and met Kelly's family. And the Crane family would be in for an equally big surprise when Debbie entered their house and looked as out of place as an Eskimo in the Sahara Desert.

The front doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of more relatives. Warren went to answer the door, and Stan looked confused as he heard the voices of his other son, daughter-in-law and Seth, Amy and Josh's cousins as they entered. "Why are all these people here?" the old man asked. "Did Mary invite them? Have you seen Mary around? Where is she? I haven't seen her all day."

*

So far as Amy was aware, Debbie's employment history was all in the hospitality industry as a sandwich shop attendant, a server in a fried chicken restaurant, a waitress in a burger joint, and thanks to Debbie's habit of not thinking before she said things, as a cocktail waitress in a strip club. However, preparing food was not something Debbie was put on this Earth to do, evidenced by the nightmare that she had prepared for Stan's birthday dinner.

Amy thought she might have an excuse of getting out of eating the Japanese food Debbie had prepared due to a severe allergy to fish and seafood. A few drops of oyster sauce was all it took to consign Amy to three days of having her head in a bucket and running for the toilet with one diarrhea attack after another.

Debbie, as it turned out, disliked fish so nothing from the sea was in the Japanese food she prepared. Instead, she had boiled rice so much it was more like an English rice pudding dessert, and substituted spinach for seaweed. The seafood component was substituted for chicken – a bucket of fried chicken from a local take-away. Debbie did know that the Japanese ate raw fish in their sushi, but also assumed that the meat in sukiyaki was left uncooked, so this dish had large lumps of raw meat combined with roughly cut celery still containing the leaves, bell peppers that had been cut to include all the seeds and carrots including the skins. Debbie's idea of a side salad was tearing apart with her bare hands (that she failed to wash beforehand) an iceberg lettuce and throwing it into a bowl.

Sauces were important to prepare authentic Japanese food, so Debbie had purchased jars of sweet and sour and satay sauce, leaving the mysterious teriyaki sauce on the supermarket shelf. One genuine Japanese condiment that Debbie did purchase was wasabi mustard, but the girl thought this was like American mustard one put on a hot dog, and the result was as expected when before anyone could stop her she swallowed a whole mouthful.

Debbie's resultant sneezing and coughing fit startled Stan, the old man spitting out his false teeth from shock. Young Josh had stared in fascination at his grandfather's struggle to re-fit his dentures, announcing to his parents that he wanted to have teeth just like his Grandpa, and trying to see if his own teeth could be extricated from his mouth.

Kelly and Seth saying Grace together did not help the awkward atmosphere of the evening. Nor did Stan's insistence that his brother Homer and sister Agatha had been to see him that day. Stan's siblings proved a good example of bad things happening in threes, and Homer had died from heart disease and Agatha from a stroke both less than three months after Mary died of cancer. Amy was very glad when the night finally came to a close.