“Ben, I haven’t lied to anyone—yet. I’m going make up the class this summer while I’m working at UNO. Did I tell you that I got a new job in the dean’s office? Anyway, I’ll be on campus, so it’ll be no big deal to retake the class. I’ll graduate in August. No big graduation. I don’t even want a party.”
Lucy may have had her share of inappropriate guilt in life, but she felt none as she looked to her college education as something “to get over with.” The degree was not a means to an end. The piece of paper would not catapult her to her dream career. Most of her girlfriends were entering careers they would embrace until marriage and baby came along, only to find that guilt was an unavoidable state of mind for the remainder of their lives. Guilt if they remained in their jobs to succeed and reap the financial benefits that would afford a lifestyle they might not have known as children. Guilt if they stayed home and “wasted” the years in college. Parents had cheered them on, “You go, girl! Run for president!” until that first baby came along, and “Of course you are going to quit.” A young woman in the eighties was facing new problems. The smart ones handled it well. That would include Lucy.
The money her parents had paid for her college education was not wasted, in Lucy’s opinion. She had met a ton of interesting people and learned a lot of interesting things—except meteorology. Lucy had a real career goal in mind: marry Tom Ducey and have a lot of babies. She had not gone to college to get her MRS degree. She was not “pre-wed.” She had no hidden agenda. She would tell you that herself. She’d always known that she wanted to get married and stay home with her kids. You got a problem with that?
“I’ll take Mom and Dad to dinner or something to celebrate when I do finally graduate. I’ll be working full-time until Tom gets a job; I’ll work to put my husband—I just said husband—through law school. I can’t believe I’m getting married.”
“I think that the graduation ceremony and party were as much for Ava and Louis as for you, Lucy. They’ll be disappointed.” I could tell this was not what she wanted to hear.
“I didn’t plan on flunking meteorology, Ben”
“I know. When are you going to tell your folks? Graduation is in three days.”
“Soon…Do you think they’ll be happy for me? I mean about the engagement?”
“I think they’ll be very happy.” I would hear the full reaction when Ava came in to have her hair done the following Tuesday. “You might want to bring Tom with you to buffer the school news. Once they see how excited you are…and hear about those wonderful color themes or whatever you called them, they’ll be fine.”
“Ya think?”
“Are you kidding me? They will get off the couch and hug the future Mrs. Ducey.” Then like a light bulb going off and falling directly on my head, the thought hit me. “Lucy Ducey?”
“Yeah, yeah. I figured that one out when I started having a crush on Tom. I think I was in seventh grade. Haven’t you ever thought about that? I probably wrote it a million times on my notebooks in study halls.”
“Lucy Ducey.” No, I had never gone there before.
“I love the sound of it, so don’t make fun or you won’t be an usher at my wedding. Now, what funky thing should we do with my hair for my engagement party?”
“Something big and poofy, I’m thinking. Or spiky! I’m an usher?” I walked Lucy over to the sink.
The good news about Lucy’s hair in 1985 is that she was finally “in.” Other women were paying sizable amounts of money to get the curl and volume that Lucille Belle had been born with. If anything, I was still calming her locks a bit to give her a Julia Roberts style, but she shone in the middle of that decade.
I warmed the water as Lucy sat down by the sinks and babbled on and on about her plans for the big day. I listened and nodded as I shampooed her hair. No longer did we talk about the “newness” of my salon, and that was more than all right with me. I had grown tired of talking about the place, so I couldn’t have been happier when clients stopped asking if I was “getting settled” or if I was “going to make it downtown” or if I was “happy with it all.” We were back to the clients’ hair and their event or disaster of the day, and I liked it.
That day in May, I was finally settled. Vanity Insanity had been up and running for a full year and two months or so. I had a lot of ideas for changes with the bay, but I chose to put any extra money into new equipment and additional employees. What remained—until an unknown future date when I could put money into fixing up the place—was a hodgepodge design. One wall of the bay was brick. The previous renters of the bay had painted the remaining two walls just before their business tanked in what I guess was a last-ditch effort to save it. The owners of Candy Fantasy or Candy Addict or something like that had painted one wall a bright yellow and one wall an obnoxious pink before the last bell had rung for their sweet endeavor. I was stuck with yellow and pink, colors I would have never chosen. Fine for now.
The sinks and counters of the hair stations were black, the cheapest choice I could afford. By the entrance were church pews, anchoring the big door, with their backs toward the windows that climbed from floor to the ceiling. A.C. and I had picked up the pews from Saint Pius X after the parish remodeled the church. Anyone who could load the old pews and take them away could have them for free. A.C. helped me load them on a borrowed truck from Subby Mangiamelli one weekend.
That same weekend A.C. and I had picked up an old desk from the Union Pacific Railroad building downtown. Mac informed me of a similar you-move-it, you-own-it deal, as the UP was getting rid of several floors of old furniture. A.C. and I moved the gigantic, sold, cherrywood desk from the tenth floor of the UP building. The guard on the main floor had felt sorry for us and helped us move the desk as far as the sidewalk before he needed to go back to his guard duty. Once we’d gotten it back to the Old Market, we’d set the desk by the pews near the door.
The desk was definitely my favorite piece, an anchor of integrity that seemed to be floating like a circus balloon in a bubblegum disaster of a room. I kept the appointment book open on the desk at all times next to an old, black rotary phone I’d found at a Goodwill thrift store. The desk served as a receptionist desk, even though I didn’t have a receptionist, though Hope liked to think that she was the receptionist on the days that she came in to drop off towels and clean sinks and the back room. She drove Toby crazy when she got to the phone before he did, since she took twice as long to make an appointment. She was slow and cautious on the phone, and some callers could not understand her very well, but I was happy to have her around throughout the week.
Customers could not see the back room, which was really just a big closet that we’d rigged as a break room where Jenae, Toby, and I put our coats and made a coffee station. What the clients did see was a scattered and homey room. Scruffy and comfortable. One of Toby’s clients called it “eclectic,” kind of a stretch if you asked me. “Unplanned” would have been better, more appropriate. For me, the guy who liked a plan and a sense of order, this room was a great challenge. Out of my comfort zone. A learning opportunity. I was learning to let go a little. I’d become more and more OK with the unplanned look.
Along with saving for more equipment and employees, I was also socking a little bit of money away each month for moving out of the house on Maple Crest Circle, which was getting smaller and smaller, even though Mom and I were the only ones living there. Cheryl had gotten married right out of high school to a really nice guy that she’d dated her junior and senior year. Tracy, who was always dating older men, was living with two other friends in an apartment. Mom wasn’t home much, as she put in full days at Boys Town. She had also met a new “little friend,” whom I had met only once or twice, but he seemed to fill any remaining hours. I saw my mom in those years mostly when she came in to have her hair done. Someday I would move out.
As I was styling Lucy’s hair, I filled her in on the most recent hires. “You might want to come back and get your nails done, Lucy Ducey. I have two ne
w girls here Monday, Wednesday, Friday. One works every other Saturday.”
“You have nail people now? You can afford that?” Lucy knew about my early struggles to get the place together financially. I was only about a year and a half from paying off my loan to Mac.
“Yep. Caroline is really quiet but hardworking, and Kelly’s a young Vietnamese woman who’s working for her citizenship. Her real name is Hmong Huy Nygen, but she’s taken on an American name to feel more American. We all call her Kelly. She’s changing her name legally when she passes her citizenship test.”
“Ben, I didn’t mean to flunk the final…”
“What final?” I took Lucy’s apron off and handed her a mirror to look at the back of her hair. “Just tell your parents.”
“Oh! Scoop! I almost forgot.” Lucy’s little scoop updates were entertaining to me since I rarely remembered the people she was scooping to me. Still, she enjoyed keeping me in the loop, or she just enjoyed talking scoop.
“Ellen Richter. Remember her?”
I tilted my head with my eyebrows raised, feigning a serious attempt to recall Ellen What’s-It.
“Ellen Richter. She outed Will when he streaked through Marian. She was Miss High and Mighty Better Than Thou. You know. Ellen.”
“Oh, Ellen.”
“Pregnant. Not married.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. She was so pure and judgmental. Right and wrong. And guess what?”
“Pregnancy.” I knew the answer this time.
“That’s right. Miss Self-Righteous Richter may not have been so pure after all…and, oh! Charlotte. Do you remember Charlotte?”
“Charlotte the Harlot?”
“Yeah…how do you know Charlotte?”
“I don’t. I’ve just heard her name. I thought she was a mythical creature.”
“She’s real all right. She gives me major gas. She loves to flirt with Tom whenever we run into her. Blond, skinny thing. Anyway, Charlotte went to California for the summer, and she came back with…” Lucy looked at me, dangling her context cue at me like a piece of meat in front of a dog. “Come on. She came back with…”
“Are we playing Password or something?”
“She came back with…”
“The flu? A new dress?”
Lucy gave me her best disappointed look. I tried again. “She came back with Sylvester Stallone?”
“Boobs! She came back with boobs! She got a boob job, Ben.”
“That was my next guess. Really.” California had more to offer than I’d thought.
I think Lucy felt better as she left my salon that afternoon. I know that she looked good. Before she got to the door leading out to the Old Market, I yelled out to her, “Hey, you just got engaged last night and you already have your ‘colors’ figured out?”
“I had my colors picked out years ago.” Lucy never looked back as she answered.
The truth? Lucy had been planning her wedding since fourth grade, years before Tom Ducey had come to her house to hang out with her brother.
Lucy Ducey.
She was a planner.
18
Lucy’s Wedding Saturday
Saturday, October 12
1985
“Nebraska must be the most unexciting of all states. Compared with it, Iowa is paradise.”
Bill Bryson claimed this in his book The Lost Continent, a book that documents his travels and humorous commentary on places as he sets out to rediscover America in his search for the perfect small town. A.C. had loaned it to me a few years ago.
I think that Mr. Bryson was trying to be funny by playing the “let’s make fun of those states that people don’t know much about” card. Hilarious. Like people from Nebraska have never heard those jokes. But then Bryson went a little too far when he decided to play the “let’s make fun of one state by comparing it to another state that people don’t know much about and essentially make fun of two states at once” card. He would have no way of knowing that he’d hit a huge Nebraska nerve, in this native, at least.
The Iowa card in and of itself is a big no-no. People in Nebraska don’t like their state being compared to Iowa. We sense a big difference in our states. Sure, a bit of healthy ethnocentricity may account for our strong point of view. Maybe the adults of our youth, grumbling about our neighboring state, had poured some of their state perspective into our minds. Maybe we were all brainwashed to think that the bad drivers in our city were all the people from Iowa who had gotten lost and ended up on this side of the Missouri River. Just look at the license plates. Oh, and while you’re at it, figure out that IOWA stands for Idiots out Wandering Around or I Owe the World an Apology. You probably thought it was an Indian word or something.
In time, my friends met or married some really nice people from Iowa, and we realized that Iowa wasn’t so bad. Honestly, most of the people from there seem just like us. Sorry, Iowa. We just don’t like being told that you’re paradise compared to us, that’s all. Come to find out, Bill Bryson, who actually made fun of every state in our united fifty in his book, is from Des Moines, Iowa. Go figure.
I’m inclined to believe that Mr. Bryson has never been to Nebraska on a beautiful fall day. Anyway, if Mr. Bryson would like to come back on, say, a beautiful October day in Omaha, I extend the invitation to him wherever he might be right now. He would then probably want to edit that little line in his book. There is nothing, and I repeat, nothing, boring about Nebraska on a fall Saturday.
Huskers, the fall colors, and perfect weather. Oh, and the occasional beer that coats the whole effect as something very much like paradise. Growing up, I looked forward to autumn Saturdays in Nebraska like the kid counting down days to Christmas. With each day of the week, I knew that Saturday was that much closer. Even though Saturday was also the day that brought in the bulk of my business, I still knew that it would be a day to be savored. Without argument, anymore, at least, the people I call employees, and the clients for that matter, knew that the pregame, the game, and programs following the Husker game would be playing on the sound system all Saturday. When the game was televised, I brought a small black-and-white TV from home and set it on the UP desk.
So when Lucy mentioned her little wedding secret back in May, don’t think I wasn’t already worried about the Husker schedule. Then I remembered that she was marrying Tom Ducey, season ticket holder for decades in his family, who would be the voice of reason in finding the “right” game day on which to wed. Most guys would ask, “Who gets married on a Saturday in the fall in Nebraska?” But rather than be slapped by a woman who couldn’t wait to marry the love of her life, Tom found an away game in Stillwater, Oklahoma—Oklahoma State, not Oklahoma—on which to marry. All men, and many women, opened their invitations for Lucy and Tom’s wedding, checked the Cornhusker schedule, and sighed, “I guess that will work.” That didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be a few discreet earplugs on an usher or two.
For Lucy’s Wedding Saturday, as I called it, I planned ahead. I announced to Jenae, Toby, Caroline, Kelly, and to any Saturday regular clients that October 12 would be a little out of the ordinary. The pregame would still be on all morning, but we would be doing hair and nails of the wedding party and special guests only. And we would be closing early so that everyone could go get ready for the wedding; Lucy had invited the entire Vanity Insanity staff.
Jenae said that she could keep the salon open later for a few other clients and come late to the wedding. In the past, both Toby and Jenae had argued that they were competent and able to open and close for me on occasions that I wasn’t able to do so. I offered no argument ever but stood firm in my rule. Only I would open and close Vanity Insanity. Jenae had called me a control freak and a few other things I had never heard before, but I was all right with it all. You could call me Mr. Flexible on most of the issues and policies surrounding my business, but I stood firm: that if this ship stayed afloat or went down, I would be the only captain to answer for it. I had, at a very young age, vent
ured out on a very risky ocean. I had opened a business in an incredibly fickle and often unkind industry, and I wanted to control that. Call me all the crude names you want.
Lucy’s Wedding Saturday began with Lucy, who came in very early, alone and calm. My wedding gift to her was styling her hair and having Kelly give her a manicure and pedicure. Kelly and I were the first to open the salon. Lucy was waiting for us at the door. I gave her a big cup of coffee and stuffed a danish into her mouth and then went to work. I made sure that I had enough time to make Lucy beautiful and send her out the door before anyone else arrived.
The rest of the morning was very hectic as we serviced Ava Mangiamelli, Tom’s mother, Lynn Ducey, all of the bridesmaids, Mrs. Webber, and Hope and Lovey, who were participating in reading and carrying up gifts during Mass. Every person had to ask at least twice, “How was Lucy?” “Is Lucy doing OK?” She wasn’t in a terrible accident. She was getting married. I was happy to repeat that she was fine. Toby and Jenae were on their best behavior that day, avoiding squabbles with each other or scenes that might take away from the focus of the day.
Marty came in midmorning with a scowl bigger than Nebraska and Iowa combined. She had flown in from Washington, DC, earlier that week with news that had already made it to Vanity Insanity—Marty had broken up with DC Guy. I guess I should remember his name, but I never met him. I just know that Marty had been expecting an engagement ring from him on her birthday in July. DC had given her a pen set or something. Nothing says “I love you” like a pen set. He had called things off two weeks before Lucy’s wedding, and Marty was not handling the news well. By all accounts the breakup was most likely Marty’s first failure. Throughout the years, she had gotten everything she tried for—jobs, awards—that erroneously equated to her that if you worked hard, the outcome would always be good. This breakup had been a huge blow to her theory.
If she had asked for my advice, I would have told Marty to quit expecting so much from life. Nothing every matched the great expectations of Martha Mary Monahan. I would have also given her advice on her latest hairstyle. She was wearing her hair in the latest—regrettable—eighties hair fashion: the asymmetrical cut. I think the New York stylist who first came up with the look was hiding under a table somewhere, laughing uncontrollably. Kind of like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” of hairstyles. Let’s tell the women who have really short hair on one side of their head and long, poofy hair on the other side that they look great. Isn’t it obvious to most of us that your hair is crooked? I didn’t know how to tell her that when she looked back to 1985, DC Guy would not be the only regret. If she had asked my advice, I could have helped on both accounts. But unlike other clients that sat in my chair, Marty never asked for my advice.
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