Vanity Insanity

by Mary Kay Leatherman

  “Products?”

  “Lamps, candles, pictures, foo-foo stuff for decorating your house. It’s called Home Décor and More or something like that.”

  “OK.”

  “Anyway, it had been raining, so the front porch was kind of slick. Theresa helps her up and then notices her son, maybe ten years old, behind her carrying another big box. So we get this lady and everything from her car into the living room. We finish getting food ready while she and her son set up.”

  “Who is ‘she’?”

  “She is some cousin or in-law of DeDe Jereske. DeDe’s daughter plays with Maria.”

  “OK.” I put a towel around Lucy’s head and walked her back to my chair.

  “Anyway, the guests come, my mom, my sister-in-laws, my mother-in-law, good friends, neighbors…The party starts, and the Décor lady starts giving her little spiel. The way these parties work, the ladies listen to a little speech about the company and products, and they can start ordering—or that’s what’s supposed to happen. The lady starts talking, and two sentences into it all, we all start looking at each other because she’s really slurring her words. Then she starts repeating herself and gets stuck on the little rhyme, ‘A candle with brass is like a home without class…’or something like that.”

  “She was drunk?”

  “Off her home-interior-decorating you-know-what.”

  “So what did you do?” I began trimming the ends of Lucy’s hair.

  “I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t move. I’m like, all these people have come here for a party, and this awkward thing is happening. Theresa gets up and says to the group, ‘I think we’re ready to start looking through the magazines and placing orders. What do you all think?’ Everyone just shakes their heads and starts looking through magazines. Then Theresa takes the lady to a separate room and finds out that woman had just discovered that her husband was having an affair. She found out when she was getting ready to come to my house. Evidently, she drank some vodka while she packed the car.”

  “She had a little boy with her?”

  “Yep, and he didn’t look that rattled by it all. Almost like he helped her out a lot. It was so sad.” Lucy thumbed through a magazine as I dried her hair.

  “OK, so is now a good time to ask questions?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Why did you have the party anyway?”

  Lucy thought for a moment. “Guilt.”

  “All of that for guilt.”

  “I felt bad for DeDe, who felt bad for her cousin or whatever…Then I felt guilty when I asked my friends since I don’t want them to feel like they have to buy something but they do anyway. Women are so weird, Ben.”

  “Ya think?”

  “I can’t tell you how many basket parties, candle parties, Tupperware parties I’ve been invited to. It’s all about guilt. When you get the invitation, you feel bad because you don’t want to go, but you should. Then you feel bad if you go and don’t buy anything, so you do. Then you feel guilty since you buy something you don’t need or even want. These parties are what little girls do when they grow up instead of chain letters.”

  “OK, what’s a chain letter?”

  “You don’t remember chain letters? Didn’t you ever get one?

  “Nope. Remember, I’m not a woman.”

  “You’d get a letter that would say, ‘Copy this letter ten times and send it off to nine of your friends. Send a letter back to the person who sent this to you and keep their name on your list, include a dollar bill or a stick of gum.’ You were supposed to put your name on the top of the list that you send to your group, or something like that. If it worked out, you were supposed to end up with a million dollars.”

  “Or a million sticks of gum. Did it ever work?”

  “Never, not once.”

  “Did you send them?”

  “Always”

  “Why?”

  “Guilt. And fear. The letter usually said that the chain had not been broken in thirty-seven years or something like that, except by one person. And that person suffered a violent and immediate death by fire after throwing the letter away. I wasn’t going to risk that sort of thing…I was seven, by the way.”

  I grabbed Lucy’s coat and helped her put it on. “So where does all of the guilt come from, Lucy?”

  No hesitation. “My mother.”

  “All of it?”

  “Pretty much. I think that even the really good and fun moms had their share of dumping guilt on their children. I think it’s their job. I remember hanging out at Stinky Morrow’s house when we were kids. It was around the holidays since I can remember they had their Christmas tree up. Everyone was finishing up breakfast, and Mrs. Morrow walked in the room and screamed when she noticed Stinky’s little sister Julie, maybe three or four at the time, sitting on the kitchen counter about to stick a butter knife into the toaster. Mrs. Morrow grabbed Julie and then looked at all of the older kids sitting at the table and screamed, ‘What, you want a dead sister for Christmas?’ The kids all just looked at her like they didn’t know the answer. And Mrs. Morrow was one of the cool moms.”

  “So, all your guilt comes from sweet, little Ava?”

  “Well, not all of it. The Catholic Church had a big hand in it…but I feel guilt when I blame the Church. Is that funny or what?”

  “Not really. OK, so how many Catholics does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

  “Easy. Twelve. One to screw it in and eleven to watch and feel guilty.”

  “OK, so, Guilt Queen, what guilt-infested activity do you have planned for today?”

  “None. Right now, I’m running over to Theresa’s house with this.” Lucy picked up a bag that was sitting next to her purse. She pulled out a small plastic statue.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Saint Joseph. We’re burying him in her backyard before Michael gets home. He can’t know about it.”

  “Why do I feel like I should call the police or something. Are you aware that it’s pouring outside? Could turn to snow with how cold it is. And you’re very pregnant. Now why are you burying a statue? And why can’t Michael know about it?”

  Lucy put the statue back in her bag.“We’re burying it so that Theresa can sell her house. It’s been on the market for a month, so we knew that we needed to resort to Saint Joseph. Michael thinks it’s voodoo.” We walked past Toby’s station to the door; his cheeks were no longer red. I would need to make a call to A.C. about the change of plans for the Husker game.

  “And you don’t feel guilty about lying to Michael and burying a voodoo doll in his yard?”

  “It’s not voodoo. I don’t feel one ounce of guilt. When you’re trying to sell your house, you bury the statue head down facing the house three feet from it. Saint Joseph will help you sell it. You can get these kits at certain bookstores. Even my Jewish neighbor did it, and her house sold three days later.”

  “OK.”

  “Don’t tell Michael. Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  I walked a little pregnant woman to her car, holding an umbrella over her head. As Lucy drove away, her own words echoed in my ears.

  People may be weird about their hair, but women are just weird.

  25

  A.C.: Quick Trim, Heading to Colorado

  Saturday, May 17

  1993

  “And we have probably the best seats at Red Rocks. We’re packed and ready to go as soon as Ben trims my head.” A.C. walked in flanked by Jenae and Virginia, flirting and gushing as he charmed them with each word.

  A.C. and I were headed to Colorado to camp near Morrison, a town in the foothills about fifteen miles west of Denver. We had tickets to see Sting in concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater on Sunday night. We were planning on heading back Monday afternoon, the day Vanity Insanity was closed.

  “A.C., you already look hot!” Jenae leaned into him as she and Virginia pulled up chairs near my station.

  “What is this? The A.C. Entertainment Hour?” I asked as
I grabbed an apron for A.C.“I hardly have enough room as it is.” The Vanity Insanity staff was growing, but the place was no bigger. Tom Ducey had called me months earlier with the news that Tres Chique had decided not to move, and therefore Vanity Insanity was still pretty much landlocked.

  “OK, so what’s your favorite song from the new CD?” Virginia, our newest stylist, stood an inch or two taller than A.C. and a good fifty pounds heavier. She wore a black apron over her clothes. The front of it read: What happens at the hair salon stays at the hair salon. Virginia’s beautiful face and long, chestnut hair distracted us all from her unusual size. “Ben’s been playing Ten Summoner’s Tales all week.”

  “I think we know every song by heart…and there’re actually eleven songs.” Jenae rolled her eyes and moved closer to A.C.

  “That’s easy.” A.C. sat in my chair and looked at himself. “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You.” Do you guys know the story behind the CD’s title? It’s actually a play on words. A pun. Sting’s name, before he legally changed it, was Gordon Sumner.”

  “Gordon?” Jenae squawked. “Sting doesn’t look like a Gordon!”

  “I get it!” Virginia shouted. Her voice filled the room. “Like The Canterbury Tales. I’m right, right? Am I right?”

  A.C. laughed. “I didn’t think anyone would catch it!” As an English major, he gloated about literary allusions that he found, many in Sting’s songs. Sting was a former English teacher himself. “I’m impressed, Virginia! The title links Sting to the naughty summoner in Chaucer’s tales. Kind of funny, if you think about it.”

  “I don’t remember Chaucer.” Jenae tilted her head. “Was Chaucer in American lit? I only finished eleventh grade.” She stood up and started playing with her hair in the mirror.

  “No, he’s British,” A.C. explained. “If you’d gone one more year, you would have learned about him.”

  “All I remember about English was my obnoxious teacher who wore a bad toupee. Oh, and I remember Gatsby. I absolutely loved The Great Gatsby. He was so loyal to his dream. He was so in love with Daisy. Something about the green light and his purposeless splendor.” I wondered if I had read the same book. I’d thought Daisy was a ditz myself.

  “Gatsby was a little random,” A.C. added as I started shaving the back of his neck.

  “Oh, here comes my three o’clock appointment!” Jenae kissed the top of A.C.’s head. “Have fun at Red Rocks, boys!” She ran to greet an older lady at the door.

  “Speaking of random,” I muttered.

  “Drive safely.” Virginia stood up and headed to her station. “Hey, look who’s here. Lucy!”

  Lucy rushed in and reveled in her introduction by Virginia. “I’ve got a sitter for two hours. I’m free, I’m free!”

  “What can I do for you, Lu?” I knew she didn’t have an appointment.

  “A.C.!” Lucy gave A.C. a hug from behind the chair. “It’s been, like, forever! I just stopped in to grab some conditioner, Ben. Ran out yesterday. This is so weird. I was just praying, and the old neighborhood gang popped into my head. I’m not kidding. I was just thinking of you, A.C. When I dropped off my dry cleaning, I saw a vase with a rose in it, and I just knew it was a sign from God.”

  “A sign of what?” A.C. asked.

  “A sign that I would run into you!”

  “Roses are Lucy’s biggest sign from God,” I told A.C. I’d heard many rose stories.

  “So I see.” A.C. smirked.

  “Seriously,” Lucy went on. “Roses are signs of answered prayers. I was just praying that I’d see some of the old gang and…”

  “Voila!” I said. “A.C. shows up! Just like your moving vans.”

  “Don’t make fun. Last year Tom and I were thinking about moving, and so I prayed and prayed if that was the right thing for us, you know, with all we have going on and schools for the girls. That entire week I kept seeing moving vans, Mayflower moving vans everywhere. I mean everywhere. I just knew that was our sign.”

  “Or maybe,” A.C. looked at Lucy in the mirror, “people were moving. Like they do every day. Some schmuck was moving across town, and you saw his van.”

  “Hey, aren’t you two supposed to be in Denver?” Lucy pulled up the same chair that Virginia had just put away and sat down.

  “We’ll be on the road in a half hour,” A.C. told her. “Lucy, you baby machine, I heard that you have three little girls now.”

  “And they’re all perfect little angels, right, Ben?”

  “If you’re referring to the last time you brought them all in with you…uh, yes, they’re perfect little angels.” I smiled. Lucy laughed. “Not a devil in the bunch.”

  “Speaking of devils.” Lucy’s voice was serious and softer. “The newspaper had an article about that Saint Walter’s priest. Sounds like they settled out of court on all counts. I guess I can see now why that Eddie Krackenier was so creepy. The kid had no dad, and the next-best father figure was…awful. That explains all the stuff he did.”

  After we were older and no longer ran into Eddie, we’d heard most of the “stuff” Eddie did through the grapevine. The “stuff” included stealing from construction sites, dropping out of ninth grade, attempting to rob an ATM, and dealing drugs. The Eddie lore was always cheap conversation filler whenever I ran into people from the old neighborhood.

  “Remember when we used to always run away whenever we saw Eddie?” Lucy’s eyes had that glaze she got as she talked about the years on Maple Crest Circle. “When we used to always” was one of her favorite lines to throw out when we got to reminiscing. “Always” was an interesting choice of words in most cases.

  “Remember when we used to always build forts in the back of the Morrows’ storage closet?”

  We did this once, got in trouble, and never did it again.

  “Remember when we used to always play Mass and pretend to give Nabisco cookies as the Eucharist?”

  I don’t remember ever doing that.

  “Remember when we used to always sing ‘Little Willy Really Won’t Go Home’ to my brother Will?”

  I never did this. Not once.

  “I never ran from Eddie,” A.C. told Lucy. “I was too tough. I do remember wanting to run from the one lady in charge of our youth group at Pius. Mrs. Plankton, or something like that. She gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “Mrs. Pinkerton,” Lucy corrected him. “I liked her!”

  “Yeah, well, I remember her taking us caroling. Ben, remember, our moms made us go? Mrs. Plankton thought it would be ‘neat’ to go sing at an insane asylum.”

  “It was a home for the mentally and emotionally challenged, A.C.,” Lucy corrected him again.

  “Right, that’s where I want to drive a bunch of naïve fourteen-year-old kids to sing holiday songs. The patients all stared blankly at us as we pounded out a bouncy version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.’ That one guy in the back kept screaming, ‘Get the F out of here’ until they took him somewhere to settle down. I remember not being able to sleep that night ’cause I kept thinking of all those people trapped inside those crazy minds. There had to be a soul down deep in them. If our mothers only knew what the holiday field trip was like.”

  “OK, on a lighter note,” I said, “remember in fifth or sixth grade when Lovey Webber cheated off some kid next to her on a quiz? She mouthed the words ‘number six’ to him, and he, probably thinking she was cute, whispered, ‘visual aids.’ Lovey was so mad when she got the answer wrong. The teacher asked Lovey what she meant by ‘fish blades.’”

  “I remember,” A.C. pointed to me as he went on, “when you used to think that the Wicker Witch was watching you.” Lucy looked confused as A.C. started singing lines from “Every Breath You Take”. He laughed so hard his eyes watered. “Man, those were good times, and we didn’t have a clue. Those years on Maple Crest and at Pius were our salad days.”

  “Salad days?” Lucy looked at A.C.

  “The salad days!” A.C. was on a roll with his literary allusions. “Shakespeare�
�s Cleopatra talks about ‘My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood.’ Shakespeare was talking about the ‘green’ youth, when we didn’t have a clue. Our salad days were the Maple Crest years when we were oblivious to the problems in life. And when it was OK to laugh at farts.”

  “You mean it’s not OK now?” I asked.

  “I get it,” Lucy said. “The salad days were when the most important things on my mind were cute boys, getting a really good tan, and making sure my hair looked good. Now it’s about keeping my kids healthy, remodeling the kitchen, and making sure my hair looks good.”

  I took A.C.’s apron off as he stood up and checked himself out in the mirror. “We sure ain’t livin’ in the salad days no more. Good to see you, Lu. Ben, what can I do to help you shut down so we can hit the road? And remember, no jokes about gas.”

  “Wait, A.C., you can’t leave yet,” Lucy said as she stood up and grabbed the bag of conditioner I handed her. “Not until you tell me about your girlfriend and you becoming Jewish. My neighbor’s Jewish. Maybe you know her.”

  A.C. looked at me, and I shook my head as I pulled out the bank bag. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell Lucy about the latest stop on A.C.’s religious adventures.

  “Sounds like you’re a few links behind in the news chain.” A.C. looked uncomfortable as he started organizing my station. “Leah and I broke up a few months ago. And as for the Jewish thing, I did dabble there for a while…”

  A.C. had practiced the Jewish religion for a few years. His enthusiasm to take in every aspect of the religion only grew when he met a beautiful Jewish woman named Leah, who fed him information on the Jewish faith and encouraged him as he questioned and explored. Their first date was to a Jewish wedding of her best friend. A. C. told me that when the bride and groom broke a glass at the end of their ceremony, he was moved to tears. “Brokenness in midst of great joy. Does that gesture not just capture the human condition? ” A.C. had lectured me at the time. “Shattered glass? The celebration of love? Are you following!”

  Leah stood by A.C. in his quest for peace. I always liked Leah. I liked to call her Patient Leah since she endured his inquisition for years, supporting him in his insatiable quest for religion and faith.