Vanity Insanity (21 page)

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 new 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

“N
ebraska 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, ventured 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.

Marty would need to keep her chin up that night alongside my buddy, A.C. While Marty had been getting the boot from a guy in Washington, DC, A.C. was putting the final papers on his divorce to Angel in a back drawer somewhere. The marriage to his psycho child bride with a serious drinking problem and enormous intimacy issues did not turn out to be such a heavenly experience in the end. I could have told him that as we’d stood in the courthouse on the cold day eighteen months earlier. The first time I’d met Angel at the courthouse, A.C. was beaming with the beauty of life and love, and Angel was looking at some girl’s hat, annoyed that “this thing” was taking so long. A.C. saw her as the person who made him whole and absolute. He really believed this and threw himself completely into the commitment. Nothing I could have said to him at that time in his life would have changed his mind. Frustration floated over that whole day for me as I could see, so clearly, something to which A.C. was oblivious. How could my brilliant and logical friend, who read
War and Peace
and
Atlas Shrugged
—and anything else by Ayn Rand, just for grins—not see that Angel was so unworthy of what he had to offer. I could have tried to stop it, but that would have only damaged our friendship. Now, standing near the debris of A.C.’s disappointment, my role, once again, was to be quiet and supportive. “I told you so” would mean nothing now.

I didn’t do A.C.’s hair that day, but he did stop by Vanity Insanity, smiling and talking to all of the ladies, choosing a much-different approach to his heartbreak than Marty, but suffering nonetheless. His latest profound statement: “the devil wears a bra”, was always followed by a huge grin.

All morning I had my hands on hair and my eyes on the clock, and by noon, I wondered where Theresa was. She knew that I would be closing early, and I hoped that she would make it in time to have her hair done before pictures. Maybe she was good with her hair on her own.