Vanity Insanity (45 page)

“Well then, let’s head over.”

My business had just burned down, and I didn’t know where to go. How about back to my childhood?

We crumbled up our wrappers and threw our trash into the McDonald’s parking lot trash bin. I don’t know how A.C. was feeling about heading back to the old neighborhood, but I was feeling kind of conflicted about it all. I had been putting the trip off and was relieved that I would not go to Maple Crest alone.

A few blocks from the old subdivision, we drove past Brookhill Country Club and its empty parking lot. The pool was empty, and the tables and umbrellas had all been stored away for the winter. A big oak tree had fallen over the fence by the diving board.

As we drove into the area, my stomach did a double-large-vanilla-shake flip, and I picked up the gift from the car floor. We drove closer to the cul-de-sac, and I mentally prepared myself to see the Wicker house for the first time in a different light. As much as I felt that I could tell A.C. anything, the news of my relation to the Wicker Witch was something I was not yet ready to share.

“Hey, look!” A.C. pointed to a new sign that welcomed visitors to the subdivision
. Maple Hill.
They had changed the name of our neighborhood.

“What’s up with that?”

I thought of Octavia. She had told me more than once that change was the sign of the Holy Spirit. That in the old days, Hebrews changed their names following conversion as a symbol of that change. Saul and Paul. Maple Crest and Maple Hill. Had the Holy Spirit been hanging out in our old stomping grounds?

“Check it out, check it out!” A.C. screamed. “Did we really live here? Good Lord, the houses are itty-bitty.” We both started to laugh, A.C.’s hearty laughter drowning out my nervous laughter. Had we really grown up on this circle? My childhood seemed so much bigger.

A.C. drove to the Morrow home and parked on the street in front of the small house. Nobody was home. Stinky had said that if that was the case to take the gift around to the back of the house and put it by the basement door, under the deck in case it rained before his parents got home.

“I’m gonna run this down to their back door,” I told A.C. “I’ll be right back.”

“You sure you don’t want me to? You’ve had a crazy day. I’d do that for you.”

“Nah, I got it.” Stinky had asked me, and I was the guy people felt comfortable asking a favor. The safe guy. I was Ben “You-Can-Count-on-Me” Keller.

I walked around the side of the little, yellow house, wondering how a family with five kids could fit in there. Near the edge of the back covered patio was a rosebush with four or five buds still holding on in November, a week after the ice storm. I put the gift by the door and turned to head back to the front of the house. When I got to the side of the house, I turned around.

I had to see it. I had to see the creek.

I walked to the back edge of the Morrow backyard, right before the pitch became severe and sloped down to the creek. I stood high and looked down low at the sadder, beaten, and broken creek. In my youth, the trees that surrounded the water’s edge had seemed mammoth in size. The creek that I remember, so full of life, had cradled my childhood and later seemingly had stolen a young boy from Omaha who was trying to deliver papers. That same creek later pilfered my innocence by exposing me to an infidelity that shattered my hope that a father could be good. Before danger and sad events, the trees seemed to protect us from the world. Now the trees seemed weak and spindly and empty, many of them broken from the impact of the ice storm.

The creek was not evil.

Bad things had happened at the creek, but that didn’t make the creek bad. The creek wasn’t guilty; it, too, was a victim. A victim like my mother. Like Eddie Krackenier. Like Theresa. Like the man who had once been married to my mother.

Like my father.

We were all victims, just like the creek.

We were all sinners.

My whole life I had feared to find my own dreams. To find myself. If I did, I just might lose myself. And it was to be in that losing of myself, of my business, that I found myself. But in order to lose myself, I had to forgive myself. And it was then that I was carried. By grace, I am certain.

Tom Osborne had written as the last a line of his book
On Solid Ground,
a line that I’d underlined. “It’s not just children or college football players who deserve a second chance. I believe we all need to be more forgiving and understanding of each other. What each of us does with a second chance is up to us.”

I had forgiven.

I was forgiven.

My cell phone rang as I moved back from the hill. I looked to see who was calling, but I didn’t recognize the number. I decided I should probably get this. Fire station?

“Hello?”

“Ben,” Jenae sobbed. “Ben, do you hate me? Please don’t hate me.” I could hear in her voice that she was in her dark place.

“Jenae?”

“Ben, I did everything you said…I unplugged everything. Everything! Don’t hate me. Don’t leave me!”

“Jenae, Jenae, everything is all right. It’s all fine.”

“But the fire…your business. What are you going to do? Where am I going to go? I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? For saving my life?”

Jenae was silent. Silent for the time ever since I had met her.

“Jenae, listen to me. And listen carefully. You didn’t start the fire.”

“What?”

“You didn’t start the fire, Jenae. And if you had, I would still need to thank you for helping me move on in my life. I’m not so sure that I was ever cut out for this hair thing. Get it? Cut out?” I laughed fully as I looked down at the creek again. “Thank you, Jenae. Thank you.”

Life did exist and flourish beyond the chair. Things would look different without a mirror.

“I don’t understand. You’re leaving us?” Jenae sobbed.

It hadn’t occurred to me until that point the impact my personal decision would have on the staff. After all, Omaha was filled with hair salons.

“You can’t leave me, Ben.” Jenae was sobbing again. “You can’t leave me.”

Jenae and I had an interesting relationship. Though I might have been physically attracted to her for seventeen minutes or so at one time in my life, my love for her had evolved—though I hadn’t known it—through the years into a fatherly love. She had never talked about her father; apparently he had failed her, too. I would always take care of her. I would always be her rock, her hope that a fatherly God might be possible. Jenae looked to me for strength; she looked to me to keep her stable. I was her Mac.

“Jenae, I’m here for you, Toots. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ben, I need you.”

“Jenae, go take your meds and take a nap. I’ll never leave you. I promise, everything will be just fine.”

“I love you, Ben.”

“Love you, too, Toots.” I ended the call and walked up the worn path in the lawn alongside the Morrow house. I looked out to my car to see A.C., leaning against the car, holding the envelope with a silly grin on his face.

“The woman really loved you.”

How could he have heard my conversation with Jenae? I was behind the house the whole conversation.

“That old lady really loved you, Ben.” He began waving the envelope through the air.

“What are you talking about?”

“Octavia Edith True Hruska. She remembered you in her will.” He poked the envelope at me. “You been carrying this around just for grins?”

“That’s her will?”

“You haven’t read this? None of it? At least the part that pertains to one Benjamin Howard Keller?” A.C. handed me the envelope on top of which were several typed sheets. “You don’t really need to read through all of the jargon. As your lawyer, I can help you with that, but believe me, she did remember you. Remember her cute, ‘little’ house in the Saint Cecilia Cathedral area? Yours. How ’bout that little old radio station in the Dundee area? Yours. How ’bout a little financial gift to the tune of $250,000?” This time he sang the word in a high-pitched voice: “
Yours!
”

I was numb.

“So even if you do go to jail—which you won’t—but if you do, you’ll be sitting pretty when you get out of the slammer. Of course, I’d take care of your money and property while you were in prison. As your lawyer, I would do that for you.”

I shook my head slowly. “Wait, what about Truman?”

A.C.’s head went back as he howled in laughter. “Benny, did you not know the lady was loaded? Tom Ducey told me that her son Truman is set for life. You just got a little drop in the bucket. Octavia was sitting on endowment after endowment toward the end of her life. Tom was having a hard time finding where to donate all of that money. According to Tom, she got her will in order when she was still, you know, sharp Octavia…Ben, what’s wrong? Maybe you don’t hear so well: the old lady loved you!”

“So much…”

“You never knew?”

“…to me…”

“You were good to her.” A.C. was more serious. “You were very good to Octavia, Ben.”

I sensed that I was being watched, and I turned to the back door of the green Wicker house. I saw a curtain rustle in the kitchen window. A.C. looked over where my eyes had stopped.

“Great idea, Benny! Let’s take the Wicker Witch out for drinks. On you, of course. Wonder what ever happened to that lady…” he mumbled as he walked toward the car.

“Throw me the keys, A.C., and don’t call me Benny. I’m going to take you out for a big dinner. Even if I can’t chew, I can watch you.” I handed him the will. “Now read this to me while I drive. I guess this is your lucky day, Arthur Charles.”

“My lucky day?”

“Yep, Bucky’s flying and buying.”

“Awesome. Can we talk about the Miracle in Missouri now?”

As I drove out of the Maple Hill subdivision and glanced over at the Wicker house, I drove away in peace.

B
aby bookmarks serve a purpose. They truly do.

However, no baby marked the year 1997 for me. With no baby, my mom sometimes stumbles to remember that year. I admit, I stumble, too. I now end up finding my place with the suffering that marked that year. Funerals, failures, fathers, and fires. Many of those who lined my life that year allowed me to find myself, to find my place. And while reminders of death seem sadder than the birth of a baby, I felt a rich relief in the suffering that year, though it made no sense at the time.

Tom Osborne made an announcement two months after the fire of Vanity Insanity that he would be retiring from the head-coaching position at UNL. The announcement came out a month before the Huskers won their third national championship with Osborne as the head coach. His retirement marked the end of an era, for the Huskers and for me personally.

I did end up calling Faith Webber. I helped her move into her new home, and for the most part, the two of us have been inseparable since she has moved back to Omaha. We talk very little about the time she spent away. We mostly talk about our plans. We have lots of plans. Most days Faith can find me at my radio station working on a sports story or lining music up for the DJ. We’ve also gotten into the little habit of going to daily Mass at Sacred Heart. Cramming, I guess. In the beauty of my “purposeful splendor,” I realize that my good looks and others’ prayers alone won’t get me to heaven, or so I’ve been told.

I moved into Octavia’s beautiful home in the Cathedral area after giving my little house to Caroline and Connor. My neighbor is a friend of A.C.’s who went to Creighton. I met him years ago during a night out with A.C. He’s the guy from New York who proclaimed “This city sucks” after only a month into his first semester at Creighton in 1980. He is now raising his family here.

With two new houses, Faith and I have been doing a lot of cleaning. We’re going to need a few more brooms. I told Faith I knew of a guy who might have some. I’m keeping my eye out for him walking through my streets. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, but I haven’t really been looking for him until now.

Following the cleanup of the fire, I used the insurance money to rebuild Vanity Insanity. I sold all of the extra bays and added nothing to the original salon. I hired Toby to man the business that I own but no longer work at. I go in every two weeks to get a trim from Jenae and look through the meticulous books that Toby maintains.

Vanity Insanity has been a thorn in my life for many years. Vanity Insanity has been a rose. Each day over the past decade, I have touched and been touched by the many suffering people with so many beautiful crosses, of all different sizes. And all chose to carry those crosses differently. Some stumbled daily. Others held them high. All who came to me, without words, spoke thousands. “Help me look beautiful while I walk with this cross.”

Not much to ask, if you think about it.

When I consider all of the heads that I’ve held in my hands, some good, some bad, mostly good and bad together, as I shampooed, cut, and listened, I know that I held God’s grace in my hands every day. A grace for which I had not asked.

A grace that I never deserved.