Vanity Insanity (13 page)

The Willie Otey thing and our unplanned meeting with Corky Payne had left an unpleasant feeling in our guts. Other things were happening around the world in 1977. Well, you know about the big hoo-ha dance at Saint Pius. In 1977 the Huskers were still looking good. Coach Tom Osborne was now coaching the Huskers as Lyell Bremser, the best Nebraska announcer ever, announced the home games. “Man, woman, and child, they’re jam-packed to the rafters for this one today…” That year, Warren Buffett lived in three-bedroom home in midtown Omaha. The extremely wealthy and humble man said that he was the man who had everything he needed in that house, with no wall or fence surrounding it.

In 1977 my hero, Gordon Sumner of England, and his friend Henry Padovani started playing in a new band formed by Steward Copeland—they called themselves the Police. They had a kind of punk-but-not-really-punk and a pretty-much-reggae-influenced sound to their music that changed my view toward music completely. Before they cut their first album, the band—hoping to make some extra cash—was asked to do a commercial for Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum on the condition that they dye their hair, and it was most likely during that time that Mr. Sumner gained his
nickname. “Sting” wore a black-and-yellow striped jersey, that a fellow band member Gordon Solomon had commented had resembled a bee. The nickname stuck.

Oh, and in 1977, the sadder and the wiser A.C. and I said good-bye to our childhoods and to the innocent and safe feelings that went with it.

It only made sense that Grandma died that year.

PART II

Let’s Go Crazy

1981 to 1994

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Ben Franklin

Did you write the Book of Love, and do you have faith in God, above? If the Bible tells you so

Don McLean, “American Pie

10

Marty: Wash, Trim for Prom

Friday, May 1

1981

M
arty rhymes with smarty.

Appropriate.

Marty rhymes with party.

Ironic.

Marty rhymes with farty.

Funny.

People should really consider the lyrical ramifications of a name when they’re placing one on a baby.

When Marty Monahan showed up at my house for a wash and trim for her high-school prom, she looked serious as usual. Every comedy act demands a straight guy. Every trio needs the one with the brains. And that is what Marty offered Lucy and Theresa.

“Have you talked to Lucy yet?” Marty fired away as she stood in the doorway, her short hair from the seventies now grown out to a long, straight un-style.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Nope, I haven’t talked to Lucy, but she’ll be in tomorrow for an appointment with my mom. It just happens to be your lucky day since I will be taking care of you today.” I had been filling in for my mother the past year for “easy dos,” as she called them. A wash and trim she knew I could handle, so she scheduled those appointments when she was working her second job at Boys Town. With the extra expense of my older sister in nursing school at College of Saint Mary’s, my mother now worked odd hours in the administrative offices at Boys Town. I had become the filler guy, moonlighting as a business student at University of Nebraska in Omaha in 1981.

“Sorry, Ben. I was just worried if Lucy had asked you what we…what she was going to ask you. You’re doing my hair?”

“As long as you’re OK with that. My mom’s working her other job today. She said you’re getting ready for your prom.”

“Right, I’ll be too busy tomorrow decorating for the dance. We’re worried that we won’t have enough fish cut out by then for our ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ theme.”

“Well, there’s no time to lose then. You need a perm and color, right?”

Marty’s brain was on overload as she juggled my stab at humor with the other trillion things splattering around her brain, along with this latest concern about Lucy asking me something.

“Kidding, Marty. Kidding. We can start with the shampoo over here. So what does Lucy need from me?” I actually hadn’t seen Lucy in a while. The past several years had scattered the neighborhood gang across the city. We might see each other driving to school or jobs, but no one had the time to hang out anymore. Our world was getting bigger, and our busy schedules and new interests limited the chance of us meeting at the streetlight on our bikes.

Lucy, Theresa, and Marty had gone on to Marian High School, a school run by the Our Lady of Sorrows Servants of Mary, the same order of nuns
that ran Saint Pius. Oh, the order of it all. The girls stayed tight in their friendship while making their mark in the secondary flight of Catholic education. Marty was the president of the National Honor Society while Theresa and Lucy made their marks socially. Faith and Lovey Webber had also gone to Marian while Hope attended Madonna Specialty School. The Mangiamelli boys all went on to make their marks athletically at Creighton Preparatory High School, also known as Prep, Ava working in the cafeteria.

I’d always known A.C. was smart, but he made a major academic splash of a mark at Brownell Talbot, landing an almost-perfect ACT score that awarded him several different scholarship offers his senior year. His brilliant mind did not stop him, however, from going to the grocery store before dates to pull cologne samples out of magazines and rub them on his neck and wrists before throwing the magazines back on the shelf. And during those same years, I didn’t make any sort of mark at Burke High School, unless you counted all of the hours spent helping my mom run her business.

A.C., Will and I—who had spent every day of every summer of our childhoods together—had each graduated from different high schools and gone on to different colleges. I was at UNO, A.C. was at Creighton University, and Will went to University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Like I said, we pretty much scattered.

Over the past several years, the cul-de-sac began to look different from the one on which I’d grown up. The yards and street seemed more and more bare as kids of the block grew up; so, too, the driveways were missing something—Grandma.

I won’t leave you hanging with the whole Grandma story. It was strange for the person who took the time to look around our neighborhood to note her absence. While we were growing up, we could calculate the time of day by her napping schedule as she moved from driveway to porch to driveway, I suppose following the sun or her karma. Our youth. She was just part of it all. She died around the time we were all heading off to high school.

In July of 1977, the Mangiamelli family had gone on one of the only vacations I ever remember them taking. They were going to meet some
really old and important relative who had traveled over from Italy for only one visit and would only go as far as Cincinnati, Ohio, to meet all of the American Mangiamellis. The Mangiamelli family packed into their station wagon and drove the trek to Ohio to visit Great Uncle Mosticolli—or something like that.

Grandma was definitely getting older, and her naps were getting longer; and so Ava Mangiamelli employed the older Morrow brothers, Stinky and Andy, to take care of Grandma while they were gone. The two Morrow brothers took this great honor as a grave responsibility, feeding her and attempting to take her for walks. At night they walked her over to the back porch of the Mangiamelli home where she slept in an old, stinky doghouse till morning. Everything was going along nicely until, a few days after the Mangiamelli family left, Andy went to get her for the evening routine and noticed that she was napping in the Webber driveway, a place she usually started her day. Grandma hadn’t moved all day. Andy ran to get Stinky before doing anything. They poked at Grandma and yelled at her. Andy cussed at her, but Grandma did not move. The two together figured that Grandma was taking her Great Final Nap.

In their panic, they made a plan. They would wait to bury Grandma until the Mangiamelli crew came home. The whole neighborhood could give her a beautiful send-off in the backyard, looking over the creek. The two agreed that she would not “keep” till the next week, so they put Grandma in a giant trash bag and loaded her on their wagon, taking her back to the deep freeze in their garage.

The Morrow freezer was awesome, always loaded with popsicles for anyone who stopped by. The freezer was the kind that looked like a chest and opened upward. Stinky and Andy put Grandma in a huge yard bag, hauled the overweight basset into the freezer, and said a special blessing over her and orange push-up pops and ice-cream sandwiches. The not-so-good part of the story is that Mrs. Morrow went into hysterics when she went to get the roast to thaw for dinner a few days later and found the solid and beloved dog among her frozen foods. She screamed, “Grandma’s in the freezer!”

The Mangiamelli family was touched though a bit freaked out by the stiff homecoming they received when Stinky and Andy brought Grandma over. We all held a sort of impromptu funeral in the Mangiamelli backyard. I brought flowers for Lucy, who, of course, cried her eyes out. Will and Anthony snickered a bit as Grandma’s thawing paw poked through the plastic bag while they were laying her to rest in the grave they dug for her, and we all said our good-byes to Grandma.

The first bookmark for death.

Grandma’s death marked the end of an era. Sometimes I break my days on Maple Crest Circle into two parts: the Grandma Era and Post-Grandma—PG. I didn’t see my Maple Crest friends Post-Grandma that much. Like I said, Grandma died, and then we scattered. So my response to Marty in 1981 was that I hadn’t seen Lucy much lately.

“Well, just so you know, she’s looking for you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” This mafia-like threat did not scare me. “Now, how much would you like trimmed from your ends today? And just who are you taking to this underwater dance?” I had learned well from my mother that the attention must always be centered on the client, his or her hair, and his or her events and concerns. When a person is in
the chair
, it’s all about that person. Never, ever talk about sex, politics, or religion. Just talk about the person sitting in the chair.

Marty spent the next forty minutes filling me in on the details of her life. Colleges she was looking at for next year. How excited she was for Lucy and Theresa because they had both been selected as prom candidates for the Marian prom. And, even though she was not a prom-princess candidate like Lucy and Theresa, she was fiercely proud of her two best friends, guaranteeing me that one of them would be crowned by the night’s end.

“I’m going to the dance with Max Van Husen. He’s very smart.”

Max was a senior at Prep who had challenged her in one of her debate matches. She had beaten him, but maybe something in his argument had turned her on. Finally, Marty answered the dress question. Nothing rainbow this time. She would wear to her senior prom the same elegant dress
she had worn when she was a debutante at the Ak-Sar-Ben Ball two months earlier.

Just like in
Cinderella
, each year, this century-old coronation event gives the rest of Nebraska a peek at some of the state’s richest and most influential families dressed in gowns and whatever it is men wear to a ball. Until Marty Monahan enlightened me as to the history and donations to this city that the Ak-Sar-Ben Knights had presented to the city of Omaha, I didn’t really get it.

Growing up in Omaha, a kid saw the phrase Ak-Sar-Ben several times in the course of a day. Of course, we had the horse racetrack that put the name on the map in 1919. But, if you drove down the street, you would also see Ak-Sar-Ben Heating and Cooling, Ak-Sar-Ben TV and Radio Repair, and Ak-Sar-Ben Sewer Cleaning, and Draining. Kind of got a pattern here. Any kid could tell you that Ak-Sar-Ben was Nebraska spelled backward, although Lovey Webber didn’t have the great epiphany until fifth grade when she figured it out in the middle of math class one day when she wasn’t paying attention.

For the Ak-Sar-Ben Ball, my mom had done Marty’s hair in a not-so-Marty swooped-up style for the la-de-da affair. Growing up, I’d never known that Marty came from big money. She never pushed it in anyone’s face. Money was not of great value to her, unlike her intelligence and serious approach to life. Money never mattered in her friendships with Lucy and Theresa, who had grown up in our humble, little neighborhood.

Marty left Marcia’s Beauty Box that day to run around and do whatever you do to get ready for a fantasy underwater adventure. I sat and wondered about the impending, ominous request from Lucy Mangiamelli.

11

Lucy: Something Different for Prom

Saturday, May 2

1981

E
vents were cake to Lucy. Getting ready for events was the ever-so-sweet frosting.

That’s why I was confused when I saw the sad and serious expression she wore as she sat in my mother’s chair, awaiting a transformation from ordinary high school girl into Pow-Zowie Prom Princess.

“Did somebody die?” I asked. My mother shot me a stern glance.

Lucy’s eyes teared up as she whispered, “They found him. He told them. “

I had come down for the big question Lucy allegedly had for me, and she threw a bunch of blurry pronouns at me.

“A man confessed from his prison cell. They went where he told them he was buried. He was there all that time. And his parents didn’t know it…” Lucy’s eyes were watering.

Kool and the Gang begged us to “Celebrate Good Times” from the little black radio. Bad timing, bad song. Put it on the list. I looked at my mother, who whispered, “Johnny Madlin.”

The name of Johnny Madlin sent a chill up my spine. I shivered.

I hadn’t heard the name in years, but I still thought about him every time I saw a paperboy. Every time I looked down at the creek. Every time I heard a song that brought me back to that year. We’d never met the young paperboy, but we all felt like we knew him. Time passed, but Johnny Madlin would still pop up in our heads. We had never found any closure about the boy at the creek.