Vanity Insanity (17 page)

“Newsflash, Marty. We no longer call them beauty shops. Didn’t your hair sugar daddy in DC teach you anything? Yep, Mom’s shutting down the business. She approached me a few months ago with the news that she was done with Marcia’s Beauty Box and the whole industry. She was getting burned out, I guess.”

“Where are you looking?” Marty asked.

“Taking my time and just looking all over Omaha,” I replied.

My mom’s feelings regarding Marcia’s Beauty Box couldn’t have surprised me more. I had always thought that this was who she was, what she liked. She styled hair. The timing of her news was also rather strange since I had been working on my business degree at UNO in hopes of helping her with her dragging business. I’d done some research on the industry following a lecture from one of my more interesting professors, who talked about the emphasis on product sales for many small businesses. The large, balding man with a big smile and goofy ties lectured about sales promotion in many fields as playing a much bigger part in many industries, one of which was the beauty industry. I took lots of notes as he preached, “The products
on the shelf are becoming more of the bread, especially for smaller businesses. The service to the consumer is just butter.”

Not only the small salons but also the bigger and better-known franchises were filling their front windows with displayed shampoos, conditioners, and hairsprays of those ever-so-elite lines that refused to allow their products on the shelves of Hinky Dinky and Safeway grocery stores.
You want to look beautiful? Sit in our chair, and hey, pick up a bottle or two on your way out of the salon.

Watching my mom’s poor business practices and unsuccessful bookkeeping, combined with this latest information on product sales, I now understand why she struggled to make ends meet keeping a “shop” in her basement. Even with my encouragement to her and suggestion of promoting products to increase revenue, my mom quickly replied, “Ben, I’ve already decided. I just need to do something else for a while.”

For a while? What about her clients? What about the ladies who drove miles and miles to have her make the difference for them? What about her license? What about her shop? Did she mean that she would come back when she wasn’t so tired? What about me?

Over the next year, I took over all of the remaining clients in my mother’s basement while she worked full-time at Boys Town, working as an administrative assistant. She giggled as she said she was really just a secretary, but she enjoyed the new title that went along with her new little adventure. As she learned to administratively assist, I made a plan.

I decided to go for it. I would start my own business. I already had the clients for it, and with the other research I had done, I knew that, along with product-sales promotion and the addition of a few other employees, I could double what my mother had been earning in the past several years. My goal was to start combing the city to find a place to start my business.

Marty moved on to another subject: my love life. I guess Omaha gossip had traveled all the way to Washington, DC. “So, how’s Mitzy?”

“I’m sure she’s fine. We’re just friends now, so I don’t have any fun news for you…”

If a lie detector machine had been hooked up in the room, flashing lights and blaring horns would have betrayed me. I’m not a big fan of
knowing the personal drama of clients that sit in my chair, but I detest sharing any drama in my life—and Mitzy was definitely the drama in my life for about two months.

I met Mitzy at Lucy’s Christmas party over Christmas break that year. In hindsight, I’m sure that Lucy had an agenda in asking me over with all of her new sorority friends, but at the time, I’d just stopped by to see a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Mitzy Culligan came up to me the minute I stepped into the Mangiamelli living room. She introduced herself and didn’t leave my side.

For two months.

At first, I was pretty into her. I must have needed something like Mitzy at the time. Standing four feet eleven inches on a good day, Mitzy was a tiny little firecracker with short hair and a beautiful gymnast body that never sat still. Her birth name was Mathilde, a bummer name for anyone growing up in the sixties and seventies, so her nickname, Itsy Bitsy Mitzy, given to her by her father, stuck. I still believe the name is more appropriate for a killer Pekinese dog.

During our first week of dating, we were together every day. This made sense, since we were both on break from school. When I had to work, Mitzy hung out at the salon, getting to know each client as if she might be related to him or her some day. By the time UNO started its new semester, I hoped I might have some Mitzy-free time. Not to be.

If Mitzy and I were not together, she needed to know exactly where I was. A.C. called her the pit bull since anyone who came within a few feet of me was quickly scared away. By the end of our first month of dating, we had celebrated the first anniversary of anything we had ever done. The first date. The first time we drove downtown. The first time we went to a movie. By the end of our second month of dating, Mitzy had named all of our future children.

When I told Mitzy I just wanted to be friends, she screamed some pretty awful things at me, which sounded hilarious coming from her tiny body. After her tantrum, I thought I would lighten the mood and even make her laugh when I said, “So I guess this means that we can’t smooch anymore?” I thought it was funny. She threw her purse at me.

The breakup did not go well. Mitzy called several times a day to tell me how stupid I was to walk away from the best thing that had ever happened
to me. A few times, during the stalking weeks following the breakup, I did wonder if I was like the man who used to be married to my mother. Maybe it was in my genes to walk away. To prove that I could handle relationships, a month after the breakup, I took a girl I had met in my business ethics class to dinner at Piccolo Pete’s. Our waiter had just served us each a big plate of spaghetti when, from the corner of my eyes, a tiny, spastic figure marched into the restaurant and up to our table, picked up my plate, and poured the spaghetti on my lap.

A.C. advised me, based on his prelaw knowledge, to take out a restraining order or to enlist in some witness-protection program if I didn’t want to be killed by the mad Pekinese. By the time Marty came to my chair that May, I was still a little jumpy whenever a door opened. Marty gave me a look in the mirror, suspecting that she wasn’t going to get any information from me.

“I’ll ask Lucy for the details…”

Spandau Ballet was singing a very dumb song from the windowsill. “I Know This Much is True” just might be within the top-three spots of the Top Ten Dumb Songs of All Time list.

“Oh, I love this song!” Marty squealed, and squealing does not look right coming from Marty.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. This is the worst song ever. The guy finds it hard to write the next line of his song, and he tells you this and then whines about wanting the truth to be known or something like that. It makes no sense.”

Marty sang with the radio.

“See, right there. Just what that does the mean?”

“Maybe it’s too deep for you to grasp.” Marty started writing me a check.

“Yeah, that’s it. I guess I need a ticket to the world. I thought the big-city life would give you some taste in music.”

I swear I saw a smile on her face as Marty pretended to storm up the stairs.

15

Theresa: Trim and Style for New Year’s Eve Party

Saturday, December 31

1983

N
ineteen eighty-three was a big year for Warren, Sting, and the Huskers.

Mr. Warren Buffett enjoyed watching Berkshire end its year with $1.3 million in its corporate stock portfolio. This, along with Buffett’s personal new worth at $620 million, probably convinced
Forbes
magazine to put him on their list of the wealthiest Americans for the first time. Feeling some of that money burn a hole in his pocket, Buffett purchased Nebraska Furniture Mart for a cool $60 million, a decision that turned out to be one of his best investments yet. The man knew money.

In 1983 Sting, formerly known as Gordon Sumner, proved that he was not only a great performer for The Police but he was also a brilliant song-writer on the band’s new album in 1983:
Synchronicity
. “Every Breath You Take” won a Grammy for song of the year, beating out Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”

For the Huskers, who were having a big, undefeated year, “big” also came in the form of a big play in that 1983 season: the Fumblerooski. Lineman Dean Steinkuhler was the big player who picked up quarterback Turner Gill’s intentional fumble in the 1984 Orange Bowl and ran it seventeen yards for a touchdown. Big.

Oh, and in 1983, something else was big: hair. I still have to live with myself because of some of the hair that I allowed to walk around Omaha during the early eighties. Most girls looking back at photos of themselves from those years, shake their heads and wonder, “What was I thinking?” Bangs teased a mile high stiffened by a ton of hairspray were what the clients asked for. The look gave new meaning to the concept of the Big Bang theory. Big hair and lots of it meant that people could see the hair coming down the road long before they saw a face. Men were asking for a little hair mistake called the mullet: business in the front, party in the back. Wrong on about ten levels. I didn’t always agree with the trends, but people asked for it. So they got what they asked for.

I couldn’t wait to get out of the tiny basement on Maple Crest Circle and move the salon into a bigger property away from this corner of Omaha. And while the process to get to this point had taken a lot longer than I’d planned, I was still ready to make the move.

After months of looking at strip malls and equipment, I had found a vacated bay in the Old Market in downtown Omaha. The Old Market was several blocks from the river, lined with restaurants, art galleries, and unique stores. The uneven brick roads and old buildings had so much character that people felt like they were walking back in time when they spent an evening in the area. When Grandpa Mac used to take my sisters and me for ice cream in the Old Market, I remember being fascinated by the horse drawn carriage rides and the street performers. The renovated area was starting to grow, and though the price of the space was more than I’d hoped for, my gut told me this was the place if I was going to try my luck in a fickle business. With a loan from Grandpa Mac, I was able to procure the space and equipment. I was on the verge of my own new adventure. I just wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

The salon was a mess since I’d spent all week packing and organizing for the move. I’d moved several boxes of hairspray near the door and was down to packing the last few boxes of blow-dryers and curling irons that would be used by the new employees I’d be hiring soon. My hope was that order in the new place would make me feel better about everything. Maybe calling all the shots would make doing what I did feel right. I planned on interviewing people for the open spots next week and slowly growing a business as I finished my last few classes at UNO.

As I placed the last bottles of hair dye and permanent solutions into one of the smaller boxes, I looked up to see Theresa, the only person I knew who could pull off the big-hair look, standing in the doorway of Marcia’s Beauty Box, taking in the clutter of the small room. She was wearing formal clothes since she was coming from work.

“‘Looking good, Theresa!” I said, sincerely sizing Theresa up and down.

She took the bait and handled the movie-line challenge: “‘Feeling good, Ben!’ Sounds like…
Trading Places.
Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd.” Damn, she was good. “I can’t believe this is my last visit to your basement, Ben.” She looked around and picked up the black radio that was sitting on top of a larger box. “This is going down to the new place, right? We need a link to this place, where it all began. Right?”

“Right.”

“Can I plug it in? Just one last time?”

“Sure.” I grabbed an apron for Theresa and walked toward the pink chair.

“The pink chair is moving, too, right?” Theresa turned on the radio to the sound of “Maniac” from the film
Flashdance
. She sat down and smiled at me through the mirror. I smiled back.

“Yep.”

From the radio, Michael Sembello sang about how everyone thinks the steel town girl is crazy. Theresa looked around the room at the empty shelves and walls. “Wow, this is really going to happen.”

“Pretty sure.”

“Oh, I wanted to tell you to go see the movie
Risky Business
, crazy good,” she said as I started combing through her long hair. “Stinky is working at Six West Theaters, and Michael and I got in free on a Friday night. You have got to see that movie, Ben.”

The Iowa baseball player, Chewey, had become chunky and overbearing, and Theresa had moved on right after her high-school graduation. I had heard that a new guy was in the picture. Must be Michael. Theresa and I spent the next few minutes catching up. She was still living at home, putting herself through the speech-pathology program at UNO. I had run into her occasionally on UNO’s campus as I finished my last few business classes.

“Oh, I heard another Loveyism the other day. This DJ was talking about some girl who sang that one song by Elton John about a tiny dancer, but said Tony Danza instead of tiny dancer. Sounds like Lovey, right?”

Lovey was almost magical but surely comical in her incessant twisting of lyrics and stories. Growing up, most of the neighborhood kids found her annoying. I found her entertaining and kind of cute.
Lovey, Lovey, pants on fire.
Hope used to say that Lovey lied. She did lie a little, but Lovey was harmless.

“She just conveniently makes up parts of her story to make it more interesting. Lovey’s just misunderstood.” Theresa defended our childhood friend and finally took a seat in my chair, safe and sound.

Through the years, Lovey bopped around from hairdresser to hairdresser. I hadn’t cut her hair in a while.

“Do you think I need another perm?” Theresa asked as she ran her hands through her hair.