Vanity Insanity (2 page)

My neighborhood was situated along a bank that hosted the Papillion Creek, quietly inching its way around our city, hiding down in low, tree-covered areas, connecting one part of the city to the other side. People pronounced the word “Papillion” in many different ways. We just called it the creek.

Seven little houses laced our curvy little cul-de-sac, each one a carbon copy of the others except for their tired colors—pink, beige, white, and goldenrod—and the backyards of each house on Maple Crest Circle sloped gradually down toward the creek, making mowing a nightmare. At the base of those backyard hills grew amazingly tall, spindly trees that reached to the sky in great clumps that we called a forest. In dry times, the creek was shallow and no wider than five feet, and in flooding periods, it was deep, wide, and dangerous. The trees that congregated all along the creek like worshipers at a church service created the best place in the world for a kid to hide and pretend to be anywhere other than Omaha, Nebraska, in the seventies.

As I stumbled over fallen branches, I yelled, “We found Grandma, Hope. She’s fine. She was napping on the Shanahans’ driveway the whole afternoon. She’s never been happier. Let’s head home.”

Grandma, an old, overweight Basset hound, had been the Mangiamelli family pet for as long as I could remember. Lucy Mangiamelli had named the pup “Grandma” because, well, everyone loves a grandma. The neighborhood kids had taken her into their hearts and looked out for her as their own. If a neighbor spotted Grandma roaming on a nearby block, he would open his car door, let her crawl in, and drive her home. “I found Grandma a few blocks over, sniffin’ in somebody’s rosebushes.” That’s just how it
was. “Grandma chewed up another shoe” or “Put Grandma outside. She stinks!” Mrs. Mangiamelli would scream from her kitchen window.

Hope ran toward me and hugged me very tightly, wiping her dirty tears on my shoulder. “Ben, thank you. Grandma is alive! Grandma is alive!”

Hope and I had grown up together in the Omaha Maple Crest neighborhood. Until my mother explained to me that Hope had Down syndrome and what that meant, I had always assumed that Hope was just a person who was born with a more forgiving nature than most.

“You’re my angel, Ben.” Hope patted my back again and again. “What would I do without you? Grandma is alive!”

I felt a little awkward as Hope praised me, hugging me, patting and patting. The dog had never been lost. I had done nothing to save the day, and as Hope patted, I knew that over a dozen people were looking throughout the neighborhood for her and had been for the past half hour. I had done nothing but sneak down to the forbidden creek to see if Hope might have wandered there. Hope kept patting.

A nauseating hum startled us both. Hope’s head slowly turned toward the sound of a radio coming from across the creek, barely twenty feet from where we stood. A very fuzzy and almost inaudible beat buzzed as Hope hugged me. With the sun darting in my eyes, I could vaguely make out the shape of a long car hidden among trees on the other side of the creek. I finally deciphered the ominous tune as “I’m Your Boogie Man” by KC and the Sunshine Band coming from the car, the bass of the music thumping against my heart. I’ve hated that song ever since that day.

“Hope, we need to go back. Let’s go see Grandma. She’ll be excited to see you.” I wanted to sound more grown-up than my fourteen years, though the truth was that I was very scared to be standing by the creek bed, and my urgency to see Grandma was more of a safety precaution than a canine homecoming—and quite honestly an attempt to break the embrace that I knew was innocent but kind of awkward for this fourteen-year-old dog hero. We needed to get back.

We weren’t supposed to be anywhere near the creek, but we were.

2

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Monday, December 8

1969

S
everal years before Hope and Grandma and the day by the creek, one frustrated nun struggled through a morning at Saint Pius X Church in the center of Omaha. The years leading up to the day by the creek and the years that followed shaped my life. Grandma and Sister Mary Matthew are linked only by my memories, but I assure you, they are linked.

Had it not been for the nun’s insane organizational obsession, her intense devotion to the Virgin Mary, and her strong aversion to giggling little girls, this page might have been blank. Thank you, Sister Mary Matthew.

On December 8, 1969, the eight grades of Saint Pius X Grade School of the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha held a procession for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Sister Mary Matthew’s objective was to have each girl in the entire school with the name Mary, first through eighth
grade, lead the procession with Father Spokinski at the all-school Mass celebrating the Feast of the Holy Day. On that day, all Marys,Mary-Combos, Maries, Marias, Mauras, and even Maureens were encouraged to open the service. First, middle, and Confirmation names were all included. In Catholic schools in the sixties, few girls did not fit this prototype.

I do not know, nor have I ever met, Sister Mary Matthew. I wasn’t even there on that cold Monday in December; I attended Franklin Public School at the time. I do know, however, what happened that day in great, though disputable, detail since I’ve heard three different versions from three very good friends. I can clearly see the procession and the tall, rickety nun hovering over the girls and lining up the Marys all according to height, as I’m sure she assumed Mary herself would want. I’m told the Kelly girls shone that day as each was included: Mary Ann, Mary Ellen, and Mary Catherine. The shortest girls entered first, with the tallest of the Marys at the end, right in front of Father Spokinski and his two freckle-faced altar boys. In my retelling, I added the freckles and the tall, rickety nun for effect. The whole thing sounded so innocent to me, at first.

So most of what I tell is unconfirmed, but what I do know for a fact is that a first-grade girl by the name of Theresa Marie O’Brien stood quietly in front of Martha Mary Monahan, another first grader whom she had never met. The two first graders had no idea at that time that the fact that they had grown up to such a height at that particular moment, dictating their positions in that line in this holiest of processions, would change the course of their lives forever. What was to be an amazing opportunity for Theresa Marie and Martha Mary, two of the three authors of the versions of the events that day, was instead a source of frustration for the orderly Sister Mary Matthew.

In the “feast line” stood the plethora of Mary-types, quietly facing the altar as the older students, posing as song leaders, began the opening hymn “Immaculate Mary.”

Immaculate Mary, your praises we sing.
You reign now in splendor with Jesus our King.
Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria! Ave, Ave, Maria!

The really cool part of being a Catholic song leader during the sixties or early seventies was the added bonus of playing light yet silly instruments as a pleasant backdrop for the vocal performers. Guitars, triangles, blocks, castanets, recorders, and maracas were replaced in the late seventies by a brief stint of the ever-overrated liturgical dance, featuring the “older girls” in dance slippers and graduation gowns flouncing down the aisle, leading Father Spokinski to the altar like feathery, floating flowers. The Catholic Church is not without its own passing and regrettable fads.

According to some of the versions of the story, Faith Webber was clanging her triangle, leading the “masses.” I enjoyed those versions, since I like to think of Faith Webber, Hope’s older sister, doing anything. I can only imagine her standing out with perhaps a special lighting around her that set her apart in the way she always appeared to me: beautiful, glowing, and ever elusive. Faith’s long, smooth, dark hair lay across her shoulders as she perfectly and seriously tapped her triangle to the beat of Sister Alleluia’s opening song. More on Faith later.

Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria! Ave, Ave, Maria!

Martha Mary Monahan and Theresa Marie O’Brien faced forward with pride as the chosen ones. The distraction that broke their perfect composure was sitting in a pew near them. Facing them with a silly grin and glasses too large for his face was the poster child for Ritalin himself: Weird, Weird Mikey Beard. He loved pretty girls and really gross things.

Fact or fiction, the recollection of that day and how it’s still regarded make it what I call noteworthy; however, my apologies to Weird, Weird Mikey Beard, as I know he is somewhere out there, quite possibly reading this. I tell what I know.

I know that Mikey Beard daily pretended, or not, to pick his nose and chase the girls on the playground with his findings. I know that Mikey had once been tied with a school jump rope to his desk by a very tired, though previously patient teacher, in the days when being tied to your desk wasn’t six o’clock news but a weekly ritual. I know that Mikey had once sung to
Theresa Marie O’Brien, quietly during social studies, with his menacing grin, “I’m Just a Love Machine”, in a creepy serenade the teacher never heard.

I also know that Mikey Beard never went to any mental institution, since, after a healthy adjustment of his medication, he got contacts, a cool haircut somewhere along the line, and a phenomenal education in computer programming. Mikey started his own computer-programming company, one of the biggest in Omaha. I know that nobody recognized Michael T. Beard at the Saint Pius X class of 1977 ten-year reunion.

What I said to Lucy after she described the computer hunk to me following her reunion was direct and honest: “That should teach you not to make up awful nicknames for people. You, who mocked Weird, Weird Mikey Beard, could have been Mrs. Computer Hunk Beard if you hadn’t been such a snob.”

Her reply was simple: “Never. He will always be the kid who stuck pencil-top erasers up his nose and blew them at people. No amount of money or good looks can change that.” There you have it. I guess the message to Mikey and other wild little boys everywhere is “Don’t do really gross things to pretty little girls.”

Weird, Weird Mikey Beard couldn’t begin to put a number on the days he was cast to the passion-orange cry room of Saint Pius X or sent to the office, but he didn’t get in trouble on that day in 1969. Not to say he was innocent. Martha Mary and Theresa Marie had not been singled out or targeted by Mikey. He was merely entertaining anyone who might catch his act from the pew. Rather than push his glasses-too-large-for-his face up his nose, he took them off, bent his head down, and turned around with a horrific surprise. Mikey had flipped both eyelids up, the red of the lids remaining flipped as he looked at the girls in line. If you’ve ever seen this immature ritual, you know how this innocent little act might throw off the strongest of stomachs. Because Martha Mary, or Marty, as she was later known, had not come across the ever-scary and kind-of-funny flip-lid trick, she shrieked at the sight.

Theresa only remembers laughing hysterically, which is no surprise. Theresa was a master laugher, the kind who made other laughers envious.
She laughed uncontrollably from the center of herself, shaking and weeping in a strangely joyous manner. As Theresa laughed, her eyes teared and nose ran; all the while, she covered her mouth in a feeble attempt to muffle the shaking convulsion. Anyone watching her in this state could do only one thing: laugh.

One person did not laugh: Sister Mary Matthew. She found no humor in the girls’ irreverence for her magnificent dream. She had no choice that day but to stop the madness. Three minutes later, Theresa and Marty were sitting next to Lucy Belle Mangiamelli, the third party and teller of the final version of the story of this day, against the walls of the passion-orange cry room. Lucy is the one who named the color “passion orange.”

When Lucy was born to Louis and Ava Mangiamelli, the first girl following four boys, her father chose to name her after Lucille Ball, in line with his years as an avid fan. Lucy’s mom, reluctant about the name though happy with a girl, respected this wish with the name Lucille Belle Mangiamelli. Lucy was the apple of her father’s eye and lived up to her name as the comic relief for the family throughout many years of economic struggles, and as a comfort to him in his later years. In 1969, little Lucy’s hair was a mass of dark-brown trestles, tamed by none, feared by many. Even without red hair, she still managed to keep a fire going in any moment she lived.

With no “Mary” name, Lucy was thrown aside like yesterday’s trash. Her fire was especially strong that day, and her blatant exile to the cry room had been more than she could take since she thrived in the limelight, especially during an all-school event. Lucy’s misfortune also turned out to be a defining moment of her life, but she did not know it at the time. Her attempts to deal with this plight had gotten her into trouble. According to Lucy, she had simply whistled the tune “Maria” as she, in the line of boys and other non-Mary sorts, passed Principal Sister Annunciata.

Sister Annunciata, recognizing the source of the nun-provoking tune, quietly and firmly pulled the back of Lucy’s “poop brown” jumper and placed her fanny against the passion-orange walls of the Saint Pius Cry Room near the entrance of the church. (Again, Lucy’s color descriptions.) Having lived across the street from Lucy growing up, I knew her well
enough to imagine that her pint-sized body, amazingly over-sized head of hair, and booming, scratchy voice probably caught the attention of many, accomplishing just what she felt she had been missing by not being included in the feast day’s hoopla.