Vanity Insanity (24 page)

“I’m not sure about the game today,” Mac replied. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. Nice touch, though. Playing the games for your clients.” Mac looked around and stopped. “What about William? Do you ever see the one Mangiamelli boy you spent your summers with? That old Will. He never met a mirror he didn’t like.”

“Not so much. Will kind of went his own way. He was supposed to go with A.C. and me to Chicago last summer. We all had tickets to see a band we follow. We planned the trip for weeks, and the day we left for Chicago, he never showed up.” Too bad for Will. He missed the last concert that The Police had before they split up in 1986.

“Sounds like he has some problems in his life right now.” Mac’s way of saying that he had heard about Will’s struggles with alcohol and drugs. He changed the subject.

“Turn up the volume, Ben, could you?”

As I turned up the volume, Jenae burst into the salon like the spray from a shook-up Pepsi bottle. Definitely on an “up” day, she squealed at the sound of the announcer’s voice. “Oh, game day! I just love game day!”

Jenae’s tight, black minidress with short, black boots and high, skinny heels needed no spotlights. All eyes in the salon zeroed in on her fishnet stockings. Jenae had pulled her hair—now dyed black—back as tightly as she could. A big, red N was painted on her left cheek. Her red, bold lips brought the whole look into one Robert Palmer video. Jenae stopped and looked at Mac.

“I’m wearing my ‘Blackshirt’ outfit. The guys on defense are so cute.” She winked at Mac.

“Jenae, this is my grandfather. Mac, this is Jenae.”

Mac’s eyes were large and round as he held out his hand.

“Oh, my gawd! Ben has a grandfather! Well, Mac, you have a really cool grandson. We just love Ben!” Jenae skirted around to stand in front of Mac.

Mac cocked his head to one side as Jenae shook his hand. “Ben is pretty cool. We think so, too, Janelle.”

“Jenae,” she corrected him. “But that’s OK, I answer to anything.”

“Jenae,” Mac corrected himself. “You look lovely for the Husker game.”

Jenae shrank back at the compliment. “You really think so? I thought that the stockings might be a little too edgy. I thought twice and then said, ‘You know, the stockings really finish off the look.’ Don’t you think?”

“I think you look very pretty.” Mac smiled. “Are you going somewhere special all dressed up?”

“No, I’m just here to do hair.”

Mac hadn’t considered that Jenae was an employee. I could see that he was working really hard to take it all in when the bell above the door announced Toby, Caroline, and Kelly, who all hurried in to set up for our big Saturday. Toby touched both top corners of the doorway and shut the door, rubbing the doorknob three times—a new little something he had added recently—and he worked hard to avoid the staff chatter so he could focus on setting up his station.

“Hey, guys, come meet Ben’s grandpa. He’s adorable!” Jenae called.

Mac sat in my chair as the staff surrounded him like he was a puppy to be pet and admired.

“I didn’t know Ben had a grandpa,” Kelly commented as I motioned them all back to their stations. Throughout the haircut, Jenae flirted with Mac and babbled to him as she worked on her own client’s hair, and Mac pretended to pay attention while he listened to the pregame commentary. I wheeled a cart with an old television from the break room out to the front area once the game started.

Mac stayed to watch the first half of the game after I finished his hair and started working on my next client. He pulled up the chair from the UP desk. I caught him a few times looking around and taking in the whole room. His eyes stopped on Toby occasionally with a “what the hell is going on there” expression on his face.

At half time Mac gave me a firm handshake and said his good-byes to the staff.

Jenae ran up and hugged him before he left.

“I’m having a Broken Berlin Wall Party later tonight. We might go see
Dirty Dancing
again. I’ve seen it three times. Have you seen it? You should come. We’d have fun.”

“I’m sure we would, Jenae, but I’m going to have to decline. Old people don’t stay out that late.” The bell rang as Mac walked out of Vanity Insanity.

My gut feeling was way off regarding the game. Seven to seventeen, final score. Our only loss of the season if you didn’t count the bowl game.
The disappointment felt worse than the stomach flu on Christmas morning. Lucy’s cousin in Cincinnati probably watched the news that night and thought her cousins’ team had won.

Mac returned every few weeks to Vanity Insanity for his haircuts. He would adjust. He might not have understood the name of my new place before he walked in that Saturday, but he got it by the time he walked out.

20

Octavia: Wash and Set for Holiday Shopping

Friday, December 18

1989

A
t first I was elated, and then I was deflated.

Going through the mail that cold morning in 1989, I found a letter from Faith, a Christmas card I presumed, since most of the other correspondence from her came in the form of postcards from her worldly travels. Faith moved around so much that I couldn’t even send her a card or Omaha Steaks for Christmas since she would likely be moved by the time they were delivered. I opened the UP drawer to get my letter opener for the card, and I was surprised by my own excitement in hearing from her. Was she going to be more personal this time? Would she let me know that she missed me, couldn’t live without me, and would be coming to Omaha for Christmas? Maybe she’d been thinking about that long kiss as much as I had. I opened the red envelope to find a UNICEF Christmas card cover, which I quickly opened.

To see the sacred in the season, we must slow down. We wish you a Merry Christmas from the UNICEF team.

In Faith’s handwriting beneath the form-letter Christmas card were the words
Thinking of you! Faith.

Thinking of you? “Thinking of you” was something I wrote at the bottom of a sympathy card. Just what did Faith think of me? I had no way of saying to her, “Thinking of you…more than I should.” I was disappointed in my overexcitement about Faith. I had always been good about managing expectations, and I knew I’d better start making adjustments to my feelings about her. I needed to compartmentalize that kiss and move on to the new year. I decided to look over my schedule for the day and was happy to see that both Octavia and Lucy were appointments that I could look forward to.

The bell above the door interrupted my pity party as Jenae used her hip to push it open. She was carrying an oversized stuffed snowman and a bag with Christmas silver tinsel spilling out. Exactly two minutes after the Thanksgiving turkey bones were thrown in the trash, Jenae became obsessed with the next big holiday on the calendar. She set down her snowman and took off her coat. “Don’t you just love him? I think his name should be Jimmy. I don’t know. He just looks like a Jimmy.” She had on green tights with red boots and a little pixie dress that looked as though it had been painted on her. Not that that was a bad thing. Toby mumbled something about a Keebler elf. Jenae told Toby exactly where he could shove his little cracker comment.

Jenae refused to allow Toby’s annoying remark to dampen her holiday spirit as she adjusted her headband, which supported two pieces of mistletoe shooting out from her head like alien antennae moving back and forth. Jenae “fixed” the decorations of Vanity Insanity all day between shampoos and highlights.

A few weeks earlier, Jenae had started working on setting up Christmas and stayed well past closing without any intimation of slowing down or quitting.

“I need to get to the store before I head home,” I told Jenae as I began unplugging all of the equipment. “We need to wrap this up, Toots.”

“I’m just starting. I’m picking up the tree tomorrow morning.”

“Tree?”

“You can’t have Christmas without a tree. Oh, and the glow-in-the-dark nativity scene is going to have to sit on the UP desk next to the wall. That’s the only place that makes sense…”

“If all of your decorations are here, what are you doing in your apartment?”

“Painting.”

“Painting?”

“I stayed up all last night painting. I got through most of the place. I have one more room to do tonight.”

“Your apartment complex allows you to paint?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I should have looked into that…Anyway, it looks awesome.”

Of course, the thought of drugs did cross my mind as I wondered about the source of energy that Jenae had tapped into during her hyper holiday, but she was a walking antidrug announcement. She had mentioned to me that she had suffered through trying to help her brother break a serious cocaine addiction, unsuccessfully.

I was the picture of patience as Jenae’s plan took over the salon for a month, but I drew the line when she started taking over the music selection and insisted that we play her Bing Crosby Christmas tape over and over again, which threw Toby into such a funk that he cleaned out all of the cabinets and closet and reorganized the display case in the front window. Even quiet and kind Kelly had enough as she pulled me aside and, in her best broken English, voiced her frustration.

“I know all de words to this tape. I don’t want to know all de words to this tape. ‘Mele Kalikimaka’ no more.”

As leader of the crew, I had a responsibility to maintain the sanity of the season. I informed Jenae that from now on, I was the only person in charge of the music; that way the staff would not squabble. This was not the first staff argument over music. The summer before Jenae had tried to convince everyone that customers would receive a growth opportunity if
they were exposed to Guns and Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” Cultural growth and a hairstyle for the patrons. Caroline politely told Jenae that one of her manicure customers had been offended by Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and that we should consider playing music without sexual implications. Toby thought we should just skip the music thing all together and focus on our work.

So we tried the stipulation route when it came to the music selection of the day. No naughty words allowed. We even tried a schedule of the Music Monitor of the day. That Christmas of 1989 was the tipping point for trying to please the whole staff. If Jenae thought I was a control freak about opening and closing the salon, then she probably felt that I was a power freak when I took over the music completely that Christmas season.

I played some Christmas music during the days until December 25, but I gave old Bing a break. I introduced the staff to Mannheim Steamroller, a local group that took Christmas music to an entirely different level, and we pulled out some Nat King Cole. I wove in a few non-Christmas tapes I’d brought from home. Sting’s
Nothing Like the Sun
became a staff favorite.

As I set the bills aside on the UP desk, I looked up to see Octavia enter Vanity Insanity. “Well, you do look ready for Christmas,” she said as she took in the room that looked like a page in a Dr. Seuss book. Jenae, who had taken it upon herself to be the holiday decorator, had brought all of her outdated decorations and encouraged the staff to join her in the trashy Christmas tradition. Caroline brought in an ugly wreath, and Toby brought a bright-green garland that he had been planning on throwing out anyway. Kelly brought in a string of blue lights, and I brought in a giant, plastic Santa impersonating Elvis that I had found at a thrift store. If we were going tacky, we would take it to the extreme.

“Actually, Jenae is responsible. I just own the place.”

Octavia’s son had dropped her off for her regular Friday-morning appointment that snowy morning in 1989 as he had for the last several weeks. I never asked but figured that Truman felt the time had come for Octavia to stop driving. There are just some things you don’t talk about. When I did my calculations, Octavia was in her mid to upper eighties. I never asked that question either.

“This is the life, I tell you.” Octavia walked into Vanity Insanity like a queen. “It doesn’t get any better than this. I have my own chauffeur. Truman knows how much I hate looking for parking downtown.”

“You’re living the life, woman.” I helped Octavia take her coat off of her shivering, small frame. She hooked her hand into the crook of my arm as I escorted her to my chair. Octavia’s booming personality, so big and strong, and blazing opinions, so sharp and current, caused me to overlook just how delicate she was physically.

Octavia had moved into Omaha in 1987, and while she held tightly to her hometown Fremont ties, she embraced the city life with fire and enthusiasm. She bought a big house two blocks from Saint Cecilia’s Cathedral, one of the ten biggest churches in the country at the time of its completion in 1959. She made it a point to get involved with her new parish and the altar society as soon as her little pumps hit the doorway of Saint Cecilia’s floor. The Cathedral community probably didn’t know what hit them when Octavia Hruska filled out forms to join the forces.

Once Octavia had found her bearings in the local restaurants, boutiques, and museums, she began investing more time and money in the missions of the city. Following her first visit to my new place, she spent the entire afternoon drinking in the Old Market area. M’s Pub, with its mirrored back wall and a large green marbled bar that anchors the center of the room with stools surrounding it, became a favorite of Octavia. In time, the owners of M’s found a favorite in Octavia as they reserved a special table for her on the days that she visited.

My mom told me that a friend of hers knew the lawyer who had handled an investment Octavia had made in one block of the Old Market. That little rumor was also making its way through the Market grapevine, and vendors wanted to know who this Hruska lady was.

The Old Market had seen big changes just to the east of the area in 1988. The city planners who had once talked about Omaha as a dying city in 1981 had decided to give one last effort to revive the fading metropolis. ConAgra was the company that gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the downtown area and succeeded in “saving the city.” The jobs and continued growth of the headquarters on the 113-acre ConAgra campus jump-started
the economy and encouraged other big businesses to take a look at Omaha as a place to set up.