Vanity Insanity (25 page)

Not everyone was happy with expansion in what was the once-bustling historic area called Jobbers Canyon, however. The historic site was nationally recognized, and conservatives were appalled that anyone would consider demolishing the area that ConAgra took over. Omaha did not want to let go of the area and had been about to break up with the company when Octavia jumped on the bandwagon. She and her money joined the force that planned to keep downtown Omaha economically alive. In the newspaper picture of the task force to bring in ConAgra, she was the little lady standing in a group of men. Octavia had told me, “What Omaha needs to realize is that change is always uncomfortable. In order to grow, we are going to have to suffer a little.” And in the next breath, she threw up her hands and sighed, “Get over it!”

The city planners, who had for years listened to the voices that resisted change, decided to go ahead with what they knew would benefit Omaha. Much like the parent who knows that the nasty-tasting medicine will only help the child, the city planners had demolished the area earlier that year. In the end, ConAgra built a billion-dollar campus that included the city’s Heartland of America Park, transforming the Omaha skyline.

In the years that followed, Octavia’s Friday mornings were a picture of predictability. A neighbor took her to 6:30 a.m. Mass at Saint Cecilia’s Cathedral, as she did every morning, and then Truman worked his schedule at TC Property Investments so that he could pick her up and get her downtown to Vanity Insanity for her hair appointment with me. Truman would then conduct business downtown until Octavia’s hair appointment and lunch appointment with a friend were over. She was probably right. Octavia was living the good life.

“Once I get my shopping done, I’ll feel better,” Octavia told me.

“Now don’t be telling me what you got me, Octavia. I don’t want to know.”

Octavia chuckled and went on. “The big thing on the list this year is a Cry-Like-a-Baby Doll. Have you even heard of such a thing? My granddaughter Sara has a star next to the doll on her list. I can’t find one
anywhere. Seems like companies have to make a damn game of it for the consumer to find the toy. And then the doll costs an arm and a leg.”

“Why don’t you just get her any doll? Do you think she’ll know the difference?”

“Are you kidding me? She pulled out a picture from the Sears catalog and pasted it on a piece of paper for me. The doll cries and then says what she’s not happy about…”

Truman’s eight-year-old Sara sounded as precocious and demanding as her grandmother.

“Sara reminds me of Truman when he was about that age,” Octavia continued. “The only thing he wanted for Christmas was a Tudor Electric Football Game. Made of metal or something. That was all he wanted. Nothing else. We searched everywhere for that thing and finally had to order it. Shipped to our house Christmas Eve morning. I almost kissed the deliveryman.

“Anyway, Truman loved the game and played it all of the time. Then, halfway through the YMCA flag football season the following year, he came home crying and crying. He was mad that I hadn’t signed him up to play. Of course, I didn’t sign him up. He never asked. He told me that he thought I would know that he wanted to play. I told him I needed to hear him ask. Sometimes we need to ask for what we want…We signed him up the next season…” Octavia drifted off in thought.

Kelly hesitated to interrupt. “Ben, you have a phone call.”

“I’ll be right back, Octavia. We’ll let your hair dry a little more.”

When I got to the phone, Kelly said, “Ben, it’s Lucy. She doesn’t sound too good.”

I dried my hands and grabbed the phone. “Hey, Lu, gonna be late?”

“Ben, I’ve never been so sick…throwing up all morning. I’m not even going to our Christmas party.”

“You OK?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Lucy had wanted to be a mother for as long as I could remember. The years of baby-sitting and watching over neighbor kids had prepared her for this day.

“Go lie down, Lu. We can reschedule when you feel better.”

When I turned to Octavia, the chair was empty. She was heading to the coat rack and getting ready to leave.

“Hey wait a second, Octavia. I refuse to let you out in the cold until your hair is dry and done. Go sit back down.”

“Are you bossing me around?” Octavia forced a confused smile.

“Yes, I am.”

“All right then. You’re the only one I let boss me around. I do have to watch my time here. I’m meeting a friend for lunch at M’s Pub. They treat me like a queen over there. My friend Sylvia was an orphan on the orphan trains that went through Nebraska from New York. It’s really a fascinating story.”

“Hello, Octavia. I introduced you to Sylvia. Remember, I told her story, and you were so interested you wanted to meet her. I do her hair every Thursday. Remember?”

“Well, I’ll be.”

Nat King Cole sang of Jack Frost nipping at the door as I finished Octavia’s hair. When she was patting the back of it, I grabbed a bag from the side of my hair station and handed it to her.

“I know it’s not wrapped or anything, but this is my gift for you.”

Octavia opened the bag and pulled out a big gray T-shirt that I was sure she would never wear. She held it up and looked in the mirror and grinned. The shirt read I MAY BE WRONG, BUT I DOUBT IT.

Jenae interrupted us both with furrowed eyebrows and her purse in hand. “Ben, can you start my next client? I have a pounding headache. I’m running over to get some aspirin at Cubby’s.”

“Sure. Are you going to be able to finish your shift?” Maybe Jenae’s crazy Christmas was getting to her.

“I’ll be fine. This headband is pinching my head and…” Jenae was out of the door before she finished her sentence.

I looked at Octavia in the mirror, shook my head, and raised one eyebrow.

Octavia put the shirt in the bag, tucked it under her arm, looked me in the mirror, and said, “Ah, vanity, too, must suffer.”

21

Lucy: Trim and Style

Ash Wednesday, February 13

1991

T
he bell lay on the ground between the two pews on a cold and windy February morning in 1991.

I had known it was loose for several weeks, but I’d kept hoping that I could buy some more time before I needed to get up on a ladder and fix it. I usually parked in the alley lot and opened the salon an hour earlier than the staff showed up. I liked to have a cup of coffee and see one or two clients before the chaos exploded. Lucy was that client that Wednesday. Once I opened the shades to the front of the salon, I stepped on the silver bell lying in the doorway. It must have fallen during the night. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

I jumped up on the pew and looked up at the upper rim of the door, hoping to devise a plan to fix the bell. The logical part of me knew that I should just throw it away, but I was surprised at the urgency in me to get the bell back up where it had been for the past seven years. I was thinking that I would have Subby Mangiamelli take a look at it when he came in
for a haircut when my eyes diverted to a clunky green Honda Civic parked in front of the shop. I recognized Jenae’s car and wondered why she was at work so early and why she hadn’t parked in the alley. I saw a body slumped over the steering wheel. I jumped down from the pew and unlocked the front door as quickly as I could.

The extreme cold slapped me as I ran out to the driver’s side of her car. The DJ on my drive to work had announced that the temperature was not quite ten degrees. I tapped on the window.

“Jenae! Hey, Jenae!”

I pounded the window with my fist, looking for movement. Jenae slowly lifted her head from the steering wheel and looked up at me, confused. Her hair was wild and nappy, covering a good part of her eyes. The dark uneven smudges around her eyes jumped out against her gray complexion. Her big, blue eyes now appeared dark gray and distant. I kept pounding and calling her name.

“Open the door, Jenae. Unlock the door.”

Slowly, as if moving underwater, Jenae unlocked the door. I opened the door and moved my hand to her shoulder to maneuver her out from the front seat.

“Hey, Toots, what are you doing up so early?”

Jenae said nothing as she gazed in my direction. No coat or jacket. Jenae was wearing some summer flip-flops, loose gray sweatpants, and an oversized T-shirt with a picture of Michael Bolton on the front. We moved toward the door of Vanity Insanity. I kept one arm around her, struggling to open the door as my foot pushed it open. I laid Jenae down on one of the pews, grabbed my coat, and covered her.

“Hey, girl. You’ve got to be kidding me with this Michael Bolton thing you’ve got going on. What were you thinking?” My voice echoed against the empty room with high ceilings. “I’m gonna go grab you a hot coffee. Be right back.”

Jenae did not move.

I came back hoping that she would be Jenae again and start flitting around with endless chatter, but I found her curled body facing the back of the pew.

“I’ve got coffee! Hey, Toots, why don’t you sit up for second…?”

Jenae didn’t move. I placed my coat behind her and pulled up her body.

“Jenae. What’s going on here? Are you OK? Jenae.”

“He’s in the storm,” she whispered.

“Somebody’s in a storm. Who’s in the storm, Jenae?” I held the back of her head and moved the cup of coffee toward her. She took a sip.

“My brother.”

I knew very little about Jenae’s family. What little I knew was not good. I did know she had a brother. The bubbly and loquacious woman who inhabited this body on most days would offer all kind of information about her life, her opinions, and her ideas—more often than not much more information that we needed to know. What she never talked about was her family or her childhood except for her younger brother, Scott, whom she would occasionally ask us to pray for. I knew that he struggled with drugs, and that bothered her. I knew that much.

“Scott? Is Scott in a storm, Jenae?”

Tears welled from her eyes as she rocked back and forth. “No. Not Scottie. Poor Scottie.”

“Jenae, help me out here. What’s going on? Did somebody hurt you? Tell me…”

“No!” Jenae shouted. “Kevin is in Desert Storm. Not Scottie!”

“OK, you have another brother. He’s in Iraq. Is that the storm?”

She shook her head.

“Can we find out how he’s doing? What do you need here?”

“No—I don’t want to know how he is. No.”

Jenae tucked her knees under her chin, rocking and tapping one foot. I knew she wouldn’t make it through her shift, and I also knew I didn’t want her to be alone. I would need to contact her clients to either reschedule or shuffle to Toby or myself. I needed to figure out what I could do with Jenae so that I knew she’d be safe.

“And poor Caroline.” Jenae shook her head and sobbed.

“Our Caroline?”

“Yes, our Caroline. She’s going to die if we don’t do something. She throws up, you know.” Jenae looked like a little girl with pouting lips.

Of course I knew. We all knew that every day following lunch, the already-too-thin Caroline would go to the bathroom and flush the toilet, run water, and throw up her lunch. We all knew this. What did this have to do with Iraq?

“Kelly can’t get enough money together to bring her sister over from Viet Nam…and poor Toby…”

Poor Toby? This was worse than I thought. Jenae had never said one nice word to or about Toby. I looked into her fuzzy eyes and leaned in to smell her breath.

“Toby tries so hard, and that witch is so mean to him. So he fires her. And then she comes right back and is so mean to him…”

Jenae was referring to Delores Welks. She had been coming to Toby for years, even before he worked for me. She was demanding and demeaning, and she shattered Toby’s world by complaining and criticizing how he did her hair, so he had “fired” her—at last count, four times. And each time, she came back announcing that no one else could do her hair as well as Toby and would he please, please take her back.

“What’s going on here, Jenae?”

“
Jenae
, ha!” Jenae started laughing. “
Jenae
! Did you know that my real name is Jane? Janie, not Jenae. Just Jane! Jane Schmeling. I changed my name legally, but deep down I will always be Jane Stinkin’ Schmeling.”

“Look at me.” I grabbed Jenae’s shoulders and moved closer to her face. “You are Jenae Tolliver to me. You are bright and beautiful, Jenae.” I gently pulled her head closer to my shoulder; her tears wiped against my neck.

Under all of her makeup and sass, Jenae was a delicate child. I remember how she’d reacted to a client leaving her a few weeks earlier. Jenae thrived on making her clients happy so much that she’d cried in the back room when she found out that client was seeing another stylist. I told her that “it” happened to the best of us. People were fickle. But she cried back to me that all she wanted was an exit interview or something.
Let me know where I failed.

“What’s wrong, Jenae?”

“Everything…” She sobbed into my shirt. She lifted up her head. “Everything is so, so sad. Everything is bad…and I don’t want to take them anymore…I really don’t.”

“Take who?” I thought that we had covered everybody.

“My stupid meds. They make me feel icky. I want to be someone who doesn’t need pills. I don’t want them.”

“Well, I’m thinking we need to find this medication if it helps you to be the Jenae that I know and love.” I had suspected from Jenae’s high and low days that she struggled, but I had not known to what degree.

Jenae began sobbing again.

“Jenae Tolliver, where are your pills?” My voice bounced off the pink and yellow walls.

She cried a muffled answer into her hands: “At home.”

“We’re gonna get this figured out, Toots.” I grabbed Jenae’s face and moved closer to her. I looked into her eyes. “We need to get you back.”

“I’m so tired, Ben. I’m just so tired…”

My mind was racing as to where this day was headed. I needed to call Kelly, who had the day off, so she could cover Caroline’s shift. Since Kelly didn’t drive, I would then have Caroline drive Jenae home and watch over her while I rescheduled appointments so I could get over to Jenae’s apartment to find her medication. Clients called us and canceled and rescheduled appointments all of the time, but when a stylist canceled, the response was not always as forgiving on the other end of the phone. The days that followed would be hectic since most people would want immediate consideration.