Vanity Insanity (30 page)

“I thought Ralph Waldo Emerson asked that.”

“I thought you were a business major. I’m not even sure who said it.”

“Touché, Octavia. OK, so let’s focus on your hair. What do you see us doing today?”

“Well, I look in this mirror and see a young, beautiful woman.”

I smiled at the mirror Octavia. “I see that same young beautiful woman.”

“Do you know that optical-illusion picture, where, depending on how your brain processes, you can either see a haggard, old lady or a beautiful, young lady?”

“I think I’ve seen it.”

“I look in this mirror every day, and my mind chooses to see the young lady. Not the old lady.”

“What old lady?”

“Ben.” Patti, my newest employee, tapped me on the elbow. “Excuse me, Octavia. Ben, do you know if anyone picked up supplies yesterday? Jenae is in the middle of a color and can’t find a dye.”

“Toby picked several boxes up yesterday.” Virginia answered Patti’s question. “They should be in the back room next to the coffee pot. Sorry, Ben, I couldn’t find anywhere else to set them down.”

I walked Octavia over to the sink to wash her hair.

“You have chemicals in your coffee? Good thing I’ve already had mine today.” Octavia held her phone and frowned at me as I pulled the apron over her.

“Hey! We’re absolutely packed in here, Octavia. We’ve got boxes on boxes. We added a new lady.”

“Virginia? The bigger gal?”

“After her, we added another stylist, Patti. We’re elbow to elbow here, lady!”

The good news: Vanity Insanity had a waiting list three pages long. Our crazy salon had been gaining a reputation as the different place: “You know, the place with the pink-and-yellow walls.” On three separate occasions, I’d tried to paint them something less repulsive and was met with
fierce opposition from both staff and clients. Not many places in town had that oh-so-eclectic feel to them, and I’m not just talking about the décor. The Old Market community had finally embraced Vanity Insanity; the owners of boutiques and restaurants in the Old Market were both clients and advertisements for the salon with the crazy staff. The bad news: we were jam-packed.

“Well, if you’re that crowded, why don’t you do something about it? Maybe it’s time to grow up!” Octavia pulled out her phone from under apron.

“Excuse me.”

Octavia pointed to the ceiling. “Grow up! The floor above you has been vacant for as long as you’ve been here.”

“Never thought about that. It would be kind of a challenge to put in a staircase…”

“Challenge? Nobody said it would be easy to go upstream. If it was, everyone would.”

“I didn’t think anyone used the upper floors on this wing.” I checked to see if Toby was near this conversation.

“Well, if you don’t know for sure, find out and quit whining.” Octavia checked her phone as Jenae came up to my station with a broom.

“Check out my new purchase! I’m putting it in our back room.” Jenae’s long, feathered earrings moved back and forth as she showed the broom to Octavia and me. “The little man who sold it to me was blind. I kid you not. He makes these brooms and sells them. Isn’t that the cutest?”

“Must have been the Reverend,” Octavia said as she held out her hands to hold the broom. She ran her little hands along the wood of the handle. “He’s still doing his work.” She shook her head and smiled.

“Yeah, he did say his name was Reverend something-or-another. He was so sweet; I just had to buy a broom from him.” Jenae took the broom and ran back to the back room. “Gotta go, my Miss Uptight’s almost here.”

Octavia looked down at her phone again.

“You waiting for an important call?” I asked. “Got a hot date or something?”

“I’m supposed to hear from Lee about a change in the board meeting for the zoo. I need to let one of my girls know so I can get a ride down there.”

“Lee? As in Dr. Lee Simmons, director of the zoo? “Lee Simmons had been pivotal in the growth and changes to the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo. Under his guidance, the zoo accomplished unprecedented expansion and national attention. I’m pretty sure that everybody in Omaha has been to the zoo at least once. The only person I knew who had never been to the zoo was Jenae. While people from all over the country flocked to our zoo, she refused. I’d quit asking her why since Jenae always said the same thing: “Going to the zoo is a lot like TV dinners and sex on the beach. They sound like a good idea, but once you get there…not so much for me.”

“With all the attention the Lied Jungle is getting, the board needs to talk about the next feature,” Octavia informed me. The Lied Jungle, the world’s largest indoor rainforest, had opened in April of 1992. “We’re thinking about a new aquarium, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

“I was never here.”

“Right. The zoo meetings are pretty interesting. I’m sitting on a few boards for banks and schools that put me to sleep. Truman tells everyone yes before I can tell them no.”

Octavia’s reputation as that ornery, old, rich lady who really knew what she was talking about had trickled through Omaha through the years, and many Omaha businesses had asked her to voice her opinion on their boards. People got a kick out of the colorful lady with colorful opinions and sometimes language. The commissioners of the College World Series had asked her to throw out the first pitch at Rosenblatt Stadium the summer before. While most people watching the nationally televised game might not have known who she was, the viewers in Omaha knew exactly who the diminutive pitcher was.

“Right now, I’m sitting on the board for First Data Corporation. Michael Beard asked me right after his company merged with First Data. Do you know who he is? Nice guy.”

“Think so.” I didn’t think Octavia needed to know of Weird, Weird Mikey Beard’s history. Since she hadn’t mentioned him spitting fake loogies
on board members at meetings, I figured the Weird, Weird Mikey Beard was staying on his meds.

“At the last meeting, Michael Beard seats me next to this really old man,” Octavia began.

“So.”

“Ben, we’re talking really, really old. Did Beard think I was stupid enough not to realize what was going on? ‘Let’s put the really old people together. Maybe they have some old people things to talk about.’”

“Maybe he was trying to set you up.”

“Not my type, honey. Nice guy but seemed like a recovering asshole. After talking to him for while, I could see right through him. Trying to be a nice guy later in life…too late.”

Toward the end of the appointment, Kelly and her sister stopped by to see Octavia. Kelly had finally made enough money to have her sister, Chin, move from Viet Nam a month earlier. Fiercely protective of Chin, who’d chosen the Americanized name Katie, Kelly was working on helping her sister gain American citizenship and helping Katie to learn English, but Katie had a long way to go since “hi” and “have nice day” pretty much covered the span of her English vocabulary.

“Oh, wow, Octavia, you have phone now?” Kelly pointed to Octavia’s new gadget.

“I do. And I’m getting pretty good at using it. Now see, this little button here can give me any message I missed.” Kelly and Katie moved in and looked closely at Octavia’s new toy. “And this one, I don’t know what that’s for. Oh, if I push the number one and hold it, it automatically dials Truman’s number for me. I have a different number for each of the girls who drive me around so I don’t have to dial the whole thing.”

“Wow, that so neat,” Kelly said with genuine interest.

Octavia handed the phone to her to look at. “Now the darndest thing happened to me the other day, ladies. This little phone rings, and I answer it like I always do—‘Hello, sweetie’ is what I say since I know everyone who calls me. Anyway, the woman on the other line is sobbing. I mean, she is crying like a baby. Finally she settles down to tell me that she found my
number in her husband’s wallet, and she asked me if I was having an affair with him. More sobbing. More drama. She called me a home wrecker. On and on. I finally said, ‘Look, you probably fat-fingered the numbers.’ Then she said I was a liar. By this time I’m laughing. ‘Honey, I’m a wrinkled old woman, but if your husband was seeing me, he wouldn’t be able to keep up with me anyway’—and then I hung up.”

Kelly and Katie’s laughter moved in unison as their bodies shook. I’m pretty sure Katie hadn’t understood a word Octavia had just said.

“Kelly, do you still have that little boyfriend you told me about last time I was here?”

Kelly translated Octavia’s question in Vietnamese to Katie, and the two sisters laughed. “No way. He was lazy man.”

“Kelly, listen to me, now, you have no time for a bum. You wait for the right guy who deserves you.”

“I tell last guy, ‘No money, no honey,’ and then kick him out.” Kelly and Katie laughed again.

Octavia’s phone rang, and Kelly and Katie ran to the nail tables. I waited while Octavia spoke.

“Hello…yes, that would work…I will see you then.”

“Simmons?” I asked.

“Warren.”

“As in?”

“Buffett. We’re playing bridge tomorrow. He’s actually pretty good.”

“You play bridge with Warren Buffet?” Her little buddy Buffett had become a billionaire in 1990.

“Only when he’s in town. He’s kind of a busy guy.”

“You are connected, you poor wretch.”

Octavia stood up, and I pulled her coat around her and helped her put her arms inside. “You know, Ben. Change is a sign of the Holy Spirit.” She put her phone in her coat pocket as I held out the crook of my arm for her. “Katie and Kelly changing their names is symbolic. They’re starting a new life here.”

“OK. So what’s your point?”

Octavia pointed to the ceiling. “Change. Make some calls. Grow up.”

I escorted her to the door and waited with her until one of her girls came to pick her up. I heard Octavia giggle as she walked out, “No money, no honey. I like that. I might have to use that one.”

As I walked back inside Vanity Insanity, I wondered where she might fit that line in. Maybe in a bridge game.

Not likely.

27

Theresa: Style for Date with Husband

Friday, November 11

1994

“Y
ou have got to be kidding me!”

Jenae was in a really bad mood.

The summer of 1994, Jenae decided that she had secretly always wanted to be a blond, so voila: she was Barbie. She had the figure of a Barbie, which few others could claim; she colored her hair, which had been growing out, a Malibu blond. Jenae’s long and straight newly golden locks against her tan skin transformed her into what I’m sure every G.I. Joe that I owned growing up would have crawled across the sandbox to get a better angle on. What made the final look a bit comical was the tattoo of a rose on her ankle and the nose ring on the left side of her nose.

She slammed a brush on her station and looked around the salon.

If you had asked her, Jenae would have listed several things that were bothering her that day. First off, the weather was always a factor in Jenae’s moods.
The oppressively high temperatures, the humidity, and the clouds hanging dark and low that day weighed heavy on Jenae. Secondly, she was struggling with that fact that anyone would accuse her favorite actor of all time, O. J. Simpson, of murder. She had no clue that he had ever played football. Finally, and probably most relevant, was the fact that Caroline, our staff’s token bulimic member, was throwing up in the bathroom again. In about ten minutes, our chairs would be filled with the first clients of the day. For the moment, we all stopped and looked at Jenae, who looked like a very angry Barbie.

“Am I the only one who can hear that? Hello? Am I crazy?” No one dared answer either question as we all looked at Jenae and then to the bathroom door across from the back room. “That’s it! I can’t take it anymore.” She stomped to the door and pounded on it with her fist. “We know what you’re doing in there, Caroline. Come out here right this minute.”

The door slowly opened, and we all glanced at the pale face of Caroline. She leaned against the door and pushed the hair from her face. “I’m pregnant.”

The staff, including Jenae, remained silent as we took in Caroline’s announcement. Ten-plus years with a group in tight quarters translated that bad days had a way of sneaking up on us. Nerves and the day-to-day problems of the staff meant that things would blow up and blow over. Vanity Insanity had celebrated its ten-year anniversary in the Old Market, which was an amazing feat in and of itself in the nomadic and fickle field of beautification. Staff turnover was just an accepted part of the salon process. Stylists and nail people got restless and often left one salon for another. My staff had remained loyal, and while for the most part I could say that was a good thing, I did have my days when I went home exhausted from the drama and energy. We’d celebrated the decade milestone with a wine-and-cheese open house for clients and business neighbors to say, “Yep, we’re still kicking and screaming’ and, in Jenae’s case, slamming brushes.

Jenae was now living with Dirk, a Market Rat and owner of Strange Love, a novelty store I had never been to and most likely would never go to. Dirk and Jenae’s tumultuous relationship offered light entertainment for those who had to hear of the big fights and rekindled love affairs. Most of the Vanity Insanity staff had been able to make it to help move Kelly
and her sister Katie into a bigger apartment. Toby was still Toby. He was still obsessively methodical and within the last year had been recognized by the national Chicago Midwest Traveling Style Team, which enlisted him to travel once a month with their entourage. Virginia and Patti took on his clients when he was gone. Hope, who was putting in more hours, was responsible for the organized shelves of products. And as for Caroline, who had continued to binge and purge through the years, we were currently not exactly sure what was going on in her world.

Jenae broke the silence. “That’s good news…right?”

“It is,” Caroline whispered.

I have never pretended to understand the wiring of the brain of a person with an eating disorder. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m not, I don’t think about food. Pretty simple. I don’t think that working in a job that focused on physical appearance could help any issues with self-image, and my years with Caroline had educated me on the real suffering that took place in her every waking hour. From what I could guess, she suffered a lifelong hatred of her body and struggled to gain a healthy relationship with that which she must have in order to live: food. Alongside her, our Virginia struggled with her own relationship with food. The comfort she found in food created some angst and health issues in a different way.