Vanity Insanity (40 page)

I looked at the school and church and paused. Saint Pius X looked beautiful. I had heard about a few renovations through the years, but I had not been back here since A.C. and I moved the free pews to Vanity Insanity over a decade ago. In the midst of sadness and broken trees, I stood in awe of the changes made to the building in which I attended CCD classes and the church where I served Mass with a kid whose name I couldn’t recall. Saint Pius look different; it looked beautiful.

A.C. nudged me. “Let’s do this.”

Clumps of people stood quiet and serious, debating whether they should enter the church for the funeral or run to their cars and leave. Shocked expressions covered faces that would not look at each other. Had Theresa really died? Clumps of zombies slowly moved toward the door with A.C. and me.

Just inside the doorway in the hallway that wrapped around the church were two easels with large poster boards, each covered with a collage of pictures of Theresa throughout her life. Several grieving zombies stood in front staring at the pictures. Who were these people? A.C. and I moved toward one poster and looked at the biggest picture in the center of the collage. The eight-by-ten photo showed a beautiful little girl missing a front tooth with long, caramel-colored hair, shining with the glow of several months swimming at a pool. A picture of Theresa and Michael at her wedding was to the left of the center picture. A picture of Theresa without her wig holding Mary Elizabeth was to the right. I could see that the collage was not in any order, as though somebody had thrown the pictures of her life against the board, knowing that the different and mixed pieces would make sense to those who knew her. A black-and-white picture of three little girls in uniforms caught my eye. Marty, Lucy, and Theresa had their arms around each other, standing in front of a school gym. They couldn’t have been more than ten.

In the lower right corner of the poster board was a blurry photo of a large group of people in the front of the Mangiamelli house on Maple Crest Circle. I bent down and took a closer look at the poorly taken photo
of the prom of 1981. Satch, the tree, towered over the group. Everyone in the picture squinted as the wind blew hair and dresses. I found myself in the photo standing next to Theresa in her cream dress. My face was a blur since I had moved quickly, turning to look toward the house of the Wicker Witch just as the photo was snapped. There I was, thrown on the board, fortunate to have been a little, blurry piece of the life of such an awesome woman.

“What a beauty.” A.C. shook his head and took a breath.

More zombies stood behind us, so we moved to the side to let them see Theresa through the years, Theresa when she’d lived. As I moved, I bumped into a body leaning against the wall. Will Mangiamelli barely noticed.

“Will.” My voiced sounded odd.

Will looked at me with red, panicked eyes. “Ben? A.C.?” He didn’t look too good.

A.C. walked around to the other side of Will and nudged him. “Come on, let’s go sit down.” A.C. and I anchored Will between us as we walked to a pew near the back of the church and sat. I hadn’t seen anyone from Vanity Insanity yet. A.C. leaned in front of Will and looked at me. I looked at him with burrowed brows and shook my head. He moved his head toward the end of the pew. Corky Payne was sitting with his head down. Why was he here? His long, gray hair and beard stuck out in all directions. He wore an old brown suit that looked like it had been crumpled in the back corner of a closet and pulled out for today. His posture showed the pain he had been carrying, his lifelong suffering upon the death of a boy born on my birthday. I didn’t want to add to that pain. I positioned myself through the funeral so that he might not see me. A.C. moved to shield me from Corky Payne’s vision.

I looked around for any sign of the staff. The church was filling up, and I knew the chances of sitting together were slim. A few rows ahead of me were three rows filled with students from the school. Lucy had told me that Theresa’s oldest son was in the second or third grade at Saint Pius. Jack’s classmates sat with teachers on the ends of the pews, glancing down the rows for any sign of misbehavior. The uniforms were different from the ones I remembered students wearing when I was young. No longer
pee yellow or poop brown; the blue and red jumpers on the girls weren’t hideous.

The funeral Mass moved like a bad dream. The voice of the priest was monotone and quiet, and I found myself looking around at the people who had known Theresa and had come to say good-bye. My eyes moved from the people to the casket near the altar. People, the casket. People, the casket, closed and cold. I spotted Jenae and Toby across the aisle and a few rows back. Toby kept looking at the back door. Jenae was crying. What I can’t recall to this day is if any music was played at Theresa’s funeral. I don’t remember the music.

Several rows ahead of me stood a very tall man with a beer belly and really short hair. He had to be at least six feet five. He bent his head over during most of the service, visibly sobbing. The altar was covered with a flock of smocked priests. The priests I recognized looked old and tired. Not-as-Big-as-He-Used-to-Be Father Laverty, Used-to-Be-Young Father Gusweiler, Even-Older-Fart Father Dailey and Still-Cool Father Whelan, who always remembered my name, who always smoked so coolly, who never touched me inappropriately. Father Whelan had an oxygen tank at this side. A.C. leaned over to Will and me. “If a bomb went off, every priest in Omaha would be gone.”

The casket, cold and closed, was covered with red roses. Roses everywhere. If roses were answers to prayer, I wondered what prayer had been answered. An end to her suffering? An end to the army of cancer cells invading her body? Had the prayers of those who wanted her here for her children been heard? I heard the sniffling of adults crying all around me.

I spotted Caroline, Kelly, and Katie standing by the confessionals at the back of the church. I never did see Virginia and Patti. Across the aisle and three rows toward the altar was the Webber family. Hope with a doily on her head. Lovey and a man I assumed to be her brother, Robert. Next to Mrs. Webber was what looked like the back of Faith’s head. Long, black hair shone in the lights of the newly remodeled interior of the church. Was it really Faith?

Mac and my mother were sitting in front of the Webbers. I saw Subby and Michele Mangiamelli sitting in a pew with Lucy and Tom, Anthony,
Stephano and his wife. Ava and Louis. I looked up to the altar and saw that one of the altar servers was a young girl. When had they started allowing girls to be altar servers?

In the front row, I could see Michael and his children. Mrs. O’Brien was holding the baby next to him. They were listening to the sermon, which was given by a younger priest I didn’t recognize. I had never met Theresa’s father, but a man sitting next to Mrs. O’Brien took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien were burying their daughter today, something no parent should ever have to do. Grief and questions hung above them in the pew.
Why take her so young? Why not us?
I’m sure those same questions hung above Octavia as she buried her Teddy. Hadn’t Corky Payne asked those same questions every day of his life since Tommy died? Jane McManus, who was murdered near Ak-Sar-Ben twenty years ago, had parents who must have asked the same questions. The parent of Johnny Madlin, the father who forgave the murderer and the mother who didn’t, still asked those questions today.
Why my child? Why not me?

Sitting directly behind Theresa’s parents was Mrs. O’Brien’s sister, Mrs. Morrow, the sister she resembled, my former neighbor. Mr. Morrow stood next to her. He looked different. He looked much older than the Mr. Morrow I remembered standing behind Stinky as he blew out his candles on his birthday cake. The perfect father. He looked older than the man sitting in a car down by the creek with the Morrows’ baby-sitter. Had Mr. Morrow ever confessed that sin to his wife as she still sat with him all these years later, both of them carrying that cross together? Or had he held that sin secret from her and carried both the sin and guilt as two large crosses alone to this day? Mr. Morrow looked different in the pew next to his wife, burying his niece. He looked older and not as perfect.

The pain in my mouth and the grief in my heart took a back seat to an anger that had been lurking in my heart for years, though I hadn’t felt angry until this moment. I looked at Mr. Morrow, who had changed a naïve teen that day by the creek. I guess I had allowed that change. The perfect father was not perfect. His sin had changed that, whether I was the only person who knew that along with him or not. Mr. Morrow had failed
like so many other fathers. Like Eddie Krackenier’s father, who had failed and abandoned him, and like the “Father” Eddie had turned to after that. Had Willie Otey’s father failed him? Had Otey not had a man in his life to keep him from running from good and doing bad? Like the man who used to be married to my mother? The failure of fathers flooded my heart, and I felt an anger I never knew I had. I was angry.

Will interrupted my anger with loud, uncontrollable sobbing. He was losing it as the funeral ended. A.C. and I both grabbed him as he started to crumble to the pew. I wasn’t sure he would make it to the cemetery. Following the funeral Mass, we walked out of the church holding on to Will as we took him to my car. We drove silently to the cemetery, each of us staring off into our own private grief.

Hope found me at the cemetery that cold, gray, and windy afternoon. She came to stand with me. She adjusted the doily on her head and then patted my back as we watched the priest speak over the coffin. Hope patted my back. “Ben, you are my angel.” She patted and said, “I think Miss Octavia and Grandma will be waiting for Theresa in heaven. Grandma will have a big, sloppy kiss for her.” I took a minute to realize that the “Grandma” Hope was talking about was the dog we’d lost years ago, the dog that had lined our youth and our driveways with her presence. “Ben, I know a secret.” Hope stopped patting and looked at me. “Faith got a job yesterday. In Omaha.” She then held my hand during the service at the cemetery.

A.C. blocked me from Corky’s view as we stood close enough to the plot so that we could see the family gathered around the casket, suspended above the grave. We were far enough away that we couldn’t hear the young priest say a few words through the wind. Theresa’s plot, which had no headstone yet, was positioned on the far corner of the cemetery tucked on the corner of two very busy streets. Nothing about her death seemed right. Nothing. Hope nestled into me for warmth.

We needed the luncheon. We all needed to gather together after the awful funeral and the less enjoyable burial. Flavors of funerals. I had actually enjoyed Octavia’s funeral, which seemed like a celebratory closure to a long, beautiful life. Theresa’s funeral had left a bad taste in my mouth.
The flavor of the funeral made me angry and frustrated. We needed the luncheon.

I saw Lucy across the cafeteria, sitting at a table alone. A.C. and I waved and walked through the outdated room with acoustic tiles and low ceilings. Lucy waved back, her eyes red and puffy. A.C. and I sat down across from her. Lucy shook her head.

“She was supposed to be the poster child for hope. Theresa was so hopeful. And then she died. She really died. Not once did she talk about dying.”

“Probably better than the alternative, to mope and groan and have the same outcome,” A.C. said.

“Did you see the article on her in the obituary paper?”

Neither A.C. nor I had.

“
Woman Dies So Her Child Could Live
.”

“As if one line could sum up her life,” A.C. sounded as though he were talking to himself. Theresa had been sick for so long that I had forgotten that she’d delayed chemo for her baby. “Mother Theresa, Princess Diana and…Beautiful Theresa. Nineteen ninety-seven, not a good year. We lost some incredible women.”

“What am I going to do without her?” Lucy cried.

I got up, walked around the table, and sat next to Lucy. I put my arm around her. Lucy sniffled as she continued, “She and I used to play this one game. Long time ago. When we were in junior high. We would take her cousin’s yearbook, and we would each look over a two-page spread of pathetic class photos; and when we were ready, we would count to three, and on three we would point to the person who took the worst picture and then laugh our heads off. Every once in a while we would land on the same photo, but mostly we would just laugh at how funny people are. Looking at a photographer in their favorite clothes. In what they thought was cute hair. Really bad smiles or closed eyes. We just laughed.”

Lucy took a deep breath. We waited for her to continue. “A good friend will tell you that you have something hanging out of your nose or tell you that you have a long hair growing out of your chin.” A.C. looked at me
with raised eyebrows. Lucy went on. “But a really, really good friend will pluck the hair out. She was that friend. Who’s gonna do that for me now?”

A.C. put his hand across the table, and Lucy put hers out to him. A.C. said, “I’m here for you, Lu. Do you want me to pop that zit on your nose?” We all laughed out loud, and it felt good.

“I have to admit it, too,” A.C. said softly. “Theresa’s death hit me like a bullet.”

“‘It was a bullet that jumped up and bit you?’” I threw out a line to break up the tension.

A.C. and Lucy stared at me as if I had made an inappropriate noise.

I continued, “‘Oh, yes sir. Bit me right in the buttocks.’”

Nobody caught it.

“‘Never did see any money from that million dollar wound.’”

A.C. shook his head. Lucy frowned.

“Forrest Gump.
Hello?
Sounds like
a line from… Anyone?”

Theresa was really gone.

Lucy started crying again. “Why did God give Theresa cancer?”

“God didn’t give Theresa cancer!” A.C. proclaimed and then sat back.

Lucy stared at him. Strange words from an atheist.

A.C. continued, “People are born. People die. Some have car accidents. Some live to one hundred. Some die of cancer. God doesn’t decide to give cancer.”