Vanity Insanity (44 page)

I looked up again. On the other side of the Norman Rockwell print were other interesting questions.

Why is the word “abbreviation” so long?

Why do they sterilize needles for lethal injections?

Can you be a closet claustrophobic?

Do cemetery workers prefer the graveyard shift?

If the cops arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

What’s another word for “thesaurus”?

If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.

I looked up at the face of the man above me, his eyebrows furrowed, his forehead filled with many ridges. He looked to be about sixty-five or seventy, about the age of the man who had been married to my mother. About the age of my father. The dentist focused on my mouth as though it were an object under a microscope. His dark-brown eyes held many years of serious focusing. I wondered if this man had any children. I wondered if he had a son. If he had failed his son.

When companies ship Styrofoam, what do they pack it in?

If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it.

The value of suffering? That wasn’t funny. We would ask for it? I looked at the Norman Rockwell print on the ceiling and found the little blond girl, who in each picture, top and bottom, was blowing a bubble from a big wad of gum. I looked at the dog, whose face looked forward in the top picture, ears blowing in the wind with great eagerness, but appeared tired and panting in the bottom print. The father had the same serious look on his face, top and bottom, the same serious focus. I wondered if the Norman Rockwell’s “vacation father” had failed his children. Had he made mistakes that disappointed them? I knew he must have.

“We need to move to this side at a different angle.” Gerilyn’s voice sounded far away. I moved a bit. I looked up at Dr. Hamilton and could see
in the deep ridges on his face that, yes, he had most certainly disappointed others in his life. He would have had to at some time. He had made many mistakes in his life. He was human. I wondered if this man’s son had ever forgiven him for his failures. Had his son ever seen the humanity in this imperfect man? I suddenly felt sorry for the man drilling my mouth.

If your mom is mad at you, don’t let her brush your hair.

If a book about failures doesn’t sell, is it a success?

Failure. Who hadn’t failed? Who hadn’t disappointed another to some degree? Forgiveness. Now that was an entirely different bird. Most people could fail almost flawlessly, flawlessly fail—but could not forgive. Forgiveness was not something practiced in the Keller home on Maple Crest Circle. I’d had a great role model in forgiveness denial. My mother couldn’t forgive the man who’d run out on her in 1963. She couldn’t forgive the Catholic Church. She couldn’t forgive my sister Tracy for clogging the bathroom with extra hair from her brush the day before Christmas. I’d learned from the best. I struggled to forgive my mom for leaving me in the business I was in because I wanted to help her, and then struggled to forgive myself for never leaving it since I’d had no idea where I was supposed to go. Yes, I was positive that Dr. Hamilton had failed many people. I would not go so far as to put a wager on if he’d ever been forgiven.

Failure and forgiveness flitted and floated on the ceiling above me. Failure and fires. Forgiveness and funerals floated and flitted. I stared at the focused father in Norman Rockwell’s picture. The focused and failing father driving his family home from a vacation on which he probably failed them all.

Gerilyn nudged me and whispered, “I’m going to help you up now. Just need you to rinse and spit a few times.” Her hands helped move me up in the chair. She smelled like heaven. She was even more attractive now than she’d been when I first saw her two hours earlier. She walked me down the hall.

“Your friend is here to pick you up. He’s been waiting for a while.” Gerilyn walked me to the lobby and pointed to A.C. What a great friend I had. I must have mentioned my appointment to him, somewhere among
the smoldering pain and the smoke blowing off my burning business. What a guy.

A.C. stood up looking serious. Even too serious for a root canal. I tried to speak around the rolled-cotton cigar fitted into my mouth, absorbing extra drool, keeping me from biting my lip. My salutations and thanks sounded like a muffled groan.

“Did you turn off your phone again?” A.C. sounded like a disapproving father I’d never had.

I wanted to introduce him to Gerilyn, my future wife. I needed to let him know that I wasn’t upset about the fire. I wanted to talk to him about the Miracle in Missouri. I needed him to lighten up. The mushy words pushed through the cotton.

“Oh, great. This is not good.” A.C. gave a half smile to Gerilyn and thanked her as he pulled out his cell phone. Gerilyn walked back to the receptionist desk.

“Whuuuh?” I asked.

“We’ve got problems, Ben. And you sounding wasted is not going to help matters. Follow me. Do you need to talk to the lady?” He motioned toward Short-and-Happy, who was looking at me. I was somehow able to communicate by sign language that I would call to set up the next appointment when I could speak coherently, when I would no longer be confident enough to ask for Gerilyn’s phone number.

“Give me your keys,” A.C. said. “I’m about out of gas after driving all over town trying to find you. Good thing Toby knew the name of your dentist.”

OK, A.C. was really starting to bug me. I hadn’t asked him to pick me up. The peace of my Novocain was wearing off. But because I wasn’t verbally or physically in a place to defend myself, I handed him the keys.

“We need to go down to the police station. What’s all this junk in here?” he asked as we got into my car.

I picked up the Morrows’ gift and the manila envelope and threw them into the back seat. I plopped down in the passenger seat and hoped to go to sleep. Had A.C. said something about the police station?

“The officer who questioned me Saturday couldn’t get a hold of you so he called me. Ben, you have some serious things to think about here. When did you and that Sinnot guy break things off?” A.C. started the car and pulled out of the strip-mall parking lot of Gentle Dental.

Sinnot? I hadn’t spoken with Sinnot in several weeks. A.C. was quickly trashing my whole escape plan.

“Ben, the officer mentioned that you would have reason to burn your place down if you were looking for a way out of a deal gone bad. Probable cause. What happened with you and Sinnot? You were the last one out of the salon on Saturday, right?”

I shook my head no.

“No? Someone else closed for you on Saturday?” A.C.’s voice was getting louder each time he spoke.

I nodded and attempted the word “Dunnay.”

“Jenae? Are you kidding me?” A.C. pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked. “Ben, you let Jenae close? You trusted Jenae with the keys to your business?”

I looked straight ahead.

“Ben, who hands his livelihood over to a woman with tight-fitting clothes and a pink stripe in her hair? Even if she is having one of her really, really happy days. What were you thinking?” A.C. spit as he was screaming.

I pulled the cotton out of my mouth.

“Ben, we need a plan here! The fire department has been working since yesterday to find the source of the fire.” A.C. hit the steering wheel. “Are you picking up on the fact that you just might be going to prison for arson? Are you following this at all?”

I nodded yes but didn’t look at A.C. He turned on the car and started driving.

In a calmer voice, he asked me, “Is there anything about the Sinnot deal that I should know before we go in there?” I guess my lawyer had taken over. Buddy A.C. had left the building, folks.

I shook my head no.

A.C. looked straight ahead as we drove quietly to the police department. I really didn’t have any feelings about the whole thing. I felt pretty peaceful in spite of his attack. Wishing I could go back to the chair at Gentle Dental and hang with my friends Norman Rockwell and Gerilyn, I refused to allow panic to enter into my mind. After all, a pretty good thing had happened today. I’d forgiven my father in the dentist’s chair today.

The father who left before I met him. The father who died before I knew him. The father for whom I paid for his burial. I had forgiven my father.

I was feeling pretty peaceful.

44

The Creek

Monday afternoon, November 10

1997

B
y the time A.C. and I arrived at the Omaha Police Station, the fog of my root-canal intoxication was beginning to lift. My peace was replaced by the unpleasant reality that I might be going to jail for a fire I’d never started.

“Just keep quiet. I’ll do the talking,” A.C. said under his breath as he opened the door for me. He looked up to a tall man with a mustache who appeared to be waiting for us outside of an office.

“Are you Arthur Perelman?”

“Yes, and this is Ben Keller. He unfortunately just had some major dental work done on his mouth, so…”

“I need to have you both come into my office. I have some news.” The man was neither rude nor friendly as he ushered us into his office. He cleared his throat as he shut the door and moved to the seat behind his desk.

“Take a seat.” The man looked at me and shook my hand. “Ben, I’m Eric O’Donnell. I’ve been working your case since the fire early yesterday morning.”

My case? I really hadn’t signed up for this.

“I just received a phone call from Kurt Taylor, the fire chief at the Omaha Fire Department. He and his team have been looking over the rubble of Vanity Insanity alongside three investigators from the police department and two men from insurance companies.”

Companies? I had only one company and a flawless track record. I wished I could speak.

“All groups seemed to agree that the fire started in the upstairs unit in a circuit box near a large pile of lumber.”

A.C. sat back and looked like he was going to ask a question when the officer continued. “The pattern of melting and charring suggests that the fire started inside the box rather than outside. Kurt’s team found a splattering of the copper wiring that indicates an electrical short followed an inflamed circuit, more than likely set off by the storm that night. I’m thinking an overload in the system caused a short in the system. I’m just guessing at this point, since that entire eastern wing of the Old Market lost electricity around that time.”

“So, is Ben good to go here?” A.C. was rubbing his hands back and forth on his slacks.

“Well, uh, yes. But officers from both the fire and police departments still need him to stick around for an hour or two to answer some questions. You’re welcome to stay with him. Did you say you were his lawyer?”

“Yes, I am representing Mr. Keller.” A.C.’s serious and professional demeanor was comical yet comforting as we moved with the officer to a different area of the police department.

As my lawyer and best friend, A.C. sat with me for the next few hours, translating my words here and there. The officer’s questions mostly pointed toward my motivation to burn down my business for the insurance money to be gained from such an endeavor. Was Vanity Insanity losing money? Did I have the financial security to move forward with the renovation project? What exactly was my relationship with Sinnot?

“Were you aware that Sinnot had filed for bankruptcy?” one officer asked me.

Are you kidding me?
Sinnot had implied the entire time we were in the “wooing” stages of planning that he would carry the project financially to gain greater control of the salon. So much had been going on for me personally in those weeks that I wasn’t myself. Usually, I would have asked for his financial information or demanded more control of the project. My anger diminished when I remembered that I had signed no contract. I was done working with Sinnot.

I began talking in the second hour of questioning, and I answered all questions with less and less of a slur in my speech and more and more confidence. I had done nothing wrong. The good news on several accounts was that my business was thriving, and bank accounts could attest to that. My financial contribution to the project and my capability of finishing the project—had I wanted to—helped support my case.

“I think that went well,” A.C. said to me as we walked down the hall toward the exit.

“You don’t have to use your lawyer voice anymore.”

“I’m serious, Ben. I was pretty scared for you. You have no idea how serious this all looked this morning.”

Regardless of the outcome, no one could take away the peace that I had found in the dentist chair earlier that morning.

A.C. apologized—sort of—in the parking lot about his abrupt behavior when he’d found me at Gentle Dental. He hadn’t wanted to see his best friend go off to jail for a crime that, at that point, he was not sure I hadn’t done.

“I’m starving,” I announced as A.C. started the car. I wasn’t sure if I could chew, but I knew that I needed something, so A.C. went through a McDonald’s drive-thru. I ordered two large vanilla shakes, and A.C. got a Big Mac combo. We needed comfort food. Neither of us had any idea where to go, so we sat in the parking lot of McDonald’s while he ate and I enjoyed my shakes.

“Who’s the present for?” A.C. asked in between bites as he pointed with a french fry to the gift in the back seat of my car.

“Stinky…I mean
Father
Stinky asked me to drop it off at his folks’ house. It’s a fortieth wedding anniversary gift.”

“The Morrows have been married that long?”

“I guess so.”

“When do you ever go back to the old neighborhood?”

“Never. But what was I gonna say? ‘Sorry, I don’t want to help you out’? Last Thursday his parents had left the funeral before he could get it from the car. He was heading out of town right after the funeral, so I…”