Vanity Insanity (6 page)

I can’t recall if we played Sardines or German Flashlight or just talked and bounced basketballs. Aside from the moment with Mr. Payne, I remember feeling really cold but not wanting to go inside since that would mark the end of another season with the neighborhood kids.

5

Octavia Hruska: Weekly Set, Going to Dinner

Friday, November 16

1973

T
he dread would always start slowly up my spine as I waited to be picked up for CCD.

During my elementary-school years, I spent two hours each week “learning to be Catholic.” The letters lined up together—CCD—scared me, though I didn’t even know what CCD stood for until I was an adult. I thought it was Catholic Children’s Detention, a place for unworthy children to be tested and to learn about purgatory as the divine spanking, common “misconceptions” about the Immaculate Conception, and other Catholic stuff like that. Although my mom struggled with the Catholic Church and its treatment of divorced Catholics at that time, my grandfather quietly encouraged my religious journey. When I asked Grandpa Mac his thoughts on the whole lurid CCD conspiracy, he laughed and said,
“Ben, I myself think that faith is more caught than taught, but that’s how it works here. You gotta go, kiddo.”

My sister Cheryl and A.C.’s mom took turns taking us to the Saint Pius classrooms on Wednesday evenings where A.C. decided that the devil himself would have cried uncle to get out of the militant sentence. One of the only memories I have is when an elderly priest with thinning gray hair visited our class and scribbled all over our board words regarding transubstantiation that I could not understand. When he was concluding his lesson, he asked our class in a quiet, holy voice, “Now, do any of you have any questions?”

A.C. responded without even raising his hand. “Who cuts your hair?”

Mrs. Perelman was running late the day I remember first talking to Octavia Hruska. Octavia had been a name my mother and Grandpa Mac talked about, but I had never really engaged in conversation with the Fremont icon. The day I had walked down to my mother’s salon, my plan was simple. I would do my best to look disappointed as I informed Mom that I didn’t think that Mrs. Perelman was going to make it and that I should probably just watch
Gilligan’s Island
or
Get Smart
instead of going to CCD—if that was OK with her.

“Come on in, Benny. You know Mrs. Hruska, don’t you?” my mother prodded me. CCD or an old lady conversation. I was being tested.

“Oh, yes,” I lied. “How are you, Mrs. Hruska?”

“Why, I’m just fine, Ben. Your mother tells me that you are doing real well in school.”

“Thanks. Mom, I don’t think Mrs. Perelman is going to make it tonight.”

“I’m sure she’s on her way, Ben. Did you know that Mrs. Hruska lives in Fremont, a few blocks from where I grew up?”

“Wow.”
Get Smart
was probably already starting. Maxwell Smart would be walking through all those doors about now.

“Octavia is meeting an old friend for dinner.”

“Old is the key word,” Octavia chided. “I haven’t seen her since high school. She read my husband’s obituary and sent me a lovely card. I called and asked her to dinner.”

“And you’re going to look fabulous.” My mother sounded sincere as she spoke.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I used to look a bit different in high school…Meredith asked how she would recognize me. Did I still have red hair and freckles? I said, oh no, I’d be the one with old hair and liver spots.”

Octavia Hruska made the drive from Fremont, a town just outside of Omaha, into town as one of her many routines that helped keep her looking refined and well-groomed. These routines would have been very foreign to the little girl she had been growing up on a farm outside of Fremont, Nebraska. She had been one of twelve kids, daughter of a struggling farmer with a drinking problem that may have impacted his financial failure.

My mom told me that Octavia’s mother had named her eighth child Octavia, possibly having run out of names for her babies. Maybe the unique name of Octavia Edith True helped keep her positive through the poverty and family shame of her childhood. Isolated from the town’s folk and stigmatized by birthright, Octavia had few friends other than her siblings. Her most loyal ally had been her beauty.

During a trip to the county fair when she was fourteen, Octavia attracted the attention of David Lee Hruska, the son of the wealthiest farmer in eastern Nebraska. The farming skills of his father, Wayne Hruska, barely matched his ability to buy and sell land. Because most of Fremont was owned by Wayne and his wife, Darlene, many people called Washington County “Wayne County.” The eldest son of Wayne made no effort to hide his interest in the True girl, who had blossomed since he had seen her at the last Washington County Fair. Octavia had been showing her prized sheep when David Hruska made claim to her heart.

As a young man, David Hruska had enough gumption, confidence, or whatever you call it to rise above the town talk and marry Octavia True, the poor girl from the wrong side of the Fremont tracks, on her eighteenth birthday. She held her head high as she made the jump over the tracks that not one person in Washington County could have predicted, and Mrs. David Lee Hruska never looked back. Octavia ignored the fact that she had ever been made fun of by most of the women who came to her garden
parties. On bridge night, no one could have guessed that she had never graduated from eighth grade. The only thing she carried with her from her childhood to her new life was her Catholic religion. She could always buy new clothes.

From the stories I’ve heard, I think I would have liked David Hruska. He died before I met Octavia.

That day in my mother’s shop, an older yet still beautiful version of Mrs. David Hruska still held her head high as she glanced in the mirror. “Marcia, do you think we need to do something with this side?” From the little black radio in the window, Carly Simon sang to her mystery ego case about his vanity. Her background singer Mick Jagger, notorious for his own escalades of vanity, chimed in with “You’re So Vain.”

I heard a door slam upstairs. A.C. interrupted Jagger and Simon when he called down to the basement from the top of the stairs in our kitchen, “Hey, Ben, c’mon. You better hurry up if you plan on going to heaven!”

“I’ll be right up.” No
Get Smart
. No more old-lady conversation. The slow dread began to race up my spine.
CCD, here I come
. “Good-bye, Mrs. Hruska. It was good to see you.”

“Have a lovely time, Ben,” she advised as she patted her hair in the mirror.

I headed up the stairs, knowing that once I saw A.C., the dread would disappear. I should probably give A.C. most of the credit for me learning anything about the Catholic Church since he always made the journey fun. If he didn’t make me laugh, he made me pay attention.

During the year that we were preparing to make our First Confession in our CCD class, I held the greatest fear during the weeks leading up to that first time I would walk into the confessional closet and sit in the dark, alone with my sins and my fear. A.C. held no fear, as he devised a master plan based on the information he had received from some savvy fifth grader, who had told him that Old-Fart Father Dailey was stone deaf. The fifth grader had told A.C. that Father could not hear our sins and would usually bestow upon the confessor some pretty minor penance. The fifth grader had tested the rumor by reporting to Father Dailey during one of
his confessions that he had committed adultery once, committed suicide twice, and had fought with his sister a few times. Father told him to be sorry for his sins and to say one Hail Mary and two Our Fathers.

A.C.’s plan was for the two of us to race to the line to the confessional of Father Dailey, avoiding the possibility of being directed toward one of the younger, nondeaf, and more-penance-heavy priests. I was happy about the plan and proud to have such a schemer for a friend. Once Sister Alleluia announced that we could go to the confessionals to make our First Confessions, the entire class raced to form a line outside of the confessional for Father Dailey. Apparently, the fifth grader had told several people his little secret.

After the other priests sat for several minutes in their confessionals, awaiting their first confessors, they each poked their heads out and looked to the line for Father Dailey. Young Father Gusweiler—we later added Uptight to his name—walked over to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed to his confessional. “Now!” My sins were indeed heard that day by a grumpy priest who gave me more than a deserved amount of penance.

A.C. and I ran to his car to go to Pius for another episode of “CCD in the Seventies,” a great premise for a reality show long before its time in which second-rate Catholics were sentenced by tired parents/CCD teachers to memorize prayers and rules. For what? Why, the prize was the experience. Every Wednesday we got to sit at another kid’s desk, who would then blame us public-school kids for messing with his stuff.

And maybe we did.

6

Mrs. Webber: Something “Fun,” Sports Banquet for Hope

Wednesday, July 10

1974

E
ven though the nation cried “ouch” during the national fuel crisis of 1974 due to the OPEC oil embargo, the crisis did little to affect my life that summer. The lines for gas were ridiculous, but they didn’t hold me back from wheeling around on my royal-blue, ten-speed bike every day.

That summer I rode several times a week to Brookhill Country Club, the neighborhood hangout. I hung with the kids on my block and A.C.—when he could get a ride to my house. We rode down to Ben Franklin Five and Dime for junk food. And as usual, I helped my mom out in our basement.

Around that time, I began to sense my mother’s limitations in running a business. She knew people and she knew hair, but she had never been good with money. I always knew that we “struggled” in the financial area; I can remember more than once witnessing my grandfather hand something to my mother in an envelope and quietly say, “You’re taking it. And that’s that.”

Several times a month, even during those summer months, Grandpa Mac would pick me up and take me to Saint Pius to serve Mass. The schedule I picked up each month from the sacristy announced days and times that I would serve. Daily Mass was offered four times and Sunday Mass five in our parish. My name popped up on the schedule about six times a month. I always picked up an extra schedule for Grandpa Mac.

That evening I sat on the porch in long dress pants and church shoes even though it was ninety-seven degrees out. Always, I made a point to be on the porch ready to go so as to avoid those awkward exchanges between Grandpa Mac and Mom. Long ago, whether one of my sisters told me or I had acquired special powers of tension osmosis, I became aware of the situation, as it were, regarding the Catholic religion in my home. The imaginary conversation between Mac and Mom would have gone something like this:

Mom: “I’m angry at the Catholic Church.”

Mac: “I can see that.”

Mom: “I am afraid that the Church doesn’t like me because I am divorced.”

Mac: “You had no choice.”

Mom: “I don’t think I should have to go through the so-called annulment process to prove my innocence. Why should I be the one who has to work so hard? He left me.”

Mac: “What about the kids?”

Mom: “I don’t know.”

Mac: “Let me show them the Church. They need the Church.”

Mom: “Just don’t talk to me about it.”

Mac: “I love you.”

So that’s how it worked. We all ignored the big Catholic elephant in the room. We all pretended that I wasn’t really going to serve Mass. I was just putting on the ugliest and most uncomfortable clothes that we all knew I hated and heading to sit on the porch. We just didn’t need to talk about it. That’s what it was like growing up in a not-quite-Catholic home.

My shirt began to stick to my back from the sweat trickling down my neck. Such suffering was offered to my grandfather, as I would do anything
for Grandpa Mac. I knew, for whatever reason, that it was important to him that I serve Mass. My trivial suffering was soon interrupted by a loud and off-key song walking toward my house.

“Grounds in my coffee, grounds in my coffee, and you’re so vain, I betcha think this song is about you, Ben!” Hope laughed loudly as she and her mother walked toward my porch. “That’s how Lovey sings that song. Everybody knows that it’s ‘Clouds in your coffee.’ Duh!”

“Let’s not say ‘duh.’ Can we think of a different word to say, Hope?” Mrs. Webber was holding Hope’s hand.

“Not really.”

Hope’s reply was genuine. It was not in any sort of tone, typical of girls her age. I agreed with her, though. “Duh” was pretty much the only word to use there. Hope’s comment was regarding what in time came to be known as “Loveyisms.” Loveyisms were the strange spin that Lovey put on lyrics. Hope’s little sister, Lovey Webber, was notorious for belting out her own erroneous versions of the most popular songs at the time. What damage Lovey could do to a song could sometimes never be repaired.

Hope smiled at me. “Hey, Ben. Guess where I’m going?”

“Uh, crazy? Can I come along?”

Hope’s head went back, and her authentic laugh made me smile. “Ben, this is serious,” Hope said. “I am going to a rewards assembly.”

Mrs. Webber chimed in. “Ben, Hope is being honored today at a sports banquet. She’s receiving an award for success in track at the Special Olympics. Hope holds the state record for the mile run last year. Your mom is going to do something fun with her hair.” Mrs. Webber was always kind and quiet. The only time I saw her mad was when little Robert went streaking toward the pool yelling, “Ethel, don’t look!”

“Congratulations on your award, Hope. You should feel really good about that.”

As Hope and Mrs. Webber headed toward the path to the back door to the salon, Mrs. Webber asked me the question that every adult had asked me that summer. “Hey, Ben, have you decided where you’ll go to high school in the fall?”