Vanity Insanity

by Mary Kay Leatherman

  I could see the breath spraying from the mouths of the kids under the streetlight, clouds of conversation filling the fall air. They were definitely planning. A few basketballs bounced as they talked. Several kids were on their bikes.

  “We can’t play Capture the Flag. The best places to hide the flag are down by the creek.” The same voice quickly moved to another subject. “How about Kick the Can or German Flashlight?” The voice belonged to the tallest silhouette, whose face became clearer the closer we got to the group. Will had the dark Mangiamelli features that impressed any girl around him. His height, looks, and strong voice gave him the commanding presence that made people want to follow him.

  Another voice chimed in. “Hey, A.C. What are you d-d-doing here?” The question came from Stinky Morrow, a kid who was a few years younger than us, but his inferiority never kept him from hanging around the older boys all the time. Stinky was sometimes annoying, but we always felt something was missing if he wasn’t hanging around. Stinky stuttered.

  “We miss you, A.C.” No one laughed as the slightly overweight eight-year-old girl came up and gave A.C. a big, long hug. Hope Webber was the second daughter of Ruth and Ed Webber.

  “Hey, Hope, I miss you, too,” A.C. said as she continued to hug him.

  “Let him go, Hope!” This time the voice, which had a nasal and obnoxious edge to it, was that of Hope’s little sister Lovey. Ruth and Ed Webber had a clear plan in naming their children. The very religious couple felt that Faith, Hope, and Love were beautiful names for the three daughters of whom they were so proud. The three little Webber girls had very dark hair with blue eyes and freckles on very fair skin. A knockout final look, if you ask me. A few years later, Robert was born. The Webber plan became a little less clear at that point, but the Webbers remained proud of their clan. Lovey, the third daughter, through her very vibrant and rather flamboyant personality, was able to transform the religious intentions of her name into something of a parody. At the very end of the hippie era, “Lovey” took on a different flavor. Lovey would constantly remind us of how she felt about herself, usually twirling her hair as she canted, “Faith, Hope, and Love…and the greatest of these is Love!”

  That night under the streetlight, with one hand on her hip, Lovey tilted her head and said, “You can’t go around hugging every cute boy you see.”

  “Lovey!” Hope retorted. “Be nice.”

  “Hope, you can hug me any time you feel like it.” A.C. Perelman was a complex kid. This not-really-black and not-really-white kid lived in a world that asked he be clearly labeled. The waters muddied as you threw religion and socioeconomic factors into the pot. A.C. would always say, “At least I don’t have a split personality.”

  Arthur Charles Perelman was born in the same year I was born, when his parents still lived next door to our house. He and his little sister, Elizabeth, had been among the neighborhood gang until a year ago when his parents decided to move to a bigger house. An older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, moved into the Perelmans’ old house and kept to themselves. Evelyn and Howard Perelman agreed to stay in touch as they moved closer to the downtown area and transferred their children into Brownell Talbot, a private school in the Dundee area. Both Howard and Evelyn were extremely bright and had met at Harvard getting their doctorates, Evelyn in medicine and Howard in business. Financially, they had outgrown our humble neighborhood, though they struggled to leave it, not quite knowing the best environment in which their two uniquely defined children could thrive.

  “Hey, Will. My cousin T-T-Theresa is spending the night at your house tonight. Lucy, Marty, and Theresa are having a slumber party or something.” Theresa’s aunt Sheila was my neighbor and Stinky Morrow’s mother, who seemed to be in a perennial state of pregnancy, with a few kids around her and one on her hip. Theresa’s family lived about six blocks from our little cul-de-sac in the Dogwood subdivision. The houses there were a little newer than the houses in our subdivision. They were still small, but the carbon-copied floor plans in Dogwood touted the dawning of the split-level house that grew to be a favorite in Omaha’s twenty-year era of Boring Construction. Split-level, raised ranch, whatever you wanted to call it, the guests of those homes had immediate options upon entering the doorway. Do I go up; do I go down? Maybe I should leave.

  Theresa lived in Dogwood, but she hung out in Maple Crest, and we were all too proud of that decision. Stinky’s comment to Will was really an attempt to get his attention or impress him. He must have sensed, as we all did, that Will had a crush on Theresa O’Brien.

  “She really is spending the night, Will.”

  “I think I know that, Stinky. Can we get this game thing figured out? I’m freezing.”

  The circle of kids was again interrupted as three figures walked from the Mangiamelli home. Lovey shouted, “Hey, Lucy, hurry up, we’re gonna play Capture the Flag. We need a few more kids.”

  Lucy, Marty, and Theresa hurried toward the group with hands in pockets. Will scowled as he muttered, “We are not playing Capture the Flag.” Will looked up and caught a glimpse of his little sister. “Wow, Lu, looks like you three fell into a humongous pile of makeup. Yikes. Must have been some accident.”

  Lucy ignored her brother, though he did have a point. She ran to A.C. and squealed in her scratchy voice, “Hey! This is perfect. This is the greatest! A.C.’s here. We almost didn’t come out, but we just did each other’s hair and thought, ‘Hey, let’s go see who might be hanging out on a Friday night.’ Good thing we did.” Lucy’s hair was covered with all sorts of colorful barrettes and ribbons. It looked more like a carnival than a hairstyle, though she seemed very proud of the new and almost trampy look as she tilted her head and said, “We’re staying up late tonight to watch Creature Feature. Dr. San Guinary’s going to make an announcement before Teenage Caveman.”

  “I heard about this. He’s announcing haunted-house kits you can order.” Stinky stepped into the center of circle as he spoke.

  “Yep,” Lucy continued, “and we’re thinking of having one before Halloween. You all can help if you want. We send the money we make from the haunted house to Dr. San Guinary. He’s collecting money for muscular dystrophy.”

  “Who’s she?” Stinky asked seriously.

  Marty stood with her usual solemn expression behind Lucy. Her straight, brown hair had been braided and finished with ribbons as well. As for her makeup, I thought she looked as though she had been hit a few too many times in the face. Theresa O’Brien was another story. She looked beautiful. The makeup had done what makeup should do. It accented her already striking features. Not even childish adornment could hide the amazing beauty of Theresa.

  “Where’s Faith, Lovey?” Lucy looked over at Lovey Webber.

  “She went to Cheap Skate with the older kids.” Lovey rolled her eyes and moved her head and shoulders in an exotic swish. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that Faith was off skating that night. I could learn to roller skate if it meant that I could look at Faith, the older, more mature girl that I found myself staring at too much. A.C. would catch me gawking and whisper, “Out of your league…”

  “Who needs her anyway? I know what we can—” Lovey stopped in midsentence. Her eyes froze on something as she looked past the group toward the entrance to our cul-de-sac. Her lower lip dropped. Her upper lip rose to scream; nothing came out. The group turned in the direction that Lovey was looking. The glare in our eyes from the streetlight above us all made it very hard to see the large shadow moving toward the group. I wanted to be brave and calm, but my gut did a somersault as my eyes tried to detect the large, lumpy body moving toward us. Why none of us ran will never be clear to me, but I was planning, as I’m sure Will and A.C. were, how we were going to attack this man—heck, maybe even kill him if we had to, to protect the ladies and youth of the neighborhood. I’m certain that everyone in the group, grateful for the safety-in-numbers factor and the close proximity to our parents in the houses behind us, was wondering if Johnny Madlin had ru
n into this same creature down by the creek.

  Once the man had moved to the point in the street where the light showered down, we all visibly sighed in relief upon the realization that the coulda-been-a-monster-coulda-been-a-killer who now stopped and looked at the group was only Mr. Payne. Corky Payne looked tired and confused as he looked at each face under the light. His eyes stopped on me and stayed there.

  Corky Payne, unkempt and unsure, carried a grief in his heart that came from his son Tommy’s tragic accident six years earlier. Tommy Payne and I were born on the same day back in 1961. On October 7 of that year, my mother and Patti Payne delivered healthy baby boys within forty-five minutes of each other. For Patti and Corky, this event was amazing since this was their first child delivered after years and years of trying to achieve a pregnancy. They were elated, and this may have been a good or bad thing for my mother since the two women shared rooms following the births of their babies. My mom was a newly single parent giving birth to me.

  Grandpa Mac shared with me that, though my own father was gone by then, obviously he and my sisters were there for mother and would visit her on the days she stayed at Immanuel Hospital. He mentioned that Corky Payne was up there every moment he could and kept the two ladies in stitches as he entertained them in his father-high state at the time. “He was good to your mother. Made her see that some fathers do stick around. Maybe caused her a bit of pain, though.”

  A few years later, Tommy Payne and I had little play dates, my mother called them. Though we didn’t look that much alike—Tommy had red hair and one of the biggest heads I have ever seen on a kid—the mothers loved to call us the twins. Tommy and I used to ride our Big Wheels all over the neighborhood. The Paynes lived behind us a few doors down, so the mothers would walk to the corner to meet and tag off with us following behind on our Big Wheels. Tommy had this loud, scratchy voice that sounded like Charlie Brown when he belted out gravel commands in his driveway. “You’re Batman and I’m Superman! OK?” He always got to be Superman.

  The summer before we turned five, Mr. Payne was backing out of his driveway. He had just seen Tommy in the backyard and didn’t know that Tommy had climbed the fence and grabbed his Big Wheel from the side of the house. Corky had no idea what he’d hit as he backed out to head to the hardware store. The Paynes drove Tommy to the hospital as fast as they could, and though the doctors did everything they could, Tommy didn’t make it through the night.

  Six months later, Patti Payne left Corky, and from that day on, Corky pretty much wandered. Some said he was a drinker, but Grandpa Mac said that Corky was doing the best he could. Corky stayed in his little house and did fix-it jobs here and there for people, but he mostly wandered.

  That chilly Friday when Corky came upon our group under the streetlight, not one kid snickered at the strange man who had singled me out.

  “You the Keller boy?” he asked me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Corky looked deep into my eyes. “How old are you now, kid?”

  “Eleven, sir.”

  “Eleven?”

  I nodded my head.

  Corky dropped his eyes and then his head, and then wandered back out of the cul-de-sac. Bummer baby bookmark. That’s all I have to say about that.

  Lovey broke the silence.

  “Well, are we going to play something or what? How about Sardines? We can keep warm, don’t you think?” Lovey elbowed A.C. and tilted her head. She was only seven or eight at the time, but I swear to you that the girl exuded sexuality in her every movement.

  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

  The 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, ba
rely 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!”