Vanity Insanity (29 page)

“Or maybe,” A.C. looked at Lucy in the mirror, “people were moving. Like they do every day. Some schmuck was moving across town, and you saw his van.”

“Hey, aren’t you two supposed to be in Denver?” Lucy pulled up the same chair that Virginia had just put away and sat down.

“We’ll be on the road in a half hour,” A.C. told her. “Lucy, you baby machine, I heard that you have three little girls now.”

“And they’re all perfect little angels, right, Ben?”

“If you’re referring to the last time you brought them all in with you…uh, yes, they’re perfect little angels.” I smiled. Lucy laughed. “Not a devil in the bunch.”

“Speaking of devils.” Lucy’s voice was serious and softer. “The newspaper had an article about that Saint Walter’s priest. Sounds like they settled out of court on all counts. I guess I can see now why that Eddie Krackenier was so creepy. The kid had no dad, and the next-best father figure was…awful. That explains all the stuff he did.”

After we were older and no longer ran into Eddie, we’d heard most of the “stuff” Eddie did through the grapevine. The “stuff” included stealing from construction sites, dropping out of ninth grade, attempting to rob an ATM, and dealing drugs. The Eddie lore was always cheap conversation filler whenever I ran into people from the old neighborhood.

“Remember when we used to always run away whenever we saw Eddie?” Lucy’s eyes had that glaze she got as she talked about the years on Maple Crest Circle. “When we used to always” was one of her favorite lines to throw out when we got to reminiscing. “Always” was an interesting choice of words in most cases.

“Remember when we used to always build forts in the back of the Morrows’ storage closet?”

We did this once, got in trouble, and never did it again.

“Remember when we used to always play Mass and pretend to give Nabisco cookies as the Eucharist?”

I don’t remember ever doing that.

“Remember when we used to always sing ‘Little Willy Really Won’t Go Home’ to my brother Will?”

I never did this. Not once.

“I never ran from Eddie,” A.C. told Lucy. “I was too tough. I do remember wanting to run from the one lady in charge of our youth
group at Pius. Mrs. Plankton, or something like that. She gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Mrs. Pinkerton,” Lucy corrected him. “I liked her!”

“Yeah, well, I remember her taking us caroling. Ben, remember, our moms made us go? Mrs. Plankton thought it would be ‘neat’ to go sing at an insane asylum.”

“It was a home for the mentally and emotionally challenged, A.C.,” Lucy corrected him again.

“Right, that’s where I want to drive a bunch of naïve fourteen-year-old kids to sing holiday songs. The patients all stared blankly at us as we pounded out a bouncy version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.’ That one guy in the back kept screaming, ‘Get the F out of here’ until they took him somewhere to settle down. I remember not being able to sleep that night ’cause I kept thinking of all those people trapped inside those crazy minds. There had to be a soul down deep in them. If our mothers only knew what the holiday field trip was like.”

“OK, on a lighter note,” I said, “remember in fifth or sixth grade when Lovey Webber cheated off some kid next to her on a quiz? She mouthed the words ‘number six’ to him, and he, probably thinking she was cute, whispered, ‘visual aids.’ Lovey was so mad when she got the answer wrong. The teacher asked Lovey what she meant by ‘fish blades.’”

“I remember,” A.C. pointed to me as he went on, “when you used to think that the Wicker Witch was watching you.” Lucy looked confused as A.C. started singing lines from “Every Breath You Take”. He laughed so hard his eyes watered. “Man, those were good times, and we didn’t have a clue. Those years on Maple Crest and at Pius were our salad days.”

“Salad days?” Lucy looked at A.C.

“The salad days!” A.C. was on a roll with his literary allusions. “Shakespeare’s Cleopatra talks about ‘My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood.’ Shakespeare was talking about the ‘green’ youth, when we didn’t have a clue. Our salad days were the Maple Crest years when we were oblivious to the problems in life. And when it was OK to laugh at farts.”

“You mean it’s not OK now?” I asked.

“I get it,” Lucy said. “The salad days were when the most important things on my mind were cute boys, getting a really good tan, and making sure my hair looked good. Now it’s about keeping my kids healthy, remodeling the kitchen, and making sure my hair looks good.”

I took A.C.’s apron off as he stood up and checked himself out in the mirror. “We sure ain’t livin’ in the salad days no more. Good to see you, Lu. Ben, what can I do to help you shut down so we can hit the road? And remember, no jokes about gas.”

“Wait, A.C., you can’t leave yet,” Lucy said as she stood up and grabbed the bag of conditioner I handed her. “Not until you tell me about your girlfriend and you becoming Jewish. My neighbor’s Jewish. Maybe you know her.”

A.C. looked at me, and I shook my head as I pulled out the bank bag. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell Lucy about the latest stop on A.C.’s religious adventures.

“Sounds like you’re a few links behind in the news chain.” A.C. looked uncomfortable as he started organizing my station. “Leah and I broke up a few months ago. And as for the Jewish thing, I did dabble there for a while…”

A.C. had practiced the Jewish religion for a few years. His enthusiasm to take in every aspect of the religion only grew when he met a beautiful Jewish woman named Leah, who fed him information on the Jewish faith and encouraged him as he questioned and explored. Their first date was to a Jewish wedding of her best friend. A. C. told me that when the bride and groom broke a glass at the end of their ceremony, he was moved to tears. “Brokenness in midst of great joy. Does that gesture not just capture the human condition? ” A.C. had lectured me at the time. “Shattered glass? The celebration of love? Are you following!”

Leah stood by A.C. in his quest for peace. I always liked Leah. I liked to call her Patient Leah since she endured his inquisition for years, supporting him in his insatiable quest for religion and faith.

“OK, fill me in.” Lucy sat back down. I reorganized my station as A.C. sat down in the pink chair. Most of the staff had left Vanity Insanity, and Virginia and Jenae were finishing their clients’ hair.

“Well, where do I begin? I did practice Judaism for a while. Here’s how it works. In the Jewish religion, a child traces his Jewish roots back through his mother. My mother was Catholic, so Leah told me all about the consequence of Emancipation to make Jewish identity a private promise rather than legal status, leaving it a complex combination of destiny and choice.”

Lucy squinted her eyes. She really was trying to understand.

“OK, basically the kid of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father has to convert, like anyone else.”

“So you converted?”

“I did. And I practiced…For a while.”

A.C.’s passion and hunger for knowledge and peace were greater than his passion for Leah. Question after question, challenge after challenge, slowly gave way to doubt and arguments, and, in time, Patient Leah became Not-So-Patient-Leah—though I couldn’t blame her—as A.C. shared his pending and growing uncertainty in the first principle of Rambam’s Principles of Faith: God exists.

In early 1993, A.C. hit a gigantic personal and moral wall as he ventured into the blurry and alarming field of atheism. My own theory is that Arthur Charles Perelman had one too many thoughts in his head, and something just exploded. The guy is one of the most brilliant people I know, but sometimes I think that he thinks too much. I knew that he was experiencing a crisis of sorts when he was barely fazed by Leah’s announcement that she was leaving the relationship.

“So you’re not dating Leah, and you’re not Jewish,” Lucy summed up.

“Pretty much.”

“Are you still a lawyer?” Lucy laughed.

In 1993, A.C. had walked away from the legal system and God. Not much else was left. “Lucy, I liked law school, but it turns out, I don’t like being a lawyer. The laws are black and white, and the world is gray and complicated.”

“Like you.”

“Like me. Every time I tried to promote justice, I found myself in position that supported the opposite. I’m taking a break from it all right now, Lu.”

Jenae and Virginia walked past the serious conversation. Jenae squeezed A.C.’s shoulder as she passed. “Y’all be good in Denver. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“Leaves them nothing to do,” Virginia shouted as they opened the door to leave. The bell rang.

“What does that mean? Taking a break?” Lucy moved closer to A.C. and looked directly into his eyes.

“It means that I have some pretty big questions. That’s all.”

“You still believe in God. Right?” Lucy sounded and looked like a little girl who wanted the tooth fairy to be real.

“Religion makes sense, Lucy. Really it does. People want to have this enormous religion security blanket of a super father figure, keeping them safe. I get it. It works for most people.”

Lucy was speechless. If A.C. had instead said that he was signing up to work for the devil, at least she could respond with anger, a slap on the cheek, or clear disapproval. If A.C. was saying what he was saying, then Lucy could not react at all.

A.C. looked down as he spoke. “Religion has its purpose. Really, it does. I guess I’m just sorting out what sometimes seems like, more or less, a mechanical acceptance of a lot of old folklore from people suggesting that people should believe this or that of God. Our world envisions what it thinks God wants humanity to do, and then people sit back waiting sadly for God to do it. And some think of God as a puppeteer, making us do what we do.”

Lucy sat down. I went into the back room to turn off the music. As Whitney Houston was singing “I Will Always Love You” from the salon’s speakers, I slowly turned down the volume and then turned off the system.

A.C. stood up and unzipped his backpack and pulled out his keys. “I get frustrated when I see some people feeling a sense of entitlement for their faith and their time worshiping. They feel that they should earn some kind of merit badge for following the rules.” A.C. cleared his throat and looked down. “I had a professor once who said that religion is the safest place for someone to hide from God…I get that.”

Lucy stared at A.C. as I started my unplugging routine.

“Lucy, I’ve got no problem if it makes a person feel better through his day thinking that there’s something beyond this existence; I’ve got no problem with that. It just doesn’t work for me anymore.”

Lucy looked down at her folded hands. “You don’t believe in God?”

A.C. sat quietly, the kid caught cheating on his spelling quiz. I started shutting off lights and checking outlets. “Way to go, A.C. Way to ruin our salad-days moment.”

“How can you not believe in God?” Lucy looked at A.C. and shook her head. “Do you believe in the devil? What do you believe in, A.C.?”

“I believe in you, Lu! Come on! Don’t be so serious. This doesn’t make me a bad person.”

“I…I just, I mean, I just don’t get it. How can you face each day if you really don’t think that there’s a higher goodness? Something bigger than we are? Something more than where we are right now?”

I knew that this whole A.C. crisis would not sit well with Lucy. Sweet and strong little Lucy. Her whole life had been a devotion to God and his goodness, which inspired and encouraged her every movement. I knew Lucy would struggle more with this news more than I had when A.C. had first dropped this bomb on me. I think I still felt that he would try on the atheist hat for while and then move on to learn more somewhere else, like he always had.

Lucy hadn’t expected this news from A.C. After all, A.C. fit in a “Good” box. Her entire life, Lucy had clearly and definitively placed people in boxes and labeled them appropriately. I wouldn’t say that she was judgmental as much as orderly. If she had to figure this world out, she needed clarification. Just pull out a marker and label the box. Ellen Richter—“Self-Righteous.” Mikey Beard—“Weird.” Eddie Krackenier—“Creepy,” now crossed out and relabeled “Victim.”

In the “Atheist” box, all was dark and bad and wrong. I’m sure Lucy thought that if you didn’t believe in God, then you would probably just become a serial killer or a pimp. Even atheists had options. But you would still be put in the “Bad” box. If Lucy had to open her mind up to the fact
that people were more complex than one label, she would most certainly struggle with the muddy fact that people and their lives, and their thoughts and their beliefs, are very, very complicated.

The silence between A.C. and Lucy was both painful and powerful.

I looked at my two good friends and realized that I was looking at two extremes on a continuum of faith—exact opposites. Blind and pure faith. True and pure curiosity. I envied them both for their absolute fervor, their valiant declaration.

A.C. moved toward Lucy and put his arm around her. “I still believe in goodness. There are lots of good things in our world. I’m just hoping to go out and find more of them.”

I stood at the door with the key. “Hey, I’ve got a concert in Colorado to get to.”

Lucy stood up and hugged A.C. She didn’t have to say it. I knew she was planning on praying for him.

A.C. knew that, too.

26

Octavia: Wash and Set, Board Meeting

Friday, January 14

1994

O
ctavia sat in my chair, looked up at me, and smiled a strange smile.

I said, “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this quiet.”

Octavia put her tiny, vein-laced hand in her big purse and pulled out a cell phone. “I’m connected.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Truman thinks he can keep tabs on me now. I’ll still do whatever I want when I want.”

“Like anyone could ever stop that.” I started combing out her hair.

Octavia placed the phone to her ear and pretended to answer it. “Saint Peter? Uh, yes, I will give him that message.”

“A direct line to heaven?”

“Saint Peter wanted me to ask you: Would there be enough evidence if you were arrested for being a Christian?”