Free Vanity Insanity by Mary Kay Leatherman

we had gone to Mass? I believe you called it a receipt. And why do you think that the priests at Pius even care about your stupid sins?”
    “Just tell Grandpa!” Tracy got up and headed out of the house, leaving the earplugs on the table, throwing the radio, still playing, in her fluorescent, oversized bag.
    “You have to live with yourself!” I yelled. I went back to studying the back of the Sugar Crisp cereal box. In addition to the fun yet useless toy I would find in the bottom of the box, I could also cut out a forty-five record of Bobby Sherman’s hit “Easy Come and Easy Go” right from the back of the box. My mind was buzzing with all sorts of ideas, like how I was going to cut the record out when the box was still over half full. Should I cut the record out or dig for the plastic sugar bear first? Could you really play a cardboard record on a record player? I heard the basement door slam, shaking the table holding my cereal. My spoon was suspended in midair. I heard the muffle of a conversation.
    Ava.
    My mom.
    Ava.
    My mom.
    Ava sobbing, “What am I going to do, Marcia?” I sensed they weren’t talking about the weather, though in a strange way, the meteorological events that year had certainly started to wear down the adult community that I knew. Maybe Ava was barometrically frustrated.
    “She’s the thorn in my side, I tell you. She will drive me to my grave!”
    I heard my mother muffle a laugh. “Oh, Ava! Lucy will be fine.”
    Aside from this moment, my memories of Mrs. Mangiamelli were all of a well-oiled mother-machine of many children who, despite her stature, maintained a high position of power over her children in a very organized household. When I speak of the tiny houses on our street, I can’t stress enough the word “tiny.” Ava, in her motherly wisdom and driven adaptability, raised four very large sons and one very bossy daughter under a very tiny roof. With a floor plan quite similar to my little white house, the Mangiamelli home was a lesson in resourcefulness.
    While my mother maintained a business in her basement, Ava directed her husband, Louis, to build the frames of two sets of bunk beds against the cement walls of their own underground Boys Town. No one ever complained about the accommodations except during the colder days in the basement in the winter. With four twin mattresses and carpet remnants, the room served as a dormer of sorts that I found resplendent. Posters of the Huskers, The Who, Adrienne Barbeau, and Raquel Welch covered the cinder-block walls, warming the look of Mangiamelli cellar. The summer before, the boys had bought a gigantic
Jaws
poster that was cooler than snot. The four boys slept there year-round. Lucy shared a room on the main level with Grandma, the sewing machine, and a desk from which Mr. Mangiamelli did his bills.
    Ava’s order and resourcefulness went beyond the home when she told Louis that all of her boys would go to Creighton Prep High School for a fine Jesuit education. Paying tuition for four boys when the public schoolwas right down the street would surely be a challenge, so Ava went up to Prep and gladly filled a position in the cafeteria kitchen. Children of employees were given free tuition. Problem solved. With all of the order and control she maintained in her life and in her home and with her children, Ava was not one who was comfortable when something went awry. Case in point—that day in my mother’s shop.
    “This. This is awful! Do you think that my baby girl is turning into a floozy?” Ava shouted.
    I muffled a laugh. Lucy, a floozy?
Luuucy, you got some ’splaining to do!
    I slowly put the spoonful of cereal into my mouth. I knew that any noise I made in our tiny little kitchen would send a loud, creaking sound to my mother’s shop. If I wanted to run away, I would make it known that I had heard the exchange. If I ran, I might miss out on what sounded oh so much more interesting than the Sugar Crisp cereal box.
    “Even