Taking Back Mary Ellen Black

Mom’s gaze stayed steady on Matt Lauer’s smiling face. “Maybe if you’d kept yourself up more.”

My hand relaxed on the paper. I was too tired and too scared about my future to fight with her. Even though Eddie had gained weight and lost hair, I was expected to maintain the face and figure of a supermodel? I’d never had one to begin with. “Mom…”

“Instead of working at the VFW, you should have gone back to work with Eddie,” she went on. “When you two worked together, you were close.”

That was the one thing she’d said that I couldn’t argue with. Even after Amber had come, I’d still found time to hostess at the restaurant and to help with the menu and redecorating. But after Shelby had come along, I’d wanted to spend more time with my children, and then we’d bought the new house.

“While Jesus is out of town helping his brother on their family farm, I’m going to be working with your dad,” she said. But for Daddy that would be more of a punishment than a privilege. He wouldn’t be able to sneak as many smokes.

Despite how much I’d hated working there as a kid—the blood and garlic seeped into your pores, bled into your hands until it stained. I found myself volunteering, “Mom, let me do it.”

“But Mary Ellen, it’s already been decided…”

I owed my father for putting a roof over our heads. “Come on, Mom, let me. I need to pay you back for everything you’re doing for me and the girls.”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “You’re our daughter. You’ve fallen on hard times…”

Obligation and charity. I fought the urge to cringe and gulped coffee instead. The back stairs creaked, and from the scent of garlic, blood and tobacco, I knew it was my father.

“I’d pay you to work with me, Mary Ellen,” Dad said, not even bothering to hide the fact he’d eavesdropped.

“But—” Mom began her protest.

“Come on, Louie.” My mother’s name was Louise, but Dad always called her Louie. “You could only spare me a few hours a day in between carting your mother around town. And I’m short-staffed right now. Jesus—” Dad pronounced his helper’s name the biblical way instead of the Spanish way “—is gonna be gone at least a couple of weeks. I need the help.”

Mom nodded, accepting what my father said as she always did, as I’d accepted all Eddie’s lies. But Daddy didn’t lie about anything other than beer and cigarettes.

From the earnest, pitying expressions on both their faces, I heard what had been left unsaid. And Mary Ellen needs the money. I couldn’t argue with that even though I really didn’t want to take his money. I’d only intended to help him out. “If you’re sure…”

Dad nodded, his gray, sleep-rumpled hair standing straight up. “I don’t expect anyone to work for free.”

But I wish I could. I hated taking money from my parents, hated relying on their generosity to put a roof over my family’s head. But it was either Grandma’s outdated house with the oven heating the kitchen, or a box on the street.

My first week on the job I thought Dad was running a special. But the business didn’t let up during the couple of weeks following that. Then it occurred to me that all the neighbors weren’t patronizing the store for the kielbasa and kishka. I was the fresh meat, the fodder for their gossip mill. Everybody wanted to know how badly little Mary Ellen Black had failed. Standing behind the meat counter in a bloodstained apron, I didn’t have to say a word. They tsked. They commiserated. They told me how I was better off without the SOB. And most of all, they rubbed it in. Maybe they didn’t mean to. Or maybe they did. Maybe it was just human nature to feel better about oneself when someone else was doing badly.

For instance, after her commiserations, Mrs. Klansky flashed pictures of her grandchildren, who are enrolled in private schools because her son-in-law is such a good provider. She also pointed out that her daughter wouldn’t have to work, but reminded me of how ambitious Natalie, the prominent lawyer, has always been. Now, maybe I should have been happy that Natalie has done so well, that Natalie doesn’t have to move back home with her mother even if her old man was screwing a twenty-year-old cocktail waitress. But my humiliation was still too fresh. And I felt a little bit like Mrs. Klansky had kicked me while I was down. So I wished that Natalie would leave her prestigious job and her perfect family and run off to live in poverty with her pool boy.

But I figured Natalie and her family were pretty safe. None of my wishes had been coming true lately, or Eddie would have been written up in medical journals for a part of his body inexplicably shriveling up and falling off. And that hadn’t happened. Where was the justice? Not that I’d actually seen Eddie lately to know my wish hadn’t come true. Despite his inability to support them, I had agreed that he could see his children. I couldn’t deprive the girls of a father, although he could.

But as Amber had pointed out, in one of her rare moments of openness, Eddie had never been around much, at least not the last few years. The restaurant had been his child much more than his flesh-and-blood daughters. Once, I’d admired his dedication to support us. Like my father, Eddie had called me his princess and had wanted me to live in a castle. That had been his excuse for working so hard to provide his wife and daughters with everything we deserved. The truth was, the restaurant had been his whole existence. Despite his twenty-year-old waitress, it probably still was. The risk of losing it had to be killing him. Like my marriage, this was another thing I had to thank my father for. For our wedding he’d given Eddie the money for the down payment to buy the restaurant from his employers. But I couldn’t be mad at Daddy. Unlike Eddie, he’d been involved in his daughter’s life. Granted, too involved, but he’d had the best of intentions.

As polka music filled the store, vibrating around the scent of raw pork and garlic, I reminded myself of that. “Daddy, when is Jesus coming back?” I pronounced it the correct way.

“Jesus?” Daddy asked, in the biblical way. With a sigh, I swallowed a Spanish lesson. If after years of working with Jesus, Daddy hadn’t learned, I wasn’t going to be able to teach him. Jesus had inspired other additions to the store, though. Chorizo and farmer’s cheese and fresh tortillas. Daddy’s store met the needs of a blending neighborhood, and his business thrived. Probably even when I wasn’t around for the neighborhood to wallow in my humiliation. Too bad my presence hadn’t attracted this kind of business to the VFW. I might have made more than a handful of quarters a night.

“His cousin Enrico just stopped by. I was talking to him out back.” And here I’d thought he’d just been sneaking a smoke. “Jesus should be back in three days.”

Sounded a lot like the homily I’d just heard the Sunday before. Going to mass was a requirement when living at home. To add to my humiliation, the girls had told Mom how rarely we’d gone before, only on Easter and Christmas. But the restaurant had been closed on Sundays, and between sleeping late and watching football, it was the only time that Eddie had actually been with his family. My time would have been better spent lighting candles to secure my future, as Grandma said. Figuring that at her age the end was near, she lit a lot of candles. Good thing Saint Adalbert’s didn’t have a sprinkler system, just a leaky roof.

“Don’t worry, Mary Ellen.”

I pulled myself from my maudlin thoughts. “What?”

“Don’t worry. As you can see, business is good. I’ll have enough work for you and Jesus.” Knowing Jesus worked circles around me, I doubted it. And I didn’t want it. The apron, the false sympathy of neighbors, the polka music, the raw meat and garlic smell of fresh kielbasa. I enjoyed the VFW more. Too bad Florence was coming back this weekend.

“Dad…” I was tempted. A job I disliked was better than no job at all.

“It’s fine, Mary Ellen. You’ll earn enough money here for your girls’ clothes and lessons and stuff. You don’t need any more than that.”

“What?”

“You’ve got a roof over your heads—”

As all the neighbors had chortled, little Mary Ellen Black was living with her parents. Yeah, it was better than a box. But it wasn’t my home. Heck, it wasn’t even Dad’s home, not when he had to smoke and drink in the garage. “I want my own house, Dad.”

“You said you couldn’t afford it, honey.”

“Not that house.” That house had never been mine, either. It had been Eddie’s. I had decorated it. I had filled it with the smells of home cooking and fresh potpourri, but it hadn’t been my dream house. Like the restaurant, that new multilevel house in the suburbs had been Eddie’s dream. I’d always preferred the character of older houses. But would I ever be able to afford one?

“Then what? You want another house?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe I didn’t need a house; a condo, an apartment, anything away from the West Side and my mother.

“Mary Ellen…” The bell dinged above the door, announcing the arrival of another customer. And so my employment from hell continued.

I hadn’t told Dad or Mom yet, but I intended the day before Jesus came back to be my last. I was passing over working at the butcher shop in favor of something, anything else. Not that I’d figured out my dreams…

They say a girl can dream? Not this girl. I can bake cookies, drive daughters to gymnastics and Girl Scouts and decorate a house like nobody else. Now that I had current experience waiting tables and providing customer service in a shop, I’d find another job. I had an interview down at Charlie’s Tavern, and if they didn’t hire me, I could always make Eddie give me back my old job at the restaurant. That was the least support he could provide; I’d certainly make better tips than at the VFW.

Mrs. Klansky returned for more pork chops and to kick me again. She brought photos of Natalie’s six-bedroom contemporary to flaunt in my face. The stark white color scheme inspired nothing in me but a need to grab up a paintbrush.

“So she doesn’t have time to decorate, huh?” I asked as I wrapped the chops, purposely picking out the fattiest ones.

“Well, she’s really busy…” Mrs. Klansky peered at her own photos.

“Can’t afford a decorator then?” What about a pool boy?

Dad snorted beside me, but amusement, not reproach, glittered in his green eyes. He might like the extra sales, but he didn’t like people kicking his little girl.

“All that white is the thing, you know,” she argued, all bluster.

I snorted now. “Ten years ago, maybe.”

“Well, at least she has a—” She stopped herself, not out of sensitivity, but because Dad had lifted his cleaver and sliced neatly through a rack of a lamb. He was the best butcher in town.

“I’m sure she’s much too busy to worry about a house, anyhow,” I said in a sweet tone. The same one she’d used when telling me that I’d surely find another husband, someday… Like I wanted another husband! Not!

I wanted a job, where people didn’t come in for raw meat with a side of gossip. After I rung up her purchase and she’d left, Dad patted my shoulder with a bloodstained hand. Although the health department now required them, Dad hated plastic gloves and refused to wear them. And as I could attest, the blood seemed to seep through them, anyhow.

“Why don’t you knock off early? Things are slowing down, and your mother mentioned this morning that she could use an extra for her weekly bridge game.”

More old ladies wallowing in gossip? I shuddered.

He laughed. “Mrs. Klansky won’t be there. And they really do seem to have fun.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had fun on my own. I had fun with my children. Although Amber spent most of her time in a book, she could be relied on for an occasion amusing comment, and little Shelby was a regular comedienne. But I needed my children to rely on me, not me on them. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

And that night I would tell both my parents that I wasn’t coming back to the butcher shop to work. After what I’d seen in my few weeks of employment, I probably wasn’t coming back to purchase anything from it any time soon, either.

The bell dinged again. “Take care of this last person and take off. I’m slipping out back a minute…”

“To check your oil,” I finished for him as he reached for his cigarettes.

“Don’t tell your—”

“Mother,” I finished again with a giggle.

“You two still do that,” said a familiar voice.

Any fleeting amusement fled. I could handle playing bridge with Mrs. Klansky better than I could handle this. Having my oldest, closest friend from school see me down and out. Jenna O’Brien. Jenna wouldn’t fantasize about Eddie’s dick falling off if he’d cheated on her. She would have grabbed up Daddy’s meat cleaver and taken care of that problem herself. Despite being petite and gorgeous, Jenna had balls and if her husband had cheated on her, she’d have his in a glass jar to warn anyone else from making the same mistake. God, I’d missed her.

“Still do what?” I asked like it hadn’t been nearly eleven years since I’d talked to her last…shortly after my wedding, in which she’d been my maid of honor, when she’d helped me into my dress and told me point blank that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Was she back in my life now to say I told you so? Should I have listened to her? Should I have had her help me back out of that hypocritical white dress and out of the church? She’d offered, and I’d turned her down.

“That thing you and your dad always do…” I caught the wistfulness in her voice. Jenna’s dad had died when she was eight.

I shrugged, still not meeting her eyes. “Yeah, some things never change. Guess it’s just a bad habit.”

“Heard you kicked your other bad habit.” Like on my wedding day, she was offering me the gracious way out.

Waddling down the aisle five months pregnant, I’d displayed little grace then. Why start now? And since I’d chosen Eddie over her, Jenna deserved to gloat. “Kicked him? I wish I had. But hell, no, I packed his bags so he could kick me aside for a twenty-year-old cocktail waitress. I actually packed his bags for him.”

And then, bracing myself for pity or triumph, I met her gaze. I didn’t have to guess what was in her big brown eyes, the amusement bubbled out with her laughter. “You packed his bags?”

“I thought he was going on a golf trip. Never saw it coming.”

She shook her head, brown curls dancing around her shoulders. “You saw it coming on your wedding day. You just didn’t want to face it.”

“So you’ve come to say I told ya so?” I got up the nerve to ask.

A trace of bitterness passed through her dark eyes. I’d hurt her all those years ago, and she hadn’t deserved it for just being a friend. She sighed. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Fun?” There was that word again.

“Naw, that’s not why I came.”

Enviously I eyed her tiny figure. Obviously she hadn’t come for the fatty pork chops. “So why did you come?”

“I was playing bridge at your house—”

“You were?” I had imagined a group of women closer to Grandma’s age.

She sighed. “Yeah, Mom suckered me in, and I had a minute. Anyway they sent me to get you.” No doubt she wouldn’t have come for me on her own. Unlike the other old neighbors who had wanted to rub my nose in my misfortune, Jenna hadn’t even cared that much…not after all these years. “We could use another person or two.”

“For bridge?”

She glanced toward the back door and lowered her voice. “For poker. You in? I heard you could use the money.”

Following suit, I lowered my voice. “They play for money?”

She laughed. “Hell, yes!”

Damn. Did I know Mom and Grandma at all? Apparently not. “Well…”

“Or would you rather stay here for all the neighbors to wallow in your misery?”

“You know about that?”

“I grew up only a few doors down from here. I know about that.” She’d had her own misery for the neighborhood to wallow in. Her old man hadn’t exactly died from natural causes, unless it was natural for a man to drunkenly fall down his own basement stairs and bust his head open. And then there were the skeptics who had always wondered if Jenna’s mom hadn’t gotten sick of being knocked around and knocked him for once…right down those basement stairs to the unforgiving surface of the concrete floor.

“So you coming? Or you love working here too much to lose the apron for a couple of hours?” Jenna. Eleven years hadn’t smoothed her sharp edges any, edges she’d no doubt developed to fend off the pitying pats of the neighborhood, for the poor little O’Brien girl.

Even after all this time, I could be more honest with her than I could be with my family…or sometimes, myself. I lowered my voice more. “I hate working here.”

“Figured as much. You try to get something else yet?”

I nodded. “I’ve got an interview at Charlie’s Tavern.”

“So you like waiting tables? Is that what you want to be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know what the hell I am now, let alone what I want to be.”

The amusement left, and concern flooded her eyes. “Ah, Mary Ellen…”

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I feel sorry enough for myself,” I admitted.

“And working here isn’t going to help that.” She blew out a breath. “And if you think it’s bad here, Charlie’s is the neighborhood bar. It’ll be worse there. I have a job opening. Mom said I should mention it to you.”

Jenna had always been close to her mom, even more so after her dad’s death. She was fiercely protective of the woman who’d been through so much. And she never disappointed her. If Mrs. O’Brien hadn’t told her to, Jenna wouldn’t have brought up the job to me. Probably wouldn’t have come to see me at all.

She hurried to add, “It’s only temporary. My processor— I’m a mortgage loan officer, by the way—”

Like I didn’t know it. Mom bragged about Jenna as if she was one of her own children. And with the amount of time she’d spent at our house growing up, she very nearly was.

“Yeah, I know. You’re doing very well.” And I wasn’t jealous, not like I was of Natalie. I’d never begrudge Jenna any of her success because I knew how hard she’d worked for it. She’d always been ambitious, like Eddie. Maybe that was why they’d hated each other; they’d been too much alike. Then. Not now. Because Eddie hadn’t ever achieved what he’d hungered for. Whereas even Jenna’s tailored business suit, a rich burgundy suede, shouted out her success as loudly as my mother did. She looked great, but she shrugged off my compliment.

“Well, interest rates are good right now, so we’re busy. And my processor, the person who handles all my paperwork to make sure the loan closes, is pregnant. She wants to take it easy. She’ll come back after she has the kid. But she’s as big as a house now and needs to kick back. You in?”

I blinked. “What? The poker game?”

“The job, you interested?”

“Working for you?”

“It’s crazy, demanding work. But you don’t have to wear that apron.”

I dragged the offensive garment over my head and tossed it on the counter. Yeah, it was temporary. I was becoming my own temp agency. Someone off with a hip replacement or a maternity leave, send in Mary Ellen Black. But I wouldn’t be handling raw meat. And hopefully I’d make more than quarters and hear a lot less pity over my divorce.

And maybe while her processor kicked back, I could figure out just exactly what I did want to be when I grew up. Hopefully, she’d be off a long time with this pregnancy and baby, because if I hadn’t figured it out in almost thirty-one years, I didn’t like my chances of figuring it out in six weeks. “Yeah, I’m interested.”

CHAPTER F

Friendship

Jenna nodded as I came around the counter. “And what about the poker game? You in?”

“Since they’re playing for money, I guess that depends on what you’re paying me,” I hedged.

She glanced around the small store; we were the only two inside. “Cash, or that creep might sue you for alimony.”

Just like Jenna, always thinking, even when I wasn’t. Just what the heck did go on inside my head? Only the orchestra of crickets singing?

“And he would,” Jenna continued. “Creep never deserved you.”

That was why Jenna and I had stopped being friends. Because of her and Eddie’s mutual animosity, I had had to choose between them, a choice I shouldn’t have had to make. Now it was clear that I shouldn’t have dropped her friendship. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, too proud to admit if I’d hurt her. But pain showed in her dark eyes. “You were knocked up, scared, and pressured by your parents.”

And she would know that because she’d always known everything about me. “Yeah. And in love. I really loved him. How stupid was that?”

“Cut yourself a break. It happens to the best of us.”

“Not you.”

She lifted her ringless left hand, but a faint indent marred the third finger. “I was.”

“Was not!” I ignored the pang of hurt over not being invited to her wedding. Why should she have invited me? We hadn’t been talking after my wedding day.

“Your mom never told you that?”

“She mentioned something once, but it was around the holidays and she was making rum balls. Mom’s never completely lucid when she’s making rum balls.”

Jenna chuckled and grabbed my arm, tugging me toward the door. “Mr. Black, we’re leaving for the bridge game.”

“Have fun!” my dad called from the back, a puff of smoke drifting in through the open door.

Jenna’s car waited at the curb, a black Cadillac. She clicked a switch to unlock the door, and I stepped over the leaves in the gutter to crawl inside. “God, I stink like the store. You sure you want me in here? I can walk.”

“Shut up and buckle up,” Jenna said as she slid behind the wheel. “You’re fine.”

No, I wasn’t. But talking to Jenna again after all these years gave me hope that I might be. After all, I wasn’t the only one with a newly ringless hand. I’d pawned mine to pay the cheap, neighborhood lawyer. “So tell me about your marriage.”

She laughed with no amusement. “I fell for a pretty face, a very pretty face.”

“That makes more sense than falling for Eddie. Nobody could ever call him pretty.” Thank God the girls didn’t look a bit like him. When we’d first met, I had thought he looked like Andy Garcia. Now he looked more like Danny DeVito.

She laughed again, in agreement, but no resentment flared in me. How could I resent the truth? “So he was pretty. Tell me more,” I urged.

“You know, Mom was right. Pretty is as pretty does. Never could figure out what that meant until it was too late. He was in construction. So picture the big, hard bod. Strong, silent type. Mom also says beware of the quiet ones, still waters run deep. I don’t know about deep, but he ran all around.”

“On you?”

She snorted. “Yeah, go figure. Guess I worked too much for him.” She’d always been so driven. Growing up poor had given her ambition.

“But he worked a lot, too. Out of town. Building houses.” She snorted again as she maneuvered the Cadillac through the back alley to my parents’ house. “Playing house was more like it.”

“So how’d you find out? Did he finally tell you?”

“Stupid ass had my little brother working with him—remember Rye?”

As a thirteen-year-old too small for his age. “Yes.”

“Well, Rye picked up on it. Told him to come clean. So he did…on Christmas Eve. Merry freakin’ Christmas, huh?”

“So you killed him, right?”

She laughed again as she jerked the Caddy to a halt behind my mom’s minivan. “I’ll never tell.”

“It’s me, Jenna. You’ll tell me.” It was my way of saying I hoped we could be close again, as close as we’d been when we’d told each other everything.

She stared at me for a minute, dark eyes cautious, reminding me that I’d betrayed her trust as much as her ex had. Then she sighed. “Yeah, I probably will. But right now, I’m feeling lucky. They were playing five-card stud when I left, and your granny was kicking ass.”