Taking Back Mary Ellen Black

Waiting until the girls had gone to bed to have our fights hadn’t worked, apparently, not even in a house the size of the one we’d lost. Not that we’d fought all that often. I hadn’t wanted to nag Eddie, not the way Mom nagged Daddy. But I had to face the fact that I’d had a lot of resentment, even before the divorce, more directed toward the restaurant than the twenty-year-old waitress—and apparently so did my girls.

“I was mad when I said that, Amber. You know how when you’re mad you say things you don’t mean.” Liar. “Like when you call Shelby names…”

Amber’s lips quirked up in a smile. “Well, sometimes I mean those. I hate sharing a bed with her. She’s a hog, and she snores!”

“Do not!” Shelby protested vehemently.

“How would you know? You’re sleeping when you’re snoring. You can’t know what you’re doing when you’re sleeping!”

Heck, I didn’t know what I was doing when I was awake. There was no guidebook for how to handle divorce, nothing that applied to every situation and every child. My girls were smart. They deserved honesty. But they also deserved a father.

“Okay, girls, how about we visit your dad?”

“Where?” Amber asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Since I didn’t know where he was living, I had no choice. “We’ll go to the restaurant. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll have a girls’ day out. We’ll have lunch and go to the mall. I’m starting my new job on Monday. I need a few clothes. You both need some new shoes.”

“Shoes…” Shelby sighed, her eyelids drooping as she drifted off to sleep to dream of new shoes. She was definitely my child.

Amber studied me a while longer; I knew the cadence of crickets never echoed inside her head. “Do you want to show Dad your new hair, Mom? Do you think it’ll make him change his mind about the divorce?”

Had she been listening to my mother? I had to find a place of our own. Of course, a reconciliation was what she wanted. Until I’d come to my senses in the form of the foreclosure notice, it had been what I wanted, too, to salvage my family. But Eddie wasn’t my family any longer; my girls were.

“Honey, are you hoping…”

“I’m not, Mom, okay?” She reached out to flip off the light, but I caught her hand and held it back. Then after slipping off Amber’s glasses, I stared into her eyes, swimming with unshed tears.

“It’s okay to hope, Amber. It’s okay to dream. But dream about things you can get with your brains and your ambition. Don’t hope for your father and me to get back together. It’s not going to happen.”

“Because of that ’ho?”

My mother wasn’t the only one she’d been listening to; evidently Grandma had shared a new word with the girls. I bit my tongue to hold in a laugh. “Amber!”

“Mom, once he sees you looking like that—”

I touched a lock of the soft hair. “I didn’t do this for your father, Amber. I did it for me.”

And it felt good. It felt damn good to do something for me.

“We’ll go see your father tomorrow, and we’ll talk about setting something up so that you can see him more. That’s all we’re doing. Okay?” And a visit was long overdue. Eddie didn’t deserve them, wouldn’t support them, but they needed him.

She nodded.

“I love you, Amber.” I kissed her forehead and stood up to head for the door and the couch in my father’s den.

“Mom?” I stopped and grasped the door frame, my stomach clenching. What now? “Don’t forget about shoe shopping, okay?”

Oh, yeah…despite her brains, this one was mine, too.

CHAPTER H

Happiness

Although I didn’t want to raise any hopes in my children or my mother, I took extra time with my makeup and clothes. I had some pride; it was about time that I showed it. And showed Eddie what he’d given up… The girls. I wanted him to want them back, to want to spend some time with them. I didn’t want him to want me. Okay, maybe I did, but I didn’t want him back.

“Going to the restaurant today is a really good idea, Mary Ellen,” Mom said, nodding at my hair and makeup, the highest praise she’d ever given me.

Even staggered by her compliment, I had to clarify, “For the girls, Mom. Yes, it is.”

“Maybe for you, too, honey.” She really did care, did love me. “Good luck.” But she would never understand me.

“Good luck with what?” Dad asked on his way out the door to open the store. Jesus was back to help him with the Saturday-morning crowd, and I didn’t know who was more relieved—me or Dad. He bussed my cheek on the way out the door. “You look good, honey. I’ll miss you today. It was great having you at the shop.”

“It was fun being with you, Dad.” And despite the neighborhood gossips, I had enjoyed spending time with my dad. While I knew Eddie would never have the kind of relationship with Amber and Shelby that I had with Daddy, I wanted him to have some relationship with them, any relationship.

As I pulled the Bonneville into the restaurant lot later that morning, I realized I should have accepted my mom’s wish for luck. Luck that Eddie would be happy to see his girls, that he would show them that they’re important to him.

But as I parked in the shadow of the concrete building on the east side of Grand Rapids, I didn’t feel lucky. I should have called him, should have warned him. But then, wouldn’t it be just like the little weasel to have refused? He’d done it while we were waiting for the divorce. In fact, I could scarcely remember the last time he’d seen his children. And while I hated him for that, I hated myself, too. I should have done this for the girls sooner.

“Is Dad here, Mommy?” Shelby asked.

“God, you’re stupid,” Amber snarled. “Dad’s always here.”

The shadow of the building grew, swallowing me in the darkness. This, not some twenty-year-old cocktail waitress, had been my husband’s mistress and not just for the last couple of years, but for all eleven years of our marriage. A new hairdo wouldn’t make him want me, wouldn’t make him regret what he’d thrown away. I couldn’t compete with bricks, a brass bar and jovial customers.

I threw open the door of the restaurant and stepped out of the shadow. As the light washed over me, I realized something else D-day had done for me. I didn’t want to compete anymore. I didn’t want Eddie to act like a husband or a lover, ex or jealous. I wanted him to be a father, nothing else.

The Saturday lunch crowd wasn’t what it used to be. But then not much was. I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure who I was yet, but I wasn’t Mrs. Edward Nowicki. Still, the staff glanced up with trepidation when we walked in. Perhaps they expected a repeat of my hysterics on the day the bank had slapped the foreclosure notice on the house. The hostess, standing behind her podium in the foyer, smiled politely, looked at the girls and then back at me. Her pouty mouth fell open. “Mrs. Nowi—”

“Ms. Black. Mary Ellen’s fine,” I corrected her. “Trina, isn’t it?”

Her head bobbed, her fine blond hair bobbing with it. “Yes.”

“Is Eddie in?”

Amber snorted at my rhetorical question.

“He’s in the office, Mrs.—Mary Ellen.” Trina’s heavily mascaraed eyes widened with a hint of panic.

“I’ll go back and let him know he has visitors,” I offered. “Would you mind seating the girls for me? They can order, too. They know what they want.” A father. And I intended to make him act like one, if only for a few minutes.

“Mrs.—” The confusion over my name stopped her protest, and I slipped past her and down the hall, past the rest rooms to Eddie’s office.

The door was ajar, so I pushed it open the rest of the way. Well, so much for my hopes and dreams. Obviously Eddie’s dick hadn’t shriveled up and fallen off. All three and three-quarters inches of it jutted out of his pants then disappeared between the lips of the girl kneeling in front of him.

“Excuse me—” Both of them jumped.

“Don’t look guilty,” I said at their stricken expressions. Good thing I’d come back alone.

“Mary Ellen—”

“It’s okay, really,” I insisted as Eddie dragged the blond girl in the tight, black waitress uniform to her feet with one hand, while he struggled to zip up his pants with his other hand.

Obviously he still had the same reaction to me, new hairdo and all, that he’d developed the last couple of years. I could deflate him faster than anyone. “We’re divorced. It’s okay now.”

Now. Before it hadn’t been. When he’d first told me about this young woman in his life, I’d been devastated, hysterically heartbroken. Now I was just quietly bitter. The divorce decree made a difference. This wasn’t my husband getting a blow job in his office. This was my ex. I honestly didn’t care. In fact, I was amused by the blush on both their faces.

“Why are you here? I told you there’s no money.” He finally lifted his chin to face me, and I noticed a yellowing bruise around one of his eyes.

“Money would be nice,” I admitted. “You should help support your daughters—”

“I told you—”

The young girl shrank away, probably wishing in her embarrassment that she could disappear. Maybe she wasn’t a ’ho, to borrow Grandma’s new word. Maybe she was just young and stupid the way I’d once been. But I was older now…

“Eddie, there’s other support than monetary. The girls need your attention. You’ve hardly seen them since you left—”

“You’re staying with your dad, and I can guess how he feels about—”

“I’m going to leave now,” the girl said as she awkwardly tried to slip past me and into the hall. I sidestepped, allowing her to escape what she was probably sure would be an ugly scene. She’d been present the day I’d gotten the foreclosure notice.

“He feels like a father should,” I went on. “He wants his daughter to be happy. He resents whoever makes her unhappy.”

Did Daddy resent Eddie enough to have given him that black eye? Despite his age, Daddy could still be a brawler. And it wouldn’t take much to beat Eddie. Although his driver’s license said five-eight, Eddie stood only five-six in his stocking feet. I could tower over him with heels, and for some reason, I’d worn platform tennis shoes today. I could take him. And if he hurt my girls, he’d be sporting another black eye. “You should feel that way, Eddie—”

“About you?” he asked, his thin lips twisting into a sneer. “Is this for me, Mary Ellen? The hair? Wearing some makeup for once? You think that’s going to make me change my mind? You should have thought of something before you got the dye job. Blondes are more fun!”

A laugh sputtered out. I couldn’t help it. “You’re such an ass, Eddie. The saying is that blondes have more fun, but since that poor girl hooked up with you, she won’t know fun anymore.”

His face reddened again. Despite the bleached highlights in his hair, he showed his age. Forty, prime time for a mid-life crisis. He hadn’t realized all those big dreams he’d had, only owning this restaurant, and he was on the verge of losing that. “You were never any fun, Mary Ellen,” he accused.

I shrugged. “Not since I met you, no. I don’t want you back, Eddie.” I wanted me back, wherever I’d been hiding the last eleven years. I wanted fun, but before I could satisfy my desires, I had to make sure my girls were happy. And they needed a relationship with their father.

“Then why—”

“For the girls. I brought them. They—” Miss him? How? He hadn’t been around much before the divorce. He’d been busy trying to save this sinking ship “—wanted to see you.”

“They did?” His flush deepened, and I remembered that middle age was prime time for a heart attack, too.

“You okay, Eddie?”

“There’s a lot going on right now, Mary Ellen. Now’s not a good time—”

My hand clenched into a fist, but before I could swing, I took a deep breath, exhaled, closed my eyes. I had to keep it together. For the girls. “Just a few minutes, Eddie. Talk to them. Ask them about school, gymnastics…show some interest in them, okay? Fake it!”

He didn’t try to lie to me for once; he didn’t claim to have any interest in them now, as he was obviously preoccupied with something else. And I knew what a mistake I’d made. Without seeing him, they could weave the fantasy that he might actually care about them, but seeing him, seeing the blank, bored expression on his weaselly face, they would know the truth. Even Shelby who was usually so blissfully oblivious…

As he walked up to the table where the hostess was serving them chocolate milk, the girls didn’t meet him with bright smiles. And he didn’t wrap his arms around them, torn apart from missing them. I missed them while they were at school. He hadn’t seen them in several weeks and displayed no joy in seeing them now. Instead, he looked embarrassed, face flushed, and for a man who usually oozed charm, he didn’t look as if he had a clue what to say to them.

“I’m sorry…”

I turned at the meek voice near my shoulder as I held back from the table. “What?”

“I’m sorry…about…”

I waved a hand at the little blonde’s anxiety. “I said it was okay. Really.” And for me, it would be since I was free of Eddie. But it wouldn’t be for her, not unless she ran like hell. I thought about warning her, but I wasn’t that benevolent. After all, she had known he was a married man even if he’d forgotten.

“But you were probably expecting…”

I followed her gaze to the table where Eddie stood above the girls, and they carried on a brief, stilted conversation. My heart ached for the disappointment on their little faces. They wanted what I had with my father; that’s what had inspired last night’s questions. But Eddie would never satisfy their longing. He would never be half the man my father was. “What? A big family reunion?” I shook my head. “No, I wasn’t.” Too much had changed over the last couple of years.

“Eddie feels bad, really he does.” God, she wasn’t just young; she was stupid, too. “About losing the house and not having any money. It’s killing him that he can’t support them. He feels so guilty that he can’t stand to see them.” Her voice cracked. “There really isn’t any money, you know…”

A commotion drew my attention away from the stammering blonde to the foyer. Two broad-shouldered guys strode in, knocking aside some of the ferns I’d potted in brass urns. I winced as dirt scattered across the thick burgundy carpet. Eddie backed away from the table, turning toward the hall to his office without even a goodbye to his daughters.

“Eddie!” the guys shouted and stopped his retreat.

The blonde clutched my arm. “Oh, God!”

I refrained from shaking her off and peered closer at the new customers. “Dougie?”

The guy with the most muscles and least neck turned toward me, staring intently from beneath a bushy unibrow. “Mary Ellen? Mary Ellen Black?”

“Dougie. I haven’t seen you in years.” Not since high school. Dougie hadn’t graduated with Jenna and me, though. Instead, he’d been doing time for some offense or other.

“Great to see you. You’re looking great.” From the appreciative gleam in his eyes, I figured he meant it.

“So you got married?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m divorced now. There’re my girls—” I gestured toward where the girls sat, wide-eyed at all the goings-on. Plates of pancakes growing cold in front of them.

“Cute kids,” he murmured.

Even a hoodlum’s compliments swelled my mother’s pride. “Yeah, they are.”

“I’ve got a couple of boys,” he said. “I married Sue. Remember Sue?”

There had been about ten girls named Sue in every class I’d attended, but I nodded. “Give her my best.”

“Mary Ellen!” Eddie’s voice rose with impatience. Not that he seemed particularly eager to talk to his visitors, but I guess he didn’t want me talking to them, either.

“I’m sorry. You all have business. The girls and I will leave now. Say goodbye to Daddy.”

I hustled them out the door, not worrying about paying the bill or leaving a tip. Except I did stop near the ’ho. “You can do better,” I told her. That was probably the best tip she’d ever gotten, no matter how long she’d been waitressing.

The girls and I walked past a Lincoln Navigator parked too close to the doors, and headed toward the Bonneville.

“I didn’t like the food there,” Amber said. “Can we get something to eat at the mall?”

As they climbed into the back seat, I fought the urge to drag them into my arms for reassuring hugs. “Sure we can. Shoe shopping always makes me hungry.” And so I’d blow the rest of my poker winnings and leftover VFW tips.

“I don’t want to eat here anymore,” Shelby declared, her bottom lip jutting out in a pout.

“That’s up to you two. Whatever you want.” And it was. Eddie hadn’t requested any scheduled visitation.

“I used to want to go home,” Amber admitted. “Back to our old house. Back to my old school, too. But there’re some neat people at the new one. They don’t care what you wear or where you live…” Not like the wannabe high-class neighborhood where we’d lived. “Some don’t even speak English,” Amber said, probably impressed someone talked less than she did; with her shyness, she usually spoke very little.

Shelby nodded. “Yeah, it’s okay.” And maybe it was. But they deserved more. And somehow I had to get it for them…for all of us.

CHAPTER I

Initiation

“Remember that I warned you how crazy it gets around here,” Jenna said Monday morning, before I had even swung my purse from my shoulder. No laced tea had mellowed her this morning. “People will yell at you. I will yell at you. Tell her, Vicki.”

The woman sitting as close to the desk as her swollen belly would allow nodded. “She can be a miserable bitch, worse than me with these raging pregnancy hormones.”

“You regretting the job offer?” I asked. My gut clenched with nerves. I’d been a lot more comfortable at the VFW.

Jenna, in a crisp, burnt sienna–colored pantsuit, shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her. But her dark eyes wouldn’t meet my gaze, wouldn’t let me see if she cared if we resumed our friendship, and that gave me hope that she did care. Maybe she was scared to let me know it. “You regretting taking the job?”

“No, not yet.” Because I wanted this opportunity for employment and friendship.

“You might.”

I shrugged, too, but my shoulders retained all the tension I was feeling. “You might regret it more. I don’t have any experience.”

She nodded, but her hair stayed in the perfect knot on the back of her head. “Well, hell, it’s worth a try, huh?”

I hoped she was talking about the job and the friendship. “Sure.”

“Vicki will show you the ropes. I’ve got a breakfast appointment.” She was gone before I’d yet to swing my purse from my shoulder.

“Here, I lock mine in the desk,” Vicki said, grabbing the bag from me. Since the front of the building housing the mortgage office was a wall of windows looking onto a street that had seen better economic days, locking up one’s valuables seemed like a wise decision. But maybe a cheap lock on a metal desk wouldn’t be enough. And the computers that topped each of the two desks in the outer office were openly on display. Those windows needed blinds.

And the plain beige walls needed some color, maybe some paintings with vivid hues. The soft gray, metal desks could use some vases of flowers to spruce them up and relieve the commercial look of the office. But it was an office, not a house. I couldn’t decorate it. I had to work in it…if Jenna still wanted me to. “Was she trying to scare me off?” I asked.

“No, just warning you. It gets hectic around here. Jenna’s at it around the clock. She’ll work you.”

I dragged in a quick breath. Would I be able to handle the job? But that didn’t bother me as much as Jenna’s hours. Why did she work so much? So that she wouldn’t miss Todd? So that she wouldn’t feel so alone? I had the girls. Did she have anyone?

“She’ll pay you well. That’s why I keep coming back after the babies.” Vicki fixed me with an intense, blue-eyed stare.

I smiled at her, hoping to relieve the tension. “So you’re warning me, too?”

She laughed but didn’t deny it. “It’s my job.”

“Understood. I just need to make some money right now.” Enough to get me out of my mother’s house, to get away from the West Side again. To make a life for myself and my daughters… And after my brief stint at the VFW and the butcher shop, I was used to temp jobs.

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