Taking Back Mary Ellen Black

“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.”

“Grandma?”

She nodded. “Yeah, she’s a shark.”

Did I know any of the women in my life? Grandma and Mom played poker. And Jenna had gotten cheated on, too, just as I had. I would definitely have to pay more attention to my daughters, make sure I knew them completely. Then maybe, someday, I’d find the time to work on knowing myself.

“You in?” Mom asked as she expertly shuffled the deck of playing cards and dealt them out to the women sitting around our dining-room table. No, this wasn’t a bridge game. The dainty teacups and little cakes and cookies were a bit deceiving. But a pile of brightly colored chips in the center of the lace tablecloth gave away the real game. And so did the bland poker faces of the women sitting around the table.

Bluffing. I knew the look. I’d seen it on Eddie’s face often enough these last couple of years. “Sure, deal me in.” Patting my purse that bulged with quarter tips, I slid onto a chair between Grandma and Jenna.

And memories filtered through my mind. Grandma had taught me how to play this game with my dolls during tea-time. How well could I remember her lessons? Apparently pretty well. A couple of hours later, I pushed back from the table, my pot sliding toward the edge. I’d done well. Real well.

Or they’d let me win out of pity. But I was getting as good at spotting pity as I was at recognizing bluffing. And their resentful faces, flushed from the tea and the game, told me they didn’t pity me now. I stood, swaying a bit. After the first sip, I’d discovered this tea wasn’t simply brewed. It was laced heavily with rum.

“Are you okay?” Jenna asked. “She always got sick whenever we used to drink,” she shared with our mothers.

I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t remember and realize she was right. And here I thought I’d stopped drinking because I’d lost my virginity to Eddie the last time I’d gotten drunk. And like a good, God-fearing Catholic girl I had intended to wait for marriage. I really had. But I think it’s kinda like that chicken-and-egg thing, because I probably wouldn’t have married Eddie if I hadn’t had premarital sex with him and gotten pregnant. Love aside, I’d been too young.

“Are you getting sick?” Mom asked, her blue eyes narrowing as she studied me.

“No, I’m fine.” If I kept repeating it, I’d believe it. “I got another job today and won the pot.” And maybe I could rebuild my friendship with Jenna, too. Life really was good.

“The girls’ll be home soon from school,” Mom reminded me. The public-school bus dropped them right in front of the house.

They couldn’t see me like this. They wouldn’t understand their mother being drunk. I didn’t understand their mother being drunk. Once I’d known it wasn’t just tea, I should have stopped drinking. I should have been the responsible one…as I’d been for the last eleven years.

I’d lapsed. And even while the rum and almond cookies roiled through my stomach, I didn’t really regret joining the game. And I really didn’t want it to end.

Since they’d started their new school a couple of weeks ago, if I wasn’t working at the VFW, I’d made a point of being home when Amber and Shelby got off the bus. I wanted to make sure they settled in, made friends and that nothing had gone wrong during their day. I hated the days I wasn’t there; they’d already lost the attention of one parent as he wallowed in debt and his affair. They couldn’t afford to lose me. Guilt settled heavily on my shoulders.

Mrs. O’Brien, voice soft, spoke close to her daughter’s ear. After a second, Jenna sighed and nodded. “If you promise not to puke in the car, you can come along to an appointment with me,” she offered, no doubt at her mother’s urging, “that’ll give you an idea of what I do, so you understand what you’ll have to do when you start working for me Monday morning.”

“I really should…”

“Heck, go along,” Grandma urged. “This morning I promised to show the girls a few card tricks when they got home. Obviously I taught you well.” Behind her cat’s-eye glasses, her left eye closed in a wink. Had she let me win? She was so good to me, to my girls, too.

I wasn’t the only adult in my children’s lives. Grandma, Daddy, and even my mother were great with them, loved and lavished attention on them. Wasn’t the saying that it took a village? I winked back. “Thanks, Gram. You sure did teach me well.”

Swaying on my feet, I turned toward Jenna, not too proud to accept her offer. “You’re going to work?”

“Doing a re-fi for Lorraine. She runs the beauty shop around the corner from your pop’s store. Come along.”

I could savor my little buzz a while longer. And talk to Jenna some more. Eleven years was too long without her, without her brutal honesty. “Gram, you really don’t mind watching the girls?”

She shook her head, jostling her blue curls. “Go, have fun.”

“We won’t be long,” Jenna offered as she vaulted to her feet. I envied her balance and energy.

“Bring along your winnings,” Mom chimed in. “Maybe Lorraine can do something with your hair.” Leave it to Mom to sober me up. Just like having a boy, I bet she thought that having nicer hair might have kept Eddie from straying.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Jenna tugged me toward the door. “She still gets to you.”

I sighed. “Yup, sad but true, and now she has even more ammunition.”

We climbed into the Cadillac and peeled out of the alley just as the bus was arriving at the front of the house. “I’ll come in—meet the girls when we get back,” Jenna said. She’d never seen them before. How could we have gone from such good friends to no communication whatsoever?

Shame at letting Eddie take over my life had me glancing out the window, and I caught a blurry reflection of myself in the side-view mirror. I looked washed out, old. And I wouldn’t be thirty-one until January, the new year. Would I find Mary Ellen Black by then?

I turned back to Jenna, who, despite her several cups of tea, handled the car with expert skill. It was neighborhood legend how well the O’Briens held their liquor…until Mr. O’Brien had fallen down the basement stairs. Before then, drinking had never made him clumsy, just mean. Jenna’s hair curled around her face in shiny, chocolate-colored waves. Despite her divorce, her clothes didn’t hang on her. I didn’t want to be Jenna. I knew I didn’t possess an ounce of her drive or ambition. But looking at her now, I knew I wanted to be better than me.

“I have no office skills,” I warned her, worried how much I’d disappoint her, especially since she’d only made the offer because of her mother. I was more capable of waiting tables at Charlie’s Tavern or Eddie’s restaurant.

“Can you dial a phone?” she asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“And you took typing classes with me and were a helluva lot better at it. You’ll be fine, Mary Ellen.”

I wanted to believe her. I shifted my purse on my lap, the weight of my winnings lying heavy against my thighs. “So you think Lorraine can do something with my hair?”

She laughed. “Don’t let your mother get to you.”

The years rolled away. We were carefree teenagers again…or as carefree as teenagers ever were. At least, we had been more carefree then than the two divorced women we were now. “Easier said than done. I’ve gotta get out of that house.”

“How did you lose the house? You have Morty the lawyer represent you?”

Heat rose to my face. “Morty was all I could afford. And the bank got my house. The bank got my car, too.”

“So you have nothing.” Her voice held none of the morbid fascination of the other people from my past who had pointed that out to me over the last few weeks.

“Just my name. I took that back. Most people—” especially Mom “—didn’t think I should, that I should have left mine the same as the girls’. But I wanted it back.” And for once I’d gotten what I wanted.

“I never took Todd’s,” Jenna said. “I’d already crossed over from real estate to the mortgage company, had name recognition.”

“Morty did make sure that I wasn’t responsible for any of the debts Eddie had racked up during our marriage. You were right about him.” Even though it had taken years for him to become the loser she’d always thought he was.

She lifted a hand. “Wish I’d been right about Todd. It’s hard to see when you’re too close.”

“You owe Rye for making him tell you.”

“I gave him a black eye.”

“Your ex or Rye?”

“Rye.” She’d always had a bad temper. A rueful smile lifted her mouth as she slammed the Caddy to a stop outside the pink stucco building that housed Lorraine’s Hair Salon.

From that name, I concluded that maybe I wasn’t the only person lacking imagination around here. Lorraine, a heavyset, bleached blonde, settled the pink phone back on her counter as we walked in the door. A few heads lifted from magazines as a handful of women sat under droning dryers. A couple of the neighborhood women waved.

“Hey, Jenna,” Lorraine said, then turned on me. “Mary Ellen, your mama was right. That hair needs some serious help. Have a seat!” She spun a chair toward me and pointed to the cracked vinyl seat. “Sit. I won’t take all your winnings. But we gotta do something about that hair. Gotta liven up your look.”

“We have an appointment, Lorraine,” Jenna reminded the beautician. Despite the prosaic name of her shop, a gleam in Lorraine’s eyes suggested she had an imagination, all right. She was probably imagining me in some big-hair Dolly-do close to her own style.

“I just came along on Jenna’s appointment to understand what she does. But thanks, Lorraine.” For insulting my lank, uninspired hair that is, of course, the sole reason my husband left me for another woman.

“Sit!” she said again, hands on her hips.

“Lorraine, come on,” Jenna interrupted on my behalf again. “The re-fi. I’m going to save you millions or less.”

Lorraine snorted. “A lot less since I don’t have any millions to save. The papers you wanted are all ready and in that folder on the counter. So stop being a businesswoman for a minute and be a friend, Jenna O’Brien. Tell Mary Ellen that hair needs help if she wants to land another man.”

Panic pressed down on my chest, leaving me just enough breath to exclaim, “I don’t want another man!”

“Still pining for the old one?” Lorraine goaded.

I snorted now. A sound I hadn’t thought I could make. “God no, I just don’t want another husband.”

“A new do won’t get you a marriage proposal,” Lorraine began.

“But it might help you find some young stud for hot sex,” Jenna chimed in distractedly as she flipped through the folder of Lorraine’s financial records.

Hot sex sounded good. But maybe that was just the allure of the unknown. It had been good with Eddie for all but the last couple of years. But I don’t think I’d ever had hot sex. The possibility of getting some lured me to the chair. That and the rum still humming through my veins. I’d hardly settled back against the vinyl seat when Lorraine whipped a plastic cape around my shoulders. “So a new haircut can get me hot sex?”

Lorraine and Jenna laughed in unison, the husky harmony hinting that they’d both had hot sex at least once. “It’ll take more than a cut,” Lorraine said, walking in a circle around my chair.

I was glad she did that rather than spinning me. I don’t know what had me more worked up, the idea of changing my hair—or the idea of hot sex. But apparently Lorraine didn’t think redoing my hair would be enough to get it. No doubt I needed exercise, new clothes, new makeup, new attitude…

“A dye,” Lorraine said, bobbing her double chin in agreement with her own wisdom.

“Red,” Jenna said with the firmness of conviction.

“Red?” I gasped.

“You always wanted red hair.”

News to me. I’d had wants back then besides getting out of the West Side? “I did?”

“You wanted to be Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”

“I wanted to be a prostitute?”

Jenna laughed. “You never said you did, but we watched that movie a million times.”

“So, Pretty Woman it is!” Lorraine declared, slapping her pudgy palms together in gleeful anticipation of making me look like a prostitute.

I gulped, but I didn’t argue. Heck, who would be brainless enough to fight looking like Julia Roberts? The only drawback I could foresee if Lorraine actually succeeded was that I’d have to admit Mom was right. Eddie never would have left me if I’d looked like Julia when we were married.

Lorraine fingered through my hair with one hand while grabbing up a plastic cap with the other. “So, was he a cheater or a beater?”

I choked. “What?”

“Cheater or beater?” she repeated her question. “Like Jenna’s Todd was a cheater. So where’d you hide his body, Jenna?”

Obviously the O’Briens had spawned another neighborhood legend. But like the famous mob boss Jimmy Hoffa, Jenna’s ex would probably never be found. A smirk slid across Jenna’s mouth, but she didn’t look up from her paperwork. “I’ll never tell.”

“Cheater,” I admitted. The second I made the confession the drone of the dryers died, and a bunch of permed heads swiveled toward me.

“Who cheated, dear?” Mrs. Milanowski asked. “Your grandmother? Nobody’s that lucky at cards.”

“Her Eddie,” Lorraine explained. I guess there was no such thing as discretion in a beauty shop.

“He’s not my Eddie.”

“I heard about your divorce, Mary Ellen,” another perm-head piped up. “That’s too bad. It’s so hard on the kids.”

What about me?

“He was the cheater,” Lorraine supplied, in case anyone had missed it. She clicked her tongue in disgust. “With all the diseases out there now, it’s almost better if they’re beaters. Safer.”

Without lifting her head from her study of Lorraine’s business records, Jenna snorted. “You’re sniffing too much perm solution, Lorraine.”

“My figures can’t be off—I have a real good accountant,” she defended.

Jenna shook her head. “The math is fine. Some of your ideas aren’t. Getting knocked around is not safer.”

Lorraine crossed herself. “Forgive me. Your poor mama…”

“Is back at Mary Ellen’s house playing cards.” Jenna waved a hand in dismissal of Lorraine’s concern. “She’s fine.”

“What she put up with from your father…”

Jenna shrugged. “It’s over now.”

I shivered despite the warmth of the plastic cape. I’d grown up in this neighborhood. How come I wasn’t as strong and resilient as these women? I hadn’t pushed Eddie down the stairs or dismembered him. How come I just wanted to pull my lank, drab hair around my face and hide?

But Lorraine had my hair, yanking, clipping and spreading goo on it. An hour later, when she whipped off the plastic cape and whirled me toward the mirror, I concluded that I didn’t look like Julia Roberts at all. Probably the baggy jeans and Czerwinski Butcher Shop sweatshirt ruined that image.

But I wasn’t bad. The red was deep and rich, and it had conditioned my hair so that it flowed around my shoulders in thick, soft waves.

“That other woman. The one from the cannibal movies…” Mrs. Rewerts lifted her hand and shook it in the air. “You know the one. She has that color hair and Mary Ellen’s same green eyes.” The other women nodded in agreement and stroked my fragile ego with oohs and aahs.

“Julianne Moore?” I looked like Julianne Moore? She’d do. And maybe, so would I. I turned toward Jenna, who had put down her paperwork to study me. “What do you think?”

“What do you think?” she countered.

I shrugged and watched the rich waves dance around the shoulders of my bloodstained sweatshirt. “I like it.”

She nodded. “Yeah, me, too.”

And I knew she wasn’t just stroking my ego. Jenna wouldn’t do that, not the Jenna I’d known eleven years ago and not the one I was getting to know again. Maybe we would never regain the friendship we had once shared, but I hoped we could forge a new relationship. I really needed a friend.

CHAPTER G

The Girls

“Mommy, you look like a movie star!” Shelby shrieked before vaulting into my arms. Although Amber had come to the kitchen, too, when Jenna and I walked in, she hung back. A book clutched in her hand, she studied me from behind the glasses that had slipped to the end of her cute little nose.

“So what do you think?” I asked. Although only ten and a half, Amber was wise beyond her years. Maybe it came from all the reading, or from some recessive gene that had skipped Eddie and me. But she was one smart kid, and I valued her opinion.

A slow smile spread across her bow-shaped lips, and she nodded, her perpetual ponytail bobbing at the back of her head. “It’s smokin’!”

“Who’s smoking?” Mom asked as she lumbered up from the cellar with a jar of stewed tomatoes in her hand. She set it on the counter without taking her gaze from my new hairdo. “Lorraine is a little too wild for the West Side.”

Translation: In Mom’s eyes, I did look like a prostitute. Good.

“It’s pretty,” Shelby insisted, fingering a strand. “And soft.”

Mom sniffed. “Anything’s better than it was. Did you see your father when you came in? He went out to check his oil, and dinner’s ready. You’re staying, Jenna?”

“Thanks, but I’m supposed to meet some Realtors at Charlie’s, Mrs. Black.” She winked at me. “They give me referrals for free drinks.”

“You need to eat. You’re too skinny. It’s all ready to go on the table. Goulash.” Mom routinely fed the neighborhood, sending dishes to ailing neighbors, cooking for funerals and open houses.

Jenna’s stomach rumbled. “One plate, and I’ll get Mr. Black.”

“Wait, Jenna. You didn’t meet the girls.” I slid an arm around Amber’s thin shoulders. “This is Amber. And this little monkey is Shelby. Girls, this is—” Was. But I was hoping. “My oldest and closest friend, Jenna O’Brien.”

“Nice to meet you,” Amber mumbled, shyly but politely.

“How come you never came to our old house?” Shelby asked with a child’s inquisitiveness. “Weren’t you friends there?”

“I was really busy,” Jenna hedged. “But that’s no excuse to let a friend slip away.” Jenna caught my eye before she went outside to get my dad.

Dinner was a wild affair. Grandma was still suffering the effects of too much tea. And Dad and Jenna had taken a while and a few beers before they’d made their way into the house. Shelby was on, entertaining Jenna with all her considerable charm, while Amber sat back and watched everyone with amusement shining in her eyes.

“So you come into my store and steal my help away, Jenna O’Brien, and then you have the nerve to sit at my table and eat my food!” Daddy shouted, lifting his hand as if to cuff her, but just squeezing her neck with affection.

“If I don’t, you’ll keep shoveling it in until you explode,” she sassed back with a wink at the girls, who giggled at her bravery. Despite their having lived with him for a while, Daddy still intimidated them with his booming voice and gruff teasing.

But Daddy was the only grandfather they had; Eddie’s parents had died when he was in his teens. I’d always felt sorry for him because of that. Even as crazy as my parents sometimes made me, I couldn’t imagine life without either of them.

“Jenna’s right. You need to watch your weight. You know what the doctor said—” Mom began.

Daddy lifted his hand, waving away medical advice. “What does he know with that fancy education?” Obviously Daddy thought the eight years of schooling that he’d had before the nuns had kicked him out for brawling gave him more sense than a doctor who’d gone to college and medical school.

“Daddy, Mom’s right. You need to take better care of yourself.” Mom shot me a smile for my support. She really did worry about Daddy, loved him even after all their years together. Maybe that was why she nagged him; she was scared of losing him the way she’d lost her father. Could it be why she nagged me? Because she cared? No, nobody could care that much.

“Strong like bear!” Daddy growled, flexing his burly arms.

The girls squealed. He pounded on the table, making the plates dance. Grandma choked on an overcooked noodle. I thumped her back with one hand while I handed Amber a napkin for the milk she’d squirted out her nose.

“I’ve forgotten how much fun dinner at the Black house always was.” Jenna sighed with a satisfied smile, covering her empty plate with a protective hand before Mom could ladle another helping on it.

“You work too hard,” Mom tsked, nagging Jenna, too. “You need to come around more.”

Daddy spoke to Jenna, but he was staring at me. “Yeah, you do. You’re good for this girl.”

“That’s not what you said when you caught us drinking—” Jenna halted when the girls displayed wide-eyed interest. “Drinking all your chocolate milk.”

I leaned in close. “Smooth. Good save.”

She flipped me off under the lace edge of Mom’s treasured tablecloth. Growing up with three brothers had given Jenna some of her rough edges.

“Grandpa doesn’t care if we drink all his chocolate milk,” Shelby said.

“Of course not, he always has more in the garage,” Jenna teased.

“Stay away from my garage,” Daddy growled.

She laughed as she rose to her feet. “Well, I’m late. The meal was wonderful, Mrs. Black. Thanks for…checking the oil in my car, Mr. Black.”

I got up to walk her to the door. “So where do I report for work? And what time?”

“You can wait until after you get the kids on the bus. Then meet me at the office. I’m on Walker between the bakery and insurance office. First Choice Mortgage.”

“Your own place?”

“Satellite office. The broker’s downtown. You’ll have to run down there occasionally. Do you have a car?”

“Grandma’s Bonneville.”

“Is that the same one you used for your driver’s license road test?”

“Yes, the car and I know each other well.”

“So do we, Mary Ellen Black. You’re going to be okay.”

I nodded, emotion choking my throat. Standing on the gravel driveway next to her car, an overwhelming desire to hug her compelled me to throw my arms around her despite all the years we’d not had any contact.

She held herself stiffly in my arms, then squeezed back for just a second before pulling away. Had she sought me out only at her mother’s urging? Or, as a divorced woman herself, had she understood how alone I felt, how much I needed a friend now? And did she need one, too? I wanted to be that friend again.

“I missed you,” I admitted. “And I’m sorry.”

“Eddie’s your past, Mary Ellen. Forget him.”

I shook my head, tumbling my new hairdo. “I can’t. I have to think of the girls. He’s their father.”

“They’re great girls. If they came out that big, I might have considered it. But raising babies, having someone completely helpless, completely dependent on me…” She shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the topic. “You’ll figure things out, Mary Ellen. And if you don’t, you’ll get by. That’s what most of us do.” I watched her get into her shiny black Cadillac. If she were just getting by, I could handle that.

“How come we never see Daddy anymore?” Shelby asked as I pulled the blanket to her chin. Amber, lying next to her in the old double bed that had been mine, turned from the light to face me. She wanted an answer, too, but from the sorrow in her eyes, I guessed that she already knew.

“We don’t all live together anymore, Shelby…”

“I know. We’re divorced—”

“No, sweetie, just your father and I are divorced.”

“A divorce affects the whole family,” Amber said with her usual sobering wisdom.

“Our family got divorced?” Shelby asked.

Before I could think of a response, Amber answered. “Yeah, but Dad was gone before that. He’s always cared about his restaurant more than us, Shelby.”