Taking Back Mary Ellen Black. Lisa Childs

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.”