Taking Back Mary Ellen Black. Lisa Childs

while we were growing up, I couldn’t slight him. He’d turned out well, but he and Daddy were not close and had never been. “He lives in another state, Mom. He and Dad never talk, never did.”

      “Your brother didn’t want anything to do with the store.” She sighed. “Your dad can’t understand that. He took it over from my father, and carried on the legacy.”

      Bart had hated the store, hated the smell of blood, hated being called the butcher’s boy, the taunt that had followed him through every year of school. “Bart had other obligations.” To himself.

      Mom nodded. “A wife and baby boy now.” Her smug smile told me that once again, in her personal scorebook, Bart had won.

      “And I’m happy for him, Mom. He has everything he’s ever wanted. His dream job in the city, and his dream girl.” Who had actually grown up right next door. Neither of them had wanted to stay on the West Side.

      Despite not knowing what my dream had become, I knew it wasn’t a fast-food job, which was all that the classifieds contained.

      Even though Matt Lauer had lured Mom’s attention back to the television, she made another remark. “I still think a boy would have saved your marriage.”

      I crinkled the newspaper in my fist, but couldn’t contain my temper. “Mom, if Eddie had wanted a boy after having Shelby, he wouldn’t have gotten a vasectomy. He didn’t want a boy. That’s not why he left. He left because he didn’t want me anymore.”

      Maybe he never had. If Daddy hadn’t threatened to grind him into hamburger, would he have married me? Back then, he’d assured me that he wasn’t proposing just because I’d been pregnant. Back then, he’d told me that he loved me. But that was a lifetime ago.

      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