Taking Back Mary Ellen Black. Lisa Childs

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.