Taking Back Mary Ellen Black

“He loves the restaurant more, Mom. I heard you say that to him a bunch of times.”

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.