already grabbed a mug, sloshed some thick brew into it and settled at the table across from her. Instead of turning on the furnace this early in September (in Michigan late summer was fall) she’d turned on the oven and propped the door open a little…just enough to take off the chill. I edged my chair closer to the heat. A glance at the teapot clock above the sink confirmed I had a little while before I had to wake the girls, so they’d get in the habit of waking up early for school. “Where’s the paper, Mom?”
She lifted last night’s edition from the vinyl chair next to her, but she never turned from the TV set. She had a thing for Matt Lauer.
“Thanks.”
She nodded, her tight curls refusing to bounce. She’d overdone the home perm again, frying her dyed-black hair to frizz. Her purple robe was threadbare, but she refused to give it up for all the new ones my brother and I had given her over the years. She was a creature of habit, of routine, from her extra thirty pounds to her frizzed-out perm. Maybe she’d stayed on the West Side, in the same house, all these years, because she was scared of change.
After all the changes in my life the last six months, I could understand her fear. But then during a commercial break, she began the lecture I’d heard repeatedly since moving home. And I knew we’d never really understand each other.
“It’s just too bad you couldn’t have given Eddie a boy. I’m sure he would have stayed then. A man needs to have a boy.”
I nearly dropped my head to the table. “Mom…”
“If only you would have drunk that tea. I did when I was pregnant with your brother, and look how that turned out…”
Despite the times I’d called Bart a retard 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
