our dining-room table. No, this wasn’t a bridge game. The dainty teacups and little cakes and cookies were a bit deceiving. But a pile of brightly colored chips in the center of the lace tablecloth gave away the real game. And so did the bland poker faces of the women sitting around the table.
Bluffing. I knew the look. I’d seen it on Eddie’s face often enough these last couple of years. “Sure, deal me in.” Patting my purse that bulged with quarter tips, I slid onto a chair between Grandma and Jenna.
And memories filtered through my mind. Grandma had taught me how to play this game with my dolls during tea-time. How well could I remember her lessons? Apparently pretty well. A couple of hours later, I pushed back from the table, my pot sliding toward the edge. I’d done well. Real well.
Or they’d let me win out of pity. But I was getting as good at spotting pity as I was at recognizing bluffing. And their resentful faces, flushed from the tea and the game, told me they didn’t pity me now. I stood, swaying a bit. After the first sip, I’d discovered this tea wasn’t simply brewed. It was laced heavily with rum.
“Are you okay?” Jenna asked. “She always got sick whenever we used to drink,” she shared with our mothers.
I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t remember and realize she was right. And here I thought I’d stopped drinking because I’d lost my virginity to Eddie the last time I’d gotten drunk. And like a good, God-fearing Catholic girl I had intended to wait for marriage. I really had. But I think it’s kinda like that chicken-and-egg thing, because I probably wouldn’t have married Eddie if I hadn’t had premarital sex with him and gotten pregnant. Love aside, I’d been too young.
“Are you getting sick?” Mom asked, her blue eyes narrowing as she studied me.
“No, I’m fine.” If I kept repeating it, I’d believe it. “I got another job today and won the pot.” And maybe I could rebuild my friendship with Jenna, too. Life really was good.
“The girls’ll be home soon from school,” Mom reminded me. The public-school bus dropped them right in front of the house.
They couldn’t see me like this. They wouldn’t understand their mother being drunk. I didn’t understand their mother being drunk. Once I’d known it wasn’t just tea, I should have stopped drinking. I should have been the responsible one…as I’d been for the last eleven years.
I’d lapsed. And even while the rum and almond cookies roiled through my stomach, I didn’t really regret joining the game. And I really didn’t want it to end.
Since they’d started their new school a couple of weeks ago, if I wasn’t working at the VFW, I’d made a point of being home when Amber and Shelby got off the bus. I wanted to make sure they settled in, made friends and that nothing had gone wrong during their day. I hated the days I wasn’t there; they’d already lost the attention of one parent as he wallowed in debt and his affair. They couldn’t afford to lose me. Guilt settled heavily on my shoulders.
Mrs. O’Brien, voice soft, spoke close to her daughter’s ear. After a second, Jenna sighed and nodded. “If you promise not to puke in the car, you can come along to an appointment with me,” she offered, no doubt at her mother’s urging, “that’ll give you an idea of what I do, so you understand what you’ll have to do when you start working for me Monday morning.”
“I really should…”
“Heck, go along,” Grandma urged. “This morning I promised to show the girls a few card tricks when they got home. Obviously I taught you well.” Behind her cat’s-eye glasses, her left eye closed in a wink. Had she let me win? She was so good to me, to my girls, too.
I wasn’t the only adult in my children’s lives. Grandma, Daddy, and even my mother were great with them, loved and lavished attention on them. Wasn’t the saying that it took a village? I winked back. “Thanks, Gram. You sure did teach me well.”
Swaying on my feet, I turned toward Jenna, not too proud to accept her offer. “You’re going to work?”
“Doing a re-fi for Lorraine. She runs the beauty shop around the corner from your pop’s store. Come along.”
I could savor my little buzz a while longer. And talk to Jenna some more. Eleven years was too long without her, without her brutal honesty. “Gram, you really don’t mind watching the girls?”
She shook her head, jostling her blue curls. “Go, have fun.”
“We won’t be long,” Jenna offered as she vaulted to her feet. I envied her balance and energy.
“Bring along your winnings,” Mom chimed in. “Maybe Lorraine can do something with your hair.” Leave it to Mom to sober me up. Just like having a boy, I bet she thought that having nicer hair might have kept Eddie from straying.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Jenna tugged me toward the door. “She still gets to you.”
I sighed. “Yup, 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.”
