Cheri Domingo—Ellen Friendship

Ellen’s friendship with Cheri Domingo combined everyday intimacy with frank counsel. She was the person Cheri turned to while trying to manage escalating tensions with her daughter, Debbi Domingo, and their closeness gave Ellen a direct role in both Cheri’s private life and the family’s most urgent crisis. Their bond was sustained through ordinary rituals—wine, long conversations, and evenings in Ellen’s backyard Jacuzzi—but it also required Ellen to say plainly what she thought Cheri was getting wrong.

Everyday Intimacy and Trust

The friendship took shape around regular, unceremonious time together. Ellen lived catercorner from Cheri’s new home, close enough that most nights Cheri could walk across the street. They opened a bottle of wine and talked in Ellen’s backyard Jacuzzi, sharing concerns that ranged well beyond parenting: Cheri’s dispute with Roger over child support, job searches, love, and her efforts to meet someone through personal ads and professional dating services. The routine offered a private place for Cheri to speak about the unsettled parts of her life.

Ellen also knew Cheri’s romantic hopes and history. Cheri wanted to marry again and remained an old-fashioned romantic, drawn to an ideal of a couple walking hand in hand on a beach at sunset. She was more circumspect about a younger man with whom she had had an on-and-off relationship for years, a relationship she had recently decided to end. Ellen had never met him, but she had once seen him slip into Cheri’s office. The friendship therefore included confidences about desire and disappointment, as well as practical conversation about work and family.

Counsel About Debbi

Much of their talk returned to Cheri’s difficulties with Debbi. Ellen had three teenage foster girls living with her and her husband; Cheri, impressed by how well behaved they were, asked how Ellen managed it. Ellen’s answer was concise: “Discipline,” she said. Her approach was exacting: she demanded to know where the girls were, and if one skipped class, she or her husband would go to school wearing a placard identifying themselves as the truant’s babysitter. The prospect of public embarrassment, Ellen believed, kept the girls in line.

Ellen saw Cheri’s approach as the opposite. In her view, Cheri had waited too long to establish discipline and had been too permissive. Cheri had given Debbi a long leash, remaining patient when Debbi broke curfew or failed to check in. Cheri believed the behavior was a phase and would pass; her optimism and reluctance to impose harsh consequences made the mother-daughter conflict difficult for her to confront. Their advice sessions thus brought two different ideas of care into sharp focus: Cheri’s patience and hope for reconciliation, and Ellen’s insistence that rules needed consequences.

Ellen’s advice was not abstract. She urged Cheri to use “Tough love” and “Consequences,” and told her, “Put your foot down.” Cheri’s uncertainty was bound up with the affection beneath the conflict. She had been nineteen when Debbi was born, and in happier times mother and daughter tried on clothes together at the mall or ate lunch at Pancho Villa. Strangers sometimes mistook them for sisters; the two would laugh, then delight in the idea that they were friends. Against that history, Cheri’s quiet insistence during arguments—“But I’m the mom.”—carried less force than the bond she hoped to preserve. Ellen’s advice pressed her to act as a parent even when doing so threatened the easy closeness she missed.

Ellen’s Intervention in the Crisis

The friendship’s practical importance became clearest after Debbi left home. Four days after a clash, Debbi called Cheri about a swimsuit she had left behind, not to apologize or make peace. The exchange became a furious argument on State Street, where passersby slowed to watch; Debbi told Cheri to get out of her life and slammed down the phone. The next day, Ellen contacted Debbi through a co-worker at the Granada Theater, asking that Debbi call her immediately.

Debbi expected Ellen to lecture her about how she was treating her mother. Instead, Ellen’s first words were, “You need to come home.” Debbi refused at first, but the two women’s recollections differ about what was said next; both agree that Debbi quickly understood the situation was urgent and that she needed to go at once. Ellen’s message drew on the trust and authority she had built through her friendship with Cheri, even though Debbi anticipated judgment rather than reassurance.

As Debbi rode to Toltec Way in a friend’s Volkswagen bus, her mind raced. At the house, yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the street and Aunt Barbara’s home, the big red barn; uniformed officers, detectives, and media crowded the normally quiet cul-de-sac. Debbi was led under the tape and walked through the confusion in a daze. The call did not explain what had happened, but it brought her back to the scene. In this final turn, Ellen’s role shifted from confidante and adviser to the person who delivered an urgent summons: the friendship that had helped Cheri face ordinary family trouble now formed the route by which Debbi learned that the situation had become catastrophic.