Mac's Week

Saturday          

“Let’s get us a man’s haircut,” Mac had said, walking down the cracked sidewalk with his son.  That’s what Mac called it to get Perry to go along without argument—a man’s haircut, as opposed to the woman’s haircuts he’d been getting at the salons and beauty shops in Louisville where his mother, Beverly, took him to get his ears lowered.  Leweyville, she called it.
Before they got to the door, Perry wowed at the old fashioned barber pole that rotated with a sandy, grinding noise beside the shop’s large front window.  He placed his small hands on it only to discover that the spinning part was encased in glass.  Mac remembered his own reaction to the barber pole when his father had taken him to Smitty’s for the first time.  He remembered his own tiny hands, fuzzy now in his memory, examining the commonly ignored fixture with rapt engagement. 
         Mac took Perry’s hand gently from the glass and walked him into the barber shop.  The place hadn’t changed in decades.  It had warped hardwood floors that bowed up in the center of the room and a roof that sagged in the center of the ceiling.  It was a well lit place, though, and the old man had been cutting the peoples’ hair in town for over forty years.  He was damn good at it.  He was so good he could cut your hair to compensate for hidden bumps on your head, or dents. 
There were two Smitties, actually—Big Smitty and Little Smitty, his son, although you could have called them both Big Smitty because they were each over six feet tall and as big around as an oil drum.  Little Smitty was sweeping up hair from around his own chair.  Big Smitty was wielding a pair of glinting steel scissors, deftly slicing away at an old man’s modest supply of hair.  The old man’s name was Barney Cooper, and he had sat on the school board sometime after the Korea and sometime before Vietnam.  Big Smitty turned from his work and greeted them with a smile.  Barney turned his head, too, just to see who had come in.
         “Howdy, Mac.  Is that’un yourn?”
         “Yeah,” Mac said, patting his son between his tiny shoulders.  They sat down in the vinyl, duct tape patched chairs that sat in a row in front of the window.  Perry’s feet didn’t touch the ground, which for any kid is enough to keep them entertained for at least two or three minutes.  Mac watched him swing his legs like out of step pendulums.
         “What’s your name, son?” Big Smitty asked.
         Mac bumped his son with his elbow a little.  “Tell’em your name, bub.”
         “Perry August Winters,” the boy said, not too loudly.
         “You like UK?”
         Perry was actually a Cardinals fan.  He’d had plenty of exposure, seeing as how his mom’s boyfriend was the goddamn fitness coach.  That’s what Mac called him in his head.  That’s the worse way to betray your roots as an Eastern Kentuckian, he thought, become a Cardinals fan.  Leweyville.
         But Perry just nodded and looked at his feet.  Mac poked him in the ribs.  “Go big blue,” he teased.  Perry seemed to roll his eyes and puff.  The boy had some real expressions for a five year old.
         Barney Cooper stood up from the barber’s chair, which was also patched with duct tape, and paid Big Smitty with a ten dollar bill, and left after refusing to take the change.  Mac directed Perry to the big black leather seat. He watched as Smitty pumped the chair’s pedal, clunk clunk clunk, and the child rose into the air.

Sunday
         Perry was looking sharp with his perfect Smitty-brand haircut when his mother showed up knocking on his front door.  Mac slept in on Sundays, but Perry, conditioned by a schedule that warranted its own blackberry, was up and dressed to meet her.  Mac had just ambled into the kitchen when he heard the knocking.  He went to the door and scooped up his son.  He didn’t live in the greatest neighborhood.
         “Don’t go to the door like that when someone knocks.  Never.  Not even at your mom’s, okay?”
         “Okay.”
         “Okay.”
         Beverly knocked again.  “Hello?  Mac?”
         Mac opened the door.  Beverly was wearing a sundress, yellow with small white flowers.  Her hair was as golden and silky and long as it had been last weekend.  She looked at Perry, sitting in the crook of Mac’s arm.
         “Didn’t you have a chance to get daddy ready?” she said.  She reached out and touched his hair.  She looked at Mac.
         “It looks good.”
         “Big Smitty does good work,” Mac said.  “It’s eleven already?”
         “Yeah.  You ready to go Perry?”
         Perry nodded and Mac let him slide down to the floor.  Mac squatted and hugged his son.
         “Love you,” Mac said.
         “Love you Dad,” Perry answered as he walked out the door and out onto the porch without looking back. 
         “Listen to your mom,” Mac said.  “I love you.”
         Perry was starting down the steps.  “I love you, too.” 
         Mac, still squatting, looked at Beverly’s feet.  She was wearing white flip-flops.  Her toenails were painted like rubies, her feet ivory and without veins.  He stood up and let his eyes lock on her hips.  He let her feel him stare at her. 
         “You done?” Beverly asked.
         “That’s up to you.”
         “See you next weekend Mac.”
         “Toodles Bev.”  Mac shut the door quietly, went into the kitchen and ate a bowl of frosted flakes.

         Mac sat on his cousin Bill’s sofa with a beer between his legs.  They had been pounding Milwaukee’s Best Ice for about two hours and watching Ultimate Fighting.  Bill was a big fan—he had UFC beanies and hoodies, Tapout tee-shirts and an Everlast bumper sticker.  He thought of himself as a real badass, and after his wife left him he decided to resume his dream of rising through the ranks of the military, where all that mattered was how hard you worked and how good you were at your job.  The doctor that gave him his physical said his knees were shot to shit.  Bill played football in highschool, so he already knew he had bad knees.  It left him wondering why he even tried.  After being rejected by both his wife and the army, Bill started training to fight at the armory, where a bunch of guys, most of them younger than him, practiced beating the living fire out of one another ever Friday and Saturday.  Bill had been going about a year, and while he hadn’t actually been lined up to fight in a real match, he had broken his nose a couple of times.
         The match on television was between a skinny brown guy and a skinny pink guy with red hair and freckles.  They looked like humanoid gray hounds—they were lean and boney, their ribs showed through their flesh.  The brown guy had kicked the pink guy’s knee inward about ten times, and the pink guy was beginning to favor it.  Bill said that’s when they really get you—when you get distracted by pain, when you’re concerned over the hot ache in your poor pummeled joints.  That’s when they lower the real boom, the right cross that closes your eyes, or the tackling roll that puts you on the ground with a forearm across your neck.
         Mac was getting bored.  There were only the sounds of the two men fighting on television and the hum of Bill’s tiny beer fridge at the end of the couch.  Mac took out his phone and started scrolling through the numbers.  He had saved one under “G” at some point in time that he couldn’t remember, so he assumed it was at the bar.  Since he was at the bar, he also assumed it was a woman’s number.  Maybe G was for Gina.  He couldn’t remember. 
         “Let’s have a party,” Mac said.
         “It’s Sunday night.  I had to buy what little beer I have last night.  Who’s going to come to a party on Sunday night?”
         “I got some girl’s number in my phone.  I could call her.  Tell her to bring some friends.”
         Bill got perkier at the mention of girls.  Truth be told he probably couldn’t have gotten laid if he was the last punch-drunk divorcee in Kentucky.  But Mac decided to call and ask anyway.  The phone rang six times.  Mac slid it shut.
         “She’s not picking up.”
         Mac’s phone rang.  The ID read “G.”  He answered and listened for a moment before speaking.  He could hear music thrumming in the background, people laughing and talking.
         “Hello?”
         “Hey did you call me?  Who is this?”
         “Hey, what’s up, this is Mac.  Is this Gina?”
“This is Gail.”
“Right, sorry.  Gail.  I think you gave me your number at the bar a couple of weeks ago.  I was wondering if you wanted to come over and hang out.”
         “I’m real busy, baby, but you can come over here.  Do you know where Guy Miller lives?”
         “Nuh uh.”
         “Go up the hill behind Dehart’s Bible and Tire, it’s the only house up there, got a shit load of cars out front.”
         “Alright.  I might come over.”
         Bill, from the couch: “I can’t drive.”
         “Okay.  See you soon,” she said.  Mac heard the phone click on the other end of the line.
         “She can’t come over.  You want to go to her place?”
         “I can’t drive,” Bill said.  Mac took his keys from his pocket and rattled them in front of Bill.
         “You can’t drive neither,” Bill said, looking away from the keys and taking a drink of his beer.
         “We’ll see about that.”
         “I’ve got to work in the morning anyway,” Bill said.
         “Work shmerk,” Mac said.  He stared at Bill who wouldn’t turn his head to look at him.  “There’s girls over there.”
         “You can go without me.  I ain’t getting in the car with you.”
         Mac sighed and stood up from the couch.  “Sit your ass there, then,” he said.  Bill was a drag anyway.
         “Are you leaving?”
         Mac was going out the door now.  “Yep.  Thanks for the beer.”  Mac shut the door behind him and stood on the front porch feeling shitty.

Monday
         Mac was a lying in a big bed that was definitely not the mattress-on-the-floor that he slept on at home.  He turned his head and saw two small feet by his face.  When he sat up he saw a girl lying naked beside him, covered completely from the waist up by the fitted sheet she had wallowed around herself.  She was boney and sharp figured, and had a tattoo of a juicy red apple right above her ass crack.  He poked the back of her knee, but she didn’t move.  He poked again.  He put his hand on her ass, felt guilty and withdrew.  He rocked her hips back and forth.  She felt cold and he was beginning to think she’d overdosed.  Finally she roused and came out from under the sheet.  She looked at Mac with the same unfamiliarity that he had looked at her with.  Her eyes were squinted against the morning sunlight that poured in through the bedroom window.  Her lips were puffy. 
         “Gail?” Mac ventured.
         “Melissa,” she answered in a croaking, early morning voice.  “Who are you?”
         “My name is Mac.”
         She nodded.  “Okay.  I remember now.”  She pulled the comforter over herself and laid back down.  Mac swung his legs over the side of the bed and found his underwear.  As he was pulling them on the bedroom door opened.  Melissa looked out from under the comforter.  There was a man standing in the doorway, a huge man with huge shoulders and trunk of thick flesh instead of a neck.  His eyes were small and black and piggy.
         “Shit,” Melissa said. 
Mac, pulling his underwear up his other leg, said, “Hey man, get the hell out of here, this is private.”
The man walked across the bedroom toward Melissa, hardly even looking at Mac.  He reached out with his hand for the girl, and Mac watched her scramble to get away from him, her feet desperate for traction.  The sheet slid away as she tried to gain footing, and Mac was reminded of a dog trying to run on linoleum.  The man’s fingers closed around a clump of Melissa’s hair, right above her left ear.  She screamed as the man pulled her out of the bed and dragged her across the floor, holding her head at waist height.  She scrambled and swatted at his pillar-like legs.
“Guy you’re hurting me stop Guy goddamn it stop!”
Mac found his pants and pulled them on in a hell of a hurry, then grabbed his button-up from the floor.  He bounded over the mattress and out into the living room where Guy had dragged Melissa, who kind of walk-crawled on her knees and tiptoes and fingertips.  There were still people from the previous night, most of them strewn about the floor like dirty laundry, some of them lying around on the furniture.  They were awake now, could not help to be awake.  Guy paused in the middle of the room, his fist white knuckle tight around Gale’s short cropped, blonde hair.  She was cursing and kicking and trying to stand to her feet. 
He let them look at her. 
He opened the front door, and with one powerful motion rolled Melissa out of the living room and onto the porch, where she lay naked on her stomach, sobbing. 
“Give me my clothes,” she said, her words almost inaudible through her gasps.
Mac felt as though he should say something, in fact he felt it harder than he had ever felt it before, the shame of silence sickening and hot inside him like a radioactive pellet.  Guy turned and looked at him.  The bastard was a gorilla.
“You can have her,” Guy said.  “Get out.”
Mac obliged.  He went out to the front porch where Melissa was now sitting, trying to cover herself with her knees and elbows.  She was a living blush.  She reached toward Mac’s leg.
“Get my clothes,” she said, “get my clothes.”
The front door slammed shut.


         “Don’t you work?” Melissa asked, sitting across from Mac at his kitchen table.  She was wearing one of his button-ups and a pair of jeans that Beverly had forgotten.
         “Not right now.  I’m on unemployment.”
         “Did you get laid off from the cabinet factory?  My friend got laid off from there,” she asked.  Her voice still had a croak to it, and Mac guessed that was the way that she normally sounded.
         “Yeah,” Mac said.  He wanted her to leave.  He felt bad for her, sure, real bad.  But he didn’t like her being here.  It had been a mistake to invite her.
         Melissa flipped her cigarette against the rim of the ashtray.  Plink.
         “Thanks,” Melissa said.
         Mac nodded.  “You’re welcome.”
         They didn’t have a whole lot to talk about.  They’d covered the basics on the ride home, Melissa sitting in the passenger seat of his truck wearing only his shirt, which covered her like an ugly flannel gown.  Guy was her boyfriend, of course, or had been up until that morning.  He had been in Cincinnati for three days doing his yearly training for his job at Lowell’s Auto Body.  He had told Melissa that he would be back on the thirteenth, but had instead returned on the twelfth, bright and early.  “He probably drove all night,” Melissa had said.
         “You want a beer?” Mac asked.
         “I don’t usually drink,” she said.  Her neck looked as thin as a flower stem.  He did like her neck, at least.  Mac went the fridge and got his two last beers.  He sat down at the table again and twisted the cap off one.
         “You can have the other one if I don’t get to it first.” he asked.
         “I don’t really want it,” she said.  Mac shrugged.
         “Okay.”
         Mac took a long drink of his beer.
         “I left all my shit at his house,” Melissa said.
         “That sucks,” Mac said.  If she was thinking he was going to go get her stuff she could think again.  Mac was just glad he got out of that confrontation the first time.  The guy looked like he twisted skillets into burritos for fun. 
         “Yeah, it does.” Melissa answered.  She crossed her legs under the table and grazed Mac’s ankle.
         “Sorry.”
         “S’okay,” Mac said.  “What do you do?”
         “Nothing,” she said.  Mac nodded.
         Mac looked at her hands lying palms down against the table top.
         “You got somewhere to go?” he asked.
         “I can call somebody,” she said. 
         “That’s good. You care if I ask you something?”
         “I guess not.”
         “You ain’t got an accent.  Where are you from?”
         “Detroit.”
         “Wow, long way from home.”
         “Uh huh.  Do you care if I get a shower?”
         “No,” Mac said, “I don’t care a bit.”
         Melissa got up from the table and began walking to the bathroom.
         “There’s towells in the dryer,” Mac called to her.  So she has someone to call.
         After Mac heard the bathroom door shut he chugged the rest of his beer.  He had a hell of a hangover.  He twisted the cap off the other beer and started to work on it.  He heard a bass boom outside and wondered if it was the Explorer again.  The shower pipes squealed, and he listened to the water hitting the tub. 
         He didn’t know what to think about it all.  He didn’t know what to think about her.  It seemed kind of unreal.  What was his role in this?  Who was he supposed to be?  What does a man owe a one night stand, and what does she owe him?  He chugged the other beer and got up from the table.  His head was clearing up but his stomach was rejecting the beer.  He steadied himself for a moment and walked to the bathroom.  The knob was a little off from the doorframe, so the door wouldn’t latch when you shut it.  He pushed the door open just and inch and peeked inside.  The shower had one of those translucent plastic doors, and while he couldn’t make out any detail he could see her posture in the stall.  She was standing with her back to the water, and she was holding her face in her hands.  She stomped her foot and he heard her try to fight off the sobbing yelp that came to her mouth.  He shut the door back and went to the kitchen table again.

         Every Monday Mac brought his mother groceries.  He’d been doing it for several years now, bringing fresh provisions such as potted meat and pickled bologna, saltines, diet Mountain Dew, Pringles, Little Debbie snack cakes.  The whole pyramid.  It’s all she would eat.  She couldn’t cook anymore, not since the stroke, and she had to get around using an electric wheel chair.  She was forty years older than him, and had several other sons, but Mac was the only one that came to see her regularly.  He visited sporadically during the week and sometimes he brought Perry, even though he knew Perry was as scared of Granny Miller as he was the dentist and thunderstorms combined.  He always came by Monday afternoon, though, for sure.  Except this time he didn’t.  He came Monday night.
         “I liked to goddamn starved to death,” his mother said, sitting in her wheel chair in the dead center of the living room.  He was putting up the groceries had had bought her, cans in the cabinet, bottom shelf only.  She was watching to make sure he did it right.  She flicked her cigarette ashes onto the carpet and blew her nose into the same blue handkerchief she had been blowing it in for what seemed like a hundred years.  “Where have you been to?”
         “I got drunk last night,” Mac said.  “Fucked this girl, brought her back to my place.”
         “Well my god.”
         “You asked.”
         “I wished I didn’t.  Do you know her name?”
         “Melissa,” Mac said. 
         “Whose people is she?”
         “I don’t know.”
         “What’s her last name?”
         “I don’t know, Mommy.”
         His mother shook her head at him.  “Ain’t you ashamed of a thing?”
         “Nope.”  Mac turned to the grocery bags on the counter and got out some microwave pizzas, which he then took to the fridge.
         “Ask her who her people is when you see her again.  Are you going to see her again?”
         “I don’t know Mommy.  Maybe.”
         “It’s about time you got over Bev.”
         “Bev won’t let me get over her.”
         “Ah, she’s a cow.  I knew she was a cow when I met her.  Going around with her nose stuck up real high.  Melissa sounds nicer.”
         “I don’t hardly know her, Mommy.”
         “At least it’s a nicer name,” she said.  “Beverly is a stuck up name.”
         “It is,” Mac agreed.  It was a stuck up name.
         “Sit the hell down a minute, Mac.  What are you in a hurry for?”
         Mac sat the hell down on the couch in the living room.  He lit himself a cigarette.
         “That crap will kill you stone dead,” his mother said, pointing at his Pall Mall.
         “I didn’t know that.”
         “I been telling you that your whole life.”
         “You told me to love Jesus, too.”
         “And you better.  Don’t get to the gates and act like nobody told you the news.”
         Mac laughed. 
         “Have you seen Bill?  What’s he into?”
         “Yeah I seen him last night.  He’s sitting around.  Same as always.”
         “Did you ask him how his mommy was?”
         “Nuh uh.”
         “You don’t give a damn about nothing.”
         “Nope.”
         “You gotta keep up with your people,” she said.  “That’s your blood.”
         “Keep up with your people, love Jesus.  I got it, Mommy.” 
         His mother reached out with her good hand and swatted his knee feebly.  “I ain’t joking, Mac,” she said.  “All you got is your people.”
         Mac‘s father had left when he was thirteen.  His older brothers were all on drugs and he didn‘t talk to them anymore and they didn‘t talk to him much, either.  Bill drank beer and cried over Karen and wished his knees didn‘t pop.  The Miller clan was in shambles.
         “I ain’t got nothing then,” Mac said.
         His mother looked away from him and stared out into nothing.  She was focusing her old and powerful memory, practicing that sacred art of the elderly: seeing the dead and distant. 
         “You got your people,” she said.
         
         Mac saw Melissa walking down the highway.  She was still wearing his button up and Bev’s jeans, and she was carrying a tied up grocery bag bloated with stolen clothes.  He watched her walking indignantly into his bright lights.  He pulled over and got out.
         “What in the hell are you doing?” he said.
         “Going back to Detroit.”
         “You’re the fucking pope, too.”
         “You want to drive me?”
         “I ain’t driving you to Detroit.  I don’t even know why I let you stay at my house while I was gone.  I just met you.”
         “If you’re not giving me a ride then get out of my way.”
         Mac turned to the side and held his hand out in front of him.
         “I guess you know which way Detroit is, right?” Mac said.
         Melissa started walking down the highway.  He watched her go, strutting away in his ex-wife’s jeans with a bag of his socks.  He got back into the truck and turned the engine back on.  He drove a little way down.  But not too far.

         “I want to thank you for being so nice,” Melissa said.  She was sitting on the other end of the couch, with a blanket around her shoulders and her legs crossed under her.  Mac had put in a movie when the had gotten back to his trailer, since she didn’t seem to want to talk very much.  He wasn’t really watching it now, though.
         “It’s alright,” Mac said.
         “It’s really awesome,” she said.  “I’ll go back to Guy’s tomorrow.”
         She was so thin.  Mac had noticed it when he had woke up that morning, had seen her bumpy little spine running down to that red delicious on her back.  But now she was a different kind of thin.  Her stature had seemed to have shrunk, and she held her lips in a thin non-smile.  Did she want him to say something?  He would not.
         “Alright,” he said. 
She nodded and pulled the blanket closer around herself.  “Thank you for not trying to be some…knight in shining armor or whatever.”
Mac put his feet up on the coffee table.  He pretended to watch the movie.  Finally, he said, “They ain’t nobody in Detroit, huh?”
“Nope,” Melissa said.
“You think he’ll take you back.”
“I don’t know.  I don’t have a whole lot of choices.”
Mac figured she didn’t.  He didn’t know what happened to her in Detroit or why she left, but it was obvious that no one she tried calling was wanting to come get her.  She didn’t have shit.  She didn’t have a job, didn’t have a car, no money, no food, no clothes.  No people.  Mac started thinking about Bill.  He knew he’d been an asshole, but if he called Bill and he really needed him, Bill would come.  At least he had that. 
“You could get a job,” Mac said.
“Guy won’t let me.”
“Fuck guy.  Get a job.”
Melissa looked at him like a dog that kept running into an electric fence.  “I really doubt he’ll let me come back,” she said, “but if he does he’s sure as hell not going to let me get a job.”
“Fuck him,” Mac said stoutly, looking Melissa in the eye.
“You don’t get it.  I don’t have a choice, understand?  Do you want me to come out and say it?  He’s all I have.  I can’t go back home.  I don’t have any money or a place to live.  He’s it.  He’s all there is.”
Mac sighed deeply because he knew what he was going to say next.  He went to the kitchen and looked desperately for a beer, but then remembered he had shared his last few with her.  He leaned his forehead against the door of the fridge.
“Stay here,” he said.
“What?” Melissa called from the couch.  Mac walked into the living room and sat down.
“I said stay here.”
“I’m not staying here,” she said.  “Just quit it.”
“I ain’t gonna beg you,” Mac said.  He got up from the couch again and went to his room.

Tuesday
“Hey,” she said.  He opened his eyes.  She sat down on the side of the bed, and Mac smiled and sat up.  He put his arm around her waist.  He leaned toward her face but she put up her hand.
“It’s not about that,” she said sharply.
Mac laid back down and turned his back to her.
“I know you’ve already done a whole lot,” she said.  “And I know you don’t owe me anything.  But I want to talk to you for just a minute.”
Mac turned over again.  He could only see her silhouette, a dark Melissa outline with that sugary, growling voice living inside.
“I want to stay.”
“Good,” Mac said.
“But if staying here means fucking you I don’t know if I can do that.”
         That was disappointing.  But Mac had a lot of practice dealing with precisely that emotion, so he just said, “That ain’t what it means.  Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
         “No,” she said.  Mac had a fish tank in his room, a scummy little ten gallon, water golden with algae.  When the room was quiet enough, dead quiet, he could hear the two boring fish that lived inside turning over their colorful substrate looking for forgotten flakes to munch on.  He hadn’t ever heard it before the divorce because Bev was always in the room with him, and her breath drowned it out.  He couldn’t hear it now, either.
         “Are you okay?” Mac asked.
         “Yeah,” she said.  “You’re…a good person, Mac.”
         She left the room and Mac put his hand in his shorts.  He laid the inside of his elbow over both his eyes and wondered what the hell was wrong with him.

         “Mac,” she said.  Mac woke up and saw Melissa sitting on the edge of the bed again, that same black outline.
         “Did you have a nightmare?” He asked as he turned away and covered his head with a pillow.
         “Mac,” she said again.  She put her hand on his shoulder and shook him.  He sat up and groaned the aggravated, sleepy adult male groan, that groan that comes from an utter detestation of anything but unconsciousness.  She took his hand in both of hers and put it on her chest, pressed the palm flat between her small breasts.  Mac felt the warmth of bare skin, the ferocious beat of her heart just centimeters under his hand.  He reached up and touched her neck.  How fragile and thin it was, how like the new green stem of a flower.

         She had cooked eggs and sausage, peppered gravy and biscuits.  There was a jar of jelly sitting on the table, and she had raised the blinds to let light in.  Mac stood in his underwear at the threshold between the kitchen and the living room.  Melissa was eating, sitting at the table with one of his tee shirts on.
         “Sorry I didn’t wait,” she said, “but I was starving.”
         “I don’t care,” Mac said, still standing at the threshold, leaning on the counter with one hand.  She looked up at him, her cheeks puffed up with breakfast.
         “Are you hungry?”
         “Yeah,” Mac said.  He got a dish and fork and a Pepsi out of the fridge and sat down at the table.  The fried eggs were perfect and white.  He poked one with a fork and hot yolk oozed and steamed.
         “I like my eggs runny,” she said.  “I hope you don’t mind.”
         “I don’t mind,” Mac said.  The sausage was perfect as well, the gravy was not too thick or thin, the biscuits were flaky and soft.  It was all perfect.
         “It’s perfect,” Mac said aloud.
         “Thank you,” Melissa said.  “I like to cook.”
         Mac opened a biscuit with his fork and said, “This is great.  Thank you.”
         “Thank you,” she said.
         Mac smiled at her from across the table.

Wednesday
         Mac was wearing a good clean shirt and his best jeans and a pair of white sneakers.  Melissa was still wearing Bev’s jeans, which she had washed three times now, and a yellow blouse that Mac had bought her for ten dollars at Wal-Mart.  She was placing a chicken casserole on his mother’s kitchen table, where she sat wearing her own dinner attire--a blue night gown and slippers.
         Melissa divided the casserole and served up garlic bread and Iceberg salad on the side.  When she finished setting the table she pulled up a chair across from Mac’s mother. 
         “Dear Lord,” Mac’s mother began, her eyes closed and her head bowed.  “Thank you for providing for us in these times.  Thank you for allowing us to be together today and we thank you Lord for all the time you’ve given us here and what time we have left.”
         She opened her eyes and Mac started to dig into the casserole.
         “You didn’t even have your eyes closed,” she said.
         “I thought you were done.”
         “When I’m done I say ‘Jesus name amen.’”
         Mac put his fork down and looked at his mother.  He closed his eyes.  His mother was silent.
         “Mom…” Mac said.
         “Jesus name amen,” his mother said, and she started to work on her casserole.  She took a bite and shook her fork at the plate.
         “This is wonderful,” she said.  “You’re a good little cook, Melissa.”
         “Thank you,” Melissa said.  “I’m glad you like it.”
         “It’s got that little extra in there,” Mac’s mother said, “like there’s a secret ingredient.”
         Melissa shrugged.  “No.  It’s just cheese and chicken and…well, that’s about it.”
         “No, no, there’s something else.  I think you put a little love in it.”
         Melissa laughed nervously.  “I guess,” she said.
         “Who’s your people?” his mother asked.  Melissa looked to Mac confused.
         “She wants to know who your family is.” he said.  He looked to his mother.  “Mom, she’s from Detroit.”
         “Why she’s still got people.  Who’s your people?”
         Melissa looked to Mac again.  “Well,” she said, “my mother was a Barnes and my father was a Digby.”
         Mac’s mother turned her face to the ceiling.  “I used to know a Barnes.  Let me think for a second…”
         “Mom,” Mac urged.  She looked at him sharply.
         “Why do you call me ’mom’ in front of people?”  She turned to Melissa.  “He calls me Mommy when we ain’t got company.  He’s ashamed of me.”
         “Don’t be ashamed of your mother,” Melissa said.  She was smiling wide at him, so wide her eyes squinted and her cheeks dimpled.
         “Everybody around here calls their mother mommy,” Mac said.
         “I think it’s cute,” Melissa said.
         “It is cute,” Mac’s mother said.  She and Melissa laughed.

         They were driving back to Mac’s trailer after leaving his mother’s house when Melissa said, “I think this has been really sweet.  I’ll say that.”  She sat on her hands and bit her lip.
         “Cool,” Mac said.  He waited.  “Is there anything else you’re wanting to tell me?”
         “I liked your mom.  She’s really funny.  And the past couple of days have been really fun.  I…I like you.”
         Mac just nodded.  He didn’t know how to feel about that.  He liked her, too.  But he didn’t know how far he was willing to take that feeling. 
         “I just want to say that I appreciate everything, and you’ve been so great.  But I think I might have a place in Detroit.”
         “Oh,” Mac said.  “I thought no one was answering their phone.”
         “Well, that’s not exactly true.  My aunt.  I used to live with her, pretty much my whole life after Mom killed herself.  I didn’t try to call her, but…I think she might answer.”
         “You should call her,” Mac said.
         “I’m just…Mac, they’ve been looking for me for a long time.”
         He looked at her quizzically as the truck bounced over bad highway.  “What are you talking about?”
         “I ran away when I was sixteen.  I’d been talking to Guy on the internet for a while, and he told me I could move in with him.  I told you that part, I just…didn’t mention the running away part.  He thought I was twenty.”
         “So,” Mac said, “how old are you?”
         “Oh, I’m eighteen now.  Don’t worry about that.  I mean, I wouldn’t say anything about us even if I wasn’t eighteen.  You know?  I mean, I really like you.”
         “Uh huh,” Mac said skeptically.
         “Don’t be a prick.  I’m having a hard time right now.  This is all really…confusing.  It’s been a total upheaval.  I’m thinking I need to get back home.  I’m a missing person now.  That’s so messed up.”
         “Is there anything else you think I oughtta know about you?” Mac asked.
         Melissa shrugged her bony shoulders and looked out the window.  “I’m not really blonde.”
         “Okay,” Mac answered.  “You want to try to call her when we get home?”
         “Sure,” Melissa said.  “I just didn’t want to, you know, leave without telling you.”
         “Okay,” Mac said.
         The radio voice of the local DJ was garbled in a fog of static, he sounded like he was talking into a fan.  Cars whooshed by.
         “I can give you a ride up there,” Mac said.  “If you needed it.”
         “You’ve done enough,” Melissa said.  She wasn’t looking at him anymore.  She was staring out the window, inspecting her own dark reflection. 
         “Alright then,” Mac said.  He knew that he wouldn’t drive her, anyway.  He knew that she’d say no, too, because she would feel like it would be too hard on him.  And she would be right.  And the fact that he knew so well how she felt toward him made him as sick as a dog.

Thursday
         Melissa hadn’t been able to get a hold of her aunt in Detroit, and so she and Mac had gone back to screwing and talking through cable programming while they ate whatever she could create using his modest collection of groceries.  She seemed happy, as happy as he had ever seen her, and he was beginning to wonder why she felt like she needed to leave so bad.  What was in Detroit?  Some no-name, no-face aunt he would never know.
         On the other hand he did understand her situation.  She really hadn’t solved any problem by living with him.  She’d just moved out of one man’s house and into another man’s.  She still didn’t have any money or clothes or really anything.  She was just sliding through her life, sliding from one thing to the next thing.  Mac had once thought that his own life was out of control, but no one had ever thrown him out into broad daylight naked as the day he was born, he had never lost everything, not truly everything, and he had never been trapped with someone like that bastard boyfriend she had. 
         Then Mac got to thinking about Guy.  That sick feeling he had gotten the morning he had woken up with Melissa had been growing and growing.  It was stinging his ego fierce.  And Guy was beginning to look a little smaller in retrospect.  He was thick, but he was short.  He didn’t have a whole lot of reach.  Mac was thinking hard on it.  He was envisioning fight scenes, choreographing them in his head.  He knew that the sort of people that did this sort of fantasizing couldn’t fight.  He had never been a hand at it.  He had the guts, definitely, but he couldn’t seem to connect fist to face quite hard enough to make a difference.  It was a skill he did not possess. 
         But he knew someone that might.          

Friday
         Mac had just turned up the hill that led to Guy’s house.  Bill was in the passenger seat.  He was breathing funny.  His hands had purple splotches.
         “Are you okay, man?” Mac asked.  He was beginning to think this was a very bad idea. 
         “Huh?  Oh yeah, yeah I’m fine.  I do this before I fight.”
         “You hyperventilate when you fight?  That’s fucked up, Bill.”
         “Lots of guys do it.  Some of them throw up.”
         Mac thought bacck to the last fight he was in.  It was in tenth grade, over a decade ago.  He had been pulverized.  He still had a big scar on his ear where the other kid had kicked his head.  He pushed the gas and the truck roared up the rest of the hill.
         There was a car in Guy’s driveway.  Just one.  Mac pulled up behind it and took a deep breath.  He looked at Bill.  His hands were still purple, and he had his eyes closed.  He was taking deep, even breaths.  Mac thought he looked like he was on the edge of a panic attack.  Then Bill’s eyes opened.  His breathing relaxed.
         “Let’s go,” he said.
         Mac and Bill got out of the truck and went up on the front porch.  Mac thought back to Melissa squatting naked on this porch, a living blush, humiliated.  The fear drifted to a distant place in Mac’s mind, and the most intoxicating anger began to take over him.  His spine felt hot.  Bill was standing behind him and off to the side.  Mac knocked on the door.
         They heard footsteps coming through the house, jarring the trailer.  The footsteps stopped.  They were being looked at through a peephole.  The door opened and Guy leaned against the frame.  He wasn’t short at all.  He was actually a little taller than Mac himself.  He had shaved his head since they had last met, and Mac could only guess what this said about his stability.
         “What the fuck do you want?” Guy said.
         “Melissa left some clothes over here.”
         “Who?”
         Mac looked at Guy and grinned.  He’d lost it.
         “Melissa.  Your ex-girlfriend.”
         Guy looked genuinely puzzled.  The he laughed, like he was just getting the punch line of a joke.
         “She told you her name was Melissa?” Guy said.  He laughed harder.  “Jesus, man, open your eyes.  She‘s a fucking compulsive liar.  She planned every part of this.”
         Mac tried not to let it addle him, at least not visibly.  “I want her clothes.”
         Guy stepped out onto the porch with Mac and Bill.  It was sunny to be five o’ clock.  Probably the solstice
         “Go get‘em,” he said.  He was standing in front of the door.
         “You‘re a little bit in my way,” Mac said.  Guy said nothing.  He waited for a while, looking at Mac, then Bill.  Then he smiled his thin, lizard smile and turned and went into the house.  Mac and Bill followed him.
         “Are you the muscle?” Guy asked, patting Bill on the back.  Bill looked at Guy with a sleepy eyed, I don’t give a fuck, expression.
         “Hey!” Guy said, calling at Mac, who was going into the bedroom.  “I hope you brought some garbage bags, cause that girl’s got some stanky fucking panties!”  He laughed again.
         Mac picked up all the women’s clothing he could find on the bedroom floor and took down all the little blouses and skirts and jeans and tops from the closet.  He laid the clothes on his shoulder, and cradled the shoes and socks and things in the crook of his elbow.  This was enough.
         He walked back into the kitchen with Guy and Bill.  Mac looked at Bill.
         “Let’s go,” Mac said. 
         Guy let them walk by him and chuckled.  He reached into his fridge and pulled out a big, amber longneck.  “You guys want to hang out?  Drink a beer?  Hey, man, we’ve got a lot in common, you know what I mean?”  He cracked it open and took two or three long drinks, hissing like a snake after he got it all down.
         Mac and Bill walked back onto the porch, then down the steps and to the truck.  Guy’s beer bottle bust by Mac’s foot, and he turned around.  Guy was waving at them, smiling.
         “Tell Maggy I said high!”

         Mac pulled over at Bill’s trailer and let him out.  Bill looked into the cab.
         “That’s the power of intimidation,” Bill said.  He had been saying things like that since they left Guy’s house.  He also critiqued Guy’s physique as ’water muscles’ and ’all show.’ 
         “Good night Bill.  Thanks.  A lot.  I mean it.”
         Bill nodded at him.  He turned and went inside.  Mac pulled back onto the highway and looked at the big pile of Melissa’s clothes he had collected.  Was she using him?  She’d never asked him to go to Guy’s.  She didn’t even know.  Guy  had obviously cracked up a little bit, too, or he was already cracked up to begin with.  Yeah, you would have to be nuts to do what he did. 
         Maggy, he thought.  He couldn’t quit thinking about it.
         He arrived back at his trailer just at dusk.  He got the clothes out of the passenger side seat of the truck and went walking up the steps.  The door opened and Melissa poked her head out at him.
         “What is all that?” she said.
         “Your clothes from Guy’s.” 
         Mac walked into the house and sat all the clothing on the couch.  Melissa walked over to the pile of clothes on the couch and leafed through them, turning them over, very nearly admiring them, these things she wore every day, or used to.  She turned and looked back at Mac.
         “Thank you,” she said.  Tears were pouring out of her eyes, and she wiped at them furiously.  “I can’t believe it.”
         “Yeah,” Mac said.  “I really like you.”
         Melissa sat down on the arm of the couch.  “I really like you, too.  But I know if I wait just a second longer I’m going to love you.  Do you feel that way?  I think you do.”
         Mac nodded.
         “So, because I like you so much, I need to tell you something.”
         “Your name’s not Melissa,” Mac said.
         The girl started crying harder, and she hid her face in her hands like she had done in the shower when Mac had spied on her.
         “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
         “Did you plan this?”
         “The night we met, I wasn’t drunk.  I haven’t drank since I was seventeen.  And I don’t party.  But I just couldn’t stay there.  Please,” she said, “don’t hate me.”
         “What’s your name?”
         She had steadied herself now, gotten control of her breath and her throat.
         “Ellen.  Ellen Applebee.”  She laughed and half-sobbed.  “I used to hate my name.”
         Mac sat down on the couch with her.  “I don’t know what…I don’t know what to do now.  I mean…what would you do, if you were me?”
         Ellen Applebee looked at him and shook her head.  “I wasn’t really thinking about you when I started this.”
         “Obviously,” Mac said.
         “Mac, you’re the best person I ever met.  I wish I’d spotted someone else, now.”
         “Do you want to know why my wife and I broke up?” he asked.
         “Sure,” Ellen said.
         “I fell in love with her sister.”
         Ellen waited for him.
         “I ain’t perfect.  Neither of us is.  Stay here.”
         Ellen shook her head.  “Mac, I talked to my aunt.  For a long time.  I think she’s changed a lot.  And I want to go home.  There’s a cab on its way, all the way from Detroit.  I was trying to leave while you were gone, because…I didn’t want to talk about this.  I was just scared.”
         Mac patted the pile of clothes that laid on the couch beside him.
         “Well,” he said, “now you got your clothes back, your name back, and your people back.”
         “I always had my people,” she said.
         
Friday
         “Mac, I’m serious, I’ll call the judge if you don’t get here on time.  I’ve got a lot of s-h-i-t going on today.”
         “Alright Bev.”
         “Perry needs his inhaler refilled, too, I sent the prescription to the Rite-Aid, I already paid for it so you just have to pick it up.”
         “Okay.”
         “Have you left yet?”
         “Nope.”
         “Mac…I’m serious.”
         “I’m leaving right now.”
         “Mac.”
         “What Bev?”
         “Perry wants to talk to you.”
         “Hey, Daddy.”
         “Hello Perry,” Mac said. 
         “I want to go to the library, I want to learn about planets today.”
         “We’ll do that first thing you get here.”
         “They said that Pluto isn’t a planet, is that true?”
         “No, that’s not true.  Pluto is a planet.”
         “That’s what I said.  Ms. Rollins don’t know nothing.”
         Bev in the background: “‘Doesn’t know anything.’”
         “I love you Perry,” Mac said.
         “I love you too, daddy.”
         “You know you always got me.” Mac said.
         “I know that.”