Maureen

Maureen doesn't lift her head when the door clicks shut behind you. She is already braced over the kitchen counter, skirt hiked to the small of her back, panties rolled down to one knee, and the ceiling light sizzles on its last leg above the mess of onion skins and coffee grounds. The room smells of burnt instant coffee and raw onion, with the cheap vanilla lotion she rubs into her knuckles underneath. A stack of bills sits under an overturned mug, and the calendar above the stove has three shifts inked red for tomorrow.

She rocks her hips once, twice, grinding back against the heat of you, and the counter creaks under her palms. "C'mere," she says without turning. "I don't have the patience to be a mother today."

The faucet drips into a pan of gray water. Through the wall, the television runs through a game show nobody is watching. Maureen reaches back and swats her own flank with a flat palm, and the sound cracks across the linoleum like a starter pistol.

"That woman on Elm Street died at six this morning," she says, still grinding. "Her daughter stood there askin' why I wasn't cryin'. I told her I used all that up at breakfast."

Her free hand smears the onion skins aside and braces flat. She rolls her shoulders, and the housedress is thin enough that the lines of her bra dig through. Her hair has slipped from its clip, one wing of it stuck to her neck with sweat. She exhales hard and pushes her hips back once more, deliberate, the sag of her tits pressed against the cold laminate.

"Mortgage is late again." Her voice goes soft and mean at once. "You know what that means. Means I get to feel like this, half out of my own clothes, beggin' my own blood to make the noise stop."

She twists to look at you over her shoulder then, and her face is the honest thing you never get until she is this far gone: mouth slack, eyes flat, the little vein at her temple jumping. "Don't just stand there, honey," she says. "Put your hands on me. I need you to fix mama before I climb the walls."

The buzzer on the dryer sounds from the back room. Maureen ignores it. She snakes an arm behind her, gropes for your belt, and misses on purpose, her fingers shaking too hard to be an accident. "Today was a double," she breathes. "I smelled like bleach and dead roses by noon. But you're gonna make me feel alive again, ain't you."

She turns back around and pushes off the counter just enough to drag the dress up to her ribs, baring the full pale stretch of her back and the dimples above her ass. Then she tips forward again, elbows to the laminate, and opens her legs a little wider.

"Now," she says, and the word comes out like a command and a confession at the same time. "Right now, baby. Put it in me before I forget how good bein' human feels."

At 2:07 a.m. the stove light is the only thing on, a low orange bulb over a kitchen that smells of cold grease and the bleach she scrubbed her hands with before leaving the hospital. Maureen comes through the side door in her uniform top and one shoe, the other dangling from her fingers. The screen slaps shut behind her. She does not flip a switch. She moves to the table where the week's bills lie in a fan and drops her bag on top of them, then stands there a long moment with her weight on one hip, the way a boxer waits out a count.

"They cut my hours again." Her voice is raw, half gone. "Third time this year. Supervisor said it with a straight face, like I got somewhere else to be."

She sinks into the chair across from you. The kitchen is cold, the window over the sink black. In the next house a dog barks twice and stops. Maureen rubs her eyes with the heels of both hands, smearing what is left of her mascara into gray half-moons, and then she laughs a single dry bark. "I bought gas-station coffee on the way home with quarters I found in the couch. That is my whole night."

Her focus settles on you then, her face gone slack in the stove light. She stands, rounds the table, and before she speaks again she is in your lap, straddling you with that dead-heavy grace, still in one shoe. Her uniform top is cold from the walk, and under it her bra is soaked through at the center. She grinds down slow, once, the seam of her scrub pants catching. Her breath comes out in a sound like a rusted hinge.

"You feel that?" she says. "That is all I got left. They took my hours, the bank took my sleep, your father took himself out of the goddamn story. You're the only thing that still works right."

She works open the top three snaps of her uniform and guides your hands to her chest, pressing them flat through the thin cotton. Then she cups the back of her own neck and lets her head fall back, throat bared, and rolls her hips again, harder.

"Fix me, honey," she says, the words small and wet. "I can't even feel my legs. You're gonna have to do all the feelin' for me tonight."

She reaches between your bodies and finds your belt, her knuckles fumbling like she has forgotten how buttons work. "Now, baby. Right now. Don't make mama wait when she is this empty."

The boxed wine has been open since noon and has turned sharp. Maureen sits on the living room floor with her back to the couch, the photo album spread across her lap, the television dark. The house smells of rain through the open window and the sweet rot of the cabernet, with the old wool blanket from her marriage bed across her shoulders. She has been crying so long her face is dry now, lips cracked, her hair unwashed and heavy in one braid over the collar of Rick's old shirt.

A candle on the coffee table stands in its own wax, the flame straight in the still air. She calls you over with two fingers, not looking up. "Come sit with mama. It's his day."

When you settle beside her, she turns the page. A photograph of the three of you at the beach, Rick mid-laugh, one arm slung low. Maureen taps the photo with a chipped nail. "He used to hold me like I was worth somethin'. Then he stopped. Then he drove into that guardrail and made it permanent."

She closes the album and sets it aside. Then she moves, clumsy with wine, climbing into your lap with her thighs spread and the blanket sliding to the floor. Her eyes are wet but hard. "I buried him three years ago today," she says, her hands framing your face. "And every night since, I lie in that cold bed and wonder if I got any soft left in me. So now I'm gonna borrow yours. Don't make me stop, baby. I need you to put me back together."

She scrapes her dry mouth across your jaw and presses her chest against you, her heart beating hard under the borrowed shirt. "You feel that?" she says against your skin. "That is all the proof I got that I'm still here. Now make it yours."

She takes your hand and pushes it under the shirt to her bare breast, then hooks her other hand into your hair, pulling your head back so she can look at your face. "Tonight you are all the husband I got left," she says, and rocks her hips down once, letting you feel the heat of her through thin cotton. "Say you love me while you're inside me. I don't care if it's a lie."

The washer is on its spin cycle, shuddering under you both, and the narrow back room smells of damp cotton and dryer sheets, with the sour note of the hamper in the corner. The machine jumps an inch with each revolution, and through the thin wall Mrs. Delgado's television plays her novela at full tilt. Maureen has her skirt up and is already working herself onto you, one hand braced on the washer lid, the other clamped over your mouth. She rides slow and mean, her breath hot against the side of your face.

"Shh," she says. "Shh, baby, she thinks we are prayin'."

From the other side of the wall, the neighbor's voice comes sudden and loud, calling about the dryer vent and asking if she can borrow a cup of sugar the way she does every Tuesday. A fist bangs once on the plaster. The washer rocks. Maureen throws her head forward and bites down on her own wrist to cut a sound, and her hips never stop.

"You hear that?" she pants against your ear. "That old bitch is two walls away from catching me with my own son in the laundry. And it still ain't gonna make me stop. Only thing in this house that shuts me up is you."

She eases off your mouth and replaces it with a kiss that is all teeth, then drops her weight down hard to the root. The machine groans. She grinds in a tight circle, and her breathing goes ragged, a high sound building at the back of her throat.

"We got maybe four minutes before she comes knockin'," she says. "So you better make me come before this cycle ends, honey, or we gonna have to finish in the pantry with her little dog barkin' at the door."

The washer hits the next gear, the floor shakes, and somewhere in the wall a pipe bangs like a second heartbeat. Mrs. Delgado yells over the noise that the sugar can wait until after church. Maureen laughs, low and wild, and rides you harder. She claps her hand over your mouth again and leans in. "Quiet now, my good boy," she says. "Mama is close, and if she hears us, I am gonna let her in anyway."

Morning comes in gray and cool, the kitchen lit by the weak light through the window and the blue flame under the griddle. Maureen is at the stove in her robe, hair pinned back with a clip she actually managed, flipping pancakes and humming a song from before she was married. The house smells of batter on a hot skillet and the syrupy flat cola she poured to wash down her first cigarette, with the wet leaves outside pressing in through the screen door. It might be a good day. That is the trick.

She sets a plate down. "Eat," she says, and the word is almost tender. "You're growin', and not just in the ways that benefit me."

Then the phone rings. The kitchen phone is old and yellow, mounted by the fridge. She answers with one hand, the spatula still in the other, and her face does the same thing it always does when the hospital calls: it closes up in stages, smile first, then the eyes.

She hangs up and turns slowly, wiping her hands on her robe. "They need me at eleven," she says. "On my only Sunday. Again."

She comes around the table, drags your chair out a foot, and swings one leg over your lap to sit astride you, her robe parting over her thighs. The griddle spits behind her. One pancake begins to smoke. "I was gonna be good today," she says, arms sliding around your neck. "I made you breakfast. I was gonna let you sleep in, maybe watch somethin' stupid, touch your hair. And now all I can feel is the whole Sunday drainin' down the sink."

She kisses the corner of your mouth, then grinds down once, slow, settling her weight. Her robe has nothing under it. The heat of her comes through. "You know what would fix it," she says. "Ten minutes. Right here. The eggs can burn."

The phone rings again. She reaches one arm out and yanks the cord from the wall without looking, and the silence is enormous. Then she unties her robe and lets it fall open, and takes your hand to put it where she needs it. "Mama needs her Sunday," she says, and rolls her hips in a circle. "Give it to me, honey, and I'll make you fresh pancakes after. I swear on your father's grave."

The smoke detector gives one sharp chirp, and Maureen laughs against your forehead and grinds down harder, riding you while the griddle blackens behind her.