Act I: The Move

1. Packing

A grackle lifts off the roof of a ranch house . . . and rises above the pines in the backyard . . . and darts like a demon against the gray sky. The grackle is a purple-black bird with a raptor’s wings. It’s chasing a smaller bird, a red-winged blackbird. The two birds come together and fly apart, over and over, until they vanish in the distance. 

Clouds pulse and knit together above the treeline. The air is sticky and cool, warning of rain. Buds and vines come awake in the humidity. You can smell that bright vegetal aroma, the opening of the world to an imminent downpour.

In a clearing off a dirt road sits the modest Michigan ranch house, lived in but not loved—dead shrubs and bald spots in the lawn and the pubic spray of milkweed at the base of the mailbox post. The house was built in the Seventies in northern Oakland County. A peppermill-shingled roof covers a house of red brick. Black vinyl shutters hang askew, and a dull white porch pitches forward to a walkway. It’s that plain red-brick house you pass, without noticing, on any rural American road. Trees close in around the house like an amphitheater: oak, maple, pine. It’s May, so the leaves are filling in, the trees shouldering into each other. 

The dirt road meanders off Gunn Road, curves, and dead-ends at a creek. Neighbors are far apart. The developer hacked this road into the woods, pounded half a dozen ranch houses into the clay, and gave up on the rest of the subdivision. 

A handsome young man elbows open the screen door. Mitch Siebold, in T-shirt and jeans, carries a cardboard box. The door jerks closed as he steps off the front porch. The box rests on his belt buckle, his leather belt cinching his jeans around his bony waist. He’s got an easygoing athletic physique, taut from hard work, all muscle and bone and eager potential. His shoulders slope forward, as if he’s always lowering himself to people shorter than he is. Pale skin peeks out under his shirt sleeves and around the collar of his white V-neck T-shirt. On his left cheek are scratches, pretty fresh—and more scratches on his neck, dribbling blood. It looks like he was clawed by an animal. 

Mitch sets the box on top of two other boxes stacked on a hand truck. He pushes back his mess of light brown hair, uselessly, as it springs back in flares and curls. He heels a boot as a fulcrum and tips the hand truck toward him. He moves deliberately. He’d like to beat the rain. He wheels the hand truck over the walk and toward the shipping container in the driveway. 

The container is one of those pods. A truck comes and drops it off at your place. You pack your stuff into it. The truck comes back and takes it away, crosses the country for a month or so, and drops it off at your new place. 

It’s painful to realize this simple process has been available to him all this time, a decisive escape from the plodding rhythm of his life in Michigan—every day that BUH . . . ba-BUH . . . ba-BUH. He’s been buried beneath the gray skies, stuck in the mud of his obligations to his mother, alone and nowhere. And yet somehow it’s always been in his power to leave, which means staying here has been all his fault. There it is: the shame of being the responsible son. Even his thoughts are plodding and gray and self-defeating, BUH . . . ba-BUH . . . ba-BUH.

But he’s twenty-five years old, and his desire is finally out in the open. The container is here, in the driveway. This is what Mitch wants more than anything: a way out . . . a real start . . . a place of his own. He presses a hand against the metal wall of the container. The metal is cold, but something warm expands in his chest. The sensation grows like desire, a taboo yearning he’s never allowed himself to act on. He thumps the pod with affection. The wall shudders like a drum. The reverberation is a bass note, hollow but satisfying. He can feel himself tip forward into hope.

A squeal from the screen door distracts him.

“Mitch,” calls Aunt Ginny, leaning out. “Your mom’s pills? I don’t know where the heck.” 

Mitch nods and leaves the hand truck. He wipes his face with his T-shirt. Blood streaks the cotton. He’s sweating, moving all his boxes. Thunder rumbles beyond the trees, a few miles away, almost an echo of the reverberation of the container. Everything feels heavy. There’s a pressure in his sinuses, the start of a headache. He can’t let himself be happy . . . not yet. 

He goes inside to help his aunt. 

Mitch has spent months prepping the house for his aunt Ginny. He’s taped 3x5 cards as labels to cabinets and drawers so his aunt knows where to find the medicines, spices, cleaning supplies, trash bags. He’s organized the closets. He’s cleared out everything in his bedroom to make it a room for his aunt when she has to stay the night. 

At the kitchen table, Mitch pages through a binder. 

Aunt Ginny sees the scratches. She tilts his head to inspect them. “My goodness.” She grunts in dismay. “Jean?”

Mitch nods.

She gets a washcloth dabbed with rubbing alcohol. “Gonna sting,” she says. She pats his cheek, pressing and holding the washcloth, lifting it away gently.

Mitch doesn’t flinch. He’s used to going numb and getting through the pain of . . . whatever.

His aunt grimaces in sympathy. “Sorry,” she says. Ginny, his mom’s sister, is a kind, hard-working woman. She’s stocky and keeps her hair cut short and wears a green “Crazy Plant Lady” T-shirt she got at Walmart. 

“She fell in the tub again,” he explains. “I went in, tried to help.”

“Your first mistake. You try to pick her up?”

Mitch nods.

“Like wrestling a sea witch,” says his aunt.

“In a bathtub.”

“In a bathtub, exactly. A naked sea witch in a bathtub. She scratched you up good. Gonna find one of her fingernails broken off in here.”

“Her way of saying she didn’t want my help.”

“Still needed that help, though,” says Ginny.

“Yeah,” says Mitch. “Still needed it.”

“Scratches too long for a bandage.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay,” says Aunt Ginny, looking over his shoulder. “I’m ready.”

The binder’s pretty thick. The black three-ring binder is worn at the edges, the plastic coating splitting a bit, its hundred-some pages, sheet protectors, and plastic folders stuffed with guidelines, warnings, and to-do lists, sticky notes bristling with prescriptions and emergency phone numbers. 

“My bible,” says Aunt Ginny, laughing. 

“I know it’s a lot,” says Mitch. “You can always call me.”

“You’re a sweet young man,” says Aunt Ginny. “I don’t know how you got this way.” She laughs and squeezes his shoulders. “Doing all you’ve had to do, all these years.” She kisses the top of his head. 

“Born bad, I guess,” says Mitch, teasing.

“Me and you both,” says Aunt Ginny.

In this house, there’s a lot to know, a lot to do . . . a lot to be careful of, watch out for . . . a lot of dangers you can anticipate but not prevent. He’s proud of his binder, in a weird way, but he’s worried for his aunt. After he leaves, she’s the only one taking care of his mom and the house. And it’s not the house that’s the problem.

Mitch shows her where to find the page of instructions for his mom’s pills. He reminds his aunt how the colorful tabs work in the binder and shows her the table of contents he made. 

“There a page for when she falls in the tub?” Ginny teases.

Mitch smiles and closes the binder. He pats the cover, stands up. He’s not leaving for a month. He has time to help her get ready. He knows she’s still in pain from the breakup with her girlfriend. Mitch hugs her and says, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, kid,” says Aunt Ginny. “If I didn’t, I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing this.” She laughs.

Mitch winces but forces a smile. “I know. Thank you.”

Mitch returns outside to find it raining. He stands at the edge of the covered porch and looks up at the sky. The dense, uninterrupted clouds, day after day, week after week: they smother hope. His boxes on the hand truck are soaked dark. He walks out in the rain and pushes his hair back. Rain gets the blood flowing, again, out of the scratches on his face and neck. He can feel the fresh sting of his mother’s attack as he goes to load the wet boxes into the shipping container.