26: Michigan

Sometimes when D feels like thinking, she cycles out to the roundabout, tires gripping asphalt as she rides in circles, faster and faster, around and around. This time of night, the glow from Detroit, Lansing, Flint, and Ann Arbor is a pale ring of limestone on the horizon, bleeding up into the granite sky.

Usually there aren’t any cars out this late, but tonight a truck passes, the driver honking and shouting. D can’t hear him, or doesn’t care to. She wishes she could stay here, in motion, forever. She wishes there were nowhere else in the world.

But it’s almost 3am, and her shift starts at four. She makes the inevitable final lap and turns off toward the city. She can make it back by then.


Sometimes when E feels like thinking, he drives up and down Lake Shore Drive, catching glimpses of the bay through a screen of suburban houses and scrub trees, of dark water stretching to the white shores of Sleeping Bear.

He’d come back to Escanaba after college, gotten a job at the family gift shop, selling Waterford crystal, handmade chocolates, Hummel figurines, novelty t-shirts, picture postcards, and Yooper everything.

He’s manager there now. By the time he finished his shift tonight, the city streets were empty. He has to be in again tomorrow morning. He just wants to drive until then.


D gets back to her house a little after noon. Kyle is in the shower – one of Sarah’s old college friends who showed up last night without warning. Some other friend is still asleep on the floor.

She waits by the bathroom door, listening to the running water, waiting to wipe the film of butter and flour from her skin. She closes her eyes and leans back against wall.

“Your toilet is broken,” Kyle says. D snaps out of her doze to see him shirtless, one of her towels wrapped around his waist.

“What are you doing here?” she says.

“Man …” he looks almost wistful. “When I read about this city online, I had to come.” He smiles. “It’s just so fucking crazy here.”

She blinks and shakes her head. “Online?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sarah posted a link to this article on facebook.”

“Fuck.” D closes her eyes and mutters: “Suddenly I feel sorry for any person, place, or thing ever written up by the New York Times.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”


There’s a customer waiting for E to open the shop, her face pressed up against the glass. When he glances at her she knocks on the window. “Are you open?” she mouths.

E sighs and digs the keys out of the drawer. The woman is joined by a large man and a large young boy. They press in closer as he unlocks the door.

“Good morning,” E says, holding the door open. “Can I help you guys?”

“I want candy,” the little boy says.

“Be quiet,” the woman replies.

The man follows. “You got a toilet I could use?” he asks.

The woman is leaning against the counter when E returns. “You got anything that really says ‘Michigan’?” she asks, looking around. “Like a big stuffed wolverine, or something?”

“I want candy!” the boy yells.

“I said ‘shut up,’ Ryan,” she says.

“No!” He picks up a Christmas ornament and throws it to the floor. It bounces, so he picks it up and throws it down again. The woman doesn’t even look at him.

The man comes out of the bathroom. “Excuse me,” E says, nodding to the boy.

“Excuse me!” the woman says. She grabs the boy and drags him away. The man follows them out the door.

“Have a good day,” E says.


Sometimes D feels like she’s living in the post-apocalypse … or the post-post-apocalypse, even. Like this city is a case study in how many times society can break down and be remade, decayed and deformed.

She and Sarah have made a lot of plans over the years. They were going to move into an artist collective. They were going to buy land and start an urban farm. They were going quit their jobs and start a bakery of their own.

The last idea had gotten as far as the quitting stage when Sarah backed out. It was too risky to start a new business, she said, in these “troubled economic times.”

Now, D’s bedroom is plastered over with useless blueprints, her closets filled with silk-screened shirts, her desk stacked with letter-pressed “grand opening” cards, all emblazoned with a clever logo for the bakery that never was.

The problem, she thinks as she picks one up and traces the image with her fingers, isn’t what sort of life you try to build, but who you try to build it with.


Sometimes when E thinks about his life on the U.P., he cycles the verb through all of the tenses: Lived. Has Lived. Lives. Will live. Will have lived. Had lived. He recites them faster and faster as they go around and around. There’s something depressing and poetic about the way the future becomes the past.

The mailman waves through the window as he drops today’s bundle into the slot. Mixed in with the usual stack of bills and fliers is a postcard, made of rough recycled paper. On the front is a design that looks like the state seal, in silver, with a cupcake instead of a shield.

E turns it over. His hands tremble slightly as he reads:

“Dear E, Sometimes when I’m biking through the city I see the People Mover passing by. Do you remember that? ‘The monorail to nowhere,” we called it. “The train of yesterday’s tomorrow, today.” I thought it was a joke back then, but now I think it must be a commentary on Michigan’s motto: “If you seek a pleasant peninsula look, look about you,” like everything looks better as long as you’re going around and around and never stop. I guess it’s terrible here, but I love it … and everybody has to be from someplace. Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice, D.”