Chapter 5 - The Dismantling
The sun was not out when I got back to custom avenue at 4:30 AM, but the sky over the lake had turned that thin, greasy grey color that means the rain is done and the humidity is coming back through the brickwork.
The front door of apartment 2B was unlocked. The safety chain was still hanging loose against the molding, just as it had been five hours ago.
The television was off, but the living room looked like a locker room after a loss. Brittany was sleeping on the small armchair, her mouth open, her new phone resting on her collarbone like an electronic amulet. Kayla was curled up on the rug with one of Emily’s quilts pulled over her head, and my mother was still on the sofa, her breathing coming in heavy, rattling snores that filled the small space with the scent of digested sour cream and stale tobacco.
I didn't take off my boots. I walked through the kitchen, where the broken fragments of grandmother’s plate still lay scattered across the white linoleum like small pieces of an old monument.
I picked up the black plastic garbage bin from beside the sink, carried it into the living room, and set it down on the coffee table with a heavy, hollow thud that sent two empty soda cans rattling onto the floor.
My mother woke first. Her eyes were small, watery, and yellow around the corners as she pulled herself up against the throw pillows.
"Ethan," she wheezed, her hand reaching automatically for her chip bag before she remembered it was empty on the floor. "What time is it? You’re making enough noise to wake the dead. Is Emily still at the clinic? Tell her she needs to stop by the grocery on her way back; we're out of the whole milk."
"Get up, Brittany," I said. I reached down, took the iPhone 15 from her collarbone, and dropped it into the front pocket of my work shirt.
"Hey!" she shrieked, her eyes snapping open as her hands clawed at the air where the glass had been. "What are you doing? That’s my phone! My contacts are on there!"
"It’s my account, Brittany," I said. "The line is disconnected as of four o'clock this morning. The device goes back to the T-Mobile store at nine for the restocking credit."
Kayla pulled the quilt off her head, her face pale and greasy from the rug. "Ethan, you’re acting crazy. Ma, tell him he’s acting crazy. He’s got that look he had when he dropped the transmission on the Buick."
My mother sat up, her face turning that dark, mottled crimson that usually preceded one of her "spells"—the ones where she needed three different pills and a glass of water with ice from the north-side machine. "You think you’re a big man now, Ethan? Because you’ve got a wife who cries when she sees a dish-pan? Your father is looking down from the clouds right now and he’s seeing his eldest boy treating his sisters like dogs in the road."
"My father died seven years ago, Ma," I said, and I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small leather ledger book I’d kept since the day I signed the warehouse contract. "And for seven years, I’ve paid the three hundred dollars a month for your supplemental health plan. I’ve paid the four hundred for the girls' car share. I’ve paid the electric bill on the old house that you rented out to the cousins without putting my name on the check."
I tore three pages out of the book and dropped them into her lap. They were covered in rows of tiny, precise numbers—the arithmetic of my twenty-somethings, written in the black ink of a union pencil.
"The total is forty-two thousand dollars, Ma," I said. "That’s what it cost to keep this family from having to look at a lease or a utility warrant since 2019. Consider that my father’s promise paid in full."
"You can't throw us out, Ethan," Lily said from the doorway of the small bedroom. She was still wearing her green wrap-dress from the night before, her curls completely flat on one side of her head. "We don't have the deposit for a new place. The management company on High Street wants two months' rent up front for anything with two beds."
"Then you better find a place with one bed, Lily," I said. "Or you can go back to the house in Delaware County where the roof doesn't leak yet. The truck will be here at noon. I hired two boys from the depot—boys who move heavy pallets for twelve dollars an hour. They’re going to take everything that doesn't have my name on the receipt and put it on the sidewalk."
"Ethan James!" my mother roared, her heavy frame shaking as she stood up from the sofa, her fingers pointing at my face like five old sausages. "I carried you for nine months! I washed your diapers in the sink when the machine broke! You’re going to leave your mother on the concrete for some girl from the north side who doesn't even know how to season a iron pan?"
I walked over to the front door, turned the brass deadbolt until it clicked back into the frame, and opened it wide to the grey Chicago morning. The air outside smelled of rain and lake iron—clean, cold, and carrying no grease from my kitchen.
"The key goes on the table by five o'clock, Ma," I said, my voice dropping back into that quiet, flat resonance that meant the shift was over and the gate was locked. "If the locks are changed when I get back from the hospital with my son, the sheriff's deputy will have the signature list from the lease. Don't be here when the sun goes down."
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They didn't scream anymore. The silence that came over the living room was the real kind—the kind that belongs to an office after the computers have been unplugged or a factory when the main transformer splits its oil.
I walked down the concrete steps of the three-flat, my steel-toed boots making a regular, unhurried sound against the cement. The red line train was rumbling four blocks away, its iron wheels hitting the switches with a rhythmic, predictable thud-thud, thud-thud that didn't hurt my head at all. I had three hours before the doctor would let me take Emily back to the apartment, and the air on Custom Avenue was the cleanest thing I had tasted in seven years.
