“Well, my advice”—the girl scooted closer—“is don’t get on this stuff. I mean, they say they want to get you in to get you off, but it’s all a lie. They just want your money. I’ve been on this for who knows how long, and I’m still taking a hundred milligrams.”
Scott raised his eyebrows, recalling that 100 milligrams was the dose that had sent him to the hospital the last time he had tried methadone. As he remembered it, he had mixed the dose with Xanax and succumbed to the cocktail soon after leaving the clinic, stumbling into oncoming traffic. The responding officer injected him with Narcan, sending him into a convulsive withdrawal that landed him in the ICU.
“How much do you pay?” Scott asked.
“Three hundred and seventy,” she answered, referencing her monthly bill.
He nodded and wondered how he would make the next installment.
When it was Scott’s turn, he swallowed the red stuff, swished a little water in the cup, and downed the rinse. Those last drops could make a difference.
Before he left, Scott met with a methadone counselor, a black man around Scott’s age.
“How many times in the last thirty days have you used heroin?” the counselor asked.
“Thirty.” Scott went on to tell the counselor about his mother lending him the $150. “I guess it’s my fault for underestimating her,” he said. “Maybe I just cut her out of everything.”
“You’re as sick as your secrets,” the counselor said.
Because he couldn’t afford both methadone and rent on his Serenity Club check, Scott went homeless. He checked into an eighty-six-bed shelter called the Guest House. Every morning, he bused to the methadone clinic, and every evening he slept on a bunk bed in a large room with other homeless men. Methadone made him sweat and gain weight, and it smothered his libido. But it worked.5
Most people who began methadone treatment dropped out within a year.6 Scott stuck with it. Over time, he became a resident manager at the Guest House and started helping people again. Four days a week, Scott worked in one of the Guest House’s satellite shelters, an unmarked three-story home with bay windows, tucked in a quiet South Side neighborhood. He scrubbed bathrooms with bleach and guided old-timers to the backyard picnic table, where they sat and tapped their cigarette ash into a repurposed Folgers coffee can.
A year and almost $4,700 later, the county agreed to help Scott pay for his methadone, lowering his monthly bill to $35. Then, through a permanent housing program offered by the Guest House, Scott was able to move into his own place, paying one-third of his income to rent. He chose the Majestic Loft Apartments, on Wisconsin Avenue, right next to the Grand Avenue mall. He had always wanted to live downtown and had been a regular at the mall after first arriving in Milwaukee; back then, to an Iowa farm kid at least, the mall was a vibrant social scene. The fourteen-story Majestic was built in 1908, originally for offices and a vaudeville theater. After it was converted into residential apartments, developers installed a fitness center, an indoor basketball court, a small private movie theater, and a putting green with artificial turf.
Scott’s apartment was on the tenth floor. It had clean, wheat-colored carpet, unblemished white walls, mini blinds over person-length windows, a generous bathroom, and a working stove and refrigerator. The Guest House furnished the apartment with a dark brown love seat and matching couch, a few lamps Scott preserved by leaving the plastic wrapping on the shades, and a full-size bed that Scott hardly used—falling asleep on the couch had become a habit. There was even a stacked washer and dryer. It felt too good to be true. At first, Scott half-believed that the Guest House would call and say they had made a mistake. The apartment rented for $775 a month; Scott only paid $141.
It took a good month before Scott was able to accept the apartment as his own. Once he did, he acquired a bathroom rug, a navy-blue coverlet, hand soap, scented candles, throw pillows, mouthwash, dishes, and a welcome mat on which to place his shoes. The apartment made Scott feel affirmed, deserving of something better. It motivated him. One day, Scott used a magnet from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to stick a note on his refrigerator. It read:
5 YEAR PLAN
Back to nursing
Make a lot more money
Live as cheaply as possible
Start a savings account
Two years and three months after losing his license, Scott was finally able to start scrimping for the lab tests he would need to become a nurse again. He even started collecting loose change for this purpose, keeping the coins in a kitchen jar.
In the trailer park, Scott had felt stuck. “I just didn’t know how to fix anything,” he remembered. “It felt like the end of the earth down there, like none of the rest of the city existed.” During that time, Scott often thought about killing himself. He’d have done it with a monster hit of heroin; but he never could find enough money. Scott’s new place was such a stark contrast to his trailer and everything it represented that he began to think back on his time in the park as “one big camping trip,” removed from civilization. Sometimes, when he remembered those days and all he had lost, he would leave his apartment and wind his way through the Majestic’s narrow, dimly lit hallways and come to a door. He’d open it and emerge in the middle of the Grand Avenue mall, as if stepping through a secret passageway. Walking the mall’s floors, Scott would take in the lights, music, food smells, and people and remember how he used to feel, years ago, when the city was still full of wonder and promise.
24.
CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING
When Arleen dialed the number, she gave Jori her “here we go” look. A landlord, Number 90, had left her a voice mail, saying to give him a call. The message was from the landlord’s son, actually, who had been the one to show Arleen the unit. He was in his early twenties with a backwards cap and a braided ponytail. “Call me Pana,” he had said. Arleen remembered living in his father’s building in 2003, in a two-bedroom unit that back then rented for $535. Now that same unit went for $625. So when Arleen applied this time, it was for a $525 one-bedroom unit. What a difference six years could make.
The phone rang, and Arleen thought about what she had told Pana. She had lied about her income, saying she received $250 a month in child support, but had been straight about her evictions. Mainly, she had begged him. She told him she’d take the unit before looking at it. She didn’t much consider the neighborhood or the condition of the place. “Whatever I get is whatever I get,” she figured. She had said, “I’m in a shelter. Please.”
Pana answered. “Yeah, so, we checked you out. Everything was what you said it was. So, we gonna work with you.”
Arleen jumped up and let out a muffled “Yes!”
“But you know, there is no room for error here.”
“I know.”
“You’re on a fixed income. So you need to pay your rent and not get into trouble.”
Arleen thanked Pana. Getting off the phone, she thanked Jesus. She smiled. When she smiled she looked like a different person. The press had loosened its grip. From landlords, she had heard eighty-nine nos but one yes.
Jori accepted his mother’s high five. He and his brother would have to switch schools. Jori didn’t care. He switched schools all the time. Between seventh and eighth grades, he had attended five different schools—when he went at all. At the domestic-violence shelter alone, Jori had racked up seventeen consecutive absences. Arleen saw school as a higher-order need, something to worry about after she found a house. Plus, Jori was a big help. He would bound down the street and memorize numbers off rent signs or watch Jafaris when Arleen left with her HOUSE notepad. He was good for a laugh too. When things looked bleak, he would try to make his momma smile by freestyling (badly) as the city rolled past their bus window.
Aye, aye, aye
Looking for me a house to move in.
That was my old school.
That’s my old block.
That’s my old gas station.
We looking for a house.