Chapter 2 - The Cicero Reality and the Golden Cage
Three months earlier, the phone call that brought Adeline Marsh into the Alfieri house had felt like a miracle. Her apartment in Cicero was so small that the kitchen table served as a desk, dining table, medication station, and homework space. That afternoon, two pieces of paper lay on it. One was another rejection from a financial assistance program. The second was an appointment card belonging to her seven-year-old brother, Wes. Two surgery dates had already been crossed out. Wes had been born with a heart defect complicated enough to require a procedure Adeline could not afford and simple enough to make poverty feel particularly cruel. There was a treatment. There was a surgeon. There was simply a number standing between her brother and both of those things.
Wes sat by the radiator folding a paper crane from a grocery advertisement while Adeline stared at the bills. “You’re doing it wrong,” he said. She looked over. “Doing what wrong?” “Worrying.” “That has a correct way?” “Yeah,” he folded one wing carefully. “You’re supposed to worry after dinner. Before dinner makes you mean.” She laughed despite herself.
Then the phone rang. The man introduced himself as a representative of a private legal office. A wealthy family north of Chicago needed a live-in nurse for a thirty-four-year-old man recovering from a spinal injury. When he named the salary, Adeline asked him to repeat it. When he explained that the position included immediate dependent medical coverage, she stopped breathing for a second. Then she asked the question experience had taught her always mattered. “Why is the job open?” A pause. “The household has had difficulty retaining nurses.” “How many?” Another pause. “Three since June.”
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Adeline stared at Wes. He was making the crane stand on the windowsill. “And the patient?” “Mr. Alfieri.” Her fingers tightened around the phone. The Alfieri name was not famous in the ordinary sense. It was known. In certain Chicago neighborhoods, people pronounced it more quietly than other names. The family owned shipping companies, cold-storage warehouses, construction firms and logistics businesses. Rumors suggested that the enterprises printed on letterhead represented only the respectable half of the family history. Adeline had grown up close enough to understand the difference between what people could prove and what everybody knew.
The man continued. “There will be a confidentiality agreement.” “I assumed that.” “You would not discuss the household with anyone.” “I understand.” She looked at Wes’s medical card. The second date had been crossed out in blue ink. “When do I start?”
