Chapter 12 - A Cold Winter in the Suburbs: The Parents Taste Their Own Medicine
While Emma and I flourished in our restored home, Eleanor and Robert spent the winter living in a dilapidated, two-room residential motel off Route 66 in the far southwest suburbs.
Their days of collecting three thousand dollars in secret cash rent while living off my grocery shopping were officially over.
Robert’s monthly social security check of $1,150 was barely enough to cover the weekly motel rental fees and basic survival groceries. Without my automated pharmacy subsidies, Robert had to navigate the complex bureaucratic maze of municipal health clinics, waiting in line for hours on freezing mornings to receive generic prescriptions subsidized by state assistance programs.
Eleanor was forced to do her own laundry in coin-operated machines down the hall, carry her own groceries up two flights of exterior metal stairs, and cook meals on a single electric hotplate sitting on a laminate nightstand.
Whenever Eleanor tried to call her sisters or extended family members to complain about their living conditions, she was met with cool, distant polite excuses. The video of her dumping Emma’s soup had permanently branded her in the eyes of the family as an irredeemable narcissist.
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No one offered them a guest room. No one sent money.
For the first time in their comfortable, manipulative lives, Eleanor and Robert Vance were experiencing the exact cold, merciless reality they had so eagerly inflicted upon me.
