Evicted

At eleven pm, there’s an eviction notice on the front door and all Alex can do is stare at it. He’s seen his fair share of these before this moment. This one is white. Just like all the others. The ‘evicted’ stamp is red, also like all the others. But this time, where the landlord has signed his name, there’s a small ‘sorry!’ written in a different color pen and a sad face next to it. It doesn’t really make the situation any better but hey. It’s added some variety. Jack will get a good laugh out of it when he sees it. Maybe.

The apartment is dark when he steps inside, and it stays dark when he flips the light switch. His sigh is loud in the silent living room. Their electric was already shut off. Chances are, their water has been shut off too. There goes the plan of giving Noah a bath tonight. Alex should have gone with his gut this morning when the thought of coming home to this entered his mind and just forced Noah to take a bath before he left for work. But he forced himself to stay positive. And now he’s got no lights and no water and no place to live and a sick husband and a three year old to look after. No stress.

Speaking of sick husbands, Alex can hear Jack coughing from their bedroom down the hall. Thanks to a bad case of bronchitis, he’s been bed-ridden for the past two days and unable to go into work. Because he wasn’t able to work, he wasn’t getting paid. So Alex had to suck it up and work some overtime shifts yesterday and today and it still doesn’t matter. They’re still being evicted. They still have to find somewhere to live. This is rock bottom. And they’ve been here plenty of times before. But this time, Alex isn’t sure if they can bounce back.

Alex pours Jack a glass of water and takes two of the pills the doctor prescribed him yesterday (at the doctor’s appointment they can’t even afford) and takes them down the hall to their small bedroom, where the door is wide open and Alex finds Jack on the bed, on his stomach and doing something on the old laptop they both share. Noah is curled up into his side, fingers clutching Jack’s worn out t-shirt. Jack looks tired, and he doesn’t give any indication that he knows that Alex is even home. Great, Jack, anyone could break in and murder you both, Alex thinks, but instead of complaining out loud, he sighs and walks to their bedside table and puts the glass and pills down. The sound of the glass hitting the table breaks Jack from his staring contest with the computer screen. His arm instantly moves to curl around the little boy snuggled up against him, but he smiles and relaxes once he registers that it’s just Alex.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is scratchy and worn out, like he’s been talking non-stop for days. “I didn’t even hear you come in.”

Alex laughs halfheartedly and nods in agreement as he pulls off his shirt and starts unbuttoning his jeans. “Yeah, I figured. I brought your meds. Take them so maybe you can wake up feeling slightly back to normal. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

Jack knows that sentence. It’s the same sentence Alex always says when they have to start looking for a new place to live. He sits up on his knees, forcing Noah to let go of him. The three year old shifts in his sleep but he stays asleep, thankfully. “Again?” Jack asks, running his hands over his face in exasperation. “Why?”

“We haven’t paid rent in three months, Jack. I’m surprised it took them this long. The landlord’s wife feels bad about it, I think. She wrote an apology on the notice.”

“Shit, Alex.”

“Yeah.”

Alex stands there in his boxers, arms crossed over his chest with Jack staring at him and Alex really isn’t sure what to do next. They’ve done this so many times before. He should be used to it. But no matter how many times you do it, you can never really get used to packing your shit up and getting kicked out of your home. A heavy weight settles in his stomach as he thinks about what’s going to happen to them over the next few days. The phone calls he’s going to have to make. The conversation he’s going to have to have with their son. He hates that he let this happen to them again.

“Don’t start blaming yourself,” Jack snaps, still watching him from the bed. “Come to bed and in the morning, we’re calling my dad. I…It’s time we just sucked it up and get the help we obviously need. Agreed?”

Jack hasn’t spoken to his dad in years. Not since Noah was born and he told Jack there was no way in hell he was going to be able to afford to raise him. He was right, but the both of them were determined to prove him wrong. Turns out, they can’t. And Alex can’t do this anymore. He can’t sit back and watch his son suffer when they can avoid it.

Alex lets out the breath he’d been holding. “Yeah. Agreed.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Jack smiles. It’s small, but it’s there. And Alex climbs up on the bed and moves his son away from the edge, closer to the middle and in between him and Jack. He barely stirs, making a weak push at Alex’s hands on him before curling up into Alex’s pillow. His dark brown hair covers his eyes and Alex thinks maybe in the morning, he can take a risk and find some scissors and give the kid a much needed trim.

“Calling my dad is the best thing we can do for him,” Jack mumbles, reaching out and brushing Noah’s hair away from his eyes. “We’ve been selfish enough already, I think.”

Admitting defeat isn’t appealing to Alex, but neither is being homeless. “I know I say this every time, and it’s never really been true…but I think this time, we can definitely bounce back from this.”

Jack smiles, and that’s all Alex needs to reassure him of that.