Young Squatters (12 page)

“I’m telling you, baby,” he said.  “The law’s there to protect defenseless people like us.  My dad always said so, and he’s absolutely right.  Man, I wish I would have listened to him sooner, the things I could have done, the people I could have screwed--”  he trailed off, giving her a smile.

She wondered what he had been about to say, but didn’t press him.  He hated to be pressed about things.  He didn’t like people who even inadvertently called him a liar by questioning him, either.

Harper thought hard about what he had said.  It had been three months already.  The Donnellys had filed a suit against them in court, but it took almost a week and a half for the court to serve them with the lawsuit.  After that, Bradford and their lawyer from the law clinic just kept sending requests for “discovery” back to the Donnelly’s lawyers: requests for oral depositions, requests for written interrogatories, requests for inspections of the house, requests for the Donnelly’s records, and on and on.  Harper wasn’t sure what that all meant, but every request pushed off the court proceedings for another ten days or more while the lawyers sorted it out and depositions were taken and everything.  She had to admit she was proud of Bradford.  It seemed like he had it all figured out, and their lawyer from the clinic was a real activist for tenants’ rights; she wanted to make sure they got their day in court.

But Harper was still worried.  They’d had to sit through depositions too.  The Donnelly’s lawyer hadn’t been real nice to them, making them out to be con artists and scammers.  But Bradford and she just stood by their story.  They’d answered an ad online, someone had let them in to see the house before they agreed by email to rent the place, they’d paid the deposit, and everything had seemed on the up and up to them.  No, they hadn’t ever wondered why such a nice house was being rented so cheap.  Yes, they had email records.  No, they didn’t have any phone records.  Everything had been handled online.

It didn’t help the Donnelly’s case any when they found out that the ad was placed from Colin’s own Gmail account, or that the PayPal account was in Colin’s name, or that they had Mr. Donnelly on tape threatening to fuck them in the ass. It all made the Donnellys look like the ones who had tried to scam Bradford and her, and Nick had gone absolutely ape.  He’d threatened to get a gun and shoot them, right there in front of everybody, and the camera and the recorders, too.  The lawyer from the clinic had filed a restraining order against Mr. Donnelly after that, and now it looked like he’d have to move out of the house.

But Harper felt kind of sorry for them.  She hadn’t meant for anybody to get hurt, they seemed like a nice enough family.  Like her own family, you know, before her father left them.  That was all she really wanted, to have a family of her own, and a house like the one she’d had as a kid.

That’s what Bradford told her they could have.  They just had to stick together and hang tough.  The Donnellys couldn’t keep this up forever, he’d said.  Their lawyer was costing them an arm and a leg.  He knew, he’d called up their firm, you know, anonymously, and they’d told him what they charged, two-hundred-fifty dollars an hour, plus expenses for filing claims and doing paperwork and research.  Their own lawyer from the legal clinic didn’t charge even half that much, and she was willing to waive her fee until the judgment came down from the court.  She thought they had a good case, all things considered.  Not that she and Bradford had told their lawyer the truth, of course.

Bradford squeezed her tight in those strong, protective arms, and she nuzzled against his broad chest.

“Really, babe, there’s nothing to worry about.  Our lawyer’s just going to bury them in paperwork, I promise.  Sooner or later, they’re not going to be able to afford to fight back.  We just have to wear them down, you know?”

Harper lifted up her head.  “I hope you’re right.  We could get into a lot of trouble for this, couldn’t we?”

“Naah. Don’t worry, baby.  I got it all worked out.”  He tapped his head with his finger, winked at her, and gave her a long, slow, luxurious kiss on the lips.  “Everything’s gonna be alright.”

***

A restraining order, a fucking restraining order.

He was the laughing stock of the entire community.  This has been his solution?  Nora had asked him that a thousand times.  To threaten the two kids in front of the whole world? He had seen his face in newspapers and on news stations, being slammed in print and on television by those welfare-favoring yuppies who thought they knew everything about society and the people in it.

He had just wanted his damn house back, to get everything calmed down and back to normal.  Now they didn’t even have a house to move back into.  Nora had cried and complained, cried and complained, over and over, until he had told her to shut the fuck up.  She didn’t understand where she was supposed to go, how they were supposed to live, especially now that he had been kicked out of the house.  They’d had so many run-ins with the law and lawyers and the failing court system that both of them were nearing insanity.  Finally he had grabbed her by the arm, dragged her down the stairs, and given her the reality of the situation.

She either stayed in the house with those two intruders--and yes, intruders were what they would always, always be--or she came with him.

She chose the latter option.  He didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or dismayed at her decision.

Nick slammed down the phone.  It was the third time he’d called the front desk about the noise in the hotel room next door.  It was a Friday night, and the thumping rhythms of a salsa-house-music mash-up had been pounding on their wall for three hours already.  He’d knocked over there twice and been told three times by a short, brawny man in a sleeveless white tee and extensive tattoo-work to mind his own business.  The reek of marijuana was coming through the walls as well, and Nick was honestly afraid to go next door again, but the front desk folks weren’t even pretending to be helpful.

“Well?”  Nora had her arms crossed and was glaring at him.

“They’ll send someone up to ask them to quiet down.”

“Oh, they will?  Really this time?”

“Shut the hell up, Nora.  What do you want me to do?”

“Call the police.”

“You didn’t see the guy next door.  The police aren’t going to stay here all night.  They’ll shut the party down and then leave, and then
we
have to live with that asshole.”

She looked disgusted with him.  He felt disgusted with himself.  They’d been here a week already, at a La Quinta that offered rooms by the week.  It was cheap, and he’d thought it was better than moving in with her sister considering they didn’t know how long they’d have to stay.  Although Belinda had kindly offered to let them stay for as long as they needed to at her place, both he and Nora could tell that her offer was strained, that she wanted to have her own life back with just Ben to boss around.

He didn’t even want to think about Colin, rotting away in some jail cell.  He’d visited on more than one occasion, promising time after time that he’d get Colin out of the place, but as usual time stood in the way.  They had to wait until he could be seen by the judge.  Nora had been hysterical.  Now her hysterics had turned into pure rage at him, as if somehow Colin’s bad temper had been all his fault, the result of his bad upbringing, the result of Nick’s influence on his young mind.  Bullshit.  She didn’t want to take responsibility herself, so she took every ounce of her sadness and fear out on him.

That was the way it had always been, after all, and he had allowed it.

They’d taken Clara to the hotel with them, hardly able to even comprehend the thousands of problems that awaited them.  But the marijuana stench had started almost immediately, and he had to practically put Clara under lockdown after he’d caught her hanging out by the pool with Mr. Tattoos earlier in the week.  Now this.

Nora kept glaring at him, sitting on the bed opposite of his.  Her voice sounded hard and uncaring as she spoke; it was a tone he’d gotten used to.  “I called Ben.  He’ll let us stay for a while.  Anything is better than here.”

He threw up his hands.  “Okay, fine! Nora, I don’t know what the hell you want.  First you want to come here, then you don’t.  We’ll just go to your sister’s in the morning!”

“Well, we wouldn’t have had to go anywhere if you’d just kept your damn mouth shut!” Nora snapped back.

“Watch your language around Clara!”

Really, Nick?  A restraining order?”

Clara was curled up on the same bed as Nora, hugging her favorite teddy bear close, burying her face and ears in it.

“Well, if your son wasn’t so stupid about—” he began, stopping himself.  Colin was his son, too.

“My son? 
My
son?!”

Nick put his face in his hand. 
Dammit
.  He was losing everything.  Those damn kids were dragging this out, the lawyer bills were mounting up, and then he’d lost his cool and started screaming threats at them during one of the depositions when he found out that his own son was supposedly behind the Craigslist posting and the PayPal account that the damn kids were hiding behind.  They’d filed for a restraining order.  Nick wasn’t allowed within a thousand yards of them.  And Colin was still in jail on assault charges after confronting the boy on campus.  Nick couldn’t afford to bail him out, not with what the lawsuit was costing them, and mentioning him now was exactly the wrong thing to say to Nora, who was already worried sick over him and this whole thing.

Nora herself didn’t even look like the woman he knew.  She had stopped wearing her carefully crafted makeup and even stopped dyeing her hair.  Grey flooded from her scalp, mingling with the strands of blonde that still lingered.  She wore sweatpants and t-shirts only now, unwilling or perhaps unable to muster the strength to dress up, except for when she went to work, every other day.  Even her job had taken a hit with the current situation; her boss had seen the news and told her to take some time off to get her life together, though he had said it in a much more polite and socially acceptable way.

“I can’t believe you let this happen!  Two weeks you said?  It’s been
four months!
”  She threw up her hands, tears filling her eyes.  “I can’t believe I married such a
coward!
”  Her voice raised at that last part, louder than the music next door, and she picked up a lamp and threw it at him.

It smashed against the wall adjacent to the party.  Nick could hear one of the pot smokers say something like, “Whoa, man, what the fuck was that?” before he dodged aside and tripped over a chair, crashing to the floor.  The small of his back filled with the hot heat of pain, reminiscent of the days when he used to have pain from doing his own yard work occasionally, like raking or mowing the lawn.

This pain, though, this was unlike anything he had ever felt before.

“Ah, my
back!
” he cried, clutching for his spine to make sure it was still there; he felt as if he had broken his tailbone, or something.  His heart beat wildly in his chest.  Maybe he actually was having a heart attack, this time.  “Oh, God!”

“Your back, my
ass!
”  She kicked at him verbally while he was down, forcing a crying Clara to stand as she spoke to him.  “You
coward!
”

She was crying and screaming at the walls and the TV and the refrigerator and everything else about the place that drew her ire, dragging Clara and her teddy bear along with her.  She threw anything that wasn’t nailed down.  The coffee pot smashed against the wall.  The coffee maker crashed into Nick’s ribs.  The laundry iron knocked over another lamp.  She took her suitcase from the closet and threw it on the bed, opened the drawers and piled her things inside.

“Mommy! You’re hurting Daddy!” Clara cried, hugging her teddy bear, tears rolling down her face.  “Please, Mommy!  You’re scaring me!”

“He’s fine, Clara,” she snapped, but she stopped throwing things at the sound of her daughter’s frightened voice.  “Don’t you worry about him, for one second. He can
hold his own
,” she said, pointedly, watching Nick as he rolled over on his back, panting, staring at the ceiling as black dots filled his vision from his back.

“I’m taking Clara and going to my sister’s right now, you damn bastard!” she said, twisting the metaphorical knife into his ribs.  “Right damn
now!
”

“Yeah, that’s right, go to Ben’s waiting arms.  He’s such a manly man, too.  I bet he can hold his own,” Nick said through gritted teeth, wondering if and when he was going to pass out from the pain.

“How dare you!” she said, her voice horrified.  “How
dare
you! I have been faithful to you for years, Nicholas.  You remember that next time you want to say something horrible like that.  Ben has been nothing but kind to us, to you.”

“Yeah, because he hates Belinda,” Nick blurted.  “He could love you, for all I know.  Draw up the papers, Nora.  I’m done with you.”

He hadn’t meant that last part he said.  But he could see the pain in her face as she picked up Clara and her bags, shoving some of their belongings into Clara’s arms as his daughter watched helplessly, too frightened to move.

Nora tore off her wedding ring and threw it onto his chest.  Then she and Clara were gone.

“Nora!  Wait!  Please!”

The door slammed shut behind them.  There was pounding on the adjacent wall, as if telling him to keep it down.  Nick gave up and started sobbing, his tears running into the piss-smelling carpet of the dingy little room, fingers clutching at the ring that had fallen onto his chest.

“Nora!” he cried again.

***

As Clara listened to her parents’ conversation, she was in tears.

How had this happened?  Throughout her childhood, her parents had been the best parents she could have ever hoped for.

They appeared so in love with each other and were always happy, she’d never once seen them arguing.  Yet over the past four months they’d done nothing but argue with each other.  The thought of her going to live at her aunt’s house made her feel sick.

To face staying at her aunt’s house was bad enough in itself, but having to go without Colin by her side was something else entirely.  Now she was going to be without her dad too, and it was too much with her to cope with.

“Come on Clara, pick up your feet and walk proud.  There’s no need to slouch,” her mother said, grabbing her hand and holding it tight.

When Nora saw the look on her daughter’s face she realized she’d been too harsh on her.  With everything that had been going on recently, she hadn’t stopped to think what effect it was all having on her daughter.  She stopped walking, feeling the gravity of the situation herself.  She briefly wiggled the fingers of her left hand.  She hadn’t been without her wedding band in ages; she’d lost weight throughout this entire process, but she’d still been surprised how easily it had come off.

“I don’t want to go to live with Belinda and Ben and Isaac,” Clara said, “I want to go back to our own house with Daddy and Colin and you and Sarah and my friends, and be a family again like we used to be.”

Nora took her daughter in her arms, hugging her tight as the girl’s shoulders shook with sobs, ignoring the sounds of the gross hotel and its inhabitants.  She had to have felt so lost; Nora herself felt lost, and she was supposed to be the adult in the situation.

As Clara sat sobbing in her mother’s arms, Nora’s heart melted. She tried hard to find words of comfort for her daughter, but nothing came out of her mouth.

“We’ll figure everything out,” Nora whispered, to Clara and to herself.  “I promise you, we’ll figure everything out.”

A few minutes later, they walked out the front door, all thoughts of Nick gone from their minds.

***

Colin was pacing in his police cell at the station.

“When I get out of here, he’s a dead man.”

Colin had been texting his friend for the past couple of days making plans of how to get back at his former so-called friend, Bradford.  He couldn’t wait to get out and extract revenge on him; there was no way he was going to let him get away with what he’d done, no way at all.

When his mom had visited him to say Clara and she were going to live with her sister and his dad wouldn’t be joining them, he was shocked.  Mom hadn’t looked sad, or anything.  Even though he had always known that she and Dad had fought, he had never thought it would come to this.  He couldn’t believe his parents were splitting up and his family had lost everything his dad had worked so hard to get.

He felt angry he wasn’t there for his sister whom he knew would be struggling on her own, dealing with the situation of their parents splitting up.  He turned his mobile off and hid it in the usual place, and went outside to have his lunch.

***

When the women approached, Harper knew the situation wasn’t going to be good.  She steeled herself for confrontation.

“We just want you to know that we think it’s horrible what you’re doing to those nice people who lived here,” one of the women said to her.  “We don’t want your kind in this neighborhood.”

Harper was down on her knees in the mulch, looking up at three women in polo shirts and crisply-pressed slacks.  The woman who had spoken had curly ringlets of blonde hair covered by a sun hat.  She had her hands on her hips, tapping a lacquered fingernail on her side.

Harper had been gardening in the yard.  Now that the Donnellys had moved out (been forced out really, by the restraining order against Nick), Harper and Bradford had taken up the yard work.  It was important for them to occupy the house openly, for everyone to see; that’s what Bradford and their lawyer had said.  Bradford had been using Nick’s riding mower, riding it around the yard half-heartedly.  They couldn’t really afford to have the landscaping company keep up with things.  Bradford didn’t really want to do the yard work, he didn’t like it and he was hardly around enough to do any of it anyway, but Harper kind of enjoyed the gardening.

She liked putting things in rows, piling up the seeds and picking out what she would be planting.  The simplicity of nature was something she had never really experienced, living with her mom.  It helped her loneliness, too, since Bradford was constantly gone, going to school or doing who knows what else to get them more money.  Sometimes when he was gone she’d feel a panic attack coming on, her breathing quickening and her hands growing sweaty at the thought of being home alone, but gardening helped with that, too.