Eric Dinnocenzo - The Tenant Lawyer (33 page)

I reached over for my cell phone, cradled it in my palm for a few moments, and then dialed Sara’s number. I was nervous while it rang, and when her voice mail picked up, the sound of her voice on the recording pierced through me. When the beep sounded for me to leave a message, I decided to leave one this time, speaking in a soft, slow and halting manner. “Hi, Sara, it’s me. I hope you’re doing okay. I know you’re avoiding my calls, but I’m just calling about the apartment. I don’t know if you’re still staying there, but I assume you are. I’m just calling to figure out what’s happening, if you’re moving out and if we’re breaking the lease, if you’re staying, or … I also have to pick up some stuff, so I’m going to need to go there.” I paused. “I’m sorry. I do love you.”

I stood in front of my mailbox at the office, holding the envelope in front of me. Looking at the logo of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the return address location, I knew that the decision in Anna’s case was inside of it. I tore open the envelope and began reading. On the first page Judge McCarthy concluded that Miguel was not a credible witness and that he was a participant in the drug deal. Right then I resigned myself to the fact that we had lost. But when I reached the end I was thrown for a loop. “Wow,” I said out loud.

At that moment Alec happened to be getting his mail, too, and he asked, “What’s going on?”

“Judge McCarthy issued a decision in my drug case. Here, check it out.”

He began reading it while I just stood there. I wondered what his reaction would be. Judge McCarthy had done a very curious thing. He had, in effect, split the baby. He decided against Anna and granted possession of the apartment to the housing authority, but he also stayed the execution of the judgment until August 31 under the condition that Miguel not be allowed to visit the premises. As a result, Anna and David would get to stay in the apartment through the end of the school year and until the time he was set to go off to college. He would be able to keep the scholarship.

“He can’t do that,” Alec remarked after he finished reading. “The law doesn’t allow a stay in this situation. He can’t rule for the housing authority and at the same time give your client more time in the apartment. He should’ve just given your client possession.”

Alec was right. Under the law the judge either had to allow an eviction or deny it. He had no discretion to give a tenant who lost a drug eviction case extra time in her apartment.

“I know. Obviously he was trying to strike a middle ground. What he did was unorthodox—”

“Unorthodox?” Alec said. “It’s more than unorthodox.”

“It’s bad for Anna because she’s going to lose the apartment, which isn’t good, but I always thought we’d lose. This is good, though, because David gets to keep the scholarship. That’s more than I expected. I don’t care if the judge violated the law. That’s not my problem.”

“
Merola
will probably appeal.”

“Let him. It’ll take two years.”

“True. But he could bring a motion for reconsideration right now. Judge McCarthy may realize he did something completely wrong and change his decision. He might be afraid of getting reversed on appeal.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I acknowledged. “But I’m not sure he’d reverse himself. He hates those motions. I’ve seen him really lay into lawyers who bring motions for reconsideration. He takes it personally.”

“It’s business, Mark. It’s not personal,” Alec said, riffing off
The Godfather
.

I joined him by saying, “Alec, you’re my co-worker and I love you, but don’t ever take sides with anyone against legal services again.
Ever.”

I went back to my office and called Anna to tell her the news. She reacted with a joyous yelp.

“It does mean you’ll have to move at the end of the summer,” I confirmed in order to make sure that she didn’t lose sight of that fact.

“With him gone at school, I won’t have
nothing
left for me here, anyway. I’ll move to Puerto Rico to my family. I’ve been here so
long,
anyway, it’s time for a change.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I’ll be okay. I have family. It’ll be the right thing for me.”

I cautioned her that we were not entirely out of the woods yet, that the housing authority might file a motion for reconsideration.

A CDBG meeting took place at the church the following day to decide on projects for the settlement money. Sitting around the table waiting for the meeting to begin, I noticed that we talked more easily with one another than we had at our initial meetings. Through the shared experience of fighting against the city we had grown closer with one another. Father Kelly began the meeting by thanking me for my work in obtaining the settlement, and everyone else joined in which felt very nice to hear. He then presented the idea that he had previously mentioned to me—rehabilitating a building on South Main Street to become transitional housing for single mothers who had been the victims of domestic violence. After sitting through so many meetings in the church basement that seemed never to end, in which divergent views were discussed at length, in which even simple decisions were difficult for us to make,
it
was quite surprising to see everyone readily agree on Father Kelly’s proposal. Yet when I thought about it, it made perfect sense that they would, since the idea appealed in some way to everyone present. It would be located in Lawrence
Geuss’s
territory, Nancy would like it because it would provide assistance to victims of domestic violence, and some of the women it would serve from the community would be Hispanic which was Gloria’s constituency. Father Kelly had cleverly chosen a project that held an almost equal appeal for everyone. I wondered if he had done that intentionally or if it had come about by chance.

Any leftover funds, it was decided, would be applied to a rental assistance fund for tenants. Of course, there would have to be court approval of our plan, but we didn’t foresee a problem with that. The uses we had in mind for the money fit squarely within the CDBG regulations.

28

A
couple of days later
Merola
filed a motion for reconsideration, citing substantial legal authority that Judge McCarthy had committed legal error. After having been through so much in the case, and now with this additional hurdle to overcome, I felt a wave of exhaustion pass over me. I just wanted the matter to be over. It was frustrating that Anna and David were now on the chopping block again, their housing and his scholarship once more at risk. In my view, the housing authority was acting in a ridiculously bloodthirsty manner, like a legal version of
The Terminator
, not stopping until it evicted Anna and David.

Despite what I had said to Alec, I was a little nervous that the housing authority might get the decision overturned. It was true that Judge McCarthy very much disliked motions for reconsideration and often came down hard on lawyers who filed them. But his decision was so clearly erroneous that I feared he might change it.

When I called Anna to inform her of the motion, David answered the phone, and I explained to him what was happening in the case. Anna wasn’t in and I asked him to have her give me a call. Before getting off the phone, I felt I should say something to try to forge a connection with him. After all, I had been to his apartment twice, we had taken a drive together to the Rite-Mart, and he had even seen me dance the salsa. And now his life had literally been changed by the outcome of the case, and I was a part of that. Yet there seemed to be a distance between us that was difficult to bridge. Nothing came to mind to say except to ask how school was going. He responded that it was good, and then silence fell between us and we got off the phone.

By the time Saturday rolled around, Sara still hadn’t returned my phone call, and I was sure she wasn’t going to. I felt it was becoming urgent that I collect my things from the apartment; I had no idea how long she intended to stay there or, for that matter, if she was even still living there. I worried that she might have vacated and the landlord might have removed my stuff. I decided to drive into Boston, but beforehand, I placed another call to her. She still didn’t answer, and I decided not to leave a message. If I left one she’d know I was coming and might make sure not to be there. And I wanted to see her again.

It felt strange and unfamiliar to walk through the front double doors of the apartment building and into the lobby. I felt nervous as I climbed the stairs and wondered if I might be walking into a bad situation. I slowly turned the key in the door and stepped inside. I heard footsteps from the direction of the kitchen and then Sara appeared from around the corner. Upon seeing me, she put her hand to her chest. “You scared me.”

She looked prettier to me than before, somehow.

“Sorry to startle you. I just came to get my stuff. You didn’t answer my calls, so I just came. I didn’t know if you’d still be here.”

“I’m moving,” she said coldly.

“When?”

“In the next couple of days.
I’ve already moved some of my clothes out.”

I felt my stomach drop, knowing this meant that our relationship was surely over. She went into the living room, and I waited for a moment before I followed her. We stood facing one another.

“I’m sorry about things,” I said, feeling my voice choke up.

She looked down at the floor. “I am too.”

“All of a sudden we just ended, and it’s hard for me to understand. We haven’t even talked since that day.”

“But it’s not sudden, Mark, and you know that,” she responded. “We fight a lot, we’re not intimate. I mean, you haven’t been emotionally available to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like there’s no empathy or understanding in you for me. I’ve felt very alone for a long, long time.”

“There is empathy and understanding,” I protested. “You don’t express your emotions. You leave me to guess them and when I don’t do that successfully this is the result. You run away from me.”

She shook her head. “See, I tell you how I feel and your first response is to reject my feelings, not to listen to them and actually feel what I’m feeling. It’s the same old thing. You can’t tell me we’ve been working for the past few years.”

“But this is how it ends? Like this?”

“I don’t know how else to do it.” Her eyes welled up with tears and she wiped them away. “I’m going to come back later and get the rest of my stuff.”

“This is how it ends?” I asked again.

“This is the only way I can do it. I don’t know how else.”

I noticed that a box filled with her belongings was positioned up against the wall in the hallway just outside of the bedroom, and it appeared that she had already moved some stuff out. She picked up her coat from the couch and put it on. I stood there hardly believing that she was leaving, that I might never see her again. She walked past me on her way to the door. I reached towards her hand to stop her.

“Don’t,” she said, jerking it away.

“I feel like I’m never going to see you again,” I said, my voice breaking. “It feels like you’re dying or something.”

“I’m leaving,” she said in a determined way, her upper lip quivering.

Tears began to stream down my cheeks.

All of a sudden Sara put her arms around me and held me tight. I embraced her, feeling her warmth against me, and then she pulled away and, without looking at me, left the apartment. I just stood there for a few minutes, staring ahead vacantly, the tears still coming as I softly cried.

29

I
had time to kill before the motion was to be heard, so I went into the clerk’s office to check a couple of files for cases that I had. Penny was stationed at the counter, and after we greeted one another she remarked, “So I see you and Kevin
Merola
are here again for that case.”

“Unfortunately.”

“It’s been quite a saga, huh?”

“To say the least.”

I wasn’t particularly nervous this morning since not many cases were on the calendar, which meant a crowd wouldn’t be watching me, and I was also in a much more advantageous position than
Merola
. I figured he’d be the one doing most of the arguing and that Judge McCarthy might even do my job for me by defending his decision. Our case was the first one called, and Judge McCarthy didn’t even give
Merola
a chance to present his argument. “I made my decision clear, Mr.
Merola
,” he barked.

Veteran that he was,
Merola
maintained his composure. “Your Honor, with all due respect, the decision contains legal error. In a fault eviction case, if the landlord wins, a stay of execution cannot be given to a tenant. Either the tenant wins and gets to stay or the tenant loses and has to move.”

“How about if I change my decision so that the tenant wins?” Judge McCarthy taunted. “I could do that, couldn’t I, Mr.
Merola
?” He leaned back in a self-satisfied way, like someone who has just finished a big meal. Now feeling certain that I was going to prevail, a surge of excitement ran through my body.