Warning: This story graphically depicts an incident of incest between a 48 year-old mom and her 31 -year-old son. The sex content will not be everyone's cup of tea. Especially considering not all of this is fiction. Some names have been changed. If you're only reading for masturbation value, scroll down to the part that starts with the Steinbeck poster. The sex runs from there to the end. Obviously I hope you'll read this in its entirety. Ratings and comments welcome. Respectfully, Leonard
IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
NINTH DISTRICT
ALLISON HENDRY AND CALLUM HENDRY,
Appellants,
v. Case No. 0704-1776
BELLS TARGO BANK, N.A., ET AL.,
Appellees.
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Staring into the mid distance, Rick recovered from his loss of concentration, tilted his head back, and looked sideways across at Myers's clients in open court. The nervous looking woman in the moth eaten pink sweater, ending his Alice moment. That must have been the mother, Allison.
She looked every bit as exhausted and broken as Rick had read in Myers disclosures. Her face wore the pain of grinding poverty. Of a mother, who worked every hour God sent for Wolmart, but who still skipped meals so her 10 year old, and elderly sick dad, would have enough food till Friday when they got the stamps.
Don't think they wouldn't put an American family out on the streets.
They do.
Regularly.
3 below zero outside and an arctic blizzard hit so mercilessly, people huddled in doorways on Manhattan's streets; non-paying customers, taking refuge in the heated sanctuary of crowded coffee shops, just to get out of the biting cold wind.
February's one of the worst months to be facing homelessness in New York. Especially with a sick parent you care for at home, who needs warmth, and a continuous electricity supply.
In his small loss of concentration, Rick realized the woman on which he peered, the bank's adversary, was pretty. A mature woman who didn't look that unlike mom.
Rick looked at Myers, the Hendry family's third-rate attorney, sitting next to her. They were counting on him to save their house.
Jesus. They'd need a miracle.
Frankly it was a marvel this family had even made it in front of an appellate judge. The comfort of the heated court room with its warm, oak paneled surroundings was certainly ironic, considering why they were all there.
As Rick scrutinized Allison, she turned and looked over at him.
Her sorrowful, confronting blue eyes found Rick, across the court room, and penetrated. He quickly looked away, and felt her stare linger and burning his portrait. His unsettling guilt.
Turning quickly to face the judge, Rick could not look Allison in the eye.
Rick had been an attorney for Bells these past 5 years, and stupidly, he still had a conscience.
Though the pay was nearly as good as a commercial firm, and Rick was free of his law school debt earlier than most other out-of-state folks his age; it was the cruelty of these moments, in absolute privilege, that made the job tough. An occupational hazard. The cruelty of the rinsings he inflicted on poor people for the bank; the things they'd asked him to do.
It cut him somewhere deep, and he felt the guilt weigh.
Seeing poor Allison there in court. Watching her frightened, chafing deep breaths. Her tears, silently streaming down her face. Judging him.
It made Rick uncomfortable.
Seeing the damage they'd done.
Having to come face to face, in open court, with the people, the families, they'd lied about. Whose contracts they'd fraudulently backdated, and whose signatures they'd wilfully forged. In Allison's case, to turn a $400,000 mortgage due in 30 years, to a $150,000 loan due in 18 months. So the bank could criminally raise repayments and turn foreclosure into unlawful theft. With the blessing of an American court.
Since last April, Rick's department at Bells had fabricated so many bogus, fraudulent documents, by the time the Manhattan district attorney's office got round to Allison's family—the bank, that barely made it out of the recession—was already up to its neck in shit.
Even with all the bailout money, and late night shredding sessions, there was still so much evidence, Bells gratefully took the government plea bargain and settled $1.2 billion out of court.
No individuals were persecuted.
Except Allison, and her elderly dad, and son, ruthlessly tossed out of their homes onto New York's streets that February.
"Mr Delgardo?" the judge asked, pausing mid-sentence to adjust the sleeve of her black gown. "Does Bells have anything further to add, sir?" she directed at Rick, in her prim New England tone.
Anything further to add? That was a joke. This was the family the bank had harassed and aggravated and threatened and exhausted, until they finally gave in. There wasn't anything further to add. The bank had done its homework and in Allison's hands rested on her lap, an economy packet of tear soaked tissues, heavy and sodden.
Not enough to dab the mom's overwhelming grief, or Rick's guilt.
"Uh. Not at this time, your honor. No further submissions," Rick stood professionally to address the court, raising his voice. Clearing his throat.
He slumped back down in his chair afterwards, and felt the cold, sweat dampness of his thin cotton shirt press against his back. He could hear Allison's sobs 20 feet away from him, and he couldn't bear to turn his head to see her blue eyes again.
A mom, much like his own; frightened and crushed by corrupt mortgage lenders and facing the bleak and terrifying prospect of losing everything they had.
Inside the America that LA producers are told by the studios, themselves derivative shareholders in the banks, *do not* make movies about ‘that'. The farthest Hollywood ventures into this territory, according to liberals, would be the trailer scenes with the sick kid in Susan Sarandon's flick, The Client. The police officer climbing into their dimly lit, impoverished trailer to call an ambulance for a family with no health insurance.
But even all this sugar coats the brutality of the poverty Bells inflicted on homeowners, like Allison's family, left to fend for themselves in the constitutional shattering of "un-American" cold.
This kinda thing –callously destroying a mom in court—putting a family on the street, doesn't gel well with the stage coach image of frontiersmen riding into the sunset.
Together, we'll go far.
Indeed.
Rick watched as the female judge, from the same Ivy League college he got rejected, snuck a lofty glance at Allison, from her lofty bench.
Despite the impartial barrier of the court, it didn't stop the injustice of the moment seeping into her, the Judge. Herself a mom with a 10 year old at school.
But to fully appreciate the irony of the moment, you need to know what they put on the wall over the Judge's chair:
IN GOD WE TRUST
Yes.
What was that? Does that second word say, G-d?
They were trusting in?
Didn't spare Allison, nor the thousands of American families like her; put out on grieving streets after Wall Street's 2008 banquet.
Rick would be stuck with that judge's hesitating-sneak-glance at Allison, for some time. It summarized the surreal nature of her courtroom, when you know it's all a foregone conclusion. When you know they're just going through the motions, and the deal's already been done in a smoke filled room.
Apparently, verdicts are supposed to come at the end of a trial, not half way through.
Rick's eyes glazed.
An ironic smile, slowly, crept across his freckled brow, as he stroked his dark brown, neatly coiffured, goatee. There was no chance the courts wouldn't come down on the side of his client.
Bells truly owned the system.
The rubber-stamping judge, a cog. In a Catherine wheel owned by the rich. In a too-empty courtroom, where money trumps all.
Rick looked back in the Hendry family's direction, relieved she was no longer looking his way. Though in his cursory scan, he saw the courtroom's bright spotlight catch the wet stream of tears running down that mother, Allison's face. And it jarred his curiosity.
Now that the bank had no further submissions, all that was left was for the Judge to wrap up this farce, starting with a brief adjournment to the proceedings.
The pretense. Their insistence that all the esoteric, high and mighty legal theory is really needed, to check over scant paperwork.
Now's not a good time, for a verdict. She'll write that up later.
Her ruling, denying the homeowner's appeal, a de facto signing of Allison's elderly dad, Callum's death warrant, wouldn't mesh well if she had to actually annihilate them in a U.S. courtroom. The family.
No one wants to witness that downer.
Not good.
Another family, at sea in an ocean of legal jargon, a system deliberately stacked against them. Allison, just like any other mom, lost in the cogs of a closed process that has 1 rigged outcome.
Allison and her family would lose their home.
Just like all the others, who have nowhere to go. No one to complain to, and no one, especially in Manhattan, who will listen.
When you see the extent of how badly they hurt people, it's not hard to understand why some folks use the second amendment, on themselves, or the excrement that throws families, with elderly veterans, onto New York's guilt laden, filthy streets.
At minus 3.
8 with the wind-chill, and no health insurance.
"Fuck, I hate this. I really fucking hate this," Rick burst out to Sonia, his office clerk, who stood sombrely listening to his account, with her head lent against the doorway to his office... an hour later.
She'd also come to know Allison's case, and it didn't feel good.