I just found out last night that our current landlord, the one who has been charging us full rent for living in a leaky duplex, told our future landlord that she has reservations about N’s character and that she can’t recommend us as tenants. Her concerns about character arose from the fact that N (very reasonably, I think) complained about roof work starting up on Saturday and Sunday mornings with no advanced notice.
I am very angry at her. We’ve been good tenants for three years, have been quiet, and have paid rent reliably (though she could be right when she says our payments were late four times this year. I’ve been pretty flaky about a lot of things since August 2008 and I only have so much control over the Postal Service). We scrounged up the money to pay rent three months in advance last summer when we knew we’d be distracted by hope and fear and traveling to an out-of-state hospital. And, in spite of all the mopping up we’ve had to do with the leak in the kitchen in the midst of our year of tragedy, we’ve been pretty good-natured in general.
Future landlord is a good sort, though, and called us to get our side of the story. Which, thankfully, he seems to have believed. Also, he told N that he picked up on a much better feeling from us than from her. He likes us, in spite of our current landlord’s best efforts. Which means we still have a place to move in August.
Unfortunately, our side of the story also involves something like this, “Well, you see, our son died in August so we were not in fact at our best this year, although we still don’t think we were bad tenants or that we said or did anything unreasonable. Yes, our current landlord knew this.” I hate dragging Teddy into this mess; it feels cheap and somehow slimy. I want to tell people about him, yes, but certainly not because of circumstances like this. His loss is part of our side of things, and I tell myself we’re not using him, but we really are.
I wish I could move out now, that I could pack up my family and memories and run to safety.
And I still wonder if I missed it, the time and place where I could have cleared up misunderstandings between us and our current landlord, helped her to see our side of things, helped us to see hers (I know there’s more going on on her side than we know). I feel like – somehow – I should have prevented all of this from turning so ugly.
I lost a World 