The Road to Santa Clara (Ch. 3): The Jeep
Ξ August 31st, 2007 | → | ∇ Stories |
As July came around, I began to feel the urge to “fit in” in Santa Clara. When we had been there, I’d noticed that everyone drove huge SUVs. So, I began to tell Jeff that I thought, perhaps, we should use our savings to buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Jeff argued that this was a little absurd, especially since we were moving away from snow country, and our chances of needing four-wheel-drive while living among palm trees were nil. However, I argued that I just wouldn’t feel safe speeding along at 90mph down the dozens of freeway s in our little tin can of a Honda Civic while Hummers zoomed past us. I wanted to be in something safer, and, I didn’t say out loud, snazzier. I really wanted something snazzier. I already felt like we were moving to some beautiful glitzy part of California and I envisioned dozens of 19-year-old blonds in bikinis lurking on every corner. I felt frumpy and insecure, and thought that if we had to live in a windowless cave, at least I deserved to have a nice car to drive around.So, Jeff, ever-devoted husband, ready to please, began to research Jeep Cherokees. Most all of them were ridiculously out of our price-range, but eventually he found one, listed by a private owner in Salem which was only 40 minutes away. He called the woman up, and was greeted by a deep voice like sandpaper. “Has the car been smoked in?” He inquired. Yes, it had. Jeff felt that this disqualified the car, but I was in love. “I’m sure you can’t even smell it,” I insisted. So, he made an appointment and we agreed to go take a look.
The day we went to look at the car, we locked ourselves out of the house, and got in a fight as we tried to get on our way. Miscommunication, on top of clashing emotions and flaring tempers made for a rough start to our journey to Salem. Then, apparently mapquest was not to be trusted, because we were led on a wild goose chase down 14 miles of dirt road, before we emerged onto a major highway in Salem. Upon emerging and glancing at road sign, Jeff and I looked at each other and realized we knew exactly where we were and could have gotten here using I-5 in about half the time it took us. Frustrated and tired, we quickly made up, kissed, and pulled into the driveway – the Jeep was sitting out front looking beautiful. It was Platinum, a deep silver gray like pewter, with leather interior. As we inspected the outside, a small skinny woman came out to greet us. She had tan, leathery skin, with hair that looked slept on, and a bare face that somehow betrayed the fact that it was usually covered in makeup – it didn’t look natural. She wore a tight ribbed tank top and tight, super short cut-offs. She was very fit, although the loose skin that covered her muscles betrayed her age – she must have been close to fifty. She made a fist and coughed several times before introducing herself, Karen Johnson. We introduced ourselves, starry eyed and obviously excited at the sight of this beautiful car. It looked even that much more impressive next to my aged, small, scratched black Civic. She gave us the keys and we hopped in. The engine roared and off we went, sitting high in luxury, wiggling around in the soft, supple leather seats, adjusting the air and stereo, inflating and deflating our seats to find the maximum comfort. The car was completely empty and cleaned out, nothing in the glove box. It smelled like smoke still, but it was clear that it’d been cleaned thoroughly. As we drove along I opened the center console – it was empty save a picture. I picked it up. It was a snapshot of Karen, with some motley looking man, dressed up in black leather. She wore a black leather halter bikini top with skin-tight black underwear and garters with fish-net tights and thigh-high black leather platform boots. She had her arms around this man, puckering her lips up at him while he smiled toward the camera.
I showed Jeff briefly. “Sick,” was his response. A little embarrassed that I’d seen it, I tucked it back away in the center console and enjoyed the rest of the ride. When we returned, I thought she smirked a little at me and asked how the ride went. Jeff thought it rode fine, so we agreed to take it. We wrote her a check, and Jeff insisted that since it was my car, I’d get to drive it home. On the drive home I blared the radio, singing along with my favorite songs, feeling on top of the world. At stop lights I was sure the cars next to me were admiring my fancy ride, and somehow I thought I looked prettier behind the wheel of a platinum SUV. I waved behind me at Jeff as he trailed in the Civic, grinning as he could tell I was having a ball.
As we neared our home, however, I stopped at a stop light, and as I waited for the light to turn green, the car began to shake. Not just vibrate – shake. Alarmed, I pulled over to the side and Jeff followed. He got in and discovered the same thing—the car shook so bad it was barely drivable. The day ended just as it had began – with us tired and frustrated.
We immediately cancelled our check, and when Jeff contacted Karen, she showed her true colors. Cursing Jeff up and down, she insisted that we bought the car “as is” and that she’d sue our pants off if we tried to do anything. I was baring my fangs and ready to fight back, but Jeff, as always, was Mr. Peacemaker. He managed to talk her out of absolute rage, and although I didn’t want to give her one cent, Jeff and Karen negotiated that if we paid her $400, she would take the car back and the deal was off. I was furious. Four hundred dollars was a lot of money, and it was so frustrating me to me that we’d come out of the entire ordeal $400 poorer and still without a new car. Jeff insisted—it was God’s grace that had shown us our error sooner rather than later and we’d escaped with hardly a scratch. In the grand scheme of things, $400 was a lot better than thousands of dollars of car repair fixing a lemon. He saw it as God’s hand teaching us a lesson—all that glitters is not gold and our trusty little Honda, though not flashy, was reliable and faithful. We didn’t need a new car.
When the car drama was a thing of the past, Aaron and Candi returned from their honeymoon and two days later moved down to Santa Clara. Aaron drove the U-haul and Candi drove her little Honda Accord, their only car. They had sold Aaron’s car in order to pay for the U-haul. They didn’t have much stuff, so it fit rather easily into the truck, and they had it rented for 5 days, so that was their time frame for finding a home. After staying with a friend Saturday night, they made their way into Santa Clara, and arrived on a Sunday morning, figuring a good first stop was church. They parked the U-Haul at the far corner of the parking lots, and in their wrinkled jeans and t-shirts, they entered church with smiles, ready to meet new friends. We’d described Kathy to them, so that they could find her and get some help getting situated. So after they tracked her down, she offered them the unused dorms. Tana had moved out by that time, so Kathy offered to let Aaron and Candi stay in Tana’s old dorm. Aaron and Candi were thrilled, since a free place to stay was exactly what they’d been praying for. So, Kathy pointed them in the right direction, and wished them luck. After lunch, they spent the day driving around Santa Clara, getting a feel for the city, then came home late and exhausted, pulled the U-Haul around next to the dorm and lugged their duffle bags up the stairs to their temporary home.
Apparently when Aaron and Candi arrived, the dorms were in even worse shape than they’d been in when we arrived. Apparently Tana had moved out without a glance behind her, leaving the room littered with trash, dirty dishes in the sink, old sheets piled in the corner, and an overflowing garbage can in the kitchen. I’ve since tried to picture neat, beautiful, all-put-together Candi stepping into the littered, damp, smelly little cubicle and managing to keep her smile while she politely sniffed and picked up Cheetos bags from off the bunk mattresses. The bathroom was worse, and though Candi had never met Tana, she knew right off that she had long brown hair. By the time they got to the beds, the newlyweds were exhausted and ready to sleep. Heading toward the bunks, they realized there was no bedding, and their own bedding was packed away deep in the U-haul.
Determined to stay strong for her new husband, Candi, simply shrugged her shoulders and declared, “Well, we have our bath towels that the Jansons got us for our wedding!” So, the lovebirds took their respective bunks and lay down on the plastic mattresses, squeaking as they settled themselves down, curled up under their new black bath towels. They lay in silence for a few minutes, but eventually, Aaron heard the unmistakable sniffing from the bottom bunk.
“Babe?” No answer. “Babe are you alright?” No answer. He pushed off his towel and swung his legs over the bunk, jumping down. Candi pulled her towel over her face and turned to the wall. Aaron gently lay down next to her, curling up next to her from behind and pulling her close to him. Eventually she turned to face him, her face red and streaked with tears, her blond curly hair stuck to her cheeks. She didn’t need to say anything. Aaron pulled her close and she buried her face in his chest. “It’s gonna be ok, Babe. It’s gonna be ok.”
The next morning they were up by 6am as Aaron had a job interview scheduled at 9am with UC Berkeley, more than an hour’s drive away. He’d packed his suit and dress shirt, and managed to unearth their iron from a box. At 6:30am that morning, Aaron could be found on the floor, on his hands ironing his dress shirt on top of a towel on the floor. Candi had put herself to work trying to clean up the dorm, stuffing wrappers into the already overflowing garbage, and washing the dishes that were now sour and crusted over. She decided that spending the morning alone in the dorm was more than she could bear, so she volunteered to go with Aaron to his interview, where she sat in the car the entire time, but was happy to be near him and not in the dreaded make-shift dorm.
When they arrived back in Santa Clara it was noon, and they decided that the previous night’s experience in the dorm was a good motivation to find an apartment that day. Since they only had one car, they decided that their housing must be within walking distance of Candi’s work, the Nordstrom Rack at Westgate Mall off Saratoga Ave. Their three choices were two extremely sketchy complexes and a third that was only slightly less scary, but it was the winner. Atherton Terrace, apartment number ten became their new home, a stone’s throw from Nordstrom Rack. By ten o’clock that night they had signed the papers, commented to each other about the manager who smelled like marijuana, and pulled up the U-Haul in the middle of the dark street, flashing the hazards to avoid a collision. Since they knew no one, the two of them, by themselves, unloaded all their belongings off the truck and into their new home. Candi, a whole five-foot-two and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, managed to smile as they lugged in every last box, lamp, and chair. Once again, they collapsed at midnight, exhausted, under the warmth of their bath towels, but at least this night they were in each other’s arms.
The next morning, Candi announced that she’d run to the store to get a few things for breakfast. As she approached the car, she gasped – the driver’s side window had been completed smashed. Glass was everywhere, the glove box was open and papers strewn everywhere, seats were torn, and the brand new stereo that Aaron had bought her for their wedding gift, was gone.
More than anything, they just felt violated. Here they had just signed a year lease, and this place, their new home, their new place of refuge, proved to be a place they immediately felt vulnerable and unsafe. Aaron called the insurance and took over, finding a place to repair the car. He even went and bought them a new stereo, but discovered that the vandal had also stolen Candi’s CD case, with her CD collection of well over 100 of her favorite albums. This was the last straw, once again, for Candi. All her enthusiasm and effort to be excited about this new adventure, and this felt like the final deflation of all her joy. But, once again, she found perspective and some key-chain mace, and was determined not to be overcome by the challenge of this new place.
The next week, Candi went to work and Aaron diligently sought out positions, eventually taking the job with UC Berkeley, and though it was an hour commute each way, they were thrilled. We talked on the phone frequently, and prayed for each other, and two weeks later, Friday, July 31st, it was our turn to take the road to Santa Clara.
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My parents are saints. Their response to our decision to move to Santa Clara was, in a word, supportive. They didn’t hide the fact that they were grieving. My mom had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and I had always been extremely close to both of my parents. My mom was, and is, my best friend. Leaving them was by far the hardest part of this decision, but I knew from Scripture that not wanting to leave one’s parents was no reason refuse God’s calling. They took comfort in the fact that at least we didn’t really want to leave. We sensed that this was a move God wanted us to make, but it wasn’t as if we desired to be farther away from them.
So, my dad volunteered to drive down our U-Haul for us, so that Jeff and I could go together in our little two-door Honda Civic, then they would stay and help us settle in for a few days and fly back at the end of the weekend. (When calculating the cost of gas for the trip, I found myself thanking God we had the Civic and not the Grand Cherokee!) We drove to their house and picked them up, bringing them back to ours the night before the big move. That morning, Saturday, we awoke early. We had found a renter for our house, and she was moving in at noon, so we only had a few hours to get packed and moved. Jeff woke at 6 and began piling boxes by the door. I got up at 7 and went to the grocery store to buy a dozen donuts in hopes of blessing any able-bodied young men who showed up to help, and at eight Jeff went to the U-haul yard to pick up our truck. They had no record of our reservation. Of course they didn’t. Once again, I panicked and Jeff remained calm, and after two hours of negotiating and calls and checks and rechecks, they were able to get us a one-way truck to Santa Clara. By this time our helpers had been waiting for an hour, enjoying coffee and donuts, but anxious to get the boxes loaded and get on with their days. The load went in without a hitch, and dozens of friends stopped in to say goodbye. Kristen Wilson, my co-director in the drama, brought me a white mocha from my favorite coffee shop, prepared just as I liked it. When Caila, my little disciple and friend who had been in my small groups for five years, showed up, I couldn’t even look her in the eye. As we stood and hugged, crying on each other’s shoulders, flashes of her life passed through my mind. I saw her as a little freshman, shy and quiet, sitting on the outskirts of the circle at Bible study, nervously volunteering answers when called on. I saw her in her in-between days of struggling with sin, her sheepish looks when we’d meet. I saw her as she blossomed into a woman of God, acting in the dramas, dancing in the dances, leading groups of her own, sharing the gospel, traveling on foreign missions trips. As she drove away I turned to the truck. It was packed, and Jeff was pulling the door down the back. It was time.
Slowly, I walked back into our little home. The carpet looked beautiful with fresh vacuum lines. I smiled at the fireplace where we’d spent so many nights cuddling. I looked into the backyard where we’d had summer picnics and lay on our backs in the grass, watching the clouds. I inhaled the familiar smell of home, mixed with the scent of pine cleaners. I touched the wall and closed my eyes for a moment. Then I walked to the door and pulled it closed, pulling it tight and locking it behind me. My parents had already pulled out in the U-haul, figuring we could easily catch up during the 600-mile drive. Jeff came to the door where I stood staring blankly out at the lawn.
“You ready, Sauce?” He tenderly put an arm around me and drew me toward the car.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. We drove through Corvallis, every turn and street and restaurant washing over me with familiarity and memories. We had to stop at the church office to pick up the last of our mail. We walked in the office and I inhaled the familiar smell of copy paper, coffee, and the subtle fragrance of Cindy, our secretary. After we got our mail, we said goodbye to the few pastors who were there, and once again, I had to just stare straight ahead, forcing my mind to stay blank, so I couldn’t break down again. But once we were in the car, the slam of my car door felt like a sudden breaking of a great dam of emotion, and I bent forward in my seat, holding my stomach and weeping like a child.
“I know, honey. I know. It’s going to be ok.” Jeff pulled out and the next time I looked over at him I realized he was crying as well. How could I leave this place? Everything that I love is here. As we passed through the rest of the town, I saw the signposts through a watery blur. After filling up with gas, we pulled onto the on-ramp and onto I-5. We both cried all the way past Eugene. Finally, an hour later, when we were emptied of tears, we sat in understood silence, holding hands, in the silent recognition that we had left, that that chapter was done, that we had grieved and left and now had no choice but to move on, to embrace, to welcome this new chapter of life in Santa Clara.
That night we stopped in Sacramento to stay with Jeff’s dad and step-mom. We’d arrive late, exhausted, and slept soundly, awaking early and polishing off a solid breakfast of Eggs Benedict before once again setting off for the short, two-hour drive to Santa Clara, to our new home.
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Read The Road to Santa Clara (Ch. 4): The Apartment »
