The Road to Santa Clara (Ch. 13): The Acropolis
Ξ October 3rd, 2007 | → | ∇ Stories |
So in the midst of adjusting to my new job at The Right Stuff, we needed to find a place to live. My first thought, unrealistically, was that we could buy a house. It seemed to me that we made plenty of money, so I thought I’d scan the newspaper to see what was available. Our home in Oregon had cost us $138,000 when we’d purchased it almost a year before. So, at work I grabbed the paper and flipped over to the Classifieds to see for myself. As I ran my finger down the column, I was confused because rather than the normal dollar sign followed by 200K or 200,000, everything was listed with an M next to it and the numbers were really low. Then, a moment later, it dawned on me. These were listed in millions. Hmm. 1.2M. 3.5M. .6M. Yeah, this was not going to work.But I didn’t want to give up. Perhaps all those listed were actual homes. Our house in Oregon was a town home, attached on one side to another home, which made it more affordable. I knew that just a mile from the church was a new housing development with town homes. They looked beautiful and were advertised as being affordable. So, one evening Jeff and I drove over and picked up a flyer—the cheapest one was $400,000. We turned our focus to apartments.
I found the apartment of my dreams: The Bella Villagio. Brand new with garage spaces included beneath the unit and double security gates, a heated pool, and a fitness center. Granite countertops and stainless steal appliances called my name. I was in love. We visited a unit and it was furnished straight out of Crate and Barrel—immaculate with sleek modern furniture and an enormous sculpted vase of Calla Lilies. The rent, for a one bedroom, was $1500.
“I think we can afford it,” I reasoned. Jeff was quiet for a moment.
“Kari, think about this. Think about Aaron and Candi’s apartment.” I thought about The Acropolis, apartment #10, where the Seifers called home. I loved being there, in their home, but I’d never thought about living there myself. I thought of the paper thin walls, mildewed showers and orangish brown wooden cupboards made of particle board. I thought of the dingy carpet and funky tile on the countertops. I thought of the green swimming pool and the apartment manager who always smelled like pot when we saw him. Jeff continued, “Don’t you think it’d be wrong of us to live here in this place, while our friends, who gave up everything to come down here and support us, live there?” I thought about this. And as I thought, I saw their apartment in a different light. Yes, it was old and needed some work, but they had made it beautiful. Candi had cleaned the place from floor to ceiling and it shone and always smelled of some delicious apple-scented air freshener she’d gotten from the Rack. She’d covered their furniture with blankets and throws, coordinating colors and creating a theme. She’d hung a cross above the couch, displayed wedding photos, and truly made it into a welcoming place. I loved their apartment, and what I suddenly realized was that I loved it because of what they’d made it. She’d done more than stainless steel appliances and granite countertops ever could. I knew then that I could do the same.
And so we changed the focus of our search. Not only did we decide to go the economy route, we also realized that we wanted to live as close to Aaron and Candi as possible. So, we began looking at apartments in the Campbell/Saratoga area. Most were either out of the price range that we’d set or they were in scary neighborhoods or the landlords never called us back to show the place. Finally, we found a potential. Crystal Lake apartments had a vacancy, and the price was perfect, $1150, so we made an appointment for an evening viewing. Since we’d both been working, we agreed to meet there for the tour. At 6:00pm it was already dark, and as I pulled up I took a deep breath. The parking lot was pitch black, with no lights, and the apartments were a dark gold color with peeling paint. We knocked on the door of the office and an old woman in a bright pink dress opened the door, glaring at us.
“Hi there, we’re here to see the apartment.”
“Right. Follow me.” And so we did. She led us across the parking lot and up to an apartment. The bottom floor was the garage, hit the garage door with her knuckle, indicating this was the one. “You can go ahead and open it.” Jeff reached down and grunted as he struggled to open the rusty door. The smell of mustiness and mothballs engulfed us and I instinctively turned away. The woman walked in and pulled the string that hung form the ceiling. Click. “Ah. Must be burnt out. Well, you can’t see it, but the hookups for a washer and dryer are in here.” Jeff nodded and peered inside but couldn’t see anything in the darkness. I stayed put out in the fresh air. She motioned for Jeff to close the door which he did, then she proceeded to climb the stairs leading to the apartment, feeling her way along the wall.
“Is there a light?” Jeff felt around with his hand.
“It’s at the top.” So we felt our way up after her, I holding the back of Jeff’s shirt for comfort and safety. At the top, Jeff found the switch. Click. “Ah. Must be burnt out.” She fumbled with her keys and finally opened the door. Jeff reached inside and clicked on the light switch which, miraculously, worked. My eyes widened as the scene unfolded before me. The carpet was stained a dark yellow and was covered, literally covered, in cat hair and dark brown stains. The linoleum was stained brown from cigarette smoke, and the smell of cat urine made my eyes water.
“Oh, it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned yet. You know the same lady lived here for thirty years. Yup. Thirty years she lived here.” And, I could almost guarantee, she had died there. I made a quick lap through the house to be polite, trying to take as few breaths as possible. Jeff led me out of the apartment and thanked the woman for her time, helping me down the steps after she’d switched off the light, leaving us blinded in the darkness as our eyes slowly adjusted. “Alright, well, get your application in because this one won’t last long,” She called out after us as we made our way to our cars.
“Will do!” Jeff called back to her and helped me into the car.
After that viewing we were not a little discouraged about the apartment search. We prayed that God would open something up, but time was running out and nothing seemed available. One evening I stood over the sink, peeling carrots for Jeff’s lunch. Every evening I’d make his sandwich and pack his fruit, yogurt, and alphabet crackers for his lunch the next day. Yes, alphabet crackers. I’d found an enormous canister of alphabet crackers at Big Lots for a song and bought them, a creative scheme forming in my mind as I stood in the checkout line. During my weeks at home, with extra time on my hands, I’d sorted through the crackers to make special messages for Jeff—which I’d then pack in baggies, giving him a task each day at lunch—re-sorting the letters to make the secret message for the day. As silly as it sounds, it was a way for us to connect, to be romantic, to know that in the middle of our busy work days we were thinking of and loving each other—that we were in this adventure together.
So as I finished the carrots and tucked in the baggie of alphabet crackers, sighing as I eyed the dishes and thought about packing up and moving again. I heard Jeff’s cell ring from the bedroom and he left his laptop and answered. I could tell it was Aaron as they chatted about their weeks at work.
“No we haven’t found anything yet . . . Really? . . . I hadn’t even thought about that? That’d be great. . . Yeah, do you have the number—we’ll call and make an appointment. Yeah I got it—ok, 8965, got it. Ok, thanks, man. Late.” I walked slowly toward the bedroom as Jeff emerged. “Guess what? There’s a vacancy at Aaron and Candi’s place. I don’t know if it’s one bedroom or two or whatever but at least it’s worth a shot.” I raised my eyebrows and frowned, considering.
“Wow, live in the same complex as Aaron and Candi?! That’d be awesome. I mean, the Acropolis is certainly not the Bella Villagio but it’s better than that cat-urine-soaked pit we saw last week.” Jeff agreed and called right then and spoke to the apartment manager, Josh, who we knew from visiting Aaron and Candi. He agreed to show us the one bedroom apartment the following evening.
After work the next evening, Jeff and I met up at Aaron and Candi’s to say hello before our tour. Candi was giddy, “We might be neighbors! You could like come get an egg or a cup of sugar if you needed it.” I laughed, feeling encouraged.
Jeff and I left them and went to Josh’s apartment where his wife opened the door with a baby on one hip and a toddler cruising around her legs on a four-wheeled bike.
“Hi, I’m Bobbi. Josh’ll be here in a second, come on in and we can do the paperwork.” A few minutes later, Josh came in the door, covered in paint and sweat, his long curly hair hanging over one eye. We finished our applications and gave them to Bobbi, then followed Josh out the door. He led us down the stairs and around to the front. The apartment complex was large, but he led us around all the way to the front corner, as we walked, Jeff and I looked at each other—could it really be? We slowed down in disbelief as Josh walked up to apartment #9, right next to #10, Aaron & Candi’s home.
“This is the apartment?!”
“Yeah, is that ok? You wanted a second floor one?” Josh was confused.
“No, I mean, that’s crazy. Our friends live right there in #10.” I was still speechless, unable to believe that out of the entire city, of the thousands of apartments around, that this would be the one that was available—sharing a wall with our best friends.
The apartment itself was nothing to write home about—tiny, with seventies carpet and gold appliances with a stove that had two tiers and a sink that was probably white at some time. The vinyl was a discolored golden brown, and the mirror on the closet door in the bedroom was shattered. We walked around in silence, taking it in.
After we’d seen it all, Josh broke the silence. “It is what it is.” We smiled and nodded.
“What’s the rent?” Jeff asked.
“795 a month.”
“We’ll take it.” As soon as Josh had left, we ran to #10 and pounded on the door. Candi opened, still holding her fork in her hand from dinner.
“Guess where we’re going to live?! The Acropolis number nine!” She leaned forward in amazement, her eyes wide.
“Number nine! We’re gonna share a wall! Oh my gosh!” She jumped up and down and told us to come inside and help them finish their dinner because she’d accidentally made way too much, which I knew wasn’t true but was thankful to be fed.
That week I hurriedly stuffed things into boxes and Jeff borrowed the large flat-bed trailer available through the church. Jeff, Aaron, my cousin Matt who lived in San Francisco and had enormous biceps, and Rick, a friend we’d met through the home fellowship, lugged boxes, cursing Jeff’s enormous collection of weighty commentaries. I supplied the sub sandwiches and soda and by noon that day we were in, crammed in. We’d gone from living in a 1,200 square foot three bedroom home, to a 800 square foot two-bedroom cave, to a four-hundred square foot one-bedroom apartment. Needless to say, it was full.
Candi was at work that day, but Aaron stuck around all day to help us unpack. After several exhausting hours of moving furniture and hefting boxes around, he collapsed into our Lazy Boy recliner, still sitting outside the front door on the grass because it wouldn’t fit in the apartment yet. Jeff took a picture of him, the Nordstrom Rack sign showing directly behind his head from across the street. It captured the essence of Aaron’s life at that time: waiting for his wife to get home from the Rack. That night we had our first dinner together in our new apartment, all four of us. Candi brought the dinner, still hot from her oven, over to our place where we sat on boxes and ate off her plates. As I savored the taste of her homemade beanless Chile (beans and potatoes were both “fuzzy foods” which Candi refused to eat because their texture made her gag), I realized that my heart felt free. Surrounded by a chaotic mess of boxes and furniture, in a somewhat dreary apartment, we were in the company of our dearest friends, embarking on a brand new adventure together. Where life in the windowless cave had seemed oppressive, this felt like an exciting challenge, like an opportunity rather than a depressing trial. Knowing they were next door, knowing we were all together in this, made it doable, made it enjoyable, gave us hope.
Since I’d get home from work around 3:30, I’d usually be doing dishes or grazing the kitchen or straightening the house at 4pm when Candi finished her day shift or took her dinner break during her evening shift. I’d be standing at the sink doing dishes and see her little blond head bobbing along the street, or be sitting on the couch reading and hear a light tap on the door and know it was her. There was something fun and comfortable about being so close. We didn’t have to have huge news or really anything significant to say. She’d unwrap her sandwich and munch, telling me about her day or listening to me tell about mine. If we were all going to be home in the evening, dinners were inevitably together. Candi and I would coordinate the food, and when one of us was ready we’d just bang on the wall that we shared, signaling it was meal-time. And, true to Candi’s prediction, we borrowed eggs, cups of sugar, and the occasional batch of fresh-baked cookies.
It was also fun to be able to laugh together about the Acropolis. It definitely housed some seedy characters. The tenants above us apparently had dance parties every Friday and Saturday night, which was fine, but what was strange was that they seemed to play the exact same song, with a heavy bass beat that shook the dishes in our cupboards, all night long. Jeff and I could sing the beat of the song by heart. Aaron and Candi’s upstairs occupants didn’t party, but had kids that ran stomping races all day long. Candi’s garbage disposal was also apparently connected to the upstairs disposal because every once a week or so it would stop up, then all of a sudden work and shoot a geyser of disposed food from upstairs into her kitchen sink. Through this she was kept current on what sort of diet they were on.
Our disposal worked fine, but the stove was a little possessed. The first day we were there I sat a sub sandwich on the stove, which was off, and came back a few minutes later to find the plastic melted onto the burner, which was still turned off. We quickly learned that the tiered stove was not to be used as counter space. The bathrooms were also an adventure. Aaron and Candi’s had no fan and the walls were so thin that it was as if there was no door, so whenever someone had to go use the restroom, the rest of us would sing at the top of our lungs so that the occupant felt a little more comfortable. The lack of fan also made mildew grow with reckless abandon in their shower. Candi became vigilant, ruthlessly attacking the slightest brown slimy growth with her harshest spray cleanser. Now our bathroom had a fan—oh did it ever have a fan. The fan was so loud that it sounded like the entire bathroom was ready to take flight, and the fan was on the same switch as the light, so when one of us stood in the front of the mirror, brushing our teeth or getting ready, there was no use carrying on any sort of conversation. A car could drive through the front room and we’d be none the wiser. I was still thankful, however, that we were the ones with the fan.
The swimming pool was coined “the fish bowl” by Jeff and Aaron who announced that under no circumstances were either Candi or I allowed to swim in it, as it was positioned in the middle of the entire complex. They envisioned strange men who never left their apartments sitting in their boxers and watching unsuspecting female swimmers. The laundry room took an obscene number of quarters per load, and the washers were so small that Jeff was tempted to start wearing his socks for a whole week before handing them over to the hamper. Quarters became invaluable.
While we laughed over the quirks of the Acropolis, we saw God’s hand in His placement of us there. Two of Candi’s fellow workers, Eden and Ruby, also lived at the Acropolis. Both Eden and Ruby were Philipino. They met simply working at the Rack, and had both needed roommates and so found an apartment across the street, since neither of them drove. Ruby was our age, but Eden was in her forties, with very broken English. Her husband and her oldest son had both been killed in a house fire, and her youngest son was in the military stationed in Iraq. She prayed every day that he would come home safely, but never knew if she’d see him again. With no one to take care of her, she simply worked at the Rack and saved every extra cent so she could afford to move back to the Philippines someday. Her dream was to return. Candi was immediately draw to Eden, and began talking to her, asking her questions, and just building a friendship. She learned that when Eden’s husband and son were killed that she felt angry at God and quit going to church, feeling abandoned by him and questioning why He would allow her to feel such pain. Her English made it hard for her to articulate her thoughts, but with tears she confided the pain that she still felt over losing her husband. And, he had not known God. She was devastated that God would let him die without knowing Him.
So, Candi began inviting Eden to church, and, to all of our surprise, Eden began coming. At 9:35 on Sunday mornings, we could hear the click click of Eden’s shoes as she walked down the concrete stairs toward our apartments. We’d then pile into our cars and head to church together. Every week Eden would weep all the way through church, weeping during the singing, weeping during the message, and weeping after as we gathered our things to leave. It was obvious that God was opening her heart, allowing her pain and bitterness to be released, touching her and freeing her in ways more profound than we ever could have imagined.
Also at church we began to recognize a few familiar faces, since we usually sat in the same spot each week and so did everyone around us. Taran, the girl with the long brown hair who lived in the dorms, sat two rows in front of her with her now husband. Rick and Jana, a young couple from our home fellowship, sat to our left, and Peter and Lori, a handsome couple recently engaged, sat directly in front of us. Lori was a spinning instructor and Peter ran a local fitness center, their eyes bright and full of life, but also shy, coming and leaving church quietly each week.
One Sunday, we arrived as usual and sat in our seat. We’d missed a week because we’d flown home for Thanksgiving, and as we began to sing I saw Lori slip into the pew beside me. After a few songs, Pastor Steve announced it was time to greet each other. I turned and smiled at Lori.
“Hi Lori! Where’s Peter?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I sensed something was wrong. A shiver ran up my spine. She looked at me, stricken, her eyes slowly filling up with tears. The noise around me faded away as I looked into her face, searching. I realized they may have broken up, but something told me it was more. She covered her mouth with her hand and held her other arm across her stomach. I realized she looked thinner, if that was even possible, than before.
“He’s gone.” Tears slipped over her bottom eyelids and ran down her cheek. I shook my head, reaching out for her shoulder, unable to believe what she was trying to say.
“Gone? What – gone? What?” I pulled her closer to me and held her arm in my hand.
“He was in a motorcycle accident. Two weeks ago. He’s . . . gone.” I closed my eyes and pulled her into my arms. Jeff stood behind me, not knowing exactly what was going on but seeing enough to know something was wrong. He rubbed his hand up and down my back as I held her.
“Lori, I’m so sorry. I mean, I didn’t even know. I wasn’t here last week—did they announce it. I didn’t even know.”
“No. No one knows. I mean, we don’t really know anybody. It’s ok – there’s no way you could have known.” She sniffed and wiped the mascara from beneath her eyes, wiping her hands on her jeans and forcing a smile. “Thanks,” she said genuinely.
The singing began again and we turned toward the front. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t even breathe as I stood, stunned by this reality. Peter, healthy, strong, handsome Peter. Gone. But what was more, no one knew. Lori and Peter came, every Sunday, but no one knew them. No one grieved with them. No one felt their pain and came to their side to bear their burden. The reality made me feel sick. How could we, the body of Christ, stand around and sing songs but not know the person we sat next to? I was convicted and confused all at once.
After church I asked if she wanted to tell Pastor Steve. She said she did, and though I offered to go with her, she said she would be fine alone. I sat and watched as she walked to the front, alone, putting one courageous step in front of the other. She waited in line as he finished talking to others, then I watched as she introduced herself and told him her news. His face was sad, and after a few moments, he bowed in prayer with her, then they shook hands and she walked to the back of the church and out the back door. I watched her shiny black hair for a minute, then she was lost in the swarming crowd. I never saw her again.
