Our Labyrinth
We’re finally landing a shot at writing one of those deplorable endings everybody around us has already authored. I hate to sound so cynical, but it’s like the fates themselves are prodding me, provoking me to get like this, as if they knew I was cynical by nature.
Every single homeowner had a similar epic to unfold. With every house purchase came a climactic story filled with hopes, obstacles, perseverance, setbacks, calamity, and finally loss of hope soon followed by an incredible victory that propounded a match made in heaven: the proper house for that one particular family. It taught lessons about hard work and never giving up, and it furthered the adage that the right one will be there waiting for you if you only try.
We were done with trying. I had had it up to here with looking at houses and witnessing the market prices escalate, dealing with sellers who were getting twenty thousand more than their asking price and who responded by asking for even more. My wife wanted to try this one last shot and put an offer on a house I hadn’t even seen, and I thought why bother but said yes because I knew she really wanted a house and our chances seemed to be getting slimmer by the week.
After this, we were going to comfortably forget about the whole thing until next year. At the going rate for houses, we felt there might be a slim hope that next year the house prices would drop. But there was no guarantee of that, of course. Regardless, this house she put an offer on was going to be our last chance before giving up and not having to worry about it for another year. Having never seen the house, I thought it was risky putting an offer for something I didn’t know I would like, but I was confident that I already knew what was going to happen, and I was writing this one off as history.
But I must have seen something coming. These things always have a knack for kicking you right back when you think you’ve seen the writing on the wall. I know it was a thought hovering around the frontal section of my brain waiting to alight on the plate of my forehead, even as I was rejecting it, asking myself what the odds were. We gave an offer with great impetuosity born of desperation, and we went off on our island trip to forget about life for three days. My real thoughts I kept to myself for fear of being called cynical.
Well, they accepted. When we came back from the island trip, it was Sunday, and we were recuperating from travel, when suddenly we heard the news — we had to move immediately to have me see a house we might go into negotiations for the next day. My wife’s reaction was really what set me loose. She expressed shocked disapproval!
What the hell were we putting an offer on a house she did not expect to even want? I flat out told her forget about it. I said let’s just tell them no, that I changed my mind. I wanted to pull out and to hang with the consequences. What could they have taken from us? A thousand dollars? Sold! I was out.
It was unfair, I recognized, but I hated the prospects of buying a home she didn’t really want — just because we were desperate. Just because the market and its escalating prices was shutting us out, and this might be the last opportunity to ever buy a house. To at least buy one within a good school district, which was our chief concern now that our daughter was going to enter kindergarten.
I thought there were worse opportunities to lose in life. We could deal with this. There were other ways. We could keep living on the haunted premises of the hospital where are apartment building was located. I didn’t care anymore. If flooding leaks took out half of our belongings in the lame duck apartment unit we had, it was the price we were paying for this set piece of a life we had chosen.
But I knew it was not that simple. I called a friend. We talked. He couldn’t understand my dilemma. “Well, if you gave an offer, it was because she must have been happy with the house. If they accepted your offer, isn’t that a good thing? What is your question? I don’t understand what you want me to help you with here.”
We talked, and we talked. He was the voice of reason, as I would say about it later when recounting this phenomenal story. He was the one that grounded me when I was planning the most devious thing. We were going to drive out there that evening to meet the realtor. The house was vacated, so we had all the time in the world to scrutinize, to employ the measuring tape to see if things fit. It wasn’t a large house, but it did have a two-car garage. I was convinced I would find enough faults with the house to argue us out of the commitment. I was bent on sabotaging the whole thing. But this talk with my friend set my attitude into a slightly different course.
When we were walking through the interior a few hours later, after having met the realtor and having conferred in the car every detail we could think of between just the two of us, I was walking, looking at our four-year old daughter managing her way through the empty rooms, and I knew that I was not there to submit verdicts but to commit to whatever was the right decision. The sun was setting. I was wondering what my wife was thinking. Words were spoken, casually, almost as if thrown aside as we passed each other in the hall as we kept walking into the same rooms over and over again. I’d walk back into a room to make sure about something and walk out and run into her going back into the room I just came from. These repeated passages were the last twigs we were pulling on to climb out and find the proper path out of our hole. But there were no obvious signs from divine powers. We had to go on pure instinct.
I can’t say what it was about it. It was the right moment. Through the west windows, the sky was glowing, and I pointed it out to our daughter. It was a soft pink and purple splash, and we walked back into the other rooms and yet again, feeling the fit of the house, trying to establish the reality of it into our hypothetical living space.
When you paced in and out of rooms long enough, taking your time, you felt the flow of the place. It was not about measurements and estimations but about following your gut feeling.
Was our story going to be something like, “We had given up but then gave one more shot at a house that had miraculously opened up in a neighborhood where nothing was going for sale, and who knew they would ever in a million years accept our modest offer?” I was already worried I was going to sound like everybody else, and we hadn’t even made the decision.
I took out the tape measure again. I made comparisons. I mentally held the numbers of things back home, finding that they would fit well. The entire process was disarming, and when we walked out of that house, I was the one trying to convince my wife that this might be it.
Yes, it had no fireplace, and the rooms were small, and it was a house that my wife deemed needed work if it were going to make her happy, but even the fact that it had no central air didn’t bother me anymore. In the car, I told her it might even be good to hold off on having air conditioning installed to not only forego the installation price but the subsequent electrical costs every month.
We told the realtor yes, and we drove around the neighborhood for one hour, getting the feel for the type of people that lived there; stellar schools didn’t necessarily mean great neighbors. But we immediately discovered that her sister’s old house was within two miles of the place, and so we actually knew the general area better than expected. We were agreeing that even though this was not perfect, it was not only the right time to buy but the place felt right. And that was not to mention that this was our escape from an apartment building that had flooded multiple times, that was bursting at the seams with all of our belongings, in an urban area of the city whose schools ranked among the lowest of the low. In our present home, we had things stacked to the ceiling in every room and closet, and the room that served as my studio space had no floor space in which to walk, even though I managed to get in this space to get work done almost everyday. With few places to even walk in such an apartment, we were looking at an unsure future.
Driving around with the windows down to get all our senses focused on the neighborhood, we went over pros and cons, and we were reassured that this was the right course to take. Back at the apartment, after a weekend trip and major decisions, we were drained, looking forward to nothing but sleep.
I woke up at four o’ clock in the morning from a recurring nightmare I’ve had now and then for the past few weeks. A minotaur was trying to get into the apartment. Was it a patient from the hospital next door? I don’t know why it was always a minotaur. When I finally opened the door, I took a pole and attacked it. It was always futile because the hulking thing would overwhelm me in our struggle. I would wake up in the dark, looking around the room, no longer on my side of the bed but in a better position to catch all things around me. And I knew then I was only dreaming.
This night, the anxiety from the nightmare was whisked away when I recalled we had just put the green light on a house. Instead of lingering on the minotaur, I was planning what would go where in our new place. What of the many possessions would get demoted to the garage? I checked the time. It was four in the morning. I stopped thinking about it at 5:45, when it was almost time to get up. I turned off the alarm and got up early; there was no point in trying to get sleep today. Though I was exhausted, I was looking forward to the day. And that would be the same feeling you get when inconvenienced by longer commutes and double the amount of monthly costs. It was going to be a monster to tackle, but we were going to meet the new challenges head on with hearts animated by a warm, new change, even if my beloved cynicism was no longer going to be a part of it.
— Rey Armenteros