When I first saw my new house, I cried. The garden walls had crumbled, leaving river rock strewn along the yard. The sign displaying the address hung precariously from a lone nail. The grass was dead, the flowers were dead, the sun beat down on us without any relief.
My husband and I had decided to buy the house the previous year but it fell out of escrow – a euphemism for we changed our minds. I wasn’t ready to leave our compact, urban home for the country. And even though our house was shrinking as our family grew, the children’s pediatrician lived on the street behind us. The library was one block away. The park was across the street.
But my husband dreamed of living on a mountain top. He reeled me in by taking me to houses on spacious lots with garages and sprawling yards and kitchens three times larger than mine. I bit.
Every weekend we drove from the city to the sticks house-hunting. One day, we ended up on a mountaintop in Topanga. The house was on a meandering dirt road with potholes deep enough for Olympic diving events and a steep drop-off into an abyss on the west side.
The owners were real estate developers who were overextended. They needed to sell. It was a great deal, but also a great deal more than we could afford.
The house was an octagon with city views, mountain views, valley views, ocean views. Built in 1981, it had rust shag carpet and honey-oak paneled walls. There was a mirror above a platform bed and a built-in gun case. Outside, a squirrel perched on a skeet-shooter dared me to live there. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I thought.
We cancelled the sale when the home inspection revealed serious leaks, decks that sloped into the house, and non-functioning fire sprinklers. It was three weeks before the 1994 earthquake. Even though several months had passed, my husband continued to obsess about ‘the house that got away,’ Finally, he called the broker. The house had suffered extensive damage. The lender wanted to make a deal.
“It’s mostly cosmetic,” he told me after he saw the fractured house, “and a screaming deal.”
I didn’t want to buy it but I didn’t want to be dream-killer either.
“Maybe we won’t qualify for the loan,” I secretly hoped.
When I finally saw the house, there were bigger problems than the disco mirror and carpet. There was no water, no sewer, no natural gas, no paved road. The closest supermarket was red-tagged in the earthquake. I was about to move to the moon – desolate and silent. That was nearly 25 years ago and I am still there, but the shag carpet is gone.
