Free 1929 by M.L. Gardner Page B

would be a hard life now.
Struggling, sadness, and frustration would be daily staples. The
room was still and quiet with nothing to distract him from crushing
hopelessness. He berated himself for not seeing the warning signs,
not saving more cash at home, and for over-extending his credit.
All of this ignorance had combined to create the perfect storm that
destroyed his life. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. He glanced at the
clock. It was after four o’clock in the morning. Ava shifted beside
him with a whimper as he got up and tied his robe around his waist.
Arianna’s impromptu party hadn’t left him much to console himself
with downstairs, but three drinks on an empty stomach, along with
little sleep, had him heavy-eyed enough to return to bed, closing
his eyes to his old life.

October 31st 1929
     
    Jonathan finished pulling the carpetbags from
the trunk. He turned to Charles, extending his hand.
    “Thank you for your help. Thank your brother
for the use of his automobile as well,” he said, glancing back at
it. He had owned one very similar to this, and he would miss
it.
    As Charles drove away, they noticed that
people had started to gather in small groups, staring and
whispering. They weren’t dressed in their best, but they were still
dressed in finery that no one in this neighborhood would be
wearing. Picking up the carpetbags, they began up the three flights
of dirty stairs to their new homes.
     
    ∞∞∞
     
    “That will fade,” Caleb told her.
Overwhelming bleach odor burned Arianna’s nose. “Now that we’re
here, we can open a window for a while.”
    She noticed two cracks in the windowpane
covered by masking tape. A cold burst of air filled the apartment
and began to dissipate the smell. Arianna lowered her hand from her
mouth and nose, her eyes inspecting the room. There were boxes,
crates and a few bags piled in the corner of the room.
    “We patched all these holes last night, Sven
and me. I’m going to repaint the whole room so that the white
patches don’t stand out as much. These walls are impossible to
clean. It’s in much better shape than the first time I walked in
here. Definitely cleaner. There’s the kitchen,” he rambled, taking
her hand and leading her in. “Small. It has everything we need for
the most part. No electric icebox. We’ll have to get used to that.
Here’s the garbage chute.” He hoped she would notice his repair job
on the rusty door.
    Her face was still set in stone as they
walked out of the kitchen, and he led her into the bathroom. “Sven
gave himself blisters scrubbing this tub. It looks a lot better . .
. .” His voice trailed off as he looked up at the round, metal ring
by the tub. The wall mounts needed reinforcing before it would hold
the weight of a towel. He added that to his mental list of things
to do. He walked out of the bathroom and around the corner to the
bedroom, towing Arianna behind.
    It was a small room with no window, and a
lone light bulb hung from a wire in the center of the ceiling. A
lopsided, stained mattress on a broken frame set close to one wall.
Caleb had squeezed Arianna’s vanity in the small space left. All of
her make-up, perfumes, brushes, hats, and hair accessories were
arranged on it almost the same as they had been in their old home.
Her eyes softened when she saw it. It was a dark oak, richly
engraved vanity table with an adjustable oval mirror held up on
either side by elaborately carved wood that wound down and around
the table. Between the glass and the wooden frame, Caleb had wedged
pictures; some taken of her while on vacation, some of the two of
them taken professionally and a few postcards she had collected
from Paris. The ornate vanity looked terribly out of place in this
dreary room.
    “How did you get this here?” she asked in
amazement. She hadn’t even noticed it missing this morning. Last
night, she had been rather preoccupied with other things, but this
morning she thought surely she would have noticed it