1929

by M. L. Gardner

  ∞∞∞

  Aryl walked a few blocks in each direction, trying to think of where Caleb might have gone. Finally, he stopped a streetwalker across from the deli.

  “Where can a guy get a strong drink around here?” The tattered blonde looked him up and down and smiled.

  “You’re the second guy to ask me that tonight.”

  “Well?” he asked impatiently. She smiled but kept silent. He huffed his breath impatiently.

  “Nothin’s free, honey,” she said finally.

  “How much then?”

  “For the information? Or for something else?” Aryl was getting very frustrated. It was cold, and his stomach was cramping worse than earlier.

  “Just the information.”

  “A quarter.”

  “Fine,” he said, digging a quarter out of his pocket.

  “Keep walking down a block, turn into the alley and walk to the third metal door on the right. Knock three times, stop and then knock twice more. They’ll let you in.”

  He walked off without saying another word, found the door, and knocked as she had told him to. A large man opened the door, gave him a quick look up and down, then stepped aside to let him in. He spotted Caleb toward the back of the makeshift bar.

  “Caleb.”

  He looked up, slightly surprised to see Aryl. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to bring you home.”

  Caleb shook his head. “Not just yet. In a while,” he said and turned back to his drink.

  “No, Caleb, you need to come home and deal with this.”

  “Deal with what? Her whining and crying all the time? If it’s not one thing, it’s another, and none of what she cries about is important in real life. Almost every single day, she is falling apart about something. And I have to make it better, but I just don’t have it in me right now. Maybe not at all. Almost every single day, I come home to a cold apartment that distinctly lacks the smell of dinner cooking.”

  “Are you done?”

  “You know how I spent my days off this weekend, Aryl? Doing laundry. She said she didn’t know how and won't attempt to learn, even though Shannon offered to teach her. I've spent too much money buying dinner every night, and I have to hide the money jar, which she threw a fit over. She has wasted more of our pitiful savings than I care to think about.” Caleb tossed back his drink.

  “Are you done?”

  “And for the last few days, she had gone on and on about this thing with Elyse. Falling apart because she feels like it’s her fault. Then last night she broke down because it doesn’t feel like Christmas without a tree, presents, and parties. Even after your speech on saving money. I can only deal with so much. And I’ve had my fill.”

  “Are you done?”

  “I suppose,” Caleb huffed.

  “Okay, good. Now you need to come home and deal with your wife. This time, I can tell you that her tears were well warranted.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She came to Jon’s while I was trying to talk some sense into him.” Aryl hesitated. “She’s sick, Caleb. She went to the doctor today, and she was crying because of what he told her.” Caleb’s face fell into sudden concern.

  “What did he tell her?”

  “It’s not my place to say.”

  “Is it serious?” he asked as he put his coat on.

  “I think it is.”

  “You gotta tell me what’s going on.” Aryl shook his head.

  “I can’t. I promised her I wouldn’t.”

  Caleb hurried faster now, worried about Arianna and angry at himself for walking out in frustration the one time he shouldn’t have.

  “I had no idea she was sick, Aryl,” Caleb said as they walked toward home.

  “I know.”

  ∞∞∞

  Aryl was shivering hard by the time they got back to the tenement, his face flushed from his spiking fever.

  “Aryl, you don’t look well,” Claire said.

  “I don’t feel so well,” he said.

  “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

  “I have to tell Jon–”

  “He’ll figure it out,” Claire insisted. She walked him straight to the bedroom and helped him into bed. “I think you’re getting what Arianna has,” she called while wringing out a cloth in the bathroom. She turned as he pushed past her and was extremely sick. When he was finished, she helped him back to bed and sat beside him, wiping his face.

  “It’s one week to Christmas,” he said suddenly.

  “Where’d that come from? That should be the last thing on your mind. You need to get some rest,” she said.

  “I have something to give you on Christmas, but you can’t touch it. Not yet anyway.”

  “Some of the best gifts are the ones you can’t touch . . . like forgiveness.” She pushed a few fallen curls away from his forehead.

  “I was going to talk to you about that. Before I started feeling so sick.”

  “Then it can wait.”

  “No, it can’t.” He took her hand away from his face and held it. “I don’t want this to ruin us like it’s ruining Jon and Ava. I won’t let it. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry with you for something I was guilty of myself. It’s hard to explain why it seems so different to me.”

  “I think I know,” she said quietly.

  “Do you? Do you have any idea how crazy it made me to think that just for those few minutes you weren’t mine?” he asked.

  “Yes and I felt the same way. You weren’t mine that night with Elyse, either.”

  “Do you have any idea how important you are to me?” he asked.

  “No more important than you are to me. I never told you because I couldn’t lose you, Aryl. It simply wasn’t an option. And if that meant living every day with guilt and regret eating me alive, then it was worth it as long as I could have you forever,” she explained.

  “Exactly,” he said with a relieved sigh. She saw his weak smile in the dim light, leaned to put her head on his chest, and listened to his heartbeat for a long time.

  “Forgive me?” he asked.

  “Yes. Do you forgive me?”

  “Yes,” he said, placing one hand on her head and the other around her shoulders.

  “I blame my parents, actually.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were so hard on you. They insisted that you make some vast fortune before you would be good enough to marry me. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t have spent that time apart.”

  “What would we have done? If I hadn’t left to make a life for us here,” he asked curiously.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we would have borrowed one of your uncle’s boats and sailed around the world. Just gone from port to port, working long enough to be able to get to the next exotic place.”

  “That would have been wonderful.” He closed his eyes and smiled.

  ∞∞∞

  “Are you sure?” he asked. She nodded, still hiding under the covers.

  “What are we going to do, Caleb?” Her muffled voice was desperate. He didn’t answer for a moment, still taken aback by the words ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  “Dr. Westley is positive?” he asked. “This couldn’t be a mistake?”

  “No. He’s sure.” She sniffled, sat up, and pushed the covers off her head, her hair clinging to her face with static and her eyes sunken from dehydration. “What are we going to do?” she asked again.

  “Well.” He stopped to wonder if Aryl would be mad if he told her about the apartment building now. “It’s going to be all right, Ahna. It’ll be fine, I promise, we ha–” He saw panic take over her face and realized what he was saying and how he was saying it. “No, Ahna. Listen to me.” He held her face in his hands and looked her in the eyes. “I’m not saying that everything is going to be fine like I did that day in October. Or like your father did. Do you understand me? I’m telling you it’s going to be all right because I know that it is. I wasn’t supposed to say anything u
ntil Christmas. But I think Aryl would understand under these circumstances.” She waited for him to finish, not fully relaxing the panicked expression. “Aryl has a plan that is real, Ahna. It’s viable. It’s going to happen,” he said excitedly.

  “What’s going to happen?” she asked cautiously.

  “We’re all three going in on a small apartment building.”

  “How on earth can you possibly do that?” she almost yelled .He let go of her face, grabbed both of her hands from her lap, and held them together tightly.

  “It’s all Aryl’s doing. He met the owner of a building that is looking to sell on private contract. We take over the building, pay the mortgage, pay him a percentage of the rents and the rest is our profit. Aryl has it all worked out to save the profits, buy more small buildings and build it up from there.”

  “When is this supposed to happen?” she asked.

  “The first of March. That’s the tentative date set for us to move in.”

  “Move in! We get to leave this place?” she asked surprised.

  “Yes. It’s not a whole lot better,” he warned. “But we can fix it up as nice as we want. It'll be ours. After paint, trim, and new windows, we can start saving for nice furniture and appliances. And the best part,” he said and smiled wide. “There are some two bedroom apartments. We can take one of those and this little guy,” he said as he pointed to her stomach, “can have a room of his own.” She sat with wide, tear-filled eyes. “I told you,” he said, squeezing her hands, his eyes convincing. “I told you it will be all right.” He moved to lie beside her and pulled her close under his arm. She was quiet, relieved, and almost hopeful as she listened to Caleb talk for a long time of his plans for the new place. “We could have Claire paint the baby’s room,” he said suddenly, interrupting his own thoughts on building improvements. “She could paint a mural on every wall. Maybe she could paint a countryside scene, so he won’t even know we live in the city!”

  “Thank you, Caleb,” she said with a sigh. He kissed her hair and squeezed her shoulder. “It might be, though, that she won’t even know that we live in the city,” she countered.

  “We have plenty of time to work out the details,” he assured. “By September, we’ll have everything in order . . . for him,” he teased.

  “About that.” She sat up on one elbow to look at him. “It won’t be next fall,” she said. He counted on his fingers and looked up confused.

  “Well, it can’t be too much later than that,” he laughed. “Unless things have changed.”

  “Not later. Earlier. More like mid-June.”

  “What!” he exclaimed.

  “According to Dr.Westley, it will be mid-June.”

  “Oh, wow,” he said soberly.

  “There’s still enough time, right? To get everything ready?”

  “Yes, there is, I just thought I had a little more time. Wow. Six months.”

  December 23rd 1929

  Monday didn’t bring a letter from Maura but a visit from her instead. “Ye mind tellin’ me what this is all about, Miss Ava?” she barked, holding up the letter as Ava opened the door. Ava threw her arms around Maura and started sobbing. “All right now, whatever it is this time, it’ll be fine,” she said, patting Ava’s back. “C’mon, let’s get inside before yer interferin’ neighbor pokes her nose out her door an’ I gotta handle her, too. I dint bring me flask with me, so I might not be so nice to her this time.” She sat Ava on the couch, pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, and handed it to her. “Now explain this letter to me.”

  “I want to come and live with you,” Ava cried. She sniffled and snorted, with little gasps of breath.

  “What on earth did he do this time?” Maura asked, exasperated. Ava went through the whole story of Jonathan’s sleep talk leading to the revelation about his relationship with Elyse and the question of infidelity during the solo trip. She finished her long-winded story with a whiny and frustrated, “And she looks just like me!” She fell on Maura’s shoulder crying. Maura patted her back patiently.

  “So, yer mad because he never told ye about her, even though he ended the arrangement when he met you?” Maura asked. Ava nodded against her shoulder. “An’ yer worried something happened on the trip he took alone with…” She paused trying to remember her name.

  “The whore!” Ava sobbed from her place on Maura’s shoulder. Maura couldn’t help but smirk.

  “My, what language, Miss Ava. Now what did Mr. Jonathan say about the trip in question?”

  “He says nothing happened.”

  “And why don’t ye believe him?” Maura asked while pushing Ava off her shoulder to look her in the eyes. “I can’t imagine Mr. Jonathan lyin’ to ye, Miss Ava. I just don’t think he has it in ‘im.”

  “I don’t believe him because he hid it from me all this time.”

  “Hidin’ and lyin’ are two different things, love,” Maura said. “Just when would've been a good time to tell ye about his kept woman across the ocean? The first night he met ye? Or the next night when he came to ask ye to dinner? Maybe right before yer first kiss? Or right before he proposed? Or right after? The day before yer wedding? The day after? Then there’s always yer one year anniversary. I can see that going over quite well with dessert.”

  “You always take his side!” Ava yelled and dropped her head down in Maura’s lap, sobbing again.

  “I’m not takin’ sides, Miss Ava. I’m just tryin’ to get ye to be honest with yerself. I don’t think this has so much to do with ye not believing him as ye being mad at him.”

  “I’m furious with him.”

  “But it’s not all about this woman, is it?” Maura asked, patting her head. Ava thought about it for a moment and then shook her head in Maura’s lap. “What else are ye mad at him for then?” Maura asked. Ava knew, but she couldn’t quite put it into words and was quiet for a long time. “You think about that while I go make us some tea,” Maura said and pushed Ava back up to a sitting position and busied herself in Ava’s kitchen. Ava stared at the dark fireplace, and that was the first thing on her list.

  “He sits and stares at this blasted fireplace for hours on end,” she said. “And he doesn’t even act like I exist. He hardly says two words to me anymore.” She stood and started pacing the living room. “And believe me,” she started with a huffing sarcastic tone, “I have no worries of ending up in Arianna’s position.” Maura had no idea what she was talking about but didn’t interrupt her now that she was getting to the real core of her anger. “And he isn’t looking for a way out. He doesn’t talk about ways to rebuild our life. He doesn’t have any hope. He just sits. And stares. And sleeps. He’s an empty shell, and he’s never once, the whole time since we’ve been here, taken how I feel about this nightmare into consideration! He isn’t like Caleb who always sees the tiniest bit of good. Or Aryl who is always looking, always thinking.” She was fully ranting now with flailing arms and a livid tone. Maura stood in the doorway of the kitchen, listening.

  “He built a business from the ground up ten years ago from nothing. Nothing, Maura.,” she yelled through gritted teeth. “He fought his way to the top, and although I hadn’t met him until after he made a name for himself, I’ve been told about the tenacity and determination that got him where he was. Where is all that now? When he needs it the most?” she asked, holding her arms out. “I’ve been to his town. I’ve met his parents. They aren’t rich, and they don’t put on airs. Jonathan acts like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and now he has no idea how to live without money and assets. Happiness isn’t possible without a large house, a Packard, parties and trips overseas,” she finished exasperated. Maura came back to the couch with two cups of tea.

  “He’s not adjusting well to this new life then.”

  “Not at all. It doesn’t even seem like he’s trying.”

  “An’ now that ye know what yer really angry about, what are ye going to do?” she asked, handing Ava her tea and patting the seat cushion for Ava to sit by
her.

  “I have no idea,” she said, sitting with slumped shoulders.

  “Yes, ye do, love. Yer going to tell him the real reasons yer angry. So he knows it’s not all about this woman.”

  “Whore,” Ava corrected. Maura smiled.

  “Whatever you want to call her, dear.”

  “Oh, I’ve got some other things to call her as well,” Ava assured.

  “But do ye believe him now, after getting to the root of why yer so angry, about that trip?” Maura asked.

  “Yes,” she sighed. “I do. But I still need to know that he doesn’t see her every time he looks at me . . . and that he didn’t feel sorry for me like he did for her.”

  “Then ask him those two questions and get that out o’ the way. Take his answer to heart and don’t ye question it again. You’ll only drive yerself mad. Then get on with the real problems. He may not even realize the extent to which he’s fallen in spirit.”

  “What would I do without you, Maura?” she sighed, taking her hand. Maura dismissed the credit quickly.

  “I will see ye on Christmas Eve at me house. I expect things to be better between you and Mr. Jonathan, do ye understand me?” Maura reached out to hug Ava before standing to leave. “He’ll come around, Miss Ava. Just give him time and be here for him ‘til then. Right now’s when he needs ye the most.”

  “That’s so hard to do when it feels like he’s pushing me away,” Ava said with tears stinging her eyes again. Maura squeezed her tighter.

  “I know, love.”

  ∞∞∞

  That evening after dinner, Ava sat away from Jonathan on the couch.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He grunted an impersonal acknowledgment and she was instantly irritated with his indifference. “It would be nice if I could steal your attention from the fire for a few minutes.” He looked over at her with vacant, despondent eyes. “I need to talk to you first about . . . Elyse,” she said. Just having to say her name set her into an even fouler mood. He exhaled heavily, dreading the conversation to come.