It was a little eccentric, but the arrangement was tailor made for Charles, who was content now, living in the servants’ house, prettily decorated by Louise. The barn bulged with everything else they’d brought with them and didn’t use, and Louise still said she was saving it all for better days.
With the sale of the house in the city, and the Tahoe property, Charles had a reasonable amount saved to ensure their future on the scale they were living now, and the amount paid to him by the new owner to oversee the property was a salary they could live on comfortably. They had few expenses living in Tahoe, and no help, other than a cleaning girl from town. Their life had moved into a whole new phase. Louise loved gardening, and pushed Charles to help her with it. He was surprised to find he enjoyed it. Somehow, it still stunned him, but they had survived the reversals which had shattered their world. And as time went on, he invested the relatively small amount he had left, and hung on to his few remaining investments. What he had grew slowly but it was safe. And the Great Depression continued with little relief for many people. Charles and Louise were better off than most.
The years slipped by, with little change in the economy for a decade. It was the longest economic depression the world had ever seen, and a dark time for the country. Their peaceful life in Tahoe spared them from the rigors of people living in shanties and abysmal conditions of poverty in the cities.
Eleanor and Alex came for a weekend from time to time, and two or three weeks in the summer for their vacations, and stayed in the cottage that her mother had set up for them. They had remained in the same jobs, and Alex had crawled his way up to a medium position at the same bank that had hired him. His unpleasant superior had quit, but by 1939, almost ten years after the crash, Alex was forty-three years old, and not likely to reach the top again, but he was grateful for the job. Unemployment had remained rampant and the economy had stayed at its lowest ebb for ten years. At twenty-nine, Eleanor was still working at Miss Benson’s, and was teaching Latin as well as French and art. The school hadn’t changed much in the years since she’d been a student there herself, and the concept of a finishing school of sorts for young ladies was somewhat archaic, but the atmosphere was genteel and Eleanor liked her job.
The only great sorrow in her life with Alex was that they hadn’t succeeded in having a baby. She had been pregnant five times, and miscarried every time. One had been a stillbirth at eight months, which had been traumatic for her, and a source of immeasurable grief to both of them. Alex had assured her the last two times that he didn’t care if they never had children, he loved her deeply and he didn’t want her to go through the same agony again, it was just too hard on her. They were almost resigned to their childlessness by then, although it saddened Eleanor more than she admitted, which Alex knew well. Even Eleanor’s mother had tried to convince her to give up. She had a wonderful husband, and a good marriage, sometimes that was enough. Louise was fifty-six by then, and Charles was sixty-two. He was in good health from his outdoor life at the lake, but there was an undeniable sadness about him ever since the crash. The losses they had sustained had demoralized him, despite Louise’s constant efforts to engage him and cheer him up. Supervising the property kept him busy enough, but the changes had been too hard on him. It always saddened Eleanor to see it, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Their old way of life would never be restored. The depression in the economy had gone on for ten years, and his own along with it. They were much better off than many of their old friends who were leading hard lives, had moved away, or had died in the meantime, unable to cope with a changing world.
Alex and Eleanor were still living in the same apartment in Chinatown. The apartment was comfortable and bright and beautifully furnished with their old things. They had come to like Chinatown, and the rent was ridiculously