Depression Era Fction Story

America,
New York
    To look at the world through the eyes of a poor man was distinctly different than seeing the same world through the eyes of the rich. Joe supposed that in the world he lived in, it didn't matter a whit if you were poor or well-to-do. Only the very rich had a variation of food, had more substance in their soups and stews than water, had more in general—more clothes, more freedom, more laughter.
Ellen shifted in her place across the room. Her sleeves were rolled up, and sweat poured off of her face as she stirred a large pot of laundry.
"At least there still water," she'd said to him, once, expression neither happy nor sad; she was simply aware.
Neither of them could consider themselves an optimist or a pessimist. They were very middle-of-the-road, choosing to sit together in common silence at the tiny table in their one-room apartment. They had it better than most—most people like them, most immigrants, couldn't speak English as well as Joe could. (Though he had always had an astute mind, and language came as naturally to him as singing or dancing or playing the mandolin came to others.) Plenty didn't have jobs, least of all a job like the one Joe held. This was simply fact.
Some called it The Great Depression, and others didn't want to give it a name for fear of giving it power, making it seem even more real than it already was. But the truth was that they were all living it. Some—people who were not Joe, who could not speak English, who could not find work, who could not feed their children—had resorted to begging, or stealing, or boiling whatever they could find in the hopes that it would somehow make it edible.
He did not see how boiling a worn old boot would make it possible to eat, but when he saw and heard of it happening, he felt a sense of detachment. Ellen was the same. Perhaps that was why they had each other—needed only one another. The rest of the world didn't matter in the end.
They sat down to supper late in the...