"Tortillas and cheese? Isn't that something they serve in Mexico? It's the Fall of '43. How'm I supposed to know anything about Mexico? We're fighting two wars, my husband's in the Navy on some leaky boat in the middle of the Pacific, and I'm supposed to give a damn about Mexican food? Beautyful, that's just beautyful."
Cristina meowed her complaint to the waitress of Philadelphia's latest avante garde restaurant -- the Habanero, a brand-new restaurant on Front Street near Walnut. She gave it four months to close, but Agnes insisted they go. She'd gotten Brian Larney to stay at the house for Grace and Harold. Victoria had decided to come with them -- Agnes had the best mother-in-law. Cristina had never liked hers and (secretly, lest Angelo should find out) had jumped for joy when she died of a stroke in '39. But Victoria was lots of fun, especially since her husband had died, Norman had gone off to work for the war effort in London, and she'd moved in with Agnes and the kids. She always encouraged the girls to make their own decisions -- said any woman was smart as any man, didn't need a man to make a good decision. Sometimes, Cristina think she liked Agnes even better than her own son. And Victoria always treated Cristina like a daughter, a special thing from a Waspy English Protestant to an ethnic Italian Catholic. No pretenses at all, even though she looked just like Sara Delano Roosevelt.
Agnes worried about her husband in London. Bombs were still falling like rain, and Heaven knew when one might land on the U.S. Bureau of Mines facility in Kensington and bring Norman Balmoral to an untimely end. But Cristina had faith. She knew Norman well enough, better than anyone, considering what they'd been doing off and on for years, and she knew he'd make it through the war. He just had to. He just had to come back to her and their lunches with the colored lights going.
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