It's spreading

They sat at a table with their sandwiches in the middle of all the hullaballoo. “So here we are, Agnes. Tell me about your father,” Cristina said.

How to start talking about Daddy? Dr. Martin Limerick, ambitious, driven, and passionate, carrying her on his shoulders to a lecture he gave at City Hall: the benefits of personal hygiene and physical fitness in avoiding influenza and consumption. Daddy, playful and engaging, making goofy faces at her during Uncle Collin’s homilies, giggling when Uncle Collin cast reproving glances their way. Her father and greatest advocate, bidding her to be his own good little girl as they walked the dog evenings. Martin Limerick, the man whose funeral after Thanksgiving ‘18 overfilled St. Patrick’s Church with seven hundred mourners. The influenza had spread all the way to the doctor himself.

By the time she finished, they’d eaten their sandwiches and Cristina had smoked her third Pall Mall. Agnes looked beyond her – and saw her former piano teacher at a fish counter.

“Why, there’s Mr. Larney,” Agnes said, grateful for a diversion. She’d been talking about Daddy for an eternity – thirty, forty minutes – and she’d forgotten the noise around her. How odd, seeing him at the precise moment she was talking about her father. It’d been Daddy who’d insisted she take piano lessons from Mr. Larney when she turned six.