They turned away from the football game. Casting the thought of men, women, and the fusses they made, Agnes took the lead and they walked toward Market Street. Agnes told Cristina about her family – Mama, Uncle Collin, Aunt Lucy.
“Your Aunt Lucy was at St. Monica’s? She was my Latin teacher,” Cristina said.
Up ahead, she saw a little mouse dart out of a sewer gutter right into the busy street. She rooted for the scrappy little fighter, darting between puttering Fords and Oldsmobiles, but a Deusenberg – probably owned by some snooty Hooverite – roared along and flattened the poor thing. Agnes covered her mouth with her hand. Cristina seemed to notice nothing, and Agnes did her best to forget the image of the squashed mousy-poo.
They walked past more shops on Market Street, pretending to ignore the empty storefronts and “out of business” signs. Agnes thought of the years of Latin swirling around her head at church, home, and school. She hadn’t liked it either. It seemed there’d never be a chance to use it even if she were to spend her entire life in Rome. And that she would never do. She planned to live in Philadelphia. Where else could she find the freedom to do whatever she wanted when she was out and about on these streets?
“That’s my family, or at least the part of it I see every day.” Agnes concluded the rest for Cristina – her aunts, uncles, cousins, Aunt Julia in Manhattan.
After she trailed off, Cristina said, “You haven’t mentioned your father.”
They stopped in front of John Wanamaker’s. Agnes eyed a beautiful green dress in the window she couldn’t afford. She considered Cristina for some time. She didn’t know her well enough to talk about her father. Mama and Granny might talk about Daddy every day, but she couldn’t. Why feel that sharp stab of pain, even thirteen years after he died?
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