“When she got to Eileen Reilly, Eileen turned red and said, “I would rather not say.” This astounded me, for her father was a handsome, charming salesman at Home Savings Shoes on Main Street – Stan the Shoe Man, my mother affectionately called him. But his daughter had absorbed some disappointment – his, or her mother’s – and did not want to speak of how he earned his living. Perhaps that was the moment I learned this as a source of personal shame, or observed the possibility of it.”
