She was in the kitchen
constantly. She learned from the nurse how to prepare his meals and
after the first month took complete charge of the sick-room. She had
had to let the nurse go for reasons of economy. One of the two colored
girls left at the same time. Roxanne was realizing that they had been
living from short story to short story.
The most frequent visitor was Harry Cromwell. He had been shocked and
depressed by the news, and though his wife was now living with him in
Chicago he found time to come out several times a month. Roxanne found
his sympathy welcome--there was some quality of suffering in the man,
some inherent pitifulness that made her comfortable when he was near.
Roxanne's nature had suddenly deepened. She felt sometimes that with
Jeffrey she was losing her children also, those children that now most
of all she needed and should have had.
It was six months after Jeffrey's collapse and when the nightmare had
faded, leaving not the old world but a new one, grayer and colder,
that she wait to see Harry's wife. Finding herself in Chicago with an
extra hour before train time, she decided out of courtesy to call.
As she stepped inside the door she had an immediate impression that
the apartment was very like some place she had seen before--and almost
instantly she remembered a round-the-corner bakery of her childhood, a
bakery full of rows and rows of pink frosted cakes--a stuffy pink,
pink as a food, pink triumphant, vulgar, and odious.
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