A Loss of Roses

As told by Chapman: "The setting…is a modest bungalow in a small town near Kansas City, and here lives Miss Field, a widow, and her twenty-one-year-old son…The time is 1933—the Depression—and they are lucky to have jobs, she as a hospital nurse and he as a gas station attendant. The young man is petulant and demanding, and his mother is loving in a mournful way, for she wishes the boy were the man his late father was. Into the house moves a friend from long ago…a stranded tank-town actress. She finds sanctuary here in return for doing the cooking and housework; it is to be a temporary setup, just long enough for the actor she has consorted with to find another job for them in Kansas City …" The actress and the son become involved in a brief affair, and he proposes marriage, only to change his mind the following day. Heartsick, the actress returns to the life she loathes, and the son decides to strike out on his own.