Chapter 4, Tracks Summary

Jimmy Herf attends to his ill mother's needs during their hotel-provided dinner. He straightens out the silverware, detects that his mother might be worse off than before, fetches butter for her mashed turnips and engages in conversation. His mother asks Jimmy to go out and buy an amount of chocolate creams. Jimmy leaves and buys the candy, his head full of childhood fantasies. He returns to find his mother in bed and very bad off. She asks him to call her sister, Emily. Aunt Emily arranges for a doctor to see Jimmy's mother and sends him to bed, where he reads and worries about his mother before crying himself to sleep. When he wakes up, he checks in on his mother. The doctor allows him to see her, and she does not look very well.

Emile and Madame Rigaud work in...