The play begins with Alan as a 29 year old taking us back into the 6 months that he went to live in California with his father, Douglas, who abandoned Alan and his mother years before and has started a new family with Ronnie. Douglas and Ronnie have two children, Jerry and Jack and they also foster two teenage girls, Penny and Carol.
Alan arrives on a Greyhound bus and has a splitting headache for three days. One the first day, Douglas goes into his swing shift job and Ronnie keeps him up until 2 a.m. talking and his father. The next day Douglas takes Alan to his workplace to get him hired on full-time. Douglas says he and Ronnie can't afford to pay for Alan's tuition for school. So, it's full-time school and work for Alan who is told by Ronnie that Carol has trichinosis, a fake disease so that he won't sleep with her; Ronnie and Douglas say that she is a loose girl.
We learn shortly after that Carol will die by the end of the play, and that Alan will no longer be living in California. We don't know how she dies or why he leaves. In the meantime, Douglas has an amateur photography habit that he keeps up with by photographing women in bikinis and he invites Alan along to learn, but Alan finds it all too creepy and feels he should be telling the model to cover up while his dad and other "amateurs" photograph her. Penny begins shooting with Douglas as well and Carol starts taking pills because she needs something to take the edge off her and her boyfriend, who is a strict Catholic, not having sex. She wants to marry him, and he has a lot of land and money in Texas. But, Ronnie has told her not to take any drugs in their house so, she must hide them from her.
We learn that Carol dies in a car accident. She's with a guy who isn't her boyfriend who is drunk and drives off a cliff and the car burns up. Douglas is infuriated that Alan hasn't tried to lay any girl since he's been there and insinuates that he is gay, and he won't have him living in his house because he thinks his young sons, Jerry and Jack will be influenced by this. He kicks Alan out of his house and Alan tells his father he is a liar, and breaks him down by revealing that he not only abandoned him, but killed his sister, who was born dead on a night that Douglas was out with some other woman. Alan's mom had to deliver the dead child alone. The play ends with Alan leaving, Ronnie not wanting to speak with Douglas and Douglas calling for Alan.
