In this play, Jessica, a writer approaching middle age, her illiterate mother Ruth, and her Jewish mother-in-law, Rachel, find themselves emotionally stranded in Jessica's beach home. Jessica's lover of several years standing has died suddenly and Ruth and Rachel have come to offer comfort. As they wait for Polly, Jessica's daughter, to return from a high school dance of the previous night, they weigh the choices each of them have made as women, as daughters, and as mothers. Recollections of guilt and regret are punctuated by wry observations on sex, history, ideas and their relationships with the men in their lives.