July 22 1947

Wilf's wife Alice is dying. He has sent for his two sons. Edgar, a successful scientist, has brought his wife. Richard, a disillusioned artist who has stumbled into teaching and who is in the throes of a divorce, has brought his heavily-pregnant fiancee. All started life as working-class and socialists. It emerges that Wilf and Alice made enormous sacrifices to put their two sons through grammar school to make them more upwardly-mobile, and indeed they are. Each has gone his own way. But do they understand or even know one another any more?

JIMMY KOVAC is a line cook in a Los Angeles restaurant. Jimmy fights with his boss, drinks beer, watches TV, and occasionally sleeps with MONICA, a supermarket checkout girl. But when he meets KATE, a New York actress in town for pilot season, Jimmy's life changes. Educated and privileged, it seems that Kate would have little interest in Jimmy, but as she spends more time with him, she discovers that Jimmy's life is not as simple as it seems. After a Thanksgiving trip to the war zone that is Jimmy's childhood home, Kate invites him to spend Christmas at her family's ski chalet in Colorado. For once, Jimmy finds himself in the company of a loving family who couldn't be more different from his own: affluent and cultured, they welcome him with open arms. Over time, Kate realizes that Jimmy has had triumphs and failures that he rarely mentions, but seems intent on protecting himself from further disappointment by opting out of life entirely. Kate asks him to move to New York with her, and Jimmy agrees to go. But a final visit from Monica on the eve of his departure leaves Jimmy facing a hard fact: living in New York with Kate may simply be an easy way out of a bigger issue that he doesn't want to face.