Eve Mozell spends half of her life on the telephone, talking to her sisters and especially to her father, who, after a life of alcoholism, manic depression, intermittent affection, and constant telephoning, is finally, to everyone's relief, going to die. Eve's older sister, Georgia, the famous editor in chief of a women's magazine, is too busy to come home. Her younger sister, Madeline, an actress, is away on vacation.

The caretaking falls to Eve, who is frightened of death, and a wreck about her own aging:. "Today I couldn't remember why I went upstairs," she tells the doctor. "Is that normal?".

Unable to find solace in her husband and exhausted from dealing with the exploits of her sixteen-year-old son and his girlfriend (along with her cat), she begins a friendship with another man, someone she has met on the telephone. Now Eve, the most down-to-earth member of her family, is in danger of becoming unhinged herself. To find where she belongs, she looks to the past, to the Mozell family history of three sisters who, after their mother left, had to raise not only themselves but their father too.