ACT ONE
It is 1942 in Brooklyn. Grandma and Bella Kurnitz live in an apartment above Kurnitz’s Kandy Store, and on a sweltering August day, Jay and Arty Kurnitiz are sitting in their grandmother's living room while their father, Eddie, asks her to take care of them. After Jay and Arty's mother passed away from cancer, Eddie owes a debt to a local loanshark on money borrowed to help pay off the medical bills. Eddie has a plan to head south to look for work in the metal scrapyards. Good dependable work during wartime is rare, and he must convince the cantankerous and grim Grandma to take the two teenagers in. While Grandma isn't keen on the idea, Bella, a sweet woman with a case of arrested development, insists that the boys stay.
The boys stay at Grandma's and Eddie sends them letters periodically. In one of them, he tells the boys he has developed an irregular heartbeat. Bella, meanwhile, takes some guff from Grandma about going to the movies so often.
Bella tells the boys that she intends to marry an illiterate usher from the local cinema she frequents, with whom she wants to have kids and open a restaurant. In telling Arty and Jay about her plans, Bella lets slip the news that Grandma has secreted $15,000 somewhere in the apartment. Jay becomes intent on finding the money and giving some of it to his dad so that he can finally return from his job.
After a few months of living at Grandma's, Louie—Arty and Jay'—mobster uncle arrives, on the run from some menacing-looking men in a black Studebaker. He takes the boys under his wing, and they admire as well as fear him. The boys agree to a $5-a-week salary from him for keeping quiet about his whereabouts.
ACT TWO
A letter from Eddie indicates he has been hospitalized for exhaustion. Arty is sick, and the boys learn that Louie is in trouble. Louie tells the boys he is going to leave town that night, and Jay asks if he can go with him. Meanwhile, Bella prepares to announce her engagement to Johnny the usher at a family dinner that night.
Louie tries to leave before dinner, but Bella insists that he stay and listen to what she wants to tell them. Bella tells them all that she is engaged and that she and the usher need $5,000 to open his restaurant. Bella’s talk about babies in her future ultimately leads to Grandma leaving the room.
Bella leaves Grandma's and goes to stay with her sister, Aunt Gert. Eventually, Bella comes home and Grandma tells her that she is just a child and cannot take care of herself. Bella then divulges a long history of sexual experiences with men in an attempt to find the kind of love and emotional satisfaction missing from her home life. Bella also admits that Louie gave her the $5,000 for the restaurant, but that she’s not going to use it and she has decided she cannot marry Johnny. It is also revealed that Grandma is strict and unloving because she lost two children.
Eddie returns, 10 months after leaving. Louie has escaped the thugs by joining the army. Bella gives Jay and Arty a football and basketball as a going away present. After Eddie and the boys leave, Bella begins cooking dinner for Grandma Kurnitz, telling her she has a new female friend, who has a brother, and that she wants to invite the two of them over for dinner sometime.
