Narrated as a memory by a restless son, the play portrays a small family's strain in a St. Louis apartment: a nostalgic, talkative mother clings to faded gentility; a shy, physically fragile sister withdraws into a world of glass animal figurines; and the absent father leaves them economically and emotionally adrift. Pressured to secure a 'gentleman caller' to save his sister, the son brings home an old acquaintance whose visit briefly stirs hope but ultimately exposes the family's fragile illusions, forcing the narrator to choose between duty and the painful need to escape.