Marion Hildebrandt has recently begun seeing a therapist, Sophie Serafimides, in secret, telling her family that her weekly appointments are an exercise class. Marion feels invisible; Russ is no longer attracted to her, and she has no close friends. She tells Sophie her suspicions that Russ is trying to cheat on her with Frances Cottrell but holds back the full story of her past, just as she has always held it back from Russ. She told both Sophie and Russ that she spent 14 weeks in a Los Angeles mental institution in 1941 after a “severe psychotic episode” (137), and that she is divorced. Now, however, she tells Sophie the story she has been concealing in a long flashback narrative.

In Marion’s childhood, the stock market crash of 1929 destroyed her father’s business, and he fell into a deep depression. One day at school, an administrator pulled Marion aside and told her that her father killed himself, leaving a note explaining that the family’s debts were worse than anyone thought. Shortly after the suicide, the family dispersed. Shirley, who was in New York City for college, stayed there to find work as an actress.