Richard’s father, a well off advertising executive, gives Richard $3000 to cover the remaining cost of his tuition, but Richard frivolously spends the money. Unbeknownst to his mother, whom the school constantly calls to cover the outstanding balance, Richard speaks with his dad to ask for more money. His father refuses, citing Richard’s moral deficiency in lying to his mother and spending the money. He suggests that Richard get a job to pay the debt owed to the school and that he’d be happy to pay for his tuition the following year.  After his mother inquires as to how the call went with his father, Richard explains that he’ll be taking a break from school to find a job to pay the debt. Thinking her rich ex-husband is holding out on his son, she becomes enraged. Later, and after she calms down, she remarks to Richard that he shouldn’t have to get a full-time job to support himself. He responds that he doesn’t want them to be beholden to his father anymore, furthering, “I don’t even like him very much.” 

After finding work at a bookstore, Richard finds himself frantically consumed by the thought of his parents speaking to each other and his mother discovering that he’d been lying all along. He anxiously arrives home to a note that she’d left for the supermarket. He checks the answering machine and listens to a message his father left that he and his mother had “an interesting discussion,” and that he’d like to talk. When his mother finally arrives back home, he clumsily presses her for information about the conversation she had with his father, but she remarks only that his father refused to send more money and that “Richard knew why.” The next day, racked with the same guilt, he returns home from work and again presses his mother as to whether or not she’d spoken to his father. She remarks that she’d been inclined to, but he dissuades her. She continues that she’d spent the day in Greenwich, Connecticut, where they had lived before her divorce, and invites Richard with her to see the 4th of July fireworks the next day. After the fireworks and on the way back home, Richard’s mother explains that she had cancelled her summer vacation plans and had taken up work at the school in Greenwich to pay for Richard’s school so that he wouldn’t have to work. She furthers that Richard shouldn’t be responsible for the debt and that he could tell her anything. He responds with a dry and guilty “O.K.”