Franklyn Tanner is aging, and he knows it. After leaving his shack in the South for his daughter's New York City apartment, he spends most of his time in an armchair by the window. His only joy is the geranium that the family across the alley sets outside their window every morning. 

Months ago, Tanner reminisces, his daughter found him sitting in his filthy tin-and-crate shack with Coleman, the elderly Black man who cares for him. Disgusted, she calls Coleman the N-word and a stinking drunkard, insults his lifestyle, and insists that her father come to stay with her. He relents, but not without regret. For over forty years, he reminisces, Coleman worked for him at his sawmill, where they became friends after Tanner made Coleman a pair of glasses. Isolated and stifled by the city, he misses his friend.

Soon after Tanner arrives in the city, a well-to-do Black man and his wife move into the apartment next door, and Tanner becomes so incensed as to demand that his daughter move to a different building. When she calls him a hypocrite on account of his friendship with Coleman, he only becomes angrier. Tanner despises his own daughter.

Back in the present, he runs an errand for his daughter all the same, gingerly creeping down two flights of stairs to another apartment. On the way back up, he yells wistfully into the stairwell and nearly falls to the ground, only to see his Black neighbor coming up the steps behind him. The man lightly mocks Tanner, leaving him in tears. This humiliation pales in comparison, however, to what awaits him in his daughter's apartment. The geranium across the alley is missing. From its owner, he learns that it has fallen to the street below. Lying amid dirt, water, and shattered pottery, the pink flower lies with its roots facing skyward. All that Tanner can do is cry.