A child with a port-wine stain on his face is born to a father angry about his son’s disfigurement. His father and mother’s marriage is strained as a result; the child's mother tries to comfort and support him while his father’s disdain for him only grows. When his father has a stroke in his fifties, his mother takes care of him despite his sour disposition until he passes away. The man becomes an actor in college and then a radio personality. A while after the death of his mother, the man moves back to his childhood home to fix up the garden. A young widow, who worked as his father’s secretary, and her daughter were given a cottage on the property when the man was a child. The boy and the young girl, Nancy, became close. When Nancy painted a birthmark on her face, the boy became incredibly upset. Nancy’s mother and the boy's mother had a terrible fight because of the incident. After the boy's father’s funeral, his mother told him that Nancy had cut her cheek with a razor blade to try to look like him. The man gets stung by a wasp and spends the night in the hospital. A woman visits him and plays a game of poetry with him. The woman listened to the man back when he was on the radio and enjoyed his show. She reads him a poem he has never heard. The man decides not to sell his family home but to stay, and wonders what would happen if he ever ran into Nancy.