Marjorie Breitweiser is a late-middle-aged woman whose husband recently left her, leading to depression and loneliness. Her mother still owns the house she grew up in. She thinks about suicide, but is determined not to carry it out. She misses childhood, and recounts a slew of memories.

As a child, she had large, crossed eyes, which her mom badgered her to get surgery to fix, even though they worked fine. Marjorie was convinced someone would love her anyway, but her mom doubted it. At 14, Marjorie began fooling around with the 16-year-old Clifton Zelony. When she lost interest and called it off, he insulted her appearance, and she agreed to her mother's wishes that she get surgery on her eyes. In the days after, when she couldn't see, she joked to her gullible friend Clementine that she saw the sights and dreams of a dead boy she made up, whose eyes she claimed to have received. Her elderly neighbor suffers a stroke and she begins to dread the inescapability of aging.

Decades later, her husband Ward, a former swimmer who is bad at sex, leaves her. The two got along okay, but he fell in love with a man. She takes all her vacation days from the pharmacy where she works and redecorates the house. Though their assets are split fairly, he is doing fantastic while she feels abandoned. She thinks about how her father, an army veteran, became a drunk abandoned her mother, a story her mother tells often.

In the present, a snowstorm snows her in and she worries about losing her job at the pharmacy. She remembers being Joan of Arc for Halloween as a child. When she visits her mother, who lives nearby, her mother asks what sin they did to deserve this and Marjorie says she'll never remarry. Her mother asks when she last heard from an old ex. She has impeccable memory of all of Marjorie's old ex boyfriends. She remembers driving home with one of them, Jonny Zale, when she was younger and inviting him to stay on the pullout couch at her mother's. He left early the next morning, and her mother said, "Let them go," speaking of men who leave in general.

Marjorie remembers changing her major to pharmacy, getting her job, and first meeting Ward. The sex was bad but he was kind and had a nice apartment. They got married and got a house together. Marjorie remembers being a baby and toddler and her mom asking her if she was happy. She remembers learning to walk.