Jay and Arty wait nervously in Grandma's apartment while their father negotiates privately with her in the bedroom.

Eddie confesses to his sons that he borrowed $9,000 from a loan shark to pay for their mother's cancer care.

Eddie reveals his plan to travel collecting scrap iron for the war effort, which will keep him away for nearly a year.

Grandma refuses to let the boys stay, but Bella shocks the family by threatening to move into a home for disabled people.

Grandma agrees to let Jay and Arty live with her above the family candy shop.

Bella tells Jay and Arty about her secret plan to marry Johnny and open a restaurant called La Bella Johnnie.

Jay and Arty sneak into the candy store at midnight to search for Grandma's large sum of hidden money.

Grandma forces a feverish Arty to drink mustard soup, insisting he cannot earn his keep while lying in bed.

Bella gathers the whole family together and announces her intention to marry Johnny, an usher at the movie theater.

Louie mocks Johnny and accuses him of abusing Bella; Grandma orders Bella to stop talking about the engagement entirely.

Bella breaks down and declares her own children would be happy and healthy, unlike Grandma's damaged and suffering children.

Bella and Grandma speak alone, and Grandma admits the deaths of her children Aaron and Rose broke something inside her.

Bella reveals she has $5,000 given to her by Louie, intending to use it to start a life with Johnny.

Eddie returns to take Jay and Arty home, and the boys learn that Louie has escaped the mob by joining the military.

Grandma reveals she always knew the boys were searching for her hidden money and tells them exactly where it was.

The play opens with Eddie Kurnitz leaving his teenage sons Jay and Arty with their formidable grandmother in Yonkers while he travels to repay a dangerous debt. Grandma initially refuses to take the boys in, but Bella's unexpected ultimatum forces her to relent. As the boys settle into life above the candy shop, Bella's secret plans to marry a man named Johnny come to a head at a disastrous family dinner that leaves her in tears and fleeing the apartment. A private confrontation between Bella and Grandma strips away years of buried silence, forcing Grandma to admit the grief she has carried since losing two of her children. When Eddie finally returns to collect his sons, the boys depart with a new and complicated understanding of their grandmother's hard-won strength.

The headline events that drive the Kurnitz family story from crisis to resolution.

Jay and Arty discuss Grandma's fearsome reputation and trade stories about the lasting damage she has caused her children.

Bella enters the apartment after becoming lost and accidentally watching the wrong film at the wrong movie theater.

Bella offers the boys ice cream sodas twice and storms off to her room when they refuse a second time.

Eddie tells Jay and Arty he has already given up their apartment because he can no longer afford the rent.

Grandma meets Jay and Arty for the first time and immediately reprimands Jay for using his anglicized name instead of Yakob.

The boys read a letter in which Eddie describes traveling across the United States and mentions developing a heart condition.

Bella confides to the boys that Grandma has $15,000 hidden in the candy store but would never willingly share it.

Louie uses a magic trick to slip five dollars into Arty's pocket and asks the boys to deny having seen him.

Louie forbids Jay and Arty from using the bathroom during the night so they will not wake him from sleep.

A man arrives at the apartment with a veiled threat for Louie, warning that the dance will be over on Friday.

Louie tells Arty how Grandma witnessed her father's murder at an antisemitic rally in Germany and suffered a permanent leg injury.

Jay begs Louie to take him along when he leaves Yonkers, but Louie angrily refuses and tells Jay to stay in school.

After Bella disappears, Aunt Gert secretly tells the boys that Bella has been staying with her and still plans to see Johnny.

Bella returns to Grandma's home carrying a suitcase in one hand and a freshly baked cake in the other.

Bella tells Grandma she has made a new female friend whose brother is a librarian and wants to invite them to dinner.

Before Grandma even appears onstage, Jay and Arty trade stories about her fearsome reputation while their well-meaning but scattered aunt Bella stumbles home from the wrong movie theater. Eddie reveals the family's desperate financial situation before Grandma finally meets her grandsons and immediately asserts her iron authority over them. As weeks pass, the boys receive increasingly worrying letters from their ailing father on the road, while Uncle Louie arrives with a gun, a mysterious black bag, and requests for the boys' silence. The looming threat of gangsters shadows the household as Louie prepares to flee Yonkers, and the boys must navigate the space between their uncle's criminal world and their grandmother's rigid discipline. After the dinner disaster fractures the family, the pieces quietly reassemble, and the play closes with Bella cautiously reaching toward a new future of her own making.

The secondary scenes and smaller revelations that fill out life in Grandma's Yonkers apartment.

Eddie breaks down in tears and admits to his sons that he hid their mother's cancer diagnosis to protect them from worry.

Bella collapses on the couch in tears after her talk with Grandma, then brightens when Eddie says the boys may stay.

Grandma sternly tells Jay and Arty she has endured tremendous suffering in her life but has never once allowed herself to cry.

Jay and Arty spot a black Studebaker parked outside and conclude its occupants are searching for their uncle Louie.

Uncle Louie reveals he is carrying a gun and tells the boys to deny having seen him no matter who comes asking.

Arty confronts Grandma during the mustard soup scene, telling her to direct her anger at Hitler instead of her grandchildren.

Louie announces his plan to flee Yonkers that very night, confessing to Arty that he was never not in trouble.

Bella asks Jay and Arty for support and rehearses what she wants to say before making her announcement to the family.

Jay steps in to help Bella find the words for her engagement announcement when she struggles to speak at the dinner table.

Grandma silently retreats to her bedroom after Bella's emotional outburst, leaving Bella weeping and the family stunned.

Bella disappears from the apartment for several days following the collapse of the family dinner into accusation and tears.

Bella confesses to Grandma that she has sought physical affection from men since adolescence, searching for the love she never received at home.

Grandma hurls a cup of tea at Bella, wrongly assuming Bella stole the $5,000 from the store's hidden hiding place.

Bella reveals that Johnny does not actually want to marry her, but vows she will still find love and start a family.

Jay and Arty thank their grandmother for teaching them to be strong before walking out the door with their father.

The play's emotional turning points begin with Eddie's tearful confession about hiding his wife's cancer, and Bella's bold ultimatum that finally forces Grandma's hand. Grandma's stoic declaration that she has suffered greatly yet never cried establishes the emotional wall that every other character must eventually break through. As weeks in the apartment pass, Arty's courageous confrontation with Grandma over the mustard soup and Jay's quiet act of maturity at the dinner table signal the brothers' accelerating growth into adulthood. Bella's private confession to Grandma about her hidden emotional life—and Grandma's furious, mistaken response—brings the family's long-suppressed pain fully into the open. By the end, Bella's revelation that Johnny has rejected her marriage plans, and the boys' grateful farewell to their grandmother, signal that something quiet but lasting has shifted within the Kurnitz family.

The key decisions, confessions, and emotional turning points that reshape every character.