Jack, Barry and Patrick are first generation Irish brothers who grew up on Long Island, the sons of a “wife-beating, child-abusing alcoholic” and a long-suffering mother. When their father dies, Mom buries him and quickly returns to Ireland to rejoin a long lost love. She leaves the house to the boys, saying, “Don’t make the same mistake I did” – marrying the wrong person. Five years later, Jack is five years married to Molly and living in the family house on Long Island; Barry, a “lapsed Catholic” and problem drinker, has been through a recent break-up and moved back in; and Patrick, the youngest, has just graduated from college and is facing “real life” with all its decisions. He also has just moved back in. After a dinner party to celebrate Molly’s birthday, Jack drives one of the guests, Ann, back into Manhattan. She makes a proposition.