Ruth cannot comprehend that her father Edek, who moved from Melbourne to New York just a few weeks ago, is far from spending a quiet retirement. In fact, "retirement" is the wrong term for the lively seventy-year-old, who first tries to be useful in Ruth's correspondence office and soon after begins an affair with the (much too young, as Ruth thinks) Polish woman Zofia. When Edek, along with Zofia and her friend Valentina, also wants to open a restaurant on the Lower East Side specializing in Polish meatballs, Ruth worries both about her inheritance and her nerves.