The young screenwriter John Fante has fulfilled his dream of owning a house. His wife Joyce is expecting their first child and feels like she's losing her footing. This metaphor becomes a tangible reality when one day the heavily pregnant woman stands in front of the stove with a bucket in her left hand and a bottle of milk in her right, only to have the floor give way beneath her. The beams, eaten away by termites, crumble. Fante calls in his gruff old father, who sets to work with a wealth of good advice to repair the hole. But old Nick is not only a mason; he’s also a stubborn old man, a pure-bred Italian American, hot-tempered, eccentric, loving, and sentimental. And so, things unfold quite differently. When the child finally arrives, the hole in the floor is still open, but there’s a huge mess in the living room.