Margie Walsh, a lifelong resident of Southie, a blue collar Boston neighborhood,[3] is fired for tardiness from her job as a cashier at a dollar store. A single mother, and knowing that she and her handicapped adult daughter Joyce, "are only a single paycheck away from desperate straits",[4] Margie goes to her old high school boyfriend Mike — now a doctor, but formerly from her neighborhood — looking for employment. After a verbal game of chicken, Margie shames Mike into inviting her (however reluctantly) to his birthday party in Chestnut Hill. Margie is looking forward to the party because she views it as a chance to meet potential employers. Her friends, Dottie and Jean, encourage her to tell Mike that her daughter Joyce was not born premature but is his, in hopes of getting support from Mike. When Mike calls to tell her that the party has been cancelled, Margie assumes that he is disinviting her because he's embarrassed to have her mix with his bourgeois doctor friends. She decides to go to the house anyway, with the intent of crashing the party.
