Plot
Although she is hesitant to do so, Mabel Longhetti, a Los Angeles housewife and mother who exhibits strange behavior, sends her three young children—Tony, Angelo, and Maria—to spend the night with her mother so she and her husband, Nick, can have a date night. Unfortunately, Nick, who is the foreman of a utility crew, has to cancel to fix a burst water main. Alone and drunk, Mabel goes to a bar and behaves very familiarly to a stranger named Garson Cross, who takes her home. She is almost unconscious by the time they get there, and Garson rapes her while she feebly attempts to fight him off.
The next morning, a confused Mabel briefly argues with Garson—whom she confuses by calling him "Nick"—before he leaves. Nick brings his 11-member crew to the house for breakfast after their long night, and Mabel makes everyone spaghetti. She is very polite to Nick's colleagues, but she asks several of them for their names, even though they have met before. The meal is superficially pleasant, until Nick snaps at Mabel for making one of his men feel uncomfortable by being overly warm to him, and the men use a phone call from Nick's mother as an excuse to make a hurried exit.
Mabel hosts a play date, but the father of the other children, Harold Jensen, is disturbed by her behavior and reluctant to leave his children alone with her. Nick comes home with his mother, Margaret, to find all of the children half-naked and running wild, with Jensen trying to get his children dressed. He slaps Mabel and gets into a fistfight with an angry Jensen, but Margaret breaks them up, and Jensen leaves with his children.
At his wits' end, Nick calls Mabel's doctor, Dr. Zepp, to evaluate her mental health. Mabel gets worked up, particularly by the presence of her mother-in-law, who calls Mabel a bad wife and an unfit mother when Nick is trying to calm her down. She becomes increasingly detached from reality, and violently resists when Dr. Zepp tries give to her a sedative injection. Convinced she has become a threat to herself and others, Dr. Zepp has Mabel involuntarily committed.
At work, Nick is on edge and yells at his coworkers when they ask about what happened with Mabel. Eddie, Nick's closest friend, remains quiet, but even this rubs Nick the wrong way. He yells at Eddie while Eddie is rappelling down a steep incline, and Eddie falls and gets injured. Afterward, Nick picks up his children from school early to go to the beach and allows them to sip his beer.
Six months later, Nick plans a large surprise welcome home party to celebrate Mabel's return from the hospital. However, his mother points out that this may be overwhelming for her, and Nick has her ask all of the guests who are not family to leave. When Mabel arrives, she is quiet and apprehensive, and no one else knows what to say, either. Nick tries his best to make Mabel feel comfortable, but, when she begins to joke around, he blows up and says they are going to have a normal conversation. Mabel says she does not know how to act without the routine provided by the hospital, which included therapies and medications and shock treatments, and she asks everyone to leave. While the guests get their coats, Mabel begins to dance on the couch while humming the theme from Swan Lake.
When Nick approaches Mabel, she runs into the bathroom and cuts her hand with a razor. He stops her, and she runs to the living room and climbs back up on the couch. The children, confused and concerned, try to protect Mabel by pushing Nick away from her. Nick slaps Mabel, knocking her to the ground, and then tries to put the children to bed, but they escape and go back to Mabel. Seeming somewhat recovered, Mabel, still bleeding, takes the children upstairs and tucks them in while they express their love for her. She and Nick go back downstairs, where he tends to her hand and they clean up and get ready for bed.
