BREATHING RECOMMENDED

A disaffected young woman's life as a "townie" and self-diagnosed lost soul is suddenly disrupted by two older women – a bitter, older version of herself with a mysterious past – and an irreverent pest with unbridled joy for life. From within the clash that follows, Grace discovers an eternal truth: you can be alive at 75 or as-good-as-dead at 30; it’s a choice. She also finds a grandmother she never knew she had—and might not want to keep.

SYNOPSIS:

Dorothy Fenston (79) and Grace Breton (30) are both as-good-as-dead.

As their new, uninvited friend Jean Bovie (78) tells it, Dorothy and Grace are “two wild ponies standing in a meadow, all fenced in, without a fence in sight.” And, as Grace’s other new, very inappropriate friend, PD Detective John Baker (55), tells Grace, “Life is something you do, Grace, not something you tolerate until it’s over.”

Dorothy and Grace come from opposite ends of the social spectrum, acquainted only because Dorothy shops at the market Grace’s uncle owns and somehow always ends up in Grace’s line when Grace is manning a register. The only things they seem to have in common, on the surface, are their caustic tongues and cynical approach to almost everything.

Many years ago, Dorothy Fenston was the outrageous, brash wife of the crown prince of one of America’s wealthiest families. The prince died. Cut off and emotionally brutalized by her dead prince’s family thereafter, she’s now a bitter old woman living in Palm Beach, surrounded by expensive antiques in a curiously modest rental with roll-out windows.

Grace Breton is a Palm Beach local. A beauty and smart as a whip, Grace lost her mother to illness early and her father to a bar fight. She never went to college because there was no money, and she now helps the uncle who raised her run Harry’s Market, a gourmet store catering to the south Florida snow-birds. Grace is tolerating her life until it either changes or ends. As Grace puts it to Jean, “I’m allergic to my life, it can’t possibly be mine, nothing fits.”

Dorothy shops at Harry’s Market though it’s half way across the county. She always ends up in Grace’s line. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not.

At opening, Grace sits in her apartment, with the birthday cake she bought for herself – inscribed “Happy Birthday Me” – waiting for her latest male mistake, who didn’t come home last night. Across the county, Dorothy sits in her recliner with a photo album, her husband Franklin in uniform, headed for Korea where he died a hero, so they said–it’s her anniversary.

Grace goes to work, leaving her key on the table by her cake. Dorothy spills coffee all over the photo album, her recliner, and herself. Dorothy cleans up and heads for Harry’s for groceries and upholstery shampoo.

Leaving the market, after buying some cereal and shampoo and causing her usual disturbance at the meat counter and in the checkout, Dorothy is mugged in the parking lot, dragged to the pavement and left bleeding and unconscious when she won’t let go of the purse with her curled photos in it. Grace, who’s taken an unauthorized and unscheduled break to the vocal irritation of a very irritating customer, is outside and runs to unconscious Dorothy’s aid.

And, with that act, these two wild ponies’ lives collide. Neither will ever be the same.

In the middle of it all are Jean Bovie, a very alive 75 with her own softball team, and John Baker, a police detective in a pick-up truck who’d rather be a writer, who’s assigned to Dorothy’s mugging, and who takes on Grace’s case, for more personal reasons.

As Grace later describes John to Jean, while acknowledging the insanity of her feelings and the BIG mistake she made in a moment of weakness, “He doesn't shop at GAP, he doesn't drink Cosmopolitans, he's at war with life, he's full of contradictions—I call him a closet human—he's a hundred years old and my dad would have hated him. He's perfect.”

Jean counsels Grace, about John and about life, with some very unconventional wisdom, as usual. She becomes Grace’s friend. Grace comments, “You make friends pretty easily.” Jean corrects her, “Perhaps quickly, when needed, but never easily.”

At the same time, Jean insinuates herself into Dorothy’s life, having decided to be Dorothy’s friend as well. Dorothy doesn’t want a friend and so informs Jean in graphic terms.

All the while, no one asks about Jean. Her irreverence, effervescence, and quirky behavior obscure the fact that she seems to be looking for a friend more intently than makes sense. No one thinks to ask why. Grace doesn’t ask even after Jean takes her on a drop-by visit to Jean’s friend who is being slowly eaten by cancer. After all, it’s Dorothy and Grace who are the clashing, headstrong problem children, at 75 and 30. Jean seems just fine. She isn’t.

One evening, Jean shows up, unannounced as usual, at Dorothy’s apartment, bearing a bottle of wine and a fat joint that she says she got from Grace. Finally succumbing to Jean’s insistent charm, Dorothy shares the wine and joint with Jean.

Things are going reasonably well, considering, when a news broadcast comes on, a special report by reporter Gwyn Voges, who has tracked down the details of Dorothy’s life with the crown prince of the wealthy family back East and his later death as an officer in Korea.

Dorothy opens up about her relationship with Franklin. The news report notes that Dorothy did not attend the medal ceremony where Franklin was honored as a war hero. Dorothy explains her expulsion from the family that always resented and hated her.

As soon as Franklin went off to war, they turned on her, shutting her out completely. She was miserable. She had an affair with an “impossibly handsome” man. Franklin's cousin wrote to him telling him about it. Franklin wrote a new will , left it in his tent, and walked off into a mine field. He was made into a hero by a government that needed heroes.

Meanwhile, Dorothy was pregnant by the impossibly handsome man. She had no money of her own and was cut off from Franklin’s family. Young and alone, she gave the baby up.

When Jean begins to share her own story, which might explain her pressing need for a special friend, Dorothy’s self-involved response sets Jean off. Jean scolds the old woman and storms out of the apartment, taking her wounded feelings and her secret with her.

The next day, Grace shows up and reads Dorothy a couple of riot acts. She tells Dorothy that Jean is riddled with cancer and that she shouldn't talk to Jean ever again.

Remorseful and chastened, Dorothy pays Jean a visit in the hospital, where Jean is recovering from her attempt to jump off of the local fishing pier. Grace tackled her, stopping her life-ending attempt. Jean explains that she’s forgiven Grace for stopping her, “She’s young; she doesn’t get it.” Jean apologizes for not being Jean’s friend but Jean will have nothing of it. “The best time to have a friend is when you need one,” she tells Dorothy.

That afternoon, John shows up at Grace's apartment, where Grace is cleaning, preparing to bring Jean home with her, to care for her, despite not having asked or told Jean of her plan. Grace is holding out for a miracle. She and John agree to be friends, hoping that will work, despite their illogical attraction and earlier intimacy. He agrees to come by the next morning, to help her go pick up Jean from the hospital and bring her to Grace’s apartment.

The next morning, however, Dorothy and Jean are at the end of the fishing pier at sunrise. Jean makes Dorothy promise she'll spend time with Grace. Jean then climbs onto the railing, held by Dorothy, recites a bit of poetry, and pushes off in a swan dive, into the ocean, just as Grace and John are screaming into the parking lot in John’s truck—having been to the hospital and guessing where Jean had gone.

In a final confrontation on the pier, Dorothy explains why she helped Jean do what Jean so badly wanted. But she also reveals something else to Grace, something that explains why Dorothy lives in south Florida, why she shops at Harry’s Market, why she always ends up in Grace’s line, and why she’s always been on Grace about her life. Grace is the daughter of the daughter Dorothy gave up for adoption so many years ago.

As the police and EMS arrive with lights and sirens, Grace does the best she can to reconcile this news, and what has just happened to her friend Jean. Walking unsteadily up the pier with Dorothy, she comments, “There’s no way we’re related.” Dorothy corrects her, “You're just like me, dear. If you're lucky, you'll outgrow it. “