In order to get closer to her father, with whom she seems to share little in common, Lydia learns how to play chess from her mother and begins seriously beating John at the game. He enlists the help of Oscar, a chess expert who works at The Manhattanite, to beat her, but to no avail. So John imagines the results of three increasingly bizarre plans to win out over his daughter.

Greeley rejects yet another of John's cartoons which he doesn't understand, one involving a seal in the bedroom of a married couple. Ellen and Lydia agree with Greeley, and when John tells Phil about his problem, Phil suggests the seal might represent John's mother who is visiting the Monroes. Naturally this provokes a fantasy in which John's mother, who showed up at the house wearing a sealskin coat, actually becomes a seal.