How It All Goes Down
- Dante drives all night to get to Dolores, then picks her up and drives her to Grandma's house.
- Dolores feels guilty that she never went to visit Grandma, but Dante tries to tell her that she wrote and called every week.
- He tries to get Dolores to forgive him, too, but for the moment she resists him.
- They arrive at the funeral home, and the undertaker is the same one who undertook Ma's death eleven years ago.
- She looks at Grandma's body: "She was and wasn't Grandma" (3.25.44).
- After the viewing, Dante and Dolores go to Grandma's house.
- Dolores is surprised to see that Grandma had sold most of her things… and bought a water bed.
- She left Dolores's room, her Ma's old bedroom, intact, though, and it brings back a lot of memories for Dolores.
- Dante asks her what she's going to do with the house, and she wants to get rid of it.
- He suggests they keep it, live there together, and he can try to find a new teaching job.
- She doesn't understand why he wants to stay with her, since he acts like she's an idiot all the time, correcting her grammar and pronunciation.
- He says she's not stupid, she's "unfettered" (3.25.87), and her "simplicity" (3.25.89) keeps him honest.
- That's a laugh. She says he's not honest, sleeping with a high school girl and all.
- Their wedding photo is on the wall. Dante kisses it and says to Dolores, "Love/Us" (3.25.95); then he sits down and watches her cry.
- A bunch of old church ladies come over later for the wake, along with Mr. Pucci, Dolores's old counselor.
- They catch up, and Dolores manages not to call him a homo, not even once.
- The next day, they meet with the lawyer who says it will take about nine months to get the house through probate and sell it.
- Dante asks if they can live there until it's sold, and the lawyer says yes.
- After the funeral, more old ladies come over to the house for the post-funeral luncheon buffet. Watching a dead woman get buried sure works up an appetite.
- Dante avoids everyone because the inspiration for a poem struck him, and he doesn't want to lose it.
- Dolores does the dishes after everyone leaves, and there's another knock at the door: It's Roberta, come to pay her respects.
- She and Dolores reconnect while Dante continues avoiding them upstairs.
- Dante comes down after Roberta leaves to share his weird, erotic, funeral poem that he wrote upstairs… while masturbating.
- He wants to stay in the house because of all the "incredible psychic energy" (3.25.227), but Dolores has to work so they leave for home the next day.
- They stop for food at Burger King, where Dolores orders a Whopper with a side… of truth.
- She tells Dante everything: How she used to be fat, how she used to make art on Etch-a-Sketches, how she was institutionalized, how she knew Kippy and stole all Dante's nude photos.
- This pretty much does the job of getting him to go away.
- He leaves her in the Burger King, and she has to ask the manager to help her find a ride to Rhode Island.