How It All Goes Down
- Dr. Shaw and Dolores, pretending to be mother and daughter, work their way up to Dolores's tenth birthday.
- He buys her a present—an Etch-a-Sketch—and she starts etchin' and sketchin' all the live-long day.
- In 1973, Dolores is twenty-one, she moves into a halfway house, and pretends to be twelve in the pool with Dr. Shaw three days a week.
- One day in the pool, they finally have a breakthrough and Dolores yells at her mother over everything that happened with Jack Speight.
- It turns out that Mom was sleeping with Jack while Rita was at work, and Dolores was always mad about that, and mad that Ma called Dad a "slut" (3.18.65) for sleeping around, even though she did the exact same thing.
- Dolores is also mad that all Ma did to help her was buy her tons of food.
- In the pool, Dolores flails and screams and yells at Dr. Shaw, and at one point hits him in the nose.
- He's not mad, though, he's glad: Dolores is "triumphant!" (3.18.98) as far as he's concerned.