How It All Goes Down
- Dolores learns to empathize with her mother and release a lot of her anger.
- And, in just a couple of paragraphs, she stops relating her dad and Jack—her dad might have been a "s***ty father and a s***ty husband […] but he had not been a rapist" (3.19.10), which is a backhanded compliment if we've ever heard one.
- Dolores gets outside work at a mail-order photo developing joint, developing photos of old people who like to pose in coffins and people who dress their dogs in lingerie.
- When Dolores gets a Christmas card from Daddy, she talks to Dr. Shaw about it. "I just want to let him go. Can I do that?" (3.19.28), she asks.
- So he asks, "Can you?" (3.19.29), but in a therapeutic way, not in a mocking way, and Dolores thinks she can.
- Four months later, Dolores is feeling pretty independent. She's been working, and her psychic has told her that she's a born artist and she's going to meet her future husband, whom Dolores draws on an Etch-a-Sketch.
- She's been Etch-a-Sketching a lot, and giving her masterpieces—recreations of Starry Night, Jesus, and Archie Bunker—to others at the halfway house.
- She decides she wants to quit seeing Dr. Shaw, but he doesn't want to quit her.
- He tries to stop her, but she's not having it, so eventually, he gives in.
- She's at least nice enough to tell him, "You did help me. Sometimes I really do think of you as my mother. In a good way, I mean" (3.19.148).
- And he lets her leave.