64 pages 2 hours read

Wally Lamb

She's Come Undone

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992

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Part 3, Chapters 26-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “The Flying Leg”

Part 3, Chapter 26 Summary

Dolores and Dante divorce, and Dolores cares little about the property she receives, aside from the last piece of canvas from her mother’s painting. Dolores moves into her grandmother’s house and becomes close with Roberta, who is aging and has arthritis and Parkinson’s disease, but refuses most of Dolores’s help, wanting to remain independent. They see movies together and talk often. Dolores gets a part-time job as a security guard and stocker for a local shop owned by a couple called the Buchbinders, and another at a bakery. She spends her divorce money on a new television and satellite dish, which Roberta criticizes, thinking Dolores should have bought a car. They argue and Roberta ends up falling, requiring an ambulance. Dolores becomes frustrated at work soon after and gets fired when she breaks a set of plates and stops cleaning. Roberta is in the hospital for two weeks, but Dolores can only bring herself to send flowers, not visit. Dolores resigns from her job at the bakery after kissing a man who works there and finding herself uninterested in the idea of dating again. A couple months later, Dolores receives word that her father died of cancer, and finds that she feels nothing, having already let go of him years ago.