How It All Goes Down
- Dominick says that when he and Thomas were ten, their TV set exploded; the house caught on fire, and Ma had to save her photo album from the burning house.
- Dominick tells us that his mother has since died of breast cancer.
- Before she died, Dominick wanted to do something nice for her: remodel her kitchen.
- But she didn't want a new kitchen, she just wanted something small, like a hot fudge sundae. She's our kind of gal.
- Dominick flips through the scrapbook, in present day, and gives us some family history:
- He and Thomas are identical twins born in different years—December 31, 1949 and January 1, 1950. Thomas is the elder bro, the Mario to Dominick's Luigi
- They once met First Lady Mamie Eisenhower.
- Ma really looked up to her father, Domenico Onofrio Tempesta.
- Dominick has no idea who his own dad is.
- Once, Ma gave Dominick a copy of her father's life story.
- It's written in Italian, so Dominick decides the perfect gift would be to have it translated for Ma.
- He finds a woman named Nedra Frank who reluctantly agrees to translate it.
- As Ma goes through increasingly rigorous chemo treatments, Dominick worries he won't have the manuscript back in time for her to read it.
- One night, Nedra Frank comes over. She and Dominick get drunk, and she tries to put the moves on him.
- He's not over his ex-wife, Dessa, though, so he pushes back, and she gets angry with him, accusing him of sexual harassment.
- When Dominick tries to get in touch with her next, she's quit her job at the college… and taken the manuscript with her.
- Ma died on May 1, 1987, and never got to read her dad's story. Pass the tissues.