I Know This Much is True Chapter 35 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Now it's time for gramps to tell us what happened to his other brother, Pasquale, the dimwitted one.
  • Pasquale gets fired after being drunk on the job (Domenico blames Drinkwater… the racism is strong in this one).
  • He gets a new job, and buys himself a monkey for companionship.
  • He and that monkey get real close—kissing each other, even—and rumors fly that Pasquale and the monkey are doing more than that, too.
  • Domenico tries to find Pasquale (and himself) a wife to take his attention off the monkey.
  • But before they can have wives, they need a house, so Domenico and Pasquale work together to build a nice duplex.
  • One day, they're working on the house when Father Guglielmo and Monsignor McNulty pay a visit.
  • The Monsignor accuses Domenico of pride (guilty) and not going to Sunday Mass.
  • Domenico, who was once chosen by the Virgin Mary herself, tells the priest to "Get the f*** out of here," and "Go home to your sister's c***!" (35.58), which we're pretty sure isn't how he was taught to speak to religious figures back in Jesus school.
  • The monsignor curses him (as in a curse-curse, not as in vulgarity) and Domenico chucks wet cement at him.
  • Pasquale starts laughing, so Domenico chucks wet cement at him, and the flying glob of concrete scares the monkey, who jumps into a tree.
  • Pasquale tries to get her out of the tree, and falls off the house…
  • Unlike Dominick, who also fell off a house, Pasquale dies in this fall.
  • After burying his brother, Domenico doesn't want to take care of the monkey anymore, so he puts her in a burlap sack weighted with bricks, and chucks her in a river.