Part 1: Chapter 3 Summary

Frank Wheeler awakens with a debilitating hangover, having stayed up until 4 a.m. drinking alone after the fight with April. He hears a mechanical screeching from the backyard and realizes it's his wife cutting the grass he promised to cut the previous weekend. As he stumbles into his morning, Frank's booze-basted brain goes into flashback mode and the reader is given a lot of back story on the current situation. Frank can hardly remember his parents' faces, for example, without the aid of a photograph. He remembers his father's tough, always-competent hands that scorned him as a young boy trying to learn how to use woodworking tools; he remembers the pain of loneliness in his childhood; he emphasizes with April's own story of loneliness and lack of affection as a child. And he recalls how their love affair in a seedy...