Dolores (Treatment)

The story of a Latina girl (Lola) who has a tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend, who is also the father of their young son, who is about 4 years old at the time.

The father is from a very well-off family; they live in Florida. The adults are in their 30s.

The story is told from the first-person perspective of Lola, as we are supposed to be missing large parts of the story, as she is throughout.

Act I

One evening, the father comes over to her shitty dingy little apartment and after the little boy has gone to bed, the dad is either on drugs, trying to do drugs or asking for money from her and they have a fight. he is unsteady on his feet and she pushes him off her with a lot of force and rage. he falls and knocks his head on the corner of the table and is dead.

it is here that the action starts. she decides to hide the body. she undresses him, puts his clothes on. she waits until it is the dead of night, gets her shitty little car and manages to put him into it, in the boot with a wheelchair that is left in the hallway by her neighbour. [We can allude to this at the beginning of the exposition section, when we show her going about her daily life with the child – showing that she is a very friendly person. Just like you and me, but also capable of hiding a body.]

She gets the little boy up in the middle of the night, carries him down to the back seat of the car, and begins to drive west towards the swamps. She has gone back to a place that is near where she grew up. So she knows the area pretty well.

Eventually, just before the sun comes up, she has found the place where she wants to leave the car; she gets herself and the son out. She kicks it into the swamp and watches it sink in.

She now has the problem of getting back to her home without detection or leaving a solid trail. She carries her son and walks a few miles to the house of her cousin. someone she knows she can trust. she doesn’t tell her what happened by Lola has a black eye, so the cousin can guess to some degree.

the cousin then drives them back to their apartment and Lola gets her son ready for school as usual, takes him and drops him off.

Act II

A few days have passed, and now the family are starting to wonder what happened to the dad. they call her and ask her if she has seen him, she says no an the web of lies starts. she says that she saw him a few days ago but that she has not seen him since then. the family are super inquisitorial about all the facts and details.

The dad has two brothers, both of whom are jock type guys and who clearly are nice to Lola but there is a huge class distinction there and it is almost patronising that they are nice to her face, when they are assholes behind her back and clearly think they are better than her because they have money. Even though, their family dynamic is not a good one and their brother was basically a drug addict.

They involve the police and things come to light one by one. like the car missing. which she explains that he took and that he did that from time to time but he normally would return in within a few days which is why she didn’t report it, or him, missing. he was extremely unpredictable.

The family has a property development business and the three sons are the shareholders along with the mum and dad but the dad died when the boys were teenagers. he was the typical country club wannabe type chino wearing middle aged plump American guy. when he died, the family became a little unglued. (maybe the dad killed himself due to the gfc? – but this has been kept a secret and covered up by the family) this can be alluded to but not really clearly addressed.

Then, we see the police involvement. This lady is the real adversary. She is also Latina. and a bloodhound of a policewoman.

Her arrival brings a change in the mood for Lola. Slowly, she realizes that the family is being nice to her, but really, they suspect her of murder, or at least, her involvement in foul play. Until then, she has genuinely thought that she has managed to ‘get away with it’.

Here the family start to look at her differently, and are trying to lay traps for her. little by little the investigation unravels until at the end of the second act, she realises that they suspect her.

Act III

As she slowly realizes that the tables have turned and that they are not trying to help her but to trap her, she is fundamentally changed. They try in many different ways to entice her to admit her involvement, but they are unable to do so. Lola, the cousin and any extended family are lowly immigrants, but they close ranks and block any attempt to coerce her.

The police threaten her with taking away her son, but the cousin takes him for a while and Lola knows he is safe.

The policewoman genuinely thinks she is guilty, but she has no proof at all and cannot establish any.

Eventually, the police woman tells that she is free to go for lack of evidence.

Then, it turns out that the dad has left everything in his will to his son which is to be controlled by Lola until he is 21 years of age – so basically now they have lots of money compared to before. she gets a new car, a new apartment and the final scene is her at the cousins house which is right next to the area where the body of the husbnd is submerged in the swamp.

We see the final scene, which is Lola swinging at a pinata and eventually smashing candy all over the place. In this moment, we see her true aggression and callousness, the glint in her eye, and the smirk on her face. And for the first time in the whole story, we are pushed to wonder: Was she trustworthy at all? Did she murder him? Has she tricked us all as well?

The End