Molly Notkin spills everything (p. 791)
—That the by all reports exceptionally attractive Madame Psychosis had suffered an irreparable facial trauma on the same Thanksgiving Day that her mother had killed herself with a kitchen-appliance, leaving her (Madame Psychosis) hideously and improbably deformed, and that her membership in the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed’s 13-Step self-help organization was no kind of metaphor or ruse.
Context
The Deformity motif's bold anchor: U.H.I.D. affirmed as literal — "no kind of metaphor or ruse" — in Notkin's deposition to the U.S. Office interviewers. The verdicts differ and both get cited per the standing ruling: Carlisle rules pro-acid, on Joelle's own interior evidence ("dodger of flung acid extraordinaire," p. 223; cleaning "after the acid," p. 225); our digest keeps deliberate undecidability, since this entire scene is hearsay from a witness who has never seen under the veil (n.328: naked "though never unveiled") and gets Joelle's very name wrong ("Lucille Duquette," p. 795). The theme's central open question, stated at its most confident by its least reliable narrator.