Mario’s night walk past Ennet House (pp. 590–591)
it’s crowded and noisy and none of the furniture has protective plastic wrap, but nobody notices anybody else or comments on a disability and the Headmistress is kind to the people and the people cry in front of each other.
Context
Ennet House is the anti-HmH, and Mario, the family's one un-ironic member, is drawn to it for exactly the reasons it's the opposite of home. No protective plastic wrap on the furniture (Avril's phobic housekeeping sheathes everything at HmH); no one monitoring anyone's disability; people crying openly in front of each other, saying "God" with a straight face and nobody wincing or looking down. It's a house organized around real feeling let out loud rather than concealed, and Mario feels good there "because it's very real" — the precise thing E.T.A. and his own family can't do, where "real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes." The recovery house full of wrecked strangers models the emotional openness the Incandenza system is built to prevent, and the damaged son can tell the difference.