Mario and Avril; the Dean’s office — "There are, apparently, persons who are…"
‘There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. […] afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.’
Context
Mario has come to his mother — the family's designated emotional center, the one who "loves" everyone into the open — with the one question that matters: how do you tell if someone who isn't crying, who's if anything "even more themselves than normal," is sad underneath. And Avril delivers a flawless clinical description of exactly Hal's condition, the disassociation-from-itself sadness, the person "not himself," afraid of being engulfed — and cannot see that she is describing her own son to his brother, deflecting instead to "Is this about Hal? Is Hal sad and for some reason not yet able to speak about it?" and then to "Mario Love-o, are you sad?" The mother who is supposed to be the family's sensor is the one member structurally unable to read the sadness in front of her. It's Gertrude-blindness with a psychology degree: she looks, and looks lovingly, and does not see.