Orin at B.U.; punting; Joelle
to keep ever from overstepping or lobbying intrusively the Moms actually for six weeks would flee any room Orin entered, both hands clapped over her mouth.
Context
Politeness roulette in its purest recorded form. Avril has determined, by lists and advantage-disadvantage charts, that B.U. is far and away the right choice for Orin — and so, to avoid the appearance of steering him, she spends six weeks physically fleeing any room her son walks into, both hands clamped over her mouth against the danger of influence. The control is total precisely because it's staged as self-erasure: every fled room is a decision made louder by the theater of not making it. Orin's own verdict on this, that his mother is "a kind of contortionist with other people's bodies," is the phrase the whole family-system theme keeps trying to earn — love that arranges you most completely by insisting it would never presume to touch you.