Hal, Mario, Coyle; the Weston memories
It’s become easier to see the climacteric changes in the Moms’s own body since she began confining herself more and more to the Headmaster’s House. This occurred after Himself’s funeral, but in stages—the gradual withdrawal and reluctance to leave the grounds, and the signs of aging.
Context
Avril's agoraphobia gets its clearest etiology here: the withdrawal into the Headmaster's House "occurred after Himself's funeral, but in stages," a gradual sealing-in that runs parallel to her aging. The enclosure-complex is dated to the death — the queen's response to the king's burial is not mourning that ends but a slow retraction from the world, until the grounds she can't leave become the whole extent of her. And Hal frames it through therapy-speak he refuses to feed: the grief-therapist and the Infantilist would ask how watching the Moms age makes him feel, "and the truth is Nothing At All." The mother's visible contraction after the funeral, and the son's flat nothing about it, are the same system running.