Mario’s birth and defects — "This is why she tries so…"

Avril's love for Mario is politeness roulette turned all the way toward tenderness, and it's the clearest gloss the book gives on why her care always looks like withdrawal. She believes Mario is the family's real prodigy, "a very rare and shining thing"; his slowness scares her, his academic poverty breaks her heart, and the smile he has put on every single morning since their father's suicide "makes her wish she could cry." And so she works terribly hard to hover less, to treat him less specially than every instinct wants — the restraint offered as the gift. It's the mother's whole system in one sentence: love expressed as the strenuous performance of not-quite-touching, and, aimed here at the son who needs it least defended against, it reads as close to noble as her operations ever get. The detail that her uncriable grief hides behind a son's daily smile is the Gertrude-frame's quietest note.