the phone call about Himself’s death (pp. 248–249)

Asked who keeps the dead father's memory alive, Hal answers "a three-way tie" among himself, C.T., and the Moms — meaning none of them, meaning the subject is sealed. Orin names it: taboo. It's the Gertrude-court silence, the family's refusal to speak the king aloud, and the one exception proves the shape of it — only Mario talks about "him. About it," and only Mario, and only when Mario starts. The unmourning isn't loud; it's a household-wide agreement not to say the name, kept by everyone but the son too openhearted to observe it.