the Headmaster’s waiting room (pp. 523–524)

The definitive politeness-roulette passage, enacted over a Granny Smith apple. Avril presses her own lunch on Hal, insists she's "stuffed," insists he'd "be doing us both a favor" by taking it — and Hal takes it, hating himself, "pretending to pretend his reluctance to eat her supper was a pretense." The book finally names the mechanism: the Moms-thing that makes you hate yourself for admitting any need, because of what your admission will cost her; "to report any sort of need or problem is to mug her." And Orin supplies the theme's fiercest single image of it — Avril going around "with her feelings out in front of her with an arm around the feelings' windpipe and a Glock 9 mm. to the feelings' temple like a terrorist with a hostage, daring you to shoot." Love weaponized as self-sacrifice so total that any honesty from her sons registers as an assault on her. It is the surveillance-love complex at its purest, and its victims are the ones made to feel guilty.