Orin and Hal on the phone (pp. 1014–1016)
Wants to blame her, won’t admit it, needs to, won’t admit it, sweepingly blames the whole affair of Himself on her, won’t interface with her or worse even acknowledge her […] tells himself he’s convinced himself she doesn’t even exist, as if she never existed, but by some coincidence has this rapacious fetish for young married mothers he can strategize into betraying their spouses and maybe damaging their kids for all time
Context
This is n110's thesis and the clearest map in the book of Orin's relation to the mother. Hal lays it out flat: Orin blames Avril for "the whole affair of Himself" — the suicide — needs to blame her and can't admit it, refuses to acknowledge she exists, has convinced himself "she never existed," and by "some coincidence" is compulsively driven to seduce young married mothers with small children, betraying and damaging them exactly as he cannot betray or reach the mother he's erased. The disowning and the fetish are one mechanism. And the whole hour-long call — the fake political depth, the endless Subject-talk routed compulsively through the one blood-relative he still phones — collapses when Hal asks the question the scene is built toward: "Whom do you think this is really about?" The Oedipal circuit named outright: the erased mother is the hidden subject of everything Orin does, and the only honest sentence in the call is the one Orin can't say.