Hal in the Pump Room (pp. 50–51)
and so works tremendously hard to hide her maternal dread […] all so that Hal might enjoy the security of feeling that he can be up-front with her about issues like drinking and not feel he has to hide anything from her under any circumstances
Context
Avril's trust-ideology dissected in a single recursive sentence, and its structure is the whole pathology. She wants Hal to feel he never has to hide anything from her — and to give him that feeling she must herself hide, "tremendously hard," the maternal dread she actually feels. The trust is a performance whose cost is exactly the concealment it claims to abolish: to manufacture an atmosphere of total openness she has to conceal her real state, so that the household's advertised transparency runs on a mother's hidden labor of suppression. It is communication pathology raised to an operating principle — a trust so total it can only be sustained by lying about how it feels. And it comes pre-staffed with experts (Dr. Rusk assures her top athletes can't really abuse substances; C.T. "supports whatever personal decisions she makes"), the family's private feelings routed through an institutional apparatus that ratifies them.