Mikey, the AA speaker, and his kid (pp. 959–960)

The saddest fact of Mikey's share is that the kid is never in it. The entire visit is nominally about the boy — just off a cast, from some "sick fucking little like stunt" Mikey and a girlfriend once pulled on him that the family won't forgive — and across two trips up the porch steps the child never once appears, stays behind Ma and the screen door, a figure Mikey fights over without ever seeing. He leaves not knowing if the cast is even off. It completes the theme's range from the far side: where the Incandenza sons ache to be seen by a father who won't open up, here a father aches toward a son he's not permitted to look at, the damage already done and the door already latched. Love mediated all the way down to hearsay about a cast.