The end of the Clipperton legend (pp. 433–434)
Himself skipped Indianapolis and took Mario to the first of his life’s two funerals so far; and it was probably moving that Incandenza acceded to Mario’s request that nothing get filmed or documented, at the funeral, for Himself’s jr.-tennis documentary.
Context
The aftermath is where the father-son bond shows its one warm register. Himself skips a tournament to take Mario to the funeral, and — the man who films everything, who just made Mario record a suicide — defers to the son's wish that this go unfilmed, and defers again when Mario insists that no one else clean the room. So Mario spends all night with two bottles of Ajax Plus and his contractured arms scrubbing Clipperton's remains off the floor, falling and picking himself up, again and again, while the father lets him. It's the same asymmetry as the weight-room vigil: the father's love for this son takes the form of getting out of his way, of acceding — a deference the tennis-playing sons never get, aimed at the one son who asks only to be allowed to do the terrible tending himself.