Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (p. 838)
the son had become a steadily more and more hidden boy, toward the wraith’s life’s end; and no one else in the wraith and boy’s nuclear family would see or acknowledge this, the fact that the graceful and marvelous boy was disappearing right before their eyes. They looked but did not see his invisibility. And they listened but did not hear the wraith’s warning.
Context
The family as failed audience: "They looked but did not see his invisibility" — Gertrude-blindness restated, the figurant doctrine applied inside the Incandenza kitchen. The doubled formula (looked/see, listened/hear) makes father and son the same case: the warning about the unheard boy was itself unheard.