IJ study archive

Scene 006: orin first call

Scene
6
Pages
32–33
When
9 May, YDAU (2009), before 0600h
Where
Hal and Mario's E.T.A. subdormitory room, Enfield MAin: E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) › E.T.A. subdormitories
POV
Hal Incandenza (3rd person)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 6)

Summary

A two-page hinge scene: before dawn drills on 9 May YDAU, Hal — packing gear in the dark while Mario sleeps — answers the phone with the inherited paternal "Mmmyellow." The caller says only "I want to tell you… My head is filled with things to say"; Hal answers "I don't mind… I could wait forever"; the caller replies "That's what you think" and hangs up. It was Orin, breaking years of silence toward the family. The scene opens with an aphorism that frames the whole exchange: sons answer the telephone with their fathers' locutions "regardless of whether the fathers are still alive."

What to notice

The narration identifies the caller only after the line is dead, and then twice — "It had been Orin", then, a paragraph later, "The person on the phone had been O." — a double flat announcement that makes recognition itself feel belated, still being processed. Notice that Hal never stops packing: the family's first contact in years passes entirely inside the logistics of smell-testing sweats and zipping bags, and his one visible response is to deactivate the ringer — quietly making sure it can't happen again. "That's what you think" plays as the exit line of a shared riff, but read against Hal's year it is a straight prophecy: he cannot, in fact, wait forever. And the room's light — "a creepy gray, a kind of nonlight" — carries the mood while both brothers say nothing true to each other.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 32: The aphorism on fathers, sons, and telephone locutions — the dead father audible in the living son's voice.
  • p. 32: Hal's pre-0600 routine: packing in stealth and darkness because Mario "didn't drill and couldn't play, and needed all the sleep he could get"; smell-testing sweats.
  • pp. 32-33: The call: "Mmmyellow." / "I want to tell you... My head is filled with things to say." / "I don't mind... I could wait forever." / "That's what you think." Connection cut. "It had been Orin."
  • p. 33: "Creepy gray" nonlight; Brandt heard laughing at something Kenkle said, off down the hall, with the clank of janitorial buckets — Hal's late-book interlocutors first audible here.
  • p. 33: Mario, woken: "Is it still dark out, or is it me?"; Hal puts "the good leg" into his sweatpants first, shoves "three coverless Dunlop widebodies" into the gear bag, deactivates the ringer, and deflects: "No one you know, I don't think."

Themes in this scene

  • Fathers and Sons: the opening aphorism makes the phone a séance device — Orin dials home and gets his dead father's intonation out of Hal's mouth.
  • Communication and Solipsism: the entire exchange is borrowed language (the call is a verbatim Beatles lyric, "I Want to Tell You"), and ends in a cut connection; even reunion is conducted in quotation.
  • Family and Hamlet: Hal lies to Mario about the caller — the family reflex of protective concealment in miniature.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • The call's text is George Harrison's "I Want to Tell You" (Revolver): "My head is filled with things to say" / "I don't mind, I could wait forever" — Hal recognizes and completes the lyric, brothers communicating via pre-fab script.
  • The "three coverless Dunlop widebodies" (p. 33) are the same "complimentary" Dunlops of JOI's implant rant on the facing page (scene 005, p. 31) — the scene-cut juxtaposition is deliberate.

Forward

  • Orin's motive for "calling Hallie again" is given in scene 012 (pp. 48-49): the Moment-magazine profile pressure — though that scene is headed October YDAU, after this May call; the chronology is loose (flagged in scene 012's connections).
  • Orin's phone-calls thread continues through the Orin-Hal conversations (first call, scene 064, pp. 242-258, 5 Nov YDAU; the second, I-Day-Eve call in the n110 scene file, pp. 1005-1022) where the DuPlessis murder, Avril's lovers, and JOI's suicide get hashed out.
  • Mario's "good leg" detail and his exclusion from drills set up scene 015 (his filmic function) and the full disability portrait (pp. 312-317).
  • "Regardless of whether the fathers are still alive" quietly introduces the wraith logic — JOI persisting in his sons — that becomes literal in the hospital-room wraith visitation (scene 162, pp. 827-845).

Notable passages (3)
  • p. 32: "Another way fathers impact sons..." — the aphorism.
  • p. 33: "'I want to tell you,' the voice on the phone said. 'My head is filled with things to say.'" — the Beatles call; why it matters: longing to communicate, expressed entirely in someone else's words.
  • p. 33: "Is it still dark out, or is it me?" — Mario's innocence rendered as accidental metaphysics.

What links here Timeline events here (3) · Connected from (5) · Passages quoted here (16) · Motifs (2)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs