IJ study archive

Scene 010: hal mario moms sadness

Scene
10
Pages
39–42
When
two parts: undated retrospect (Green/Bonk, tenth grade to post-graduation years), then midnight, YDAU (2009), date unspecified
Where
trailer off the Allston Spur (part 1); Hal and Mario's E.T.A. room, midnight, dark (part 2)in: Allston-Brighton · E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) › E.T.A. subdormitories (also)
POV
narrator on Bruce Green, then Hal/Mario dialogue only

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 5)

Summary

Two joined panels. First, the Bonk story concludes: by tenth grade Mildred has become a frightening Marlboro-and-Attitude girl; Green saves for a low-slung car, develops a will, and by graduation-year they live with baby Harriet in Tommy Doocey's snake-smelling trailer off the Allston Spur, where "for a while life was more or less one big party." Then, after a section break, a midnight E.T.A. dialogue: Mario keeps asking Hal whether he believed in God during that day's brilliant match, whether the Moms ever got sad after Himself died, why she never cried. Hal deflects with jokes and finally offers the flag-at-half-mast parable — you can lower the flag, or "you can also just raise the pole" — arguing Avril's grief is real but disguised by elevation. The dialogue is studded with Hal's typographic silences.

What to notice

The midnight dialogue runs without a word of narration — no tags, no room, just voices — so the scene's one physical event arrives secondhand, embedded in speech: "Don't cry, Booboo." is the only way we learn Mario is crying, the dark rendered so total that even the narrator can't see in. Watch where Hal's silences fall: he goes wordless precisely at the true statements — "You're talking about since Himself passed away", the question of how he feels "inside" — so the ellipses read as his most honest answers; and twice the brothers trade consecutive silences, the typography keeping time while both lie awake saying nothing. Hal's deflections escalate through borrowed forms — grief as management dispute ("administrative bones to pick with God"), then a joke, then a parable — and only inside the parable does his urgency break cover, in the sudden insistent second person of "Are you listening?" and "You get me?" Notice too the hard cut that opens the scene: the Doocey trailer's makeshift family closed out in the past tense, then a section break dropping into another improvised household of two — the book already pairing its families by juxtaposition rather than comment.

Beats — page-by-page
  • pp. 39-40: Mildred Bonk's metamorphosis into the Winchester smoking-alley set; Green's answering self-construction ("practiced Attitude on the aunt who'd taken him in. He developed a will.").
  • p. 40: The trailer off the Allston Spur with Tommy Doocey, "the infamous harelipped pot-and-sundries dealer" whose snakes' stink he can't smell because his lip covers his nostrils; Mildred high all afternoon watching serial-cartridges; Green at Leisure Time Ice.
  • p. 40: Section break; YDAU header; "Hey Hal?" — Mario's insomniac catechism begins; the day's match ("Boy did you ever make that guy look sick").
  • pp. 40-41: Mario's wound surfaces: "You think I think fuzzy thoughts all the time. You let me room with you because you feel sorry for me" — Hal files it as sleep-deprived "petulance."
  • p. 41: Mario: did you believe in God out there? (He asks "once a week.") Hal: "I have administrative bones to pick with God... I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death."
  • p. 41: "You're talking about since Himself passed away." — Mario names what Hal won't; "You moved like you totally believed."
  • pp. 41-42: The insomniac/agnostic/dyslexic joke ("whether or not there's a dog").
  • p. 42: Mario's real question: why didn't the Moms cry? She seems happier, taller, laughs from lower down — while Hal listened to Tosca and cried.
  • p. 42: Hal's counter-evidence: she's an agoraphobic obsessive-compulsive workaholic who never leaves the grounds; then the flag parable: lower the flag, or raise the pole to twice its height. "She's plenty sad, I bet."

Themes in this scene

  • Family and Hamlet: Gertrude-anxiety verbatim — the mother who didn't mourn, seemed happier, laughs more with the uncle-figure (C.T.) than she did with the father; Mario plays the Hamlet role of insisting the grief question be asked.
  • Depression and Anhedonia: Hal's "anti-death" deflections and his inability to say what he feels "inside, not" — the hollow under the wit that the book later names anhedonia (pp. 692-698).
  • Communication and Solipsism: Mario's questions met by Hal's "…" silences; "You never say, is why" — the brother who can't not be sincere interrogating the brother who can't be.
  • Fathers and Sons: Himself's death is the dialogue's gravitational center, approached only through jokes, flags, and Tosca.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • Tommy Doocey's trailer is Erdedy's once-removed supply source (scene 004, p. 18: harelip, snakes, Allston) — the recreational-drug economy linking white-collar Erdedy, the Bonk-Green party years, and (later) Ennet House, which sits near this same Allston/Brighton edge of Enfield.

Forward

  • Green and Mildred's "one big party" ends off-page: she leaves with Harriet; Green lands in Ennet House — this is the last image of his happiness.
  • Mario's God-questions recur: his attraction to Ennet House, where "once he heard somebody say God with a straight face and nobody looked at them or looked down or smiled" (p. 591, scene 117; pp. 589-593) — the sincerity-detector role begins here.
  • "You moved like you totally believed" anticipates the book's theology of total worship via tennis (Schtitt's material pp. 79-85, scene 026; Stice's transcendent match).
  • Avril's post-mortem flourishing and the C.T. laughter feed the Avril dossier (her possible affairs, scene 005; the Wayne revelation) — Mario's observations are data the book never lets Hal refute. Carlisle makes the Hamlet slotting explicit: Avril "seems happier with her own 'half-brother' (p. 3), who became the new headmaster, after her husband's death" — C.T. structurally in the Claudius position (his reading, text-compatible).
  • "Now she's got the Headmaster's House and her office and the tunnel in between, and never leaves the grounds" (p. 42) — first mention of the E.T.A. tunnel system (later the Pump Room, Eschaton tunnels, the Tunnel Club) and the precise geometry of Avril's confinement.
  • The flag/pole parable is Hal's most generous reading of Avril; compare the Moms-head dream (scene 012) for Orin's reading of the same mother.

Notable passages (5)
  • p. 40: "and for a while life was more or less one big party." — the sentence whose past tense contains Green's whole tragedy.
  • p. 41: "I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death." — Hal's grief theology compressed.
  • p. 41: "You moved like you totally believed." — Mario on embodied faith.
  • p. 41: "Mario, you and I are mysterious to each other. We countenance each other from either side of some unbridgeable difference on this issue." — the brothers' mutual opacity stated tenderly.
  • p. 42: the flag-at-half-mast / raise-the-pole parable — load-bearing family-hamlet passage; Avril's grief-by-elevation. (Carlisle's summary omits the parable entirely — a notable blind spot in his coverage.)

What links here Timeline events here (13) · Connected from (11) · Passages quoted here (21) · Motifs (1)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs