IJ study archive

Scene 152: joelle family secrets

Scene
152
Pages
751–752
When
night of 14 Nov YDAU (2009) — scene 150's cleaning frame continuing
Where
Ennet House, 5-Woman roomin: Enfield Marine Public Health Hospital complex › Ennet House Drug & Alcohol Recovery House
POV
Joelle van Dyne (3rd person limited)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 8)

Summary

A short coda to the Thanksgiving memory: Joelle's verdict that the whole Incandenza family "was lousy with secrets" — from each other, themselves, itself — the biggest being "this pretense that overt eccentricity was the same as openness," i.e. that they were all "'exactly as crazy as they seem'" (Orin's phrase). She reflects that we're all more intuitive about our lovers' families than our own, then returns to the room's present tense: Charlotte Treat glistening with fever, scarred cheeks violent red, ribs standing out under a wet Michelob Dry T-shirt with "that skinny stemmy look of katexia"; Kate Gompert's unmade bed with a yellow paperback called Feeling Good curling face-down on the mattress. Joelle dusts all five bedside tables with the room's last Kleenex, "wiping in careful rings around objects she wasn't to touch," nursing a weird fear that Kate — who makes her extremely nervous at the best of times — will walk in and find her cleaning in kerchief and damply clinging veil.

What to notice

A two-paragraph room built almost entirely of absences: Orin survives only as "the punter's phrase", Kate as an unmade bed and a face-down paperback, and the one body actually present is asleep — the veiled woman is the page's only consciousness. The scene also enacts the verdict it delivers: dusting "in careful rings around objects she wasn't to touch" is exactly Joelle's method with the Incandenzas — attention circling what it isn't permitted to handle — the book's ring-figure shrunk to a Kleenex-wipe on a bedside table. And notice which exposure she actually fears: a woman who has organized her whole life around a hidden face dreads being caught not faceless but housekeeping, the veil "damply clinging" over kerchiefed, unglamorous care.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 751: the verdict — "The whole family was lousy with secrets... From each other, themselves, itself"; eccentricity-as-openness named as the master pretense; "'exactly as crazy as they seem' — the punter's phrase."
  • pp. 751-752: the lovers'-families aphorism ("We're all a lot more intuitive about our lovers' families than we are about our own families, she knew").
  • p. 752: Charlotte Treat's fever portrait — deep cheek scars "a more violent red than the rest," ribs under the wet T-shirt, "katexia" (sic), "She looked like a ravaged fowl."
  • p. 752: Kate's unmade bed; Feeling Good face-down and curling; Joelle's fear of Kate walking in on her cleaning; the last Kleenex used on all five bedside tables, "careful rings around objects she wasn't to touch."

Themes in this scene

  • Family and Hamlet: the explicit thesis-statement for scene 150's dinner — the Incandenza pathology is not eccentricity but the use of displayed eccentricity as camouflage for secrets; arguably the book's most quotable formulation of the family system.
  • Depression and Anhedonia: Kate's absent presence — the unmade bed and the curling self-help paperback (Feeling Good, the era's standard CBT-for-depression text) doing the characterization while Kate herself lies concussed across the river (scene 141).
  • Addiction and Recovery: the House's rules shaping even care — cleaning around what she may not touch; sober consideration (no YYY tapes for sleeping Treat) as practiced, effortful love.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • Direct continuation of scene 150's cleaning-and-remembering (scene 146 is the same night's dental-dream interlude in the bunkroom); the secrets verdict caps the Thanksgiving analysis — the doggie-dish, the unmentioned tennis, the tumbler (scene 150, pp. 744-746).
  • Dramatic irony with scene 141: Joelle dreads Kate walking in; Kate is purseless and concussed on Prospect St. at roughly this hour — the book lets the dread and the fact pass each other unmet.
  • "Katexia" (printed thus): authorial idiolect-spelling of cachexia, of a piece with the scene's free-indirect Joelle voice (cf. "greebles," scene 150 p. 739).

Forward

  • "Exactly as crazy as they seem" reaches forward to Hal's late assessment of the family and to Avril's politeness-roulette material (family-hamlet anchors across scenes 102, n.234 — see scenes/scene n234).
  • Charlotte Treat's fever and scars continue her thread from scenes 056/066/074 and 146; her sickness sets up the House-health texture of the post-Gately-shooting days (+).

Notable passages (3)
  • p. 751: "The whole family was lousy with secrets... A big one being this pretense that overt eccentricity was the same as openness." — essential for family-hamlet; the Incandenza key.
  • pp. 751-752: the lovers'-families sentence — the epistemology that licenses Joelle (and the reader) to out-see Orin's account of his own family.
  • p. 752: "a copy of some yellow paperback called Feeling Good open face-down on the mattress and starting to curl" — depression characterized by an object; pairs with Kate's psych-ward testimony (scene 024).

What links here Timeline events here (4) · Connected from (3) · Passages quoted here (22) · Motifs (1)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs