Mothering Hal: Politeness Roulette, the Black Hole of Human Attention, the echoes she mistakes for him

timeline_event

texture · YDAU (the November present)

When: YDAU present (the November scenes)
What: Avril "always had this way of establishing herself in the exact center of any room" — Orin's term, "The Black Hole of Human Attention." Her non-imposing selflessness reads to her sons as coercion: "Politeness Roulette," the ritual where refusing her offered apple (or supper) becomes an act of aggression against her feelings ("Please, I'm not using this oxygen anyway"). Her closing benediction is a mock-command: "do not, under any circumstances, enjoy yourself." The deeper wound (scenes 135, n234): "Avril Incandenza believes she knows him inside and out," but "His Moms Avril hears her own echoes inside him and thinks what she hears is him, and this makes Hal feel... lonely"; per Orin she keeps "Hal's skull lashed tight to hers" so subtly he can't pull away — "He lives for applause from exactly two hands."