Hal's disclosure: the Avril-Wayne liaison since Wayne's second month; the imagined tableau

pivotal · 20 Nov YDAU — the Wayne liaison

• When: 20 Nov YDAU, Hal supine in V.R.5 during the blizzard
• What: Hal states it flatly in his interior narration: "John Wayne had been involved with the Moms sexually since roughly the second month after his arrival. They were both expatriates." Wayne "ate dinner with us at HmH every so often because he and the Moms were tight," and "The Moms made little attempt to disguise her attachment to Wayne." Hal doesn't know whether Mario knows, "to say nothing of poor C.T." (Corroborating detail, scene 170: after Wayne's decongestant reaction "the Moms herself had apparently stayed by Wayne's side late into the night at St. E.'s.") Hal's imagined tableau of the two is "not very erotic... stilted, as if composed." Whether Hal's assertion is fact or another instance of the family's projective certainty is left open.