Hal eats the mold as a small child ("I ate this")

pivotal · ~B.S. 1996-97 (Hal ~4-5)

• When: early spring, Weston MA backyard; Hal "around five" per scene 002, "Hallie's four" per n234 — Orin's reckoning both times, and it slips (see Dating notes)
• What: At the family's first home in Weston, toddler Hal comes crying into the backyard where Avril is Rototilling a garden, holding out a gnawed patch of green/hirsute basement mold ("a rhombusoid patch of fungus," visibly chewed, hairy stuff impacted in his front teeth), and says flatly "I ate this." Avril, whose OCD "four horsemen" include untidiness and enclosure, freezes on recognizing it and runs a hysterical circle inside her string border yelling "Help! My son ate this!" — in n234's fuller telling JOI and Mario watch through the glass until neighbor Mr. Reehagen hoses things down. The originary Hal event, told entirely as Orin's memory (which he admits "diverges" — and in n234 he is mid-seduction by Steeply, an unreliable teller); echoed at the far end of the arc by YG's "Call it something I ate."