The acid incident at the Thanksgiving table — the compressed and the full telling, deformity disputed

pivotal · 24 Nov YTMP, disputed

• When: Thanksgiving Day, 24 Nov YTMP (2003) per Notkin's telling — explicit in-text date; NOTE Carlisle's calendar catch, recorded in the archive's rulings: real 2003 Thanksgiving fell 27 Nov — authorial, as printed. The scene-060 telling is UNDATED (~pre-YTSDB; that scene does not date it)
• What: Compressed (scene 060): the veil's backstory surfaces only obliquely — Orin is "punter extraordinaire, dodger of flung acid extraordinaire" (p. 223), and she recalls imitating "the wife and mother they both declined to shoot" (p. 225); whether the veil hides ruin or unendurable beauty is not settled there. Full, per Notkin (scene 159): on Joelle's third visit home with Orin, she Speaks the Unspeakable at table; her low-pH-chemist Daddy erupts with his confessed lifelong "pure" love for her; her mother's denial-system blows and she hurls a flask of world-class acid at the Daddy, who ducks — Orin, superb reflexes, ducks too — and the dazed, bradykinetic Joelle takes a direct facial hit, resulting in "the traumatic deformity." Nobody presses charges.