'So then you haven't talked to Hal?'

'When?'

'Jesus, Mario, it's like trying to talk to a rock with you sometimes.'

'This is going very well!'

Someone gargling. Guglielmo Redondo's voice going through the rosary, it sounds like, just inside his and Esteban Reynes's door. The Clipperton Suite in East House had had a bright-yellow strip of B.P.D. plastic for over a month, he remembers. The Boys Room door a different kind of wood than the room doors. The Clipperton Suite had a glued picture of Ross Reat pretending to kiss Clipperton's ring at the net. The roar of a toilet and a stall door's squeak. The Academy's plumbing is high-pressure. It takes Mario longer to walk down a set of stairs than to walk up. Red primer stains his hand, he has to hold the railing so tight.

The special hush of lobby carpet, and smells of Benson & Hedges brand cigarettes in the reception area off the lobby. The little hall doors that are always closed and never locked. The rubber sheaths on the k.n.o.bs. Benson & Hedges cost $5.60 O.N.A.N. a pack at Father & Son grocery down the hill. Lateral Alice Moore's desk's plaque's DANGER: THIRD RAIL light is unilluminated, and her word-processing setup wears its cover of frosted plastic. The blue chairs have the faint imprints of people's bottoms. The waiting room is empty and dim. Some light from the lit courts outside. From under double doors is lamplight, much attenuated by double doors, from the Headmaster's office, which Mario doesn't explore; Tavis is unnerved into such gregarity around Mario it's awkward for all parties. 316 316 If you asked Mario whether he got on with his Uncle C.T. he'd say: Sure. The Bolex's light-meter is in the No Way range. Most of the waiting area's available light comes from the doorless Dean of Females's office. Meaning the Moms is: In. If you asked Mario whether he got on with his Uncle C.T. he'd say: Sure. The Bolex's light-meter is in the No Way range. Most of the waiting area's available light comes from the doorless Dean of Females's office. Meaning the Moms is: In.

Heavy s.h.a.g carpet is especially treacherous for Mario when he's top-heavy with equipment. Avril Incandenza, a fiend for light, has the whole bank of overheads going, two torcheres and some desk lamps, and a B&H cigarette on fire in the big clay ashtray Mario'd made her at Rindge and Latin School. She is swivelled around in her swivel-chair, facing out the big window behind her desk, listening to someone on the phone, holding the transmitter violin-style under her chin and holding up a stapler, checking its load. Her desk has what looks like a skyline of stacks of file folders and books in neat cross-hatched stacks; nothing teeters. The open book on top facing Mario is Dowty, Wall and Peters's seminal Introduction to Montague Semantics, Introduction to Montague Semantics,317 which has very fascinating ill.u.s.trations that Mario doesn't look at this time, trying to film the c.o.c.k of the Moms's head and the phone's extended antenna against the c.u.mulus of her hair from behind, capturing her back unawares. which has very fascinating ill.u.s.trations that Mario doesn't look at this time, trying to film the c.o.c.k of the Moms's head and the phone's extended antenna against the c.u.mulus of her hair from behind, capturing her back unawares.

But the sound of Mario entering even a s.h.a.g-carpeted room is unmistakable, plus she can see his reflection in the window.

'Mario!' Her arms go up in a V, stapler open in one hand, facing the window.

'The Moms!' It's a good ten meters past the seminar table and viewer and portable blackboard to the far part of the office where the desk is, and each step on the deep s.h.a.g is precarious, Mario resembling a very old brittle-boned man or someone carrying a load of breakables down a slick hill.

'h.e.l.lo!' She's addressing his reflection in the quartered window, watching him put the treadle down carefully on the desk and struggle with the pack on his back. 'Not you,' she tells the phone. She points the stapler at the image of the Bolex on the image of his head. 'Are we On-Air?'

Mario laughs. 'Would you like to be?'

She tells the phone she's still here, that Mario's come in.

'I don't want to intercept your call.'

'Don't be absurd.' She talks past the phone at the window. She rotates her swivel-chair to face Mario, the receiver's antenna describing a half moon and now pointing up at the window behind her. There are two blue chairs like the reception-area chairs in front of her desk; she doesn't indicate to Mario to sit. Mario's most comfortable standing and leaning into the support of the police lock he's trying to detach from his canvas plastron and lower, shucking the pack off his back at the same time. Avril looks at him like the sort of stellar mother where just looking at her kid gives her joy. She doesn't offer to help him get the lock's lead brace out of the pack because she knows he'd feel completely comfortable asking for her help if he needed it. It's like she feels these two sons are the people in her life with whom so little important needs to be said that she loves it. The Bolex and support-yoke and viewfinder over his forehead and eyes give Mario an underwater look. His movements, setting and bracing his police lock, are at once graceless and deft. The lit Center Courts, now empty, are visible out the left side of Avril's window, if you lean far forward and look. Someone has forgotten a gear bag and pile of sticks out by the net-post of Court 17.

Silences between them are totally comfortable. Mario can't tell if the person on the phone is still talking or if Avril just hasn't put the dead phone down. She still holds the black stapler. Its jaws are open and it looks alligatorish in her hand.

'Is this you pa.s.sing through the neighborhood poking a head in to say h.e.l.lo? Or am I a subject, tonight?'

'You can be a subject, Moms.' He moves the big head around in a weary circle. 'I get tired from wearing this.'

'It gets heavy. I've held it.'

'It's good.'

'I remember his making that. He took such care making that. It's the last time I believe he enjoyed himself on something, thoroughly.'

'It's terrific!'

'He took weeks putting everything together.'

He likes to look at her, too, leaning in and letting her know he likes looking. They are the two least embarra.s.sable people either of them knows. She's rarely here this late; she has a big study at the HmH. The only thing that ever shows she's tired is that her hair gets a sort of huge white cowlick, like a rolling ocean comber of hair, and just on one side, the side with the phone, sticking up and touching the antenna. Her hair has been pure white since Mario can first remember seeing her looking down at him through the incubator's gla.s.s. Pictures of her own father's hair were like that. It goes down the middle of her back against the chair and down both arms, hanging off the arms near the elbow. Its part shows her pink scalp. She keeps the hair very clean and well-combed. She has one of Mr. deLint's big whistles around her neck. The big cowlick casts a bent shadow on the sill of the window. There's a maple-leaf flag and a 50-star U.S.A. flag hanging limp off bra.s.s poles on either side of the window; in an extreme corner are fleur-delis pennons on tall sharp polished sticks. C.T.'s office has an O.N.A.N. flag and a 49-star U.S.A. flag. 318 318 'I had quality interface dialogue with LaMont Chu upstairs. But I made the girl Felicity, the really thin one - she got upset. She said only a towel.'

'Felicity will be just fine. So you're just strolling. Peripatetic footage.' She refuses to adjust syntax, to speak in any way down to him, it'd be beneath him, though he seems not to mind when most people do it, speak down.

Nor will she ask about the burn on his pelvis unless he brings it up. She's careful to keep her oar out of Mario's health stuff unless he brings things up, out of concern that it might be taken as intrusive or smothering.

'I saw your lights. Why is the Moms here, still, I thought to myself.' She made as if to clutch her head. 'Don't ask. I'll starting whingeing. Tomorrow's going to be h.e.l.lishly busy.' Mario didn't hear her say goodbye to the man as she put down the phone so the antenna now points at Mario's chest. She's putting out the nub of the Benson & Hedge against the rooster-comb holder he'd squeezed and karate-chopped and put down the bowl's center, when he made it, after she'd said she wanted it to be an ashtray. 'You give me such pleasure standing there, all outfitted for work,' she said. 'Aprowl.' She ground individual sparks out in the bowl. She had the idea that her smoking around Mario made him worry, though he'd never said anything about it one way or the other. 'I have a breakfast engagement at 07, which means I have to do final swotting and whacking for morning cla.s.ses now, so I just lurched back over here to do it instead of carrying everything back and forth.'

'Are you tired?'

She just smiled at him.

'This is off.' Pointing at his head. 'I turned it off.'

To look at them, you'd never guess these two persons were related, one sitting and one standing canted forward.

'Will you eat with us? I hadn't even thought of dinner until I saw you. I don't even know what there might be for dinner. Many Wonders. 319 319 Turkey cartilage. Your bag is by the radio. Will you stay again? Charles is still in conference, I believe, he said.' Turkey cartilage. Your bag is by the radio. Will you stay again? Charles is still in conference, I believe, he said.'

'About the debracle with the Eschaton and the Postman's nose?'

'A person from a magazine has come to do a piece of reportage on your brother. Charles is speaking to her in lieu of any of the students. You may speak to her about Orin if you like.'

'She's been aprowl aprowl for Hal, Ortho said.' for Hal, Ortho said.'

Avril has a certain way of c.o.c.king her fine head at him. 'Your poor Uncle Charles has been with Thierry and this magazine person since this afternoon.'

'Have you talked to him?'

'I've been trying to b.u.t.tonhole your brother. He's not in your room. The Pemulis person was seen by Mary Esther taking their truck before Study Period. Is Hal with him, Mario?'

'I haven't seen Hal since lunchtime. He said he'd had a tooth thing.'

'I didn't even find out he'd been to see Zeggarelli until today.'

'He asked about how the burn on my pelvis is.'

'Which I won't ask about unless you'd care to discuss how it's coming along.'

'It's fine. Plus Hal said he wishes I'd come back and sleep there.'

'I left two messages asking him to let me know how the tooth was. Love-o, I feel bad I wasn't there for him. Hal and his teeth.'

'Did C.T. tell what happened? Was he upset? Was that C.T. on the phone you were with?' Mario can't see why the Moms would call C.T. on the phone when he was in there right across the hall behind his doors. When she didn't smoke a lot of the time she held a pen in her mouth; Mario didn't know why. Her college mug has about a hundred blue pens in it, on the desk. She likes to square herself in her chair, sitting up extra straight and grasping the chair's arms in a commanding posture. She looks like something Mario can't place when she does this. He keeps thinking the word typhoon typhoon. He knows she's not trying to consciously be commanding with him.

'How was your own day, I want to hear.'

'Hey Moms?'

'I determined years ago that my position needs to be that I trust my children, and I'd never traffic in third-party hearsay when the lines of communication with my children are as open and judgment-free as I'm fortunate they are.'

'That seems like a really good position. Hey Moms?'

'So I have no problem waiting to hear about Eschaton, teeth, and urine from your brother, who'll come to me the moment it's appropriate for him to come to me.'

'Hey Moms?'

'I'm right here, Love-o.'

Tyc.o.o.n is the term her commanding way of sitting suggests, grasping her chair, a pen clamped in her teeth like a businessman's cigar. There were other carpet-prints in the heavy s.h.a.g. is the term her commanding way of sitting suggests, grasping her chair, a pen clamped in her teeth like a businessman's cigar. There were other carpet-prints in the heavy s.h.a.g.

'Moms?'

'Yes.'

'Can I ask you a thing?'

'Please do.'

'This is off,' again indicating the silent apparatus on his head. 'Is this a confidential thing, then?'

'There isn't any secret. My day was I was wondering about something. In my mind.'

'I'm right here for you anytime day or night, Mario, as you are for me, as I am for Hal and we all are for each other.' She gestures in a hard-to-describe way. 'Right here.'

'Moms?'

'I am right here with my attention completely focused on you.'

'How can you tell if somebody's sad?'

A quick smile. 'You mean whether someone's sad.'

A smile back, but still earnest: 'That improves it a lot. Whether Whether someone's sad, how can you tell so you're sure?' someone's sad, how can you tell so you're sure?'

Her teeth are not discolored; she gets them cleaned at the dentist all the time for the smoking, a habit she despises. Hal inherited the dental problems from Himself; Himself had horrible dental problems; half his teeth were bridges.

'You're not exactly insensitive when it comes to people, Love-o,' she says.

'What if you, like, only suspect suspect somebody's sad. How do you reinforce the suspicion?' somebody's sad. How do you reinforce the suspicion?'

'Confirm the suspicion?'

'In your mind.' Some of the prints in the deep s.h.a.g he can see are shoes, and some are different, almost like knuckles. His lordotic posture makes him acute and observant about things like carpet-prints.

'How would I, for my part, confirm a suspicion of sadness in someone, you mean?'

'Yes. Good. All right.'

'Well, the person in question may cry, sob, weep, or, in certain cultures, wail, keen, or rend his or her garments.'

Mario nods encouragingly, so the headgear clanks a little. 'But say in a case where they don't weep or rend. But you still have a suspicion which they're sad.'

She uses a hand to rotate the pen in her mouth like a fine cigar. 'He or she might alternatively sigh, mope, frown, smile halfheartedly, appear downcast, slump, look at the floor more than is appropriate.'

'But what if they don't?'

'Well, he or she may act out by seeming distracted, losing enthusiasm for previous interests. The person may present with what appears to be laziness, lethargy, fatigue, sluggishness, a certain pa.s.sive reluctance to engage you. Torpor.'

'What else?'

'They may seem unusually subdued, quiet, literally "low." '

Mario leans all his weight into his police lock, which makes his head jut, his expression the sort of mangled one that expresses puzzlement, an attempt to reason out something hard. Pemulis called it Mario's Data-Search Face, which Mario liked.

'What if sometime they might act even less low than normal. But still these suspicions are in your mind.'

She's about the same height sitting as Mario upright and leaning forward. Now neither of them is quite looking at the other, both just a couple degrees off. Avril taps the pen against her front teeth. Her phone light is blinking, but there's no ringing. The thing's handset's antenna still points at Mario. Her hands are not her age. She hoists the executive chair back slightly to cross her legs.

'Would you feel comfortable telling me whether we're discussing a particular person?'

'Hey Moms?'

'Is there someone specific in whom you're intuiting sadness?'

'Moms?'

'Is this about Hal? Is Hal sad and for some reason not yet able to speak about it?'

'I'm just saying how to be generally sure.'

'And you have no idea where he is or whether he left the grounds this evening sad?'

Lunch today was the exact same as lunch yesterday: pasta with tuna and garlic, and thick wheaty bread, and required salad, and milk or juice, and pears in juice in a dish. Mrs. Clark had taken a Sick Morning off because when she came in this morning Pemulis at lunch said one of the breakfast girls had said there'd been brooms on the wall in an X of brooms, out of nowhere, on the wall, when she'd come in very early to fire up the Wheatina-cauldron, and n.o.body knowing how the brooms were there or why or who glued them on had upset Mrs. Clarke's nerves, who'd been with the Incandenzas since long before E.T.A., and had nerves.

'I didn't see Hal since lunchtime. He had an apple he cut into chunks and put peanut b.u.t.ter on, instead of pears in juice.'

Avril nods with vigor.

'LaMont didn't know either. Mr. Scht.i.tt is asleep in his chair in his room. Hey Moms?'

Avril Incandenza can switch a Bic from one side of her mouth to the other without using her hand; she never knows she's doing it when she's doing it. 'Whether or not we're discussing anyone in particular, then.'

Mario smiles at her.

'Hypothetically, then, you may be picking up in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disa.s.sociation from itself, maybe, Love-o.'

'I don't know disa.s.sociation disa.s.sociation.'

'Well, love, but you know the idiom "not yourself" - "He's not himself today," for example,' crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. 'There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.'

'Engulf means means obliterate obliterate.'

'I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all. This interpretation is "existential," Mario, which means vague and slightly flaky. But I think it may hold true in certain cases. My own father told stories of his own father, whose potato farm had been in St. Pamphile and very much larger than my father's. My grandfather had had a marvelous harvest one season, and he wanted to invest money. This was in the early 1920s, when there was a great deal of money to be made on upstart companies and new American products. He apparently narrowed the field to two choices - Delaware-brand Punch, or an obscure sweet fizzy coffee subst.i.tute that sold out of pharmacy soda fountains and was rumored to contain smidgeons of cocaine, which was the subject of much controversy in those days. My father's father chose Delaware Punch, which apparently tasted like rancid cranberry juice, and the manufacturer of which folded. And then his next two potato harvests were decimated by blight, resulting in the forced sale of his farm. Coca-Cola is now Coca-Cola. My father said his father showed very little emotion or anger or sadness about this, though. That he somehow couldn't. My father said his father was frozen, and could feel emotion only when he was drunk. He would apparently get drunk four times a year, weep about his life, throw my father through the living room window, and disappear for several days, roaming the countryside of L'Islet Province, drunk and enraged.'