She's not been looking at Mario this whole time, though Mario's been looking at her.

She smiled. 'My father, of course, could himself tell this story only when he he was drunk. He never threw anyone through any windows. He simply sat in his chair, drinking ale and reading the newspaper, for hours, until he fell out of the chair. And then one day he fell out of the chair and didn't get up again, and that was how your maternal grandfather pa.s.sed away. I'd never have gotten to go to University had he not died when I was a girl. He believed education was a waste for girls. It was a function of his era; it wasn't his fault. His inheritance to Charles and me paid for university.' was drunk. He never threw anyone through any windows. He simply sat in his chair, drinking ale and reading the newspaper, for hours, until he fell out of the chair. And then one day he fell out of the chair and didn't get up again, and that was how your maternal grandfather pa.s.sed away. I'd never have gotten to go to University had he not died when I was a girl. He believed education was a waste for girls. It was a function of his era; it wasn't his fault. His inheritance to Charles and me paid for university.'

She's been smiling pleasantly this whole time, emptying the b.u.t.t from the ashtray into the wastebasket, wiping the bowl's inside with a Kleenex, straightening straight piles of folders on her desk. A couple odd long crinkly paper strips of bright red hung over the side of the wastebasket, which was normally totally empty and clean.

Avril Incandenza is the sort of tall beautiful woman who wasn't ever quite world-cla.s.s, shiny-magazine-cla.s.s beautiful, but who early on hit a certain pretty high point on the beauty scale and has stayed right at that point as she ages and lots of other beautiful women age too and get less beautiful. She's 56 years old, and Mario gets pleasure out of just getting to look at her face, still. She doesn't think she's pretty, he knows. Orin and Hal both have parts of her prettiness in different ways. Mario likes to look at Hal and at their mother and try to see just what slendering and s.p.a.cing of different features makes a woman's face different from a man's, in attractive people. A male face versus a face you can just tell is female. Avril thinks she's much too tall to be pretty. She'd seemed much less tall when compared to Himself, who was seriously tall. Mario wears small special shoes, almost perfectly square, with weights at the heel and Velcro straps instead of laces, and a pair of the corduroys Orin Incandenza had worn in elementary school, which Mario still favors and wears instead of brand-new pants he's given, and a warm crewneck sweater that's striped like a flea.

'My point here is that certain types of persons are terrified even to poke a big toe into genuinely felt regret or sadness, or to get angry. This means they are afraid to live. They are imprisoned in something, I think. Frozen inside, emotionally. Why is this. No one knows, Love-o. It's sometimes called "suppression," ' with the fingers out to the sides again. 'Dolores believes it derives from childhood trauma, but I suspect not always. There may be some persons who are born imprisoned. The irony, of course, being that the very imprisonment that prohibits sadness's expression must itself feel intensely sad and painful. For the hypothetical person in question. There may be sad people right here at the Academy who are like this, Mario, and perhaps you're sensitive to it. You are not exactly insensitive when it comes to people.'

Mario scratches his lip again.

She says 'What I'll do' - leaning forward to write something on a Post-It note with a different pen than the one she has in her mouth - 'is to write down for you the terms disa.s.sociation, engulfment, disa.s.sociation, engulfment, and and suppression, suppression, which I'll put next to another word, which I'll put next to another word, repression, repression, with an underlined unequal sign between them, because they denote entirely different things and should not be regarded as synonyms.' with an underlined unequal sign between them, because they denote entirely different things and should not be regarded as synonyms.'

Mario shifts slightly forward. 'Sometimes I get afraid when you forget you have to talk more simply to me.'

'Well then I'm both sorry for that and grateful that you can tell me about it. I do forget things. Particularly when I'm tired. I forget and just get going.' Lining the edges up and folding the little sticky note in half and then half again and dropping it into the wastebasket without having to look for where the wastebasket is. Her chair is a fine executive leather swivelling chair but it shrieks a little when she leans back or forward. Mario can tell she's making herself not look at her watch, which is all right.

'Hey Moms?'

'People, then, who are sad, but who can't let themselves feel sad, or express it, the sadness, I'm trying rather clunkily to say, these persons may strike someone who's sensitive as somehow just not quite right. Not quite there. Blank. Distant. Muted. Distant. s.p.a.cey s.p.a.cey was an American term we grew up with. Wooden. Deadened. Disconnected. Distant. Or they may drink alcohol or take other drugs. The drugs both blunt the real sadness and allow some skewed version of the sadness some sort of expression, like throwing someone through a living room window out into the flowerbeds she'd so very carefully repaired after the last incident.' was an American term we grew up with. Wooden. Deadened. Disconnected. Distant. Or they may drink alcohol or take other drugs. The drugs both blunt the real sadness and allow some skewed version of the sadness some sort of expression, like throwing someone through a living room window out into the flowerbeds she'd so very carefully repaired after the last incident.'

'Moms, I think I get it.'

'Is that better, then, instead of my maundering on and on?'

She's risen to pour herself coffee from the last black bit in the gla.s.s pot.

So her back is almost to him as she stands there at the little sideboard. An old folded pair of U.S.A. football pants and a helmet are on top of one of the file cabinets by the flag. Her one memento of Orin, who won't talk to them or contact them in any way. She has an old mug with a cartoon of someone in a dress small and perspectivally distant in a knee-high field of wheat or rye, that says TO A WOMAN OUTSTANDING IN HER FIELD TO A WOMAN OUTSTANDING IN HER FIELD. A blue blazer with an O.N.A.N.T.A. insignia is hung very neatly and straight on a wooden hanger from the metal tree of the coatrack in the corner. She's always had her coffee out of the OUTSTANDING FIELD OUTSTANDING FIELD mug, even in Weston. The Moms hangs up stuff like shirts and blazers neater and more wrinkle-free than anyone alive. The mug has a hair-thin brown crack down one side, but it's not dirty or stained, and she never gets lipstick on the rim the way other ladies over fifty years old pinken cups' rims. mug, even in Weston. The Moms hangs up stuff like shirts and blazers neater and more wrinkle-free than anyone alive. The mug has a hair-thin brown crack down one side, but it's not dirty or stained, and she never gets lipstick on the rim the way other ladies over fifty years old pinken cups' rims.

Mario was involuntarily incontinent up to his early teens. His father and later Hal had changed him for years, never once judging or wrinkling their face or acting upset or sad.

'But except hey Moms?'

'I'm still right here.'

Avril couldn't change diapers. She'd come to him in tears, he'd been seven, and explained, and apologized. She just couldn't handle diapers. She just couldn't deal with them. She'd sobbed and asked him to forgive her and to a.s.sure her that he understood it didn't mean she didn't love him to death or find him repellent.

'Can you be sensitive to something sad even though the person isn't not himself?'

She especially likes to hold the coffee's mug in both hands. 'Pardon me?'

'You explained it very well. It helped a lot. Except what if it's that they're almost like even more more themselves than normal? Than they were before? If it's not that he's blank or dead. If he's himself even more than before a sad thing happened. What if that happens and you still think he's sad, inside, somewhere?' themselves than normal? Than they were before? If it's not that he's blank or dead. If he's himself even more than before a sad thing happened. What if that happens and you still think he's sad, inside, somewhere?'

One thing that's happened as she got over fifty is she gets a little red sideways line in the skin between her eyes when she doesn't follow you. Ms. Poutrincourt gets the same little line, and she's twenty-eight. 'I don't follow you. How can someone be too much himself?'

'I think I wanted to ask you that.'

'Are we discussing your Uncle Charles?'

'Hey Moms?'

She pretends to knock her forehead at being obtuse. 'Mario Love-o, are you you sad? Are you trying to determine whether I've been sensing that you sad? Are you trying to determine whether I've been sensing that you yourself yourself are sad?' are sad?'

Mario's gaze keeps going from Avril to the window behind her. He can activate the Bolex's foot-treadle with his hands, if necessary. The Center Courts' towering lights cast an odd pall up and out into the night. The sky has a wind in it, and dark thin high clouds whose movement's pattern has a kind of writhing weave. All this is visible out past the faint reflections of the lit room, and up, the tennis lights' odd small lumes like criss-crossing spots.

'Though of course the sun would leave my sky if I couldn't a.s.sume you'd simply come and tell me you were sad. There would be no need for intuition about it.'

And plus then to the east, past all the courts, you can see some lights in houses in the Enfield Marine Complex below, and beyond that Commonwealth's cars' headers and store lights and the robed lit lady's downcast-looking statue atop St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Out the right to the north over lots of different lights is the red rotating tip of the WYYY transmitter, its spin's ring of red reflected in the visible Charles River, the Charles tumid with rain and snowmelt, illumined in patches by headlights on Memorial and the Storrow 500, the river unwinding, swollen and humped, its top a mosaic of oil rainbows and dead branches, gulls asleep or brooding, bobbing, head under wing.

The dark had a distanceless shape. The room's ceiling might as well have been clouds.

'Skkkkk.'

'b.o.o.boo?'

'Skk-kkk.'

'Mario.'

'Hal!'

'Were you asleep there, Boo?'

'I don't think I was.'

'Cause I don't want to wake you up if you were.'

'Is it dark or is it me?'

'The sun won't be up for a while, I don't think.'

'So it's dark then.'

'b.o.o.boo, I just had a wicked awful dream.'

'You were saying "Thank you Sir may I have another" several times.'

'Sorry Boo.'

'Numerous times.'

'Sorry.'

'I think I slept right through it.'

'Jesus, you can hear Schacht snoring all the way across. You can feel the snores' vibrations in your midsection.'

'I slept right through it. I didn't hear you even come in.'

'Quite a nice surprise to come in and see the good old many-pillowed Mario-shape in his rack again.'

'I hope you didn't move the bag back here just because it sounded like I might have been asking you. To.'

'I found somebody with tapes of old Psychosis, for until the return. I need you to show me how to ask somebody I don't know to borrow tapes, if we're both devoted.'

'Hey Hal?'

'b.o.o.boo, I dreamed I was losing my teeth. I dreamed that my teeth dryrotted somehow into shale and splintered when I ate or spoke, and I was jettisoning fragments all over the place, and there was a long scene where I was pricing dentures.'

'All night last night people were coming up going where is Hal, have you seen Hal, what happened with CT and the urine doctor and Hal's urine. Moms asked me where's Hal, and I was surprised at that because of how she makes it a big point never to check up.'

'Then, without any sort of dream-segue, I'm sitting in a cold room, naked as a jaybird, in a flame-r.e.t.a.r.dant chair, and I keep receiving bills in the mail for teeth. A mail carrier keeps knocking on the door and coming in without being invited and presenting me with various bills for teeth.'

'She wants you to know she trusts you at all times and you're too trustworthy to worry about or check up on.'

'Only not for any teeth of mine, Boo. The bills are for somebody else's else's teeth, not my teeth, and I can't seem to get the mail carrier to acknowledge this, that they're not for my teeth.' teeth, not my teeth, and I can't seem to get the mail carrier to acknowledge this, that they're not for my teeth.'

'I promised LaMont Chu I'd tell him whatever information you told me, he was so concerned.'

'The bills are in little envelopes with plasticized windows that show the addressee part of the bills. I put them in my lap until the stack gets so big they start to slip off the top and fall to the floor.'

'LaMont and me had a whole dialogue about his concerns. I like LaMont a lot.'

'b.o.o.boo, do you happen to remember S. Johnson?'

'S. Johnson used to be the Moms's dog. That pa.s.sed away.'

'And you remember how he died, then.'

'Hey Hal, you remember a period in time back in Weston when we were little that the Moms wouldn't go anywhere without S. Johnson? She took him with her to work, and had that unique car seat for him when she had the Volvo, before Himself had the accident in the Volvo. The seat was from the Fisher-Price Company. We went to Himself's opening of Kinds of Light Kinds of Light at the Hayden at the Hayden 320 320 that wouldn't let in cigarettes or dogs and the Moms brought S. Johnson in a blind dog's harness-collar that went all the way around his chest with the square bar on the leash thing and the Moms wore those sungla.s.ses and looked up and to the right the whole time so it looked like she was legally blind so they'd let S.J. into the Hayden with us, because he had to be there. And how Himself just thought it was a good one on the Hayden, he said.' that wouldn't let in cigarettes or dogs and the Moms brought S. Johnson in a blind dog's harness-collar that went all the way around his chest with the square bar on the leash thing and the Moms wore those sungla.s.ses and looked up and to the right the whole time so it looked like she was legally blind so they'd let S.J. into the Hayden with us, because he had to be there. And how Himself just thought it was a good one on the Hayden, he said.'

'I keep thinking about Orin and how he stood there and lied to her about S. Johnson's map getting eliminated.'

'She was sad.'

'I've been thinking compulsively about Orin ever since C.T. called us all in. When you think about Orin what do you think, Boo?'

'The best was remember when she had to fly and wouldn't put him in a cagey box and they wouldn't even let a blind dog on the plane, so she'd leave S. Johnson and leave him out tied to the Volvo and she'd make Orin put a phone out there with its antenna up during the day out by where S. Johnson was tied to the Volvo and she'd call on the phone and let it ring next to S. Johnson because she said how S. Johnson knew her unique personal ring on the phone and would hear the ring and know that he was thought about and cared about from afar, she said?'

'She was unbent where that dog was concerned, I remember. She bought some kind of esoteric food for it. Remember how often she bathed it?

'What was it with her and that dog, Boo?'

'And the day we were out rolling b.a.l.l.s in the driveway and Orin and Marlon were there and S. Johnson was there lying there on the driveway tied to the b.u.mper with the phone right there and it rang and rang and Orin picked it up and barked into it like a dog and hung it up and turned it off?'

'So she'd think it was S. Johnson? The joke that Orin thought was such a good one?'

'Jesus, Boo, I don't remember any of that.'

'And he said we'd get Indian Rub-Burns down both arms if we didn't pretend how we didn't know what she was talking about if and when she asked us about the bark on the phone when she got home?

'The Indian Rub-Burns I remember far too well.'

'We were supposed to shrug and look at her like she was minus cards from her deck, or else?'

'Orin lied with a really pathological intensity, growing up, is what I've been remembering.'

'He made us laugh really hard a lot of times, though. I miss him.'

'I don't know whether I miss him or not.'

'I miss Family Trivia. Do you remember four times he let us sit in on when they played Family Trivia?'

'You've got a phenomenal memory for this stuff, Boo.'

'You probably think I'm wondering why you don't ask me about the thing with C.T. and Pemulis and the impromptu urine, after the Eschaton debacle, where the urologist took us right down to the administrative loo and was going to watch personally while we filled his cups, like watch it go in, the urine, to make sure it came from us personally.'

'I think I especially have a phenomenal memory for things I remember that I liked.'

'You can ask, if you like.'

'Hey Hal?'

'The key datum is that the O.N.A.N.T.A. guy didn't actually extract urine samples from us. We got to hold on to our urine, as the Moms no doubt knows quite well, don't kid yourself, from C.T.'

'I have a phenomenal memory for things that make me laugh laugh is what I think it is.' is what I think it is.'

'That Pemulis, without self-abas.e.m.e.nt or concession of anything compromising, got the guy to give us thirty days - the Fundraiser, the WhataBurger, Thanksgiving Break, then Pemulis, Axford and I pee like racehorses into whatever-sized receptacles he wants, is the arrangement we made.'

'I can hear Schacht, you're right. Also the fans.'

'Boo?'

'I like the fans' sound at night. Do you? It's like somebody big far away goes like: it'sOKit'sOKit'sOKit'sOK, over and over. From very far away.'

'Pemulis - the alleged weak-stomached clutch-artist - Pemulis showed some serious bra.s.s under pressure, standing there over that urinal. He played the O.N.A.N.T.A. man like a fine instrument. I found myself feeling almost proud for him.'