David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘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 hellishly 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 classes 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]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 for Hal, Ortho said.’

Avril has a certain way of cocking 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 buttonhole 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. 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.’

Tycoon 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 shag.

‘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 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 somebody’s sad. How do you reinforce the suspicion?’

‘Confirm the suspicion?’

‘In your mind.’ Some of the prints in the deep shag 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 passive 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.