STetc ch 38 - mothers

[Michael Bailey]

Hicks's mom in the dream has the same telephone exchange (TRIangle) as Al Capone's mother.

Nice bio of the latter, not super long, imho very readable:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/80zhkx028dsm35tscgugc/Shadow-Ticket-links.odt?rlkey=1f1cpcz7ncb2g68ja23rql07i&st=nb8duw2u&dl=0   (ch38 link 2)

Among highlights: his older brother James changed his name to Richard James Hart and worked as a Prohibition agent in Homer, Nebraska.

Al Capone died in 1947; his mother lived in Chicago until 1952.


Hicks: Where are you?
Mom: Better not say much. They listen in.
"Who?"
"The ones I work for."

So maybe his mom works remotely as a service rep for some E-Commerce company which monitors - it's a dream after all...

The conversation consists of 2 phases: a bit of unsatisfying paranoid persiflage a la Beckett, and then the "carload of kisses" revelation wrapped in well-wishing & warnings.

With Hicks's mom's propinquity to Teresina Capone fresh in one's mind, the concept of divided loyalties seems apt -


  *
Offering a commentary on the "women love a fascist" trope: it's not so much that they want to come to the fascist team, but like Vond says in VL, some dude with a big gun makes them come.  But she still has fondness for her offspring, at a deeper level, and more verbosely, than her discourse about her forced employment.

And didn't she (the former) run off with somebody in a much earlier chapter, leaving Hicks in the care of an aunt and uncle?