Hal in Tavis's waiting room (pp. 521–522)
The Moms always had this way of establishing herself in the exact center of any room she was in, so that from any angle she was somehow in the line of all sight. […] His brother Orin, during a late-night round of Family Trivia, had once described Avril as The Black Hole of Human Attention. […] When Avril entered a room, any sort of pacing reduced to orbiting, and Hal's pacing became vaguely circular around the waiting room's perimeter as Avril rested her tailbone on the receptionist's desk and crossed her ankles and produced her cigarette case.
Context
An August flashback while Hal waits outside Tavis's office: Avril enters, and the room's geometry reorganizes around her. She takes the exact center; Hal's straight-line pacing bends into orbit. "The Black Hole of Human Attention" — the family system as celestial mechanics, mother as the mass everything curves around.