Joelle cleaning; the Incandenza Thanksgiving
he thought he could somehow get to his father through her. That he pictured himself having weighty, steeple-fingered conversations with the man, Joelle’s appearance and performance the subjects. A three-way bond.
Context
The reason Orin pushes Joelle toward Himself's camera isn't really about her at all; Joelle sees straight through it to a son trying to buy proximity to an unreachable father with the one currency he thinks the man values — a face worth filming. He imagines the three of them bonded over her image, "weighty, steeple-fingered conversations," Joelle the go-between exactly as (she theorizes) his mother has always been the go-between. It is father-hunger routed through a girlfriend, and it curdles the way such things do: Joelle ends up "closer to Jim than Orin had ever been," which becomes part of what poisons the brownstone. The son's attempt to reach his father through a substitute mostly hands the father a new intimacy the son is locked out of.