Joelle's walk: the anti-ad and U.H.I.D. — "after the acid, after first Orin…"
after the acid, after first Orin left and then Jim came and made her sit through that filmed apology-scene and then vanished and then came back but only to—only four years seven months six days past—to leave […] Imitate the wife and mother they both declined to shoot. Use Incandenza’s toothbrush on tiles’ grout.
Context
Jim's apology to Joelle exists only as film — he "made her sit through that filmed apology-scene" rather than speak one — and Avril is defined by her absence from the frame, "the wife and mother they both declined to shoot." A family whose intimacies and exclusions are all camera decisions; Carlisle reads the cleaning compulsion as Joelle impersonating that unfilmed wife. The n.80 wobble-lensed "I'm-so-terribly-sorry" monologue-scene (screen list) gives this apology its production file.