Joelle cleans and remembers the Incandenzas
Orin recalled the Moms used to tell him she loved him about a hundred times a day. It nearly made up for Himself’s blank stare. Orin’s basic childhood memory of Jim had been of an expressionless stare from a great height.
Context
Orin's nocturnal family seminars on the co-op futon, relayed through Joelle's recall of them — memory at two removes. "Basic childhood memory" is exactly the arrested, tiny-child's-perspective record her p. 739 maxim warns about: a father reduced to a single stored image, which the rest of the scene quietly complicates.