IJ study archive

Joelle cleans and remembers the Incandenzas — "Orin had said she was the…"

quote

Orin had said she was the third-neatnikest person he knew after his Moms and a former player he’d played with with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a dual diagnosis with which the U.H.I.D. membership was rife. But at the time the import had missed her. At that time it had never occurred to her that Orin’s pull toward her could have had anything either pro or con to do with his mother.

Context

Retrospect revising the record: the remembered remark meant nothing when stored and everything on replay. Same machinery as n.305's tiny sting — the raw's "she, no one's fool" carries the note "(she thought then)," the apparatus timestamping her self-assessment as a memory her present self no longer endorses. Carlisle completes the import she missed: like Avril, whom she fears, Joelle is obsessed with cleaning.

In anthology