He names his photo -- a green floor, a yellow wall, a white baseboard, a pair of Mary Janes with heel enough to hint at good trouble -- "where Mom left her shoes." A truer title might be "where Dad left Mom's shoes" or "how Dad forbid any of us to move Mom's shoes" or "grief freezes" or "Dad froze" or "how a skidding station wagon jumped a curb and turned the pulsing movie of my pulsing childhood into a pulseless snapshot" or "slick, bare feet on a dewy lawn" or "would Mom have been able to dodge that fucking station wagon if she'd had her shoes on?" or "could Dad have thawed someday if Mom had died wearing those shoes instead of leaving them on a green floor by a yellow wall three strides from our kitchen counter?" or "why did she have to be out there in the rain?" or "would it have killed her to go a day without weeding?" or "nobody ever weeded again" or "vines strangled her marigolds" or "saving her marigolds by weeding every day might have saved us" or "weeding is a saner way to honor a gardener's life than forbidding motherless children from moving a pair of shoes" or "soil might have healed us" or "we never healed" or "does any language use the word 'orphan' for a motherless boy whose father might as well be dead?" or "the possibly irrational fear that a rambunctious friend would trip over the shoes and knock them across the green floor is the reason the orphan never invited any friends inside ever again" or "the possibly irrational fear that a girlfriend would say 'cute shoes!' and pick the shoes up is the reason the orphan never invited a girlfriend over" or "the shoes were just a symptom" or "the only person I'd bring into the mausoleum formerly known as our home is a person I wanted to scare away" or "I never wanted to scare anyone away" or "girlfriends went away anyway" or "the universe doesn't care that your mother is dead. expect to lose again and again" or "when Lisa dumps you for a varsity benchwarmer, you will hold your head high so as to not notice what shoes she's wearing" or "shoes imprison" or "sacred objects" or "the ugliest scene you will ever see in the mausoleum is tear-streaked Grace, three years your elder, screaming 'Dad, if you can't even care enough about life to come to my graduation, I swear to God I'll throw these shoes in the river'" or "Dad skipped graduation" or "Grace didn't throw the shoes in the river because the shoes were back at the mausoleum and she wasn't ever going back there" or "Grace must have known Dad would skip graduation because she packed all her clothes and stuff in her Chevette before she drove me to school to hear her give her valedictorian speech" or "Grace's speech didn't mention Mom's shoes or Mom or Dad or the past or even the present" or "Grace lived for the future" or "'shut up! sorry. just be quiet, Jimmy. just please be quiet.' is what Grace said whenever I started to say, 'Gracie, remember how Mom used to dance to that super-fast song called …'" or "Grace was still in her graduation cap when she hugged me goodbye, pointed the Chevette south, and didn't let the engine cool until she finally found a town with low enough rents and fat enough waitressing tips to get herself a basement apartment with a little flowerbed outside" or "shoes are no substitute for a sister."