It's a novel. It provides access to a fictional world not the actual world. The intersection of these worlds is in the reader's mind.

I force myself to remind myself of this. The depiction of the Catherine of Siena image in the novel possesses the attributes of Saint Agnes that Catholics in the actual world associate with the iconography of the ablated breasts.

Now it loomed into her line of vision in the skinny light from the hall. A woman. On her knees. A knocked-down look, cast-up begging eyes, arms outstretched holding up her present on a platter to a lord. Gigi tiptoed over and leaned close to see who was the woman with the I-give up face. "Saint Catherine of Siena" was engraved on a small plaque in the guilt frame. Gigi laughed [...] pudding tits exposed on a plate -- but in fact it didn't feel funny.

That plaque on the frame. One possibility: in the fictional world of the novel a label has been switched. The readers and the character are viewing a mistake. Other possibility: the label in the fictional world is accurate and not misplaced. The readers who know about St. Agnes get a jolt. A bell chimes. The readers that don't know about St. Agnes read on. Quietly. Not oblivious. Differently interpellated.

It is the set up that intrigues me. Gigi is positioned herself as an object of a gaze. A young boy's fascination with her bosom:

It was the I-give women serving up her breasts like two baked Alaskas on a platter that took all the kick out of looking in the boy's eyes. Gigi watched him battle his stare and lose every time. He said his name was K.D. and tried hard to enjoy her face as much as her cleavage while he talked. It was a struggle she expected, rose to and took pleasure in -- normally. But the picture she had wakened to an hour earlier spoiled it.

The subtle shift from I-give to I-give-up. The double take. What are the stakes represented by "the etching she had barely glanced at when poking around the day before"?

A similar play of tones in a likely game of avoidance and intersection to be seen, read and heard in a gendered-exchange, pages and pages later in a conversation during a school Christmas play:

"You think what I teach them isn't good enough?"
Had she read his mind? "Of course it's good. It's just not enough. The world is big, and we're part of that bigness. They want to know about Africa --"
"Oh, please Reverend. Don't go sentimental on me."
"If you cut yourself off from the roots, you'll wither."
"Roots that ignore the branches turn into termite dust."
"Pat," he said with mild surprise. "You despise Africa."
"No, I don't. It just doesn't mean anything to me."
"What does Pat? What does mean something to you?"
"The periodic chart of elements and valences."
"Sad," he said. "Sad and cold." Richard Misner turned away.

Proverb swapping. Very African. A whiff of Primo Levi. Very intertextual.

What means? What meaning?

How many children had Lady Macbeth? Just what is askable is not what is answerable. Beyond the frame.