Hal and Mario on liars (pp. 772–773)

Hal names the family's central performance by pointing at the one place it isn't a performance. Mario's bottomless, non-judging acceptance sounds "just like talking to the Moms" — the same total-forgiveness register Avril runs — and the difference Hal draws is the whole indictment of the mother in nine words: with Mario "I can feel you mean it." Avril's unconditional love is a thing you can't feel the sincerity of, a grace so smooth and total it reads as technique; Mario's is the real article, indistinguishable in form and opposite in truth. The Incandenza trust-and-love ideology gets measured, here, against the family's one member incapable of performing it, and comes up wanting.