Hal and Mario in the dark: 'I can feel you mean it'

The dialogue's quiet register-hinge. Mario's serene, deflecting reassurances ("pretty much all I do is love you and be glad I have an excellent brother") make Hal say talking to him is "just like talking to the Moms" — and then the crucial correction: "Except with you I can feel you mean it." The whole family's problem and Mario's whole gift fit in that "except." Avril's warmth and Mario's warmth can sound identical, deploy the same soothing phrases, incline the same way — but one is felt as meant and the other isn't, and the difference is not in the words. It's the anthology's finest distinction between manufactured and real sincerity: not a matter of content or even of intent you could prove, but of a meant-ness the listener can feel — the thing the brass mask is built to counterfeit and Mario doesn't have to.