Orin phones Hal about Himself's suicide (p. 248)
‘So OK now, who would you say speaks most about the guy, keeps his memory alive, verbally, the most now: you, C.T., or the Moms?’ ‘I think it’s a three-way tie.’ ‘So it’s never mentioned. Nobody talks about him. It’s taboo.’ ‘But you seem to be forgetting somebody.’ ‘Mario talks about him. About it.’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘To what and/or who all this talking?’ ‘To me, for one, I suppose.’ ‘And so you do talk about it, but only to him, and only after he initiates it.’
Context
The theme in miniature: "keeps his memory alive, verbally" — memory as an activity someone has to perform out loud — answered with "a three-way tie," i.e. a tie at zero, which Orin decodes instantly into taboo. Only Mario, the family's non-performer, actually does the remembering. Four and a half years of family silence audited in nine lines of stichomythia.