"Okay."
"He lied to me, Ma."
"Okay."
"He had a doll. The doll. Rosalie's doll. In his closet. And he lied about it right to my face."
Her mother was quiet for a long time. The ziti began to smell like ziti. Outside the snow kept falling on Lowe Avenue, on the plastic Nativity, on tipsy Joseph.
"Your father," Rosemary said at last, "lied to me once."
"Ma—"
"No, you listen. Christmas of 1962. You were two, so you don't remember. He came home every night for three weeks at ten o'clock smelling like turpentine and he wouldn't tell me where he'd been. I thought he had a girlfriend. I went through his pockets. I called your Aunt Philomena crying, and she came over with a rolling pin, I'm not kidding, she was going to go down to that store and kill him. He kept saying, 'It's nothing, Rosie, it's nothing, I'm doing inventory.' He couldn't lie to save his life. His ears went red. You know how his ears went red."