The black plastic hand on the kitchen clock hovered at 5:30, and Mary sat with satisfaction over a plate of steaming spaghetti and bumpy meatballs, with a salad of iceberg lettuce and vinegar-and-oil dressing. The DiNunzio family ate dinner at the same time every night and served pasta four nights a week, except for fish on Fridays, still. Mary felt reassured when things stayed the same, and her parents’ home, which she visited every Wednesday for dinner, was the Church of Things That Stayed the Same. She had brought Judy home for dinner because Mary’s parents adored her, treating her like the tall child they never had. Judy returned the affection, marveling at each visit that Italians really acted Italian. Mary had no defense for it. Some stereotypes rang true for a reason.

The DiNunzios’ brick rowhouse in South Philly was laid out in a straight line from living room to dining room to kitchen, the rooms strung one after the other like the slippery beads on a favored rosary. The sofa in the living room sagged in the center, its shiny green quilting protected by doilies her mother had crocheted decades ago. The room’s maroon carpet had been worn in a strip down the middle, a missal’s ribbon made by years of walking through the dining room, which was used only on Christmas and Easter. Even as a child, Mary knew something really good had to happen to Jesus Christ for the DiNunzios to eat in the dining room.

The heart of the house was the kitchen, tiny and shaped like a Mass card. A Formica table with rickety wire legs took up most of the room, and the five of them-Mary’s mother and father, Mary and her twin Angie, and Judy-had to huddle to fit around it for dinner. Refaced wood cabinets ringed the room and Formica counters cracked at the corners, so near to the kitchen table that Mary’s father could stay in his chair and turn up the Lasko fan in the window, which he did. The plastic blades whirred faster but the air remained stifling.

“Madonne, it’s hot,” said Mary’s father, Mariano DiNunzio. A long time ago, his crew of tilesetters had christened him “Matty,” and it stuck. He was a bald, stocky man with large eyes, a bulbous nose, and an affable smile. He wore Bermuda shorts and a white undershirt, his tummy stretching soft as a cherub’s under the worn cotton. He had tucked a paper napkin in his T-shirt like a bib. “You gettin’ some breeze, Judy?” he asked.

“Yes, thanks.” Judy was struggling to twirl her spaghetti.

“Good. You’re the guest. We want you to be nice and comfortable.”

“I am,” Judy said, as steaming strands slipped through her fork for the second time. She tried it again, her tongue to the side in concentration.

“You want help with that?” Angie asked. Her dark blond hair was combed into a short ponytail that curved like a comma; she wore an ivory shirt with short sleeves and khaki shorts. Angie looked like a casual-dress version of her twin, though her manner was far from casual.

Mary smirked. “Don’t help her. It’s fun to watch her struggle.”

“Oh, stop,” Angie said. “I’m going to teach her how to twirl.”

“But she’ll run off and tell all the other WASPs. Then where will we be? Fresh out of state secrets.”

Judy fumbled with the spoon as spaghetti slithered off her fork. “I don’t get the spoon part.”

“You don’t need to use the spoon,” Angie said, but Mary waved her off.

“Don’t believe her, Jude, she’s lying. Spoons are key to expert twirling. They don’t let you in the Sons of Italy unless you use a spoon.”

“You don’t need the spoon,” Mary’s father said, and beside him, her mother nodded, pushing bangs like cirrus clouds from a short, bony brow. Vita DiNunzio was losing her hair from years of teasing, which only made her get it teased more often, at the beauty parlor at the corner.

“But spoons are cool,” Mary insisted. “Real dagoes use spoons.”

“Why do you use that term?” Angie snapped, and Mary reflected that her twin had left her sense of humor at the convent, with no hope of recovery since she’d taken a job as a paralegal. Nothing about being a paralegal was funny.

“You know, Ange, you used to be a lot of fun.”

“Like you?”

“Exactly like me,” Mary said, and her meaning wasn’t lost on Angie, who averted her eyes.

“Girls, girls,” their mother said, her tone a warning.

Mary bit her tongue. Her chest felt tight. She didn’t know how to reach Angie, though they’d been so close as kids. Mary had always treasured their twinness, seeing it as unique and special, but the bond that Mary viewed as security, like moorings to a boat, Angie saw as confinement, the tether to the puppy. Angie had spent most of her adult life tugging at that leash, fighting to slip free of it completely. Mary regretted the loss, and the wound had been reopened by the Connolly case; Bennie was embracing a twin she had never known, just as Angie was pushing her away.

“Judy,” Angie said, “put the spoon down and pick up some spaghetti on your fork. Pick up just a little and twirl it against the side of the plate.”

Judy pierced a few strands of spaghetti with her fork, her expression grimmer than anybody’s eating spaghetti should be. “I’m a Stanford grad. I should be able to do this.”

“But you can’t,” Mary told her. “Because you won’t use the spoon.”

“Mary,” Angie warned, in the same tone their mother had used.

Mary’s face flushed. She felt suddenly warm in the tiny kitchen. Hot tomato sauce-“gravy” in the vernacular-bubbled in the dented metal saucepan on the stove and residual steam from a pot of spaghetti water curled into the air. The aroma filling the small kitchen-sharp with oregano, sweet with basil, chunky with sausage-that seemed so fragrant when Mary first came home now smelled cloying. “You know,” she said, “some people don’t eat spaghetti when it’s hot out. They think it makes them hotter to eat spaghetti.”

Mary’s mother looked over, squinting behind her glasses. “What you mean, no spaghett’?”

“No spaghetti in summer. If we ate cold things for dinner, we’d feel cooler.”

“Drink your water,” said her mother, and beside her, her father frowned deeply, his forehead fairly cleaving in two.

“What are you talkin’, a cold dinner? Cold isn’t dinner. If it’s cold, it can’t be dinner.”

“That’s not true, Pop,” Mary said, not sure why she was pressing such an inane point. She loved spaghetti in any weather. She would’ve eaten it in a steambath. “In restaurants they have cold dinners, like cold salmon with a salad. Sometimes they serve the salad warm.”

“Cold fish, warm salad?” Her father’s hand flew to check his hearing aid, a gift from Mary. She’d been so thrilled when he agreed to wear it that she suggested eating in the dining room, but had been roundly rebuffed. “You sayin’ cold fish, warm salad, Mare? Where’s this at?”

“Downtown.”

“What kinda thing is that? How they make the salad warm?”

“I don’t know. Either they don’t chill it or they heat it, I guess. It says on the menu, ‘A warm salad of wilted greens.’ ”

“Wilted? Wilted means spoiled. They don’t serve it like that.”

“Yes, they do. Put it right in front of you.”

Her father snorted. “They should be ashamed of themselves! Crooks! Cold fish, warm salad! That’s ass-backwards.”

“Watch your language, Matty,” said Mary’s mother, but her father pretended not to hear with alarming accuracy.

“People pay good money for that? That’s cocka-mamie!”

Mary caught her twin’s eye across the tight circle of the table and to her surprise, Angie was smiling over her water glass. Mary sighed inwardly. She used to be able to read her sister’s mind.

“I did it!” Judy yelped suddenly. “Look!” Grinning, she held up a forkful of spaghetti balled like yarn.

Mary laughed, and her father set down his fork and clapped, his dry, rough palms smacking thickly together. “Brava, Judy!” he said.