Ruffly Speaking

eyes swept upward. Perhaps she addressed God. Perhaps God listened. If so, the Deity had to hear it all. You don’t. Here’s a sample: “Central to the dispute as to the precise year of its erection is, as one might suppose, the War of 1812, i.e., did Theodosius Smith merely place an order for it before taking up arms, or was it, in point of fact, not merely commissioned but actually crafted, delivered, and erected in its entirety prior to his departure?”
    With every word she said, I seemed to shrink. I should have walked away.
    “Alternatively,” she continued, “could it possibly be, as Milligan posits, that Agatha Smith, the eldest of the surviving daughters, supervised the construction during her father’s absence?” She paused. Maybe I was supposed to be taking notes. “We shall probably never know with any great degree of certainty, although...”
    Her blue-gray eyes cold with outrage, she went on and on. At the end of what seemed like an hour, when I felt about two inches high, she threw Rowdy a single glance of scorn. Then an expression of sudden sweetness transformed her face. It smoothed the wrinkles, even diminished the jut of her jaw and chin. She softly cleared her throat and reached what she evidently felt was a climactic conclusion. Her voice was very soft and infinitely censorious. “Longfellow is reputed to have admired it.” Cambridge! I mean, what’s the most Longfellow could’ve said? Nice fence, right? And when you consider the eminent people, including highly qualified AKC judges, who’ve admired Rowdy and Kimi? Well, you’re bound to conclude that, all in all, my dogs were a lot more praiseworthy than her stupid fence. And, of course, the dogs didn’t mean the fence any harm. In fact, all they did was admire it, just like Longfellow. But in a different way, of course. Or so one assumes.
     

7
     
     An hour later, Rita was smashing her fist on my kitchen table. “So you’ve got the perfect comeback! And what do you do? Stand there and let this old snob make you feel small.” Bang! The spectacular Emma’s pizza that Rita and I were sharing for dinner practically leaped up, as if a misguided chef were tossing the finished product instead of the dough.
    I replied with dignity. “I didn’t have to say it aloud. Thinking it was enough.”
    “Would you not shout at me?” Rita’s slice of pizza dropped to her plate, and her hands flew to her ears. Her hearing aids whistled. “Christ, I hate that sound! You know what it is?”
    “Feedback. It happens when—”
    “Wrong,” Rita snapped. “It’s the sound of old age.”
    “Rita, there are children who wear hearing aids, and, as a matter of fact, there are dogs—”
    “So instead of being an old lady, I get to be a dog! Hallelujah!”
    If you know Rita, the first thing that’ll hit you is that she didn’t sound like herself, and, as it turned out, the foreign sound of her own voice was one of her approximately seven thousand complaints about the hearing aids, which she’d picked up from the audiologist that morning and had been dutifully wearing all day.
    “But in dogs,” I said, “they’re implanted in the ear. Dogs don’t have the option of taking them out when they’ve had enough.”
    Rita shook her head. Her sleek hair danced. “I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to... Christ, how am I going to see patients like this? I’m going to turn into one of those silent types. Twice an hour I’ll utter a single word: Um. I can’t believe people pay for that.” She took a bite of pizza and chewed. When she rested the slice on her plate, her eyes filled with tears. Emma’s pizza is good enough to make you weep, but the effect isn’t usually literal. “Holly, I can’t chew right! And when I smile... When I move my jaw, these things feel like stones being jabbed in my ears.”
    Rita and I have been through some tough times together, but I’d never before seen her look defeated. I felt terrible.
    “You just got them this morning,” I reminded her gently. “You’ll get used to them.” My tone was the one I use for dogs forced to wear those horrible Elizabethan collars that prevent postoperative animals from ripping out their stitches. When the incision heals, though, the Elizabethan collar comes off. Rita was supposed to wear the hearing aids for life.
    “Talk to me,” Rita ordered. “Distract me.”
    Rita is a born psychologist. What distracts her is mental life. Those jokes about therapists asking