Ruffly Speaking

about Mothers? All true. Fathers, too, sometimes. Early childhood. Links to the present. Therapists are loopy about ' connections. So to cheer Rita up, I talked about Marissa and her delphiniums and also about her ever-so-slightly authoritative approach to the obedience training of small human beings, and then, since Rita was still looking glum, I used her favorite phrase. “I had this fantasy…”
    I began. As usual, Rita perked up right away. I continued. “When I saw the woman marching up with her flat of delphiniums, I had this fantasy that she was going to offer me some. I was going to tell her about how my mother grew them, and she was going to be really impressed that someone even knew what they were.”
    “Someone?”
    “Me. She was going to be impressed with me. And she was going to insist on giving me a tour of her garden. And then she was going to sort of press this flat of delphinium seedlings on me, with complete instructions.” My sense of minor humiliation returned. “It didn’t quite work out like that.”
    “The resurrection fantasy is your own,” Rita said, “but the reality is that it was her loss.” She sounded like herself again, at least to me, but as soon as she’d finished speaking, her eyes refilled with tears.
    “Her name is Alice Savery,” I went on, still trying to distract Rita. “S-a-v-e-r-y, Savery, only she isn’t. Very.”
    “Introductions followed the indirect tongue-lashing?”
    “Definitely not. I ran into Doug Winer on my way home. He was just turning onto Highland, and he pulled over. Doug was Morris Lamb’s partner—Winer and Lamb —and also... Anyway, Morris lived on Highland, and Doug has inherited Morris’s house, and he was on his way over there to check on something. Doug isn’t living there. He lives with his parents. Someone’s renting Morris’s house. Anyway, Doug told me who this woman was. Alice Savery. He says she’s sort of obsessed with the
    fence. Also, apparently I got off easy. She hates dogs, or she’s afraid of them or something. She thinks they come in and ruin her garden, and she’s paranoid about rabies.” Rita was nibbling pizza as if searching for some way to masticate without moving her jaw. The return of appetite is a sign of health, or it is in dogs, anyway. She stopped chewing. “Phobic,” she said. “Paranoid is—”
    “Okay. Phobic. Anyway, her brother was some kind of famous professor.”
    “Savery,” Rita said, as if the name should mean something to me. “She’s Savery’s sister?”
    “Whoever he was.”
    “Alfred Savery was a Harvard professor who was an expert on Pope. Alexander Pope translated Homer. The Iliad and—”
    “I know who wrote the Iliad. So her brother was sort of, uh, third-hand?”
    “No, he wasn’t... Okay. Look, Holly, I’m sorry. These damn things. I’m just— Shit! This is like some kind of sensory bombardment experiment! And why the hell did I have my hair cut so short? Take one look at me, and what do you see? Handicapped. Poor handicapped person.”
    “You aren’t—”
    “Aurally challenged. Shit! You know what? The CIA probably makes listening devices that’ll fit inside the head of a pin—”
    “Look, I am very sorry that you have small ear canals.” She was supposed to get those tiny Ronald Reagan gadgets that go right in the canal, but she’d had to settle for aids that were infinitesimally more visible than those. “But, Rita, the fact is, they practically don’t show.”
    “The fact is, they are this disgusting prosthetic pink!” She brushed back her hair and turned her head to display her left ear.
    “Well, what do you want? Purple?” Not tactful.
    Rita’s lips quivered, and she burst into tears, but crying evidently didn’t help. “Holly, nothing sounds normal! It isn’t just that it’s noisy; it’s noisy and horrible. The whole world sounds like a cheap radio.”
    “Rita, people do get used to them.”
    “I don’t want to get used to them.”
    “Maybe you have them turned up too loud,” I suggested. “Or... Rita, do you have to wear both of them?”
    She sighed and grimaced. “There’s this whole thing about binaural hearing. You’re supposed to—”
    “Let me try them.” I stretched out my hand. “I want to hear what it sounds like.”
    Rita looked as if I’d asked to borrow her toothbrush. “They won’t fit you right. They’re made—”
    “Just take them out! It’s no different from trying on earrings, okay?”
    She