Ruffly Speaking

shamelessly manipulated, Leah changed the subject. It’s even possible that Bernie Brown recommends the tactic. “Matthew’s mother says she’ll be glad to talk to you,” Leah announced, “and her dog is so cute. His name is Ruffly. He’s a little mixed-breed, and he has great big ears, and he’s really adorable, and you should see him work. He’s amazing-”
    Another thing about the Bernie Brown method: It’s very effective. Leah had my attention. “So what’s she like?”
    “The rector?” Leah gave a wry grin.
    “Stephanie Benson.”
    “This is totally unlike you.”
    “What is?”
    “I start telling you about Ruffly, and you’re asking about the rector? Are you all right?”
    “Yes,” I said. “But Rita isn’t.”
    While I outlined what Rita herself would probably have called my “treatment plan,” Leah rummaged around in the cupboards, which were no longer a sort of dog lover’s twist on Old Mother Hubbard’s. On Tuesday night, Leah and I had gone to the Mount Auburn Star Market, where she’d filled our cart with hardtack rye crackers, edible seaweed, canned beans, balsamic vinegar, red cabbage, fruit-flavored water, and enough packages of ramen noodle soup to provide the first course at a banquet for the entire population of Greater Tokyo. The package she selected that night was pink. Pink is shrimp.
    By the time two cups of water had come to a boil, I was saying, “So what Rita needs is an encounter with a possibility that’s become a reality, because this whole thing is totally alien to her. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, because if you grow up the way most of us grew up, the whole thing is strictly theoretical. Like creatures from outer space, okay? Maybe in theory you might agree that there could exist intelligent life on other planets, and maybe all along you would’ve agreed that there could exist a successful, attractive professional woman your age who wears hearing aids, but you’re about as likely to meet someone like that as you are to run into a space woman. Only what’s really happened, I think, is that Rita feels as if, all of a sudden, she’s become one of these aliens, and, before, she wasn’t even sure they existed.”
    “With the rector, it’s no big deal.” Leah peered at the pan and poked a fork into what looked like a rectangle of freeze-dried curly white worms. “She wears her hair pulled back; you can see her hearing aids. Besides, Ruffly’s leash has ‘hearing dog’ printed in big letters, and his tag says he’s a hearing dog, which is how she gets to take him to restaurants and stuff, where dogs aren’t allowed.”
    I caught the glint in her eye. “Don’t even think about it,” I ordered her.
    Leah indignantly plopped a bowl of noodles on the table in front of me.
    “So what is Stephanie like?” I asked. “Or, really, would Rita...?”
    “Oh, yes. Definitely.”
    “Great,” I said. “And is she going to come to your course?”
    Leah nodded. “But not next week. Maybe the week after. Ruffly’s having problems. He isn’t used to the new house yet. But the rector said to tell you to call her.” Ramen noodles taste better than you might imagine, kind of like spaghetti in oversalted bouillon. “This isn’t bad,” I said. “She said to call her?”
    “So you can—”
    “I know why.” I drank some broth. “I just...”
    “Holly, is something bothering you?”
    “Can she hear enough to... It’s okay to call?”
    “They have an amplifying phone. Matthew hates it because his mother always forgets to turn down the volume, so when he answers the phone, it blasts in his ear. But it rings really softly, because they don’t need to hear it, because no matter how soft it is, Ruffly does. You should see, when the phone rings? That’s one of Ruffly’s sounds, and he goes berserk.”
    “And, uh... Stephanie. You can, uh, have a conversation with her?”
    Leah looked disgusted with me. “How could she be a rector if you couldn’t talk to her? And she sounds just like everyone else. Actually, she sounds like Rita. She’s from New York.”
    Having finally put it all together, I addressed Leah sternly. “You were there tonight, weren’t you! At the Bensons’? You knew there was a hearing dog there, and you took Kimi with you? Leah, I’m not positive, but I don’t think—”
    “They got along great,” Leah assured me. “Ruffly even let Kimi eat out of his dish.”
    “And if Kimi had gone for his food, and he’d