Ruffly Speaking

us here? In his house?”
    “It’s a lot better than seeing it empty. That would be really strange.” We were in the front hall now. I imagined Stephanie buying a rug for the bare floor, closing the big windows in winter, arranging to have them washed, making the house her own. “And Morris would have been glad to have a dog here,” I went on. “I mean, I am, too....” I let it go at that. Without a dog, the house might not have felt like Morris’s, but it seemed unnecessary to say so.
    “It’s an unlikely house for me,” Stephanie acknowledged. “It’s not really my style, and I’m used to an apartment, but the location is perfect—a ten-minute walk from St. Margaret’s—and the neighborhood was irresistible. After the city? I still can’t get over it.” Stephanie opened the front door, looked up, and smiled. “Trees. A real garden. We actually have a backyard. It seems like a miracle. It’s the most bucolic place I’ve ever lived.”
    I looked up and down Highland Street. Even by my rural standards, it was remarkably verdant. Furthermore, unlike the country, it was all ivy, flowers, and well-pruned shrubs and trees, and it lacked the dented mailboxes, discarded beer cans, and tom-open plastic bags of rubbish that are the garden sculpture of the average back road in God’s country, the beautiful State of Maine.
    “Highland is one of the prettiest streets in Cambridge,” I agreed. “And it’s so quiet.” As soon as I said it, I felt stupid. What did Stephanie care whether it was quiet or not? But maybe she did. I remembered the horrible roaring and buzzing that had assaulted me when I’d tried Rita’s hearing aids. I couldn’t reconcile that bombardment, which seemed to be defeating Rita, with Stephanie Benson’s poise and self-confidence, and especially with her obviously cheerful outlook. Although Stephanie was chatting and lingering, she was also ushering me out —we were at least halfway down her front walk. On impulse, I suddenly said, “Please tell me if this is an imposition or an intrusion, but I have a big favor to ask. One of my best friends has just started wearing hearing aids?” Why is it that women turn everything into questions? Rita had just started to wear the aids; there was nothing questionable about it. I rushed on. “And she’s having a rough time getting used to them. And I don’t know how to help her.” Confession. What are priests for?
    I guess Stephanie was a good priest. Her big, wide face warmed immediately. “Would you like me to talk to her? I’d be glad to.”
    I was thanking Stephanie and starting to explain a little about Rita when I caught sight of three boys huddled together on Highland Street. They seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, but now formed a tight little group on the far side of Alice Savery’s property. They weren’t making any noise—they seemed to be whispering together—and they were almost motionless. What grabbed my attention, I suppose, was their unnatural silence and stillness. Ambush posture: Your dog is trotting along minding his own business, sniffing a utility pole, bouncing around, and then suddenly another dog appears, and instead of leaping ahead to greet it or behaving himself and ignoring it, your dog drops flat to the ground. His legs go right out from under him. He doesn’t make a sound. His hackles don’t rise. He freezes. Then WHAM! He springs. It isn’t called ambush for nothing.
    But only one of the three boys actually sprang—a scrawny kid of seven or eight, I guessed, with straight brown hair that stood out in tufts all over his head. His two companions sank almost to their knees and sheltered themselves from view in the branches of a flowering shrub, but peered out to follow the dash of their tufted friend, who bolted down the sidewalk in front of Alice Savery’s house with his arms outstretched like the wings of an airplane, and deliberately and repeatedly whacked the top of Alice Savery’s fence along its entire length.
    At the end of his first pass through what I suspected was enemy territory, the boy was heading straight for Stephanie, Ruffly, and me. His eyes were in most respects entirely different from Rowdy’s, which are, of course, almond shaped and very dark brown—the boy’s were violet-blue circles—but I’d seen that glint before. It’s the sparkle that appears in the eyes of a creature who’s right in the delicious midst of getting away with something good. Rowdy, though,