Ruffly Speaking

her back. She must have answered on the first ring.
    Although Rita and I made a pretense of chatting while Matthew used the phone, we couldn’t help overhearing, of course, but then Steve arrived, and I actually missed the rest of what Matthew said to his mother. By then, Leah had stopped the video, and she and Rowdy and Kimi had come into the kitchen to find out what was going on and to greet Steve. By the time Matthew’s call ended, he had a small audience for his explanation, the gist of which was that he couldn’t tell what was going on —probably nothing—but—with a glance toward Leah— would it be all right to watch the rest of the video at his house? His mother had insisted that there was no need for him to return home, but he couldn’t diagnose the problem from a distance. Besides, he suspected that his mother might be getting crank calls. If so, she’d feel better if he were there.
    Everyone agreed that, of course, Matthew should go home.
    “Leah,” I said, “you’re welcome to go watch the video at Matthew’s, but this is definitely not a good time to take Kimi there. If something is going on and—”
    “It’s kind of late, anyway,” said Leah, who, I might add, could listen to music, read, and talk on the phone until one A.M. or maybe even later, for all I knew, and then arise at seven and get to AHSP on time looking and acting as if she’d had ten hours’ sleep. I wasn’t sure whether she actually enjoyed staying up late or whether she simply wanted to be someone who did enjoy it. “I think I’ll go to bed early,” she added. To Matthew she said, “We can watch the rest tomorrow. Or another time.”
    With apologies and thanks to Leah and me, and mannerly departure noises to Steve and Rita—but not a word to Rowdy and Kimi—Matthew departed. Then Steve— Have you actually met Steve? My God, maybe I’m starting to take him for granted. Well, in case you haven’t been introduced, he’s tall and lean, and when his brown hair is long enough to wave,’ it does; and if you don’t view him from the rear, his eyes are his best feature. They change from green to blue depending, in part, on what color he’s wearing. A vet with chameleon eyes. And he doesn’t even specialize in reptiles.
    Steve had arrived with a six-pack of Geary’s pale ale, which I happen to hate, but drink anyway out of loyalty to my home state, where it’s brewed and bottled. Rita loathes Geary’s even more than I do and has no reason to consume it, so I fixed her a gin and tonic. Meanwhile, Steve poured ale into two pewter mugs presented by the Cambridge Dog Training Club to Rowdy and Kimi in honor of their official AKC Canine Good Citizenship. Then he filled a glass tumbler that Vinnie, my glorious last golden retriever, had won years before at a fun match. (Short on drinking vessels? Show your dogs.) He handed one mug to me and, despite my intense glare, gave the other to Leah, who’d taken a seat at the kitchen table. A true gentleman, Steve reserved the mere fun-match trophy for himself.
    With a shrug toward the door through which Matthew had departed, Steve asked, “So what’s going on?”
    I told him about Stephanie’s call. Then Leah took over. As I hadn’t realized until Leah spelled it out, Stephanie had more difficulty with phones than she usually let people know about, especially when callers used speaker phones or, worse yet, those cordless contraptions acquired as bonuses for subscribing to cheap magazines.
    To my surprise, Rita spoke up vehemently. “Those things! And you know who always uses them? Mumblers.” If the word had been murderers, Rita’s tone wouldn’t have been any more damning than it already was.
    Leah was cradling the mug of ale in her hands. It seemed to me that she disliked the taste of alcohol. What she enjoyed was holding adulthood in her hands. “So,” she said, “if someone calls and Stephanie can’t hear right, she gets sort of upset, because she can’t tell whether it’s someone she knows, so she doesn’t want to just hang up, or whether it’s a wrong number or the person’s already hung up. Also she doesn’t totally trust the phone lines in their house because she found out that the phone company didn’t do the wiring.”
    “M orris did?” I tried to envision Morris Lamb crawling along baseboards, running lines through walls, and installing jacks. What came to me was an image of the two Bedlingtons in a tangled heap of telephone paraphernalia and