Ruffly Speaking

dress of some unbleached homespun material. When she raised her arm to pour the wine, the dress looked like the ceremonial costume of some ancient religion. To my surprise, she said, “Doug is still so guilt-ridden.”
     “He’s very conscientious. He fusses about details. But I wouldn’t say he’s—”
    “It’s the garden.” She spoke very softly. “You do know about Morris?”
    Answer yes to a question like that, and you already know as much as you’re ever going to. “Sort of,” I said.
    “Well, it was Doug who... I’ll show you later.” Stephanie handed me a goblet of wine. “Now probably isn’t the best time. Doug... Well, the garden is... It’s a box, really, with the dirt inside. A raised bed. He built a whole elaborate little miniature garden. There are hoops that go over it, and there’s plastic that goes over the hoops, so you can turn it into a little greenhouse, and there’s some kind of underground heating and watering system. But the point is, Doug built this little garden as a gift for Morris. And they planted... I don’t know a thing about gardening—and not much more about cooking! But all sorts of edible flowers and exotic greens, salad greens, and that’s where Morris must have begun gathering— But what a thing to start talking about! We’re having a salad! I don’t...” She faltered.
    “That’s fine,” I assured her. “I’m not—”
    “I bought everything. After, uh, after what happened, Doug tore out everything in the raised bed. That’s what he’s out there doing now, planting it with lettuce and something or other. He bought little lettuce plants. It was just an empty box of dirt, rather depressing, not that there was any real danger, but, even so, he’s so guilt-ridden....”
    Whatever the true cause of Morris’s death, Stephanie clearly accepted Doug’s account. I was about to say something about Mr. Winer, Doug’s father, when Doug tapped lightly on one of the open glass doors of the deck and walked in. The tapping set Ruffly to work, but as soon as Stephanie reminded him that Doug was a welcome visitor, Ruffly calmed down.
    At Stephanie’s insistence, Doug accepted a small glass of wine, and the three of us moved outdoors to the deck, taking seats on the tan pipe-and-canvas lawn chairs that had been torn and scratched by Morris’s dogs. The raised garden, located a few yards beyond the deck, was clearly visible to all of us. As soon as Stephanie caught sight of the rows of lettuce and some orange marigolds that Doug had just planted, she said a polite and appropriately subdued thanks. Although the lettuce would immediately bolt and turn bitter in the July heat, I should probably have added a quiet word of admiration, but after a quick glance, I averted my eyes. Mounds of earth are what they are; one pine box looks pretty much like another; and Morris Lamb really was dead. What threw me into near tachycardia was that, at first glance, the elements suggested the grave site of a giant recently interred by a lazy undertaker who’d only half buried the coffin, but had piled the raw earth with flowers nonetheless.
    When I recovered, Stephanie was inquiring about how things were going at Winer & Lamb, and Doug was telling her all about the expansion of the mail-order side of the business and the preparation of the new catalog. “Our old ones!” he exclaimed in disgust. “Did you ever...? No, of course not, why would you? You don’t really cook, do you? Either of you? Not to speak of? Or collect? Well, you wouldn’t have had any reason to see our old catalogs—it’s a very specialized clientele—and, frankly, the way I felt when I looked through our last catalog was, well... I wished they’d all been lost in the mail! That nasty, cheap paper and the typographical errors! No sense of design whatsoever—nothing but a horrid little list. It was so amateurish that it made me sick.”
    Stephanie pointed out that knowledgeable collectors were probably satisfied with a simple list, and I added that the dealers who specialized in used and rare dog books relied on catalogs that were far from color glossy, but Doug said that we both sounded just like Morris, who hadn’t understood that to survive the threat posed by the megabookstores, they had to expand the mail-order business. Morris hadn’t wanted to be bothered with the tremendous work required to turn out a thoroughly professional product—speaking of which, he must fly! In taking leave, Doug