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bathroom. Threatening no supper, no ‘nice meatloaf’, no ‘buttery mash’ if he didn’t wash his face and hands, then switching tactics and promising ice cream tomorrow if he was good tonight.
    And in opposition to the sounds of Scott’s voice, there was Aaron’s wall of words ‘No, no, no, no, no’ which altered in pitch and tempo, rising and falling and sounding to the uninformed outsider like the cries of someone being tortured. And maybe to Aaron it was torture. Did it really matter if he washed his face and hands or not? Sometimes it didn’t seem worth the effort, but then as Scott said, you start letting one thing go and the next thing you know you’ve got him tied to a leash in a dirty basement, and you hose him down once a month and only then because the smell is floating up the stairs.
    The phone started to ring.
    â€˜Marilyn! Mar! Sorry, can you get that? We’ve got a situation here…’
    She dropped the potato and the peeler into the tepid brown water, grabbed a clean tea - towel and hurried into the sitting room wiping her hands dry. It was seven - fifteen. She knew who was calling, Momma and Poppa Clement, to say ‘night - night’ to their best boy, Aaron. Though so far he’d never been persuaded to come to the phone. Telephones with their disembodied voices, even the familiar voices of his parents, seemed to scare Aaron. But every evening Scott and Aaron’s parents rang up and asked to talk to him.
    In the hallway she saw that Aaron was holding onto the newel post at the foot of the stairs with two hands. His body was rigid and his head was bent low at the neck, a sure sign that he was in a defiant mood. Scott was standing next to him with a lavender - coloured bath towel in his hands.
    She didn’t really need to hurry to get to the phone, her in - laws would let the phone ring for minute after minute after minute until someone finally picked up, and in the event that no one picked up the first time, they would ring every half hour after. They were persistent and vigilant, would seemingly never give up anything once they had started, which might explain their untiring devotion to Aaron.
    â€˜Hello?’
    â€˜Is that you, Marilyn?’ It was, as she’d expected, Scott and Aaron’s mother. Her voice was full of warm enthusiasm, like that of a kindergarten teacher talking to a five year old, yet it always made Marilyn think of disappointment.
    â€˜Yes, it’s me.’
    â€˜How’s our boy?’
    â€˜Oh, he’s fine,’ Marilyn said out of habit, aware as she said it that Aaron’s voice, the angry ‘No, no, no, no, no’ must be carried, along with her own voice, over the wires, up to the satellite, to be beamed down into Audrey Clement’s ears as she stood in the overheated kitchen of their scrupulously clean Ontario home.
    â€˜Has he had his supper?’
    â€˜No, not yet, I’m just in the middle of it.’
    â€˜Oh, what are you having?’
    â€˜Meatloaf, mash, veg.’
    â€˜Oh, he loves his meatloaf! She says they’re having meatloaf, Dave.’
    Dave was Marilyn’s father - in - law, a man who was tall and stooped, with a white beard and a full head of white hair that made him look like an underfed Santa Claus, especially in the red sweater Audrey had knitted him last fall.
    â€˜Will Baby come to the phone?’ Audrey said in a needy voice. Baby was the affectionate nickname Audrey and Dave had for Aaron.
    â€˜No, Audrey, I don’t think so, but I’ll just ask. Hold on.’ Dutifully, knowing it was a charade, she went to the doorway and said in a loud clear voice, ‘Scott, your mom’s on the phone, does Aaron want to say hello?’
    And Scott, in an equally loud voice said, ‘Aaron? You wanna talk to Momma? Momma’s on the phone.’
    Unsurprisingly, Aaron’s answer was no. Though whether it was a particular no