after Conner’s family moved in, his mother Carol called the builders to make a few minor repairs. When she asked the painter why the bathroom door jamb was so uneven, he looked at her like she was crazy and said, “What do you expect for $10,000?”  
        The only phone was on a desk in the entry hall and would clang like a fire alarm so it could be heard throughout the house. In those days, there were no cell phones and no separate business lines; just one heavy, industrial-strength, all-purpose black rotary phone, and that would often be a party-line shared with two or three other households. To make an out-going call, you first had to make sure none of your neighbors were already on the line.
        As far as Conner was concerned, the phone was a strange and frightening device that he had no use for. He never made calls. Many nights his father would call home before leaving the office. Conner would hear his mother talking to him, then announce that Daddy was on his way, which he and his sisters always found exciting. Aside from that, Conner’s only dealings with the phone were to answer it when nobody else would. His greatest hope was that it would be his father, but usually it was one of his father’s clients. They would ask if Donald was home. If he wasn’t, they’d want to leave a message, but that was almost impossible for Conner. He had no sense of payments and premiums and over-due notices. He’d try to take numbers, but usually asked them to please call back later when his father would be home.
        Conner’s family received a lot of phone calls in the middle of the night. Each time, one of his parents would clamor out of bed to answer. But when they picked up the receiver and said hello, there would be silence at the other end, no dial tone, as if someone was listening quietly but unwilling to speak. Conner’s mother told him years later that the calls came from their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Snyder, who’d confessed her sins to another neighbor who later told his mother. Mrs. Snyder had a baby that slept in a bedroom right next to the driveway. When Conner’s father came home each night around ten, he’d park right under the baby’s window with the radio blaring. Mrs. Snyder was angry that her child was being disturbed so her middle of the night calls was her way of getting even.

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        Conner’s parents were in a lot of clubs and went to a lot of meetings. His mother Carol was in the sewing club with other neighborhood wives. They’d gather one evening a week at someone’s house and share dessert and talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. Conner didn’t remember them ever actually doing any sewing. And there was the bridge club where there’d be three card tables set out in the living room and six couples rotating to different tables calling trump and no trump and I’m the dummy. Conner would usually hide in his bedroom