The Orin–Hal phone call — "Hal and Mario’s mother had done…"
Hal and Mario’s mother had done her undergraduate Honors work at McGill on the use of hyphens, dashes, and colons in E. Dickinson. The Epsom-water whitens his calluses. Unlaundered bedding swims around him. The phone twitters. Ample make this bed, or Ample make this bed. The phone twitters again.
Context
Orin's answering-machine message has just floated his "theory" that all of Dickinson sings to 'The Yellow Rose (of Texas),' and the narration drops this depth-charge one flat declarative at a time: Avril's Honors scholarship was on Dickinson's punctuation. The Subject's "random" poetics small talk is keyed to the Moms's file — U.S.O.U.S. has done its homework — and Hal's head is already running the line as the phone rings. Punctuation as a scholarly speciality, and as a fingerprint.