“Susan is a nurse, she’s over at Good Sam,” he reported.
“Your parents must be so proud,” Mrs. Moore noted. Then, quickly, a shadow of some grief passed over her face; she was not the kind of woman who knew how to hide feelings; she never had been. “You know, until Megan moved back, not one of my children stayed in Cincinnati. Not one! Last year, I was so mad at all of them!” She laughed self-consciously, as if to let him know that this wasn’t the life-crushing disappointment she had just admitted it was. “The Dilmeyers, did you go to school with any of them? Ten children and all of them stayed here! Margaret Dilmeyer can’t stop bragging about it, she has twelve grandchildren already, I hear about it all the time. I don’t mean to complain; I’m not complaining! Well, I’m glad that Megan’s here, at any rate. She just moved back! So that’s nice. Your parents must be so happy, to have you both living in the same city.”
“I think they enjoy it, yes,” Kyle acknowledged. He was touched by her confession and leaned back on his left foot, acknowledging with that simple gesture that he didn’t really have to run off; he had a few minutes to chat. “But everyone’s well?” He wanted to suck the words back into his soul as soon as he had uttered them.
“Oh, they’re all great. Just great!” she bubbled, a conscious brittleness entering her tone. “Jeff is in Germany, of all places, on a Fulbright. He’s got all this research with DNA. Nobody knows what he’s talking about half the time but he’s successful. He’s always being published in big science magazines. Nature. He’s got an article in that one, coming out, he’s really proud.”
“Well, I don’t actually know a lot about research publications but I know that a Fulbright is a big deal,” Kyle said, grateful that she had had the good grace to pretend that he actually cared about Jeff, her patently favorite son. Both of them knew there was really only one of her eight children in whom he had any interest at all. But he really had to get out of these waters before they got any more perilous. The nurse at the desk had raised her eyes impatiently more than once, and he could tell from her familiar tics that she was about to butt in and embarrass him for taking five minutes off to chat with an old friend, when the waiting room was turning into a veritable petri dish of infected toddlers. “It’s great to see you,” he told her. “Please tell Mr. Moore I hope he feels better. Kidney stones are no fun.”
“Alison’s still in New York!” she announced. He wished he could have kept his heart from hammering in his chest, but barring that, he could at least control any sign of interest in this line of discussion. He had known as soon as he saw Alison’s mother that he would not get out of this conversation without hearing about her, but that didn’t make it any easier when it finally happened. He forced a nod which he hoped carried with it an air of professional disinterest.