“It’s just while they’re little,” he reassured her. “She worries about all the colors, and the light patterns, there are so many studies about what they do to kids’ brains.”
“No studies about what that bullshit does to adult brains?” Alison asked. She was looking off now. “Well, it’s great to see you, you look really good, Kyle,” she said. The polite whisper hovered behind the good-bye; what was the point of even talking? Life quite frankly had forbidden them to speak. Another step past and she would be gone.
“How long are you in town for?” he blurted. She hovered for a moment, dragged backward by the hook of the question.
“I’m not sure,” she acknowledged. There was something there, some kind of exhaustion, wariness, something she couldn’t say. Of course he had no right to ask her anything.
“Well, if you’re here for a while, you should come over,” he informed her.
“Come over?”
“Why not?”
“Why not?”
He laughed, finally, at that. “Are you just going to repeat everything I say?” he asked.
“Am I going to repeat everything you say? I don’t know, maybe I will,” she shrugged.
“I have a pretty full plate at the office this week, but I’m usually out of there by seven. You could come over for dinner some night.”
“Dinner?” She actually grinned at that one, awakened by the absurdity of all this into the moment, and he finally could see her again, wry, complicated, quick to amuse. She’s in there, he thought. “I don’t know, Kyle, your wife just had a baby,” she reminded him. “It’s probably not the best time to just have people over for dinner.”
“She’ll love it,” he assured her. “She’s stuck in that house with two babies all day and the only chance she has to talk to anybody at all is when they show up on our doorstep.” His invitation was sure-footed, buoyant with the ring of a truth he was inventing on the spot.
“Maybe you should ask her,” Alison suggested, with enough of a raised eyebrow to acknowledge that there was a reality between them more authentic than this polite conversation might suggest.
“She’ll be thrilled.” Is he insane? Alison thought, but Kyle kept pushing through. “She’s always wanted to get to know you. God knows she’s heard enough about you.”
I bet. “I’m sure you have better things to talk about than me.”
“You’re a big television star! We don’t watch it, but everyone else does. My father is addicted.”
“Your father?” Kyle had tossed that one off casually but Alison inwardly cringed. Mr. Wallace had always had a soft spot for her, and she remembered fondly his steadiness of character and his concern about whether or not you were making the kind of decisions you can live with. She really didn’t want to hear that he had been watching her fall in and out of bed with the losers who were constantly traipsing through the universe on nighttime television. “Seriously, don’t tell me that your father is watching that junk, the very thought makes me want to crawl under a rock.”
“He watches it religiously. My mother hates it but he seems to love it.”
“Terrific.”
“Right?” There was something different here, a lightness which she hadn’t felt with him for years. Well, she’d barely seen him for years, only that once, but before that too everything had been so brokenhearted and operatic. This seemed almost normal. He was actually laughing at her discomfort, not in a mean way, more like an old friend who is just happy to tease you. It was distinctly weird.
“I’m so glad that you think it’s amusing, Kyle, but it makes me kind of uncomfortable to think of your dad watching me on television.”
“After what I’ve watched you do on television, I don’t believe anything makes you uncomfortable.”
“I thought you didn’t have a television!”
“We don’t! But sometimes I just—see ads for it.” That was clearly a lie, but why? Did he secretly sneak off and watch nighttime soaps with his father? The new male bonding. That seemed unlikely.
“You watch it online,” she guessed. “In between patients, you dial it up on Hulu.”
“As if there was a minute to do anything between patients. Other than argue with insurance carriers. No no no, I’ve just seen ads.” No question, he was lying. But then he grinned at her. What did it matter, they were finally talking to each other like actual human beings. Hanging out with Kyle hadn’t gone this well for—well, ever, maybe. There was no worry that this might all suddenly erupt into a huge awful fight which would end up with them almost having sex.
“Really, how long are you in town for?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you’re at your mom’s?”
“Yeah, I’m at my mom’s.”
“I’ll give you a call there.”
“Okay, sure.”
And so he finally walked away from her, approaching the line of cash registers at the front of the store with his baby formula under his arm, the rules of suburban America respected and complete. It was just what it was, two people parting with the past left like a bland linoleum floor between them. The absurd clarity of the fluorescent lights left no shadows around him to haunt her imagination.
fourteen