“Yes, I had heard that,” he said politely.
“She’s still crazy about this acting thing, but she hasn’t had much luck yet,” Mrs. Moore continued. “A couple of auditions. It’s a big deal, apparently, even getting into the hallway outside the auditions. She has lots of stories, it’s a big adventure, I understand that, but I finally said to her, don’t you have to actually get in something, a television show, or something that pays you something, isn’t that the point? Well, that wasn’t the right thing to say, obviously. But I’m worried. You can’t blame me for worrying. She has no money. She was working in an office for a while but she didn’t like that, I guess there were a lot of people there who were really unethical and they expected her to do things that just bothered her too much. She wouldn’t tell me anything specific. Anyway, she finally quit that and now she’s waitressing for some company that does private events. So she makes a lot of money when they call her but they only call her once in a while and I think she should get a real job, something with health insurance, but she says she went to New York to act. But she’s not doing that either! At least in Seattle, she wasn’t making any money but she was acting, which I thought you won’t get anywhere by acting in Seattle, but in New York she’s not even doing that much.” All of this information was excruciating to Kyle. He stared at the floor and nodded diligently, hoping that she would somehow understand that she was making him miserable, and do the decent thing and shut up. She did not. “She hasn’t asked for money,” the woman continued, again offering up the most private details imaginable, at the top of her lungs, in the middle of a waiting room full of strangers. “She’s too proud for that! She was always too proud, no one could tell her anything. Her father says she’s going to have to come to us sooner or later. I wanted her to fly home for the weekend a couple months ago, just to get out of that city, and she said she couldn’t afford the plane fare! And fares are low now. But she doesn’t have any extra money at all. She just can’t keep going on with nothing! Her father is really disappointed. She did so well in school, he really thought she might go on and do something with herself. He said to me, it just seems like a waste, a total waste of her time and her twenties. I don’t know, maybe she’ll get tired of it and come home.”
He knew she was offering this possibility to him as a hope. Kyle thought about what to say, as he looked at the floor. There he found something resembling courage and raised his eyes. “I don’t,” he said. “I hope she finds everything she wants there. Okay, where’s Heather?” he asked, glancing at the name on the file in his hand and tossing his question confidently back toward the nurse at the desk.
“She’s in four,” the nurse replied, sour. Kyle tipped his head toward Mrs. Moore with a quiet nod of respect and left. If you gave that woman any more leeway, he thought, she’d keep talking about nothing for the rest of the afternoon.
three
“GUESS WHO I saw yesterday!” Rose asserted cheerfully, holding the telephone with one hand while stirring the spaghetti sauce with the other. The pot had been on the stove for two days and the whole house smelled like tomatoes and garlic. There was a pleasant steam floating over the burners.
“I don’t know, who?” said Alison. She tried not to sound too much like she couldn’t give a shit, but her mother frankly did not make it easy. Rose seemingly could call only when she had some bit of news to report about bumping into some girl whom Alison had gone to high school with, and how well that person was doing, how many children she had or the nice car she was driving. Buried not too deeply in the conversation would be cautious questions about how things were going for Alison in her newly adopted city, Gomorrah.
“I was at the urologist,” Rose told her, suddenly feeling the need to draw this out a little. “Because your father was really feeling bad, and they needed a urine sample and he couldn’t even keep the pain medication down, he could hardly get out of bed, he was feeling just awful. So I had to take in the urine sample for him. I said, if you’re in this much pain you need to go in and see him, but you know your father, he won’t be told anything.”
“So you saw someone I knew at the urologist’s office?” Alison prodded her, trying to get this story back on course.
“Kyle,” Rose said.