“She left a job as a CPA to work for a nonprofit?”
“Yes. Remember I told you that? But she’s really smart. And she comes from a good family here. Her father was an attorney. Retired now. Her mother—”
Just then Russell heard that familiar click that told him his mother had another call coming in. He’d heard that click about a thousand times in his life, and it never failed to make him just a little bit sick to his stomach.
“Russell, dear. Hold just a moment. I have another call.”
Of course you do.
He pressed the phone to his ear and waited a painfully long time, imagining her talking about escrows and interest rates and inspections and appraisals and all those other things that made up his mother’s world, leaving little room for anything else.
Finally the line clicked again. “Russell, are you still there?”
“Yeah, Mom. I’m here.”
“About visiting. Of course we’d love to. I just don’t know when it will be possible. Your father and I will have to coordinate our schedules and get back to you. This month is out for me, and your father has a conference next month in addition to his surgery schedule. And why he agreed to teach this semester, I’ll never know.”
“Okay,” Russell said. “Just let me know.”
“Of course, dear. I need to go now. Stay in touch.”
And then she was gone.
There had been a time when he’d believed his mother when she said it was just a timing thing and schedules were being compared and yes, of course they’d love to, even when he lived only fifteen miles away. Then weeks would pass, and months, and pretty soon it was time for the Morgensen family Christmas at their home in Highland Park. They’d sit around his parents’ professionally decorated Christmas tree, where Russell would collect the usual cashmere sweater and whatever bottle of vintage wine his father happened to pull from his wine cellar. Then for another year, they’d have unbearably stilted telephone conversations that went nowhere. Then Christmas would roll around again…
And then it dawned on him. His birthday. His mother hadn’t said a word about it.
“Dr. Morgensen?”
He looked up to find Cynthia at his office door.
“My mother,” he said as he stuffed his phone into his pocket. “She and my father are coming for a visit.”
“That’s nice,” Cynthia said. “When?”
“They have to check their schedules. My mother is the top Realtor in the Park Cities in Dallas. It keeps her really busy.”
“I bet it does. What does your father do?”
“My father?” Russell suddenly felt like the slacker his parents thought he was. “He’s a heart surgeon.”
Cynthia’s big brown eyes grew even wider. “Wow. I imagine that keeps him busy, too.”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Cynthia said brightly, “I hope I get to meet them when they’re here. Will they come to the office?”
All at once, Russell realized just how wrong that would be. His mother would look at Cynthia’s Sea World pencil cup and her stuffed rabbit and the plants that were beginning to make his waiting room look like Little Shop of Horrors, and she wouldn’t be able to fathom any of it. And what if they tried talking to Velma? That would be an experience. Then his father would glance around his office and wonder where his son’s golf trophies and awards from professional associations were. Russell could take then to dinner at the club, but as nice as the Majestic was, it felt like a low-class bar and grill compared to their club in Dallas.
Suddenly he felt sick to his stomach all over again. What the hell had he been thinking when he moved there?
“Of course they’ll come to the office,” Russell said. No, they won’t. They’re never coming. I could live here for twenty years, and they’d never step foot in this town. Never.
“Good,” Cynthia said. “That’s good.” But there was something in her voice that didn’t sound like cheerful conversation.
It sounded like pity.
And then he knew. She must have overheard part of his conversation, and she had an inkling what was going on. But there was nothing pitiful about him. His practice was off to a great start. People looked up to him here. He was a thirty-two-year-old man who certainly didn’t need his parents to tell him he was doing well. He didn’t need anyone to tell him his decisions were right or wrong. He didn’t need anybody, period.
But his practice wasn’t in one of Dallas’s high-rent neighborhoods. He wasn’t in debt up to his eyeballs to have outrageously expensive state-of-the-art