A descent through the carpet

Community service really can make you a changed person. After school, Zenobia and I compared notes for the history test at the library, and she told me that Zahava and Zainab liked doing kiddie sports so much, they've got summer jobs at the community recreation centre. I told her that my read-aloud days are over for the time being. After that I walked over to my mother's office to get a ride home. While I was in the waiting room, I heard the last patient of the day talking to my mother.
"Dr. Larson, you must be related to that charming Arne Larson! I'm in a creative non-fiction writing class with him. Such a sweet man. It's amazing how he's always short of cab fare back to his house outside town every week--it's wonderful how he comes in from the farm just to learn to be creative! I'm always happy to help him out with his fare out to his farm." I think my mother groaned at that point. I wasn't sure what happened next, since my mother started to recommend various forms of treatment for menopause, which the woman (obviously) lightly rejected. Then the conversation started getting odd.
"Dr. Larson, do you think my father could get poisoned by my granddaughter's modelling clay? This weekend she used his false teeth to cut cute shapes out of it, and Dad says that his teeth still taste like coloured clay."
"Why was she playing with someone's false teeth? Wasn't anyone watching her?" my mother asked.
"Oh, children always do cute things like that: if it's not clay, it's stickers, or playing with a tricycle on the stairs, or re-sorting the knife drawer..." My mother started to steer the conversation to "what medical problem do you think you have?" right then, but the patient didn't take the hint. "My daughter's coming back from the north to teach this summer, and she'll be marrying her high school boyfriend when she comes home. It's just so, I don't know, right to marry someone you've known for so long. My daughter April [at that moment I realized exactly who the nutty patient in there was] is in a band with Duncan Anderson and Gerald Forsythe, who she's known for years! Why, doesn't your daughter go out with Duncan? I think I recall April saying something about that." Much to my disgust, my mother said yes, my daughter is seeing Duncan. At that point I would have been overjoyed if she disowned me, but no, she had to go on and talk about me. My mother even admitted that Duncan and I had met when I was just starting school. Now I really want to go back to the therapist, I thought. Mrs. Patterson said that that was lovely. Then she went on a tangent about true love sometimes happening out of nowhere. Her father, she said, for instance, up and married Iris and no one had ever heard of her. April's band now had an amazing new singer, and the boys certainly were interested in her. Oh no, she must mean Eva, I thought, and she thinks Eva's attempts to entrap Duncan are wonderful. Around that point my mother said something about having to pick up her son, and Mrs. Patterson said her goodbyes at length and exited the office, flapping her arms oddly. I glared at my mother, who looked guilty.
"You talked about me with that crazy woman! She's trying to set Duncan up with that cowboy-simile crazed band singer!" My mother apologized. I reminded her that supervising children doesn't stop them from doing stupid things: "Didn't Charles Wallace blow up part of the back yard under full parental supervision?"
She agreed, and after the guilting-out we rode home. Then, as we pulled into the driveway, she said suddenly, "Does that woman realize she's subsidizing Arne's rent?"