Do they think he has a spouse? 
Yes, she’s very loud and bombastic 
LOL @MotherOfDragons re zen master husband/bombastic wife.
Re the OP, I’d just assume positive intent.
Re the bigger picture, I like to think my community is relatively sane/kind about this kind of thing, but honestly I just dodged most of it until decisions were in. I had a few close friends who knew everything (except actual grades/scores) because we found it useful to be each other’s sounding boards, and for everyone else, I kept it all pretty general – type of schools the kid was looking at, a few places we’d visited, stuff like that. Not strictly speaking evasive, but also not volunteering a lot of detail.
My thinking was mostly to give my kid some space (and theirs too), and I think that was the right choice. I just didn’t need that many people up in our business while we were in the thick of it. I had the sense that most people I bumped into felt the same way – nobody was all that nosy, at most I’d get questions like “so … how’s senior year going?” Now that it’s over, I’m happy to talk to anyone who’s interested in how the process went down, but at this point most people are pretty well over it.
Some of the friends who proudly answered that question by saying “We’re looking forward to attending Beachbum U to major in being Beachbums in sunny California” and being amused by the sputtering/frustration from those asking did precisely that.
A few of those among the jerky subset within the top 25-33% of the class who constantly asked us that very question who ended up attending Ivies/peer elites…including HYPSMCC were shocked and a bit put off when they found some of them ended up joining them at those very institutions. Wouldn’t be surprised if their very first thought is “WTH is that slacker/clown doing here at [enter name of Ivy/peer elite or respectable colege]?!!” I certainly got that reaction from a few HS classmates at Oberlin and one HS buddy had similar reactions from HS classmates at Midd.