IV

Wednesdays are a gray suit day for father. He wears a pair of black wingtips and gray heather suit with a lovely solid black tie over a solid white shirt. He says the Italians make the best suits – they are comfortable and sleek at the same time. This, he tells me, is a contradiction worth wearing. Mother coordinates just as much. After all, they’d been married for 15 years and routines were difficult to break. She wears a grey pinstripe suit with a pink blouse underneath with black trim. It’s very fetching my father admits to me when he picks me up from school.
Wednesdays also meant that I saw them both in the same room. We had family counseling after school and we’d meet mother downtown at the therapist’s office. The greetings were cordial as the room was not. It was always cold despite being colored in a lot of maroons and browns. Even the leather couch the three of us sat upon as a dark mauve. It was not very comfortable and I always had to sit in the middle between my parents. The therapist wanted to remind my parents that I was their middle ground and should always remember that.
Of course, we were to only spend an hour in therapy, talking about this and that. Often times, father fell asleep and mother would slap his leg every fifteen minutes or so until the session was over. It had now been six months since father moved into the house across the street.