VI

What my parents wouldn’t admit was that they both still loved each other. So on a routine trip to the mall December, I arranged for them to be in the same place at the same time. Fridays, my mother liked to comb begin the weekend with her Friday shopping ritual at Macy’s. My father liked to comb the racks for sales that preceded the weekend. He also liked to haggle with the salespeople on new suits, which never worked, but he still did it anyway. This was a no-brainer; they both loved shopping for clothes, especially the expensive, department-store kind you find only in fancy print magazines like Esquire or Vogue, or whatever that’s supposed to mean.
At Macy’s, I surveyed the front entrance from a comfortable distance between the glitz of the perfume counters and mother perusing the new lines of purses. I spotted father stroll in, heading right for the men’s suit section in the back. I waited a few minutes to let him settle in and dragged mother back to there to look at argyle socks. I needed some for school in the spring. What I didn’t expect was my mom to see him and pause like a doe caught in a hunter’s gaze. He hadn’t seen her, but it wasn’t difficult if he’d just pay attention.
She dashed behind the undershirt rack as he pulled toward her. Looking for underwear after he discovered his entire underwear drawer submerged in red paint. I watched in anticipation as their eyes met when they reached for a set of clean white tees, a careful pause as two animals sized each other up to fight or to flee. To be honest, I rather this situation more because of the moment of decision before the click of action taken. Do they fight, as they’d (what seemed like) always done? Or do they make amends? It is their Friday ritual and they’ve discovered each other in the fierce woods of Macy’s on a late Friday afternoon before the sales went up for the weekend.

What would they do?