A father’s touch

IT IS ALWAYS AROUND this time, after my mother has begun crying and my father has finished his first cigarette, that the therapist turns to me and asks how I am doing. My therapist has short, straight, silky, brown hair that ends at the bottom of her earlobes. She wears thick, round glasses, and her apartment smells of burnt food. When she talks, my therapist sounds like a cat purring. She always responds by saying, “yes, dear.” When my mother speaks, usually in between tears, my therapist takes long drags of her cigarette and sighs, “oh, I see, dear.”

We have met for the past three Wednesday afternoons in her New York City apartment. Her kitchen, which has teal blue tiles behind the sink, is small and dimly lit. There is a wall-to-wall dirt-brown shag carpet in the living room, with two brown couches