And there it was.
Three hours, and his first complete sentence about consequences was about his family’s reputation.
“I’m going to my mother’s house,” I said.
“The one with the porch that sagged.
I kept it, by the way.
I’ve been paying the taxes on it for six years.
You never asked why I drove out there on Sundays.”
I slept at my mother’s house that night.
The porch still sags.
I’ve had three contractors tell me what it would cost to fix it and I have not fixed it, and I know exactly why, and I’m not going to pretend it’s a mystery: my mother sat on that porch for twenty-six years and I would like the shape of it to stay the shape she sat in.
I sat there at two in the morning in a navy silk dress I altered myself, and I did the arithmetic I had been avoiding for two years.
