July 2020

I had some sort of cold in July. My daughter had outside evening rehearsals, and my husband always volunteered to go pick her up. He’d leave me with our boys, and I remember feeling annoyed. The boys were rammy from quarentine, and I was feeling under the weather. But, also, it was nice that he did the pick up.

Except, he always left half an hour early. (“To get a good parking spot.”) And he always stayed chatting for at least an hour. “Porch Chats,” he called them.

Sometimes my daughter would text me, “I want to come home but dad is on the porch talking and he won’t leave yet.”

I’d ask my husband later about it and he would say that wasn’t what happened. “I was ready and she wanted to keep talking with her friends.”

It became a habit, this staying after rehearsal. It didn’t really matter whose rehearsal it was. He’d pick up my daughter, or my sons and then they would all just stay there hanging out having porch chats.

Maybe sometimes they all chatted together on the porch. But now I know that it was mostly Heather and my husband on the porch, and the kids out back. Now I know that they made plans for their secret meetups, and that Heather had bought tantric sex books and was storing them in the cabinet on her porch.

Now I know.