The first time Toby climbed into my car after school and groaned, “Mom, please tell Dad to make her stop,” I honestly thought he was exaggerating.
He was not.
“She honked at me from the curb,” he said, rubbing both hands over his face. “In front of everyone.”
I glanced at him. “Honking?”
“Like I was her date.”
I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to laugh, because he looked so horrified. Then I saw his eyes. He was serious. Miserable, even.
So I called Darren.
He laughed.
Actually laughed.
“Oh, come on, Janet,” he said. “She’s just having fun.”
“Your son is embarrassed.”
“He’s 16. He’s embarrassed by oxygen.”
I remember gripping my phone tighter. “This is not funny to him.”
“Vanessa is trying to connect with the younger generation.”
I stared at the wall of my kitchen while he said that, and for a second I actually wondered if he heard himself.
“The younger generation?” I repeated.
He sighed like I was the difficult one. “You always make everything a problem.”
That should have prepared me. It did not.
Vanessa started showing up at Toby’s track meets too. Not quietly. Never quietly. She shrieked people’s names from the stands like she had known them for years. She yelled, “Go, Mason!” and “Nice pace, Eli!” and once even tried to strike up a conversation with a group of sophomore girls about skin care and boys.
