Page 70 of The Getaway List
“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you out on this sooner,” says my mom, shifting her head to look at me. “I’m going to try to be better about it. But it’s a two-way street, Riley. You have to talk to me, too. I had no idea you were so upset about your schedule.”
It takes a moment to answer her, only because for all I’ve resented the past few years, I’ve never actually imagined a conversation about it. It didn’t seem like one we’d ever have.
“It wasn’t just being upset. It was that—I hated having everything decided for me. I hated not having any time to do what I wanted, like write or explore or even just—be with my friends.” Now that I’ve said it the rest spills out of me, almost faster than I can keep up. “It felt like you were rejecting all those parts of me, and it felt even worse when I realized you were using it to keep me from Tom, too. Like you didn’t trust me to stay out of trouble or even pick my own friends. But I didn’t say anything because I thought you knew how I felt and just—didn’t care.”
That last part is only half true. The other truth is that I didn’t want to rock the boat. Becoming friends with Tom as a kid gave me a new perspective on single parenthood, because he and Vanessa were always so comfortable. I don’t think I appreciated just how hard my mom had to work to give me the same things Vanessa gave Tom until then, and the last thing I wanted to do was make it harder on her.
But I can’t say that. I think she must already know, because there are plenty of things she’s done in turn to hide it from me, to make it so I’d never have to worry. So much of this, I’m starting to realize, is less that we don’t understand each other, and more that we understand each other too well.
“I’m your mom. I always care,” she says. “But we’ve both been busy these past few years and I just—I’m sorry if it seemed like I was rejecting you, and if you felt like you had to do any of that to make me happy. All I wanted was for you to be happy. But I’ve always thought of that more in the long term, and for me that meant keeping you out of trouble, and I thought that meant keeping you from Tom. All that structure seemed like the way to do it. Something I didn’t have with my own parents, to the point where it seemed a lot of the time like they didn’t even care. It upset me so much that I felt like I had to kick up a big fuss and go to make a point.”
My throat tightens in that moment because it reminds me so painfully of Tom that I feel the ache for him all over again, only deeper this time now that I’m feeling it for my mom, too.
“I never knew that,” I say.
“I didn’t tell you, and I wish I had. Especially now that I know your aunts sure gave you a mouthful,” she says, rolling her eyes.
I choose my next words carefully. “I think it might have helped me understand where you were coming from on this if I knew. I wasn’t—I’ve always known how much you care,” I tell her. It feels important that she knows that.
Sure enough, she ducks her head for a brief moment, like maybe that really had been one of her fears. Like maybe it was the one that was driving all the overscheduling and helicopter parenting of the past few years. It starts to shift the narrative in my head, enough for me to understand how deep this conversation needs to go before we can come out to the other side of it.
“I’ve always known I can count on you. But the way you were involved—too involved—it felt like you didn’t trust me,” I tell her.
“Sometimes I didn’t,” she admits. “I’ve always trusted your intentions. But your judgment—well. I didn’t tell you what I did at your age because I worried it might just give you incentive to get into more trouble than you already had.”
She’s said variations of this before, and they’re a snag that can’t let go of me. I never needed ideas. I had plenty of my own, and they came from an entirely different place than she thinks they did.
It feels scary to challenge her on that, even in this moment when we’ve been more receptive than we’ve ever been. It’s less that I’m worried she’ll be upset, but more that it feels strange to point out the differences between us, the disconnect.
“I’ve never wanted to get into trouble, though. I’ve just wanted to explore.” I think of what Tom said to me on the roof the other night, about having so much potential because I’m curious. It didn’t know how to settle in me then, but I’m starting to see the truth in it now. “All those things we snuck off and did as kids—it was just because we wanted to learn things, wanted to see what we were capable of. We’ve been doing a lot of that this summer, too.”
“I know,” says my mom. Not reluctantly, but confidently, the same way she did last night. As if she knows a whole lot more about the summer than the bare details we discussed over text.
I watch her carefully. “You do know,” I say, the how? very much implied.
My mom nods. “You were right about Tom. He really is looking out for you. When you and I weren’t texting as much, he’d fill me in on what you two were getting up to. He said he didn’t want me to worry.”
I go very still, only because this is a lot to digest at once. The idea that Tom was keeping yet another secret from me, the way he did with the dispatch service.
“I hope you’re not mad at him,” says my mom quickly. “I get the sense that he was worried about us because of his own relationship with Vanessa.”
I’m not angry. If anything I’m a little bit sad. Understanding that Tom’s way of keeping secrets is just another quiet way he’s trying to protect the people around him, whether it’s the best way to go about it or not. He didn’t want my relationship with my mom to go the way of his, and this was the only way he could think of to intervene.
It’s a very Tom thing to do. Another way of isolating himself, of taking on other people’s problems. It makes me worry even more now that he’s about to be in the middle of nowhere, more isolated than he’s ever been.
So I shake my head. “I’m not. But yeah, things with Vanessa—well, for lack of a better way to say it, have gone to shit.”
“I gathered that.” My mom’s voice is tight. “Vanessa and I were briefly in touch, too. I had her old email and got her attention with a less-than-polite subject line about you two being up here unchaperoned and her just being okay with it. I always hated how the two of you could slip right out from under her nose when you were kids.”
I bite down the urge to smile, because Tom and I counted on that for all our adventures. But the urge fades just as fast knowing that the same way we used to slip out from under her, she let Tom slip out completely.
“Then as the summer went on and I was in touch with you and Tom separately, I kept emailing less out of worry about what the two of you were up to and more worry for what was going on between Tom and Vanessa,” says my mom.
“Did you know she was sending him things through the dispatch?” I ask.
My mom tilts her head. “What dispatch?”
“There’s this app where people can anonymously send gifts,” I explain. “They deliver all over the city. And for some reason Tom kept getting them every time we were going on one of our Getaway—our, uh. The activities we were doing with our friends.”
