Willa & the Extraordinary Internship

CH. 22

"Hi, darling," Lila Grainger said chirpily into the phone. "You wouldn't believe what a good time Daddy's having."

"Is he?" Willa couldn't help but ask. Somehow the idea of her casual-Friday Dad immersing himself into an unfamiliar culture was mind-boggling. Even more boggling was the idea that he was having fun. "Really having fun or you want him to have fun?"

"I'll let him tell you himself. I don't want to repeat the same things when long distance is this expensive," explained her mother. "So tell me, what's new with you?"

Willa stifled her groan. Her mother was well-meaning, she truly was, but she had this idea that if she asked her daughter often enough, one day Willa would have a litany of things to tell her. She cupped her phone to her ear and snuggled deeper into bed, pulling the paisley comforter up to her chest.

After a kiss-less goodbye to Nate at his apartment, she'd come home, reheated some Chinese leftovers, and then gone to bed. No sooner than she'd picked up her e-reader for a nighttime novel her cell phone had begun its cacophonous chime. Knowing her mother was on the other end almost made Willa let the call go to voicemail, but guilt kicked in at the third ring and she'd answered.

"Nothing's new." She fiddled with a loose thread in the comforter, hoping it wouldn't come apart any further. "What about you guys?" Good job, Willa, she congratulated herself. Change the subject and get her talking about something else.

"We saw the Taj Mahal. It's too bad we don't have data on our phones otherwise I would have sent them to you," her mother said, disappointed. "And the ashram doesn't have wifi. I mean, can you believe it?"

"It is a third world country."

"Yes," her mother said with a heavy sigh. "Half the country is so rich and the other half is so poor..." she trailed off. "I feel so guilty shopping at the bazaars. Since the dollar is so strong right now, the exchange rate is wonderful. All I can think about is how cheap things are here in rupees. And then I see tragically skinny children, shirtless in the streets, not a parent in sight. I feel so guilty when there I am haggling with a vendor over what would amount to pennies back home."

Willa was quiet. Her mother, as a general rule, wasn't so conversational. Nor was she this frank about her emotions. Lila Grainger was far more likely to poke and pry her way into the lives of others rather than share anything remotely real about herself. Her mother wasn't a cold woman, but she was reserved even with her own family and had the tendency to show more introspection into Willa's life than her own.

She had been silent for too long, she realized belatedly. With the silence lingering between them, her mother was quick to fill the void with a pointed question. "How's work?"

"You don't normally ask me that," Willa half-smiled. "Or refer to my job as anything remotely like 'work'."

"Well, Willa, it's an internship, isn't it? An extended one, obviously. I just never pictured you doing it for this long," her mother said. "I thought after you had your MBA you would do something in your field, but you just...." She made a noise of frustration. "It's a step backward for you."

"I need to find myself. And what I want to do. What my passion is." It felt trite even to Willa's ears. Everyone wanted to find themselves these days. There were twenty-eight-year-old college students who still hadn't graduated because they'd changed their majors so many times. There were people who took gap years and went off to see the world. There were people like Maryam who found something they liked doing and then made it happen. Or people like Cyn who found their passion and didn't mind if she had to live paycheck to paycheck if it meant doing what she loved every day for the rest of her life.

"And you can't do that with a real job?" her mother pressed.

"No," Willa said shortly. "Can we have this fight when you get home?"

"It's not a fight." Her mother sounded surprised.

"Yes, it is."

Her mother took a deep breath. "I'm trying to understand, Willa, exactly what it is that is tying you to this university. To this woman. By your own admission you learn nothing and fill the role of a secretary, at best. Is that really what your education has prepared you for? A lifetime of being a lackey?" Lila's voice gentled. "Willa, is that really where you belong?"

"You sound like Cyn." The words weren't bitter. It was true, her mother had raised some of the same arguments that Cyn had made so many days before.

"That girl is a smart cookie," her mother said promptly.

The statement rankled, but Willa let it go. For some reason, be it cosmic injustice or divine intervention, Cyn was great around parents. She never let age be a divide, no matter who she was talking to. Where most people would stick to safe topics like school around their friends' parents, Cyn would take an interest in the parent's jobs, talk politics, and tell jokes like they were old buddies instead of grown-ups who needed to be impressed.

"....Mom?"

"Hmm?"

"I wrote a book. I also left my job." No need to tell her about the less than professional circumstances regarding my dismissal, Willa reasoned.

There was a moment of stunned silence. "What?" Her mother's voice was shaky.

"I want to be an author."

"You didn't go to school for writing, though."

Willa could tell her mother's hundred-miles-per-hour brain was struggling to compute this. To her credit, she also hadn't harped on why Willa had left Paige's employment.

"Believe it or not, the two aren't mutually exclusive," Willa said dryly.

"Okay."

Okay to what, Willa wanted to scream. She dropped this bombshell on her mother, and the most she had to say about it was "okay"? "That's it?" She couldn't hide the incredulousness from her voice.

"Okay, as in, if this is what you want to do, Daddy and I will help you get there." Her mother's voice was strong, capable, and full of vigor.

Now it was Willa's turn to be stunned into silence. "Really?"

"Of course," her mother said sharply, as though offended Willa could even ask. "All I ever wanted was for you to find your place. Your niche. In the past, whenever we talked about you finding a job....all you ever said was 'it's not my thing'. Oh, Willa, I just wanted to tear my hair out when I heard you say that. Maybe it's because I never had to struggle to find my 'thing', so this is just something I'll never understand, but you never once said what was your 'thing'. And now you have. It's that simple. Dad will think so too."

It rocked Willa to her core. She had thought her mother didn't understand her, that she was trying to force her into a mold into which Willa did not and could not fit into. All along, her mother had only been trying to help her. With a mother-hen need to make sure her daughter would turn out okay, she had thrown herself headlong into job hunting on Willa's behalf, faithfully sending Willa no less than twenty job posts a month. All with the hope that one of them might turn out to be Willa's 'thing'.

She felt a wave of affection for her mother, washing over her with a sudden clarity and peace that had been missing for most of their adult relationship. "I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, Willa." Her mother's voice was choked with emotion. They weren't a family that said it often. "I'll put Dad on."

She heard her mother calling her father's name and Willa sank down onto her pillow. Her ear was hot from the phone, which was generating a lot of heat and causing her mild discomfort. None of that mattered, though. Things were going to be all right. 

Author's Note: Time for a shameless self-promotion! If you haven't checked out my newest story, All This Time, go check it out. It's more romance-focused than what I usually do and is told from the POV of Charlotte Wright, a spunky, modern-day matchmaker who gets more than she bargained for when a familiar face from her past shows up wanting a pretty big favor - her hand in marriage. Her future hubby is everything Charlotte loathes in a man, begging the question...do opposites truly attract?