CHAPTER 37
It was like stepping into a time capsule, walking into her parents’ small house in Irvine. They’d managed to buy it when housing prices weren’t tremendous and the neighborhood wasn’t considered very good, but it had been in an excellent school district, and that ultimately was all that had mattered to her mother especially. Now, many of the houses around them had been rebuilt or remodeled, and the tone of the neighborhood was a lot more expensive.
That hadn’t changed her parents, though. Walking in, she found it still smelled like she was used to—a combination of her mother’s goji-berry-and-chamomile tea, her mushroom broth for the chicken soup she cooked with Costco rotisserie chickens. There was a plastic bag stuffed with other plastic bags hanging by the door. A faint medicinal odor from whatever ointment her mother used for her arthritis. Her father’s photos of his family were hanging alongside pictures of her mother’s, in plastic frames they’d gotten on sale at HomeGoods, the photos casual and even slightly blurry, not Instagram ideal but still perfect. There was a too-generous coating of dust on some plastic flowers that had been that way for as long as she could remember. There were boxes of bulk items in an industrial-stainless set of shelves in the living room, and the couch in front of the television sagged visibly, its orange-and-scarlet flower pattern faded from the sun.
It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford new items—Willa knew that. The TV itself was a slim large-screen that they’d proudly purchased (also at Costco, also on sale) so her mother could watch her beloved K-dramas. This was a habit her mother had previously made fun of. Now she watched and gossiped over the shows with her Vietnamese friends. Her father just shook his head at her, but it hadn’t stopped him from watching the World Cup on it and cheering his butt off.
“Did you eat?” her mother asked her immediately as she kicked her shoes off and changed into her house slippers.
“A little.” Actually, she hadn’t, but she knew that she would. Eating was like breathing at her parents’ house. Her mother had gone down to the airport to pick her up, but she’d taken over, driving them back to the house. Her father was sitting on the couch, smiling at her, his foot elevated on the coffee table and wrapped up. “How are you feeling, Dad?”
He make a pssht sound. “Just a sprain, can you believe? All that fuss.”
Her mother made a worried-hen noise at him, and he rolled his eyes, but his smile was still fond as he swatted at her butt. “I’m heating up soup,” her mother announced. “Do you know what you want for dinner? I’ll take stuff out of the freezer.”
Willa glanced at the clock. It was barely eleven. But at the same time, it was, again, just as she remembered. Food had been such a central part of her existence. Even when they were broke, her mother insisted that they eat as well as possible. They had a garden—her father, thankfully, had a green thumb, and her mother wasn’t bad herself. Her mother shopped at three different markets and worked the circulars, making a dollar stretch until it screamed. Willa hadn’t even realized how tight they’d been financially until she was an adult and her mother had cautioned her about choosing such an irresponsible career.
Which made this visit all the harder.
“I can make potato-and-cheese pierogi,” Willa volunteered, and her father’s eyes lit up, but her mother made a dismissive noise.
“We have plenty of food, no need to go through all that trouble!” Seeing the disappointment in her husband’s face, her mother then added, “I’ll get out the steaks instead,” which cheered him back up.
After all these years, her parents still loved each other. It was tangible. Visible. She envied it, in a lot of ways. It had always been what she’d wanted. And for a brief time, she’d had it, with Steven. It hadn’t been perfect, and it had been hard, but at times, it had been incandescently beautiful.
She had doubted she’d get another chance at it. Hadn’t anticipated it. Until Hudson.
“How long are you staying?” her mother called out from the kitchen, the sound of her bustling around clear.
“Just for the week,” Willa responded, following her and leaning against the archway where she could watch her mother work. This, too, was exactly the same. Her mother pulled out a large pot from the dishwasher, which Willa knew had not been used to wash the dishes in decades. It was essentially a really expensive cabinet at this point.
“I see.” Her mother put the soup broth on the stovetop to heat. Judging by the look and scent, it was some variation on súp nui gà, a very simple Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. It was comfort food, she knew. As if her mother seemed to instinctively know that her daughter was going to need comforting, even if she’d only booked the trip to check in on her injured father.
When the soup was ready, they took bowls out to the living room. Her father slurped it, sighing happily, and Willa tucked in. Her mother, on the other hand, put her bowl on the plastic place mat on the coffee table and fixed Willa with a sharp stare.
“So,” she coaxed. “How did the cookbook you were telling us about go?”
How did she know? She was like Alexa: she seemed to hear every damned thing, and knew even more.
“There were some issues.”
“Did you get paid?”
Willa sighed. “Some.”
“Some?” Her mother’s tone was incensed. “Why? What happened?”
“There was a problem with the author. It doesn’t matter,” Willa said, cutting off the line of inquiry. She had no idea how she was going to explain influencer culture and NDAs to her mother, who, despite being a very intelligent woman, cultivated a very deliberate aversion to most things on the internet.
Her mother took this in. Her father, as usual, was quiet but listening intently. “What are you going to do now, then?”
Willa took a deep breath. “I’m still thinking through my plans.”
Her mother made a little noise at this, and even though it wasn’t fully verbalized, Willa had heard it enough to know what it meant: I am dubious, but I am not going to say that out loud .
Which didn’t surprise her, since essentially, ever since Steven’s death, she’d felt like the largest “I told you so” in history had been brewing between her and her parents, like a ticking time bomb.
“What kind of plans?” her mother asked instead.
This was the tricky part. “I have some ideas,” she said, but knew immediately that wasn’t going to be enough when her mother leaned forward. “I’m going to stop over in the Bay Area after this, before I go back to the island.”
Her mother looked surprised. “Oh? Does someone there have a job, maybe? It’s expensive to live there, though.”
Her father made a grunt of agreement.
“Not a job exactly,” she said slowly.
She’d come up with the plan, or the vague sketch of a plan, on the plane. Ever since she’d talked with Hudson and emphasized that he had the support he needed to pursue his dream, she’d had a smack of clarity.
She’d always had the dream.
What she’d ignored was the support .
“I’m going to talk with Nat and some of my old friends from the industry,” she said. “They’ve got a big network of contacts ... I’m sure that some of them will extend to the Seattle area. And there are lots of things I can do online that maybe they can help with.”
Her mother’s eyes grew wider as Willa spoke. Then she looked at her father with something like panic. “You aren’t selling the house?” she finally blurted out.
Willa sighed. “Not if I can help it.”
Her father now harrumphed loudly. “This,” he said, “is a terrible idea.”
She winced. If her nearly silent father decided to weigh in ... well, that time bomb was going off now, from the looks of it. “Dad ...”
“No!” He glared at her. “I was silent when you married that man, even though you know it was a bad idea. You were a baby, and he was ten years older, and he dazzled you and dragged you along into debt and exhaustion. I got to watch you turn yourself inside out for whatever he wanted. I don’t even think you liked cooking—”
“Now, you know that’s not true,” she shot back. “I wanted to be a cook, but you both said I had to get a college degree! In something real !”
Her mother sighed. “Maybe we should have let you go to culinary school,” she said. “You could have taught ...”
“No,” her father argued. “We should have insisted she get the degree in chemistry. Then, at least, she could have a real job. With regular paychecks.”
As they squabbled, Willa fought the desire to tug her hair. How could two people in their seventies reduce someone in her forties to someone in her teens?
“I know,” Willa finally broke in. “I know . I know you don’t approve of what I chose or how I lived my life. I know you feel like I’m a failure. And I’m sorry, but ... I’m also not sorry. Because as draining as it was, I will never regret marrying Steven.” She felt tears stinging her eyes, but she kept moving. “Every moment, even the hard ones, was worth it, because I really, really loved him. Every crazy idea, every over-the-top dream, everything. I loved him, and I loved who I became when I was with him, and on some level, I’m going to miss him every day of my life.”
It was like opening a floodgate, and the tears came pouring out, but she kept going.
“He taught me how to dream, not just suffer,” she said. “But I learned something recently. It’s never just your dream. Or rather ... you can have a dream, but you can’t get it all alone. Everybody needs help sometimes. You just have to be brave enough to ask.”
Her father looked angry. Her mother looked troubled but was surprisingly quiet. “So you’ll beg people for help? Let them know what has happened and expect other people to make things all right? We raised you better than that.”
“It’s not like that,” she said, and didn’t cower at her father’s stubborn glare. “Not for me, anyway. I know that’s how you were raised, and Mom too. But I feel like it’s different. It’s not showing weakness or begging for help. It’s loving people and letting people love you.”
“They aren’t family,” he snapped.
“No, they aren’t,” she said. “But Harold put Great-Aunt Caroline in a rest home and then rented out her house and, I’m pretty sure, pocketed the profits. That’s why she left it to me.”
His mouth shut abruptly, and he went pale. He let out a soft curse in Polish.
“I’m not saying that family can’t be trusted,” she finished, giving his arm a comforting squeeze. “I’m just saying, there are different kinds of family, and if people love each other, I think that’s one kind. I’m still leaning on family. Just ... different family.”
“I am calling that son of a bitch ...,” he growled.
“Honey,” her mother said, and Willa looked at her. “Do ... do you really think we think you’re a failure?”
Willa wiped at her tears. “Well. You could hardly call me a success.”
“I never cared about that,” her mother said, getting up and sitting by her on the couch, putting her arm around her shoulder. “Never.”
She grinned, giving a watery laugh. “Sure you didn’t. Immigrant Asian mom,” she teased.
But her mother didn’t go along with it, even though it had been a running joke for years. “I just hated seeing you kill yourself for his dream,” she said. “I hated seeing my only daughter so exhausted, working so hard, and we couldn’t do anything to stop you. I didn’t want this life for you.”
Willa gave her a hug, tucking her mother’s head against her shoulder. She’d misunderstood, so hard. The words were a comfort.
“I’m doing what I can to turn that around,” Willa said, with as much confidence as she could.
“How?”
Basically, she was going to take a leap of faith. Only this time, she was doing it on her own—for her own dreams.