Ms. Ingall wanted me to meet her here. At the faculty lounge. There’s a restaurant for afternoon tea, whatever that is, with white chairs and white wainscoting and the sun coming in from three sides. Everywhere there are vines, clinging to white trellises through the window, trying to get in. Before the cold. Before the winter.
Ms. Ingall is squinting in the bright, sunny room. I don’t get the feeling she’s used to this much sunlight.
“Thanks for inviting me here, Ms. Ingall.”
“Well, you’re very welcome. Do you like tea, Willa?”
“Um . . . sure.”
“You don’t drink tea, do you?”
“Not really.”
“They actually do make a respectable iced latte here, if that’s more to your liking.”
The waiter comes, and before I know it there are cucumber sandwiches all over the place. Who would have ever thought to put a cucumber in a sandwich? It’s a revelation.
“Tell me, Willa. Do you have friends back home? Back in Iowa?”
“Yeah. I mean, I did.”
“And do you miss them?”
“I try not to think about it, honestly. It’ll just make me sad.”
“I see.”
The waiter brushes past.
“Did you think about what we spoke about, Willa?”
“Um. Sort of.”
“Any thoughts . . . ?”
“Well, my mom sort of . . . she sort of has, like, this plan for me. She kind of just wants to just take the reins, you know? Leave it to her kind of thing.”
“Your mother. The economist.”
I nod. “Well, you know, as you can imagine, she’s kinda got it all figured out.”
Ms. Ingall looks at me. The waiter pours her tea into a little teacup with pink roses on the handle.
“And you, Willa?”
“Yes?”
“Do you have it all figured out?”
The teacups are so dainty here, you almost feel like you could break them just by looking at them. And Ms. Ingall. She’s dainty, too. But I don’t get the feeling you could ever break her.
“I don’t really have anything figured out, Ms. Ingall, to be honest with you.”
“That’s okay, Willa. That’s part of the adventure.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you have to find your way. But . . . it’s for you to find, Willa. No one else can find it for you.”
The waiter comes by with a three-tiered platter; each tier has minicakes, some pink, some cream, some yellow. There are even some chocolate cream puffs, which I will rendezvous with soon.
“But why does anyone have to find anything? I mean, why can’t you just . . . give up?”
I say it before I know I’m saying it.
Ms. Ingall stops for a minute. Puts her tea down.
“Is that what you feel like, Willa? Do you feel like giving up?”
And I don’t know what’s happening to my face. Suddenly it’s lit up, behind my skin, blazing.
“Sometimes.”
Saying this. Somehow, saying this makes it all come barreling down the track. And my eyes are trying to cry. Trying so hard to give in. But I’m not letting them. I am not going to cry over cucumber sandwiches.
Ms. Ingall weighs the situation. The waiter comes over, but she waves him off. Not now. Not now, when my student is having a meltdown.
“Is there a lot of pressure on you, Willa? To be . . . perfect?”
It sounds like such a dumb thing. It sounds like such a dumb, easy thing.
“Kind of.”
I’m starting to put the tears back now.
“Willa, you don’t have to be perfect. Do you believe me? You don’t. You just have to be Willa.”
And I could gobble up this whole tearoom right now, the pink minicakes and the yellow minicakes and the chocolate cream puffs. I could gobble up this room and these trellises and Ms. Ingall, too. Just for having given me, once, just once . . . a reprieve. A relief from myself. A vacation. A respite from “should.”