Joan Is Okay(14)

Only around my family did I catastrophize. I never did it at work. I never saw a pimple and thought death in two and a half days. Even though a hospital was where something like that could be true.

From Greenwich station, I called a cab.

My brother’s ten-acre compound was made up of a main house, a guesthouse, and a four-car garage. The main house was just over six thousand square feet. It had six beds, six baths, an imperial staircase, vaulted ceilings, an indoor/outdoor pool with a sauna. The guesthouse had two bedrooms, two baths, and a garden-facing kitchen. The grounds had perennial gardens, a tennis court, a basketball court, an antique stone wall, a bridge that went over an artificial pond filled occasionally with koi, winding footpaths, and a verdant lawn for limitless summer fun. The nearest neighbor was across the street but also two acres away, from my brother’s very long driveway and up the neighbor’s.

The last time I’d visited was at the start of last summer, three months before our father passed away. After we test-drove the Tesla, Fang and I came back to the compound and Tami joined us out in the yard, under a wood cabana, by their perennial gardens. I could hear my nephews screaming from somewhere on the property but I couldn’t see them. Their screams of fun were indistinguishable from those of pain and reminded me of emergency rooms. I inspected my fingernails and then the lawn, a continuous carpet of green. I asked Fang how often they cut the grass and it was more often than my nails.

But we don’t have to cut anything ourselves, Tami said from behind a pair of sunglasses. We have people to do that.

Now the lawn was a little less green and the trees had changed colors.

The cabdriver looked up at the gables of the main house as he drove. He said, You live here, miss?

I said, Oh no, I’m just on staff.

Then I was at the front door knocking and ringing the bell for what would become a full fifteen minutes until their housekeeper let me in. The housekeeper was different from the property manager, who was different from the groundskeeper. In truth, I never knew exactly how many staff members at any given time were on the premises.

Where is she? I asked, and the housekeeper offered first to take my coat. I said I could hold it; I wasn’t staying for very long. Then she led me to a woman I hardly recognized, sitting in a corner of one of their foyer rooms that functioned as an antechamber for those who’d just arrived. My mother was thinner. Her cheeks had hollowed in and there were so many lines around her face that hadn’t been there before. I asked if she’d fully unpacked, and of course she had; the moment she arrived, the housekeeper had taken her three suitcases, one by one, upstairs. Each garment was pressed and hung up. The thermostat in my mother’s bedroom set to the cool 68°F temperature that she liked.

The house is too big, my mother said from the foyer. I didn’t know where to start.

I suggested the kitchen, and we made our way there, where I put on a kettle of water. Hot water was a Chinese staple. Even I drank mugs of it year-round out of habit and now comfort. My parents could never get used to the amount of cold water everyone drank in America or understand why even historically hot beverages, like coffee and tea, had to be iced. For our mother’s arrival, my brother had bought several electric kettles and placed them around the house. There was one in her bedroom, so at night she wouldn’t need to come downstairs in the dark. Considerate, but I was also reminded of a former patient who had checked himself in for shortness of breath. He was my father’s age, but the similarities stopped there. White and wide. Even with an oxygen mask on, he had no problem telling the intern about the ongoing renovations of his new East Hampton home. Going well, he said unironically. My wife wants a treadmill in every room, so she doesn’t have to exercise in one place.

I asked if my mother had noticed all the water kettles. How through this, Fang was at least trying to make her feel more at home.

At home I have only one kettle, she said. And it’s not fancy like these, it’s very plain and old. Your baba boiled all of our water.

We sat side by side on the barstools, along the massive kitchen island. My mother held the hot water mug to her face and blew steam off its surface like smoke.

I asked if she could do me a favor.

She took a slow sip.

Could she not tell the others about my coming here today?

She took a slower sip.

I’m serious, I said. Because she and Fang were the casebook mother-son pair. They spoke to each other about all and rarely fought.

Who am I going to tell? she said. Your business is your own. She wasn’t going to get involved.

When the hot water was finished, an hour had passed and it was time for me to leave. I got into another cab back to the station, and this cabdriver asked the same thing: You live back there, miss?

I said my mother did for now.

So, where to? he said, as we went down the driveway and onto the road.

I didn’t answer him.

Spa? Country club? Where we going, miss?

I didn’t answer him.

He pulled over to the shoulder after a red light and stopped the cab.

She doing all right? Your mother?

I said I didn’t know yet, it was too early to tell.

Just her in that big house then?

No, I said. My brother lives there too, my sister-in-law, three boys under ten, a rotating staff.

But my father, I said, and after those words, I had to look out the window.

I can understand that, the cabdriver said, and turned his blinkers on. Just let me know when you’re ready.