Joan Is Okay(24)

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SMELLS OF CINNAMON, NUTMEG, and vanilla permeated the ninth floor, and a one-foot-diameter wreath had been placed on 9B’s door and mine. Did I do that? I asked myself when I first saw the green ring with red bows and berries, because sometimes I forgot these things, what I did or didn’t do outside of the hospital, like the real world had become a dream. No, the wreath finding and putting had to have been Mark.

Through the double set of windows, Enormous Man was visible one day and gone the next. A two-foot-tall evergreen wrapped in tinsel had been put up on the sill, and this new potted plant blocked a third of the view.

I heard tenants outside all the time now. The door of apartment 9B opened and closed, echoey corridor talk between my neighbor and someone else. Without even looking out the peephole, I knew that people were entering and exiting 9B with books or tools or pies.

The doorman continued to ask whether or not I was in love with Mr. Mark. Had I been showered with gifts yet? he asked, for that was crucial to finding love. A constant stream of them. Women like stuff.

When I said I had less stuff than Mark, the doorman didn’t seem to believe me, but then as if on cue, as if he and Mark had conspired together, been discussing me behind my back, Mark found me later that day to ask if I needed a reading chair. He’d bought a new leather one for himself, but his previous non-leather one was still in fine shape, and before he put it up for sale, he thought that he would check.

Had the doorman put him up to this?

Who?

The doorman. Our doorman. The one obsessed with rom-coms and matchmaking, who won’t push the elevator buttons for you or let you push them yourself unless you’re standing dead center in the suspended metal box with good posture.

Mark knew nothing about this; no one escorted him to the elevators or commented on his posture.

Maybe he likes you, said Mark.

He’s married, I said.

Mark’s eyes did a big and exaggerated spin. No, not like that. He likes you as a tenant. A very New York thing to have happened. Most doormen have favorites, ones they try to look out for and help.

How to become un-favorited was my thought.

It’s a good thing, he said, and went back to his apartment to bring out the chair.

The moment I saw it, I loved it. A vibrant, showstopping chartreuse suede, in a slightly retro design. With a swipe of my hand, the suede turned from a light to a darker chartreuse; another swipe and it turned from dark back to light. I offered to pay, but Mark waved off even the thought. He pushed the chair into 9A and my open living room, which just had an old futon I’d bought years ago and in one corner my robot vacuum, in another the books that he had given me that had gone unread. I moved the old futon to the back and put Suede Chair in the room’s center.

Did you get robbed? he asked, looking around, and I said not that I knew of.

But where’s your table, where do you eat?

I had a fold-out chair and table in the closet, a desk in the bedroom where sometimes I ate. From the closet, I brought out the metal chair and unfolded it.

Please, I said.

He said it was the most uncomfortable thing he’d ever sat in.

But then there we were, me in Suede Chair, receiving my first guest since I’d moved in. Given the neighborhood’s safety index and that my one bed was too small, Fang and Tami never visited. I also wasn’t close to any famous museums, for educational purposes, for their boys.

I told Mark I didn’t know how guest visits were supposed to go. Did he ask me questions or did I? He laughed. I laughed. Then he added that for all his time in the city, he had never met anyone like me.

You haven’t met enough people, I replied. There were lots of people like me, tucked away in schools and office buildings. People who had been standardized, a standard provider who provides standardized care.

No, you’re different, he said.

A word I hated hearing about myself and must have given that away through my immediate frown.

Different is good, he said, shifting in his chair that was actually too small for him and creaking a lot from new weight. Some people try their whole lives to be different and never achieve it in any significant way. Some people make it look effortless.

I frowned some more though Mark didn’t seem to notice and continued to inspect my empty room aloud. His words started to echo so I stopped paying attention to them.

Who really wanted to be different? I wondered. And to be treated differently for things about them that couldn’t be changed. Most people who were different just wanted to be the same.



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THE FIRST COUNSELOR DEDUCED that I had trouble seeing boundaries. My arm-crossing father, who came to initial meetings, replied that boundaries were a Western trait, a luxury, an act of selfishness. No such boundary existed within our family as the self does not exist, and if the self does not exist, then there can be nothing to invade. My father also added that I seemed fine and these meetings were stupid.

We can see how you would think so, the counselor said, but we worry about your daughter. An excellent student but has trouble connecting with peers, is rigid, inflexible, things have to be done a certain way according to Joan, according to her peers. She should be tested for…, and each counselor gave a list.

She’s shy, said my father.

But sometimes she has outbursts.