Joan Is Okay(36)

Is this your half can of soda in the fridge? says Jerry, holding up the can in question.

No, no, says Kramer. It’s yours. My half is gone.

Daytime television transitioned into prime-time movies. Action movies, superhero movies, horror, romantic comedies, and the classics. Or what commercials promised to be a classic.

An empty New York City street, under the light fog of dawn, gray and blue buildings rising up all around, monolith-like, and down this empty street, down Fifth Avenue, comes an old, boxy yellow cab. Out steps a tall and slim woman, black dress, gloves, and sunglasses, a long white scarf with fringe, and reams of pearls draped across her neckline and back. Idyllic music plays, a lush violin, many violins, an oboe, a choir, as this stunning pearled-up woman peruses those curtained window displays of that famed jewelry store, Tiffany’s, while eating a croissant. Inside the store hang large chandeliers, heavy with crystals, draped in the same way as the pearls around her neck, because the woman herself is a chandelier, a fixture and an object.

Holly Golightly is a runaway orphan turned call girl, and being at Tiffany’s calms her down. She talks about the quietness and the proud look of the place, how nothing bad could ever happen to you in there. She says, If I could find a real-life place that makes me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.

Proud, quiet (on a slow day), how nothing bad could ever happen to you there (under the right care). Which was I bereaved of? The temporary loss of the hospital or the permanent loss of my father?

Here was a fatherless girl in the big city, in an almost empty apartment with a nameless cat.

Here was a fatherless girl in the big city, in an almost empty apartment with a robot vacuum.

A fact demonstrated by so many movies and shows—and this Oscar-nominated classic was no exception—was that you could not live in Manhattan without having at least one crazy neighbor.

Holly has a crazy neighbor who is made up to be Japanese, but the actor himself is not Japanese, and this incongruence gave me pause, though I wasn’t exactly sure why, except that by the end, I didn’t like what I was watching. I didn’t like the neighbor or my confusion around him. Mr. Yunioshi has exaggerated facial expressions, a grotesque way of baring all his teeth, spitting while he speaks, and mispronouncing every other word. Was this how people saw my father? And how people saw me? Because someone like me could never be Holly, of course. Only in my mind could I be her, but to the rest of the world, I was a Mr. Yunioshi or a Mr. Yunioshi’s daughter.

Suppose Mr. Yunioshi’s daughter did exist and had been fine on her own, living alone and unperturbed, until one day a Kramer moved in across the hall. Would that make good television? Would anyone want to watch?

At first, my version of Kramer still knocked, before transitioning full time to the spare key, which was now fastened to his key ring with a white label that said joan. I would hear my lock barrel turn and then Mark would be in my living room.

He only brought food over and never took it. Homemade pies both sweet and savory, breakfast muffins, loaves of sourdough bread. Whatever he brought that we couldn’t finish, he would expertly wrap in cellophane and stick in the fridge for me to eat later.

He had more furniture pieces for me, old stuff that he didn’t need anymore, or new stuff he had bought on a whim but didn’t need. He blamed online shopping for being too easy. Not only were there so many deals, sales, cash back promotions, but with just a few clicks of your mouse, a rug could appear for you in a matter of days.

He did have a rug for me, as well as an ottoman, a marble side table for Suede Chair, a bin of kitchen utensils, a large woodblock chopping board, and an assortment of fridge magnets.

My fridge now had five magnets, one of which was a tap-dancing baguette that had the word pain on it in all caps and red type font. When I pointed to the dancing baguette magnet and said, Pain, he frowned. It’s pronounced paan, he said, his mouth in the shape of a flat oval. It’s French for “bread.”

While making room for my new lapis-glazed stoneware dinner plates that he’d bought in bulk by accident during a flash sale, he looked through my many cabinets of flavored sparkling water, from tangerine to pamplemousse. He picked up one can and skimmed the nutritional label on the back.

How is that possible, he asked, for flavored water to have zero calories? Shouldn’t the flavor have some calories? How could a flavor additive not?

I said the flavor was just an essence and essences didn’t have calories.

But if I’m able to taste it, then shouldn’t it have some calories?

Your body can’t digest essence, and whatever isn’t digested, technically, has no calories. Steel, for instance—say you ate an entire steel bar, your mouth would be able to taste the steel and your brain would say not a good idea, but since your body doesn’t metabolize steel, no calories there.

Is that really how it works? he asked.

I confirmed again.

That’s not how it really works, he decided.

More books. To add to the stalagmite by Suede Chair and new mini stalagmites along the wall. These were books that he’d recently finished and thought I would like.

Ever read him? Mark asked, showing me a thick volume of essays by a world-renowned brain surgeon. Not bad, he said of the book. Verbose in lots of places, the middle is a slog, and the ending wasn’t quite earned, but otherwise brilliant. Taught me a little more about your kind.