Joan Is Okay(42)

Almost too ironic that I was fleeing one crowd of people for another, trading a house party in for a bash. How did I get myself into this situation? Which tests of being an effective hermit had I failed?

I said yeah, well. I asked if Tami could lend me some clothes.

Everything all right? he asked.

Totally fine, I said.

At pickup, he was waiting for me in their new Land Rover. After I got in, he pointed out the car’s leather-lined interior, the broad clamshell hood, the exterior color of Yulong white. This was their newest plug-in hybrid model. On a full battery, it could do about seventy-five miles of mixed city driving.

Mixed city driving is key, I said.

He drove us through the town center and said had it been earlier and light out, he could have at least shown me around. He didn’t understand why I executed my personal plans without foresight or consideration for others. What if he hadn’t picked up the phone, hadn’t heard it? Then I would’ve had to find a way to their house on my own at night. Greenwich was safe, but no place is that safe after dark.

From downtown we drove past the town’s hospital that was barely visible now and that Fang pointed out each time we passed.

You could work there, you know, he said as he had before. Doctors here demand some of the highest hourly rates in the state, thus the country. Great work-life balance.

I nodded. But the squat brick building eerily aglow on my left had always seemed too pristine to be a hospital. There was no sense of danger or chaos. No contradictory signs like this way to emergency, but this way to ambulatory care. Left for billing, right for accounts payable. Down for lower floors, up for basement.

As Fang drove up their driveway and pulled into their garage, he asked if I was in some kind of trouble.

No trouble, I said.

From the garage we started walking along a scenic, pebbled footpath toward the main house, which had been extensively decorated for the new year with long, embroidered banners, flanking a newly painted red door, and groups of colorful lanterns evenly spaced around the porch. The footpath veered past the main house and into the back lawn, where the guesthouse stood, decorated more modestly with one lantern. I’d been telling Fang about my work situation, that I’d accumulated so many vacation days it was encouraged I take them all at once, which was very nice of the hospital wasn’t it, very thoughtful and kind. Fang listened but I couldn’t get a read on him. I couldn’t tell if he suspected that I’d been fired and had nowhere else to go. I did have nowhere else to go, but theoretically, I still had a job.

On the guesthouse porch, Fang said that I could stay here for now and we would figure the rest out tomorrow. It’s after ten, he said. Best not to wake up everyone else.

Been a while, hasn’t it? I said fakely. How was the trip and beautiful Mountain Time Colorado?

Fang handed me a set of keys, along with a tote bag of Tami’s clothes. His face had pinched, and under the small porch light, I could only see lines and shadows. He told me to cut the act. He knew that I’d been coming to see our mother in secret while they weren’t home.

She told you, didn’t she?

Course not. But it wasn’t terribly hard to figure out or anyway that unpredictable. Ma can keep a secret, but you’ve never been a good liar.

I opened my mouth to say something but closed it again when I realized that it was a lost cause.

Everyone processes grief differently, and what Ma says, different people need different kinds of support.

But Fang could draw a direct line from my having spent only two days in China not grieving to my situation now. I was alone, thus lonely. I had no partner or children to help me get through. Yet the thought of family scared me, which was why I avoided it. I had to check those feelings from now on, he said, and get over them. A family is safe harbor, so it was crucial to establish yourself within this harbor, and to establish that harbor within a place.

Did we wish to be seen as immigrants forever, he asked, or did we want to become settlers of a place? Settlers created settlements and the ten-mile-radius target in Greenwich was meant to be that.

My turn to say that it was late and to unlock the guesthouse door and go inside.

You’ve always been like this, he said, everything on your own terms, no regard for the big picture.



* * *



—

I HAD TROUBLE SLEEPING that night. Outside was too quiet, the guesthouse even more so, and Tami’s nightgown was too long for me at the bottom, in the sleeves, was too perfumed around the neck.

Sleep, I said, and my brain said no.

A direct line? I could draw one from Fang having felt denied everything to denying himself nothing. From him having been left behind by our parents to his belief system now. Control, being close enough to control, following a plan.

His big-picture plan, long established, was that progress came in three waves. The first wave was our parents, who took any job available and occupied the lowest social rung. In their discontent, they invested in their children, us, and we would go on to rebuild the wealth that had been lost. The third wave, my brother’s children, would be the first to benefit from a safety net created by wave two. Finally, they could take risks, pursue passions, and, as my brother believed, make us culturally ascendant. It was then three waves until fiscal and social success, and my big-picture job was to provide a third, which is the part that I had trouble with. If I never married or had children, it was heavily implied that all this planning was for naught.