Joan Is Okay(48)

Dozens of times he called me “little chicken” and took me outside to play. When we came back an hour later, the fight was over.

I had taught my father the meaning of that phrase, fish out of water, but he was the one who had taught me. So, here you say “fish out of water.” But there, you would say “like a fish to water,” or rú yú dé shuǐ (如鱼得水)—like a stranded fish put back. He rested his case again. East and west will never get along, never see eye to eye.

Did he mean us? Was he the east and I the west, two fish arguing about the idioms to which they belonged?

Other questions I’d never asked my parents, never thought to find out: Did they fight less after they returned to China? My father soon found better work, and they bought their apartment that was on a high floor and had a closed-in balcony. That their standard of living improved so quickly made me wonder once why they didn’t move back sooner, say ten or fifteen years earlier, why stay so long in America, for what, for whom—proof that even smart people can ask dumb questions. And if they weren’t fighting as much, what were they doing in their less stressed-out spare time? I couldn’t imagine my parents with leisure, with fun (or knowing what to do with leisure if our most prized trait was to endure), but that’s my blind spot, not theirs. For I knew that they did have fun, through the occasional photo sent over, shots of just the two of them standing side by side next to a turtle pond, or group shots of them at yet another banquet table with unfamiliar faces. Who’s that? I would ask, and get, Old classmates, old friends. We all went out singing last week, or dancing, or turtle watching.



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ON PRESIDENTS’ DAY I texted Madeline to wish her a happy Presidents’ Day, since I knew she had the Monday off. She texted back that it was snowing, and whenever she looked outside her window, she felt like she was living in a snow globe, which was nice. She was home all day with her boyfriend and their plants, binge-watching West Wing. I said how appropriate. A common question we asked patients coming out of sedation, to test their cognition, was who the current president was. Sometimes they gave fictional names like Jed Bartlet, and she finally wanted to know who that was. Now she was deep into season four.

Reese had returned from his wellness retreat and was back on service, she wrote.

I wrote that I was jealous. How long was he on?

Two straight weeks, half of them nights.

The director was clearly punishing Reese, but I could feel my face heat up. It seemed unfair to put Reese on that schedule, while letting me rest idle and eat steak tartare. (A dish the chef had prepared the other night, that while delicious, I couldn’t get through without imagining the red mound as my brain and here was my silver spoon of relaxation, of privilege, scooping away my brain content, leaving me bare. My mother didn’t touch hers. She had gotten into one of her honest moods and was questioning the way Fang did things like why would you serve me cold and uncooked meat with a raw egg? A proper part of fine dining, he said. And, he thought, something new that they could all try. You don’t have to eat it, Ma, we can get you soup. But why did we need fine dining in the home? she asked. What was wrong with regular, everyday dining?)

Over text, Madeline made fun of Reese some more: supposedly he had a new girlfriend and had almost cleaned off his desk.

Then she started typing something. The ellipse bubble appeared, disappeared, appeared again. The text that finally came through wasn’t long but it was serious. She said she didn’t want to cause undue panic and nothing official had been announced, but the hospital had been preparing and directors were meeting behind closed doors. Cases in Europe were on the rise. Two weeks, she predicted, bed capacity would have to double, all specialties redeployed, and all off-service attendings called back.

I said I could already see it coming.

What? she wrote. The shitstorm?

At least China’s curve had started to bend.

China’s China, said Madeline. But what about Western countries, those with more liberties, diversity, and an entrenched sense of the self? Her family in Germany kept asking her if they should be worried. The first case had arrived in Bavaria, where her mother and sister still lived.

And what did you say? I asked.

I said you should be worried, she said. She advised her mother to stop leaving the house, which her mother refused to do, since this mother came from strong stock and parents who had lived through the war, so what was a small virus compared to the Nazi army marching through her hometown. Her other response to Madeline’s warning was to ask her daughter if living in America for so long had melted her core. Germans did not know fear, they could take anything on (in other words, Germans could eat pain too). So no, Madeline’s mother was not going to stop leaving the house every day for fresh bread, though she appreciated her Americanized daughter’s concern.

Stubborn mothers, difficult ones.

Sorry, I wrote, with a sad face.

What can you do? Madeline replied, with Blonde Shrugging Woman emoji.

Before she went back to West Wing, I told her what I’d learned about LaCroix and its hidden Bavarian past. That’s scandalous, she said. Turning lager into calorie-free sparkling water.



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ON FEBRUARY 20, HUBEI Province reported just 349 new cases, the epicenter’s lowest daily count since the start. An American couple was taking a six-month-long cruise around the world, when in Japan, the husband’s temperature spiked and he had to be taken off the ship and isolated at a local hospital. Now the wife was back in the U.S. while the husband was still in Japan. The husband told CNN that being apart and stranded gave him a strange feeling of loneliness—you’re all by yourself, and there’s nobody else here to take care of you (except for the Japanese nurses and doctors). He wished to be reunited with his wife and believed that the best care he could get was on his own home soil.