Joan Is Okay(50)

I held my hands out and asked what she wanted me to do.

Nothing, she said. You don’t need to do anything since you’re already the perfect daughter.

I told her to stop calling me that.

Then stop treating me like a child.

When she looked away again, I wondered if this was what she was thinking but didn’t know how to express: In China, I might be a widow, but at least I’m not a child. Just because I’ve lost my husband doesn’t mean I’ve lost my mind, and what I need help with isn’t money or food, but something else entirely.

I said I would let her drive down the driveway and back up, but only if I sat in the passenger seat, with my hand on the emergency brake.

What about Nanny?

She can sit in the back.

My mother chose Fang’s new Land Rover, clamshell white with red leather interiors and automatic closing doors. The driveway took a full minute to get down at ten miles an hour, with the sunroof lifted for the breeze. It was 34°F out, said the dashboard, and my mother had tied a scarf around her neck and turned on the radio to the first channel with music. Inevitably, I thought of the green Mustang, of Wendy’s Frostys and of summer. Our nomadic family of four had spent only six summers together before Fang was off to college. There could never have been a childhood home, but after I went to college, there was no physical home at all.

Could one of your worries be that your family may have failed? a counselor once asked me.

Failed at what?

At being together, at placing a higher value on success than on keeping your unit together.

An odd question, I thought then, but an insular and shortsighted one, I think now. Some bonds are so forged in fire, some experiences are so permeated with feeling, that it is impossible to not see them with love.

At the end of the driveway, we checked the mailbox. Then my mother did a perfect U-turn and drove us back to the main house.



* * *



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SINCE LEAVING THE CITY, I hadn’t texted my cohost/neighbor about anything until he finally texted me.

Was I okay?

I am, I wrote. Was my apartment okay? The dining table taken out, all the extra chairs, everyone gone, the door locked and secure?

It is, he replied. And are the two of us okay? he asked. As neighbors and hopefully still friends, he hadn’t meant to overstep.

But you did, I said.

Not his intention, and he was sorry.

I said I appreciated the apology.

Then he asked why I hadn’t told him earlier that he was coming over too much and becoming a bother.

I would’ve stopped, he offered. Or at least toned it down. He’d assumed that I’d wanted him there, that I’d wanted the housewarming, I’d never mentioned otherwise.

Was never agreeing to something agreement? I wondered.

We should have communicated better, he said, and was upset at himself that we hadn’t. What do you think? he asked. He felt that he’d always been clear about his intentions but maybe aspects were lost. Could we try from now on to say what we mean? He saw this as a chance for growth.

The lobe of rage burst in my head like a polyp. I could feel a liquid temper seeping out of my pores.

My epiphany. Mark was just like Reese—well-meaning in some ways, clueless in others. Neither could imagine having wasted another person’s time or consuming every square inch of air in a room. Because Room People were full of themselves. They believed their own perspectives reigned supreme. And whereas I was taught to not stick out or aggravate your surroundings, to not cause any trouble and to be a good guest, someone like Mark was brought up with different rules—yes, push back, provoke, assert yourself, some trouble is good, since the rest of us will always go easy on you and, if anything, reward you for just being you. Not all of this was on him though. I shouldn’t have opened my door to him and accepted his gifts. The spare key was a mistake, and my fault for not having spoken up sooner. That I’d believed everything he had to offer was valuable. My fault. A hundred percent accurate that I had no knowledge of the books he liked, baseball, television shows, charcuterie, and home decor. My uncouth assumption that when the French spoke about eating bread and pain, they were speaking to something that I knew very well. But not being steeped in the same culture as he was did not make me someone who needed his help, and that he’d acted like it was his job to improve me was both presumptuous and wrong. Why did he never consider the vice versa? For all his worldly and conscientious thoughts, wasn’t I at least a person of two languages and two cultures? And to get to where I was today, didn’t I know a few things he didn’t?

I chose to not text him back or do what I wanted to do, which was call and lay into him until he could finally see where I was coming from. Expending more energy on him wasn’t the answer. Why try to explain yourself to someone who had no capacity to listen?



* * *



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MY HAIR HAD GROWN long and stringy. I washed it every other day but I rarely brushed it, and since there was no need to keep it out of my face anymore, I left it down. One weekend morning, early before anyone else was up, Tami in a beige sweater jogger set found me in my brown turtleneck. I’d been browsing coffee table books in their living room when, passing me from behind, she lifted a strand of my hair by its end and we both watched it listlessly fall. Then she sat down across from me and offered to take me to her salon so I could get that limp mess trimmed, blown dry, and tousled with a nutrient-rich mousse.