After turning a page that was mostly blank, Mark suggested that since I was home so much now, we should revisit the idea of cohosting a get-together for the building. It could then be the entire ninth floor, both our doors would be open and guests could go back and forth. We had the same dinnerware now, the same decor sensibility.
I said I was worried about Wuhan and by extension China. I had him look at the images, and even after I translated, he didn’t seem too concerned.
Yeah, but didn’t the last SARS outbreak peter out? The virus mutated within a month or something. At least that’s what he’d been reading online.
I said, Each virus is different, no two are alike.
Like snowflakes, he said, and I said nothing. Because a virus was nothing like a snowflake.
But we’ve all gotten a type of corona before, he stated. It was in the common cold, albeit a bit more severe this time. Just don’t touch your T-zone, what every article seems to suggest.
He showed me these articles that he was referencing, all fact-checked, he said, by reputable sources. I scrolled through them and saw only words, predictions. Much of medicine is built on hindsight, but hindsight usually means that in exchange for knowledge a lot of people first have to die. I said whatever happened, demand could not exceed supply. I thought I was speaking calmly, until Mark pointed out that I was not.
Hey, he said.
Hey what?
Our health systems are built for this stuff.
I said they really weren’t.
Let’s agree to disagree, for now. And remember—he paused for some sort of effect.
Remember what?
It’s on the other side of the world.
* * *
—
NO FORMAL ANTONYM FOR catastrophizing exists, but why did it seem that more people had this trait than not? Isn’t it more evolutionary favorable to catastrophize? Does fortune truly favor the bold?
* * *
—
FOR OVER A WEEK, I didn’t hear from my mother in a significant way. She had ignored my texts about why she was ignoring my calls with one-sentence replies that all was fine, and since January 23 I’d tried to call every day. I had become that daughter, the overprotective and possibly annoying kind, the daughter who believes she is also the parent to a parent who doesn’t like being the child.
I could picture my mother glancing at her phone. Who’s texting and calling me so much? Who’s blowing up my phone? Oh, it’s just Joan-na. Then turning the phone down, facedown, and resuming whatever it was that she was doing, like finishing a hot beverage. She wasn’t bound to me, and besides being my mother, she was free to do other things. I’d come to realize long ago that my parents didn’t fit parental norms and whether that was a result of their own personalities, genetics, or the slow grind of immigration, who could say. A normal parent calls too much, wants to be there every step of the way, and can never leave their kids alone. But that my parents could leave me alone, and separate themselves from me, did not necessarily mean that I was uncared for. We know what you’re made out of, daughter, because we know ourselves. We won’t always be there for you, but we trust ourselves to have raised you well.
As I gazed out the window, it started to snow.
Maybe my mother has learned to ski, I thought. Far-fetched but not impossible. A near seventy-year-old woman skiing, peacefully and idyllically, with just the sounds of her blades cutting white powder underfoot, and casually checking her ringing phone on the downhill, then putting the phone back in her coat and skiing on. But then this serene image turned scary. What if she fell and fractured her knee? She didn’t have health insurance here, nor did she know the hospital system. I would need to find her a good surgeon and then convince this surgeon to let me scrub in. But because I wouldn’t be able to shut my mouth while I watched, I would constantly be questioning the good surgeon and his technique until he eventually asked me to leave. With all due respect, and we appreciate you being here for your mom, but please get out of my OR.
On January 27, two days into the year of the rat, she finally picked up.
Yes? What is it? she asked. She seemed agitated and announced that their monthlong trip had come to an end, and she was trying to pack. But where were her reading glasses, passport, green card, and plastic box of pills? They were set to leave in a few hours, and no one was helping her—why wasn’t anyone helping her?
I asked if she had learned to ski.
Ski? She’d hardly left the lodge.
Was the lodge fun?
Why would sitting all day in a lodge with Tami be fun? Why would being watched by her hawk of a daughter-in-law and followed from place to place like prey be fun?