It’s a good thing, he said, and went back to his apartment to bring out the chair.
The moment I saw it, I loved it. A vibrant, showstopping chartreuse suede, in a slightly retro design. With a swipe of my hand, the suede turned from a light to a darker chartreuse; another swipe and it turned from dark back to light. I offered to pay, but Mark waved off even the thought. He pushed the chair into 9A and my open living room, which just had an old futon I’d bought years ago and in one corner my robot vacuum, in another the books that he had given me that had gone unread. I moved the old futon to the back and put Suede Chair in the room’s center.
Did you get robbed? he asked, looking around, and I said not that I knew of.
But where’s your table, where do you eat?
I had a fold-out chair and table in the closet, a desk in the bedroom where sometimes I ate. From the closet, I brought out the metal chair and unfolded it.
Please, I said.
He said it was the most uncomfortable thing he’d ever sat in.
But then there we were, me in Suede Chair, receiving my first guest since I’d moved in. Given the neighborhood’s safety index and that my one bed was too small, Fang and Tami never visited. I also wasn’t close to any famous museums, for educational purposes, for their boys.
I told Mark I didn’t know how guest visits were supposed to go. Did he ask me questions or did I? He laughed. I laughed. Then he added that for all his time in the city, he had never met anyone like me.
You haven’t met enough people, I replied. There were lots of people like me, tucked away in schools and office buildings. People who had been standardized, a standard provider who provides standardized care.
No, you’re different, he said.
A word I hated hearing about myself and must have given that away through my immediate frown.
Different is good, he said, shifting in his chair that was actually too small for him and creaking a lot from new weight. Some people try their whole lives to be different and never achieve it in any significant way. Some people make it look effortless.
I frowned some more though Mark didn’t seem to notice and continued to inspect my empty room aloud. His words started to echo so I stopped paying attention to them.
Who really wanted to be different? I wondered. And to be treated differently for things about them that couldn’t be changed. Most people who were different just wanted to be the same.
* * *
—
THE FIRST COUNSELOR DEDUCED that I had trouble seeing boundaries. My arm-crossing father, who came to initial meetings, replied that boundaries were a Western trait, a luxury, an act of selfishness. No such boundary existed within our family as the self does not exist, and if the self does not exist, then there can be nothing to invade. My father also added that I seemed fine and these meetings were stupid.
We can see how you would think so, the counselor said, but we worry about your daughter. An excellent student but has trouble connecting with peers, is rigid, inflexible, things have to be done a certain way according to Joan, according to her peers. She should be tested for…, and each counselor gave a list.
She’s shy, said my father.
But sometimes she has outbursts.
Is she physically violent?
No one is suggesting that.
Then I don’t see a problem.
We’re not suggesting there is a problem. We too want Joan to succeed.
Does she need your permission to do that? he wanted to ask, but couldn’t get it out clearly and the counselor didn’t seem to understand him. She needs no one’s permission, not mine, not yours, and because this was the extent of his English while angry and arm-crossed, he just repeated the phrase—not mine, not yours—until it was time for us to go.
The last counselor I saw was in college, freshman year. She asked if I had ever met with a counselor who was more like myself. A well-meaning question that she asked cautiously and in a circular way, at 7:30 a.m., before I had class at 8:00. I think the word she didn’t want to use was Asian. The nonexistent Asian therapist—had I ever met one of those? To understand difference requires difference and someone who has been in your shoes. At least she was the first counselor to admit not quite getting it instead of trying to pinpoint a fault. After her I would have no more time for counselors, and once I started my training, I needed only to turn to the person beside me in lecture to know that we were the same. At face value, medicine was still a meritocracy and the most straightforward path that I could take. Moving through the ranks had less to do with what I looked like or my family, but had everything to do with if I could watch and listen carefully, if I could carry out the tasks that were asked of me and then pass the same instructions on when my turn came to teach. The joy of having been standardized was that you didn’t need to think beyond a certain area. Like a death handled well, a box had been put around you, and within it you could feel safe.
* * *
—
HAD MY FATHER BEEN happy raising me, been happy to be my father? And had I posed those questions to him, would he have considered them important questions or simply Western ones? Americans he found to be so outwardly happy all the time and superficially positive. To be indiscriminately happy seemed to him as much of a curse as to be indiscriminately sad.
We often went months without speaking, not out of annoyance with each other or any real reason except that there wasn’t a need. The longest stretch was a year in my mid-twenties when I was body-deep in clerkships and my father was, as usual, busy. I spoke to my mother that year and to him indirectly through her. Tell Dad about this, and she said that she would. The year of no contact ended just as casually as it began. He called me about his vertigo, a possible ear infection, and some red fungal spots on his chest. I asked if he had seen a doctor, and he said wasn’t I the doctor, his daughter the doctor, unless the doctor was not in today and it was just his daughter. If just the latter was in, he would call back tomorrow for the doctor.
My father could be playful, mixed in with Asian stoicism and formality. I said no, the doctor was here today and ready to receive patients.
Then we went through his symptoms and I told him the kind of medication to buy and how often to put it on.
It was a twenty-minute conversation, one of the longest that we would have.
Thanks, doctor-daughter. Or do you prefer daughter-doctor? Which one?
I said the former was fine.
All right then, doctor-daughter, so long, goodbye.
But the phrase for goodbye in Chinese is zài jiàn, or “see you again.”
* * *
—
TO WRITE A CHINESE word, we sometimes do it in halves. On the left-hand side, we can put a person (人) on top of an ocean wave (?) and, on the right-hand side, give this wave-riding person a knife (刀). A knife for fighting with, for striving with; a knife to accompany you on the unknown sea adventure ahead.