When You Were Here (10 page)

“How’s it going, man? I remember you. Elizabeth’s son, right?”

I nod. I’m glad he remembers me, that I don’t have to dive into a lengthy explanation or reminder. “Yeah, I’m just here for—” I stop for a second, because I’m not sure how to finish the line out loud.
To see if I can ever be happy, or even remotely human, again. Would you happen to have the magic cure?
“To see Tokyo again.”

“How’s she doing?”

There it is. The point in the conversation where we all become uncomfortable. That all-too-familiar moment when I have to tell someone for the first time. Like I had to do several weeks ago with the guy at the coffee shop in Santa
Monica we used to go to, then the gal at the little pet-food shop around the corner from our house, and now here, with Mike.

“Actually she died a few months ago,” I say, the words still clunky and awkward. They probably always will be. “Back in April.”

Then the look. The tilt of the head, the heavy
oh
, like they’ve said the wrong thing. “Oh, man. I’m really sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks.”

“Damn, I’ll miss her. You know, she was here every day when she was in town.”

“Yeah, she dug this place.”

“She talked about you all the time when she was here. Said you got into UCLA and that you were kicking ass at school.” Then he points from me to him, and we’re back to regular chatter, and says, “She even passed along some of your new finds to me. Like that band Retractable Eyes.”

“That’s a good band,” I say, and I find it strangely cool that my mom channeled some of my music taste to the guy who served her breakfast. I find it even cooler that she talked to him about me. This is better than the
Personal
pile.

“They’re awesome. Anyway, she was our favorite customer. We loved those crazy wigs.”

“What was she like when she was here?” I ask because I’m hungry for more of this kind of sustenance. Apartment logistics are one thing; stories are another entirely.

Mike pauses to consider, wiping his hand on his apron. “The same as all the other times. She came here, had her breakfast bowl, talked about whatever movie she saw or book she was reading or her family, that kind of thing. She didn’t seem like someone who was sick. I mean, I knew she was sick because we talked about stuff, but you would never have guessed from how she acted, know what I mean?”

I nod a few times, glad to know my memory of her aligns with others’. “Yeah, that sounds like her.”

“She was always in a good mood too. Especially that time your sister came with her. Nice gal, your sister.”

And there goes the pitch. Like the batter just whacked my best curveball out of the park, and I never even saw it coming. Because my mom didn’t mention Laini’s visit, and my sister didn’t say anything either. I feel a searing pang of jealousy pound into me, thinking Laini might have been out here for my mom’s treatments, maybe her last treatment with Takahashi, and that Laini was helping to take care of her. That was my role, my job. Laini didn’t drive my mom to the hospital; she didn’t clean the bathroom when my mom had vomited in the middle of the night; she didn’t take her toast for breakfast the day after a chemo. Why did she
get
to be a part of my mom’s life over here and I didn’t?

“When was my sister here?” The words feel bitter on my tongue. I e-mailed her earlier in the week to give her a heads-up that I’d be coming here. But evidently I don’t merit the same kind of courtesy, since she never told me when she came to Tokyo.

Mike looks up for a second. “A few months back? Maybe January, maybe February?”

“That’s great,” I say to Mike, but it’s a lie. Because it’s not great that all the women I know, or knew, like to keep secrets. Holland and the way she left, my mom and the teahouse and the temple, now Laini with this visit I never knew about. I think secrets suck. I don’t like to keep them; I don’t like to share them; I don’t like to have them. I thank Mike and pay, and as I walk away I dial my sister’s cell phone, and it goes to voice mail.

But there is someone I can see now. The man who may know everything. It’s nine in the morning, and that’s when doctors’ offices open. A spark rises inside me as I catch another subway.

They are not here—my sister, my dad, Holland. The others in the
Personal
pile aren’t here at all.

But I am. And I can go, and seek, and ask.

The doctor is in.

Or the doctor isn’t in.

Or the doctor isn’t in yet.

See, I don’t know, because there isn’t any sign on his door. There isn’t an
OPEN
or
CLOSED
sign. Or a
BACK SOON
sign. Or a Post-it note letting the next of kin of his former patient know where to find the Great Dr. Takahashi.

C’mon, Doc. You were like the messiah to my mom. You were the man. You were God. Where are you?

I even called him before I flew over the Pacific Ocean. I left a message. I asked for an appointment three days ago. How long does it take to return a phone call to the kid of one of your dead patients? I knock harder, over and over, as if the answers will come when it hurts enough, when I am
raw enough. My knuckles are red now, worn now. And still no one answers. No one opens the door.

I’m pissed at myself that I never went with my mom to an appointment here, but she was the mom; I was the kid. It wasn’t like I was supposed to go to her doctors’ visits, especially the ones halfway around the world. Besides, she told me everything about Takahashi.

At least that’s what I thought at the time.

I turn to leave, wishing I had a translator, wishing someone could decode all these clues. But I don’t, so I walk to Kana, to our meeting later. I plan to ask her about the teahouse and the temple, to ask her to tell me all she knows. I’m halfway across the city when my phone buzzes. I pull it out and there’s an e-mail from Jeremy.

I click it open.
Dude. This is Sydney. I met her at the beach last night. Guess what? She loves dogs! Who woulda thunk it.

There’s a photo of a gorgeous brunette wearing a gray V-neck T-shirt and board shorts and waving into the camera with one hand. Her other hand rests on top of a dog’s head. My dog is looking the other way, but I see half her face. I laugh as I read the rest of the note.

For the record, I am not, technically, sending you a photo of your dog. I am sending you a photo of a chick.

I bang out a reply.
For the record, I am not thanking you for the photo that happens to include a head of a dog. I am thanking you for where that chick’s hand was when you took that picture.

Since I’m in my e-mail anyway, I fire off a note to Laini.
How’s Beijing? Great, I’m sure. I’m in Tokyo now, and I heard you visited Mom back in the winter. That’s awesome, though I gotta admit a little weird that you never mentioned it in all our e-mails. What’s the story?

It’ll take her days to respond. She’s probably holed up in the library, translating ancient Chinese texts into modern-day Mandarin or something. She’s getting a master’s or a PhD at Peking University in Beijing. Honestly, I don’t know which degree she’s pursuing because she’s been gone for so long—first college on the East Coast, then study abroad, now living abroad—and even if she graduated from one level to the next she wouldn’t invite me, wouldn’t tell me. She sends e-mails with supreme regularity—almost always on Mondays and Thursdays, which leads me to believe I am on her Monday and Thursday to-do lists. The rest of the time she is busy being Chinese, studying Chinese history, learning Chinese ways, doing everything to renounce the years she was raised wholly American.

I close the phone and continue my trek across town.

My mom was a blogger, but she was more of an entrepreneur. An engineer by training, she developed cell phones for years, first for a Japanese company, then for one in California. When she burned out on engineering, she started a blog about cell phones, and very quickly it was read by everyone in the business. She scooped national newspapers
and beat out online outlets for years because she had contacts on the inside everywhere. She crushed the blogging competition so effectively that a big publishing company offered her many millions for her blog.

“You’ve got to know when it’s time to hold and know when it’s time to sell,” she told me when we went out to dinner to celebrate the sale. “That’s the biggest mistake people make in business. They get greedy, and they hold on too long. They think they can get more. That the stock’ll go up more. But the price won’t always keep rising. So grab that chance.”

A few months later, she was diagnosed, and fighting cancer became her new job.

As I reach Shibuya, I find myself wondering if her business advice might come in handy for me as I consider what to do with the apartment here. If I should hold it or sell it. I’ll have to go research Tokyo real estate to figure out how to apply her business wisdom.

I stop outside an electronics store, where a salesman is hawking a TV set. Across the screen walks a cat, a silver-and-black-streaked tabby. The cat stops and stands on its hind legs, like it’s holding itself up on its haunches, hands-free, or paws-free. Then a dog appears, a Dalmatian riding a red bicycle down a busy sidewalk. When it finishes, the screen switches to a water-skiing squirrel.

“Bet they don’t have squirrels like that in Santa Monica.”

I turn around to see a girl who’s about my age. She is the most strangely dressed person I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something, considering I’ve strolled up and down Venice
Beach. She wears five-inch-high red vinyl shoes with huge straps across the tops of her feet and equally huge buttons securing each strap, then pink socks with purple polka dots up to her thighs, then a black pleated skirt with yellow lightning bolts. On her top, she has gone conservative with a long-sleeve white blouse, but over the blouse are suspenders with cartoon pink saxophones on them. Her hair is teased out in two pigtails, and she’s tied purple bows around each one.

She gestures to the pink suspenders and the purple bows. “See, it pulls the colors from the socks all together.”

“Right. Of course.” I am boring in my white T-shirt, beige shorts, and black flip-flops.

She sticks out a hand. “I’m Kana Miyoshi. I figured you were the American boy, since, well, you’re the American boy.”

“That’s me. The American boy. Danny Kellerman.” She has a strong handshake. I notice her fingernails. Each one has been polished a color of the rainbow.

“And, just in case you’re wondering, I’m not a Harajuku girl.” She glances down at her clothes.

“I didn’t think so,” I say, because Harajuku girls are more Little Bo Peep–style. They wear big, ruffly skirts with apron bibs and buckle shoes. Look, it’s not like I know anything about fashion, but when you’ve been to Tokyo more times than you can count on both hands, you learn these things. Especially when your mom has—
had
—a thing for Japanese fashion. “But the hair is kind of Harajuku.” I point to her pigtails.

She puts her hands on her hips and gives me an indignant look. “You have to have the whole ensemble to be Harajuku, Danny. Don’t make me take you over to Harajuku to prove it.”

I hold up my hands, the sign of surrender. “I’ll choose to believe you.” Besides, it can’t hurt to be on Kana Miyoshi’s good side. She knows stuff I don’t know. She knows stuff I
need
to know.

She clasps her hands and talks in a sensei accent. “You are a wise man, Danny Kellerman.”

She gestures to the sidewalk, indicating we are to walk together. We pass a shoe store selling high-top Converse decorated with Batman, Superman, and the Green Lantern, and she dives right into conversation. “Do you like sponge cake? Because there is this totally awesome place only five blocks away.” She waves frantically in front of us, as if to show me where this sponge cake place might be. “Wait. Correction. I should use the proper term. They’re
shoto
. The café calls them shoto cakes! But really. We know what they are! They’re sponge cakes. And, oh my God, if you ask, they’ll pour chocolate sauce all over it. With blueberry jam too.” Her voice shoots up when she mentions the jam, a sound that can only be described as pure childlike glee.

“You know, you don’t sound like your e-mails.”

“I know!”
She says it like it’s a shout. A businesswoman glances sideways at her and shakes her head as if to say,
Girls shouldn’t talk that loud
. Kana gives the woman a sharp look and then hisses at her. I can’t tell if it’s playful or
serious, but the woman looks away. Kana turns back to me. “But, you know, there’s my business side,” she says, tilting her head. Then, she leans back the other way. “And then there’s my Kana side.”

“Kana side. I like.” I almost bump into a young mom pushing a baby stroller. “
Sumimasen
,” I say to the mom. Then to Kana, “So you kind of run the apartment business for your mom or something?”

“I think it’s safe to say I run the
communications
side of things,” she says, sketching air quotes with her multicolored fingers. “Don’t know if you picked up on this, but Mommy’s not so hot in the English department.”