When You Were Here

It’s not mystical tea. It doesn’t bring eyesight to the blind. But drinking it again makes me turn over a new possibility: that maybe what my mom was searching for wasn’t healing from the disease, but healing from the way it can hollow your heart.
    “She even asked Mrs. Mori if we could take this picture because the teahouse doesn’t allow cameras. Mrs. Mori likes your mom, so she made an exception.” Kana nods at the back of the teahouse, and I gather that Mrs. Mori is the woman who poured the tea. “Your mom didn’t have her phone, so I used my camera and told her I’d give her a real copy, not just a digital one. But I forgot! I’m so sorry. I meant to send it to you.”
    “To me?”
    Kana nods. “Yes. The photo was for you. She said, Danny can’t be here, so let’s show him the teahouse. ”
    Everything I hide, everything I bottle up, is threateningto spill over now, and I wish I could get a handle on this vicious game of Ping-Pong being waged inside me. I am jealous one minute, pierced with guilt the next, then simply overcome.
    “I love it,” I say to the table.
    She shows me another one. My mother outside a temple. She’s not posing for the camera this time. She’s staring inside, and the photographer—Kana—has captured her in profile. She looks peaceful, content.
    “You’re a good photographer.”
    “It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t always resort to a cell phone, isn’t it? I love my real camera,” she says, then pushes the photos to me. “They are for you.”
    “So what’s the story? Did you go with her everywhere? Like to the doc or something?”
    Kana laughs lightly, then smiles. “Sometimes. She liked company. She liked to talk. And seeing as I am oh-so-amazingly fabulous at linguistics, I got to hang out with her.”
    “You mean you were a translator? I thought my mom’s Japanese was good enough from her time working here and all.”
    “Let me tell you, her Japanese is way better than yours. And besides, Takahashi speaks English, you silly dork. Though your mom spoke to Mrs. Mori in Japanese when she was here.” It’s a weird thought—my mom was here in this quiet, Zen-like teahouse speaking a difficult language I barely know to a woman who was honored to take care of her, who let her snap photos in this place, while I was backhome studying Faulkner or writing essays on the Habsburgs or Hohenzollerns.
    And this girl in front of me wasn’t just the apartment caretaker, she wasn’t just a guide who helped my mom navigate the city, like I had assumed from her letters and from her job. She was more, much more.
    “You were my mom’s friend,” I say, and it comes out as a whisper.
    “Yes, I was your mom’s friend. We are both very chatty, in case you hadn’t noticed. We both like to gab, gab, gab.” Kana flaps her fingers against her thumb, imitating a talking mouth.
    I smile faintly, but it’s so strange, this look into my mom’s life here, her friends here those few days each month when she was away. My mom was friends with a crazy, upbeat girl my age here in Tokyo. Then I laugh inside—maybe that’s why she was so happy here and back in California too. Maybe Kana rubbed off on my mom.
    “I’m glad you guys were friends,” I say to the tea. I can’t bring myself to say it to her face.
    “She was amazing, Danny. I loved her. And I’m so sorry for your loss. And I’m so sorry I didn’t say that sooner.”
    She reaches out her hand, places it on mine, then asks me how long I’ll stay in Tokyo.
    I shrug. “I don’t know. I bought a one-way ticket, so I’ll just figure it out. I guess as long as I need.”
    “What is it you need?”
    It’s such a simple question, but I could answer it in fiftythousand different ways. Because there is so much I need. I am filled with so much want, so much need, and yet every day I keep reaching, and every day I keep missing the mark.
    But the simplest answer is the one that feels so far away.
    To be happy.
    “You said she was happy. I want to know what made her so happy when she was here. Especially since she was fighting so hard to live two more months. She kept saying she was going to hang on till my graduation, and it seemed like she would. It seemed like she could fight cancer forever. And then, bam. She got worse. And it all just happened so quickly. I thought I could handle it. I thought I was ready. I had a five-year apprenticeship for this. Plus I’d done it already with my dad. This