When You Were Here

beating me at Whac-A-Mole, the picture that flashes when she calls. I flick back to the words I said to her at my house when I called her a disease, when I called her a cancer. I don’t want that to be the last thing I’ve said to her. I don’t want to carry a knot of anger, a kernel of resentment, that I feed for years until it leaves me scarred.
    But I don’t answer her call, because I’m not strong enough yet to resist the sound of her voice.
    Instead I open an e-mail to her, and I take the shard out of my hand. It doesn’t bleed. It barely even hurts as I say good-bye.
    Hey, Holland. Great chatting with you on the train earlier. Listen, I feel bad about the way I left things. I was a jerk to you at my house that day. I’m really sorry about what I said to you. If you make it to that Statham flick, let me know what you think. Just don’t tell me the ending.
    I’m tempted to add a smiley face, but I don’t do emoticons, so I let the words do the work for me. She’ll know what I mean. She’ll know that I’m sorry and that we’re all good from here on out.
    Then I hit Send.
    I look around the apartment one more time, at all the memories this place holds. I came to Tokyo in part for a practical reason, to decide if I should keep this place or sell it. But there isn’t a single bit of me that’s been evaluating that choice, that’s been weighing the financial or logistical implications of owning an apartment halfway around the world. And honestly I haven’t thought much about the house back in LA either, but maybe that’s the one I should sell, with its empty rooms and gardens I don’t know how to take care of. I could find another place near UCLA, a place just for Sandy Koufax and me.
    But I’ll deal with that soon enough. For now I leave and head into the Shibuya night, walking down a crowded street, passing laughing guys and gals jabbering in a language I want to understand. I do a double take when I spot an ice-cream stand staffed only by a robot. Like a vending machine, but a little more elaborate. I press the buttons on the touch screen next to the blue-and-white life-size robot, and when my order has been entered, the robot shifts clunkily to a soft-serve machine, pulling levers to fill a cone with chocolate-and-vanilla swirl. As I watch and wait, I text Kana.
    I am ready. To see more of this city, more of my mom’s friend, more of the places and people my mom knew before Takahashi returns in a few weeks.
    They have ice-cream robots over here! Can we start those language lessons soon?
    Seconds later she replies. YES!!!! Ice-cream robots rule.
    The robot hands me the cone, and I head into the crowds, keeping pace a few feet behind a loud, laughing group of friends out for the evening, coattailing onto their crew as if we’re all hanging out tonight in Tokyo.

Chapter Eighteen
    Before I meet Kana the next day, I reacquaint myself with Dr. Takahashi. I’ve Googled him before. But I want to revisit him: his work, the research he’s done, the awards he’s received. I flip open my laptop and settle in on the couch, clicking and searching, until it’s all fresh in my mind. He was educated at Kyoto University, did a residency at Mount Sinai, then studied traditional Chinese medicine, especially herbal treatments for cancer. He returned to Japan and has practiced here for twenty-five years. He’s known for bringing a rigorous mix of Western and Eastern medicine to patients—meaning you come to him for science and spirituality. Collaborative cancer treatment, he calls it. He is a scientist and a Buddhist, and his research reflects that.
    I scroll through a journal article about a study he workedon involving clinical trials of new anticancer drugs and advanced therapies, then another one where he wrote about the roles of nutrition, physical exercise, and emotional health too in recovery from the disease.
    I pause at those words— emotional health . My mom must have been his best patient, his top student in that class. I look away from the screen for a second; it’s ironic in a way. I spent the last four years working to the top of my class in school and pulled it off. I was always reaching, trying, achieving, succeeding.
    But I don’t know a damn thing about emotional health.
    I close the computer, grab my wallet and keys, and check my phone to see if the doctor has called me back yet, if the doctor can tell me more about this hazy, gray subject I definitely don’t excel at.
    No such