When You Were Here (17 page)

We let go of each other’s hands when we reach our destination, a working-class district. We walk past several shopping alleys with tented stalls catering to the locals. They’re selling staples, like pots and pans and lotions and towels.

The temple is at the end of the pedestrian shopping way—it’s clearly a temple, with lanterns and a pagoda-style design, but it’s smaller than the other temples I’ve seen and needs a new coat of paint. I walk in with Kana. Incense burns, and candles flicker. My eyes adjust to the lower light in here. I take a deep breath, expecting to hear a voice, feel a presence, something.

Instead Kana whispers. “Do you consider yourself religious?”

I shake my head. “Agnostic Jew.”

Though cultural Jew would be more like it. I like bagels and lox, I crave matzo brie when I’m sick, I eat noodle kugel on Rosh Hashanah, and I think rabbis are the closest there can be to wise men. I did a year of Hebrew school, but I wasn’t even bar mitzvahed. My parents were Jewish, but they both lost interest in the maintenance of the religion, and I have to say I’m glad neither one of them insisted on sending me to Hebrew school after that one year. I’d rather have been playing sports or reading books, so that’s what they encouraged. I never felt like I was missing anything, to tell the truth.

But maybe I
was
missing something. Maybe if I were more religious, I could deal with my parents being gone. I could believe they were in a better place, maybe even back together again. I think they’d both like that. My mom missed my dad a ton, and if there is a heaven, or an afterlife, or
something else
, I have no doubt he’d have been pining for her the whole time until she arrived a few months ago.

Then I realize: This is the first time I’ve thought of them together. The first time I’ve imagined them as anything but ash. Maybe all I needed was to go to a temple.

Or maybe I’m losing my mind.

“I think your mother was a Buddhist. Or became one,” Kana says.

I nod. This much I know about her. Not that she became one, because she didn’t convert or anything, because you don’t really convert to Buddhism. But over the last few years,
she definitely felt more affinity for Eastern religions and for the central beliefs of Buddhism—reincarnation, nirvana, wisdom, karma, and enlightenment—than she felt for Judaism. Though honestly, the religions aren’t that different at the core.

She talked about Buddhism a couple times over our many dinners out in Los Angeles—at the Indian buffet around the corner or the nearby taqueria that had twenty different kinds of salsa, including pineapple and mango, her favorites, or even Captain Wong’s—no MSG, brown rice, just veggies for her.

“I sent in my application today,” she said over broccoli.

I raised my eyebrows in question.

“For Buddhism. I hope I filled out the form correctly. I want to see if they’ll accept me,” she said.

“Ah, I hear it can be quite rigorous.”

“They usually get back to you in a few months, but I filed it early decision, so I think I’ll hear sooner.”

“Well, that’s binding, you know. Are you ready for that kind of commitment?” I teased as I speared a piece of pepper steak.

“
U.S. News and World Report
ranked it top among world religions, so I think I’ll be okay with the decision,” she said, then took a bite of her broccoli. Her tone shifted then; she became not so much serious but heartfelt. “I think it would give me peace, though, Danny. With everything.”

“Sure. Peace is good. Who doesn’t like peace?” I said, doing everything
not
to change the tone in my voice, doing
everything to keep the conversation light. “And I like this pepper steak. We should come to Captain Wong’s for graduation dinner. Don’t you think?”

She gave me a small smile, then a nod, and kept eating.

I wasn’t really sure what I thought about Buddhism then, or now, to be honest. Besides, I’d always assumed that as Jews—cultural or otherwise—we were on the same page with the whole no-traditional-afterlife thing, but maybe my mom started to believe in more.

“What do you think she’d be reincarnated as?” Kana asks in her soft voice, her Tatsuma Teahouse voice.

I am tempted to make a joke, but when I flash back on the conversations with my mom over dinner, I know now’s not the time to be flippant. Besides, when Kana looks at me with those earnest eyes, I can tell she is paying respects, that this is how she honors the dead. So I give the question space, and I give myself time to form a real answer. Not just words I pluck from thin air because they happen to fit the question. But an answer from within. Because I
know
the answer, deep in my gut. “A lilac bush. She would be reincarnated as a lilac bush. And she would love it. She loved lilacs like it was a religion. She said nothing smelled as good as a lilac bush. Whenever she saw one, she’d stop and smell it. And not just smell but inhale it, ingest it.”

She did that at our neighbor’s house in Santa Monica. When we went for walks, she’d glance behind us, survey his yard, and then she’d grab my hand and we’d rush over to his prize lilac bush. She’d lean in, breathe it, and then waft
it toward her with her hand. That’s why I stole clippings of it for Mother’s Day that year.

“Ah, heaven,” she said. She sniffed it one more time for good measure. “Someday I will have a yard full of lilacs. Someday I will spend my days doing crossword puzzles and smelling lilacs. And my children will bring me dark chocolate on a tray while wearing little waiter suits.”

Then she punched me lightly on the arm and said, “C’mon, we have to get out of here before the crazy man shows up.”

Kana’s eyes sparkle as she listens to the story, little glimmers of light dancing across her pupils.

She places her hand on my arm. “Danny, Mr.-Stories-Aren’t-Really-My-Thing-Danny.
You
just told me a story. And I think that is the most animated you have been since I met you.”

“Why do you think she was so happy here, Kana? You spent time with her when I couldn’t be here. What was she like? You said in your note how she was always joyful.”

“I think it takes a very special person to find the joy in everyday life. Your mom was like that. She was one of those people.”

Everyday life.
I flash back over the last week with Kana. Crepes and conversations. Panda erasers and pictures of my dog. And talking. So much talking. About everything and nothing. Maybe that
is
enough to be happy. Maybe it’ll be enough for me.

But how do you find joy in
everyday life
when you’re
dying? I have a hard time finding it, and I’m the one still living.

“Let’s go outside and see if there is a lilac bush,” Kana says.

“I don’t think lilacs grow in June.”

“No, but that’s the point. Maybe there is a lilac bush even if there isn’t supposed to be one. You know what I mean?”

I don’t laugh or snort or scoff. Because I do know what she means. And even though we don’t find a lilac bush on the grounds of the temple, I have to admit I do smell something like lilacs in the air. Maybe my mom has been reincarnated here. Maybe this is her first reincarnation, as the scent of her favorite flowers.

She would like that.
I
would like that. And somewhere, deep inside me, I believe it too.

I believe.

June melts into July, and a sticky heat sinks down on the city. It is hot beyond words here, the sweltering-city kind of heat. The streets radiate fire, and the sun throws it right back down again, like it’s casting bolts of heat, pelting endless blankets of scorching air. Cities are the worst places to be in hot weather.

I miss my pool. I miss the shaded sections of my backyard. I miss sitting under a tree and stretching out in the shade and reading a book and feeling the breezes from the nearby ocean drifting by. I miss the ocean. I miss throwing tennis balls to my dog as she fetches them in the waves.

I miss my dog.

June was a temptress, a tantalizing geisha with a come-hither wave and a dance and a sway of the hips. But July,
with this heat, is her cruel stepmother. On a particularly hot Saturday morning, I stay inside where it’s cool. I Skype with Kate. She reviews several outstanding estate matters with me. Things about accounts and money and time periods when I can access certain funds.

Then she takes off her glasses, and it’s strange, this all-too-familiar gesture of hers viewed through a computer screen. “What did you decide to do about the apartment?”

The question jars me for a moment. It’s what I thought I came to Tokyo for. To see this apartment again, to decide if I should keep it. But I’ve barely
had
to think about the decision because there’s no way I’d sell it.

“Keep it,” I say, and Kate tells me about the paperwork and details we’ll need to work it out. I nod and say yes to it all, knowing I’ll do whatever I need to do to keep this home as my own.

“And at some point, maybe not today or tomorrow, but at some point, you should think about what to do with the house over here.”

It’s so weird to think this is my decision. That at age eighteen, when I haven’t even set foot in a college classroom, let alone an office for a job, I’m being asked to make this choice.

“I don’t know yet,” I say, but I know where I’m leaning on this.

“What about your mom’s things, Danny?”

I close my eyes for a second. My chest feels tight.

“Her clothes. Her wigs. Her books,” Kate continues.

“Donate them,” I answer quickly, so I don’t have to think about it. Then I have a better idea. “Everything except the wigs. Can you send the wigs here?”

She laughs. “For you? Something you want to tell me?”

“Yeah. I started a drag show in Roppongi. No, they’re for Kana. She’ll love them.”

“I’ll send them along with my rug. I have an antique rug traveling to Tokyo next week by private jet. This client of mine owns property in both LA and Tokyo, and her own private jet!”

“That’s the only way to travel. Or so I’m told.”

I’m about to say good-bye when I remember I picked up something for Kate. I hold up a plastic mackerel for her sushi collection. “And I’ll send this along to you. But not by private jet. Just regular mail.”

After I turn off the computer, my cell phone rings.

It’s a local number, but it’s not Kana, and there’s only one other person I’ve been hoping to hear from in Tokyo.

I nearly pounce on the Talk button to take the call from the doctor’s office. It’s not even the receptionist. It’s Dr. Takahashi himself. My pulse is rocketing, and I’m all raw nerves as he says words like
doctor-patient confidentiality
and
I don’t typically do this
.

Then the next words come, and they’re fucking beautiful. “But I understand this is important, and for you I can step outside the bounds.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much,” I say, and I’m overjoyed that he’s taking pity on me. Funny, how pity
was the thing I never wanted from Holland, but it’s the thing I’ll happily take from the last great hope.

I race to meet Kana at our rendezvous spot near Yoyogi Park to tell her the good news. Takahashi is back from Tibet, and he will see me at the end of the week. The last piece, the last thing I came for. He can finally tell me what’s behind door number three.

“It’s like a pronouncement, Kana, like I’ve been granted an audience with the king,” I say, and I feel as if I can exhale, as if I’ve been holding my breath for this meeting.

She beams and raises her right arm straight, then speaks in a deep voice. “King Takahashi will see you now, Danny Kellerman.” Then she surprises me by imitating me, adopting some sort of exaggerated California boy drawl and making a hang-ten gesture. “Dude, so it is written, so it shall be.”

All I can do is roll my eyes, because she has schooled me, beaten me at my own game of Occasional Sarcasm.

When I return to my building, a blast of cold air greets me in the lobby. I will say this: Tokyo does air-conditioning well. It’s arctic inside my building, and it is epic. I consider myself something of an expert in air-conditioning. I have studied the fine difference in degrees, have meditated on sixty-eight degrees as the perfect cooling temperature compared to sixty-seven degrees. I have contemplated whether
sixty-six is icebox frigid enough for me. And I have declared sixty-five to be my nirvana, so I crank the thermostat to that perfect temperature when I arrive upstairs. The familiar whirring of the machine begins, a comforting hum that will usher in the igloo effect. But the temperature doesn’t drop. The air isn’t any cooler.

Crap. My apartment will be a sauna in minutes if I don’t fix this. The air-conditioning unit is in a utility closet in the main bedroom. I open the door to my mom’s room, then to the closet, then I inspect the unit, popping off the cover easily. Right away I can tell the filter’s a mess, all dirty and clogged, and that’s why the air isn’t cooling down. It’s an easy fix, so I head back to the kitchen, grab the garbage can, and return to the bedroom. I find the extra filters right next to the machine—sending a silent thanks to Kana and Mai, because no one ever has filters when you need them, unless it’s your job to stock them—so I swap in the new one, tossing the old one into the trash. I put the cover back on and close the closet door. My dad was handy; he taught me to be handy too. I glance over at the framed photos of him, a reminder that he gave me this skill, that I can still find pieces of his life in me.