Lucy had only gotten lost once in Japan, wandering in Uji on her second-to-last afternoon.
That morning, she had momentarily reconsidered her visit to the bamboo forest, much preferring the idea of staying in and watching Kyoto’s passersby from the second story of her hotel room. On a whim, she abandoned her itinerary and headed to Nijō Station, waiting for the train to Uji. Mid-Monday morning commuters trickled off and on at each station. Lucy remained, moving only to transfer trains twice, watching as the coherent grey blur of the city became dormant fields, dusted by snow.
Disembarking at Uji Station, Lucy headed for the Byodoin Temple. Taking a wrong turn, she turned a seven-minute walk into thirty. She stood at a four-way intersection, as some cars muffled by. One turned into the lot of a big white church, and Lucy wondered what was so urgent that their prayers needed to be made before lunch. She almost wanted to text her mother, ask what she thought, perhaps tell her that she was lost, but that she would be alright. It all happens for a reason, her mother would’ve replied, probably ignoring her first question because she’d say that prayers were too personal to examine. Lucy hadn’t texted her, knowing that travelling alone meant depending on herself, not her mother. And yet, she felt guilty experiencing something in a way she knew her mother would love: consistent and only slightly unexpected.
Lucy reoriented herself, finally crossing the Uji bridge, minutes away from the temple. A flurry of snow persisted slowly, like the flakes were savouring her last moments abroad, and not the other way around. She soon found herself sitting on a bench, her fingers fiddling with the smooth charms of the bracelet beneath her coat. Snow slipped through winter-thin branches and melted into the lightly rippling pond surrounding the temple. As she looked at its sloping red tiles, coated in white, she couldn’t imagine sharing this stillness with anyone else aside from strangers, some who called Japan home, and others, far from their own. Getting lost, she had thought, wasn’t all that bad.
A few days later, Lucy heads to the airport, finding her gate in minutes despite her unreasonable worries that it might’ve disappeared before her flight. She lands home around dinner time, well past the Montreal sunset. Lucy planned to take an Uber, texting her mother before takeoff:
Don’t worry about picking me up!!! It’s not worth bringing out the snowbrush for
Waiting to collect her bag, Lucy’s phone lights up with a selfie from her mother, already at her gate. Her previous message says something about how Uber prices are outrageous. The Uber’s cost, Lucy figures, is likely a similar price to airport parking, and hardly the reason for her mother’s insistence. It’s probably more to do with Lucy using her barely-there savings to travel after finally completing her undergrad degree. It was her first time away from home alone, and despite the thirteen-hour time difference, her mother replied to most of her texts within minutes. Her mother hardly texted first, but one night, Lucy received a message around noon, Montreal time:
Made a matcha to match you!
A picture of her latte arrived a moment later. She missed Lucy, and Lucy missed her too.
Lucy spots her mother from afar. She looks up when Lucy approaches, as if she can distinguish the rattle of her suitcase from the others. Before she knows it, her mother’s hugging her, and Lucy’s hugging back. When her mother pulls away, she tucks Lucy’s hair behind her ear.
“I’m glad you’re home.”
“I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed again.”
Her mother laughs, leading them to the parking garage. They ride the elevator up to level four, where her mother exits to the left, before circling back to the elevator. She circles the right side for a minute, mumbling what sounds like right here—before turning back to the left. Together, they listen to the clack-clack-clack of Lucy’s suitcase against the concrete.
“You forgot where you parked, didn’t you?”
“It was right here,” her mother points to a car that is decidedly not theirs. “I’m sure.”
Lucy sighs before spotting their rusty white Corolla at the end of the aisle. “There.”
Her mother smiles, her breath condensing in the cold air. “What would I do without you?”
Lucy hauls her suitcase into the trunk before slamming it shut. In the rearview mirror, she catches her mother’s eye, already on hers. After spending so many days alone, she isn’t used to being watched so carefully. Maybe she prefers the quiet liberty of being unnoticed. But when she slips into the passenger seat, and the peachy glow of the car’s light reflects off the silvers in her mother’s short black hair, Lucy isn’t so sure anymore.
“What are you feeling?” Her mother asks over the hum of the car’s warming engine.
Lucy startles before realizing she means dinner.
“Pho?”
“You read my mind,” her mother says, pulling out of the spot. “Now tell me everything you haven’t already told me about Japan.”
She indulges her mother, telling her about the yolky egg and vinegar poured atop her ramen from her first night in Tokyo, wondering if tonight’s dinner will compare in any way. When they stop at a red light, Lucy pulls out her phone, scrolling through her camera roll until she finds the picture of the street lights shaped like lilies of the valley, emitting a hazy white glow outside her hotel in Kyoto four nights later. They both love that sort of thing.
When they park at the restaurant, her mother fumbles with her seatbelt before jumping out of the driver’s seat and hugging Lucy tightly. Her hands smooth the back of Lucy’s hair, ruthlessly tangled from fourteen hours on the plane.
“I haven’t hugged you in forever,” her mother says into her messy hair.
“We literally just hugged at the airport. And it’s only been nine days.”
“That didn’t count. But you’re right, I’m only allowed to miss my daughter at the ten-day mark.”
“It was hardly a week,” Lucy replies, pulling away to climb out of the passenger seat.
Over the roof of their car, her mother gives an exaggerated nod. “I won’t report you missing to the police until at least two weeks have passed. Got it.”
Lucy rolls her eyes, and they waddle carefully toward the restaurant, avoiding the relentless January ice.
The restaurant’s empty, save for a mother and her daughter, already digging into two steaming bowls of soup. A large bowl sits in front of the mother, while the young girl eats from a smaller one, probably spooned from her mother’s. The girl, probably six, sports thick bangs and a pink tulle skirt. Her feet, weighed down by her hot pink Sorels, don’t quite touch the floor. They look alike, the girl and her mother, their twin smiles both slanting slightly to the left. Years ago, when Lucy was roughly the same age as the little girl, she remembered being told how her button nose was a replica of her mother’s. She wonders whether they still share similarities now.
Choosing their seats, Lucy only leaves a table between the two families. She and her mother hang their jackets on the back of their hard plastic chairs, careful not to let them touch the slushy floor. Both of their glasses, foggy from the sudden warmth, lay folded on the marble tabletop, leaving them holding their menus only a couple of inches from their faces.
She’s unsure why she’s drawn to a table so close to strangers. To willingly sit and watch feels invasive, so much so that she considers moving to the other end of the restaurant. But when she watches the mother lean over to settle the static flyaways of her daughter’s bangs, she decides that this table is just fine.
When Lucy finds her usual number fourteen, rare beef and tripe, she places her glasses back on the bridge of her nose and twiddles with her bangle, rotating its two silver charms around their own axis. There used to be three, but Lucy, in a rush to make the train to Uji, hadn’t properly closed the clasp of her bracelet. The charm had still been there on that bench at the Byodoin Temple. It wasn’t until she crossed back over the Uji bridge to break for lunch that she pulled off her coat sleeves and noticed her unclasped bracelet and the missing aquamarine bead. Forgetting that it was the middle of the night in Montreal, she texted her mother. This time, her mother didn’t reply right away.
Startling herself and the restaurant’s owner, Lucy began to cry.
Sure, it was only a charm, but it was one her mother had given her. When Lucy was roughly the same age as the little girl in pink, her mother picked her up from school and headed to the mall to polish her rings. At the jeweller’s, Lucy peered and pointed at all the shiny things behind the glass cases. The employees were kind enough not to scowl at the fingerprints she left behind. A particularly pretty charm caught Lucy’s attention; its dark blue glass reminded her of moving water. At the time, Lucy begged her mother to buy it for her, but her mother insisted it was too expensive for a girl so young. A few months later, Lucy was delighted to unwrap her birthday present and find a charm in her palm. Not identical, but similar. This charm was more aquamarine; its white detailing looked like bubbles. “This used to be your grandma’s,” her mother had said. “It’s yours to keep now.” Sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed, Lucy watched as her mother pulled out a used chain from her dresser and slid the charm through the metal. Lucy had worn the charm across her neck for years, her mother clasping the chain for her until she learned to do it herself.
It was only hours later, when Lucy slumped into her seat on the train back to her hotel, that her mother replied to her text.
Now a part of you will be left in Japan forever.
Without looking up from her bangle now, Lucy asks, “Why are we pretending like you’re not going to order number sixteen?” She doesn’t need to meet her mother’s eyes to know that she’s glaring at her sharply over the menu. For a moment, Lucy feels like a kid again. Small enough to be carried, stroking her palm against her mother’s neck until both their skin turned pink and her mother would have given a similar look.
“So now you know everything about me?” Her mother quips.
When the waitress arrives, Lucy orders for herself and watches as her mother trails her finger along the menu, pretending to be pensive.
“I’ll have number sixteen, please.”
“And two coffees!” Lucy adds.
“Luce, it’s past seven.”
“And?”
Her mother smiles warmly at the waitress. “We’ll share one coffee, please.”
When she clears her throat to complain, the little girl in pink peers at her from beneath her bangs. At the neighbouring table, the girl’s mother swaps their bowls, offering the last of her noodles. Lucy folds her hands on the table, rubbing her fingers over her bracelet’s tarnished charms.
“Tell me more.” Her mother glances at Lucy’s wrist. “About Japan.”
Lucy remembers her travel between Tokyo and Kyoto, how the weight of her carry-on forced her to ask a stranger to lift her bag into the overhead shelf of the shinkansen. It was filled so heavily with trinkets, some of them for her mother. She reconsiders her time in Uji, uncertain where exactly she lost her mother’s charm. Lucy retraced her steps all the way from the train back to the bridge, hoping to find a glint of blue in the snowy sidewalks. Eventually, she gave up, returning to the center of the bridge with an ice cream cone, her consolation prize purchased from one of the many shops along the Byodoin Omotesando. With the cold waffle cone in her ungloved hand, Lucy ignored the winter chill and imagined her mother’s charm sinking to the bottom of the Uji River.
“What else can I say?” Lucy asks.
This made her squint. When their coffee arrives, Lucy tells her mother to take the first sip.
As it so happens, her mother was right. It’s well into the A.M’s now, and Lucy and her mother are quietly listening to one another toss and turn beneath their duvets. Apparently, even just half a glass of sweetened condensed milk and a concentrated level of caffeine is a lethal pairing past seven.
“Coffee’s keeping you up, too?” Her mother asks eventually.
“I’m jet-lagged,” Lucy laughs. “What’s your excuse?”
A muffled chuckle comes from her mother’s room, adjacent to Lucy’s.
Lucy pictures the layout of her mother’s room: how both of their headboards are pushed against the same shared wall between their rooms, how both of their doors are only half-shut. There is a sure comfort in knowing that her mother is nearby, how the two of them practically lie scalp-to-scalp after being apart for days.
Her mother replies, “Just thinking about how quiet you were at dinner.”
Despite being in her twenties, Lucy feels, in a way, that she’s being scolded. Her eyes dart around the room, but without her glasses, everything is a mushy blur of darkness. It’s illuminated slightly by the yellow reflection cast by the streetlights on the snow, which creeps through her sheer curtains.
When Lucy was in kindergarten, she swore that she saw two shadows moving on the same bright backdrop of her curtains. It was as if the two Build-A-Bears that rested on her armchair had come to life and were performing in shadow theatre. The shadow puppet of the plush rabbit, named Soleil, leaned into the puppet of Ribbit the frog, the two of them chatting. Lucy couldn’t decide then if she had been dreaming or if she had just woken up, entering an in-between state where reality met the makings of her own mind. When she blinked, the shadows disappeared, and Lucy decided she had imagined the whole thing. Kicking off her covers and running to the other room, Lucy sharply poked her mother with a finger so she’d feel it beneath the padding of her duvet. Her mother woke with a deep inhale and a dazed, “What’s wrong?” She didn’t need to answer before her mother shuffled further into her bed, giving room for Lucy to tuck herself in beside her.
She knows now that there is honesty in her nightmares.
“How often do you think about death?” Lucy half-whispers, half-yells into the present silence of her bedroom.
When her mother doesn’t reply for a minute, Lucy assumes she has finally fallen asleep. Shutting her eyes, she tries to do the same.
“I guess I think about it sometimes. Death, I mean.” Her mother says carefully, adding, “Do you?”
This time, it’s Lucy who’s silent. She had managed to survive her first trip alone, with the only casualty being a glass bead and occasionally missing her mother. There was no particular reason to be thinking about death, her mother’s or her own. And yet, for those nine days, she carried a perpetual fear that something might have happened to her mother while she was away, and despite everything, a steady guilt for leaving. Lucy wonders if the little girl in pink harbours the same anxieties. If she, too, worries for her mother more than herself. Perhaps it’s something more familial—a genetic trait passed down from Lucy’s mother to Lucy.
“A little,” Lucy replies, this time in more of a whisper than a yell. “When I was away.”
This is not the sort of conversation she can bear to have in the daylight. From the other room, her mother’s sheets rustle, and Lucy imagines her shifting from her back to her side, closing the already small distance between herself and their shared wall.
“You didn’t tell me that,” her mother says. “Is that why you were—”
She thinks her mother wants to say quiet, but Lucy knows she means distant.
“It’s just been on my mind since I lost that charm.”
“Gosh, Luce, still? I told you, I care more about you than a charm.”
Lucy shrugs, even though her mother can’t see her. “It’s just—now there’s a part of you that I can never bring back.”
Without a word, Lucy listens to the squeak of her mother’s bedframe. Her mother’s slippers drag, taking the ten or fifteen steps between their two bedrooms. Lucy sits up when she appears at her door. She shuffles towards the wall so her mother can sit beside her. When the mattress dips beneath her, Lucy tells herself that there will be plenty more times when her mother can not or will not be around, so she hugs her fiercely while she can. Her mother hugs her even tighter, pulling back just enough to look Lucy in her eyes when she says, “I must have raised you wrong if you think you can lose any part of me that easily.”
That night, she falls asleep with her back pressed against her mother’s, just like she used to. It’s the best sleep Lucy has had in nine days.
Leave a Reply