Mary Waters - The Favorites

She was ashamed to meet her aunt Masako’s eyes. And in Momoko she no longer saw a simple child, but an additional complication in the forward-thinking game. Now, if her grandmother bought her a new dress or a trinket, Sarah hid it from her cousins. She constantly searched Momoko’s eyes, alert for any signs of jealousy.

If she could be so angry after just one look from Mrs. Asaki, then how could it not be different for her aunt and cousin? What resentments did they feel that they could not express?

Thus it came about that Sarah drew away from the Asaki house, choosing to adopt the social boundaries of her elders. As the years passed, the distance between the girls would grow to resemble that of the generation before them.

In the parlor, next to the tokonoma alcove, a narrow storage recess ran horizontally along the wall. It had miniature sliding doors made of the same durable paper as the fusuma room dividers. This space had been designed to store seasonal hanging scrolls, but the Kobayashis used it for their photograph albums.

Five years ago Sarah had preferred the newer vinyl albums, filled with pictures of herself as a baby and a toddler. But ever since the talk about black-market rice and snakes and adoptions, she had become curious about the older albums at the back of the shelf. Those books were of better quality, covered with aged fabric that had faded to shades of brown and indigo. Their silk tassels, now rust colored, still had centers of bright purple.

Today she was leafing hurriedly through the “war and occupation” album. There weren’t many pictures from that period, barely enough to fill up the book. The photographs were tiny. Some were the size of playing cards and others even smaller, glued onto the black cardboard pages like stamps in a collection.

She was looking for a specific photograph, and here it was: the only picture of Mr. Kobayashi’s former wife. It had been taken in their garden in Manchuria, a year before she contracted typhoid fever and died. She had a round, blank face and rosebud lips, exactly like a kokeshi doll, and she was so petite she made young Mr. Kobayashi look tall in contrast. The baby boy bundled in her arms would also contract the fever, but survive. After the war, Mr. Kobayashi would bring his sickly baby back to Japan and marry Sarah’s widowed grandmother. This baby was Sarah’s uncle Teinosuke.

She was looking for this picture because her uncle was coming for lunch today, and she had overheard her grandmother saying in wry tones that Teinosuke took after his mother. To the girl’s disappointment, the face on the page revealed no new clues to the woman’s personality. She scrutinized the picture, remembering Mrs. Asaki’s words at their last tea. She had always assumed this doll-like creature was a romantic lost love, a parallel to her grandmother’s Shohei. But in fact she had been second choice…just as her husband was now.

Sarah’s uncle lived almost two hours away in Osaka. He was the same age as Mrs. Nishimura, and he was a bachelor. More important, he was insignificant within the family. He was on the periphery of the women’s “outside” circle.

But none of this was outwardly evident. When he arrived, a heaping platter of his favorite food was awaiting him on the low dining table: fried pot stickers stuffed with pork, ginger, and garlic. This was accompanied by individual dipping bowls of soy sauce, vinegar, and hot chili oil. “Chili oil makes you sweat,” Mrs. Kobayashi had explained to Sarah as they set the table. “Sweating is very healthy in the summer.”

Teinosuke Kobayashi was noticeably shorter than his stepmother and stepsister. Either the babyhood fever had stunted his growth, or else he had inherited his natural mother’s petite frame. Young Teinosuke had been afflicted, all throughout grade school, with thin, flyaway hair (“sort of brownish, like a Caucasian baby, very strange,” Mrs. Rexford said), which was surely a lingering effect of the fever. Perhaps the illness had also affected his ability to learn. His grades were poor, and he was the only child in their entire extended family who had not gone to college.

But now, in adulthood, he exuded good health. Peering up at the others from under a glossy shock of black hair, he tucked into the gyoza heartily, his Adam’s apple working up and down. He talked unendingly about business-he worked with insurance of some kind-in a loud, knowing voice.

“Aaa,” replied his father, nodding and chuckling affably. “Aaa…Aaa… is that right.” But eventually the elder Mr. Kobayashi excused himself from the table and returned to his workshop. Over the years, his son’s academic and professional disappointments had cooled his interest. For Mr. Kobayashi, who had always lived in the shadow of his more accomplished brother, success was extremely important.

After Mr. Kobayashi’s departure, there was an awkward silence.

“Tei-kun,” said Mrs. Rexford. “Are you still playing pachinko as much as you used to?”

Her stepbrother replied, rather stiffly, that he was.

“Take me sometime,” she teased. “Come on!”

“No!” he said, scandalized. “You know nice women don’t go to pachinko parlors!”

“You could be my chaperone. It would be fun.”

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head grimly. “It wouldn’t be proper.” But exercising this masculine authority had revived his confidence; before long he was bragging again about business.

Long ago, Teinosuke Kobayashi had wielded great power within the family. As a child he had been instinctively clever about leveraging his position as a sick, motherless boy. When his stepmother disciplined him he sought out his father and complained, knowing he would get full sympathy. For Mr. Kobayashi had finally realized that although his wife performed all her duties with conscientious effort, she was never going to love him. And he found little ways to punish her for it.

Teinosuke also had a champion in Mrs. Asaki. If he ran down the lane to tell on his stepmother, the older woman marched right over to the Kobayashi house to demand an explanation for the boy’s tears. In those days, despite the boundaries protecting her own adopted daughter, Mrs. Asaki had no qualms about meddling and keeping her sister-in-law in her place.

Yoko, several years older than her stepbrother, had watched all this and seethed. Knowing better than to confront Mrs. Asaki or her stepfather, she did all she could to make life easier for her mother. Her grades were impeccable, as was her conduct at home. She kept a sharp eye on Teinosuke. She itched to punish him in private, but that would have created even more trouble for her mother.

Sarah had little sense of how hard those years had been for her grandmother. But she did understand that time had brought about a gradual power shift. She felt great sympathy for her uncle. Apparently her mother did too; her stepbrother’s reduced position brought out a noblesse oblige that was so warm and natural, so heartfelt, that even Sarah fell under its spell. Of course Mrs. Rexford was capable of putting on an act. And yet-the girl was sure of it-there was genuine kindness there, a kindness that belied or at least balanced out her earlier disparaging remarks.

“Remember that time, Tei-kun,” Mrs. Rexford was saying, “when you ate three bowls of noodle soup at one sitting? Aaa, those were the days, weren’t they?”

“They were, Big Sister,” he said. Sarah was moved by his childish honorific.

After a leisurely lunch, Teinosuke took his leave. He ruffled Sarah’s hair before stepping down into the vestibule. He had always been a kind uncle.

Afterward, washing dishes in the kitchen, Mrs. Rexford gave a snort of laughter. “Good Lord!” she said. “Will he ever stop putting on airs.” But she didn’t seem bothered. In fact, she seemed quite cheerful.