Mary Waters - The Favorites

Mrs. Asaki, confined to the Kyoto area all her life, had never had met anyone like her. She had never visited a dance hall. She had never worked outside the home. Every morning she followed her husband out into the lane, where she sent him off to work with a deep formal bow. Every Monday, he discreetly slipped her an envelope containing the household allowance for the week.

For the first time, the older woman had a dim sense of what she had missed: an unfettered, independent youth in which she might have tried out her own powers. Her envy was like physical pain. This would have surprised her Ueno neighbors if they had known, for in their eyes Mrs. Asaki’s beauty surpassed anything the newcomer had to offer. Locals compared her to the popular actress Sono Fujimoto, for they both had a doe-eyed beauty and drooping distinction. She was admired by men and women for her graceful way of sashaying in a kimono that made her look liquid, almost boneless.

That was a long time ago.

“I think I’ll lie down for a bit,” Mrs. Kobayashi said.

“Soh. Soh, of course. Would you like me to pull down some coverlets for you?”

“That’s very kind, but there’s really no need.”

Reluctantly, Mrs. Asaki took her leave. She hurried home to break the news to her daughter, the shopping bags banging against her legs.

Only then did she wonder what this might do to the carefully calibrated balance between the two houses.

In the Ueno neighborhood it was often said that Mrs. Asaki and her daughter made a picture-perfect pair. “Never a cross word between them, ne…,” they said with wistful sighs. “So respectful of each other-a pleasure to see.” One housewife had remarked, “They’re so polite. You’d almost think they were in-laws.” Only a careful observer would have noticed a certain thinness of flavor in their relationship, not unlike their cooking.

No one was more conscious of this than Mrs. Asaki herself.

How it started, she could not have said. She was better at acting than at reflecting. At any rate the process had been so gradual as to be invisible, like the growth of a child.

There was a time, decades ago, when Masako had been like any other child, with eyes only for her mother. Those early years still glowed in Mrs. Asaki’s memory for their simplicity, for their lack of the emotional ambivalence that would haunt her in later years. One of her favorite memories was the day she had taken little Masako to Umeya Shrine for her traditional Seven-Five-Three Blessing. She could still see it: a crowd of children aged seven, five, and three, dressed up in their best kimonos and tottering about in their shiny new slippers like bewildered little dolls. And among them was her precious Masako, the only girl to wear a tiny white fur wrapped around her neck over her pink silk kimono. Mrs. Asaki had sewn the entire outfit herself, sacrificing the last of her prewar finery.

And it had been worth it. “Look, Mama, I’m pretty,” little Masako had breathed, eyes shining as she reached up to pet the unaccustomed fur with the clumsy, reverent fingers of a five-year-old. And Mrs. Asaki had known a moment of keen joy.

That night at the Asaki house, dinner was subdued. Cooking was out of the question, so Mrs. Asaki phoned in a sushi order for both houses. The delivery boy had just come by on his bicycle, balancing on one hand a precariously high stack of lacquered wooden boxes. As usual, only the women and children sat at the low table. Mr. Nishimura didn’t come home until almost 9:00 P.M., a typical hour for a salaryman in middle management.

“I doubt if she’ll have any appetite,” said Mrs. Asaki. “But the sushi from Hideko is her favorite. If she can swallow even one or two bites, that’ll be better than nothing.”

There was a murmur of sympathetic agreement around the table. With guilty expressions, Momoko and Yashiko tried to eat more languidly. But it was hard, for sushi from Hideko was a rare and delectable treat.

“Probably Grandpa Kobayashi will make sure she eats,” said Momoko.

Mrs. Nishimura wasn’t eating much-just three pieces of sushi on a condiment plate-but that was normal. As a proper traditional wife, she ate just enough to tide her over until it was time to eat with her husband.

“I’ll go over first thing tomorrow,” Mrs. Nishimura said. Her eyelids were puffy. “She needs help in the kitchen, and the parlor has to be set up with the white cloth and everything, for when Sarah-chan brings home the ashes.”

She said this dispassionately but Mrs. Asaki, her antennae sharpened over the years, caught the hint of eagerness that still brought a bitter taste to her mouth. Their history was made up of such moments: her daughter irreproachable in her behavior, she jealous and wounded but unable to find fault. It was frustrating because on some deep, fundamental level, she knew she was being wronged.

“Soh, that’s a good idea.” What else could she say? With a tragedy like this, boundaries went out the window. She wished she could help Mrs. Kobayashi herself, but this was a job for a young, able-bodied woman.

“She could use the help,” Mrs. Asaki continued. “At least until her real family gets here.” As a subtle reminder, she put the faintest of emphasis on the word real.

Mrs. Nishimura busied herself realigning the condiment cruets in the center of the table: soy sauce, chili oil, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, sesame salt. After some time had passed she picked up the teapot-“Some more tea, Mother?”-and refilled her cup with a filial gesture. Something about the patient droop of her neck gave Mrs. Asaki a pang of remorse. She knew her daughter felt guilty, had always felt guilty, for not cleaving to her the way she should. To compensate, she treated her adopted mother with such kindness and politeness that it alienated them even more. There was nothing to be done for it. The heart wants what it wants. If circumstances were different, Mrs. Asaki would have sympathized with her dilemma.

She drank her tea. She was grateful, shudderingly grateful, that her own Masako was safe and alive. Even now she could hardly wrap her mind around this awful news. What irony: her own child was alive and Mrs. Kobayashi’s wasn’t. There was a story she had heard around the neighborhood: a man had donated a kidney to his sick brother, then died of complications while the sick brother went on to thrive with the kidney that wasn’t his.

Should the sick brother have given the kidney back?

No, she thought, biting into a slice of red tuna. It was rich and fatty on the tongue, the freshly ground wasabi warming her sinuses.

“Poor Sarah-chan, ne…,” Yashiko remarked to the table at large.

“Soh, poor Sarah-chan,” agreed her grandmother. “Think how lucky you are, both of you, that your mother’s right here beside you. It’s a sad thing indeed when a daughter takes her own mother for granted.”

There is something bracing, almost exhilarating, about a catastrophe. Like a typhoon, it sweeps away the small constraints of daily existence. It opens up the landscape to bold moves and rearrangements that would be unthinkable in normal times.

It was in such an atmosphere that they buried Shohei. The war was escalating. Shortly afterward, American bombs fell on Kobe, Mrs. Kobayashi’s birth city. Vast areas of the city burned down in the fires.

Mrs. Kobayashi’s family, the Sosetsus, barely escaped with their lives. Hitching a ride on a farmer’s oxcart, they made their way inland to Kyoto with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “We ran through the city with our coats over our heads,” Mrs. Kobayashi’s mother told them. She was freshly bathed, dressed in one of her daughter’s kimonos. Her air was so refined that it was hard for Mrs. Asaki to imagine her running at all. “Look,” she said, “where the embers burned through.” Everyone stared in awe at the scorch marks on the Sosetsus’ padded silk coats.