Mary Waters - The Favorites

Mrs. Asaki laughed and clapped her hands. “Well, that’s Yoko for you,” she said. She had always been fond of her plucky niece, and she felt extraordinarily pleased that Mrs. Kobayashi had managed to pull this off. “Even in death, she doesn’t follow the same rules as everyone else!”

The burial, at least, would be traditional. It would take place thirty-five days after death, following a formal sutra ceremony. In the meantime, the Kobayashis were holding a monthlong wake in their home. Sarah would arrive in two weeks and stay until the burial.

Mrs. Asaki dropped by the Kobayashi house every so often, prayer beads tucked into her clutch purse, to offer up a prayer and discreetly check on the situation. She brought little gifts: flowers for the funerary table, a monetary envelope to help pay for So-Zen Temple ’s sutra services during the wake, a plate of altar-worthy fruit. It wasn’t that she expected to catch them at anything. After this many years, it was unlikely that anything would happen. Even if it did, they would be far too careful to risk being caught. So it was a masochistic exercise, really. But the old woman had always believed in the power of prevention.

Today she approached the Kobayashi house with an armful of peach blossoms. The air in the lane had a caressing, restless quality peculiar to spring, as if it had just floated in from distant, sun-warmed fields. She sniffed with appreciation but also a little sadness, for this year she didn’t feel part of it. A new physical weariness had been dragging at her lately. The changing of seasons was always hard on the body, but this tiredness was different. In the last few weeks, she had increasingly felt the full weight of her eighty-three years.

Mr. Kobayashi was standing outside the kitchen entrance, smoking a cigarette.

“Aaa,” he said in greeting, bobbing his head with a friendly nod. He lifted his face and exhaled a mouthful of white smoke that floated up into the low-hanging cherry branches overhead, blending in with the white blossoms.

“Is it mist, or is it cloud,” she quipped, quoting a line from the classic cherry blossom song.

Her brother chuckled and nodded his head again. They always treated each other affably, although they weren’t particularly close. There was no animosity; they simply didn’t have much to say to each other. Even in childhood she had been closer to Shohei, who was small enough to cling to her after their mother’s death. Kenji, the middle child, was an independent boy who moved in his own orbit. It was odd, she thought, how two people so biologically close could end up being practically strangers.

“Such a thing, ne…,” Mrs. Asaki said now, referring to the death. She wondered what he was feeling. He had a soft spot for his stepdaughter, she knew. Over the years, as he gradually lost interest in his own son, he had come to admire the child his brother had left behind. He had admired Yoko’s intelligence and her accomplishments, which brought him honor over the years, and he had also admired her fierce and loyal spirit, though he himself had never been on its receiving end. It reminded Mrs. Asaki of his unrequited feelings for his wife. She felt a rush of pity for her brother.

“Aaa, aaa,” Mr. Kobayashi agreed. He took another drag of his cigarette. Then, the conversation being over, he rolled open the kitchen door to accommodate her flower-laden hands.

Stepping inside, she smelled fish stock simmering on the stove. Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Nishimura were seated together at the low dining table, sharing a quiet moment over tea. They didn’t look up as the door rolled open; they must have thought it was Mr. Kobayashi. In the brief instant before they realized her presence, Mrs. Asaki had a clear view of the soft, contented look on her daughter’s face.

She felt that old twist of jealous misery. She had often felt it when her daughter was in her teens, but that rarely happened now, with her daughter fully grown and the boundaries so fixed between the two houses. So this moment, coming on top of her fatigue, surprised her with its impact. She was no longer a match-she realized it now-for the sheer tenacity, the sheer life force, that was her daughter’s longing. It was like a stubborn mold spore that refused to die, biding its time for years and years.

Now the two women noticed her. After a brief, awkward moment, they invited her, “Come on up! Have a seat!” with expansive, welcoming gestures.

“No, no,” she laughed, stepping slowly up onto the tatami matting. “I can’t stay. I’m just here to say a quick prayer for Yo-chan…”

“Are those peach blossoms?” said Mrs. Kobayashi. Even in her grief, she was staunchly lipsticked, powdered, and pompadoured. “Maa, how lovely. Are they from the Morinaga vendor?”

“Soh,” affirmed Mrs. Asaki. “They’re nicer than cherry, I thought.” As if to make sure, she held out the long branches, with their reddish-pink blooms, at arm’s length. “Not quite as common.”

Mrs. Nishimura got up from her floor cushion and relieved her mother of the flowers. “Thank you, let me go arrange them,” she said, as if this was her home now and Mrs. Asaki was a guest.

Mrs. Asaki shuffled slowly down the hallway toward the other end of the house. She no longer had the energy to keep wrestling for her daughter’s heart. It was an indulgence, and she would have to give it up. At least her daughter would be there for her in old age. She would be taken care of, no matter what.

In the parlor, the glass panels had been opened to let in the spring air. The clear light, not yet tinged by the green foliage of summer, shone through the white gauze curtains and illuminated the currents of incense circulating in the room. She knelt before the funerary table, took out her prayer beads, and lit another incense stick. Before striking the miniature gong she glanced briefly at the framed photograph, taken four years ago during the O-bon festival. Mrs. Rexford looked relaxed and maternal in a summer cotton yukata. It touched Mrs. Asaki to see the womanly warmth that had replaced her niece’s expression of wary attention.

She was an old woman and had prayed at many wakes. The first had been her mother’s, when she was still a young girl in the country. “Pray with all your might,” her elders had told her. They explained how, during those thirty-five days, her mother would labor up a mountain wearing a white funerary robe and carrying a wooden staff, her forehead adorned with a small white triangle of cloth. “Dead spirits are reluctant to leave this world,” they had explained. “They’re afraid of the unknown so they keep looking back, they keep stalling. It’s our job to help them along. Each prayer we say is like a strong hand at her back, pushing her up that mountain. So encourage her. Tell her, ‘Keep going! Keep climbing, Mother! You’re almost there!’”

In this spirit Mrs. Asaki now prayed for her niece, physically leaning her torso into the words of the sutra. She remembered her athletic physique, her powerful tennis backhand, and she hoped those qualities would help to ease the difficulty of the climb. This one, she thought, will pass into the next world with a minimum of fuss. She’ll go bravely, in order to spare her mother.

As she prayed she felt as if she, too, was laboring up a mountain. For the first time in her healthy life, she felt unequal to the climb before her.

Mrs. Nishimura entered the parlor just as Mrs. Asaki was putting away her prayer beads. She set down a celadon bowl from which the plum branches, their bases secured on short iron spikes, rose up at random angles like the live branches of a tree.

“Well done!” said Mrs. Asaki, admiring this simple arrangement with maternal pride. Ikebana was her special talent, one she had successfully passed down to her daughter.