Mary Waters - The Favorites

“She’s grown!” she whispered to Mrs. Kobayashi.

“Yes. But she’s still the same little girl she always was,” Mrs. Kobayashi whispered back.

“She seems to be doing well.” The loss did not show on Sarah’s face as starkly as it did on her grandmother’s. Young people were resilient. But in the days to come, Mrs. Asaki would notice that sometimes, when the girl thought no one was looking, her eyes would take on the same unfocused glaze that Mrs. Kobayashi’s did.

“She has good restraint,” she added. She expected nothing less from a member of her own family, but one never knew with Americans.

It was time to move to the parlor. “Let’s welcome your mother home,” said Mrs. Asaki. She and Mrs. Kobayashi, fellow matriarchs, led the way into the incense-clouded parlor. The others trooped in after them, filling up the small room.

Mrs. Asaki was taken aback by the urn on the funerary table. She was expecting the usual: a ceramic container small enough to cup in the palm of her hand. But this was a wooden box of some sort-varnished, lacquered, handsome enough in its own way, but big enough to hold a potted plant.

“Americans don’t pick out the symbolic bones,” Sarah explained. “They keep all the ashes. That’s why it’s so big.”

“Ara maa,” Mrs. Nishimura said weakly.

“Granny, look! Auntie, look!” Eight-year-old Jun pointed to a red Japanese passport lying on the table among the flowers and fruits. “Big Sister had this taped right on the side of the box! Just like they pin notes on little kids in kindergarten.” He was clearly tickled by this comparison.

“I thought there’d be trouble getting her through customs,” Sarah said. “But the man at the airport was really, really nice about it.”

Everyone stood staring at the sturdy, outsized box.

“That’s a lot of ashes!” said Mr. Kobayashi from the back of the room.

Mrs. Nishimura turned to Mrs. Kobayashi. “Would you prefer to have the bones picked out properly? And placed in a more…ehh, fitting receptacle?”

“No, no.” Mrs. Kobayashi reached out and touched the box, as if to reassure her daughter within. “I don’t want her disturbed any further.”

“Maybe the Americans are right,” Mrs. Nishimura said softly. “The more we have of her, the better.”

Mrs. Asaki kept staring at the box, packed full of ashes by the gram. It was a stark reminder of the physicality of death. Her own time was drawing near.

“It’s somehow fitting, don’t you think?” said Mrs. Izumi. “It’s just like Big Sister.”

“Soh,” said Mrs. Nishimura. “She had such a presence, bigger and bolder than anyone else…” She laughed, her voice catching a little as she did so, and everyone laughed along with her. But the break in her voice had caught them unawares, and Mr. Kobayashi was heard to clear his throat.

Mrs. Rexford’s burial was a quiet affair, attended by only the two households.

“Let’s not bother telling anyone,” Mrs. Kobayashi said. “I simply haven’t the strength to deal with them all.” Normally such an attitude would have been self-indulgent and improper, but the circumstances were so unorthodox that it felt natural-and quite freeing-to make up rules as they went along. “Yo-chan wasn’t one for convention anyway,” she added.

“Proximity,” quoted Mrs. Asaki, “is the truest intimacy of all.”

They caught the JR-the Japan Railways train-at Nijo Station, next to Nijo Castle. It was the second stop on the route, so the platform was crowded. Mrs. Asaki and Mrs. Kobayashi, veterans of public transportation, scurried to the “silver seats” reserved for the elderly. The rest of the party, including Mr. Kobayashi, who was too proud to take advantage of his age, fended for themselves. They were soon lost to view in the crush of bodies swaying from overhead hand straps.

As the train wound its leisurely way through the city, discharging smartly dressed professionals along the way, the seats emptied and everyone could sit down. The stops grew increasingly obscure as the city limit gave way to open fields, bright yellow with rape flowers. The passengers changed as well: plainly dressed folk on errands, students in navy uniforms commuting to school. The atmosphere in the train was peaceful now, almost timeless, like the wartime trains they used to take out to the country for black-market rations.

Now, as then, Mrs. Asaki sat by the window. She gazed out at the open fields and rice paddies, at the encroaching foothills. The decades had left their mark. There were more roads now, more houses dotting the landscape-newer, smaller tract houses such as one saw in certain parts of the city. Every so often they passed an old-style farmhouse, the kind she remembered from her childhood: ponderous structures with steeply pitched, top-heavy roofs in the tradition of temple architecture.

“Have you noticed,” said Mrs. Kobayashi, “that Sarah’s hand-the place where her thumb attaches-is the spitting image of her mother’s?”

“Is that so?” said Mrs. Asaki sympathetically.

“Take a look when you get a chance. It’s uncanny.”

Mrs. Asaki was reminded of the years after Shohei’s death, when her sister-in-law would point out such traits in little Yoko: a certain crook of the arm, the curve of a brow. She hoped this meant Sarah would be replacing her mother in Mrs. Kobayashi’s heart. She was the natural choice, the one least disruptive to the status quo. But the girl lived so far away, and she was of the wrong generation. Who knew what unpredictable turns a mother’s heart might take?

They took two separate taxis to the temple. Mrs. Asaki sat by the window, her fatigue temporarily forgotten, clutching the sill with both hands and glancing about with eager eyes. She hadn’t been here in decades, not since the black-market days. There were no relatives left; they had died or scattered into oblivion.

“That wasn’t there before!” she exclaimed as they passed a snack shop on the corner. Her fellow passengers did not respond. Mrs. Nishimura was unfamiliar with the area, having grown up tending the Asaki gravesite in the city. Momoko and Yashiko were too young to care.

They rode on in silence. “I wonder if Sato-san’s place is still there…,” she said. Mr. Sato was the farmer who had bartered rice in exchange for their silks and family jewelry. After the transactions were completed, he always invited the Asakis to stay for lunch. His wife served sushi made with freshly killed raw chicken from their farm, for ocean fish was scarce in wartime. Squeamish at first, they eventually warmed to it and, in later years, even referred to it fondly.

Mrs. Asaki wished she had ridden in the same taxi as the Kobayashis. She and Mrs. Kobayashi could have reminisced together. We’re the only ones left, she thought.

“This place has completely changed!” she mourned.

“What did you expect, Grandma?” said Momoko. “This is the twentieth century.”

“Momoko,” admonished her mother in a low voice.

Mrs. Asaki’s excitement deflated before the girl’s withering tone. Over the last few years, a subtle change had come over Momoko. Her insolence had an underground quality; it never rose cleanly to the surface but would insinuate itself into some innocent remark. Her own Masako had never been this way, even in adolescence. Was it a modern thing? Sometimes Mrs. Asaki suspected it was indeed personal, that it stemmed from some deep-seated resentment she was at a loss to account for. She was baffled. In traditional families it was usually the parent who bore the brunt of such behavior.

The sting of it stayed with her while they greeted the priest and seated themselves for the formal ceremony.