Mary Waters - The Favorites

“Remember how quiet the weavers’ alley was just now?” Mrs. Kobayashi said. “That’s the way it was in wartime, when I was a young woman.”

Sarah remembered her mother’s comment about looms moving in tandem with the stock market. “It’s odd,” she said, “that even in this bad economy, there’re all these new buildings. So many things changing.”

“Not everyone’s hurting, I guess.”

They approached the “expensive” fish store. The open-air market had two seafood stores: the expensive place with the good-quality seafood, and the cheap place with affordable seafood, mostly imported.

“You’re visiting at the perfect time,” her grandmother told her. “The fish right now, the big heavy cold-current ones, they’re at their fattiest this time of year. Sashimi is at its prime!”

Sarah noticed there were no customers in line. Plenty of people were bending over the crushed-ice display, but no one was buying.

One of the vendors, a shrewd older woman, came out from behind the counter to show Mrs. Kobayashi her most expensive items. “Madam!” she said by way of greeting. “After your granddaughter goes home to America you’ll be kicking yourself, with all due respect, for not letting her taste this highest-quality roe! At its absolute prime, madam, this time of year!” She waited, with a complacent smile, as Mrs. Kobayashi wavered. Reaching out a hand, she let it hover dramatically over a display of enormous scallops. “Sashimi grade,” she said simply. “Flown in a few hours ago from Hokkaido.”

It occurred to Sarah that she hadn’t heard her grandmother bargain in a long time. That practice must have gone out of style.

In no time at all, the woman was wrapping up their fatty sashimi plus several other unplanned purchases. She rang up the total on a cash register. “It’ll be good for the young miss,” she reassured Mrs. Kobayashi, “to eat good-quality seafood prepared properly in her granny’s kitchen. In America ”-her eyes slid over in Sarah’s direction-“those people eat their fish cooked in vegetable oil.”

Sarah laughed, tickled by her expert salesmanship. The vendor responded with a homey smile, revealing a gold tooth.

“You have your mother’s laugh, don’t you,” she said wonderingly. “Startles me every time, miss, coming from that American face.”

Sarah, who had long ago outgrown her insecurity over her Caucasian features, could appreciate this paradox. “She’s right, you know,” she told her grandmother as they walked away. “I don’t resemble anyone on my Japanese side.”

“You have lots of family characteristics,” Mrs. Kobayashi said firmly. She counted them on her fingers: a widow’s peak, a thumb that joined her hand at exactly the same angle that her grandfather Shohei’s had, a floating cyst on her neck that had been passed down through several generations of Kobayashis.

“And let’s not forget your voice.” Sarah’s voice was identical to her mother’s. In the early days, whenever Sarah said “moshi moshi” over the telephone, Mrs. Kobayashi had felt a wild lurch of hope that her daughter’s death had all been a big mistake.

“And on top of all that,” the old woman concluded, “you have the same open presence your mother and your grandfather had.”

Sarah pondered this as they turned homeward. She wondered what her grandfather Shohei would think if he could see them now: an unlikely pair! She imagined his shock and bewilderment at seeing his own wife walking alongside an American, channeling to her all the love that had once gone to him.

Walking abreast, they turned off the main street. They passed the Kinjin-ya teahouse and entered a narrow residential lane that headed west toward So-Zen Temple. On Sarah’s last visit this lane had been gravel; now it was paved. Their shoes made flat slapping sounds against the blacktop, and Sarah missed the gentle k’sha k’sha that had so often reminded her of walking on new-fallen snow.

The sun broke through briefly, its pale light slanting tentatively into the lane. Many of the rickety doors had been replaced by sturdier models with slats of brown plastic instead of traditional wood. One corner house had been torn down altogether and replaced with a Western-style model home, complete with white aluminum siding and a door that opened with a knob. Hanging from the knocker was a painted wooden cutout of a puppy, holding in its smiling mouth a nameplate spelling out THE MATSUDAS in English letters.

A bicycle bell tinged behind them. They backed off to the side, careful not to bump into a motor scooter parked beside one of the doors. A straight-backed housewife rode past with a bow of thanks, her wire basket filled with newspaper-wrapped groceries.

“We’ll have this sashimi for lunch, with hot rice,” Mrs. Kobayashi said as they resumed walking abreast. “You’re not here for very long, so we need to plan the menu carefully. We can’t afford to let a single meal go to waste.” Energized by this task before her, she walked briskly. “Do you have any cravings?” she said. “If you do, tell me now.”

“Grandma?” Sarah asked. “Whatever happened to the little lane that hadn’t changed in generations?” That summer day, when she and her mother had strolled home after eating azuki ice, already belonged to a different lifetime. “You know, the lane with the thatched roofs?”

Mrs. Kobayashi gave a short, puzzled laugh as Sarah described it to her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “They’ve torn a lot of those down.” Then she suddenly stopped short. “Sarah-chan,” she said, “do you remember if we locked the kitchen door when we left?”

A few more years, Sarah thought, and these lanes would be unrecognizable. She imagined a day in the future, perhaps when her grandmother was gone, when she might walk through these lanes with her own daughter-a child with even less Japanese blood than she. And a certain quality of reproach in the slant of sunlight would remind her with a pang, as it did now, of her mother’s confident voice saying, “It’s never going to change, I’m sure.”

“Once, when I was a girl,” Sarah would tell her daughter, gripping her hand tightly, “I walked these lanes just like you, with my own mother.” Saying these inadequate words, she would sense keenly how much fell away with time, how lives intersected but only briefly.

“Thank goodness I remembered the shiso leaves,” Mrs. Kobayashi said now, leaning over and peering into Sarah’s string bag. “When you were little you refused to eat your sashimi and rice without it, remember? Maa, I never saw such a particular child!”

“That wasn’t me, Grandma,” Sarah said. “That was Mama.”

“Oh…” Mrs. Kobayashi was silent for a moment. “Well, that would make more sense, ne,” she said finally. “Poor thing. Autumn hiramasa was her favorite. But we couldn’t afford it during the postwar years. Then just when things got better and she could have eaten her fill, she moved away…”

Sarah looked over at the old woman beside her. Mixed in with her sympathy was a certain satisfaction: here was someone who still mourned, who still hurt deeply and had not forgotten.

“Grandma,” she said, in the gentle tone she had often heard her mother use. “There’s no use thinking like that. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Mrs. Kobayashi quickened her pace, as she sometimes did when she was feeling emotional. “People don’t always get the luxury of timing,” she said.

One day Sarah noticed that her grandmother had bought more roasted eels than the two of them could eat.

“Do you want me to take some over to Auntie’s?” she asked.

“No, no. There isn’t enough for everyone in that house. This isn’t cheap, you know.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “The extra portion’s for your auntie’s anemia. What I do, ne, is flag her down sometimes when she passes by the kitchen door. I sneak her in for a quick bite, and no one’s the wiser. Or sometimes I give her liver-you know, the kind I always make for you with ginger and soy sauce. Of course it’s a secret.”