The Favorites

chapter 23

It was a sunny afternoon well into spring. Cherry petals, crisscrossed with bicycle tracks, littered the Ueno lanes like old snow.

Mrs. Asaki had come home from shopping downtown, dragging her tired feet through the dirty petals. She tapped on the Kobayashis’ kitchen door in order to drop off a package of seasonal grass dumplings. There was no answer. Gingerly, she slid open the door-the short curtain wasn’t drawn, so someone had to be home-and heard a strange keening coming from the family room. Slipping off her shoes, she stepped up onto the tatami floor.

Mrs. Kobayashi, seated at the low table, looked up with bloodshot eyes.

“Yoko’s dead…,” she said.

“Hehh?” Mrs. Asaki’s shopping bags, all five of them, hit the floor with a thud. She sank down beside her sister-in-law. “Yo-chan? Dead?!?”

“Sarah just telephoned.” Sarah was eighteen and in her first year of college. “Yo-chan and her husband were driving somewhere together, and…” Mrs. Kobayashi winced, as if talking hurt her.

“Was it an accident?”

“It was instantaneous…both of them.”

They continued to sit, at a loss for words.

It felt eerily similar to when Shohei had died in the war. Then, too, the news had come from afar. Like his daughter he had died in a strange land, suddenly and in his prime. Mrs. Asaki remembered young Mrs. Kobayashi saying, “I just got a telegram…,” with that same odd catch in her voice.

Mrs. Asaki’s grief for Shohei had been intense, for the siblings were close. After their mother died, she had cared for him like her own son.

Now she said helplessly, “It’s a terrible thing. A terrible thing.”

Mrs. Kobayashi nodded.

If only she would cry, thought Mrs. Asaki. In the old days, her sister-in-law had trusted her enough to cry in her presence. Together they had sobbed over Shohei’s death. It was the first time Mrs. Asaki had felt close to her. Until then, she had secretly resented this young woman who had captured her brother’s heart so easily and completely. She wasn’t proud of her feelings, and luckily Mrs. Kobayashi never suspected.

Mrs. Asaki’s dislike went deeper than just Shohei; she had felt it in her gut the first time they met. Her sister-to-be had worn a Western dress of sky blue, with a purple sash and a small bunch of violets pinned dashingly at the base of her V-neckline. She had an air-not arrogance so much as a kind of bright self-satisfaction, typical of girls who had been sheltered all their lives.

“What a fashionable dress,” Mrs. Asaki had said.

“Oh, it’s just cheap fabric…I’m embarrassed, seeing the beautiful kimonos here in Kyoto.” It was a perfectly correct response, but her expression belied the words.

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.”

chapter 24

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.

“What about your ships…?” asked Mrs. Asaki. The Sosetsus’ import business was the mainstay of their wealth.

“Gone,” said one of the sons bitterly. “All except two that were out at sea. Our entire fleet was in that harbor.”

Mrs. Asaki was enthralled in spite of herself. An entire fleet, destroyed! Her in-laws had sunk from wealth to poverty in the blink of an eye.

“I can’t get over it,” she said later that night to her husband. “What a change of fortune!”

“It could have been us,” he said in dazed wonder.

“Yes, it could have been us…” They were silent, pondering the upheaval the war had brought. The Asakis were doing better than their neighbors, even in this time of food rationing. Mr. Asaki was a high school superintendent. His public office gave him access to black-market channels in the prefectural bribery system. And Mrs. Asaki had farming relatives out in the country, a fact that had once embarrassed her.

“They can’t possibly squeeze into that little house,” Mr. Asaki said.

“Of course not!” There were six of them: Mrs. Kobayashi, her mother, three siblings ranging in age from thirteen to twenty, and four-year-old Yoko. When Mrs. Kobayashi delivered her baby, there would be seven in all. “She and Yo-chan should move in with us,” she said, “till that family gets back on their feet.”

She ran her eyes over the too-large house-the wide expanse of tatami matting, the long empty halls. She and her husband had always hoped for children. But now, on the brink of forty, she knew it was never going to happen.

“It’ll be nice,” she said, “having small children here.”

The months passed. Japan surrendered in 1945. Mrs. Kobayashi gave birth to a baby girl called Masako.

One day Mrs. Sosetsu paid the Asakis a formal call and announced they were moving back to Kobe. “We have a hard road ahead,” she said, “but Kobe is our home.” Her bows were deep and controlled, but the emotion in her face was real. “We can never repay you for what you’ve done,” she said. “We’ll never forget your kindness.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Asaki. He and his wife bowed back in unison. “We wish you all the best.”

“We wish you all the best,” echoed Mrs. Asaki. This house was going to be lonely without little Yoko and the baby.

That night at dinner she asked, “Will you be moving back to Kobe as well?” Her eyes shifted from her sister-in-law to the baby strapped on her back. Masako was fast asleep; her cheek, round and soft as a dumpling, lay against her mother’s shoulder.

“I’d like to,” said Mrs. Kobayashi wistfully. “But there aren’t any jobs in Kobe for someone like me. My children and I would just be a burden.” She paused. “No no, Yo-chan,” she told the little girl, who was reaching across the table with her chopsticks. “If you want more radishes, say, ‘Please pass the radishes.’”

“Please pass the radishes,” said Yoko obediently.

“When this rationing is over,” said Mr. Asaki jovially, “we’ll have meat again! And fresh fish from the coast! What do you think about that!”

The child looked at him blankly, then turned her attention to the boiled radishes.

“I’ll move back across the street and get an office job,” said Mrs. Kobayashi.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Asaki, “and I can look after the children.”

Mr. Asaki, who came from a traditional Kyoto family, looked up sharply from his rice bowl. “Times may be bad,” he said, “but not so bad that a woman under my care has to go out in the workplace to be ordered about by strangers. What you need to do is get remarried.”

Mrs. Kobayashi looked young and trapped. Mrs. Asaki’s heart went out to her. Ever since Shohei died, the two women had become close. But Mrs. Asaki’s sympathy was still tinged with a smug sort of pleasure in knowing that her sister-in-law’s charmed days were now behind her.

Her husband, as if thinking along these same lines, continued. “You’re not a privileged young girl anymore, working for pocket money.” Then, more gently, “I know something of this world. I know it isn’t kind or respectful to women over a certain age who work for their food. And you’d barely support your children on what you’d make.”

“He’s right, dear,” said Mrs. Asaki. “Servitude in some office isn’t the answer.”

They were silent. Baby Masako flung out an arm in sleep. Little Yoko hunched over her bowl, picking out one grain of rice at a time with her chopsticks.

“Besides,” said Mr. Asaki, “how many multinational companies are there in Kyoto anyway?” He leaned back and took a swallow of tea.

“Let’s think on it, ne, dear?” said Mrs. Asaki soothingly. “We’ll put our heads together and come up with a really good plan.”

It was then that the wheels in her mind began to turn.

chapter 25

The morning after Yoko’s death, Mrs. Nishimura headed down the lane with a bulky bundle-food and various supplies-wrapped in a purple silk furoshiki cloth. Mrs. Asaki stood on the upstairs balcony, hanging up socks and handkerchiefs to dry, and watched her go. Her daughter looked up and waved with her free hand. She waved back.

Later that day Mrs. Nishimura came home with a wealth of information. She recounted it all in painstaking detail, as if to ease her mother’s mind by being as transparent as possible.

There would be no funeral, she said. Since Yoko had married into the Rexford family, it was technically not the Kobayashis’ place to give her one.

“I’m sure the funeral in America will be very nice,” Mrs. Asaki said.

Momoko looked doubtful. “I heard they don’t even have cremation ceremonies in America,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter. At least they do cremations.”

By all rights Mrs. Rexford’s ashes should have stayed overseas as the property of her husband’s family. “But it’s not as if there’s a Rexford cemetery,” Mrs. Nishimura explained, “or even a Rexford family.” Apparently Mr. Rexford had always planned to have his ashes scattered over the ocean. While that option was fitting and right for her father, Sarah had thought it wrong, somehow, for her mother. Although Mrs. Rexford had never actually stated her burial preference, other than to say she wanted cremation, Sarah felt sure she would have wanted to be buried in her homeland.

“Well, naturally!” said Mrs. Asaki.

Over the next few days, Mrs. Nishimura took charge of the wake preparations. While Mr. and Mrs. Kobayashi dealt with the voluminous paperwork for the temple’s genealogical records (they were complex and highly accurate, going back for centuries), Mrs. Nishimura transformed the parlor. She set up a long low table, covered with a ceremonial white cloth, in front of the tokonoma alcove. She sifted through family photographs to find the most recent picture of Mrs. Rexford, which she framed and decorated with a black funerary band. This would stand on the low table, along with the cremated remains when they arrived. She bought incense sticks and small prayer candles for visitors to light when they came to pay their respects. Since incense had to be burned round the clock until the burial, she stocked up on special twelve-hour sticks that would burn through the night. She placed an order to have a personalized tablet made; this would be placed in the family altar after the burial.

More news followed. Mrs. Kobayashi had made private arrangements with the temple authorities to have her daughter’s ashes laid to rest in the Kobayashi family plot.

“How did she manage that?” cried Mrs. Asaki in astonishment. “Yo-chan married out of the family line!”

“No one knows,” said Mrs. Nishimura in her soft voice. “But a bereaved and determined mother can do surprising things.”

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.

As if to make up for having lingered over tea earlier, Mrs. Nishimura now removed a clean cloth from her apron pocket and began polishing the varnished wood of the tokonoma. “The priest’s coming in a few hours,” she remarked. “And then the Izumis are coming tomorrow.” She ran her cloth over the surface with the sure movements of a woman who had grown accustomed to her surroundings. Mrs. Asaki knew what a thrill it must have been for her daughter to spend time here, inhabiting the Kobayashis’ intimate space for the first time since those long-ago days when she had played with the Kobayashi children.

“What time are they coming?” she asked, referring to the Izumis.

“Late afternoon, I think she said.” Mrs. Nishimura sounded wistful, for this meant her time here was drawing to its end.

Mrs. Asaki now rose to her feet, and an involuntary sigh of exertion escaped her.

“Are you still feeling tired, Mother?” Mrs. Nishimura sounded concerned. “I’ll bring home some of that fish broth.” She was making it from scratch to build up Mrs. Kobayashi’s strength, using kelp for its iodine and red snapper heads for the therapeutic benefits of their glands and cartilage. This had once been a common household practice, but in the last decade or so, Ueno housewives had switched over to dehydrated fish powder.

“No, no,” protested Mrs. Asaki. “She needs every drop of that broth. We both know she isn’t well.” Mrs. Kobayashi had suffered from episodes of weakened eyesight where everything skittered into flashing lights. Once, on her way home from the bathhouse, her knees had turned to jelly for no reason and she had collapsed onto the pavement.

“But you don’t seem well either,” Mrs. Nishimura said doubtfully.

“No, no,” Mrs. Asaki insisted, “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Well then, if you’re absolutely sure…”

“I’m sure.”

If only her daughter was more like Yoko, with that willful protectiveness that warmed the heart. “Nonsense, Mother,” she would have insisted. “There’s plenty in the pot. I’m bringing some home, and I’m going to make you drink it!”

chapter 26

But maybe Masako was born that way, thought Mrs. Asaki as she shuffled down the lane. Having grown up in the country, she knew firsthand how gestational environment affected the personalities of young animals. During her first pregnancy Mrs. Kobayashi had been happy; she had been in love. She was constantly nibbling on some newfangled treat Shohei had brought home: imported bananas, buttered popcorn, Chinese pork buns. But her second pregnancy was filled with worry and grief. She had scraped by-as they all had-on a substandard diet.

This very lane, now covered over with gravel, had once been their only source of greens. The neighbors had farmed it until it was nothing but a narrow dirt path cutting through rows of radishes and chrysanthemum shoots and spinach. In between their black-market trips to the country, the Asakis, too, had coaxed vegetables out of the meager city soil, which they fertilized with human excrement carried out discreetly in covered buckets.

The things that shape us, she thought.

Take her own life. What if she had adopted a child like Yoko? What if she had given birth to her own children? What kind of person would she have turned out to be?

And most important: what if she had allowed her only chance for a child to slip through her fingers?

War had created an opportunity. And Mrs. Asaki had grabbed it, with a cunning aggression that surprised even herself.

Heart pounding, she had broached the first part of her plan to her sister-in-law. “Why not marry Kenji?” she said. “He’s coming home from Manchuria soon. And he’s always been sweet on you.” It was the perfect solution. They both needed spouses; the children needed a mother and father. All their family problems could be solved at once.

This time, when she saw the trapped look on her sister-in-law’s face, she felt only a faint irritation.

Mrs. Kobayashi’s lips worked silently as she searched for a polite excuse. “But-his child is the same age as Masako!” she said finally. It was a good point. Second marriages, especially those with children from both sides, were best forgotten by the public. But how was this possible, with two siblings so close in age? It would be obvious they came from different parents.

“I have a solution,” said Mrs. Asaki. She was starting to sweat under her kimono. She shrank with distaste from what she was about to do.

“We’ve always wanted a child of our own,” she began. She steeled herself to meet Mrs. Kobayashi’s startled eyes. The words poured out: they could adopt little Masako. The neighbors could be trusted to keep quiet. All the children could still grow up together, right on the same lane. No one would have to miss out on anything.

“After all,” she concluded, “these kinds of arrangements have been going on for centuries.”

The amazement in Mrs. Kobayashi’s eyes changed to gradually dawning awareness. For a brief unguarded instant, her eyes narrowed with hate.

Mrs. Asaki’s own shame twisted into an answering flash of anger. This young woman had an inflated sense of what life owed her. How quickly she had forgotten the staggering debt her family owed. Where was her gratitude now?

“It seems to me you’re forgetting how society works,” Mrs. Asaki told her coldly. “Families survive by helping one another. We were there for you and your family in your worst hour of need. Who’ll be there for us, when we’re old and helpless with no children to look after us?”

Mrs. Kobayashi hung her head and said nothing.

“You already have children,” Mrs. Asaki said. “You’re young and healthy.” She was stung by the unfairness of it. “You can still have many more.”

Years later, when Mrs. Asaki broke the news to Masako about her adoption, she related these events in a far more benign light. In her version, both parties came to a mutual decision in the spirit of what was best for the family. Which, if one really thought about it, was exactly what had happened.

She told her daughter on her twentieth birthday, when she turned legally of age. She took her into the parlor to formally deliver the news.

“What a pity your father’s not here,” she said. Mr. Asaki had died two years earlier from lung complications. “He wanted so much to see you grow up.”

Masako listened carefully as her mother told the story. But she didn’t seem shocked. She asked no questions. Did she already know? That possibility had never occurred to Mrs. Asaki.

Masako finally asked one question. “Was she sad,” she asked, “the day she gave me up?” She said this calmly, almost conversationally. But the nakedness in her eyes gave her away.

“Why yes, of course she was!” cried Mrs. Asaki. Then she paused. Part of her wanted to keep going, because it was what her daughter needed to hear. But the other part of her was reluctant.

So she compromised. “She shed a tear, and she stroked your head one last time before she handed you over to me,” she said. “Then she bowed, and I bowed, and she thanked me for agreeing to raise you as my own.”

In reality there had been no tears. Mrs. Kobayashi had seemed vacant, almost distracted; her complexion had a yellowish cast and there were dark circles under her eyes. And there was no ceremonial handing over of the child. When Mrs. Kobayashi took formal leave of the Asaki house, baby Masako had been sound asleep upstairs. While the two women exchanged formal bows and polite phrases in the outer guest vestibule, little Yoko stood quietly by, her shoes on and ready to go. She made no fuss, she did not ask after her little sister, she did not clutch on to the hanging sleeve of her mother’s kimono. She seemed to sense that her mother was no longer strong enough to deal with childish demands. When Mrs. Kobayashi finally ushered her down the garden path toward the outer gate, the little girl had looked back with an expression of such gravity, such adult sentience, that Mrs. Asaki had shivered.

chapter 27

Back in her own house, Mrs. Asaki padded down the long hall toward the kitchen. It was time to make advance preparations for dinner.

She hadn’t cooked in years. She had given it up when her daughter became the lady of the house. It was good to be back in charge again while her daughter was away.

But ara, what was this unwelcome intrusion? Mr. Nishimura was vacuuming the tatami floor of the informal dining area, wearing a thin undershirt and jogging pants. He did this every Sunday on his day off-Mrs. Asaki always heard the vacuum cleaner from the other side of the house-but she’d never realized how much he spread himself around in the process. The low table, pushed off to the side, was piled with his Sunday newspapers. Two empty bottles of beer stood among them. His jogging jacket lay flung into a corner of the room, and the radio had been switched to some unfamiliar station playing enka, those heartfelt torch songs heard in traditional drinking houses.

At his mother-in-law’s entrance, Mr. Nishimura’s expansive air shrank. This was her house, after all.

“Maa maa, so busy at work! Much obliged,” laughed Mrs. Asaki as she passed through the dining area into the kitchen. She cast a pointed glance at all the clutter on the low table.

Mr. Nishimura grinned at her, but as soon as he was done vacuuming he gathered up his newspapers and beer bottles and jacket, then slipped off to another part of the house.

He was a good man. Mrs. Asaki had picked him out herself, with the help of a matchmaker. She had chosen astutely and well. He was a good companion for her daughter, and in all these years he had not disappointed. But she was still vigilant-on warm nights she left the upstairs glass panels slightly open, so she could hear his footsteps on the gravel and check them against the clock beside her futon.

He wasn’t the kind of man she would have chosen for herself. Years ago, his coworkers had gone on strike because management had been grossly unfair. Mr. Nishimura, afraid of losing his job, hadn’t joined them. When his coworkers were fired, he received a promotion for his loyalty. Mrs. Asaki had been filled with quiet contempt. Her own husband would have never been so cowardly. But as a mother, she was glad that Masako and the girls would be safe.

The Kobayashi daughters had not chosen arranged marriages. This was hardly surprising, given their mother’s history. Take Yoko and her American husband-but there was no point in comparing Yoko to anyone; she was always the exception. Tama, on the other hand, had been coaxed by her father into some introductory meetings.

Back around that time, Mrs. Asaki had visited the Kobayashi house and found Tama alone, looking over some résumés that a matchmaker had dropped off. Little Sarah was hovering over her aunt’s shoulder, even though she was too young to read.

“You’re breathing on my neck,” Tama said irritably. She was in a bad mood. Her college sweetheart, Masahiro Izumi, had not yet proposed.

She eventually relented, allowing the little girl to hold two photographs that had come with the résumé. It was a running joke that parents always reached for the résumé first-which listed a candidate’s education, current employment, parents’ affiliations, and hobbies-whereas young people reached for the photographs.

“Maa, pictures! What fun! Let’s see!” Mrs. Asaki dropped onto her knees beside the child, who obligingly held out the photographs so they could both share. In one photo, an earnest-looking young man stood in a formal suit; in another, he stood on a riverbank and grinned as he held up a fish on a line. Wordlessly, Tama handed over the accompanying résumé. Mrs. Asaki scrutinized it.

“He seems like a fine candidate,” she told her niece. “Well educated, hardworking, with a good future.”

“Yes,” said Tama brightly. “And in his free time, he enjoys fishing!” Her voice held such amused contempt that the little girl glanced up with interest.

Mrs. Asaki felt the sharp sting of insult. Her own daughter had married a man like this-Mr. Nishimura’s résumé was almost interchangeable with the one she held in her hands. But she could secretly relate to her niece; she would have felt the same way in her position. For Mrs. Asaki, too, knew what it was to possess beauty and charm, to have the arrogance that came from having options.

Introductory meetings had been arranged-the tense, stilted kind with both sets of parents present. A few weeks later, Mrs. Rexford dropped by with an update.

“She sabotaged it,” she said, eyes dancing. “What a show! She talked nonstop about herself, she kept interrupting…” She gave a ringing laugh of approval. “I told her, ‘Tama-chan, it’s not such a stretch from your usual behavior!’”

“Ara!” said Mrs. Asaki.

“Our father’s giving up out of sheer embarrassment.”

“That’s a shameful way to act,” said Mrs. Asaki. “Wasting everybody’s time.”

“Well, the whole business is downright medieval,” Mrs. Rexford retorted. “Marriage isn’t a job opening. It’s pathetic, having to get interviewed like some kind of applicant.”

Mrs. Asaki felt an echo of her long-ago dislike for Mrs. Kobayashi and her port-city airs.

Luckily, Masako hadn’t rebelled like her cousins. But then her situation was different. She had attended an all-girls’ college; it was what her father wanted. And college aside, she lacked that certain wayward sparkle with which her cousins had drawn young men their way.

No, Masako had never caused her parents the least bit of trouble, even as a child. For this Mrs. Asaki was grateful, even smug. But she had felt a dim sort of worry when she saw how the neighborhood children, especially Yoko, shielded her from the full brunt of their rough games.

As the years passed, Mrs. Asaki had taken a special interest in Sarah’s upbringing, for she, too, was an only child. On the surface her grand-niece seemed quiet and well mannered, just as Masako had been. But in Sarah’s eyes there was nothing shuttered; Mrs. Asaki suspected she could transition quickly into anger or grief. And why not? There would be no consequences if she did. The Rexfords were self-contained, living far away from family or anyone who cared. Mrs. Asaki yearned for their simple life.

Sometimes she dared to wonder if Masako’s docility came from being adopted. They had tried so hard to give her a carefree childhood. But if there had been a leak…if her daughter had carried that burden all those years and never come to her…But no, that possibility didn’t bear thinking about.

chapter 28

Across the lane at the Kobayashi house, Mrs. Nishimura was leaving for the day.

She stepped down from the tatami floor into the kitchen vestibule. Mrs. Kobayashi followed her down to see her out. Standing close together on the small square of cement, they slid their feet into comfortable household flats.

The older woman reached out and, in a spontaneous gesture of warmth, gripped her daughter’s hands in both of her own. “Thank you, Ma-chan,” she said. “Thank you for everything. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Pleased and shy, Mrs. Nishimura squeezed silently back.

She had a sudden memory of standing in this very same spot with her sister Yoko. She was thirteen years old. There had been a birthday party for little Tama, and the children had feasted on fried chicken. This unusual dish, resurrected from Mrs. Kobayashi’s Kobe days, had excited the young guests. Frilled drumsticks clutched in bare hands, they laughed and joked with boisterous abandon.

Masako, crowded around the low table with the others, felt something within her loosen and spread out in this easy warmth. It had been several months since she last visited this house. Now that the children were older, they were busy with their own friends, their own activities at school. And since learning of her own adoption-she had known for almost a year-Masako had become self-conscious about visiting. Today, sandwiched in between Yoko and Teinosuke, she basked in this cozy intimacy that could have been hers. She pretended she was one of them-she pretended so hard she could almost feel herself changing into the bright, carefree sort of girl she might have been if she lived here with her real family.

She had gazed at Mrs. Kobayashi presiding at the table, smiling and ladling hot rice into the children’s bowls with soft, youthful hands that were so different from the veined, aging hands of her adopted mother. She felt a great yearning to touch one of those hands, to say the word mother. What the result of such an action would be, the girl couldn’t imagine. She thought it would be like puncturing the sac of an egg yolk, releasing something slow and rich and golden and momentous that would flow over her the same way it flowed over Yoko. But she didn’t yet feel entitled to this or resentful about its loss. She just felt a vague, primal shame about being given away.

After the neighborhood children had left through the formal guest entrance, Masako put on her shoes in the kitchen vestibule. Yoko did too; she had changed into her tennis clothes and was going out to practice. The two girls stood together on the small square of cement, leaning over to pull up the backs of their sneakers.

Masako wasn’t ready to return to her big, quiet house. There was a hollowness in her that threatened to widen out into terrible infinity. In a sort of controlled panic she turned to Yoko.

“I want to call her Mother,” she said. “Just once.” It was the first time she had mentioned it since their talk a year ago.

Her big sister looked at her with such sympathy and understanding that something in Masako loosened even further, and she felt herself on the verge of tears.

“Just wait a little longer, ne?” Yoko said. “For everyone’s sake. You have to be strong. Hold on, just a little bit longer.”

Now, decades later, Mrs. Nishimura gripped her mother’s hands and felt that old childhood desire. But it was no longer the terrifying thing it had once been. The years had rendered it down to something poignant and small, worn thin by day-today life.

For the first time, she decided to make an overture. And here was a rare chance, as perfect and fragile and unexpected as a glistening soap bubble-a chance that, deep down, she had always hoped would come. She felt her heart starting to pound. It would do no harm…just one small, intimate remark that would be answered in kind, creating a lovely moment that would resonate afterward. Their lives would not change. She knew this. They were grown women with a firm grip on reality and duty.

But the moment of opportunity had passed. Mrs. Kobayashi withdrew her hands and turned away to open the kitchen door. Mrs. Nishimura felt a sag of relief, followed by disappointment. Such a chance might never come again.

“You and I,” she said quickly to her mother’s back, “we’re the only ones left…” It was a reference to the original family unit consisting of Shohei, her mother, Yoko, and herself.

The kitchen door, rattling noisily in its groove, drowned out her soft voice. Mrs. Kobayashi caught something about being left behind, but she assumed Mrs. Nishimura meant the fish broth cooling on the stove. So she stepped outside onto the stone step and exclaimed, “Maa, how warm it’s gotten lately! If this keeps up, it’s going to be fine weather for Yo-chan’s burial.”

She stood on the gravel and saw her daughter off, waving a fond good-bye as she turned the corner.

If the timing had only been right, she would have responded with genuine emotion. It had always saddened her that her daughter never mentioned the adoption. “But my hands are tied,” she had lamented to Mrs. Rexford. “If she came to me, I’d jump at the chance. But she never has.”

“Maybe she’s waiting for you,” Mrs. Rexford suggested.

“Don’t be silly. She knows it’s not my place. No, she’s just closed off to me. All I get is that outside face. Sometimes I wonder if deep down, she hates me.”

Mrs. Rexford had shaken her head, baffled. No one had much insight into Mrs. Nishimura’s inner life.

Mrs. Asaki was upstairs, sitting on a floor cushion and folding laundry, when she heard her daughter come home. There was a faint clatter down in the kitchen and soon Mrs. Nishimura came upstairs with the usual tray of tea and rice crackers to tide her over until dinnertime.

“These dried so fast today,” Mrs. Asaki remarked, gesturing to the small pile on the tatami mat that she had just unpinned from the balcony clothesline.

“Soh ne,” Mrs. Nishimura agreed, setting down the tray on the low table. Her tone held an unaccustomed sharpness that alerted Mrs. Asaki to her next words. “Mother,” she said, “you forgot to turn off the gas on the stovetop. Again.”

Ara! Had she? Mrs. Asaki, who prided herself on her sharp, youthful mind, felt a stab of fear, then shame. It was immediately followed by anger that her daughter had felt the need to point it out. What difference did it make? This was her last day in the kitchen anyway.

“Well,” she replied in a humble tone that didn’t quite hide her petulance, “it’s probably best for an old woman like me to stay out of the way.”

Mrs. Nishimura said nothing. She moved across the room and passed beyond the open glass panels to the balcony. She stood there, resting her forearms on the wooden rail and gazing out onto the view.

Mrs. Asaki went back to folding the laundry, but her eyes stayed on her daughter. She was leaning her weight onto her forearms, hunching forward like a child so her shoulder blades jutted out under the thin cardigan. From behind, her slight figure could almost pass for that of the teenager she had once been. In years past, Mrs. Asaki had watched her leaning against the railing in this same forlorn pose.

It was early evening now, and somewhere out in the lanes a tofu vendor was making pre-dinner rounds. His horn made a plaintive, mournful tune-toooofuuu…tofu-tofuuu-that signaled the day’s end. But it was still light, for the days were growing longer. The air still had that burgeoning quality Mrs. Asaki had noticed earlier, that sense of currents floating in from distant, sun-warmed places. It seemed to release yearnings all across the narrow lanes until they rose up, hovering like kites, ready to swell at the slightest lift of the breeze. The pet finches, in their bamboo cages hung from the balcony eaves, sensed this too and were restless, ruffling their feathers and hopping from perch to perch.

Whatever was going on with Masako, it was probably to be expected. All that time spent at the Kobayashi house, her daily routine turned completely on its head; who knew what feelings had been stirred up as a result? And now it was over, for the Izumis were arriving tomorrow and then Sarah would come, along with all sorts of visitors paying condolence calls. The Kobayashi house would become busy and insular, the Asaki household would once again recede to the fringes, and life would go back to normal.

Mrs. Asaki felt sorry for her daughter. She understood-better than anyone-how it felt to be near someone day in and day out, knowing that person was missing someone else. How ironic that they had this in common.

But another part of her, the part that was a woman and not a mother, was unmoved. What about me? she thought. It’s no more than what’s happened to me. And all because of her daughter’s misguided fantasies. Adoption or no adoption, Mrs. Kobayashi would never have had eyes for anyone but her firstborn. Look at Tama and Teinosuke: they were raised in the Kobayashi house, but what good did it do them? They were nothing more than second-best. Masako, on the other hand, had a mother all to herself. She was the center of attention; she had wanted for nothing. If not for her stubbornness, the two of them might have had what Mrs. Kobayashi and Yoko had.

Mrs. Asaki rose to her feet. She carried the pile of folded laundry over to the black lacquered tansu chest, which had been part of her wedding trousseau. She pulled open the drawers, the round iron handles clanking against the wood. From her standing position, she looked past her daughter to the view beyond. In this transient light the tiled roofs had solidified to dark, one-dimensional squares; the television antennae and the power lines had melted away until it was once again the neighborhood of prewar days, with cherry blossoms glowing dimly in the dusk and wisteria draping the wooden fences.

It’s no more than what’s happened to me, she repeated to herself. She felt an angry kind of sorrow-not so much at her daughter, but at the vagaries of a life that had molded her into someone so possessive, so dependent on this one child. When Mrs. Asaki was young she had never chased anyone. People had sought her. She had some special quality, but what it consisted of, she could not have said. Maybe it wasn’t the sort of thing that translated well into old age. At any rate, the last of it had run out several years ago, as her granddaughters outgrew their granny and turned into teens with better things to do. But she still remembered, deep in her viscera, how it had felt to be that person: all these years had not dulled the loss of the woman she had been.

Padding back to the low table, she sat down to her tea. She reached out for the long string hanging from the ceiling lamp. It hung down almost to the floor-a convenient length for small children and for those seated on floor cushions. Grasping the red silk tassel, she tugged. The room filled with a cozy, rice-papered glow, and she felt a sudden desire to reach out to her daughter, for out on the balcony it was growing dark. “I know how it feels,” she wanted to say. She longed to convey some great tenderness with those words, some solidarity that only a fellow survivor could give. For a moment, infected by the spring breeze, her heart rose with the possibility.

But then sanity returned, and with it the long memory of quiet hurts that now came crowding up into her chest. How much rejection could one allow? She was old. She was tired.

So Mrs. Asaki did nothing.

She wondered if she would have felt differently if Masako was her biological child.

When feelings run out, when relationships die, it’s often a long time coming. The end comes in quiet lulls and falls away, like a leaf from a branch. Mrs. Nishimura would never know what had changed in her mother’s heart, for their gentle interactions would go on unaffected for years.

Standing at the balcony rail, lost in her own thoughts, Mrs. Nishimura was hardly aware of the electric light switching on behind her.

chapter 29

A few days later, Mrs. Izumi came visiting alone. “Auntie!” she greeted Mrs. Asaki, who was out in the front garden, feeding the turtles in the mossy stone vats. “I’ve come for a girls’ chat.” She held out a package of roasted miso dumplings, still hot from a local tearoom and smelling of wood smoke.

“What a treat!” said Mrs. Asaki. “Go right on up. Ma-chan’ll make us some tea.”

The Izumis were here for only a few days. They would not be coming back for the burial. For one thing, it was a non-Christian ceremony; for another, the Izumis lived too far away to make a second trip. They had left Tokyo several years ago, abandoning the main island altogether and relocating to the southernmost tip of the country. Mrs. Asaki knew very little about that region, only that it was tropical and people there had extremely brown skin.

She followed Mrs. Izumi into the informal dining area. After four years, it still offended her that her niece wouldn’t stop at the parlor to pay respects to Mr. Asaki in the family altar. It just wasn’t right. Her late husband had been especially kind to the Kobayashi children. When they were small, he would take them to a special restaurant on Christmas Eve for American hotcakes and syrup. Didn’t Tama remember? If Mrs. Asaki were younger she would have made some acidic remark. But in her old age, she was increasingly careful to ingratiate herself with her family. So she merely sang out, like the agreeable granny that she was, “Maa! Those dumplings smell wonderful!”

With the kettle on the stove, the three women sat down at the low table.

Mrs. Nishimura emptied the contents of the package onto a large plate. “Tama-chan, you’ve brought so much!” she said. “We can’t possibly eat this all. I’ll save some for the children.” She transferred a couple of skewers onto a smaller plate and slipped away behind her sister’s back-not to the kitchen, but out into the hall. Mrs. Asaki knew she was headed for the family altar, where she would deftly, discreetly offer the dumplings on her sister’s behalf. She felt a warm rush of gratitude.

She felt sorry for Mrs. Kobayashi, whose daughter refused to pray at her own sister’s funerary table. The Izumis had their own brand of prayer, which was invisible to others as it required neither chanting nor kneeling nor going anywhere near the funerary table.

But as the tea progressed, Mrs. Izumi didn’t mention religion at all. Her new, quiet maturity was more disturbing than her earlier fervor. Back then, in her childlike way, she had needed their attention. Now this gracious “outside” face reminded Mrs. Asaki of her own daughter.

“You know, after I heard the news,” Mrs. Izumi said, “that very same night, a snake appeared in my dream.”

“Maa, how auspicious!” said Mrs. Asaki with warm approval. “Snakes bring good luck.” Her late husband had carried a snakeskin wallet for many years, as a traditional way of attracting wealth and good fortune.

“Big Sister was born in the year of the snake,” added Mrs. Nishimura.

Mrs. Izumi nodded. “It’s surely a sign,” she said, “that she’s doing well on the other side.”

The women fell silent, nodding at the truth of this statement.

Mrs. Izumi and Mrs. Nishimura were not particularly close. Even as children, they were too far apart in age, in temperament, in social interests. All they had in common was their big sister.

Under their placid expressions Mrs. Asaki sensed deep emotional currents, revealing themselves in a twist of the mouth or a look in the eye. Their relationships with their big sister had been complex and personal-perhaps even painful?-and they would hold it close to their chests.

She steered the conversation toward happier ground. “When Yo-chan was young, she simply refused to wear ribbons,” she told them. “She was a stubborn one. Quiet, but stubborn.” The women laughed indulgently as she trotted out reminiscences from Mrs. Rexford’s childhood.

“It was a simpler time,” said Mrs. Izumi.

Mrs. Asaki remembered those days as anything but simple. But each generation, she knew, viewed its childhood with blind nostalgia.

The last of their laughter faded into the midday stillness of the house. They sipped their tea.

“How’s life in your new place?” Mrs. Nishimura asked.

“It’s nice out in the country. There’s a big community of church members. It’s so cheap to live there, we can work part-time.”

“How nice. We’re envious.”

“There are orchards too. Last year, I pickled my own umeboshi.”

“You?! Pickling?!” cried Mrs. Asaki in astonishment.

“Did you do it from scratch?” Mrs. Nishimura wanted to know.

“Yes, I did,” said her sister proudly. Then her expression turned sheepish. “But I messed up the vinegar or something,” she confessed, and giggled. “They turned out so hard and bitter, nobody would eat them.”

Now that’s the Tama we used to know, thought Mrs. Asaki. It saddened her that these flashes would appear less and less often, then one day fade out altogether.

On the morning after Sarah’s arrival, Mrs. Asaki and her daughter visited the Kobayashi house to pay respects to Mrs. Rexford’s ashes. The house was crowded and noisy, for the Izumis were still there. Stepping up onto the tatami floor, Mrs. Asaki felt rather festive.

“The girls will be coming by after school,” she announced. “And their father, after work.”

“Granny!” cried Sarah. “Auntie Masako!” She was eighteen now. Her body reminded Mrs. Asaki of Mrs. Kobayashi’s when she had been young. It was in the slope of the shoulders, the straight set of her neck…When Sarah walked away to fetch some extra floor cushions, the old woman recognized the outline of her sister-in-law’s long waist.

“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.

chapter 30

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.

Eventually, calmed by the priest’s sonorous drone, she turned her attention to her surroundings. A wall of shoji doors, drawn shut against the morning sun, glowed with a fierce yellow light that lit up the wide room, with its empty expanse of tatami matting meant for funerary parties larger than their own. A mahogany altar, decked out in ornate gold-and-brown brocade, held an assortment of bronze lotus blossoms rising up toward the ceiling on tall stems. Shielded from the sun’s glare, the bronze glowed softly as if radiating light from within.

In the row directly ahead, Sarah and her grandparents sat quietly on black floor cushions. Mrs. Asaki noted the odd way Sarah sat: on folded legs so her backside rested directly on her heels, placing pressure on the tops of her feet. This was no way to sit for extended periods. Mrs. Asaki sat pigeon-footed so that the outsides of her feet, not the tops, bore directly on the mats. She had faint calluses on the sides of her feet from decades of contact with the floor. Modern children-those raised in Western-style houses-could no longer sit for hours as their predecessors had. But that was in the newer districts; in the Ueno neighborhood, Sarah was still the only exception. Mrs. Asaki remembered watching with surprise and disapproval as the little girl hauled herself away from the table after an unusually long sitting session, dragging her paralyzed legs behind her like a seal and gasping, “Pins and needles…,” between bursts of uncontrollable laughter. She hoped there would be none of that today.

Her worries were unfounded. Partway through the ceremony, when it was time for each person to rise, approach the altar, and transfer a pinch of incense from a small bowl to a large smoldering urn, Sarah acquitted herself well. She bowed nicely, with an elegance of line unexpected in a foreigner. That’s Yo-chan’s doing, Mrs. Asaki thought, and she felt a surge of affection for this girl who would stand between Masako and her biological mother.

Finally the priest brought out an antiquated brush-writing set and began grinding ink and water on the stone. With a flourish of calligraphy, he wrote Mrs. Rexford’s name on a long wooden tablet. Bowing deeply, he presented it with both hands to Mr. Kobayashi, who bowed back and received it with both hands.

“Are you sure,” the priest asked afterward, “that you wouldn’t like a cup of tea before you go?”

No, no, they laughed, bowing copiously and talking all at once, thank you so much, but we couldn’t possibly rest till this is done! They left the temple and headed down a short road toward the gravesite, with Mr. Kobayashi carrying the long, narrow tablet before him like an upright spear.

The road skirted the edge of a rice paddy. The day was growing warm. A faint mist rose up from the young green shoots, and with it a long-lost smell from Mrs. Asaki’s childhood, that brackish tang of paddy water. It brought back the past so strongly that her breath caught in her throat. She turned to her brother, wanting to share this moment, but she realized it was nothing new for him; he came here every year to tend these graves.

A small boy was crouching on the embankment of the paddy with a plastic pail at his side, peering into the murky water in search of frog eggs. Or would it be tadpoles at this stage in the season? Mrs. Asaki couldn’t remember.

“Remember when you used to do that?” she asked, turning to her brother. “I can see it so clear in my mind-you and Shohei coming home at sunset, with ropes of frog eggs slung over your shoulders.”

Mr. Kobayashi’s handsome face creased into a warm grin. “That’s right,” he said. “What fun that was!”

“When we lived in the Kyoto hills,” said Sarah, “Mama would show me how to find them.”

“We kept ours in that big stone vat,” said Yashiko, “before we got the turtle. Remember, Big Sister?”

Momoko nodded. “When the tadpoles grew legs, they all hopped out.”

They slowed their steps, gazing nostalgically at this tableau of Japanese childhood. Unnerved by their scrutiny, the little boy rose to his feet and slunk away, clutching his plastic pail.

The Kobayashi plot lay on a small rise, low enough for everyone to climb without too much trouble. It tired Mrs. Asaki a great deal, but she squared her shoulders and said nothing. She wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Kobayashi were feeling the physical strain as well. Single file, they climbed several meters up the short dirt trail. Lush foliage-vines and grasses and edible ferns-fringed their path in wild profusion, catching at their legs with damp, soft tendrils.

There were roughly fifteen Kobayashi gravestones, rising up haphazardly from the sea of vegetation. The oldest markers-small and moss-stained and porous-stood farther up the hill, their engravings long since rained away. They were so old the wooden tablets in the metal braces had rotted away and no one knew who the individuals had been. Nonetheless, they were family. Mrs. Nishimura, the most able-bodied adult, climbed up toward them, picking her way carefully among the damp foliage. She had brought a bag of bean cakes in her purse, and she placed one at each gravestone. Soon the faint smell of incense came drifting down to the others.

“Is this one of ours?” Mrs. Nishimura occasionally called down to Mrs. Kobayashi, for these family plots had no clear dividing lines.

When she came down to join the others, Mr. Kobayashi was kneeling down before the biggest and newest of the gravestones. Gripping a small garden trowel in one hand, he struggled to wedge it under the flat stone slab lying in front of the gravestone.

“Can you do it, Father-san?” said Mrs. Kobayashi worriedly. “Is it safe for your back?”

“May I help, sir?” asked Mr. Nishimura, starting to step forward.

“I’m fine,” the old man replied, a little brusque at these affronts to his masculinity.

“Of course he’s fine,” Mrs. Asaki told the others. “Let the man do his work.”

He lifted one end of the stone slab. With both hands, he dragged it to the side. And there it was-a small, granite-lined space that had lain undisturbed these fifty years. Lined up in one corner were three small porcelain urns bearing old-fashioned designs of their time. Mrs. Asaki’s mother was on the far left, then her father, then her brother Shohei.

Everyone was silent: the children, for whom burial was a new experience; Mrs. Nishimura, beholding her biological father’s urn for the first time; the older generation, whose memories stretched far back in time.

Mrs. Asaki was transported to when she had first stood here as a child, peering down into this small space. It was as if nothing of consequence had changed in the interim; she had come back full circle to this green-filtered light, this same sharp pyoo-pyoo of woodland birds. It was like blinking once, then finding three urns instead of one.

“Hai,” said Mr. Kobayashi, still in kneeling position, and reached out his hand for the box. His wife gripped it one last time, then handed it over.

It stuck in the opening. Mr. Kobayashi turned the box sideways, but it stuck again. No one spoke, no one breathed-but after a firm push it went in, no worse for wear except for a long scratch down the side.

Mrs. Kobayashi gave an audible gasp of relief. Everyone else, just as relieved, began laughing weakly.

“It sure was big,” Sarah said after the stone slab was back in place.

“It took up the space of ten people,” Yashiko said wonderingly.

Momoko wanted to know if they would need a new gravestone after this.

“I shouldn’t think so. There’s space for one more, at least,” said Mrs. Kobayashi.

“Well,” cackled Mrs. Asaki happily, “if that wasn’t just like Yo-chan, all the way to the end!”

On this note, the burial was over.

They ate their lunch a few meters from the gravestone, on blankets spread under a cherry tree. They were famished. Mrs. Nishimura had brought a simple snack of rice balls to tide them over until they reached a restaurant in the city. A modern woman in her own way, she had bought them at a convenience store. They were huge, containing as much rice as four normal rice balls, and triangular in the Tokyo style. They were individually wrapped in an ingenious system of plastic wrapping. One tab broke apart the outer wrapping; another tab removed an inner plastic sheet that separated the crisp, dry sheet of seaweed from the moist rice.

“Which filling would you all like?” Mrs. Nishimura said. “Umeboshi? Or salmon with mayonnaise?”

“It’s amazing,” said Mrs. Kobayashi, “what they can do nowadays!” She still molded her husband’s rice balls by hand when he went off with his friends for a morning of golf.

“Here, I’ll show you how it works,” Mrs. Asaki told the couple. She was proud of her familiarity with modern techniques. “First you pull this,” she told them, demonstrating.

But nothing happened.

“Areh?” She turned over the rice ball in confusion.

“Let me do it, Granny,” said Momoko. She snatched it out of the old woman’s hands and deftly pulled the correct tabs.

“Ara maa,” cried Mrs. Kobayashi, “how clever!”

Mrs. Asaki sat quietly. She was suddenly very, very tired.

Mr. Kobayashi took a hearty bite. “Not bad!” he said, surprised.

“Not bad at all,” agreed his wife. “The rice tastes quite fresh. Soft and chewy, and salted just right.”

“Oh, it’s fresh all right,” Mrs. Nishimura assured her. “They make them fresh every morning.”

They placed one of the rice balls on the Kobayashi gravestone, in between the fresh flower bouquets. Considering the occupants, umeboshi seemed the proper choice. Salmon and mayonnaise was too new; that combination had become popular only in the last decade.

“Well,” Mr. Kobayashi remarked as everyone sat eating hungrily and drinking cold tea from a thermos, “It’s too late for the cherry viewing, but it’s still very nice.”

“Yes, isn’t it lovely?” said Mrs. Kobayashi. “Yo-chan loved eating here. She used to say it gave her quite an appetite.”

chapter 31

The homebound train was almost empty, so they had their pick of seats. Mrs. Asaki and Mrs. Kobayashi settled into the “silver” section. Everyone else took ordinary seats farther back.

The two women were silent as the scenery slid past. Their airy cheer fell away. Today’s events, casual as they were, had taken a toll that was only now beginning to make itself felt.

Mrs. Asaki was remembering an incident when she had been a young wife, raking leaves in the garden. A scrawny alley cat was stalking its way across the top of the fence and she had stopped to watch it. The cat, too, came to a wary halt. Ueno cats, which had survived for generations by stealing fish out of open-air kitchens, were alert to mistreatment by irate housewives.

Resting both hands on the rake handle, she gazed into its slit-pupiled eyes. The cat stared back, unblinking.

She had pretended it was a creature of prey, a big cat from Africa. She imagined herself shrinking down in size, becoming more and more at its mercy, until the experiment began to feel real. Suddenly she was afraid. Quickly, roughly, she shooed it away with her rake.

That experience had stayed with her. Maybe she recognized in it some germ of prophecy, the way one does with powerful dreams. She now thought of the exasperated way Momoko had snatched the rice ball out of her hand. Once she would have thought nothing of reprimanding the child, but more and more she regarded her with a kind of fear that was new. This momentum would continue, she knew. It would soon extend to Yashiko, to her own daughter, to her son-in-law…

On the seat beside her, Mrs. Kobayashi was absently stroking the folded silk furoshiki on her lap. Earlier that day it had been wrapped around her daughter’s boxed remains.

“I looked at Sarah-chan’s thumb,” Mrs. Asaki told her, although in truth she had forgotten all about it until now. “And I do see what you mean.”

Mrs. Kobayashi nodded. “Yes,” she said simply.

Mrs. Asaki felt a wistful envy for those two, for the closeness and promise still lying in wait for them. How did her sister-in-law manage to go through life never at a loss for a close, passionate relationship to sustain her?

Turning her head, she looked out the window. The hills were close, invigoratingly close. Rice paddies spread out before her; here and there, dirt paths wound away into the hilly terrain. In the corridors of her memory she saw similar roads stretching away: through rice paddies, through canopies of trees. Many times, after a long day in the fields, the locals had ridden home on a wooden cart, facing backward with their feet dangling over the edge. It struck her now, at eighty-three years of age, that this image-a dirt road stretching away behind her-was the most evocative and defining memory of her childhood. She had one early memory-perhaps it had been her first-of such a road stretching away into a blurry sort of greenery. She had seen it from her mother’s lap, the back of her head resting securely against her mother’s breast. It was so long ago it no longer felt like her own memory but a scene from some nostalgic television drama.

And here she was decades later, a success in life. She knew what her fellow train passengers saw: a well-dressed elderly woman surrounded by a devoted brood. A woman with a secure old age ahead of her. And yet…

She tried to remember how it had felt to sit in her mother’s lap. She tried to picture herself being held close, being coddled and cared for, and something stirred deep in her core. She felt her eyes blur over with tears.

“Would you like a throat drop?” she heard Mrs. Kobayashi say. She must have noticed something, for her voice was gentle.

Mrs. Asaki nodded her head with a little bow of thanks, not because she wanted one but because it was the easiest thing to do. The candy was an old-fashioned flavor she hadn’t tasted in years, brown sugar, and it spread out in her mouth with surprising and comforting sweetness. This, coupled with the unexpected tenderness from her sister-in-law, filled her with a tremulous sense of gratitude.

After a while, still sucking on the throat drop, she turned to the woman sitting beside her. So many times during the war they had come home like this on the train, tired and spent. Once again she had the sensation, as she had at the open grave, of blinking once to find the grieving young woman beside her transformed into a grieving old woman. Who knew Mrs. Kobayashi would lose yet another daughter? Mrs. Asaki, knowing her own guilt in the matter, felt a rush of sorrow.

She said, “Yo-chan was a good child.”

“Yes.”

“She was happy,” Mrs. Asaki persisted. “She loved passionately all her life.”

Mrs. Kobayashi nodded her thanks. The corners of her mouth wobbled involuntarily, for it had been a long day. This was a dangerous time for both of them; they were old women and they had been holding things together for a very long time.

“She was a good child,” Mrs. Asaki repeated. Reaching out timidly, she patted her sister-in-law’s hand. Mrs. Kobayashi did not draw it away. Instead she turned up her palm to meet Mrs. Asaki’s hand with her own. At this surprising gesture, long denied her and coming from such an unlikely source, the old woman felt her throat constrict.

“The way you raised that child,” she said finally, “was a success.” In this heightened moment of compassion and remorse and gratitude, she was moved to offer up the most private, painful part of herself. It was the first time she would admit this to another living being. It would also be the last.

“I could never get Masako to come close to me,” she said.