The Favorites (12 page)

T
here
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.

T
he
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!”