The Favorites (22 page)

O
n
a hushed, sunny afternoon when the last of the red maple leaves were drifting down from the trees, Mrs. Asaki came tapping at the kitchen door. As always, she had an official excuse for coming: to pay her respects at her ancestors’ family altar. According to Mrs. Kobayashi, the old lady paid her respects quite regularly. “She looks forward to coming here,” Mrs. Kobayashi had confided to Sarah. “Poor thing.”

While her grandmother made preparations in the kitchen, Sarah readied the
kotatsu
in the family room. She brought over an extra floor cushion from the stack in the corner—it was autumn, so the cotton covers were a warm shade of rust—and turned on the heat switch under the table. She glanced at Granny Asaki, who stood hunched before the altar, murmuring under her breath and massaging her tasseled prayer beads with practiced, efficient hand movements that spoke of a lifetime of prayer.

“A little offering for your mama,” she said afterward, nodding at the envelope on the altar.

“Thank you, Granny! Thank you so much.” She lifted the
kotatsu
blanket. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” she asked as her great-aunt lowered her frail limbs onto the floor cushion. “So sunny and warm.”

“Oh no, it’s not too warm,” the old woman said brightly, reaching under the table to feel the heater. “The temperature’s just right.”

Sarah smiled and settled the quilt around her great-aunt’s bony hips. Mrs. Asaki watched her, nodding imperceptibly.

“You’re a good girl,
ne,
” she said. “Your mama in heaven is happy with the way you turned out.”

Mrs. Kobayashi entered the room with a tray of covered ceramic bowls. “You’ve picked a good day to come!” she told her sister-in-law. Placing the heavy tray on the table, she walked over to the frosted glass panels and slid them all the way open; they rattled in their wooden frames. Sunshine poured in, catching glints of gold in the straw of the tatami mats. With sunlight came the smell of burning leaves and the vague sadness of a season nearing its end.

Mrs. Kobayashi stood there for a moment, gazing out at the laundry courtyard. Above the fence the sky was deep blue, with that high dome of autumn described in classic Japanese poetry. “How long has it been,” she said, “since we had such beautiful weather?”

This, Mrs. Asaki heard perfectly. “
Soh,
it’s been forever!” she replied. “Ahh, how good the sun feels! Like warm hands on my body.”

This mystery of selective hearing had been explained to Sarah by her grandmother. “It’s only certain pitches she can’t hear,” Mrs. Kobayashi had said. “You and your cousins, you all have high-pitched voices because you’re young women, so she can’t hear what you’re saying. But my voice has low tones, so we never have a problem. Now, your auntie has high tones, which
makes things difficult. You wouldn’t think it, would you, with her being an alto and all. But there you are.”

Settled into the
kotatsu
with her elders, Sarah did nothing more than smile and nod. She wanted Granny to have this hour free from auditory strain, so she could relax and have a lively chat without shame and disability hanging over her. She remembered how carefully and correctly her own mother had once spoken English.

“Would you care for some
ten-don,
Granny-san?” Mrs. Kobayashi lifted the lid from one of the ceramic bowls. Steam rose into the air, along with a mouthwatering aroma.
Ten-don
was a humble dish of day-old tempura, reheated in a flavorful broth and poured over rice and eggs. It was hardly the thing to serve a guest, but as Mrs. Kobayashi had once explained to Sarah, old people secretly craved comfort food over tea and fancy confectionery. Besides, this dish was easier on the teeth. Broth turned the crispy crust into a soft, flavorful mush that melted in the mouth, and the vegetables—sweet potatoes, carrots, eggplant—turned as soft as pudding.

Mrs. Asaki’s aged eyes gleamed, and she hunched over her bowl with a little sigh of pleasure. With hands that slightly trembled, she lifted a chopstickful to her mouth. “Granny-san, it’s delicious!” she said. She had always freely acknowledged that Mrs. Kobayashi was the better cook of the two. “It’s been
years
since I tasted this dish.”

Mrs. Asaki’s reprieve was not just auditory; she rarely received such warmth and attention at home.

“That’s why she fritters everything away on money envelopes,” Mrs. Kobayashi had once told Sarah. “You watch, there won’t be anything left for them to inherit. She always thinks of herself first.”

“She thinks smart,” Sarah had said. For in a traditional world
where women had little power, Mrs. Asaki had used her wits. She had married well, strategically leveraging her physical beauty. And in adopting a child in her forties, she was surely motivated by more than the simple desire to love a child. There must have been an awareness that, in a society without nursing homes, a childless woman was doomed. A son would have been preferable to a daughter, but once again Mrs. Asaki had shown foresight by moving her son-in-law into her own home, ensuring her place within their family unit. And through shrewd use of her monthly pension, she still maintained a degree of control. All in all, she had played her cards well. She had achieved the security she sought, if not the full loving spirit that might have accompanied it. Sarah thought her great-aunt would have been an interesting woman to talk to, if she had known her as a fellow adult instead of a one-dimensional granny.

“Has Sarah-chan been telling you lots of stories about America?” Mrs. Asaki asked.

“Yes indeed. The child’s a hard worker,” said Mrs. Kobayashi proudly. “She tells me she works long hours. Large companies are very demanding, you know.”

What Sarah had not mentioned was how disillusioned she was by her career, how little it had lived up to her expectations. She remembered her view of life as a child: a maze in which a perfectly good path sometimes veered off in an unexpected direction. She wondered now if that was the norm rather than the exception.

“
Maa,
you have a good appetite,” Mrs. Kobayashi said. “That’s very healthy. Old people like us, we have to keep up our appetites or else we’re done for.”

Mrs. Asaki, who had been greedily focused on her bowl, came to with a little start of embarrassment. If her wrinkled skin could have blushed, it would have.

“It’s good to eat,” Mrs. Kobayashi reassured her. “Don’t worry about appearances, Granny-san. We’re past that, you and I.” She covered the old woman’s gnarled hand with her own. “We’re the only ones left. We have to keep on living, with all our might.
Ne?
”

Mrs. Asaki nodded her head, like a child.

“Let’s enjoy our food to the fullest, Granny-san,” Mrs. Kobayashi said. “Let’s not leave a single bite.”

Sarah watched them. Both women, in their different ways, had forged through life as best they could. Mrs. Asaki had used foresight and strategy. Mrs. Kobayashi had followed a linked chain of great loves. In the process, they had caused damage—to each other, to innocent bystanders. And although they would never be true friends, each understood what the other had gone through. Each understood the nature of the journey. Life was difficult. Safe havens were few and impermanent.

Something of that hardship and peril transmitted itself to Sarah. Life will be hard, she thought, harder than I know. She wondered how she herself would make her way through life.

Was she equal to it? She thought so. For she could feel the women’s reserves passing down to her, reserves she would draw on in years to come. She felt a dim premonition of her power, similar to what she had felt the summer she was fourteen. Her mind flashed back—instinctively, as if fingering a talisman—to the summer day when her mother had held her hand in hers.

“You’re right, Granny-san,” Mrs. Asaki said in the singsong accent of old Kyoto. “We have to keep on living, with all our might.” Nodding her aged head, she looked over at Sarah.
“Ne?”
she said.

And Sarah affirmed it with vigorous nods of her own.