The Favorites (3 page)

A
t
8:30 on the dot, Masako Nishimura arrived to apologize for her daughters’ untimely intrusion.

Mrs. Nishimura and Mrs. Rexford gave off such different energies, it was hard to believe they were cousins. On closer scrutiny, however, one could see they shared the same high cheekbones from the Kobayashi side. Sarah had seen old school photographs in which they looked virtually identical with their bobbed hair, cat’s-eye glasses, and young, unformed expressions. More than once, leafing through the Asaki album with her great-aunt looking over her shoulder, Sarah had gotten them mixed up. Mrs. Asaki would correct her patiently, murmuring, “It’s a strong family likeness,
ne
…”

Over the years, the women’s faces and even their bodies had evolved to reflect their different personalities. Mrs. Rexford’s confident posture, and the hint of muscle in her arms and calves, were natural extensions of her personal strength. In contrast, Mrs. Nishimura was less substantial, almost ethereal. She had a physique more suited to traditional kimonos: narrow, sloping shoulders; a walk that was an unobtrusive glide, as opposed to her cousin’s firm, decisive stride.

When it came to faces, Mrs. Nishimura wore one basic expression: one of pleasant, attentive cooperation. It was a classic “outside face.” Every well-bred person used it at some point, usually on formal occasions or with strangers. Westerners, who were its most frequent recipients, assumed—understandably, if incorrectly—that this Japanese veneer of politeness was a permanent condition. And with Mrs. Nishimura, that may indeed have been the case. One always sensed in her a certain emotional reserve, even in the most casual situations.

Mrs. Rexford was the opposite. Among her Ueno neighbors, she frequently dropped her mask to show spontaneous reactions: affection, enthusiasm, gossipy fascination. In truth, these flashes of emotion were not always so spontaneous or genuine. But Mrs. Rexford, blessed with surer social instincts, understood the value of judicious lapses in etiquette. Since childhood, she had used this technique to downplay her achievements and make herself more approachable. Since this familiarity was used from a position of power, it gave the flattering illusion of inner-circle acceptance.

“I’m so sorry about the girls,” Mrs. Nishimura now said in a voice as gentle as her face. Instead of standing squarely within the doorway, she peered around the sliding door in the pose of a hesitant intruder. “Bothering you, right in the middle of your breakfast…”

Mrs. Rexford laughed and waved away the apology. “
Anta,
don’t be silly! Children will be children!” she cried, throwing an affectionate look at the girls. “Ma-chan, how have you
been
?”

Mrs. Nishimura decided to scold her daughters anyway.
“Kora,”
she admonished them softly. Momoko and Yashiko grinned with guilty embarrassment.

“Come up and have some tea!” said Mrs. Kobayashi, already pouring out an extra cup.

Mrs. Nishimura stepped up into the small vestibule. She still wore the short bob of her college photos, parted on one side and pinned with a barrette. There was a sheltered, almost virginal quality about her, emphasized by a pale pink blouse with a Peter Pan collar. As a child Sarah had subconsciously registered the shades and shapes that, like abstract art, made up her “auntie”: the round bob above the round collar, the pastel clothing against the whitish cast of Japanese cosmetics. These combinations struck a deep chord of recognition within her, like the sound of the pigeons earlier that morning.

Once again, the currents in the house altered. Although it was relaxed and intimate, there was now a slightly guarded quality that hadn’t been there before. It was as if two identical masks of kindness had dropped over Mrs. Kobayashi’s and Mrs. Rexford’s faces.

They all sat cozily around the low table, ignoring the uncleared breakfast dishes. Now the conversation no longer included the children but circled among the adults. Sensing this, Sarah and Momoko began talking to each other in low voices.

“Mama and I are coming over to your house later,” Sarah said. “We’ll probably bring French pastries, or maybe a cake.”

“What kind? Do you know yet?”

“I’m not sure—we still have to go to the bakery.”

“What are you doing later? Do you want to come up and play in our room?”

Little Yashiko, who had sidled over to sit beside her big sister, murmured that she had once tasted lemon custard cake, and she had liked it.

Having thus reestablished their friendship, the three girls were content to fall silent and eat chocolates out of the tin, all the while following the adults’ conversation.

“…a mere toddler! He was kicking that ball, running after it, kicking it, running after it, so
excited
…” Mrs. Kobayashi was reminiscing about one of their neighbors’ sons, a young man who had recently moved to Berlin to study under the famous conductor Seiji Ozawa. “Laughing and drooling, with that soccer ball practically up to his knees…”

The children shrieked with laughter. Mrs. Nishimura rocked with mirth, demurely covering her open mouth with her hand.

“And he went right on going, out of sight!” Mrs. Rexford chimed in. “Just vanished over the horizon, like in some surrealist movie! You should have seen those little legs working,
choko-choko-choko
…” Mrs. Rexford and Mrs. Kobayashi worked well as a team. Their chemistry was so bright, it seemed to suck the air right out of the room.

They were all laughing so much that no one heard the footsteps on the gravel or the kitchen door rolling open. Suddenly Mrs. Asaki was standing in the doorway, smiling. “Good morning!” she chirped, in that singsong cadence of Kyoto old-timers.

There was a moment of surprised silence before Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford jumped up from their cushions. Even Sarah felt somehow caught in the act. “
Ara,
Granny-san!” Mrs. Rexford protested. “Sarah and I are supposed to visit
you
! We were waiting until ten o’clock!”

“We’re so embarrassed!” added Mrs. Kobayashi, even though it was Mrs. Asaki who was clearly breaking the rules.

With both hands, Mrs. Asaki waved their words away. “
Maa maa,
everybody so formal!” She laughed. “What does it matter? We’re all
family
!” Here the old woman cocked her head, like some coquettish bird, and appealed to Sarah—
“Ne?”
—as if the two of them were the only sane people in the room. Sarah, unable to keep from smiling in delight, agreed with a vigorous nod and an
“Nnn!”

“Wait! Let me heat up some more tea,” said Mrs. Kobayashi, rushing across the tatami and down the wooden step. The kitchen, which was an extension of the vestibule, stood on a lower level than the rest of the house. The architecture was a carryover from a bygone era when women had done their cooking away from the main house, in lean-tos or covered porches.

“No no, don’t bother on my account.” Mrs. Asaki climbed up onto the tatami and looked around at everything with her bright eyes.

Mrs. Rexford was waiting for her in an open space away from the others, seated with legs folded beneath her and fingertips pressed to the floor. “Sarah!” she hissed in her obey-me-now voice. Sarah scurried over and assumed the position next to her mother, self-conscious because everyone else was watching with interest.

Mrs. Rexford bowed first, barely giving Mrs. Asaki enough time to get down on her elderly knees. She had a finely trained bow that put the older lady’s to shame, and she was fully conscious of this advantage. Mrs. Kobayashi, unlike her sister-in-law, had a background of rigorous training in formal etiquette associated with the high arts, and she had ensured that her daughter received this same training. Mrs. Rexford’s skill was evident in the way she pulled back her shoulders and arched, catlike, to the floor.

“My mother, my daughter, and I,” she said, shifting into a refined, inflectionless tea-ceremony voice, “live perpetually in your debt.” She timed her bow so that its lowest point coincided with the end of her sentence. “With your gracious permission”—here she lifted her head from the floor and paused, then slowly began rising back up—“we remain indebted to your kind regard during this coming visit”…she straightened up to a sitting position for full effect, fingertips still poised on the floor…“and
for many more years to come.” She bowed once again, this time in silence. She knew it intimidated Mrs. Asaki to be faced with such a display of formality, and this knowledge somehow compensated for the fact that her flustered mother was down in the kitchen, scrambling to put together a pot of company-quality sencha tea.

Mrs. Asaki returned the bow with an appropriate response. Mrs. Rexford then looked pointedly at her daughter.

Now was the time for Sarah to bow correctly, as she had been taught. She counted silently to herself—one million one, one million two, one million three—timing her bow to end at the count of three. She could hear someone unwrapping a chocolate. Spine straight. Rear end down. It was a difficult, almost athletic feat. Her mother, trying to coach her a month before their visit, had said despairingly that a good bow just couldn’t be faked, any more than a dancer’s pirouette could. It took too long to train the right muscles. A bow was an acid test of one’s daily habits.

Sarah returned to a full sitting position before she realized she had forgotten to utter a single word. She had learned a simple speech, something to the effect that she was happy to be back and grateful for Mrs. Asaki’s kindness. But she couldn’t remember a word of it.

“Well done, well done!” Mrs. Asaki sang out with her cheerful cackle, and clapped her age-spotted hands.

“Granny-san,” said Mrs. Rexford, returning to a tone of affectionate familiarity that her daughter nonetheless suspected was an “outside” voice, “sit down here on my cushion.
Ne,
please.” She smoothed the cotton fabric in a deferential gesture of invitation. Mrs. Asaki accepted, ducking her head in a pleased quarter-bow, and Mrs. Rexford went away to help her mother with the tea. “Sarah,” she called back over her shoulder,
switching once again to a disciplinary tone, “clear those dirty dishes off the table. Quickly!”

Sarah obeyed. Carrying the loaded clearing tray with both hands, she stepped down into the kitchen, feeling with her bare foot for the wooden step she couldn’t see. She liked her grandmother’s kitchen, with its vaguely primitive, backstage atmosphere that was so different from the rest of the house. It had a long narrow floor lined with wooden planks. Overhead were high exposed rafters blackened by years of smoke, from which a lanternlike fixture hung at the end of a long rope. Best of all, a miniature door opened right out onto the street so they could trade with vendors.

Here in the narrow kitchen, Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford were standing side by side. It was the only way they could both fit. Their backs were to Sarah, so they didn’t notice her approach. A newly arranged tray of tea utensils lay at the edge of the counter, ready to be carried up to the guests. Mrs. Kobayashi was lining up individually wrapped tea cakes on another tray beside it. Mrs. Rexford poured hot water from the kettle into a teapot.

“…like a hawk. Even now, she won’t trust Masako and me together,” Mrs. Kobayashi whispered.

“I still can’t believe Granny came.” Putting down the kettle, Mrs. Rexford wiped stray drops from the surface of the counter.

“Never let down your guard,” whispered Mrs. Kobayashi. “She’s aware of everything. Remember that.”

Mrs. Rexford mulled this over. “It’s so unlike Masako,” she said finally. “Usually she’s more careful. If she hadn’t stayed this long, Granny would never have come over in the first place.”

“It’s awkward,” agreed Mrs. Kobayashi.

Sarah, who all along had sensed some disturbing point outside her range of vision, felt a small thrill as it came into focus.
The girls’ early arrival had been no accident. Mrs. Nishimura had
wanted
to come here; she had
wanted
to linger at this untidy breakfast table. Sarah recalled the guarded, apprehensive smiles of her grandmother and mother.

Now the two women fell silent.

“Hora…”
Mrs. Kobayashi let out a sigh. “I had a
feeling
you should have gone there first. Didn’t I tell you? After this many years, you develop a sixth sense about these things.”

Noticing the girl’s presence for the first time, the women immediately switched to an animated discussion about the freshness of the tea cakes.

T
here
was no chance to ask questions until late that night, when Sarah and her mother finally lay down on their futons.

They were side by side in the parlor. The walls were plastered with a mixture of fawn-colored clay and chopped straw. Like all traditional parlors it had a tokonoma, a built-in alcove of polished wood. Within it hung a long summer scroll with flowing black script. The scroll was the only object of pure white in the room, and it leapt out at the eye from inside the shadowed recess. At the foot of the alcove, in a shallow glazed bowl, Mrs. Kobayashi had arranged a single yellow lily from the garden, deliberately angled across long clean lines of summer grass.

Back in America, Sarah hadn’t remembered much about this room. But as soon as she arrived, everything had fitted seamlessly back into her memory, like the pigeon calls this morning. In fact when she first entered this room, she had immediately noticed that the stringed koto, which her mother had played in her youth and which stood in its original sheath of faded red silk, was now leaning against the tea cabinet wall instead of the tokonoma wall.

Sarah and her mother lay on their backs. Moonlight shone through a gap in the heavy drapes, which were slightly open to let in the breeze. For the first time that day, the house was utterly silent.

“When I was little,” said Mrs. Rexford, “there used to be a snake living up in the attic.”

“Ugh, a snake!” said Sarah. “Did you see it?”

“No. I just heard it at night, when I was lying in bed. The mouse would run—its nails went
k’cha k’cha
—then there was a quick dragging sound. After that, it got quiet again.”

“Weren’t you scared?” Sarah asked, even though she knew better. Her mother disapproved of timidity in any form.

“What for? Snakes bring good luck to households, remember? In the old days, farmers stored grain in the attic. Grain attracts mice, and mice attract snakes. So having a snake in your attic meant you were wealthy. During the occupation, I’d listen to that sound and feel safe, because the snake was protecting our black-market rice.”

“Black-market rice? In this attic?” Sarah strained her eyes in the moonlight. She could make out the shadowed, roughly hewn rafters of the ceiling, curiously out of sync with the polished gleam of the alcove and wall posts. The attic was silent. Never in her lifetime had Sarah heard any sound. But these were modern times after all, when nothing exciting ever happened.

She shifted her body to look over at her mother, and the buckwheat-husk pillow gave a loud crunch. Mrs. Rexford lay with her hands clasped behind her head. In the moonlight her face looked unformed and unfamiliar, framed by a cloud of hair loosened from its French twist.

They had never slept together in the same room before.

“Mama?” Sarah spoke softly, aware that these rooms were
divided by nothing but paper panels. “How come things are awkward with Granny and Auntie?”

“Hmm?”

“I heard you talking in the kitchen.”

Mrs. Rexford gave a sigh of reluctance. Sarah waited patiently. Usually her questions were met with a brisk, “You’re still a child, it’s none of your business.” But this time—she felt sure—her mother would take her into her confidence as a form of damage control.

Sure enough, her mother whispered, “I suppose you’re old enough.” She switched to English. “But you’re not to tell Momoko or Yashiko—they don’t know yet. And don’t bother your grandmother.”

“Okay.”

“Your auntie Masako was adopted as a baby. The Asakis weren’t her real parents.”

“Oh. Then who were?”

“She and I have the same parents,” said Mrs. Rexford. “She’s my full sister by birth.”

“So
Grandma’s
her real mother…?” Sarah’s mind raced back over that morning. The tightness between her temples intensified as her brain realigned itself.

“That means your auntie is your
true
aunt. And Momoko and Yashiko are your true cousins.”

Sarah mulled this over. “Why did Grandma give her away?”

“She didn’t just
give
her away. It was more complicated than that.”

They were silent. Outside in the lane, a neighbor’s bicycle crunched slowly over the gravel.

“Here’s what you need to know. After your real grandfather died in the war, your grandmother was beholden to the Asakis. It was wartime and…things were complicated. She didn’t
want to give up her baby, but she felt she had to. That’s it, basically.”

“But why—”

“No more questions.” Her mother switched back to Japanese. “We have to get some sleep.” Resigned, Sarah rolled onto her back and pulled the light summer comforter up to her chin. “Good night,” she said.

“Good night.”

She closed her eyes. Despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t shut down her brain. It was as if she’d been awake for so long, she had forgotten how. Inside her skull the echoes of Japanese voices chattered on and on, and would not stop.

After several minutes, her mother spoke again. “You mustn’t judge your grandmother. It was a difficult time.”

“I won’t.”

“In-family adoptions are actually an old tradition. In the villages, if you didn’t have children there was no one to take care of you in old age. So extended relatives had to help each other out. But they always kept the child inside the family. Japanese people never give away their babies to strangers.”

“Hmmm…”

“People still do it. Sometimes it’s to maintain the family line. That’s really important, you know, because family altar tablets have to be passed down from generation to generation. Or else rich families do it so they can pass down assets to a member of their clan.”

“Is that why—”

“No. Go to sleep.”

Mrs. Rexford soon drifted off. Sarah lay listening to her deep breathing.

If she had known of this adoption as a child, she probably would have thought nothing of it. Small children accepted
everything as normal. After all, how was this any stranger than her grandmother marrying two brothers? Talk about keeping things within the family! Mrs. Kobayashi had married twice, the first Mr. Kobayashi for love and the second Mr. Kobayashi out of necessity. It had never occurred to the girl to find this curious. As a child, all she cared about was that her grandpa was related to her by blood, even though he wasn’t technically her grandfather.

Her thoughts drifted to the attic, silent now, emptied of snakes and black-market rice and the energy of a turbulent past. She thought of the war that polite people never mentioned—the war that had brought illegal rations into this house, caused her grandmother’s second marriage, and somehow contributed to her aunt’s adoption. In the shadowy rafters, the brutality of those times seemed to still linger.