The Favorites (4 page)

A
fter
the formal visits of the first day, the two houses kept mostly to themselves. They did, however, drop by almost daily to share freshly cut flowers from their gardens, or an extra eel fillet bought on sale, or half of a designer melon received from a visitor. On certain evenings, Mrs. Kobayashi had Sarah walk over a platter of tempura or pot stickers, hot and crisp from the frying oil. These were greeted with great enthusiasm because—as Mrs. Kobayashi explained privately—the cooking over there was not so good. The Asaki household followed the old Kyoto tradition, using seasonings so subtle they were practically flavorless. (Mrs. Kobayashi, the Kobe native, went on to say that Kyoto people were notorious for donning beautiful silks in public but making do with substandard cuisine in private.) Sometimes Mrs. Asaki, laden down with shopping bags and beaming—she loved going downtown, where all the action was—tapped on the Kobayashis’ kitchen door on her way home and dropped off a French bakery bag filled with brioches and frankfurter pastries. But these exchanges lasted only a few minutes, and the women rarely took off their shoes and entered each other’s houses.

“How come we never sit around and talk, like we did the first day?” Sarah asked. Deep down, she knew why. But a childish part of her was disappointed, even petulant; she had been hoping for a constant round of social activity.

“Goodness, child. Who has the time! A house doesn’t just run itself,” said Mrs. Kobayashi, laughing.

Mrs. Rexford shot Sarah a glance of warning. “People need boundaries,” she said.

Luckily the children had no such restrictions. Sarah spent hours at the Asaki house. Within that household were two different worlds, one downstairs and one upstairs.

Downstairs was Mrs. Nishimura’s domain—not just during the day but also at night, when she and her husband rolled out their futons in the television room. Unlike the sunny rooms upstairs, the ground floor was tinged with restful green light from the garden. Since the formal dining room was used only for guests, the children gravitated toward the informal eating area that directly adjoined the kitchen. Under the large low table, stacked in tin boxes, were snacks: rice crackers wrapped in seaweed, shrimp crackers, curry-flavored puffs.

In the pale underwater light, Mrs. Nishimura glided in and out of the kitchen bearing delicate glass dishes of flan pudding, or salted rice balls, or crustless sandwich triangles garnished with parsley. “
Hai,
this is to wipe your fingers,” she told them, offering steaming-hot hand towels rolled into perfect tubes, just like the ones in restaurants. Her conversation was as soft and serene as the leaf-filtered light. “Do you like juice?” she would ask gently, as if Sarah were still seven or eight instead of fourteen. She made conversation by saying things like, “Yashiko’s favorite spoons have Hello Kitty on them, don’t they, Yashiko?”

Sarah sometimes wondered if her aunt switched personas as
soon as she was alone with her own children, dropping her outside face and talking in rapid, droll sentences like everyone else. She watched carefully when her aunt was in the company of other women. Although Mrs. Nishimura did switch to an adult-level vocabulary, her demeanor remained as soft and ethereal as with the children. She lacked the impulsive, gossipy spark that the other women seemed to share in abundance. Once, in a private uncharitable moment, Mrs. Rexford sighed sharply to her mother, “I swear! She’s like a blancmange pudding.”

Then Mrs. Rexford had immediately rectified her blunder (“Because blancmange pudding is pure and white, never sullied by anything ugly”) to ensure that there would be no true understanding on her daughter’s part.

“It’s okay, Mama, I know,” said Sarah. “She’s sort of like a Christian Madonna, isn’t she.”

Mrs. Rexford’s relieved eyes met hers. “Exactly,” she said.

It wasn’t as if the two sisters disliked each other. Mrs. Rexford was protective of Mrs. Nishimura, who in turn looked up to her big sister with sincere admiration. But they weren’t everyday friends, the way Mrs. Rexford was with their mother.

When the girls tired of playing downstairs, they climbed up to the second story, where the tatami mats were warm from the sunlight flooding in through the glass wall panels. Sometimes they slid shut the latticed shoji screens against the midday glare. Then a soft, diffused light glowed through the rice paper and created a lovely effect, as if they were living inside a giant paper lantern.

The girls’ room wasn’t a true “room” in the Western sense, since the entire second floor was one enormous room. In place of solid dividing walls, there were
fusuma
: wall-to-wall partitions of sliding doors that were left open during the day and slid shut at night. These doors were covered on both sides with thick,
durable paper whose fibrous surface was interwoven with what looked like delicate strands of green seaweed.

Momoko and Yashiko’s side looked out over the back garden. Much of the view was obscured by the leafy branches of a huge persimmon tree. But Mrs. Asaki’s side, which faced the gravel lane, had a striking panoramic view. Sarah loved standing on her great-aunt’s balcony and gazing out over the tiled triangular roofs: some slate gray, others gray-blue, all sprouting television antennae like feathery weeds. Every so often, this somber expanse was interrupted by the imposing black sweep of a temple roof or the bright vermilion of a tall shrine gate. In the distance, against the green backdrop of the Kyoto hills, a cluster of tall commercial buildings rose up through the summer haze.

From this vantage point she could also look down directly into her grandmother’s garden, as Mrs. Asaki had done that first morning. It gave Sarah an uneasy thrill to realize how clearly visible everything was from here, right down to the pink comic book she had left outside on the veranda. Once Sarah saw her mother and grandmother outside in the garden, crouching side by side near the lilies and pointing excitedly at something in the dirt. She waved but they didn’t see her.

This view reinforced her feeling that the Asaki house was somehow incomplete, in spite of its large size and pleasant rooms. Its soul seemed to look out toward the Kobayashi house instead of inward unto itself. Of course, that might have been her imagination. But Momoko and Yashiko seemed to feel it too. “Big Sister, can we go play at
your
house now?” one of them invariably asked. Sarah would have preferred to stay. She liked the novelty of an unfamiliar household, and her aunt served frequent snacks. But she yielded to her cousins, whose mute urgency was like that of dogs straining at a leash. She felt, in some strange way, that she owed it to them.

“Don’t stay too long and become a bother,” Mrs. Nishimura called gently from the doorway, waving after her children, who had already broken into a run. And Sarah, lingering behind to return her aunt’s wave, felt once again that odd compunction.

There wasn’t much to play with at the Kobayashi house. It had none of the Asaki house’s amenities: no colored pencils or origami, no finches in hanging cages on the balcony, no ancient turtles floating in mossy stone vats. But when the girls stepped up into the kitchen vestibule and saw Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford doubled up with laughter over their tea or spiritedly gossiping in the kitchen as they chopped vegetables for the evening meal, they always felt they had arrived at the true center of things.

“They sure do love to come here,” Sarah remarked one day after her cousins had gone home. She had spent the last half hour watching them dart between her mother and grandmother, tugging on the women’s sleeves and crying, “Aunt Mama, Aunt Mama, guess what?” and “Look, Granny Kobayashi! Look what I got.”

“Why do they need
your
attention?” she asked her grandmother irritably. “They see you all the time. They live right here.”

“They’re only allowed to come over when you’re visiting,” Mrs. Kobayashi said.

Sarah opened her mouth, but her mother silenced her with a look.

During these early days, the girl observed many things. She saw that her grandmother never approached the Asaki house, not even to drop off flowers or food (the exception was formal holidays such as New Year’s or O-bon, when both families dined together). She saw that her grandmother never chatted for very long with Mrs. Nishimura unless Mrs. Asaki was also present.
Mrs. Kobayashi showed a similar, though lesser, restraint around Momoko and Yashiko, which disappeared if they were all in a group.

But everyone else interacted freely. Mrs. Asaki came visiting—alone, without her daughter—on the pretext of paying respects to her ancestors’ family altar. She lingered afterward for a jolly gossip over tea and slices of red-bean jelly. And Mrs. Rexford had once stayed at the Asaki house for several hours, calling Mrs. Asaki “Auntie” and drinking beer with Mr. Nishimura, although she generally refrained from such visits out of loyalty to her mother.

Sarah wondered if Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Asaki had set up these boundaries right from the start. Perhaps they had silently evolved over the decades. If that first morning was any indication, there must have been slip-ups. For how could such an arrangement not foster, on either side, countless small moments of sorrow and resentment?

T
here
was an old saying: a well-bred woman thinks several steps ahead. “It’s like playing chess,
ne,
” Mrs. Rexford explained to her daughter. “Before you make a move, you have to consider all possible consequences.”

Usually the women’s strategies were simple. If Mrs. Kobayashi or Mrs. Rexford realized they were laughing too loudly, one of them might utter “Shh…” and jerk her head in the direction of the Asaki house.

Or they might say to Sarah, “Let’s not mention that we went out for sushi without them,
ne
? It’s just easier.”

“Why would they even care?” Sarah asked. “They do things without us, and
we
don’t mind.” Her elders merely looked at her with weary patience.

One day, to Sarah’s delight, the women announced they were taking her downtown for an afternoon of shopping. It was then that she learned how complex forward-thinking could be.

“Should I run over right now and invite Momoko and Yashiko?” Mrs. Asaki always invited her along when she took her granddaughters shopping. They had ice cream on the six
teenth floor of the Takashimaya department store, and they were allowed one item each from the Hello Kitty shop.

“
Soh soh,
run along and invite them,” urged her grandfather, who happened to be passing by on his way to the workroom. He carried a sheaf of sketches and his hair was rumpled. He was preparing for an upcoming jewelry exhibition.

Mrs. Kobayashi waited until he passed, then shook her head at Sarah. “Don’t listen,” she whispered. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” The two women exchanged wry smiles of exasperation.

“You mean they can’t come?” Momoko and Yashiko adored the French pastry shops and the department stores that lined Marutamachi Boulevard.

“It would be best if you didn’t mention it,” her grandmother said.

Sarah pouted as she and her mother stood in the parlor, changing into their downtown clothes. “Grandma’s stingy,” she complained.

Mrs. Rexford laughed. When the three of them reconvened in the family room, she told her mother, “We need to educate this child. She thinks you’re being stingy.”

“Ara maa.”
Mrs. Kobayashi smiled indulgently.

Mrs. Rexford took to her task right away. “Now use your chess brain,” she told Sarah as the three of them put on their shoes in the vestibule. “What would happen if you invited the girls?”

“They’d be allowed to come. Granny and Auntie would say it was a lovely idea.”

“You’re absolutely right. They’d certainly
say
that.”

Mother and daughter stepped out into the lane and watched as Mrs. Kobayashi drew the curtains behind the glass panels of
the kitchen door. She then rolled the door shut and locked it, even though Mr. Kobayashi was still inside.

“Let’s go this way,” Mrs. Kobayashi said. They headed toward the paved street, avoiding the gravel lane that passed right under Mrs. Asaki’s balcony. Their corner house was convenient for sleight-of-hand exits. The view from the Asaki house covered only the Kobayashis’ formal guest entrance, not the kitchen entrance around the corner.

“So if they came with us, what would happen?” quizzed Mrs. Rexford.

Sarah had no idea. She had never been good at chess.

“Don’t you think Granny Asaki would feel bad,” her mother said, “sitting at home while her grandchildren were out having a good time with their real grandmother?”

Sarah darted a quick glance at her grandmother. So she knew that Sarah knew!

“
Would
Granny feel bad?” Sarah asked doubtfully.

“Of course! She’s very insecure.”

Before turning the corner onto the main street, they paused. Mrs. Rexford peeked around the wooden fence. Ahead of them was the neighborhood snack shop whose owner, chatty Mrs. Yagi, was usually outside gossiping with a customer. “She’s not there. Quick,” Mrs. Rexford said, and the three of them strode briskly past in their telltale clothes: Sarah in her good dress, the women in their heels.

They relaxed when they entered the long, tree-lined stretch of Ginnan Street, where the crosstown bus stop was.

“So if Granny feels insecure and frustrated”—Mrs. Rexford was slightly out of breath—“then what happens? She takes it out on—whom?”

“
Nnn
…Uncle?” Sarah knew something about the in-law situation; her parents had discussed it. Things were a bit
strained because the mother-in-law, not the son-in-law, owned the deed to the house. In theory it made perfect sense to take in a son-in-law and his family—the house was too big for a widow living alone. But there
was
something emasculating about it. And apparently Mrs. Asaki was not above taking subtle advantage of the situation.

“Very good,” said Mrs. Rexford. “Then what would happen?”

“There’s
more
?”

“This is really not that hard,” her mother said. “Use your brain. If the harmony of their house is disturbed, who has to act as go-between and calm everyone down?”

“That would be your auntie,” said Mrs. Kobayashi. “And a thankless task it is,” she added grimly.

“So then you’d have three adults upset and troubled, all because you didn’t think ahead. Is that what you want?”

“No! I don’t want that.”

“Then as strange as it may seem,” concluded her mother, “slipping out like this is actually the best solution.”

“Very true,” said Mrs. Kobayashi.

For Sarah, this was an unfamiliar way of thinking. It was exciting but also exhausting, like that playground game where balls came at you from every direction. Despite the good intentions, it struck her as vaguely distasteful. The Asaki household would be shocked and hurt if they knew how much strategy lay behind her grandmother’s and mother’s actions…or
would
they? Apparently large families were much more complex than Sarah had imagined. Those big, jolly families she read about in children’s books, the kind that stood around the Christmas tree holding hands and singing, never seemed to face these kinds of issues.

“Are they really that sensitive?” she asked her grandmother later that day. “Do you really think we have to be this careful?”
She had waited to catch her grandmother alone, because she feared her mother would tell her to mind her own business.

“Saa…,”
Mrs. Kobayashi replied, “it’s better to be safe than sorry, don’t you think?”

“Are all Japanese families like this?”

“Probably not,” her grandmother said.