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 shuffl
ed 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.
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