Mrs. Asaki felt the sharp sting of insult. Her own daughter had married a man like this-Mr. Nishimura’s résumé was almost interchangeable with the one she held in her hands. But she could secretly relate to her niece; she would have felt the same way in her position. For Mrs. Asaki, too, knew what it was to possess beauty and charm, to have the arrogance that came from having options.
Introductory meetings had been arranged-the tense, stilted kind with both sets of parents present. A few weeks later, Mrs. Rexford dropped by with an update.
“She sabotaged it,” she said, eyes dancing. “What a show! She talked nonstop about herself, she kept interrupting…” She gave a ringing laugh of approval. “I told her, ‘Tama-chan, it’s not such a stretch from your usual behavior!’”
“Ara!” said Mrs. Asaki.
“Our father’s giving up out of sheer embarrassment.”
“That’s a shameful way to act,” said Mrs. Asaki. “Wasting everybody’s time.”
“Well, the whole business is downright medieval,” Mrs. Rexford retorted. “Marriage isn’t a job opening. It’s pathetic, having to get interviewed like some kind of applicant.”
Mrs. Asaki felt an echo of her long-ago dislike for Mrs. Kobayashi and her port-city airs.
Luckily, Masako hadn’t rebelled like her cousins. But then her situation was different. She had attended an all-girls’ college; it was what her father wanted. And college aside, she lacked that certain wayward sparkle with which her cousins had drawn young men their way.
No, Masako had never caused her parents the least bit of trouble, even as a child. For this Mrs. Asaki was grateful, even smug. But she had felt a dim sort of worry when she saw how the neighborhood children, especially Yoko, shielded her from the full brunt of their rough games.
As the years passed, Mrs. Asaki had taken a special interest in Sarah’s upbringing, for she, too, was an only child. On the surface her grand-niece seemed quiet and well mannered, just as Masako had been. But in Sarah’s eyes there was nothing shuttered; Mrs. Asaki suspected she could transition quickly into anger or grief. And why not? There would be no consequences if she did. The Rexfords were self-contained, living far away from family or anyone who cared. Mrs. Asaki yearned for their simple life.
Sometimes she dared to wonder if Masako’s docility came from being adopted. They had tried so hard to give her a carefree childhood. But if there had been a leak…if her daughter had carried that burden all those years and never come to her…But no, that possibility didn’t bear thinking about.
chapter 28
Across the lane at the Kobayashi house, Mrs. Nishimura was leaving for the day.
She stepped down from the tatami floor into the kitchen vestibule. Mrs. Kobayashi followed her down to see her out. Standing close together on the small square of cement, they slid their feet into comfortable household flats.
The older woman reached out and, in a spontaneous gesture of warmth, gripped her daughter’s hands in both of her own. “Thank you, Ma-chan,” she said. “Thank you for everything. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Pleased and shy, Mrs. Nishimura squeezed silently back.
She had a sudden memory of standing in this very same spot with her sister Yoko. She was thirteen years old. There had been a birthday party for little Tama, and the children had feasted on fried chicken. This unusual dish, resurrected from Mrs. Kobayashi’s Kobe days, had excited the young guests. Frilled drumsticks clutched in bare hands, they laughed and joked with boisterous abandon.
Masako, crowded around the low table with the others, felt something within her loosen and spread out in this easy warmth. It had been several months since she last visited this house. Now that the children were older, they were busy with their own friends, their own activities at school. And since learning of her own adoption-she had known for almost a year-Masako had become self-conscious about visiting. Today, sandwiched in between Yoko and Teinosuke, she basked in this cozy intimacy that could have been hers. She pretended she was one of them-she pretended so hard she could almost feel herself changing into the bright, carefree sort of girl she might have been if she lived here with her real family.
She had gazed at Mrs. Kobayashi presiding at the table, smiling and ladling hot rice into the children’s bowls with soft, youthful hands that were so different from the veined, aging hands of her adopted mother. She felt a great yearning to touch one of those hands, to say the word mother. What the result of such an action would be, the girl couldn’t imagine. She thought it would be like puncturing the sac of an egg yolk, releasing something slow and rich and golden and momentous that would flow over her the same way it flowed over Yoko. But she didn’t yet feel entitled to this or resentful about its loss. She just felt a vague, primal shame about being given away.
After the neighborhood children had left through the formal guest entrance, Masako put on her shoes in the kitchen vestibule. Yoko did too; she had changed into her tennis clothes and was going out to practice. The two girls stood together on the small square of cement, leaning over to pull up the backs of their sneakers.
Masako wasn’t ready to return to her big, quiet house. There was a hollowness in her that threatened to widen out into terrible infinity. In a sort of controlled panic she turned to Yoko.
“I want to call her Mother,” she said. “Just once.” It was the first time she had mentioned it since their talk a year ago.
Her big sister looked at her with such sympathy and understanding that something in Masako loosened even further, and she felt herself on the verge of tears.
“Just wait a little longer, ne?” Yoko said. “For everyone’s sake. You have to be strong. Hold on, just a little bit longer.”
Now, decades later, Mrs. Nishimura gripped her mother’s hands and felt that old childhood desire. But it was no longer the terrifying thing it had once been. The years had rendered it down to something poignant and small, worn thin by day-today life.
For the first time, she decided to make an overture. And here was a rare chance, as perfect and fragile and unexpected as a glistening soap bubble-a chance that, deep down, she had always hoped would come. She felt her heart starting to pound. It would do no harm…just one small, intimate remark that would be answered in kind, creating a lovely moment that would resonate afterward. Their lives would not change. She knew this. They were grown women with a firm grip on reality and duty.
But the moment of opportunity had passed. Mrs. Kobayashi withdrew her hands and turned away to open the kitchen door. Mrs. Nishimura felt a sag of relief, followed by disappointment. Such a chance might never come again.
“You and I,” she said quickly to her mother’s back, “we’re the only ones left…” It was a reference to the original family unit consisting of Shohei, her mother, Yoko, and herself.
The kitchen door, rattling noisily in its groove, drowned out her soft voice. Mrs. Kobayashi caught something about being left behind, but she assumed Mrs. Nishimura meant the fish broth cooling on the stove. So she stepped outside onto the stone step and exclaimed, “Maa, how warm it’s gotten lately! If this keeps up, it’s going to be fine weather for Yo-chan’s burial.”
She stood on the gravel and saw her daughter off, waving a fond good-bye as she turned the corner.
If the timing had only been right, she would have responded with genuine emotion. It had always saddened her that her daughter never mentioned the adoption. “But my hands are tied,” she had lamented to Mrs. Rexford. “If she came to me, I’d jump at the chance. But she never has.”
“Maybe she’s waiting for you,” Mrs. Rexford suggested.
“Don’t be silly. She knows it’s not my place. No, she’s just closed off to me. All I get is that outside face. Sometimes I wonder if deep down, she hates me.”
Mrs. Rexford had shaken her head, baffled. No one had much insight into Mrs. Nishimura’s inner life.
Mrs. Asaki was upstairs, sitting on a floor cushion and folding laundry, when she heard her
daughter come home. There was a faint clatter down in the kitchen and soon Mrs. Nishimura came upstairs with the usual tray of tea and rice crackers to tide her over until dinnertime.
“These dried so fast today,” Mrs. Asaki remarked, gesturing to the small pile on the tatami mat that she had just unpinned from the balcony clothesline.
“Soh ne,” Mrs. Nishimura agreed, setting down the tray on the low table. Her tone held an unaccustomed sharpness that alerted Mrs. Asaki to her next words. “Mother,” she said, “you forgot to turn off the gas on the stovetop. Again.”
Ara! Had she? Mrs. Asaki, who prided herself on her sharp, youthful mind, felt a stab of fear, then shame. It was immediately followed by anger that her daughter had felt the need to point it out. What difference did it make? This was her last day in the kitchen anyway.
“Well,” she replied in a humble tone that didn’t quite hide her petulance, “it’s probably best for an old woman like me to stay out of the way.”
Mrs. Nishimura said nothing. She moved across the room and passed beyond the open glass panels to the balcony. She stood there, resting her forearms on the wooden rail and gazing out onto the view.
Mrs. Asaki went back to folding the laundry, but her eyes stayed on her daughter. She was leaning her weight onto her forearms, hunching forward like a child so her shoulder blades jutted out under the thin cardigan. From behind, her slight figure could almost pass for that of the teenager she had once been. In years past, Mrs. Asaki had watched her leaning against the railing in this same forlorn pose.
It was early evening now, and somewhere out in the lanes a tofu vendor was making pre-dinner rounds. His horn made a plaintive, mournful tune-toooofuuu…tofu-tofuuu-that signaled the day’s end. But it was still light, for the days were growing longer. The air still had that burgeoning quality Mrs. Asaki had noticed earlier, that sense of currents floating in from distant, sun-warmed places. It seemed to release yearnings all across the narrow lanes until they rose up, hovering like kites, ready to swell at the slightest lift of the breeze. The pet finches, in their bamboo cages hung from the balcony eaves, sensed this too and were restless, ruffling their feathers and hopping from perch to perch.
Whatever was going on with Masako, it was probably to be expected. All that time spent at the Kobayashi house, her daily routine turned completely on its head; who knew what feelings had been stirred up as a result? And now it was over, for the Izumis were arriving tomorrow and then Sarah would come, along with all sorts of visitors paying condolence calls. The Kobayashi house would become busy and insular, the Asaki household would once again recede to the fringes, and life would go back to normal.
Mrs. Asaki felt sorry for her daughter. She understood-better than anyone-how it felt to be near someone day in and day out, knowing that person was missing someone else. How ironic that they had this in common.
But another part of her, the part that was a woman and not a mother, was unmoved. What about me? she thought. It’s no more than what’s happened to me. And all because of her daughter’s misguided fantasies. Adoption or no adoption, Mrs. Kobayashi would never have had eyes for anyone but her firstborn. Look at Tama and Teinosuke: they were raised in the Kobayashi house, but what good did it do them? They were nothing more than second-best. Masako, on the other hand, had a mother all to herself. She was the center of attention; she had wanted for nothing. If not for her stubbornness, the two of them might have had what Mrs. Kobayashi and Yoko had.
Mrs. Asaki rose to her feet. She carried the pile of folded laundry over to the black lacquered tansu chest, which had been part of her wedding trousseau. She pulled open the drawers, the round iron handles clanking against the wood. From her standing position, she looked past her daughter to the view beyond. In this transient light the tiled roofs had solidified to dark, one-dimensional squares; the television antennae and the power lines had melted away until it was once again the neighborhood of prewar days, with cherry blossoms glowing dimly in the dusk and wisteria draping the wooden fences.
It’s no more than what’s happened to me, she repeated to herself. She felt an angry kind of sorrow-not so much at her daughter, but at the vagaries of a life that had molded her into someone so possessive, so dependent on this one child. When Mrs. Asaki was young she had never chased anyone. People had sought her. She had some special quality, but what it consisted of, she could not have said. Maybe it wasn’t the sort of thing that translated well into old age. At any rate, the last of it had run out several years ago, as her granddaughters outgrew their granny and turned into teens with better things to do. But she still remembered, deep in her viscera, how it had felt to be that person: all these years had not dulled the loss of the woman she had been.
Padding back to the low table, she sat down to her tea. She reached out for the long string hanging from the ceiling lamp. It hung down almost to the floor-a convenient length for small children and for those seated on floor cushions. Grasping the red silk tassel, she tugged. The room filled with a cozy, rice-papered glow, and she felt a sudden desire to reach out to her daughter, for out on the balcony it was growing dark. “I know how it feels,” she wanted to say. She longed to convey some great tenderness with those words, some solidarity that only a fellow survivor could give. For a moment, infected by the spring breeze, her heart rose with the possibility.
But then sanity returned, and with it the long memory of quiet hurts that now came crowding up into her chest. How much rejection could one allow? She was old. She was tired.
So Mrs. Asaki did nothing.
She wondered if she would have felt differently if Masako was her biological child.
When feelings run out, when relationships die, it’s often a long time coming. The end comes in quiet lulls and falls away, like a leaf from a branch. Mrs. Nishimura would never know what had changed in her mother’s heart, for their gentle interactions would go on unaffected for years.
Standing at the balcony rail, lost in her own thoughts, Mrs. Nishimura was hardly aware of the electric light switching on behind her.
chapter 29
A few days later, Mrs. Izumi came visiting alone. “Auntie!” she greeted Mrs. Asaki, who was out in the front garden, feeding the turtles in the mossy stone vats. “I’ve come for a girls’ chat.” She held out a package of roasted miso dumplings, still hot from a local tearoom and smelling of wood smoke.
“What a treat!” said Mrs. Asaki. “Go right on up. Ma-chan’ll make us some tea.”
The Izumis were here for only a few days. They would not be coming back for the burial. For one thing, it was a non-Christian ceremony; for another, the Izumis lived too far away to make a second trip. They had left Tokyo several years ago, abandoning the main island altogether and relocating to the southernmost tip of the country. Mrs. Asaki knew very little about that region, only that it was tropical and people there had extremely brown skin.
She followed Mrs. Izumi into the informal dining area. After four years, it still offended her that her niece wouldn’t stop at the parlor to pay respects to Mr. Asaki in the family altar. It just wasn’t right. Her late husband had been especially kind to the Kobayashi children. When they were small, he would take them to a special restaurant on Christmas Eve for American hotcakes and syrup. Didn’t Tama remember? If Mrs. Asaki were younger she would have made some acidic remark. But in her old age, she was increasingly careful to ingratiate herself with her family. So she merely sang out, like the agreeable granny that she was, “Maa! Those dumplings smell wonderful!”
With the kettle on the stove, the three women sat down at the low table.
Mrs. Nishimura emptied the contents of the package onto a large plate. “Tama-chan, you’ve brought so much!” she said. “We can’t possibly eat this all. I’ll save some for the children.” She transferred a couple of skewers onto a smaller plate and slipped away behind her sister’s back-not to the kitchen, but out into the hall. Mrs. Asaki knew she was headed for the family altar, where she would deftly, discreetly offer th
e dumplings on her sister’s behalf. She felt a warm rush of gratitude.
She felt sorry for Mrs. Kobayashi, whose daughter refused to pray at her own sister’s funerary table. The Izumis had their own brand of prayer, which was invisible to others as it required neither chanting nor kneeling nor going anywhere near the funerary table.
But as the tea progressed, Mrs. Izumi didn’t mention religion at all. Her new, quiet maturity was more disturbing than her earlier fervor. Back then, in her childlike way, she had needed their attention. Now this gracious “outside” face reminded Mrs. Asaki of her own daughter.
“You know, after I heard the news,” Mrs. Izumi said, “that very same night, a snake appeared in my dream.”
“Maa, how auspicious!” said Mrs. Asaki with warm approval. “Snakes bring good luck.” Her late husband had carried a snakeskin wallet for many years, as a traditional way of attracting wealth and good fortune.
“Big Sister was born in the year of the snake,” added Mrs. Nishimura.
Mrs. Izumi nodded. “It’s surely a sign,” she said, “that she’s doing well on the other side.”
The women fell silent, nodding at the truth of this statement.
Mrs. Izumi and Mrs. Nishimura were not particularly close. Even as children, they were too far apart in age, in temperament, in social interests. All they had in common was their big sister.
Under their placid expressions Mrs. Asaki sensed deep emotional currents, revealing themselves in a twist of the mouth or a look in the eye. Their relationships with their big sister had been complex and personal-perhaps even painful?-and they would hold it close to their chests.
She steered the conversation toward happier ground. “When Yo-chan was young, she simply refused to wear ribbons,” she told them. “She was a stubborn one. Quiet, but stubborn.” The women laughed indulgently as she trotted out reminiscences from Mrs. Rexford’s childhood.
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