The Favorites (13 page)

B
ut
maybe Masako was born that way, thought Mrs. Asaki as she shuffled 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 gradu
ally 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.

B
ack
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.

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.

A
cross
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.