The Favorites

And it had been worth it. “Look, Mama, I’m pretty,” little Masako had breathed, eyes shining as she reached up to pet the unaccustomed fur with the clumsy, reverent fingers of a five-year-old. And Mrs. Asaki had known a moment of keen joy.

That night at the Asaki house, di

“I doubt if she’ll have any appetite,” said Mrs. Asaki. “But the sushi from Hideko is her favorite. If she can swallow even one or two bites, that’ll be better than nothing.”

There was a murmur of sympathetic agreement around the table. With guilty expressions, Momoko and Yashiko tried to eat more languidly. But it was hard, for sushi from Hideko was a rare and delectable treat.

“Probably Grandpa Kobayashi will make sure she eats,” said Momoko.

Mrs. Nishimura wasn’t eating much-just three pieces of sushi on a condiment plate-but that was normal. As a proper traditional wife, she ate just enough to tide her over until it was time to eat with her husband.

“I’ll go over first thing tomorrow,” Mrs. Nishimura said. Her eyelids were puffy. “She needs help in the kitchen, and the parlor has to be set up with the white cloth and everything, for when Sarah-chan brings home the ashes.”

She said this dispassionately but Mrs. Asaki, her ante

“Soh, that’s a good idea.” What else could she say? With a tragedy like this, boundaries went out the window. She wished she could help Mrs. Kobayashi herself, but this was a job for a young, able-bodied woman.

“She could use the help,” Mrs. Asaki continued. “At least until her real family gets here.” As a subtle reminder, she put the faintest of emphasis on the word real.

Mrs. Nishimura busied herself realigning the condiment cruets in the center of the table: soy sauce, chili oil, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, sesame salt. After some time had passed she picked up the teapot-“Some more tea, Mother?”-and refilled her cup with a filial gesture. Something about the patient droop of her neck gave Mrs. Asaki a pang of remorse. She knew her daughter felt guilty, had always felt guilty, for not cleaving to her the way she should. To compensate, she treated her adopted mother with such kindness and politeness that it alienated them even more. There was nothing to be done for it. The heart wants what it wants. If circumstances were different, Mrs. Asaki would have sympathized with her dilemma.

She drank her tea. She was grateful, shudderingly grateful, that her own Masako was safe and alive. Even now she could hardly wrap her mind around this awful news. What irony: her own child was alive and Mrs. Kobayashi’s wasn’t. There was a story she had heard around the neighborhood: a man had donated a kidney to his sick brother, then died of complications while the sick brother went on to thrive with the kidney that wasn’t his.

Should the sick brother have given the kidney back?

No, she thought, biting into a slice of red tuna. It was rich and fatty on the tongue, the freshly ground wasabi warming her sinuses.

“Poor Sarah-chan, ne…,” Yashiko remarked to the table at large.

“Soh, poor Sarah-chan,” agreed her grandmother. “Think how lucky you are, both of you, that your mother’s right here beside you. It’s a sad thing indeed when a daughter takes her own mother for granted.”

chapter 24

There is something bracing, almost exhilarating, about a catastrophe. Like a typhoon, it sweeps away the small constraints of daily existence. It opens up the landscape to bold moves and rearrangements that would be unthinkable in normal times.

It was in such an atmosphere that they buried Shohei. The war was escalating. Shortly afterward, American bombs fell on Kobe, Mrs. Kobayashi’s birth city. Vast areas of the city burned down in the fires.

Mrs. Kobayashi’s family, the Sosetsus, barely escaped with their lives. Hitching a ride on a farmer’s oxcart, they made their way inland to Kyoto with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “We ran through the city with our coats over our heads,” Mrs. Kobayashi’s mother told them. She was freshly bathed, dressed in one of her daughter’s kimonos. Her air was so refined that it was hard for Mrs. Asaki to imagine her ru

“What about your ships…?” asked Mrs. Asaki. The Sosetsus’ import business was the mainstay of their wealth.

“Gone,” said one of the sons bitterly. “All except two that were out at sea. Our entire fleet was in that harbor.”

Mrs. Asaki was enthralled in spite of herself. An entire fleet, destroyed! Her in-laws had sunk from wealth to poverty in the blink of an eye.

“I can’t get over it,” she said later that night to her husband. “What a change of fortune!”

“It could have been us,” he said in dazed wonder.

“Yes, it could have been us…” They were silent, pondering the upheaval the war had brought. The Asakis were doing better than their neighbors, even in this time of food rationing. Mr. Asaki was a high school superintendent. His public office gave him access to black-market cha

“They can’t possibly squeeze into that little house,” Mr. Asaki said.

“Of course not!” There were six of them: Mrs. Kobayashi, her mother, three siblings ranging in age from thirteen to twenty, and four-year-old Yoko. When Mrs. Kobayashi delivered her baby, there would be seven in all. “She and Yo-chan should move in with us,” she said, “till that family gets back on their feet.”

She ran her eyes over the too-large house-the wide expanse of tatami matting, the long empty halls. She and her husband had always hoped for children. But now, on the brink of forty, she knew it was never going to happen.

“It’ll be nice,” she said, “having small children here.”

The months passed. Japan surrendered in 1945. Mrs. Kobayashi gave birth to a baby girl called Masako.

One day Mrs. Sosetsu paid the Asakis a formal call and a

“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Asaki. He and his wife bowed back in unison. “We wish you all the best.”

“We wish you all the best,” echoed Mrs. Asaki. This house was going to be lonely without little Yoko and the baby.

That night at di

“I’d like to,” said Mrs. Kobayashi wistfully. “But there aren’t any jobs in Kobe for someone like me. My children and I would just be a burden.” She paused. “No no, Yo-chan,” she told the little girl, who was reaching across the table with her chopsticks. “If you want more radishes, say, ‘Please pass the radishes.’”