Alone in her kitchen, Mrs. Nishimura began washing the breakfast dishes. It took several minutes for her mind to fully grasp what she had done. Tiny tremors began running along her spine. How had she found the courage? She had to turn off the tap and take several deep breaths before she could go on.
chapter 36
The rainy season drew to a close, and each day the sun shone with ever-increasing strength. The intimate, sodden hush of the Ueno lanes gave way to a bright, bustling energy, a quickening. Sound traveled swiftly and clearly. Children whizzed past on bicycles; alley cats darted through the long, lush weeds.
One sunny morning, Mrs. Nishimura ran into Mrs. Kobayashi at the open-air market. Mrs. Nishimura was coming out of Shinsendo Bakery, a new establishment with Parisian awnings of red, white, and blue. Mrs. Kobayashi was approaching from the direction of the pickle store. She noticed her daughter and her face brightened in recognition. Mrs. Nishimura waited, admiring the older woman’s firm, pleasing stride as well as the peach gauze scarf tucked into the neckline of her blouse.
Stepping away from the bicycles and pedestrians, they exchanged small domestic updates. Momoko was still studying hard for her entrance exams. Sarah was interning at a financial consulting firm over the summer.
“In a week or so,” Mrs. Kobayashi said, “it’ll be hot enough to carry a parasol.” She tilted back her head to look at the sun. Mrs. Nishimura, too, lifted her face to the sky: a strong blue, with the classic cumulus clouds of early summer. They lingered, savoring the bright warmth and the communal lightheartedness of fellow shoppers stepping past in summer clothes.
Mrs. Kobayashi looked over at Mrs. Nishimura’s woven straw basket. “So,” she said in a playful tone, “what did you buy?” She had never asked such an intimate question before.
“Saa, let’s see…” Shyly, Mrs. Nishimura parted the handles of her basket. The action felt oddly familiar; she had watched her big sister do it many times. She peered into her own basket, just as her sister used to do.
With friendly curiosity, Mrs. Kobayashi leaned in to look. Among the usual items-garlic shoots, ginger, dried whitebait, fried tofu skin-were two loaves of Shinsendo bread and a kimono fashion magazine. Kimonos were Mrs. Nishimura’s weakness. In her free time she pored over the fat quarterly glossies, in which elegant women modeled seasonal kimonos with expressions of gentle tranquility.
“This bread’s for Mother,” Mrs. Nishimura explained. “She tears off little pieces and dips them in sugar. She calls it a nostalgic craving.”
Mrs. Kobayashi nodded. “That’s right. She told me a long time ago that it used to be a special treat when she was growing up in the country.” She opened her own string bag for inspection. “All I have so far is pickled seaweed.”
They were suddenly approached by a middle-aged woman from Mrs. Nishimura’s choir. “Nishimura-san!” The woman gave two half-bows of greeting, one for each person. “Do you live in this area too?”
Mrs. Nishimura and her mother automatically jerked away from each other, embarrassed to be caught peering into each other’s shopping baskets.
“Maa, Kimura-san, good morning! This is my…” But aunt felt wrong somehow, after all that had happened. She had a sudden impulse: How would it feel to stand here on this street, in the bright light of day, and tell the truth? It would make no difference to her choir mate.
“This,” she said, “is my mother, Haruko Kobayashi. And this is Mrs. Aki Kimura, who sings with me in the choir.” For a brief moment, time stood still.
“How do you do?” The choir woman bowed, unaware that anything was out of the ordinary.
Mrs. Kobayashi, usually such a fluent conversationalist, could not speak. She was deeply moved; it showed plainly on her face. But she had enough social presence to bow deeply, more deeply than the occasion required, in order to make up for her muteness.
Seeing her mother’s tremulous mouth, Mrs. Nishimura felt a piercing joy. And a sort of wonder: with a single word, she had turned all her years of yearning into a benediction for her mother.
Part 4
chapter 37
The first day back in her grandmother’s house gave Sarah a sense of wavering in time. Her American self dropped away. In its place, long-forgotten former selves came swimming up from the depths: the little girl who had attended school in Japan, the fourteen-year-old who had lived here one summer, the various older selves she had been on subsequent visits. She was twenty-four years old. She had passed the CPA exam and joined the tax department of a multinational corporation.
“This soup is delicious,” she said. “Creamy. Very delicate.”
Mrs. Kobayashi nodded. “I changed the ratio of white miso to red. That way it won’t interfere with the flavor of the squash.”
“Look at these colors.” Sarah held out her bowl at arm’s length, admiring the overall effect. “So nice and autumnal. The orange of the squash, the speckled brown of the mountain potato…”
“Against the red lacquer of the bowl,” said her grandmother proudly.
“A perfect combination.”
Sarah returned the bowl to its proper position in the palm of her left hand.
“No one makes breakfasts like this anymore,” Mrs. Kobayashi said. She nodded at the array of side dishes: eel omelette, umeboshi, glazed kelp and beans. “Over at Granny’s house, they sometimes eat their rice with nothing but miso soup and fried eggs. Momoko told me.”
“Not very satisfying,” said Sarah, forgetting that her usual breakfast in America was nothing but cereal and a banana.
They ate contentedly.
Sarah gazed about at the wooden posts and fusuma panels of her childhood. She still half expected to hear her grandfather’s hammer tap-tapping in the workroom.
“It’s quiet with him gone, ne,” she said. Mr. Kobayashi had died of a heart attack two years ago. Although his loss paled in comparison with that of her parents, Sarah had loved her grandfather and his death had been a shock.
“Yes, it’s hard to get used to. It’s strange living alone.”
Sarah remembered his affectionate, if clumsy, presents: boxes of caramels for her, packets of Japanese radish seeds for her mother, a bottle of processed seaweed paste (“to put on your bread when you get home”) or some other impractical thing for them to take home to America.
“Granny Asaki visited me the week he died-did I ever tell you? You’d gone home by then.”
Sarah shook her head.
“She rang the bell at the visitor gate. I’m thinking, what’s all this? Then she seats herself in the parlor and bows her head to the floor, over and over. She says, ‘You were a fine wife. He didn’t deserve you. It’s humbled me all these years, the way you worked so hard without complaining.’”
“How lovely,” said Sarah. “I adore Japanese formality.”
Mrs. Kobayashi snorted. “Well, it’s true. I gave him decades of exemplary service. It was for my own self-respect.” Then her voice softened. “He appreciated it near the end, though. He used to look up from his plate and say, all gruff and embarrassed, ‘You were always good to me. Thank you.’”
Sarah nodded.
“I did more than enough for the man,” her grandmother said briskly. “I have no regrets.”
“Do you ever dream about him?”
“Not really. Do you?”
“No. I still dream about my parents, though. I keep forgetting they’re dead. You’d think after six years, it would soak through to my subconscious.”
Her grandmother, chewing, nodded with interest and encouragement.
“It’s odd,” said Sarah, “that they’re so fresh in my dreams. It’s like that part of my brain is frozen in time.”
“Yes, the human brain is very mysterious.”