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 the dumplings on her sister’s behalf. She felt a warm rush of gratitude.
She felt sorry