of all that,” the old woman concluded, “you have the same open presence your mother and your grandfather had.”
Sarah pondered this as they turned homeward. She wondered what her grandfather Shohei would think if he could see them now: an unlikely pair! She imagined his shock and bewilderment at seeing his own wife walking alongside an American, channeling to her all the love that had once gone to him.
Walking abreast, they turned off the main street. They passed the Kinjin-ya teahouse and entered a narrow residential lane that headed west toward So-Zen Temple. On Sarah’s last visit this lane had been gravel; now it was paved. Their shoes made flat slapping sounds against the blacktop, and Sarah missed the gentle k’sha k’sha that had so often reminded her of walking on new-fallen snow.
The sun broke through briefly, its pale light slanting tentatively into the lane. Many of the rickety doors had been replaced by sturdier models with slats of brown plastic instead of traditional wood. One corner house had been torn down altogether and replaced with a Western-style model home, complete with white aluminum siding and a door that opened with a knob. Hanging from the knocker was a painted wooden cutout of a puppy, holding in its smiling mouth a nameplate spelling out THE MATSUDAS in English letters.
A bicycle bell tinged behind them. They backed off to the side, careful not to bump into a motor scooter parked beside one of the doors. A straight-backed housewife rode past with a bow of thanks, her wire basket filled with newspaper-wrapped groceries.
“We’ll have this sashimi for lunch, with hot rice,” Mrs. Kobayashi said as they resumed walking abreast. “You’re not here for very long, so we need to plan the menu carefully. We can’t afford to let a single meal go to waste.” Energized by this task before her, she walked briskly. “Do you have any cravings?” she said. “If you do, tell me now.”
“Grandma?” Sarah asked. “Whatever happened to the little lane that hadn’t changed in generations?” That summer day, when she and her mother had strolled home after eating azuki ice, already belonged to a different lifetime. “You know, the lane with the thatched roofs?”
Mrs. Kobayashi gave a short, puzzled laugh as Sarah described it to her.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “They’ve torn a lot of those down.” Then she suddenly stopped short. “Sarah-chan,” she said, “do you remember if we locked the kitchen door when we left?”
A few more years, Sarah thought, and these lanes would be unrecognizable. She imagined a day in the future, perhaps when her grandmother was gone, when she might walk through these lanes with her own daughter—a child with even less Japanese blood than she. And a certain quality of reproach in the slant of sunlight would remind her with a pang, as it did now, of her mother’s confident voice saying, “It’s never going to change, I’m sure.”
“Once, when I was a girl,” Sarah would tell her daughter, gripping her hand tightly, “I walked these lanes just like you, with my own mother.” Saying these inadequate words, she would sense keenly how much fell away with time, how lives intersected but only briefly.
“Thank goodness I remembered the shiso leaves,” Mrs. Kobayashi said now, leaning over and peering into Sarah’s string bag. “When you were little you refused to eat your sashimi and rice without it, remember? Maa, I never saw such a particular child!”
“That wasn’t me, Grandma,” Sarah said. “That was Mama.”
“Oh…” Mrs. Kobayashi was silent for a moment. “Well, that would make more sense, ne,” she said finally. “Poor thing. Autumn hiramasa was her favorite. But we couldn’t afford it during the postwar years. Then just when things got better and she could have eaten her fill, she moved away…”
Sarah looked over at the old woman beside her. Mixed in with her sympathy was a certain satisfaction: here was someone who still mourned, who still hurt deeply and had not forgotten.
“Grandma,” she said, in the gentle tone she had often heard her mother use. “There’s no use thinking like that. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Mrs. Kobayashi quickened her pace, as she sometimes did when she was feeling emotional. “People don’t always get the luxury of timing,” she said.
chapter 39
One day Sarah noticed that her grandmother had bought more roasted eels than the two of them could eat.
“Do you want me to take some over to Auntie’s?” she asked.
“No, no. There isn’t enough for everyone in that house.