often Sarah slid the book toward her great-aunt and remarked, “So pretty!” or “Auntie was so cute!” Her great-aunt gave a pleased cackle and replied: “That was a high school field trip.” Or, “That was two years after I got married.”
Here was a photograph of Mrs. Asaki as a young woman: tall, unrecognizably beautiful, standing under a tree. She wore a white fur draped around her neck and down the side of her silk kimono. She had grown up in the rural outskirts of Kyoto, the daughter of a town mayor. Despite this unremarkable pedigree, she had married into a fine old family in the city on the strength of her looks. In this picture she was tilting her head demurely to the side, but her sloe-eyed gaze held that gleam that beautiful women have when they know they’re invincible.
Sarah knew that Granny had been asked to stay upstairs to make things easier on everyone. It was too bad; social activity had been her lifeblood. Mrs. Kobayashi sympathized too. “Poor thing,” she had said. “It would be so much healthier if she could chatter away in a public bathhouse, instead of being cooped up there all alone.” But theirs was more of a philosophical pity, for they also understood Mrs. Nishimura’s position. As Sarah’s mother used to say: What can you do? There was no perfect solution, and right now it was Mrs. Nishimura’s turn to bloom at the expense of someone else.
The old woman never let on that her circumstances weren’t ideal. “Who wants to run about at my age?” she bragged. “I’m perfectly happy in my little kingdom upstairs. Surrounded by family, waited on hand and foot, maa maa, I’m incredibly lucky…”
Sarah scrutinized the photograph again. Mrs. Asaki, glancing over to see what was taking so much time, gave a little laugh of recognition. “I was young then,” she said.
In college, Sarah had learned that history was the study of power rising and power falling. Sitting here, leafing through the pages of another woman’s life, she felt the truth of this and was humbled. It occurred to her that her own past—the trio of her mother and grandmother and herself that had once seemed so extraordinary, strong and shining like the sun—was hardly unique. Countless other suns, like her great-aunt’s, had risen and fallen as a matter of course, each with its own forgotten story, its own poignance.
chapter 45
Sarah found her aunt alone in the kitchen, making preparations for dinner. “I’m just finishing up this side dish,” she told Sarah, in apology for cooking in the presence of a guest. She was sautéing a combination of julienned carrots, hijiki seaweed, and fried tofu skin. It looked identical to the dish Mrs. Kobayashi often made, but this would have much less soy sauce and sugar. Mrs. Kobayashi disparagingly referred to it as “Kyoto flavor.”
Before going off to undress, Sarah leaned against the kitchen doorjamb and watched her aunt. The radio was on, a plastic Hello Kitty model long outgrown by Momoko and Yashiko. For years now, it had been tuned to the same classical station that played everything from the Western melodies of Strauss and Puccini to the elegant notes of koto, punctuated by a shamisen’s bitter twangs.
In general, Mrs. Nishimura seemed unchanged. Under her apron she wore a blouse of pastel yellow, with a round collar that had embroidered daisies on it. She still wore the short bob, although Sarah could see it was professionally cut at a salon, with graduated layers and the subtlest of brownish highlights to indicate she was coloring her roots.
But on closer inspection, Sarah did sense something of the change her grandmother had mentioned. That virginal, ethereal quality was gone. As Mrs. Nishimura reached for a bottle of seasoning, she leaned across the counter with an unfamiliar physical brio that reminded Sarah, for an unsettling moment, of her own mother.
She stared, but Mrs. Nishimura made no more surprising moves. Stirring quietly at the stove, she was once again the aunt of Sarah’s childhood: a gentle figure who never frowned or grimaced, who hovered with a damp cloth for wiping children’s fingers.
An early memory floated up in her mind. She was six years old; they were walking to the park on a winter afternoon. She was in the middle, between her aunt and Momoko—Yashiko wasn’t born yet. “Hold on to Big Sister’s hand, for safety,” Mrs. Nishimura had told Momoko. As young as she was, Sarah knew her aunt was doing this to flatter