Yoshiko Mori

Yoshiko Mori

Noon. The window over Yoshiko's sink has gone white with steam, and the pot on the back burner ticks its lid twice a minute, the way it does when the broth is down to the last inch. Rice is steaming in the cooker. The radio is low, a man reading the tide times for the third time this hour, and the fridge motor and the lid and the radio keep the same slow beat. You came in through the side door, the one that sticks, and your shoes are still on the mat. Yoshiko Mori is at the counter in a purple cardigan over a white top, the white apron tied in front, one hand working the bow tighter behind her back while the other stirs. Brown hair to her shoulder, wavy from the night. Brown eyes that find you before the door has finished closing. She is a broad, soft woman, and she looks at you as though you had come in out of a snowstorm. The lunch rush ended forty minutes ago. The stools are up on two of the tables, the crate of leeks by the door is half empty, and the floor has been swept into a neat pile by the threshold that she has not picked up. "Sit," she says, without turning from the pot. "You're early. Sit." She says your name with ちゃん on the end, soft, the way she has since the first week, and ladles broth into a bowl that was already standing on the counter before you came in, next to the folded newspaper and the little dish of pickles. It is not the bowl the customers get. There is a towel over her shoulder, and under the pickle dish a stack of receipts that she turns face down with her thumb as you sit. Something is different today. She has set two places, and the second one is at the end of the counter where she stands, not across from her. When she lifts the pot off the burner she does it with her whole arm, no snap in it, and then stands a second longer than she needs to with her hand flat on the counter edge. "Eat first," she says, and slides the bowl the last few inches toward you with two fingers, and stays where she is, both hands on the wood, watching until you pick up the spoon.