When a mother imagines the ideal girlfriend for her son – especially one he is considering marrying – she should be neither strikingly beautiful or flamboyant, nor too homely as to be a black mark against her son’s reputation. The ideal girlfriend is a nice young miss, the type who would appear neat and unobtrusively pretty, perhaps wearing a conservative blouse and pleated skirt. Of course, not the type who’s overly bold or assertive.
At least, that’s what her group of ladies thought. They all considered themselves refined housewives who enjoyed getting dressed up for a fancy outing together. That meant a satin or chiffon dress, accessorized with eye-catching jewellery and a designer handbag. All the more of a status symbol for having been acquired at a department store in Umeda.
Even buying it in the sale, after jostling among other shoppers and snatching it away from another woman’s hands – a department store purchase still earned top honours.
Then again, the housewives who actually
Those who really were refined wouldn’t dare to complain if their son brought home a showy girl like her who would say something as sassy as what she had just muttered.
Yasué had seen from afar the antics of the queenpin leader of her group. How she had tossed her handbag onto the seat just as that other woman was about to sit down. And Yasué had heard the crass burst of laughter.
She had been loath to join the group, wondering what the people around them would think of her.
But Yasué was definitely too timid to confront the woman who had thrown the bag. The way the queenpin saw it, she had done it as a kindness towards Yasué, giving her a leg up when she was lagging behind. Yasué was well aware of what might happen to her, were she to defy that kindness, having witnessed others who had left or been ousted from their group.
There was nothing else to do but hand the carelessly tossed bag back to her. As Yasué muttered an apology, she felt an unpleasant prickling sensation in her stomach. She’d been experiencing more frequent stomach upsets recently. She didn’t really have any interest in going all the way to Takarazuka today for an expensive lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Someone had got hold of their menu and, studying it, had remarked, ‘If we’re going to go, we just have to try the fancy prix fixe,’ and so it was decided they would order the most expensive option that was five thousand yen per person.
It being a Saturday, her husband and son were home for the day and before she left Yasué had prepared fried rice for their lunch.
Her association with this group had started back when they were together in the PTA for their children’s junior high school. Yasué’s husband and son, familiar with the group’s challenging dynamics, hadn’t said a word – they had always been sympathetic to her ambivalence about attending these outings.
When Yasué had handed the bag back and apologized, the queenpin had said, ‘No big deal,’ with an audible laugh. Yasué had smiled in an attempt to be agreeable. She had learned that the secret to getting along in life was not to go against the alpha.
That’s when the comment, like a stab in the gut, had been let loose from the seat beside her.
But what could Yasué say that would make the young woman understand that she dared not refuse the seat saved for her by the queenpin?
The fact that Yasué lacked the nerve to say any of these things out loud meant being lumped in with these ladies and being one of ‘the worst’.
She envied those women who had long ago been put off by the group and whose names no one ever mentioned any more. Having missed her chance to escape herself, she wondered just how long her relationship with them would go on for.