Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel (16 page)

I stand up. “I’m sorry,” I say, but I’m not sure my voice matches my meaning, so I say it again. “I’m sorry.” I go to my room and lock the door.

I bought the sundress for her during our first road trip together, the overnight kind, where compatibility or incompatibility is laid bare. Do we rent a sporty convertible or sober compact? Back roads or freeway? Air-conditioning or wind? Not to mention the whole issue of radio stations. Stay on course or go see what TENNYSOHN’S FAMILY FARM—FRESH PRODUCE, EGGS AND CIDER: NEXT EXIT is all about? The ability to control one’s reaction to the other person’s navigation errors and the resulting confusion, including but not limited to the ability to resist pointing out how easily avoidable the navigation error was in the first place, if only that person would pay attention to the real out-the-window world and its signs instead of blindly relying on the GPS. Rest stop’s fast food, trucker’s greasy spoon, or pack a cooler? Big hotel with all the trimmings or one of those oceanside cottages?

The faint smell of smoke.

We held hands at the top of the dunes. To the north, the lifeguard tower kept watch over the umbrellaed throngs; to the south, nobody, nothing but sand and waves. We didn’t need to say even one word. The empty stretch of beach pulled us both. I wasn’t a good swimmer at all and had never been in the ocean, but Silke had grown up near the water and had been on the swim team in high school. I trusted her. “The sand is nicer here in the tideland,” she said. We laid out our towels. When it got too hot we cooled off in the ocean. She showed me it was okay to go out deeper so the waves would slide past beneath us. We floated together. “Never turn your back on the ocean,” she said. Ocean bobs thwarting our kisses. Trying to get the timing right. Giggles at my accidental snorts of salt water. Her eyelashes sticking together. Regaining my legs, emerging from the shallows and walking back onto the shore felt strangely birthlike. She gathered her water-darkened hair and wrung it out. Grains of sand stuck to the drops and stayed that way for a while. I wiggled my back into the towel to create a perfect me-shaped cradle of sand. The hypnotic sound of spume. Skin tightening as it dries. The sun heavy on my face. What may or may not have been a nap.

On the walk back to the cottage there was the cutest little shop, as she put it. We could never stay side by side in a shop or store; we always eventually wandered off on our own. I pulled the white sundress off the rack. She turned and showed me a yellow floppy-brimmed hat. A perfect match. She tried on the dress over her bikini. I bought her the hat, too, and the lady behind the counter had Silke turn around so she could snip off the tag. She wore the dress and hat out of the store. “How’d you know that was my size?” she asked. The dress was nothing fancy. Cotton, spaghetti straps, not too long not too short, with just the right amount of frill. Her wearing it made it look prettier than it actually was.

Smoke is supposed to dissipate. Someone always takes care of it. But this smoke does not dissipate, and it is the wrong kind of smoke. I’ve never smelled it before but I know it’s the wrong kind.

“Silke?” I say through my closed door. I wait a moment. How long has the smoke been building? It’s like when the car came speeding down the road and in my head I calculated all sorts of physics and geometry, and so now I am calculating and gathering evidence to find the smoke’s source, beginning with simple questions of inside or outside, this apartment or another. Knowing the source will tell me how afraid I should be.

It’s true that we look for evidence that supports what we already want to believe. It takes a disciplined mind to do otherwise. So I end up wasting precious minutes trying to convince myself that the smoke is coming from somewhere other than my own apartment. In order to tell myself that I have nothing to fear. But during those precious minutes the smoke yields to the fire, erasing any doubt.

“Silke, are you okay?”

But to my calls only the fire responds, a crackle and a rip. The color, the smell, the heat of fire, all these I knew about, but the sound of fire surprises me. Fire is a living thing, eating and burning and belching. A hot wind crackling back and forth. My shirt sticks to my skin. The fire grows, fast. Black wisps through the door’s slits, as though the smoke itself is trying to escape some horror out there.

A noise that could be the front door.

“Silke?”

Time after time she called my name through my door and I was mute. Now it’s her turn. To ignore. To inflict. She knows the flames will find me. She has left me to fend for myself. Who could blame her?

So this is it. Just like that, no going back. My heart pounds and my left hand quivers, but I have the courage to embrace this immolation.

She’ll be outside soon. I crawl to the window to get one last look at her before she runs away. She’ll look so beautiful in the streetlamps.

Shadows dance across the pavement where I let my son die.

She will run away and start over. Good for her. If I had known I’d cause her so much grief I’d have never let her come near me. I am a disappointment.

Darling!

I will sit here and burn.

My flaw will die with me. I won’t pass it along, and I won’t kill again. And I will be released from guilt.

I am calm.

I have fought off the future.

Black clouds press down from the ceiling, a sort of upside-down flood. The words smoke inhalation come to mind, abstract words in a newspaper, now real. If I have one selfish prayer left, it’s for smoke inhalation. I’m not sure I could stand the burning, the smell of my engulfed hair and skin and flesh. Please lord, don’t make me watch myself blister and explode.

But the street is deserted. The smoke is cactus needles piercing my eyeballs, in and out, tenderizing. I squeeze them shut. It clogs my throat and soils my tongue. Somewhere out there some glass shatters.

Flames reach my door, licking upward. Still the street is empty. I bark at the door. “Silke? Silke!” Me, fine, blister and burn, but not her!

I crawl to the door, like an animal. I pull my sleeve over my palm and retract the locks and swing open the door. A concussion of heat and smoke flings me onto my ass. I stumble upright and plunge into the black billows and orange strobes. I hold my breath.

The living room window is pushed open all the way to the top, creating a square hole whose small size requires deliberate contortions to climb into, gain solid crouched footing, and leap from. My wife Silke is at the window in just such a climbing posture. Her left foot is already in the sill, her right foot on the floor. Her arms are up, both hands pinching the frame in search of an adequate grip. The curtains are long gone. The ceiling smoke doesn’t wait; it finds the hole and jumps on out ahead of her. The difference is the smoke goes up. The path to the front door is clear. Her left hand has now found its grip, but the right still searches. She tries pronating it. It’s awkward. Five floors is high enough, probably, considering that below there is only concrete. It’ll have to do, five floors is all this place has.

You were so happy I picked out the right-sized sundress. You thought I didn’t know! You thought I wasn’t paying attention.

But now the dress is speckled orange with holes glowing wider as they burn. When her right hand finally gets its grip she’s pretty quick about it. Right foot in the sill. She hoists her torso into the hole. Just like she used to do on the starting block at high school swim meets. She rocks backward to gain some pendular momentum. But I’m quicker. My left arm extended like a scoop, I intercept her at the waist and then finish with my right arm in a violent sideways hug, and the amount of force I need to be absolutely certain that I get her out of the window’s hole via the proper direction gives me incredible inertia and we both go crashing to the floor.

She says something but I can’t make it out. Sirens are coming. I pull her to her feet. I support her weight. The flames race toward the door. The piano wires snap, one by one.

Nineteen

“Thomas?” she says, and her eyes light up, but then she looks over my shoulder at my wife. Perhaps she smells the smoke.

“I have nowhere else to go.”

I sit Silke down on the sofa. Megumi wears only striped panties and a thin cotton tanktop, nearly transparent, but my wife seems not to notice. She stares straight ahead.

“Sorry to wake you.”

“I was reading,” she says. “I think she should lie down.” She walks my wife to the sofa and cradles her head as she guides it to the pillow. She asks what she needs, but there is no answer. She goes to the bathroom and comes back with a blue plastic bowl of water and small towels. She kneels on the floor and dabs Silke’s forehead with a wet towel, then her cheeks, clearing away the soot and grime. “Are you cold?” she asks. My wife’s only response is to look into Megumi’s eyes, then mine. Megumi gets some clothes from a drawer, sweatpants and a large hooded sweatshirt, a man’s sweatshirt. “Thomas,” she says, “help me.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen my wife naked in over three years. Megumi pulls the sweatpants up to her waist, and I straighten her arms and pull the sweatshirt over her head, down to her waist. Megumi covers her with a blanket and says, “Maybe she should go to the hospital.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Silke says.

It won’t be long before the sun rises. The last hours have been such motion, actions and reactions, my life flipped in an instant, no going back. What of my room? Charred by now, firefighters plodding through the mess, hacking away at blackened lumber and plaster with sharp tools perfectly suited. Surges run through me, impulses, jerks, shocking my organs awake, my skin barely able to contain them, stretching then going slack as the impulses search for a weak spot, some place to release the pressure. My body finally again performing the functions for which it was made: lifting and traveling and caring. Responding to my commands. Yes sir, we’ll tackle her, sir, we’ll lift her off the floor and carry her down the stairs. My body is excited again, atoms and cells crashing into one another, reorganizing, roused from slumber and anxious for the next assignment, wondering if this action is the new state of things.

Her breathing is steady and slow, her sleeping sound. Had I left my room a moment later she would not be here. Because of me she is still here, but I don’t know if I have saved her life or once again ruined it.

The surges inside me wear themselves out. They fade. I grow tired. Megumi pulls some bedding off the shelf and spreads it over the floor. “It’s a futon,” she says. “We have no choice.” Under the blankets she keeps her distance but reaches out for my hand. She strokes my fingers. My wife coughs, clipped hacks, soot stuck to her throat. The surges are silent now. I sleep.

In the morning Megumi is already awake, quietly making breakfast. I go the bathroom and look into the mirror. My eyes dart away. I wash my hands. I brush my teeth with my finger. I brush and spit and lick the inside of my mouth. I still taste smoke. I brush again, and then again. I spit out all the smoke. It slides down the drain. I shower. The hot water stings my skin. I wash the smoke out of my hair.

“Don’t worry about the futon,” she says from the counter, shaking her head, but I continue folding the futon as best as I can, and I place it on the shelf. I join her at the counter. She gives me an orange to peel.

Silke coughs again. I go to her. Behind those shut eyes, restless dreams trying to work out if she’s alive or dead.

She wakes. The two of us hover over her. I take her hand. “How are you?” I ask. Megumi goes to the counter and returns with a tray of rice, soup, a peeled orange, and a glass of water. I ask my wife if she can sit up. “I’m fine,” she says.

She swallows the entire glass of water before coming up for air. She looks down at her new clothes.

“I’LL BE BACK AFTER
my shift,” Megumi says as she leaves. “Call if you need anything. There’s an extra set of keys on the hook.” She closes the door.

And so we are alone in her apartment, together in her room. The smell here is probably new to my wife, and strange and dark, the scent that has lingered in my room.

She eats all her breakfast, even the orange. I take the tray back to the counter and wash the dishes.

“Do you want a shower?”

“My head hurts,” she says.

“Some Tylenol?” She nods. “Is it just your head?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I bring her another glass of water. She swallows the pills. “Megumi is so kind,” she says.

While she is in the shower I go to the window—it’s open a crack—and look outside at an apple tree. In autumn you could probably reach out and grab an apple.

She finally comes out, her hair damp. “Are you okay?” I ask. She gives me the look I deserve, yet I persist: “Do you want to talk?”

“Suddenly after three years you want to talk.” Her voice spits more than rebuke. She’s protecting us both. Where would we start? Maybe she would ask me why I bothered stopping her. Talking about what happened would only lead to miscommunication, misunderstanding.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“To work.”

“Dressed like that, in Megumi’s clothes?”

“I’ll buy something along the way.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to go to work?”

“At this point,” she says, “we’re all out of good ideas, don’t you think? I might as well go to work.”