Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel (20 page)

“Yes, I will be here.”

The movie is funny. We laugh together. I used to love talking during movies, and the memory returns of one of our first dates, a late-night movie in a nearly empty theater. I held her hand, which she liked, but I kept talking to her and the screen, which she did not. She wriggled her hand free and dropped it uselessly on her own thigh.

The credits roll, outtakes cut back and forth, the botched lines and failed improvisations, and it’s time for bed. That is what couples do; they agree on bedtime. “You first,” I say, motioning to the bathroom. When she finishes splashing and spitting and flushing, I enter the bathroom and lock the door. She has left behind a trail of scents. Face wash, toothpaste, mouthwash, cream. A woman, fragrant, ready for bed. Ready for what will happen in bed. Next to her, I am dirty. I merely brush my teeth. I don’t even floss.

There is no bedside lamp yet, so she lies in bed beneath the ceiling bulbs, which are way too bright. She leaves her breasts exposed. They still sit upright, gravity has not yet claimed them. Such pale, pink nipples. Smaller than Megumi’s.

“I think I’ll sleep on the sofa,” I say in the doorway. “It’s just—”

“It’s okay, don’t worry. I understand. No one ever said this would happen all at once.”

I turn out the light, surrounding her with darkness.

The next day at about two o’clock the cable guy arrives. He does not, near as I can tell, regard me with suspicion, the way the clerk at the convenience store always regarded me. No trace of apprehension. It appears that from looking at me he cannot tell that I have spent three years in my bedroom. Even if he knew everything—if he could somehow see it on my face—he’d respond as everyone else: that it was an unavoidable accident. Nothing I could’ve done. It’s all in my head, that’s what he’d say. Get over it, he’d say. But don’t you understand, I’d say, I killed him! Who’s to say I won’t do it again? Get over it, he’d repeat. Because that’s how people distill complexity. And anyway, he’d say, you’re out of your room now, aren’t you? Move on.

But all he sees is a guy who just moved into a new apartment and needs his cable television and high-speed Internet installed, and all he says is, “Over there?” while pointing to the television. His boots clunk on the wood floor. He drops to his knees, over which he wears pads with an elastic backside and hard plastic frontside, and gets to work.

I try to busy myself in the kitchen, to give him his distance, space in which to work, and I make some noises from time to time, clinks and clanks that let him think I’m preoccupied and not actually watching his every move. He strips the insulation off some wire with a special tool, exposing the shiny metal line. Work. This man is performing work. The apartment he leaves will be different from the one he entered—it will have continuous entertainment streaming into it. A thrill overtakes me, like I want to get down on my knees beside him and offer my assistance. I could hand him his tools and take them back when he’s finished and place them in the correct compartment in his toolbox. I could learn from him. I could watch and learn and ask questions and in time if I proved worthy he’d let me connect the wires and test the current. I, too, could work. I could be meaningful. Silke would be proud of me were I to leave every morning and mix with the world and accomplish some tasks and then return at the end of the day to share my experiences and spend time together with her.

I want to interrogate this man who uses his hands to rearrange the world, but I cannot find an opening line. How long have you been installing cable television? I want to talk like a man. I want to talk about coaxial cable and fiber optics.

When he is finished I offer him a drink. “All we have is water and orange juice.” (I don’t have time to consider in what sense I used the word we.) He opts for juice and I hand him a glass. He chugs half all at once and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and the back of his hand on his Dickies.

“Nice place,” he says. “Just moved in?”

“A few days ago. The last place caught fire.”

“Here in the city?”

“One hundred ninth Street.”

“Fucking sucks, man. Lost everything?”

“Everything.”

He sips the juice, a small sip this time, as though attempting to show some respect. “Well, you have a good place now. You’ll build it all back up.”

“Kind of small?”

“They’re all kind of small around here. That’s why we live in Queens. More room, a yard, my wife tries to grow tomatoes.”

“Tries?”

“Actually she does all right with the tomatoes. It’s the lettuce she has a problem with.”

So this is how people talk. This is how two strangers learn about each other or try not to learn about each other or try to not let the other person learn about them. And I’m so good at it! How did I get so good?

“I’m going to have to head down to the basement to reset the unit connection. You need a key to get in there?” I tell him I have no idea, that I’ve never been down there, and I offer to go down with him. He tells me not to bother, that he’ll go down alone and if he needs a key he’ll come back up or ask the doorman. He is either treating me like a client (not wanting me to needlessly exert myself) or he is concerned for his safety. Humans have an instinct that strangers and basements do not mix.

When he comes back up twelve minutes later he tells me I’m all set. He turns on the television and runs through some setup menus and suddenly the first image appears, an anchor behind a news desk. He flips through the channels. All seems to be working perfectly.

After dinner Silke and I assemble the new bookcase. “Did you ever go to the doctor?” I ask.

“For what?”

“For the smoke.”

“I didn’t go. You?”

“No.”

“We seem to be okay.”

No more sobbing, no more outbursts, no more plates smashing against the walls. Just like that. What happened to her—to us—in that fire? I’m tempted to call her delusional. Silke, you’re delusional. You ignore the basic facts, which are as follows. I let our son die and you hate me for it. Rather than fusing together in our moment of abject grief I selfishly retreated into my own tiny world and left you out there to fend for yourself. For reasons known only to yourself, you stayed out there, just outside my door, waiting. What hell I was going through, and what hell you were going through! I took advantage of your love, your generous heart. I bled it dry. And yet I cannot deny the urge welling up to embrace her and hold her face and kiss her lips and say, What was I thinking, hiding away like that, sitting in silence, cataloging my scars? Who was that man in his room? It wasn’t me! You’re all that matters!

It’s a second shot at life, at everything, and I should be diving in, head first. But I have underestimated the effect of the wall, of the closed door that for so long stood between us. I have returned home from outer space, from war, and I’m not sure where I am, what the rules are. We are together again, but we don’t know where to start.

With Megumi, all is new. It flows easier. There is no past, no need to reconcile who I was with who I’ve become. It would be easy to dismiss her as mere distraction, except for the intensity of my feelings. The intensity is real. A heart can love twice.

Two strangers in an earthquake. Trapped, they share the same black, dusty space. They nourish each other’s souls and keep each other alive until at last help comes and they emerge from the rubble holding hands. But for how long? How long before the sunlight shows the truth?

It is the same with Megumi. It is the same with my wife.

“Silke,” I ask, “don’t you blame me?”

She doesn’t take her eyes off the television. “I’ve told you many times I don’t. I’m happy to have you back.”

Twenty-three

In the morning Silke packs a small suitcase. “It’s only for a couple nights. I don’t understand why everyone likes San Francisco so much,” she says. “The city is boring, the conference will be boring, a bunch of stuff I already know. But so much about holding down a job is just going through the motions, don’t you think? Which is better, the black skirt or the gray?” She holds them both up for my inspection. I nod toward the black. “Not too dressy?” I shake my head. “Not too sexy?” I have no idea how to answer. She laughs and packs them both. “I want you to get out of the house while I’m gone. Promise?” I nod. “Why don’t you go see Megumi? I can tell you miss her. Go. Promise?”

All eyes are on me as I enter the store. I don’t know how the Japanese girls know who I am, but they know.

“Thomas,” she says and comes out from behind the counter. She looks so different in her work uniform. She grabs my arm and presses tight. “Is everything okay?”

I wait for her to change clothes. The Japanese girls smile at me, trying to make me feel comfortable, but I know what they are thinking.

She has her purse and jacket. “Let’s go.”

A coffee shop. Surrounded by people. I told her I could handle it. I insisted. She waits at the table, an old, circular bistro-style with marble top and iron base, while I place our order with the cashier. Two coffees and a large cookie on a tray. I set the tray on the table. Megumi already has the napkins. “I hope you like chocolate chip,” I say. “Let’s split it.”

I haven’t been in a room so loud in a long time. A polyphony of conversations, clinking tableware, laptop keyboards, hissing espresso machines, orders called and confirmed, newspapers folded back, laughter. Megumi breaks off a piece of the cookie.

“How’s the new place?” she asks.

“Why didn’t you call me back?”

“I was going to. Last night. But I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“You wouldn’t have been disturbing anything.”

The cookie gets smaller. Megumi refills her coffee. She says I look like I could use a refill, too.

“I’ve been sleeping on the sofa. It’s not very comfortable.”

“Then here, let me get you another cup.”

She asks again about the new apartment and I tell her the minimum. She asks about the old place, what’s going to happen to it, and I say that Silke is working on it but it’s on hold while she’s away for a couple of days, but that I don’t want to live there again. She says she understands, that if she were me she wouldn’t want to live there anymore, either.

“You know what I need?” she says. “Actually, you know what we both really need? Some time away. Some time out of the city.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I mean both of us. Together. Let’s go to the onsen. Remember?”

“The one upstate.”

“We don’t even need to pack anything. They’ll take care of us. Let’s just go. Right now.”

Years of stillness, and now such motion. From the train window the world rushes by. A balm of strange thoughts floods in and out, and I think of Einstein and how he’d like the way I describe my view from the train—world rushes by—since from my perspective it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that I am still and the world is moving past, the trees and the houses and the hills. But to someone eating a picnic on the hill, it looks like I’m the one moving, here then gone; appearing then disappearing. Life is relative.

Megumi sits next to me, her head on my shoulder, and she is sleeping, and it looks like we are both sitting still with the world passing us by. Life is relative but death is absolute, or so I thought. But I see now that my problem with death has always been one of perspective. I see my life and death not from my own perspective, but from the perspective of that man picnicking on the hill, and I’m jealous that he’ll remain on that hill after I’ve passed through.

“Here,” she says. From her purse she pulls my notebook of scars. “You left it at my place.”

“You’ve been carrying it around?”

“I read every page. I know all your scars.”

The train cuts through the forest. Our motion smudges the flowers into little dots and streaks of color. The world out there undulates in graceful waves of green far into the distance, an endless green ocean frozen in time. And there is also blue, and there is white, an entire world made up of three colors. But I look closer, my focus shifts from the immense sweep of it to the fine details, and I see not just three colors but thousands, millions maybe. The green of the trees is not one uniform green but a pointillism of uncountable hues, light and dark, reflecting sunlight from every possible angle, shimmering in the breeze. And the sky, too, is not just blue but has subtle gradations from the palest of pale blue to the richest, thickest blue, and the clouds are not just white but brilliant, blinding white and gray, and as they float along unseen currents, their shapes and colors morph ever so slowly and I realize I have been holding my breath.

At the end of the line we transfer to a taxicab and plunge deeper into the green waves, into the mountains. The trees split open just ahead of us and close up behind us, like we have been swallowed and are being pushed along by the forest. In the road’s curves and switchbacks and climbs and descents I lose my sense of direction.

“There it is!” Megumi cries. The driver slams on the brakes and whips around the wheel, turning the car onto a narrow road, almost hidden, marked only by a cluster of bamboo, tall and modest, bowing elegantly upward, tiny leaves dancing. “That bamboo is the only sign,” she says. We drive along, veering left and right with the road, until we come upon a woman, a Japanese woman in a smart black uniform standing at the side of the lonely road. The woman marks the entrance to the onsen, and as we turn into the driveway she bows.