Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel (3 page)

At the side table she prepares two cups of tea, pouring hot water from an electric kettle. The water steams. Her movements are not steady. She holds the tray with both hands and sets it between them on Hamamoto’s desk. The room is sparsely furnished, windowless, a soft yellow glow from two floor lamps in opposite corners. In the heavy, undisturbed silence, the outside world seems far away. Silke presses her mouth into a tight smile. But then it’s gone.

“These cups are over one hundred years old,” Megumi says. Foreigners never understand the significance, but she says it anyway. It’s not that the age itself is important or that one hundred years is particularly old, but that for one hundred years people have been sitting across from each other drinking tea out of these same cups, a long string of moments that have come and gone never to return, and in that whole time the only thing that hasn’t changed is the cups.

“What kind of tea is it?”

“Hojicha. Gently roasted green tea from a special shop in Kyoto.”

“I’ve never been to Japan.” She takes a sip. Americans have such large mouths.

“It’s a beautiful country. But, Mrs. Tessler, I’m afraid that Hamamoto was a little pre . . . prema—”

“Premature?”

“I’m sorry. My boss was a little premature with you.” Silke’s bloodshot eyes burrow into hers, into her head, downward, through the knot in her throat, all the way to her stomach. She sickens. She knows Silke’s expression. She, too, wore it, when her brother was a hikikomori. Her mother wore it. Her father wore it worst of all. Fear. Shame. Hopelessness. And something else, too: exhaustion. No matter when, no matter where, that person alone in his room never left their minds. In a way, he wasn’t missing at all, he wasn’t withdrawn. He was stuck in their brains, pounding their skulls with his fist. Every dream fell into a nightmare.

“Your English is very good. How long have you been here?”

“I thank my father for my English. He spoke English at his job, and he thought foreign language was so important. Every day when he came home from work—even if it was late—he made me tell him about my day, using English only. Fifteen minutes, every day. I hated it at first, but now . . .”

“All I have is a couple years of high school French.”

“Je m’appelle Megumi,” she says with an exaggerated accent, arching her eyebrow, trying to coax a smile.

“You speak French, too?” There is no smile.

“A little. And Korean. But I’ve never been to France, so I’m not a good speaker.”

Silke doesn’t savor her tea. She sips like she’s smoking a cigarette at an interrogation, and she can’t sit quite still, little shifts back and forth, side to side, like she’s in the midst of swirling winds.

Her father’s expression seemed normal outside, but at home, as he chewed his rice, as he thumbed through the newspaper, his eyes would not focus. And if a stray sound leaked from her brother’s room, they’d all turn their heads and freeze, like a family of deer in the meadow, alert for what comes next. But nothing came next. Only silence. They went back to their newspaper or television or homework.

What does Silke do when she hears a stray sound from her husband’s room? Does she tilt her head, perk up her ears, cry? And when no more sound slips out, what activity does she return to, what fills her empty hours?

“Premature?” Silke asks.

The day is too cold, the air too bitter and merciless to send this woman outside with no hope, with only fear and exhaustion. “I just meant that I’m afraid I can’t help you unless I know a little more about you and your husband.” Just a few questions, Megumi thinks, a few questions before she decides.

Silke looks around the room. She squeezes her own shoulder. The air is perfectly still. The tea no longer steams.

“How long has he been withdrawn?”

Now Silke’s body goes quiet. She sits still and takes a slow sip of tea. “It’s been three years.”

“And does he ever come out to see you?”

“Never.”

“And do you ever go into his room?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Why are you afraid?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

When they were growing up, she and her brother slept together on the floor, on the same futon, next to their parents on their big futon. Their apartment had only one room. Sometimes, in the dark, when they thought she and her brother were asleep, her mom and dad’s futon would rustle. They were all so close then. When years later their apartment had six rooms, though, she became afraid to enter or even look into her brother’s room. Afraid of what she might find. Afraid to upset the balance.

“Do you have an idea about why he’s in his room?”

“It’s because—”

“No no no, not the actual reason, just if you think you know what the reason is.”

“I am his wife.”

“Of course you are.”

“But why don’t you want to know?”

“Sometimes the reasons aren’t what we think they are. So I’ll make like he’s a friend I’m getting to know. A blank slate. Better chance of getting him out.”

“A friend . . . not . . . a brother?”

Megumi understands Silke’s meaning. “Yes,” she says, “brother. Brother and friend.”

“Maybe this is a bad idea.” Silke’s eyes dart toward the door.

“But don’t you want him out?” Her tide is turning. These green eyes are pulling her out to sea.

Silke sets down her cup and kneads her hands together as though numb. “It’s been so long. . . . I don’t know how it got this way. It’s embarrassing.”

“You aren’t alone, Mrs. Tessler.”

Silke stares into her teacup. “Are you sure about that?” she says.

She is so young, barely thirty, Megumi guesses, thirty to her own twenty-two. They are silent for a time. Silke reaches for her teacup but then puts her hands on her lap. “He was such a nice guy. An amazing guy. If he wasn’t, I’d have never . . . everything was fine, really, we were happy . . . I just don’t want you to think he’s a bad guy. He’s not a bad guy.”

“I’m sure he’s wonderful,” Megumi says. Silke gives her an odd look. Megumi knows her words don’t always come out right. She considers them for a moment before trying again. “The fact that you’re here right now proves he’s a good guy,” she says, and the odd look disappears.

“But to be honest, Me-g—”

“Megumi.”

“Megumi. To be honest, I don’t know who’s behind that door. Is he still . . . see, that’s the thing: I need to know who’s in there. At this point I can’t just stay living like this, but—maybe this sounds crazy—but I can’t just leave yet, either.”

“It’s not crazy.”

“Not that I’m blameless, I’m not saying that, but . . . do you understand? And not that he’s perfect, but I can’t just abandon him, not until I know who’s in there. And even then, I don’t know, because . . . how did I let things go so far? It’s scary how good you get at covering it up. Lies, excuses . . . until it’s completely natural and you don’t even think you’re lying anymore.”

“I understand, trust me I do. I’ve been there. But you’re doing the right thing.”

Again Silke presses her mouth into a smile. Megumi notices that for the first time Silke is looking at her in the comparative way women look at other women. There is silence for a time, and they both take long drinks of tea.

“What is it, exactly, that you would do?” Silke asks.

“Very simple. You give me a key, I go to your home, I go to his room, I spend time with him.” On such a biting day, nobody deserves to be sent away without hope. One visit, that’s all. She’ll go to him once, and if anything isn’t right, she’ll never go back. It’s too cold to promise anything less.

“Spend time?” She shifts in her seat.

“Talk. I talk to him. And listen.”

“What if he doesn’t want to talk to you? He hardly ever talks.”

“They want to live in their room forever and be left alone. They don’t want me coming around, but that doesn’t matter, because I won’t stop coming.” It could be a lie, but it’s a lie she needs to hear.

“How often?”

“Maybe once or twice a week at first. All depends on how he responds.”

“Does it work?”

Before the teacup reaches her lips she sets it down. “All I can say is that after three years in his room, not much else is going to work. Not if you want things back to normal. The way they were.” Silke’s eyes are big and round and sad, like two spent stars, their final flicker before going dark and inert forever. Those two spent stars start crying. She expects Silke’s crying to grow into sobbing, bawling even, but quiet tears are all she has left, no energy for anything more. “You want him back,” she says, wearing a gentle expression. “You want to see him and you want your life back, it’s natural. But he’s been in there for so long, your husband probably doesn’t know how to come out of his room. So long that he’s not sure if he knows how to live out here anymore.”

From the desk drawer she takes a stationery set. For a few minutes she writes, then folds the paper and seals it inside an envelope. “Give him this,” she says.

That night she has a hard time falling asleep. She lies on the floor on her futon, searching through the darkness for the web of cracks in the plaster ceiling, all the time seeing the image of Silke Tessler’s green eyes glittering with tears. She thinks of Thomas Tessler, unseen Thomas, somewhere out there, all alone in his room, perhaps at this very moment reading her letter, thinking about her as she thinks about him.

Four

Entire afternoons go missing. I sit cross-legged on the bed or on the floor reading magazines, sometimes unfolding and melting into supine sleep, but sleep is not what steals the hours. They go missing while I am awake, wide awake, so wide that I am rendered unaware. The walls of my room, what tricks they play: boxing in my wilted soul, paralyzing the clock then suddenly lurching it forward hours, even days. Sometimes weeks. Months.

My walls are not completely solid, not without two weaknesses, window and door. Through the window there are trees and buildings and cars and children playing and even the sun arcing through the sky, but I see none of those things, as I keep the shade pulled down to the sill, always. The door separates and connects. It is flimsy, but one day with drill and screwdriver I fortified it with a thick dead bolt, so strong that the door will rip off its hinges before the lock gives way.

My window shade burns golden with the day’s last sunrays. Were I to raise the shade, what a sight I’d see, what a crisp winter sunset.

The front door slams. She returns after a hard day at the skyscraper office. Her high heels click through the living room and down the hall to her room. I am not the pet, the dog in its cage waiting for Master’s return to be let out, to run in circles and jump and bite: I am the dog that has been digging holes in the lawn, the one who can’t raise his eyes. I move to the door to listen.

She talks to me from the hallway. I learn about her day, about the bitter weather and her chapped lips and asshole boss. Quaint concerns. There is nothing new. She talks to the door, not to me. I do not respond. She asks me how my day was, as if my days can be one way or another. She asks if I saw anything good on television, if I read anything good on the Internet. But there is nothing left for me to say.

“Do you need anything?” she asks. Her simple offers are the hardest to bear, like she’s pressing on a bruise. She has not yet given up on me. It is her nature to care—she must care and give care and take care—and it’s something I didn’t fully realize about her until we had our son.

“I think about you all day,” she says. She waits for a response, as if I might say me too, or come out and give her a hug. She says that sometimes she comes down the hallway real quiet and just sits there listening to me. There’s not much to hear, but she listens anyway. “Don’t think I’m trying to spy, okay? I’m not nosy, I just . . . I’m afraid that if I speak . . . it starts out so simple, just that I miss you, that I want to talk to you like I used to talk to you, maybe even hear your voice again, but then I always end up so angry. I hate when I get angry.” She releases a deep breath. “And besides, I don’t know if it’s better to leave you alone or come and talk. Am I the problem, or can I help?”

She is sitting on the floor now. We are mere inches apart, but all we have are our voices. “Why did we get married in winter? Winter is a horrible time to get married.” Today must be the day. It must already be January. Late January. The twenty-second. “I can still see a future. Can you? We could try again, we’re young, it’s not too late . . .”

“Won’t it always be between us?” I say. “We’re tainted. We’ll always have this dark thing between us, dividing us. How can we be together if we’re separated by this atrocious thing?”

“Or maybe it doesn’t divide us. Maybe it keeps us together. Have you ever thought about that? Maybe it’s glue.”

Are we really bound together, forever, no matter what? What dissolves the glue, what grants freedom?

The doorbell rings. “That’s our anniversary dinner,” she says.

She eats alone in the kitchen. Pizza. Pepperoni, from the smell of it, and bitter onions. She uncorks a bottle of wine. The gurgle of two glasses being poured. They ting together, as a toast. She says something but I can’t make it out.