Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel (6 page)

A middle-aged man in shabby clothes, sitting in a sideways seat, staring out the opposite window, eyes glassy, rocking slightly back and forth and moving his lips in some sort of rhythmic mumble, as though reciting a list over and over in his mind. Juice, eggs, safety pins; juice, eggs, safety pins. Or a prayer, one they both could pray together. Oh please Lord end it quickly, end it soon, or at least explain how things got this way, how I ended up outliving my loved ones and drove the rest away, mercy Lord, please tell me my sins, for I’d ask forgiveness if I knew what they were.

Does she fit among these people? She looks down on herself: high heels, knee-high socks, short skirt, open jacket. Yes, she fits in perfectly. Is this what drove Thomas into his room? Was he on a bus one day and realized he was no different from anyone else and never would be? She’s seen him five times already. Hamamoto said she could leave work and go visit him whenever she needs to. More specifically, she’s seen his bedroom door and nothing else. Last time, she sat outside his door for an hour telling him stories about her old life in Japan and her new life in New York. Some of the stupid things she’s done, and some of the good things. She’s asked about his life now and his life before. But he’s been completely silent.

The bus stops and the teenagers get up to leave and as they pass the boy mutters to her. “Crazy Chink, wanna watch me fuck her?” The doors close behind them and the bus moves on.

Thomas’s silence has changed. It used to tell her to stop, that he was indifferent. Now it tells her to go on; that he’s soaking up her every word. A weird idea, but she can’t help feeling it. Any other guy would’ve injected himself into her stories, argued with her interpretations, admonished her or praised her for her choices, schooled her on what she could’ve done better. But he lets her talk. He doesn’t dispense advice or tell her what to think. What kind of person feels no need to express his thoughts? Who knows, maybe he hates her, but he accepts her. She can feel it. Nobody else would’ve been able to stay silent and let her be herself. Especially an American. Americans love to tell her what they think about something. But not him. He sits and listens. Of course it could all be in her head. Silence is silence. It doesn’t sound like anything. But it’s also true that there are different kinds of silences, and one is the kind that draws you closer.

She gets off at her stop but she doesn’t go home. She just walks. Right on Church Street. Left on Reade. She walks and walks randomly through the streets, black like coal. Everything is still, the city on pause, a heavy silence as everyone waits to resume again.

Between two buildings she catches a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge’s tall stone towers, like a beacon. She makes her way toward the bridge, and when she reaches the foot she keeps on going, up the boardwalk. A few cars slide along beneath her, but she’s the only one on the footpath. She climbs the bridge to the crest, then sits on a bench facing midtown. On television, in the movies, New York seemed so bright, gleaming, fueled by dreams. But it’s not as bright as Tokyo, and not as big, and not as energetic. New York is dark and lonely and dead. The river’s bluster stings her face.

The sky resolves, the sun inching closer to the horizon, and she’s still on the bench. Her father calls and asks what she’s doing. “I’m sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge,” she says.

“It’s winter—don’t get yourself sick. Do you know what day it is?”

“I know.”

“I loved him, you know. I never thought even one bad thing about him, ever. Do you believe me?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

That day she leaves her shift early and goes to see Thomas. There’s always a strange gray smell in his apartment, if not the smell of death then not the smell of life either. She slips off her shoes. Poor socks, foreigners don’t understand the stress taking off her shoes in their homes causes her. No matter how clean they think they keep their homes, they wear shoes inside and so a film of city muck covers their floors. In Japan, even the meanest ditch digger takes off his shoes upon entering a home. But here, she is the foreigner. She wonders if Thomas wears shoes in his room.

The apartment has a vintage feel, high tin ceilings, polished wood floors, exposed pipes and beams overhead and running down the wall, a stylish design. But everything is frozen in place like a museum exhibit, not a place for lived lives. There is a stasis to it: Silke has kept the apartment clean and tidy, like the parent of a missing child who keeps the room preserved just as it was, for the day the child returns.

There is a piano in the living room, the kind that stands up against the wall, the kind she played as a child. What if she sat down, cracked her knuckles, and began playing? There must be some songs still stuck in her fingers, even after all these years, even from childhood. Mozart, she could play Mozart. At peace in there, doing whatever it is he does, then suddenly, Mozart, badly played Mozart floating through the apartment, bouncing off the walls and floor, echoing. That would get him out of his room, if only to make her stop.

The piano keys are hidden underneath a cover of dark wood. She runs her fingers along the smooth wood but does not open it. The piano is old. The corners are scuffed and misshapen from so many slight impacts. The top is stained with circles from drinks set down as someone played. Is this a live piano that plays music, or a dead piano that plays only memories?

From the couch she picks up a blanket and throw pillow and takes them to the end of the hallway, where she assumes what’s become a comfortable position: lying on her back on the blanket, knees bent, her head against the door and resting on the pillow.

She folds the excess blanket over herself. So warm. So dark. A womb. She falls asleep.

She wakes to noises from his room. Without thinking, as though still in a dream, she exclaims, “Thomas?” The noises stop. “It’s just me,” she says. The pillow smells faintly of a woman’s perfume. She imagines Silke, her head on the pillow, flipping through the channels, waiting for a respectable hour before officially going to bed.

The sound of his mattress, then the creak of a floorboard: he moved, and sounds as though he’s right next to the door. “Thomas,” she says, “I’m sick of talking to the door. Go get a pen and paper. I want you to write a question on the paper and slide it under the door. You can do that, right? Just any question at all, whatever you want.” She knows he won’t, of course, that from his room will come only silence. She stretches her legs and opens her eyes wide and then, from under the door, a single sheet of white paper. Eight and a half by eleven. She sits upright. In the exact center of the paper, in small scribbled letters, it says go away. She tells him that go away is not a question, and slides the paper back under the door. It comes back a few seconds later. To the original he has added some extra words and a question mark, so that it now reads Will you please go away? She’s sorry, she says, but she can’t go away. Not yet. Try a real question this time, she says, and pushes the paper under the door. But it doesn’t come back. Okay, she says, here’s a question for you. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

The paper slides into the hallway. He has written the word No. She slides it back. “My brother,” she says, “was just like you. He withdrew into his room, too.” She blurts it out before she can snap her mouth shut. “Thomas, can you open up? So much easier if you open up. Don’t you think? More potential for conversations or whatever else.”

She paces up and down the hall. She sneaks into Silke’s room. Queen bed, unmade. Open closet packed with clothes. She looks through the hanging dresses and tops, a mix of cheap and expensive, all stylish and all size four to six, all too big for her. On the shelves are stacks of folded jeans and sweaters. Underneath, on the floor, a pile of shoes and boots. She tiptoes around the bed, to the dresser. Some thin leather belts. A small jewelry chest. She opens a drawer and thumbs through Silke’s earrings. Back in the hallway, the eight and a half by eleven is sitting on the wood floor, slightly askew. She reads the question.

“No,” she says, “my brother’s not in his room anymore. He spent four years inside but he’s out now.”

She slides back the paper. She hears the pen scratching against the paper, and in a moment it’s back in the hallway. She reads his ragged handwriting.

“Yeah, I guess you could say I helped him out,” she says, pushing back the paper. “Why won’t you let me in?”

When the paper comes back, he has flipped it over, and on the new side of the sheet there is only one question. Is your brother okay now?

She stares at the question, wondering about the truth, and wondering what she should tell Thomas. She lies back down on the blanket. “Yes,” she says, “I suppose . . . you could say he’s doing better now.”

He’s happy?

“He’s dead. Today’s the anniversary.”

Thomas does not respond.

“He was assaulted,” she says. “Is that the right word? Maybe fight is better. He got into a fight. But, he didn’t start the fight, and he didn’t fight back.”

It was the middle of the night, she tells him, and he had sneaked out of their apartment to go to Family Mart for some food. He loved ham and tomato sandwiches with cut-off crusts. The fuckers stole his sandwiches, and later the police gave her all the things they had collected from him, and the plastic shopping bag was splattered with dried brown blood. She read the receipt. She doesn’t know why she read it, maybe just because he might have read it, too, before he was assaulted. The receipt showed three sandwiches. But there were no sandwiches. Beat him and sliced him and stole his sandwiches. Probably took them somewhere and washed them down with beer.

They got a call, and she and her parents rushed to the hospital. The nurse behind the desk said they had to go quickly to his room, because he was being uncooperative. Not acting in his best interest.

“A doctor and some nurses and two big men—I’m not sure what the word for them is—and the big men were tying my brother’s legs and wrists to the bed. He fought them, he kicked and punched the air. Two more big men rushed in. It took four of those big men to pin him down. While he fought, his purple and bandaged and swollen face smiled at me. Racist blood. That’s what he shouted at the top of his lungs, over and over. Don’t give me that racist Japanese blood. He was looking at our father. But they tied him down and gave it to him. Then, suddenly, he stopped fighting. He was lying there, perfectly still. As the blood flowed into him, all the rage drained from his face, like spring snows melting away.”

For him the fight was over, she says, but only she knew what that meant. She knew what he was going to do. She started crying. Her mom and dad left the room, then the big men and the doctor. It was only her and a nurse and blinking lights and plastic tubes. And a bad smell. She took a seat in the chair next to his bed, reached out, and held his hand. He closed his eyes. “His hand felt so hot in mine. Such life inside him. I told him it wasn’t too late to change his mind. I begged him. I told him I didn’t understand. And do you know what he said? He said, ‘You only want to understand so you can stop me. But there is no stopping me. If you truly understood me, you wouldn’t even try.’ ”

A sudden metallic sound startles her. She opens her eyes and sits upright. She stares at the knob. It seems to take forever. Finally the knob turns a quarter turn and stays there, like he won’t pull but also won’t let go, like his arm is absorbing the torque while he reconsiders. She stays quiet and waits. She tries not to even breathe. Then the door opens, only an inch or two, enough to see inside through a narrow strip of light. The knob unwinds. She waits for the strip of light to grow wider. Instead, she hears the floorboards squeak and the mattress springs compress.

Nine

I am not looking at her, I cannot look at her, but in the corner of my eye I sense her, a slight movement toward me, just a shadow, a figure in my room, someone besides me, and my world seems to have run out of space, is barely bigger than my body, and I have nowhere to go, I am trapped here on my bed and I am not breathing. She stands still now; the shadow keeps her distance. I let out a breath and gulp down another, like I’m diving down to the bottom of the ocean. I stare just in front of my crossed legs at a spot on my bed, my eyes a powerful microscope, and I can see the tiny threads and the little creatures nesting in their weave. My gaze is searing hot. I might set the sheet ablaze.

She moves no closer but I see her head twisting around, taking in my surroundings. What have I done? I look down to see if I am wearing clothes today, for I feel naked, chills running in waves over my skin. She left the door wide open, my oxygen rushing out, leaving me with nothing, water rushing in, I float up to the ceiling and take a last gulp of air before drowning. Reduced to a pebble beneath this girl’s foot. Not a plea for sympathy, merely an observation: I see how I must look to her. It’s good Father and Mother aren’t here to see their creation, the sum of their sweat. I hope no heaven exists from which they look down on me and regret rearing me.

Perhaps she is not here. Perhaps I am still listening to her story and my mind has raced forward to contemplate the possible effects of an as-yet-unmade decision and what I am seeing and feeling is not real but a prediction of what I would see and feel were I to open the door, and as such I am learning a lesson: that the locks belong secured and the door belongs shut.

I’m suddenly aware of an odor, wet and loamy. It’s oozing out my skin, my wild hair, my clothes and sheets. I’m sure she can smell it, even from across the room, and maybe she can discriminate the urine and semen, little drops here and there marking my territory, if indeed they are present, for I can’t remember what I have done and not done in here, there being until now no reason to remember, to keep track of things. It’s my odor that keeps the shadow there, no closer. I have been unearthed like a cracked skeleton, evidence of some previous, now extinct existence, here this whole time just beneath your nose, waiting to be noticed.