Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel (10 page)

Silke’s footsteps down the hall. She knocks, gently. “Sweetie, have you thought about dinner? I’m making your favorite pork chops.”

Megumi stays silent.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come out, just this once?”

Her footsteps back down the hall to the kitchen. Megumi lets out a long breath, just now realizing she has been holding it. Is it over or has it only begun? Yet the thrill of it: of being inside like him, of having his life, experiencing it.

Silke keeps cooking, more chopping, urgent now, the regular rhythm has fractured. Pots and pans, running water. The sizzle of meat, the smell of meat, the salty fragrance. Plates, utensils, setting places for dinner.

Footsteps. “Are you sure you don’t want to come out? I got them cut extra thick just for you. We need to celebrate. Thomas?”

Like Thomas, like her brother, she is silent.

“You know,” she says from only inches away, “it’s such a shame all you have is that little microwave and can’t even have a decent meal. You there in that little room, just microwaving frozen dinners, me out here with all this space and the nice kitchen and fresh groceries and nice wine . . . you know, that stuff will kill you. All the preservatives in those microwave dinners, all the chemicals, they’ll kill you. And when was the last time you ate a fresh vegetable or fruit? How would I know, maybe you do, right? Well, even if you do it doesn’t matter much because of all the frozen shit you eat. I bet when you die your body won’t even decompose. They’ll bury you—I’ll bury you—and your body will just lie there in the dirt, as it is, so full of preservatives. Maybe in a thousand years someone will dig up your body so perfectly preserved and they’ll put you in a museum and maybe then you’ll be important. What kind of life are you living in there? Is it so much better than being out here with me? Do you like those fucking microwave dinners so much? You know, I can smell them sometimes. When I come home from work, I can smell the stink coming from your room. Fucking disgusting. Makes me want to puke. You in there, me out here, it’s ridiculous. How much longer can I take it? I’m making dinner for you, your favorite, why won’t you come out and eat it?”

Megumi watches the two shadows of Silke’s feet in the slit beneath the door. They are perfectly still.

“No, nothing? Just going to sit in there and not make a sound and ignore your fucking wife? I don’t deserve a response? Just going to hide in there and scrounge around outside for food in the middle of the night, like a rat? That’s the life you want?”

They share a long silence.

“Just this once?” she asks, her voice trembling. “Then you can go back inside. Jesus Christ, I’m not asking you to spend the night with me, just dinner.”

Back to the kitchen. A chair pulling out, then scooting back in. Knife against plate.

“Oh sweetie!” she says from the kitchen, loudly, and as though she is talking to Thomas at the table. “I’m so glad you changed your mind. I already set a place for you and our son—we’re all together again. There, sit down. Did you have a good day? Oh, don’t want to talk about it? That’s okay, why do couples always have to talk about work anyway? What do you think of dinner? Oh really? Even better than normal? I outdid myself this time? Thank you sweetie, it’s so kind of you to say that. I’m sorry about what I said before, about you not decomposing. I didn’t mean it. I’m sure you’ll decompose just like the rest of us. I just get a little frustrated at times, you know? I’m sure you can understand. It gets so lonely out here without you. But now you’re here, eating with me! Thank you! Thanks for tonight. Thanks for doing me the honor. I know it’s hard for you. And I really concentrated on getting these pork chops just right just for you. Oh my gosh, you’re wolfing them down! Be careful. Savor. Want another? No? How about one more, just one? When’s the next time you’ll be able to have them? Might as well get your fill now while you still can. Good, there, have another. How’s it going with your rental sister? Have you made any progress? Have you fucked her yet? Sweetie, don’t look at me like that. It’s a legitimate question. Have you? Is she a good fuck? Does she suck your dick better than me? I bet you’re staying in there just so she can keep coming. And I’m the one paying for it. No, no, that’s ridiculous, isn’t it. Ridiculous. She’s a sister. I’m sorry, Thomas, sorry to have said that. And about not decomposing, sorry about that too. But I get frustrated and I say the wrong things. Can you forgive me? Eat your pork chop. I just get frustrated, you know?”

The night crawls on. Megumi sits on Thomas’s bed and waits. The worst part is the helplessness. After a while, thinking about where he might be or what might have happened to him becomes useless and frustrating—it’s all just uneducated guesswork—and her thoughts sink deeper. Back in Japan when her brother was in his room it felt like she and her parents were constantly waiting for him to come out and that he knew they were always ready to welcome him with open arms. That was the assumption. That the family was his safety net and when the time was right he would come out of his room to them. In other words he was the one keeping himself in his room, and the family was what would eventually catalyze his return. But now she’s not so sure. Sitting here in Thomas’s room, it all seems so much more complicated than that. She wonders whether at a certain point it all reverses, like how every so often the Earth’s magnetic poles switch, and the loved ones waiting outside go from being a harbor to being a barrier. For her brother the thought of coming out to face her and their parents must’ve been paralyzing. And right now she can’t leave Thomas’s room because Silke is there. It might be the same for Thomas. If Silke weren’t here, would he still be living in his room? Maybe the closeness that she and her parents and Silke constantly provided and provide isn’t reassuring at all. Maybe it’s stifling. Suffocating.

Suddenly she hears—as though it has been going on for some time but she’s just now realizing it—moans, gentle at first but then more intense. Two voices, two moans, man and woman. “You like it like that?” The voice is not Thomas’s. Is Silke so bold, so wicked to do it right in front of Thomas, taunting him to come out and do something about it? She wants to rush out there and—and what? Politely explain how distasteful it is to sleep with another man in front of your husband?

“Just like that just like that just like that . . .” But the voice is not Silke’s. Abruptly, it stops. Footsteps to the bathroom, a few seconds of running water, then footsteps back to the living room. She’s brushing her teeth. Then the sex sounds return. The television. She’s watching while she brushes. Behind the groans and slapping skin she again hears the running water, and spitting.

Silke doesn’t wait for the on-screen couple to finish. She turns off the television. The house goes quiet.

For a while Megumi hears nothing, then the sound of mattress springs compressing. Does Silke always sleep with the door open?

More moans, loud moans, only Silke’s voice this time, from her lonely bed. She calls out Thomas’s name as she does it. “Deeper,” she says. “Is that all you’ve got?”

Megumi tries not to listen.

Fourteen

At sunrise I awaken but next to me the pretty little pest still sleeps. Scant space between us, I can smell her dark, foreign scent, pleasant and strange. I lean in even closer, her black hair tickling my nose, and I inhale. So alluring. Will her rich scent stick to my pillow? Her eyes are closed, dark lashes sticking up like little feelers. Her skin is white in the way we (if there is still a we I can claim allegiance to) might find unhealthy but I’m sure she finds healthy and pure. Her lips are stuck together in the corners but parted slightly in the middle, a tiny hole for gentle breathing, vulnerable. She breathes in the air I breathe out. Can she not feel my stares?

My wife’s shower faucet squeaks closed. The metal rings slide along the rod. While she pats herself dry (I used to do it for her) I sink my head into the pillow, my nose just barely touching Megumi’s tangled hair. I breathe deeply.

The girl bolts upright as though possessed and looks down on me with bulging eyes and her mouth opens but before she makes a sound I put one finger to her lips—so soft—then point to the door, meaning my wife is still here, getting ready for work.

I sit up, and she whispers to me. “What are you doing here?”

I whisper back. “What are you doing here?”

She looks into my eyes, dumbfounded. “You were missing,” she whispers.

“I’m right here.”

Silke’s high heels click down the hallway. She knocks on my door. “Thomas, are you awake?”

I find my full voice. “Yes,” I say to the door, “I’m awake.”

“I’m sorry about last night. I’m not sure what to say, just that I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“Of course,” I say, looking at the girl’s red mouth, “I forgive you.” The girl puts her hand on my leg. A tiny bit of her weight is transferred to me.

“I’ve been patient, haven’t I? I’ve tried to help you,” Silke says. “Have I ever blamed you?”

What have these three years done to her beauty? Her green eyes that used to glow so bright, have they gone dark and sallow? Were she to put her head on my lap, would I find stress wrinkling through her face, would I find gray strands among the gold?

My heart is beginning to swell with uncontrollable, directionless, aimless emotion. I fight it, I squeeze it dry, but it always swells up again, heavy, sodden. I wish the girl weren’t here to witness this.

When Silke leaves for work the air clears, the pressure dissipates, but the aftertaste lingers. I make Megumi a cup of microwave coffee, then one for myself. She gulps it down. “I was so worried about you,” she says. “Where were you?”

“Pork chops, right? I smelled them when I sneaked in.”

“She said you were supposed to come out for dinner.”

“It must’ve been pretty bad last night. She never apologizes.”

She searches for clues in my face, something to tell her what is appropriate and what is not. “It’s okay,” I say, “you can be honest.”

She nods her head, her look says it all. I take a sip. My coffee is not as good as Silke’s. “I got on a bus,” I say. “I rode it back and forth, all night, until I was sure she was asleep.”

She pets my beard. “How long has it been since when you shaved?”

“I have no idea. Months and months. A year? Over a year.”

Her fingertips worm through my hair and land on my cheeks. She squeezes. “I wonder what you look like under there,” she says.

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

She lets go. “You should let me find out for myself.”

In the distance a siren wails. My left arm quivers. I hide it under my back. Ambulances stalk the city, picking up and dropping off. Now another siren joins in, syncopated whoops and chirps, fighting selfish traffic, fighting time.

“Come on,” she says, “let’s shave it off.” She pulls me up by my hands. Our faces are close. Her dark scent. From behind, with her hands on my hips, she steers me to the bathroom.

I stand facing the mirror and she moves left and right in the cramped space, searching for the perfect angle. First, with my orange-handled scissors, she snips away the farthest reaches of my beard. Squiggles float to the floor. “Take off your shirt,” she says, but she doesn’t wait for me, she pulls it up herself. I reach for the sky.

In the mirror my chest is pale under the bare incandescent light. Not much hair. I used to have more muscle. They have gone a little slack. The contours are subtle now, just enough to remind me what I was. What I could be.

“Have you done this before?” I ask.

“I’ll figure it out.”

She snips. I suck some squiggles up my nose. It tickles. I sneeze. “Hold still,” she says with a smile. “Lean forward,” she says, “I’m not that tall.” To maintain the position I must brace myself against the sink. “More,” she says. The squiggles fall softly, like snow. The scissors open and close with a metallic bite. “You’re beginning to take shape,” she says. The soft underside of her arm brushes my shoulder, barely a whisper, but my entire body feels it. I get goose bumps. She goes on cutting.

When she is finished trimming she holds a hot, wet towel against my face. Through the towel she massages my cheeks and jaw and forehead. Drops of warm water slide down my chest and disappear into my pants. “Don’t you already feel fresher?” she asks.

She pats my cheeks with shaving cream. “It’s not foam,” I say. “You don’t need quite so much.”

“It’s the good stuff.”

“The good stuff? Where do you learn those expressions?”

“I pick them up. I’m always paying some attention.” She finishes applying the cream. “Now it’s like you have a whole new beard. A snow beard. Maybe this is how you’ll look when you’re old. Like Santa. Did your father have white hair?”

“My father died before he could go gray.”

She tells me I need to hold still. “I don’t want to cut your juggler.”

“Jugular.”

“Just hold still. Did I put on too much cream?”

“Way too much.”

“Hold still.” She finds the proper angle. She presses the razor to my cheek, up high by the bone. She pulls it down to my jaw. A vertical tract of clear skin surrounded by white. Too much cream. She rinses the blade in the running water. Some of the hairs stick to the porcelain, others plunge down the drain. Blobs of cream stick. Slowly they erode, lose their grip, and slide down the porcelain into the hole.