Hikikomori and the Rental Sister

by Jeff Backhaus

  “Was there blood?”

  “A bunch. My son laughed and laughed. Made fun of me for being afraid of a mouse.”

  “And this one? Right thumb?”

  “Sixth grade. It was Jamie’s mom’s turn to drive us home from basketball practice. We loaded into the station wagon. The windows steamed up. We were still sweaty from practice. She pulled into my driveway. It was dark by then. I got out, said good-bye, closed the door, but when I went toward the house my thumb stayed behind. It was stuck in the car door. With my other hand I had to lift the handle and open the door and pull out my thumb. I didn’t feel a thing, isn’t that strange? But when I got inside and turned on the light my hand was covered in blood. Wouldn’t stop. Had to go to the hospital. Four stitches and a splint. I had broken it in two places. I was out for the season.”

  “Did the team lose because you weren’t there?”

  “They probably won more games without me. I wasn’t any good.”

  “Did you ride an ambulance to the hospital?”

  “My dad drove me. It was so cool to watch him run through the stop signs and flash his brights and drive faster than everyone. I forgot I was bleeding.”

  She opens to another page. “This one looks like a good one. Show me.” He twists his forearm. Three circles next to each other, the middle one bigger than the others. She touches the scars. “But you don’t remember how you got them?”

  “I’ve tried, but I have no idea. What could that shape possibly be?”

  “Maybe a bite?”

  “Something with three teeth?”

  She skips ahead a few pages. “Wow, show me this one!” She holds up the sketch.

  “That one? That was so long ago. I don’t even remember the year. I was in grade school. Maybe kindergarten.” He pulls up the leg of his new jeans, but it won’t go high enough.

  “Take them off. I want to see.”

  He takes off his jeans.

  She grabs his calf and pinches for a better look. “It’s like a huge hole,” she says.

  “You’re probably too young. Or maybe it was different in Japan. But when I was a kid soda came in bottles, glass bottles, in six-packs with a handle.”

  “Like beer.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I was grocery shopping with my dad.”

  “Your mom was already passed away?”

  “She was still here. We were having a summer barbeque. Mom sent us out to pick up some last-minute things. Dad always had little jobs for me, and that day my job was to carry the six-pack of soda. The bottles were green. I think it was 7UP. The cardboard handle cut into my hand, but I was strong, up and down the aisle.”

  She strokes his leg as he talks. This is the same guy—isn’t it?—who a few months ago wouldn’t acknowledge her through the door, the same guy who shouted at her to go away, who pushed back her origami penguin. His frozen insides are thawing, and she is the heat source, she knows it. Not his wife. Her. If it weren’t for her, where would he be? And when she makes it all the way, when his core, too, is completely thawed, where will he go?

  She sees him as a little boy helping his father with the soda. Smart father: it’s hard for a kid to run off to the candy aisle when he’s lugging around a case of soda. Thomas must have felt so important, helping his father that way.

  “Even though they were heavy, I refused to set the bottles down. I wanted to prove I could do it. I didn’t need a break. But then, in the pasta aisle, there was a huge crash and I felt my legs go wet. Green glass all over the floor, and clear, bubbly soda spreading wild. I didn’t understand. The handle was still in my hand. I hadn’t dropped it, but two of the bottles were missing. They had fallen through the bottom of the case. I lifted it to show my father I hadn’t dropped it. I was afraid of getting in trouble for making a mess in the store, but Dad didn’t even look at the bottles, he was looking at my leg. A huge shard of green glass, a missile, was sticking out my leg. Half in, half out. Blood was streaming into my shoe. I wasn’t wearing socks. The blood was sticky. I pulled out the glass. I don’t know why but I put the glass in my pocket. There was a commotion. They took me to a back room and bandaged me. White gauze.”

  “It’s so big. You should’ve gotten stitches.”

  “I thought I’d get in trouble for wasting soda and making a mess in the store, but my dad didn’t say anything.”

  “Do you still have the glass?”

  “It was in my room somewhere. Probably melted.”

  She turns the page. “What about this one?”

  “Let’s stop.”

  “Just one more. It’s so interesting.”

  “Okay,” he says, “let’s do one more.”

  She finds a scar marked April 2000. Central Park. “This one.”

  “Nope,” he says. “That one’s a secret.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s really embarrassing. Too embarrassing.”

  “Come on.”

  “Maybe tomorrow. If you’re good.”

  “Okay I’ll be good but then you have to tell me.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise to think about it.”

  She sets the notebook back down on the side table. “Only the notebook survived? That’s all you brought back?”

  “Pretty much. It’s all I really wanted.”

  “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. So precious. But didn’t it hurt to see all your other things destroyed?”

  “I didn’t feel as much as I thought I would,” he says. “Like when you come home from a long vacation and you see all your stuff again and it’s all right where you left it and you wonder how you lasted so long without it but then you realize you lasted just fine and you don’t really need any of it.”

  “Except for the notebook.”

  “ ‘My life through scars.’ ”

  “You should write that on the cover. It needs a title.”

  She ignores the tension lurking below his happy façade. She’ll take the happiness for as long as she can get it.

  Later she readies the futon. Silke does not come back. Thomas and Megumi lie together in the darkness.

  Neither of them can sleep. Their thoughts race and collide. They toss and bump into each other, struggling to find the right position. She touches him. He responds. He accepts. While he is inside her there are no thoughts. There is peace, relaxation. When it is over—like an exhale—they finally fall asleep.

  Her brother walks out of his room, smiling, with a tray. He sets it in front of her.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says, “but for you it had to be perfect.”

  She tries to speak, but she cannot.

  From through the open window a white petal floats in and lands in her soup.

  “What luck!” her brother says.

  The petal is nearly transparent, soaking up the soup.

  She focuses all her energy toward her mouth, but it is no use. She is mute. Her thoughts and questions, trapped.

  Next to the river she spots a turtle, trying to camouflage itself among the wet rocks, hiding deep inside its shell.

  She knock knock knocks on the shell.

  Big white squid, splayed open wide and hanging along a line to dry in the sun. She is so hungry.

  She begins to perspire uncontrollably in the heat, and an unseen hand blots the sweat from her skin.

  But she has nothing to drink.

  She is so thirsty.

  She wakes up and goes to the kitchen. There is a candy bar in the refrigerator. She keeps it where an American would put the butter. A grid of chocolate. She breaks off a square. She waits at the window. The breeze floats in. She allows the chocolate to melt on her tongue before swallowing.

  In the morning she makes breakfast. She opens the window a little more. She needs fresh air. Spring is here. She doesn’t eat much. As she puts on her jeans, he wakes up. “I left you some breakfast. And I made some extra rice for your lunch. Don’t worry ab
out dinner, I’ll make it for you. The keys are on the hook.”

  “Is it the fancy Japanese rice?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re spoiling me.”

  She kisses him on the way out. His lips are warm, but leaden.

  She assumes Silke would contact Hamamoto, but Hamamoto goes about her business, coming down from her office from time to time to check on the shop, then going back upstairs.

  Her father calls but she ignores it. She listens to the voicemail. It’s her brother’s little voice. Noona, when are you coming home? She listens to the message three more times. After that there’s no need: his voice rings all day in her head, in her bones.

  When she returns home the table is already set. The chopsticks are perfect. Thomas is in the kitchen, mixing something in a small bowl. He turns but he doesn’t stop mixing. “How was work? Hungry? It’s almost ready.”

  “It smells amazing, it smells Japanese. Is it?”

  “I tried to make it like you do,” he says with a smile. “Sit. Let’s eat.”

  Broiled saba marinated in miso. Green beans with black sesame. Potato salad. “The rice is very special rice from Japan,” he says, laughing.

  “Thomas. How did you learn to make Japanese potato salad? I’m shocked.”

  “Don’t say anything till you try it. I have no idea if I got it right. I found all the recipes online and I walked all the way to Sunrise Mart to get the ingredients. Can you believe that?”

  “It’s incredible.” She takes a bite of the potato salad. “I don’t know what to say, it’s perfect.” Only a slight exaggeration.

  “Really? It’s so different from any other potato salad. I wasn’t sure I got the flavor right.”

  “Next time I’ll tell you my dad’s secret ingredients. You’ll go crazy for it.” She’s giddy. Apart from her parents, nobody’s ever cooked for her. Her past boyfriends couldn’t even manage a ham sandwich. A Korean word comes to her. Kamdongiya. Touching, tender, affecting, poignant. This meal: kamdongiya.

  While she cleans the dishes, he sits on the sofa. “I still can’t believe you made all this. I had no idea you could cook.” What other secrets, what other gems, are waiting to be discovered?

  She finally gives in to her hope. She can see the two of them together, like this, night after night. Her brother and her family, they could wait a little longer, or maybe he’d want to try living in Japan. It’s not a crazy thought. He could do his photography there. Every season they could spend a weekend in Hakone and stay at the same onsen and watch how the trees and birds and sounds and everything changes throughout the year. On the train back to Tokyo they could split a beer and bento. She could teach him a little of the language. There’d be no end to what she could show him. Tiny hidden izakayas. Yoyogi Park spiders. Walking around Jingumae, holding hands. Her parents would love him. He’d have to learn to bow. Cherry blossoms in spring. She bets she could even get the man who once never came out of his room to one day sing karaoke. Well maybe not in a bar, but at least in a private karaoke room. They could sing to each other. She can’t sing much either. It doesn’t matter. In summer, drinks at skyscraper bars high above the bustle and heat. He’d be so inspired there. So would she. Maybe Hamamoto could use her contacts to help her open up her own wagashi shop. Someplace small and special. He could take the pictures. Baseball, obviously, the Giants at the Tokyo Dome or maybe the Swallows at Meiji Jingu. In autumn, they’d share a big simmering pot of nikujaga. There is a whole district in Tokyo that is nothing but block after block of camera shops. Day trips to old country villages, where the food is best. The gray beach in winter, all to themselves.

  “Look,” Thomas says. “It’s like the one you slid under my door.” He picks the origami penguin up off the shelf next to the television. “Remember?”

  “Actually,” Megumi says, “that is the one I slid under your door. The one you pushed back.”

  “You kept it.” He stands the penguin in the palm of his hand. “I was such a jerk.”

  “You’ve come so far.”

  He places the penguin back on the shelf exactly as he found it. “I never imagined I’d have such a reaction to you. I didn’t see it coming. Back then I just wanted you to go away. I thought you were going to try to fix me.”

  “I wasn’t. But you can’t shut out the world forever.”

  “It never felt like I was shutting out the world. More like my world had simply gotten smaller. Like if you’re here in New York you don’t spend your days obsessing over what’s going on in Istanbul or feeling bad that you’re not keeping up with the news in Boulder or Sri Lanka. It doesn’t feel as if you’re missing anything. My room was world enough.”

  She knows the thing to do is to ask, What about your wife. But she does not.

  “And I was your pest,” she says.

  “You were. You kept coming.”

  “I promised myself I would visit you only once. To get everyone off my back. I was going to make up some excuse.”

  “Then why did you keep coming?”

  “Why did you open the door?”

  They laugh. The moment hovers.

  “You burrowed pretty deep,” he says.

  The doorbell rings. Megumi’s heart leaps. Like a defendant when the jury returns, it’s time to stand up and hear the verdict. She suddenly realizes that adrenaline and trembling and sweat and syncopated breathing and a concussive heartbeat are not how the body shows fear but how it purges fear. But there isn’t enough adrenaline, her heart can’t beat fast enough, her lungs can only expel so much, her muscles, too, have a limit to their twitch. Thomas grabs her hand. Skin suddenly moist. Whose skin? Both of theirs? A far-off moment, suddenly here. All too suddenly. And yet she wants to know the outcome faster, right away, to somehow know before she learns. It’s the waiting. The struggle to keep composed no matter what. She prepares all sorts of responses, depending. She should have started preparing sooner. It’s too late now. Caught up in her own delusion. But what did any of them expect? Like he said, she burrowed deep. She had to. Too much was at stake. The beach in winter, all to themselves, she can see it. Some delusions win, some lose.

  “You want me to get it?” he asks. He lets go of her hand.

  “No, I’ll get it.”

  The only way to tell if her acting is good enough, if her face is managing to hide every last one of her swelling emotions, is to gauge Silke’s reaction when she opens the door. But Silke’s face is perfectly warm and neutral, which could mean that Megumi’s concealment is successful or that Silke is working on a concealment of her own. Megumi leads her up the stairs. The expected small talk. Concern answered with reassurance. Sticking to the script.

  She wants it to be over. She wants the whole world to skip ahead an hour. It does not. It slows down. Just for her. Each minute slower than the last.

  As far as Silke is concerned, there is no reason she shouldn’t hug her husband in front of Megumi. And there’s no way Thomas can refuse. But do they have to hold it so long? At least from this angle she can see only Silke’s face, not Thomas’s. Silke has one hand higher than the other. Megumi can see the pressure Silke exerts on his back. Fingers pushing. Why is the heart so impractical? In this scene Megumi has no place. But does that mean she has no place at all? Silke rubs his back now. Thomas’s posture is not as stiff as Megumi had hoped. But his hands are still. He is mostly the recipient.

  The hug finally ends. She listens to the conversation just closely enough to hit her cues, that’s all. She has nothing to add. Any closer and she might remember the exchange. Silke’s offer and Thomas’s acceptance. She does not want to remember any of it.

  It’s never been so hard to smile. Silke says she can’t thank Megumi enough for all she’s done, that it’s all because of Megumi. She gives Megumi a bow-wrapped Tiffany box. “Try it on, see how you like it.” Silke tells Thomas to help her with the clasp, then asks for his opinion on whether Megumi looks beautiful in the necklace. Thomas answers honestly. The pain dee
pens.

  Time stays slow even after they leave. She sits on the floor. The apartment is silent. The penguin stares at her.

  Twenty-two

  In the taxicab my wife apologizes in advance for the condition of the new apartment. “I’ve been so busy just setting up, I haven’t had any time to clean. I didn’t go to work. You were right. Took some personal days. It was the second place I saw and it was available right away and I’ve been running around like crazy picking stuff up and accepting the deliveries and all that. I hope you like it. Probably needs a coat of paint, so maybe Saturday we can go to the store and pick out colors. If I don’t have to work to catch up on what I’ve missed. I was thinking of pale green for the living room.” She fumbles with the new key but finally pushes open the door and flicks on the lamp. “What do you think?” she says.

  There is only one bedroom. This is where she has brought me to heal. Or brought us to heal. We are downtown, on Bank Street, a world away from the old place. It’s softer here, leafy. It’s too expensive, but she decided it’s worth it for the calm street that cuts a diagonal through the grid, for the newness, a place with no stain on the concrete outside the front door. A place to heal. That is how she sees it. She expects us to start over. Past is past, future is future. America is the land of starting over.

  “The rest of the furniture arrives next week,” she says.

  I am careful with her. She is careful with me. We circle each other. This is strange for us both, discovering what still holds true and what is new as we face the same question. Now what?

  No doubt Megumi is asking herself the same thing. But she is alone. The only sounds her own. Nobody to share her fish and soup and rice. Nobody to catch her smile. Can she feel what I feel? Does that make it better or worse?

  Silke sits on the kitchen floor scrubbing a spot on the cabinet. Green elastic holds back her hair. Some strands fall to her cheek. I open the refrigerator. There is some fruit. A bottle of orange juice. Three bottles of Miller High Life. My old favorite.

  The bedtime awkwardness is inevitable. She diffuses it by feigning early exhaustion and the need to wake up early for a breakfast meeting at work. That way I can decide later where I’d like to sleep, without the weight of her stare. It’s touching, her concern, her sympathy, her ability to think a few moves ahead. She says goodnight. She pauses, then kisses my cheek. She keeps the bedroom door open as she sleeps or pretends to sleep.