Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

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