Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel (23 page)

Outside her open window the apple tree shimmers in the sunlight. The leaves dance gently in the breeze, rubbing together to make a soft sound. Are they waving to her? She’ll miss you, apple tree. Will she once again take long walks with her father and look at the trees and the spiders in their webs? Will she be back in time for ohanami, to walk with her new brother among the cherry blossoms? She’ll be sure to tell him about this apple tree.

The apartment is empty and soulless, stripped clear of what few possessions she had. Now it’s just a box, clean and bare, a shell waiting for the next whoever. Be nice to the apple tree!

She calls for a car to the airport. “Five minutes,” the dispatcher says.

In the middle of the room her suitcase stands upright. She sits on it and pulls an envelope of photographs from the THANK YOU shopping bag. Pictures from the onsen, pictures of Thomas Tessler when he had long hair, of him alone and of the two of them, faces together, smiling for the camera. Thomas once told her that every photograph tells a little white lie, but she can’t help thinking those smiles were real, are real, that at that moment they were together and happy. There are pictures of him with short hair, freshly cut, her sitting on his lap. In one picture, when she thought he was looking at the camera, he was in fact looking at her. She looks closely at the expression on his face, reading it, looking for clues. His look is intense, as though he is etching her face into his memory, right down to the texture of her skin. There is no more sadness in his eyes, instead only gentle happiness and longing.

She thumbs further down the stack but then stops. Pictures of Thomas alone on the balcony, the green mountains in the background. She did not take these pictures. They are self-portraits. When did he take them? While she was in the onsen crying?

He shot the rest of the roll for her, twenty portraits, twenty different expressions, a catalog of someone she will say she once knew. She’ll put her favorites on the wall, and when someone asks who it is, she’ll say, “Oh, he’s one of my American friends,” and leave it at that, but she’ll close her eyes for just a moment and remember everything, all at once, and when the feelings become too intense, unbearable, she’ll open her eyes and smile.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Amy Gash, Jae Yoon Hah, Martha Hughes, David Marshall, Elisabeth Scharlatt, and Sonoko Sugiyama.

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2013 by Jeff Backhaus.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN 978-1-61620-188-3