HOMESTAY

“You do want to see him, Toshi. I know you do.”
“All he has to do is open the door.”
“We should open it for him.”
“We tried that once, Mika. Don’t you remember? My bloody foot still hurts with every step. Everyone at the office thinks it’s a bone spur. I miss every work golf day because of it. That clown Fujihara gets to suck up to the boss around eighteen holes, even carries his clubs for him while he kisses ass in that whiny little voice of his. And you wonder why I haven’t been promoted in two years.”

“Maybe we should try again, it’s been so long.”
“Maybe we should have another baby. Is there still life in that womb of yours? We can go to our room and we’ll make another one. Nine months from now and we can forget about him in there. Leave him there until the dirt suffocates him. We don’t owe him anything now. He can’t be helped.”
‘But I think we should try once more. He has had some time to think about things. I’m sure he still loves us. Please Toshi, can we try again?”

“If we do that, we lose. How can you be so thoughtless? I kill myself all day to provide for you and that one in there and what thanks do I get for it? All you do is complain. He never says anything at all. There are times when I don’t know which is worse. The only reason we know he is alive is that the food keeps disappearing.”

“He’s got problems. We have to allow for that. We should have been better parents to him. A lot of this must be our fault.”
“Why? Give me one good reason why I should care. He has everything he wants, all those sneakers and manga and computer games and privacy, everything he ever asked for you made sure he got because he’s your precious son and he can’t go without. Every talk show with baby tips you watched; you’ve read every book about raising children. All that time you wasted on him. WE wasted on him. All I ask is that he shows his face sometimes. He is our son, not our lord.”
“He just needs time to get his head straight.”

“How much time does he need, Reiko? There are days that I hope that you and I get involved in a car crash or something. Then what’s he going to do? What happens when the meals stop getting pushed under the door, when you stop carting away his plastic bags of shit and bottles of piss? Is he going to stay there stuck in his own filth? I’m surprised you don’t reach through that slot to wipe his ass for him. I can’t fight both of you, woman. He isn’t a baby any more. Sometimes I think you wish you could lie down on the floor there so you could suckle him again. It makes me sick.”

“He is still my son. He is still your son. He needs time and then everything will be all right. He was always a thinker. Maybe he just has all these wonderful ideas and he needs time to think them through so he can get them just right and then he’s going to come out and everyone will be amazed.”

“Of course they’ll all be amazed, they think he’s overseas studying English with some loving family in California. You think he needs more time? Let him have the future then. He can have the whole bloody lot, forever or longer if he needs. He can stay there in that room until he rots away to nothing. I am so sick of the smell of air freshener. Even my dreams smell of ‘ocean breeze’. One day someone will find out, and I don’t even know if I care anymore. No-one is going to believe that he’s on a homestay in America for more than two years. Even that long is hard enough. I think Hayashi-san is getting suspicious; there is something different in the way that he grunts at me these days. And if a drug-head like him is starting to wonder, you can be sure Mrs Sato down the hall with her itchy phone-dialling finger is just looking for an excuse to call the police.”