SUGAR

The sugar comes before the arsenic. Helps to hide the taste.
“We want you to come out of there.”
No chance.
“You are really upsetting your mother.”
Eighteen years of mostly sexless marriage (with one notable exception) and you are one to talk.
“She wants to see you.” He grunts like a mother-shaped elbow has just caught him below the rib-cage.
“We want to see you, we both do.”
Nothing like a little paternal honesty.
“You are being silly. Why do you want to stay in there all day? It’s been a week since you went in there.”
Why do you wake up at five-thirty every morning, spend all day at a job you hate, get back after dark, do overtime on weekends, all for this shitty apartment and two weeks off in summer?

“Your school has called. Your headmaster said you must come back to class because you are missing some very important material.”
Nothing to do with him being worried about Education Department inquiries into reasons for absenteeism I suppose?
“Son, it is very important that you come out now. We will forget all this ever happened and life can go back to normal.”
That’s what I am most afraid of. Why don’t you use my name? You never use my name.
“Son, won’t you at least say something? You owe us an explanation for these thoughtless actions.” Another jarring elbow to the rib cage.
“Don’t do that again, woman, I am talking to the boy.” Genuine anger in his voice for the first time.

I hide in my room for a week and it takes a dig in the ribs to annoy you. Is it because I am taller than you now?
“Well boy, don’t you have anything to say? I am your father, do not forget that. I have been very understanding so far but you do not try my patience.”
I didn’t know you had it in you. Do you even realise that in this moment you are living for the first moment in your life? Every other role has been designed for you. This one you made yourself.
“Why won’t he say anything? He doesn’t even talk. He has no respect for us.”

“Maybe he has hurt himself and can’t hear us.”
“That’s all you ever say – maybe he’s hurt himself – every time he is the one who should be cared about. He isn’t a baby any more, drinking your milk and waiting for you to sing him to sleep. The songs and the milk dried up long ago.”

He finally gets through to her and I hear her walk away, as far as she can go without leaving the apartment, her breath catching as she fights the tears she cries for both of us. I must be strong. These times call for resolve, for dedication. He is easy to ignore: a handful of beachside memories isn’t nearly enough to replace a thousand dinners and breakfasts alone with mother, or the hundreds of evenings he came home late, watching me pretend to sleep from the doorway as my room filled with the stench of Suntory whiskey and charcoal-filtered Mild Sevens. Always looking in on me, checking my progress and growth before he retired to the bedroom to pretend that Mother was the hostess he had spent the evening flirting with in some Shibuya snack bar.

“Don’t you have anything to say?”
His voice rises and his knuckles crack in the empty hallway. He has driven us both away without even knowing how.
“It’s like I’m talking to a goddamn wall.”
I stifle the urge to laugh as he kicks the door in frustration. The nails tense against the jolting wood but hold firm.