The Hole Page 11

  “What about you, miss? You look like you can drink a lot,” she said to J.

  J’s glass was just as full as when she’d received it.

  “Actually, I can’t.”

  “There’s nothing to it. Just drink until you feel good. Then you start getting drunk, and getting drunk leads to leaning on someone, and leaning on someone leads to hugging and…”

  She burst into laughter again. Everyone struggled to laugh with her, but J’s face hardened.

  “I don’t know what I’m talking about. This is what happens when you get old. You don’t hold back, you stop watching what you say…”

  She told them to enjoy themselves and left the room. The faces of Oghi’s four visitors softened, as if now they could relax.

  S began talking. At first it was various news related to the university that he’d wanted to pass along to Oghi, but soon the four of them were talking only among themselves. Oghi watched as they busily chatted away without regard for him. None of them showing him any consideration.

  S started to say something but stopped short and threw a glance at Oghi. He didn’t hide the uneasy look on his face. J avoided Oghi’s eyes too. She acted as if she was not going to look directly at him at all. He opened his eyes wide. He wondered what S was about to say. At the same time he didn’t want to know. Whatever it was would clearly upset him.

  While S struggled for words, K said, as if to change the subject, “Our department is very worried about you.”

  Oghi blinked slowly. K didn’t stumble like S did. He simply said what he’d come to say and did not hide the fact that he was now in a position to be able to catch Oghi up on department affairs. K had finished what S was afraid to say.

  As soon as he understood what they were telling him, Oghi got angry. He was furious at the world for rolling on its merry way, unscathed and at peace. While he was lying there with his face torn and his body shattered and broken, everyone else was living their lives and rubbing his nose in it. Oghi’s injuries had not disturbed their world in the slightest. The only one lying in bed all day, pissing himself, sweating, shitting, worrying about bedsores, then actually getting bedsores, feeling constantly stoned from his meds, drowsy all the time, and watching his life slide by while all he could do was stare up at the ceiling was Oghi. Their lives were free of car accidents and unexpected handicaps. It had happened to Oghi alone. Oghi’s world was the only one that collapsed, Oghi’s life was the only one that got ripped to shreds.

  The tension in the room was thick; everyone had polished off their glasses of whiskey and was sitting there in dumb silence. Oghi had to do something. He couldn’t just fume. The four of them would leave any minute now.

  Oghi mouthed the word paper at J and mimed writing with his left hand. She pulled a small notepad and a pen out of her bag and helped steady his hand as he spelled out something. K watched nervously as Oghi’s hand moved across the paper.

  This might be his only chance to write something down. His mother-in-law would not give him much more time. There was so much he wanted to ask and so much he wanted to write, but there was one phrase that stood out before the rest. It had not just occurred to him by chance. He’d been repeating it in his head the entire time.

  S studied Oghi’s scribbles and recited each letter, checking his reaction to see if it was correct. Once Oghi had the first part down, he read it out loud as K filled in the rest.

  “Tasukete kudasai?”

  Oghi blinked. He made an OK sign with his left thumb and forefinger to indicate that K has guessed correctly.

  “Save me? Help me?” K asked, looking puzzled. “Tasukete kudasai is Japanese for ‘save me.’ Is that what you meant to write?”

  They all stared at Oghi.

  M said, “What are you saying? What do you mean by ‘save me’? Write some more.” The look on his face had turned serious, and he gestured for Oghi to keep going.

  Oghi couldn’t write anything. There was too much to write. He had to think about what it meant that his mother-in-law had been mumbling the words “save me” the whole time. Was she referring to Oghi’s crisis? Was she saying the situation has grown so desperate that she needed help? That didn’t seem to be the case. Maybe it was just a habit of hers. Why on earth was she constantly muttering those words?

  Oghi didn’t have long to mull it over before his mother-in-law came back into the room. J hurriedly put the pen and notepad back in her bag.

  “Oh my, look at that. We have to take care of that right away, even if we do have guests over. Please excuse me, this will only take a moment.”

  His mother-in-law wasn’t wearing latex gloves this time as she reached under the bed to remove the catheter bottle. The urine, which was so dark that it looked like food coloring had been added to it, sloshed out of the top.

  The four visitors seemed to realize at once what the smell was that had been floating in the room all that time, but they were careful not to show it on their faces. Oghi scowled hard. He wondered if his shredded skin gave any expression to what he was feeling. The sound of his mother-in-law dumping the contents of the container into the toilet and noisily washing it in the sink carried all the way down the hall to them.

  She put the washed container back under the bed and, with everyone still in the room, opened the front of Oghi’s pants. Oghi raised his left hand to try to stop her. She pinned his hand down with one arm. J let out a quiet shriek and turned her head. Oghi’s mother-in-law wiped Oghi’s crotch and the tip of his penis where the catheter tube entered, as if it were no big deal, first with a damp washcloth and again with a dry towel.

  “We can’t let a sick person go uncared for, now can we?” she said.

  J glared at Oghi’s mother-in-law, her face stony. His mother-in-law blithely finished up her task.

  With the front of his pants wide open, Oghi willed himself not to pee. But this time as well Oghi’s fervent wish was not to come true. The plunk, plunk, plunk of Oghi’s urine as it beaded at the end of the catheter tube and dripped into the empty container was all too loud and clear.

  Oghi closed his eyes. Only after his mother-in-law had finished everything she wanted to do did she let go of his left hand. The four guests just stood there. No one spoke.

  After a long silence, J said, “We better go.”

  The other three hurriedly stood, as if they’d been waiting for those words, and said goodbye to Oghi. It was the usual clichés. They hoped he’d get better soon. They would visit him often.

  Oghi lay there. He didn’t look at anyone. He felt ashamed of the way he had greeted them so happily when they first came in, opening his eyes wide, rolling his eyeballs around, groaning.

  His mother-in-law led the way to the front door. J started to follow them out of the room but turned at the last second, rushed back to Oghi’s side, and whispered in his ear.

  “Your mother-in-law invited us here. She called me.”

  Oghi grabbed J with his left hand. He held on tight. Slowly, he said, Come. Back. Again. Had she understood? J nodded.

  They had no time to say anything else. His mother-in-law returned to the room to find out what was keeping J. She stared hard at J, who was just that moment stepping away from Oghi.

  When she left the room, his mother-in-law asked Oghi, “Did you say your goodbyes? Who knows when you’ll see them again. Don’t worry, I’ll see them out.”

  As she was closing his bedroom door, she added one more thing.

  “By the way, I submitted your letter of resignation to the school. Don’t you think it’s a little unfair to your students? There’s no telling how long it’ll take you to recover. Your students deserve to be taught by someone who’s capable.”

  She slammed the door behind her.

  Oghi watched through the window as his visitors walked out the front gate. After they were gone, the iron gate was shut tight.

  His mother-in-law did not come inside right away but stood and looked around at the holes that now pockmarked the garden. She turn
ed and looked in Oghi’s direction. The darkness was turning his mother-in-law’s face pitch-black. She stood there a moment and glared at Oghi, and then hopped like a child along the paving stones that he and his wife had placed in the yard and came inside.

  Oghi and his mother-in-law were alone in the house. It would be that way for a long time to come. His mother-in-law knew a lot of things. She did not hide it from Oghi. For all he knew she might have learned all of the things that his wife thought she knew. The problem was, Oghi had no idea what on earth his wife had known.

  12

  THE WORKERS SHOWED UP IN the morning. But it wasn’t until they reappeared next to the front gate that Oghi realized they had uprooted the camphor tree planted at the side of the house. It was the same tree that the nursery owner had warned them was not a good fit for such a small yard. But Oghi’s wife had been stubborn.

  The branches had grown quite dense, just as the nursery owner predicted, but the soft curves nicely complemented the straight, square lines of the house. Despite the concerns, the tree grew thick and healthy and put out lots of soft, green leaves.

  The workers replanted the tree next to the front gate. Next to the camphor tree they planted two magnolias so close together their branches touched. Though they weren’t as big as the camphor, the magnolia trees also had thick trunks and dense branches. Even Oghi, who knew nothing about growing trees, thought it was a strange arrangement. It looked like the trees had been transplanted not to give them room to grow but to hide the house from view.

  Perhaps he was being too negative. Out in the countryside, it was common to see large fruit trees planted next to a house’s front gate. Maybe it only looked odd to him because his mother-in-law’s idea of what a garden should look like was so different from his wife’s.

  But no matter how hard he tried to see it that way, it didn’t work. It looked like his mother-in-law was building a wall. Now the people who used to peek over the low metal fence and gaze around at the garden would see nothing but tree trunks. More than that, Oghi would see nothing but trees. He would be unable to watch, albeit from afar, as his neighbors walked by. He would not get to enjoy seeing the peddlers’ trucks coming to sell fruits or vegetables and the neighbors crowding around them.

  Even after the workers left, his mother-in-law was still doing something in the garden. From his window, Oghi couldn’t see where she was or what she was doing. He could only make out a few sounds. The sound of something sharp pounding the hard earth, the sound of dirt being dragged up, the sound of the ground being struck with a shovel.

  Every now and then he didn’t hear anything at all. It got so quiet that he wondered if she had left, and he strained his ears all the more, wondering if she was inside the house. He tried to guess where in the house she was, what she was doing there. Then, as if to mock him, the sounds would start coming from the garden again.

  When she opened the gate for the physical therapist, his mother-in-law was the spitting image of Oghi’s wife. She was wearing the same clothes and hat that his wife had worn while working in the garden, and she was carrying the same shovel.

  As soon as the physical therapist came into his room, Oghi asked for pen and paper. When he tried to voice the words, he failed, but he was able to get his message across by mouthing it. The same trick never worked with his mother-in-law. She always responded as she saw fit.

  Take me to the hospital.

  “The hospital?”

  Oghi blinked.

  “Why? Is something wrong?”

  He blinked again. He hoped the therapist would start talking and eventually stumble across what it was Oghi wanted to say.

  “As a matter of fact, I was planning to tell your mother-in-law that I have to come more often. The thing about rehabilitation is that you can’t just do it like we’ve been doing, where I show up once or twice every now and then. It absolutely will not work. You won’t get better that way. I’m guessing you know that too, right? I bet you don’t feel that you’ve made any progress. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Oghi blinked.

  “But I think your mother-in-law might be having second thoughts.”

  This was what Oghi wanted. To talk about his mother-in-law.

  “The truth is, my house calls are a little pricey. I’d love to offer my services for less, but given my level of experience, my dedication, and my reputation, I’ve had to raise my prices. I can’t just give discounts whenever I want. There are rules about this sort of thing. If I lower my rates, then later I get an earful from my partners. You’re probably wondering how they even find out about it. It’s crazy, but they know everything. It’s because this type of work is all about word of mouth. When one client tells someone else about me, they always mention how much I charge. Even after I’ve told them that that price is just for them and to please not tell others. That’s what burns me up the most.”

  Oghi mouthed the word at him again: HOS-PI-TAL.

  “I know. I’m not surprised you would think that. That doing this at the hospital instead with proper equipment would help you get better faster. But you already saw what it’s like there. You got physical therapy while you were hospitalized. Ten patients, but only two people to take care of them, right? That’s so unacceptable. Injured people are vulnerable! They’re each hurt in different ways, and the body parts that need rehabilitation are completely different. For example, today I brought a grip strengthener. You have to use this because the muscles in your right arm are weak. And remember how I put braces on your feet last time? You need those to maintain the right position while exercising the joints. See, it’s this kind of thing. The details, the little things you don’t notice. Only people with a lot of experience know how to use these tools. But they don’t do that at the hospital. You saw that yourself. You broke a blood vessel in your thigh during physical therapy there, didn’t you? That’s bad. That therapist really messed up. For someone like you, since you don’t have any sensation in your joints, if you push it too far, you can pull a ligament. You can even end up with a condition called heterotopic ossification. You may not realize it, but I’m always thinking about you. And not just while I’m here. Before I show up, I think about what to do for you, and when I leave, I think about what to do next time. You have to keep working on strengthening your upper body. That doesn’t mean giving up on your lower body. Please don’t misunderstand me. I just mean we have to give a chance to the parts that have a chance first. That’s why I’ve had you working your traps, your lats, the muscles in your neck. It’s gotten easier to move your head, hasn’t it? So when you keep saying ‘hospital, hospital’ like that, it really hurts my feelings. It costs a lot of money to keep going to the hospital. You have to reserve an ambulance each time, and the orderlies have to come too. It’s a lot of trouble. When you compare it to those costs, my services are cheap.”

  Oghi had no choice but to listen to his whole long, boring speech. It was no use waving his left hand or trying to shake his head to show that wasn’t what he meant. The therapist stubbornly shot down Oghi’s attempts at communication.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve been very worried about the fact that you haven’t made any progress. I’m supposed to be helping you get better. It must be my fault that you still have no strength. It might not look like it, but I feel really responsible. Once someone is in my care, I’m responsible for them all the way to the end. If I could, I would have you up on your feet this very second. I mean it.”

  Oghi stared at him. If he could have spoken, he would have said thank you. His therapist had not neglected Oghi. He was doing his best to convince Oghi of that. He seemed to think Oghi was the one calling the shots.

  “If you aren’t happy with me, please say so. The truth is, exercising the joints can be very painful. In your case, because there’s no sensation at all, you can’t tell whether or not I’m doing a good job. But you have to trust me. Massages can hurt too, and you can’t do it too hard. You have to do it carefully, not use too much pressure, b
e gentle but stick to technique. That’s how I do it.”

  The therapist was blatantly pleading his case.

  Oghi asked for paper again. The therapist hurriedly opened his notepad. Oghi was anxious. This was the only person left besides his mother-in-law whom Oghi got to see now. This time, Oghi wrote M.I.L. PROBLEM. It took him a long time just to write those few letters. The therapist had trouble figuring out the second word and kept cocking his head to one side then the other.

  “I’m guessing M.I.L. is mother-in-law, but what does this say? Program? Problem? Progress?”

  Oghi mouthed the word at him.

  “Oh, problem, ‘mother-in-law problem.’ As a matter of fact…”

  Oghi started to feel relieved. It seemed the therapist knew that she was up to something. He had been there on a relatively regular basis and had stayed for two to three hours at a time. He had witnessed Oghi’s neglect and the dark changes to Oghi’s house, and had to have a better sense than anyone else that something was amiss.

  “It really is a problem.”

  Oghi nodded.

  “I bet you don’t know. Out in the yard. She’s been digging a really enormous hole. Can you see it from here?”

  He went to the window. He stood as far to the right of the glass as he could and said, “You can barely see it from here. The pit. It’s huge…”

  Everyone had mentioned that pit. How big it was, how deep it was, how hard his mother-in-law had been digging away at it.

  “She has been acting strange lately.”

  Oghi was grateful to his therapist for recognizing that much.

  “I think she’s at it everyday. She ought to rest… When I came in earlier as well, she was dripping with sweat as she dug. Have you noticed? She’s lost a lot of weight. There might be something wrong with her health too. A person her age sweating that hard, she’ll make herself sick.”

  Oghi waved his hand to say that wasn’t what he’d meant, but the therapist wasn’t looking.

  “So you’re worried about your mother-in-law and you think she needs to go to the hospital? I’ll tell her you said that. I’ll tell her you’re worried about her. I told her myself that she shouldn’t work so hard. She could just hire workers instead. She could even ask me for help. I mean, I do get paid by the hour, but if she tells me what’s going on, I could knock a little off.”