Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

She was making her way north on Fifth Avenue to a lunchtime lecture at the Goethe Institute, something about a German-American artist. She’d spent the morning poring over the legalese of her six-year-old divorce settlement. This was a much deserved lunch break; there would be a reception after the lecture — an hour or so until she could eat. She could hold off until then, but not much longer. Her staples: reception cheese, wine, crackers. Pinot Noir. Smoked Gouda. Over the sudden swell of heads, she could make out the wrought iron jutting from the windows of the Institute. She could see exactly where she needed to be and had no way of getting there. Her stomach growled.

Claire nearly slammed into a plywood coffin. Right here in Jackie Onassis’ neighborhood. The two men and two women carrying it had painted their faces white, as if they were dead. The dead carrying the dead. She didn’t know what to make of that. They were in her way.

“Excuse me,” she said, but they didn’t.

“Excuse me,” she said again, and the coffin was gone, buried in the wash of color that was now Fifth Avenue.

Excuse me.

Drums and feet. The grinning winter wind. So many faces they were faceless. Chants she couldn’t understand until she read their signs: don’t walk. bring the boys home now. make love not war. peace begins at home. And then a rusty voice above them all, a crazy man in their midst yelling, “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas,” even though it was mid-March.

Claire threw her head back in frustration and caught sight of a city seagull circling above her. She glared at it suspiciously. Who would eat the cheese? Someone else would drink the wine.

Shifting from foot to foot, the hint of pain. She was already running late, and her only good shoes were in the Macy’s bag she was carrying. She would hardly have time to change into them. The soles of the green flats she wore now were so thin she could feel every shard and crack of pavement and old hard gum.

The smell of dust found her. Something about her father. She wanted a warm summer day in the country and the smell of dust. She felt like singing, or at least having a reason to sing. Her father, though he would never allow himself to articulate anything but kind and trusting thoughts toward his country and president, might be proud of her for being here, even if it was an accident. She missed him.

The peaceniks, the beatniks, the families with sons and daughters. Teenagers, the clean-shaven, the homeless. People shouting, people chanting together: Peace Now. Old men, children, everyone full of the same rage. Fists in the air. The sidewalks too were filled with onlookers — boys in brown uniforms and green berets jeering at the marchers, jeering, we’ll kill you, you fags. Two thousand down, one million to go. Frantic, waving signs: traitors should be shot. Fists in the air.

The protest was moving south. She would certainly be late if she tried to take another route. And she had errands to run later in the day. Replace the eyeglasses she’d broken last night, if she could convince the store they were still under warranty, buy a gift for Mary’s baby shower, maybe have her green flats resoled. But then she’d have to wear her good shoes outside and she couldn’t risk that — they were the only decent pair she’d kept after selling the rest. Errands like receipt paper scrolling in on itself. The wasted day, the wasted life. And all these people thinking they were better than her for supporting a cause, protesting the war. Looking at her standing there idly with her shopping bag.

What did the war have to do with her, or with any of them? She was hungry, that’s what mattered. She was always hungry. And it was embarrassing to have a whole train car of people overhear her stomach grumbling. Maintaining balance was hard enough without involving herself in foreign politics. The balance of riding the subway but looking too elegant to be there; the incredible energy it took to postpone divorce proceedings because she couldn’t afford representation; to put on appearances that a life alone was better than a life with him. There weren’t enough hours in the day to learn how to present her own case, plus the odd jobs she picked up. Sometimes her friend Lynn would hire her as a buyer for her decorating company. And sometimes Mary would have her do research for one of her books, though not lately. Mary hadn’t been returning her calls.

But Claire scraped by with the rent the artists paid her. She’d converted Freddie’s den into a studio and she’d need to find a new renter soon. Paintbrushes clogged her sink. Picking up after the artists was a full-time job — they were like children. Freddie’s lawyer had dropped in on her once and it wasn’t fun to make up excuses. To pretend that she — that she —was the artist.

A man named Avery had been the first. He’d moved his film equipment into the den to do a day shoot, and when they were done, he didn’t leave. He gave her a little money for the storage space and the few roles he had her play if he couldn’t find anyone else. But it wasn’t long before he tired of her. She didn’t have the range, he’d said. But he was just the first of many.

It was only when Mary teased her that all her renters were handsome, talented bachelors that Claire thought this arrangement at all strange. Was the room all they were paying for, Mary had baited? Mary guessed, but Claire did not admit that, if they stayed late working in the den, she would often let them into her bed. A night or two per week at most.

Claire would have to fight her way north on Fifth, against the onrush. Two blocks to the Goethe Institute, and she could make it. She would mingle at the reception. She would try not to stand too near the food table for too long; she was as proud as she was hungry. She often decided not to drink the free wine, but felt she deserved the cheese. Sometimes she thought there were others like her, though she could never be sure. Sometimes she met men.

Claire held her chin up like she was wading through high water. Salmoning up the street. No one gave her a second glance. She could get lost in here. She could disappear into it, unable to recognize herself from the crowd, swallowed whole. The smell of sweat under tweed coats.

And then she was moving south, being moved, the Met and the Institute falling farther and farther away. She turned and walked with the crowd to keep from being trampled. Someone stepped on the heel of her shoe; she wasn’t walking in rhythm. She couldn’t do anything right. More policemen lined the streets like hedgerows, or barbed wire.

Next to her, a group of doctors wearing lab coats. Ahead of them, women with a banner strung between two poles; on it was a crude reproduction of one of Goya’s Black Paintings. A teenager tried to scamper up a telephone pole and a policeman raised one arm to pull him off by his collar. He went down, beneath the crowd, but Claire didn’t see him resurface.

It seemed theatrical. She was walking in the middle of a movie set, everyone an extra from a different film, only half-hearing the same direction, trusting the feet in front of them. Everyone with the same angry smile and wind-ripened cheeks. The end-of-winter streets dreaming of a better time. All the people, together and dreaming.

These people weren’t cowards like the newspapers said. The headlines, anyway, as Claire never read the full articles. Look at them, look at them saying what’s in their hearts. Look at them with tears in their eyes. Had she ever once cried over anything so outside of herself? She could take a cue from them, the way they stood strong against the slaughter, against the onslaught of words from the boys in berets. The very boys the marchers were trying to protect, singing out for their safety.