Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

“Hello?” Mary said.

Claire was silent in the warmth of her friend’s sudden voice. Then she hung up. She couldn’t explain it all to Mary now, not like this.

“Husband not home, huh?” said one of the officers, softer than before.

“No,” she said. “No one’s home.” She asked for a glass of water and they let her use her hands at a sink. She splashed her face and stared at her fun-house reflection in the chipped stainless-steel mirror.

Back in the cell. The fluorescent light that never ceased. The payphone ringing. She sat on the bench and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, three more people had been put in the cell and had found a place on the floor or the bench. The one who had been crying earlier was missing. She’d been crying but never made a sound. How much time had passed?

She watched the old man on the floor, sleeping with his head tilted back on the bench, his chin in the air. She tried to breathe steadily like he was, matching his chest’s rise and fall. But he stirred as if he felt her gaze and met her eyes. “I was only drinking a beer on the street,” he said.

Claire said, “You should hold it in a paper bag.”

Two of the boys shuffled oddly in the middle of the room. Were they dancing? No one could possibly dance in here. And then one boy was on the shoulders of the other, stretching his arms above his head, holding a cigarette to the light fixture, trying to catch a spark.

“Unscrew the covering,” Claire offered.

“We know, lady,” said the boy on the bottom. He was older than the others and had been talking excitedly earlier, the other boys listening intently. Claire looked away. Why she was concerning herself with these people, she didn’t know.

The smaller one on top said to her, still straining up, “They took our lighters.”

The plastic covering fell to the ground. Someone yelled, “Watch out,” after it had already smashed into several large pieces.

Of course it wouldn’t light, they were only killing time. The boy on the ground lowered the other down safely.

Then he looked at Claire, a little sheepishly, and walked over to where she sat. A cigarette was trapped in his mouth, sticking to his dry lips as he talked. “Police did that to him,” he said, pointing to the boy with the bloody nose. Claire nodded and tried to look sympathetic. “Sorry for being testy. I need a drag and a cheeseburger.” He handed the cigarette to Claire, who wished he hadn’t mentioned a cheeseburger. “You gotta pretend,” he said.

Claire took it and smiled. “Thank you,” she said, but she didn’t bring it to her mouth.

In the center of the room, the other boys were growing excited and their voices carried.

“I heard fifty thousand,” the bloody one said.

“No way. A hundred thousand. It’s possible.”

“The radio said seven,” said the third.

“They’re liars.”

“They get the numbers wrong on purpose. And we can’t do anything about it.”

“Fucking yuppies is what they are.”

From beside Claire, the older boy flicked another cigarette at them. “Hey, watch your mouth.” He turned back to Claire. “Were you there? At the protest?”

“Yes,” she said.

He nodded solemnly, studying the bars. “That’s good. That’s very good.”

His eyes were tired and absent, two-dimensional like cigarette burns. She liked that he assumed she’d been thrown in here with the other protesters, something wild. He seemed to be their leader, confident but not arrogant, in his early or mid-twenties. His hair was shaggy and unwashed, and he wore a plaid shirt with a frayed collar and wide-legged slacks. Not a hippie, or a beatnik, nor upright. Claire liked that he didn’t appear to belong to any group. Obviously, he hadn’t had a mother picking out his clothes for some time. Even in here he smelled nice.

She nodded toward the other boys. “They listen to you.”

“It’s funny,” he said. “I quit drugs a while back, but once you realize that sometimes people actually listen, and you have this power to be heard and all — I can’t get enough of it. So, if I’m going to be addicted to something?” He shrugged. “You hear me?”

Claire raised the unlit cigarette to her lips and pretended to inhale. “I hear you.” She handed it back to him. “How long have you been in here?”

He looked at his watch very seriously. “Five hours, twenty-three minutes, seventeen seconds.” He grinned. He had nice teeth.

“How long have I been in here?” she asked quietly.

A faint V of veins rose from his forehead. He stopped grinning, stood up and announced, “It’s time for sleep.” His boys mumbled consent. The others in the cell seemed to agree, too.

But there weren’t enough mats for everyone. The boys rested their heads on each other’s shoulders or legs, and immediately started horsing around again.

“Don’t act stupid,” their leader said. “We have to speak up for ourselves and protest this bullshit, excuse my language. Are you going make sense at the arraignment if you don’t sleep? Are you going to convince anyone you don’t belong here?” No one answered. It was like he’d flicked out the lights, and everyone settled in, making a bed of the cement floor. He motioned for Claire to take the one bed. Stepping over the legs of children, she shook her head. “I don’t need it.”

He smiled so warmly she thought she could kiss him. He sat down and patted the ground for Claire to sit. They leaned their backs against the metal frame of the bed and their heads on the edge of the thin mattress. She watched the boys resting on top of one another. An unsaid trust. Somewhere, someone was screaming. But when she shut her eyes, it was a whisper.

The cement dawn smashed Claire in the side of the head. Dug its nails into her back and kicked her hips in. She was too old to sleep on the ground.

The leader was up, standing over her as if he’d been watching her sleep, waiting for her eyes to open. He reached his hand down. She took it, he pulled her up. She was taller than him.

Her throat was so dry no sound came when she opened her mouth. Her voice pulled out of her like knotted rope. “I still don’t know your name.”

He grinned. “Jill,” he said. “What’s yours?”

What an odd name; she felt the urge to tease him. She thought of asking how old he was, but she didn’t really want to know. She didn’t want to know anything more. She wanted to go home. She wanted to fall on her bed with all her clothes on despite their filth, kick off her shoes and not care where they landed. Leave the door open, let anyone see her sprawled across her big mattress, her down quilt. But who would come to find her?

Later they brought bologna sandwiches. Breakfast. One boy threw a piece of bread at the wall and it didn’t bend or crumble; it made a hard sound like a pebble.

The strung-out boy threw up in the corner and the teenage girl called out for help. The guards said they’d call someone, but no one came. An hour later? Was it more? The boy put his head on her lap and she moved her fingers through his hair and whispered to him. Finally a man in a different uniform entered. They had to wake him; he’d fallen asleep near his mess.

“Let me stay with him,” the girl moaned after them. No one answered.

At some early hour, an officer came and called Claire’s name. She was first, though she’d been there the shortest time. She was moved to a different cell, then there was paperwork. Carbon copies of everything.

This is my street and this is my door. She clutched the painting at her side as she dug through her bag for her keys and came up empty. Her keys were lying in the middle of Fifth Avenue, crushed by feet and wheels. Maybe her keys were in the gutter. Maybe they’d reached the Hudson. And no one was home, waiting. No one was ever expecting her. Perhaps that was why she’d left her address and number for Jill and his boys. She’d asked the lawyer to give it to them, ignoring his raised eyebrows.