Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

“I’m too old for you,” she said. “I don’t want you talking about me at your rallies.”

“That’s not true,” he said, taking a step back.

Something was wrong. She could tell the minute she walked into the den. The room was too quiet. And it seemed cleaner. Claire had just returned from a reception at the Goethe Institute, her first since before the boys moved in. It had felt good to get out of the house, to have a reason to dress up and carry her good shoes in her Macy’s bag, to look too decent for the subway. To be surrounded by esteemed scholars and art critics who would never suspect her of housing an antiwar collective. But she hadn’t talked much and had left early after pocketing some cheese, wrapped in a cloth napkin, a gift for the boys.

Jill was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “What’s happened?” she said. “What is it? Tell me.”

Carlos held out a piece of paper to her from the couch. He was hugging his knees, wearing pajama pants and socks and no shirt. His eyes were red. “Greetings from Uncle Sam. Bird’s draft letter.”

She didn’t take the letter from him. Bird was standing silhouetted by the window, hard to see, holding his card. He was the smallest of all of them. “So he’ll burn it,” Claire said a little too casually, not addressing Bird directly. She threw her bags on the floor and gave an exaggerated shrug. “Or he’ll mail it back to the government and we’ll fight it in court.”

“We’ll burn it together,” Lawrence said from the arm of the couch. “That’s always been the plan, right? If one of us…”

“In the park. Tonight. For everyone to see,” said Jill. “Then tomorrow we’ll talk about our options. I’ve been doing it for everyone else. Just because it’s Bird, just because, it doesn’t make it any different. There must be something medically wrong with you. Maybe you’re a lunatic. Or depressed. Super depressed. Or homosexual. Hell, we’ve been living here together, all these boys in one room.”

“You crack me up,” Lawrence said seriously.

“Or maybe he’s just too dumb for the army,” Carlos said. “What’s your card say?”

“He’s 1-A,” Jill said. “What’d you think?”

“Let me see that.” Carlos moved swiftly from the couch to Bird and snatched the card from his hand. He pointed at it. “See, if we just erase this line here, and add a couple lines there, see, it says 4-F.”

“Give that back,” Bird said loudly.

Carlos jerked the card away, lifting it as high as he could above his head. Bird jumped but couldn’t reach. “You’re too short. Why would they want you? You’re too short, isn’t he?”

“Give that back, Carlos,” Bird said, kicking him in the shin.

Carlos hooted and laughed, but the others didn’t join in. Claire watched silently. Finally, he flicked the card down at Bird. It hit his forehead then fell to the carpet. Bird left it there. Watching it like it was a cockroach he wasn’t sure was dead.

“If you want to make a show of it,” Carlos said, “we could find enough lighter fluid to cover you, easy. I got some matches if you want ’em.”

“Not funny,” Lawrence said. “That’s not funny. Is it Claire? Why are you being such an asshole, Carlos?”

Claire shook her head. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry. She tried to say, “No,” but nothing came out. Nothing, lots and lots of nothing.

“Leave him alone,” Jill said half-heartedly. “We’ll do what we have to do. We’ll go to jail with him, if it comes to that. We’ve been there before.” He started quietly singing the Draft Dodger Rag, “I got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat.”

Carlos sat back down on the couch and hugged his knees again. “We could get him off to Canada. Couldn’t we, Claire?”

Claire was still standing. She didn’t know what to do with her hands.

“He might never get to come home,” Lawrence said. “Or he’ll get canned. Five years.”

“Same if we burn it and so what?” Carlos’s chin was on his knees, trapping his words. “Jill said it, we’ll do what we got to. We could go disappear to Mississippi, even. What’s keeping us here? There are other fights, important fights. Hide him down there where no one would think to look. We could go tonight.”

“We could do nothing.”

It was Bird. They all turned to him.

“What do you mean, Bird?” Jill said slowly.

“I mean I’m going.”

Jill stood up from the floor. “What do you mean, Bird?”

“I mean my family,” Bird mumbled.

“What?” Lawrence said. “What are we?”

“My mom. She’ll disown me if I dust off.” Bird looked at them, and then he looked like he swallowed himself. His body crunched in on him and it seemed like he knew it and was trying to stop it, holding his arms defensively, fists and face clenched. “I’m going,” he said.

So they had mothers. It was something Claire had to continuously remind herself: that they weren’t lost boys. They were boys with mothers.

“He is a lunatic. If he wants to go. You don’t need a shrink to prove that,” Carlos said.

“I’m going,” Bird said again, and then, with the same intonation, “I’m sorry.”

Then Jill was walking across the room toward him. They were only a few feet apart, but it seemed to take forever for Jill to get there. So much time and Bird was shrinking and saying, “I’m sorry. You got to understand. Maybe I can do more from the inside. I’ll send you coded letters. You need a man on the inside. You need me.” Shrinking while he was talking until Jill was over him, so much taller. Then Jill slapped him across the jaw.

Claire saw the slap, but the sound was delayed. She thought of lighting and thunder.

Bird began to cry. Jill leaned in and embraced him mightily and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, man, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and he might have started crying, too, their faces in each other’s shoulders. Until Jill leaned back and cupped the jaw he’d just hit, cradling it just long enough to show Bird how he felt. They loved each other. They all did.

What was she supposed to say?

Claire stood in the doorway, watching the scene like a home slide-show of someone else’s family. Was she supposed to act the part of the mother? She, who’d never been one?

Claire had slapped her own mother, once.

She would not let them see her cry. This handful of sadness was not mysterious. It was not God. It was overly human. It was a boy. It was lying on her couch. It was eating from her refrigerator and gumming up her floors and needing her.

Without a word, she walked out, locked herself in the hallway bathroom, and undressed. She let her skirt drop to the floor. She studied her figure, still under her control, though her hips had filled out. As if now, after all this time, they had something to say. Her bones groaned like an old house — small internal shifts that only she could hear.

She ran her hand down her sternum, her breasts, her stomach. She found herself thinking of Mary’s pregnant belly, and what her own body might look and feel like if she were pregnant too. Did Mary worry her child would grow up to join the army and fight a faraway war? She imagined Mary must look beautiful naked at almost nine months. She thought of Nicolette and did not try to cover the image this time. Imagining her made Claire feel less lonely. As she slid her hands over her body, she let herself remember how Nicolette had touched her so many years ago, but now recalled that moment as a ghost touching her, the cold fingers of empty space. She’d pushed Mary away and who else could she talk to about this? About what? Losing a boy who wasn’t hers, who she barely knew and couldn’t help? She couldn’t help a soul and why should she care. She hated that she could feel sorry for herself at a time like this. But she was losing herself. And she had to flee.