Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

“What about Leo’s father?”

Mary straightened her shoulders, shifting only slightly from Claire. “What about him?”

Claire didn’t know what about him. She took a slug of wine, the bottle already half gone.

“I still haven’t told him,” Mary said.

“But he would help, wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right,” Claire said quietly.

“He’s married with two kids, for Christ’s sake. And the midterm election was just before Leo was born. I knew what he would have said and I didn’t want to hear it. Not again. The speech is always the same. That waiter years ago, or a congressman now, there’s no difference. They must all have subscriptions to some top-secret newsletter for chauvinists. I bet they rehearse it in the mirror.” Mary deepened her voice in her best impression of a man. “This is your decision and I support you, baby. Whatever you choose, baby. But it’s bad timing, there’s no money, it’s better for everyone including the baby, baby. Trust me, baby.”

Claire laughed, but stopped when she realized Mary wasn’t.

“The number of times I’ve heard that speech and had a hundred bucks shoved at me to get it over and done with.” She held up her fingers as if counting out the three men, then rested it on top of Claire’s.

“Did you love him?” Claire asked, her eyes on Mary’s unmoving hand.

“Love him? I don’t know. Yes? Maybe I still do.” Mary lifted the bottle halfway to her mouth then seemed to forget it and put it down. “I know him. I know him better than he knows himself. But I don’t want him to know. Leo’s father will never know he’s Leo’s father. I only have a few weeks to lose this pregnancy weight before the book party. A year and still I haven’t lost it all.”

Claire took the bottle from Mary and quickly downed another mouthful. “You’re going to see him there?”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘What weight?’” Mary shrugged. “It’ll probably be the last time I see him. Until Leo’s old enough to ask questions. He’ll probably get picked on in school and need an ego boost someday and I’ll tell him who his brilliant father is.”

So Mary thought he was brilliant. Claire hadn’t realized she’d been assuming, hoping, that Mary hated the man.

“The book was one of my best, though. Don’t you think?”

Claire nodded and drank again. She had the galley somewhere. She’d read most of Mary’s books, six in all, but she hadn’t wanted to pull this one off the shelf.

“I’m sorry I’m going on like this. I think I’m a little tipsy.” Mary took the bottle back and finished it off. “Remember when things were simpler?”

“No. When was that?” Claire smiled. “I do remember when your boyfriends were simpler.”

“Dumb as rocks is what they were.”

“What happened to the one who tried to make a film about the people in the sewers?”

“Him! He only lasted an hour down there and he ran out screaming that his camera was stolen!”

Mary cackled, her mouth wine-stained. Claire tried to ask about another, but only laughter escaped her. Then Mary hiccupped and they both doubled over. They fell back and their bellies burned. There were no words. Nothing was all that funny, but neither of them could stop. They laughed until they forgot they were people.

Then Mary kissed her on the mouth. Once. And they lay flat on their backs, beside each other in silence for a long time, no longer laughing but breathing hard and deeply serious in a way that was related to laughter, and their stomachs ached from the physical memory of it.

It was a first, but it wasn’t new. Claire’s heart raced in that familiar way. And not only because she had fantasized about Mary without realizing she was fantasizing about Mary — it was as if they had kissed before and were returning for more. She felt so grateful she could cry.

They moved closer to one another. Even after their bodies pressed, they did not stop moving closer. Here was the hollow above Mary’s collarbone. Here was Claire’s neck. Her elbow as it had never felt before, shimmying under Mary’s cheek. Kissing and pressing and kissing hard, until Claire closed her eyes, locking the moment inside her.

“What are we doing?” Claire whispered.

Mary answered silently. Her lips were chapped. Claire remembered that Mary’s lips always bled in winter. She felt the filaments of Mary’s lips on her own, the coarse parts of them. She felt Mary’s fingers moving down her body more than she felt her own body. Claire was rigid, nearly immobile for most of it, outside of herself looking down from above. She grazed Mary with her own hand. She had never touched another woman, Claire said again and again. Mary only laughed and took charge, undressing Claire as if she were undressing herself, fluid and natural. Claire was inadequate, prudish. But, in feigning knowledge, she felt more sexual than she ever had. She bit Mary’s lip hard. Their breasts pressed together. She kissed Mary’s arms all the way up and down, giggling. She sucked on her shoulder. Sucked on her knee, and upper thigh, and ribs, but nowhere too close. She moved so they were diagonal, so their smooth sides and hips could touch, so she could know what that felt like, too. She liked imagining the two of them from above, watching the film of their encounter. She felt as if she had never been touched by anyone.

In their excitement, they made such plans — Claire would move in not just for the month, and not only to help with Leo. Mary said she was afraid they would become a cliché, finding this in middle age — they’d be one of those couples that everyone envies, the kind whose happiness comes late and twice as big and here it is.

They both fell asleep on the floor, naked, wrapped only in each other. Claire dreamt that men broke in and shot them both clean in the forehead, and an older Leo found them dead. The neighbors came, and the coroners, and no one knew how the two women ended up there together, the tenderness between them. No one knew their story and it was as if their love hadn’t happened at all, and Claire woke with a dread that took the form of thick saliva. In a dream state, she rose to close the curtains. She stood above Mary, who lay unharmed and still curled around the empty space where Claire’s body had been.

Mary had had other women. But why me? Claire wondered. Why now? Perhaps she symbolized the stability Mary had never had. She was Mary’s oldest friend who was still alive. That meant something in this city, this neighborhood. Come to think of it, Mary didn’t have many friends — more often lovers whom she’d call friends in a pinch. Perhaps she made Mary feel sexy for the first time in a long while. Poor lonely, prudish Claire, Mary must be thinking. Claire was just there.

It was Sunday morning. Mary was long awake, working at the typewriter at the bedroom window. Claire watched her from the bed. The new spring sun made the paper gleam and Mary’s morning hair was caught up with light. She turned and smiled.

“It’s you,” Mary said tenderly, moving to the edge of the bed. She wiped the hair away from Claire’s forehead. “I know you.”

Claire pulled the sheets up to her shoulders, embarrassed.

“When did you get so modest?” Mary said, as if they’d woken up naked together on many occasions.

Claire gripped the hem of the sheet to her as she sat up. “I’m not.”

“You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you? I knew it. I made a mess of things again. Now you’re going act awkward around me. You’re going to want to leave.”

“I’m here,” Claire said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know it’s new. And strange. But mostly—”

“Mostly it’s perfect,” Claire said. “The strange part is how normal it feels.”