Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

My phone vibrates in my pocket and would you look who it is, it’s Miles. Lying here, thinking of punching a wall in honor of him, and then he calls. It isn’t fair. I shouldn’t be able to affect the universe this way.

I try to push the talk button, but my thumb has other plans, punching a bunch of numbers, and I’m afraid I’ve hung up on him, then it vibrates again to tell me I have a voicemail. Miles says he saw my mom in the grocery store today and that it’d be cool to talk to me. I can’t tell from his voice how much she’s told him, if he knows I’m sick or not, if she put him up to calling me. Of course she failed to comply with my one teeny request for secrecy. For all I know the whole town is on speakerphone every time I talk to her.

Do you hear that buzzing? I’m not expecting anyone and I wish I had a butler. The door buzzes again. I get up and press my face to the window, which is forever stuck, and try to get a view of who’s downstairs.

Tachi’s remote-controlled car runs into one of the policeman’s heels on my stoop. The cop turns around, shields his eyes searching for the driver. But Tachi’s somewhere unlocatable, probably controlling it from his window across the street, laughing out loud to no one.

The same two cops from the roof of the gallery.

Now they’re buzzing all the other tenants but no one in my building would ever open up for the police. The next apartment over buzzes, I hear it through the walls, but the cops are still stuck outside. A dead bee on the sill twitches with each buzz, close to my face.

Dan answers the door.

“I know you want to get rid of me, but I need to stay here for a couple days. Then I’ll be out of your hair for good, capisce?”

Into the lion’s den. The last place they’ll look for me.

Jules comes out of the bedroom in her nightgown, tying a scarf around her head, a question on her face.

“We have a house guest,” Dan says to her.

“What’s wrong?” She drops the scarf to her side and she’s nearly bald and I look away.

“Finish with your scarf,” I say.

“West, what happened?”

“Nothing happened. They’re fumigating is all. The neighbors have bedbugs.”

Dan straightens up. “You better not bring them here.”

“What is that?” Jules points to the tube with the painting, which I wrapped up in Christmas paper, the only kind I had in my apartment.

“I don’t have bedbugs. The neighbors do,” I say. “It’s preventative. Just a couple days.”

They look at each other and pretend to communicate with their eyes but I know they’re speaking different languages.

Jules and Dan have already eaten but they sit at the kitchen table and watch me scarf down some bland veggie pasta. “Why didn’t you join us at the protest?” Jules says.

“You went?”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Dan says. “Jews are born protestors.”

“It’s in our nature to take issue with an indifferent leader,” Jules says. “We get mad at God if He’s unjust. Even though maybe He’s always unjust. Maybe humans are more moral than God. But he set the standard, and we have to let him know if He’s not living up to it.”

“Easier to let Bush know,” Dan says.

“But what good did it do?” I say.

“We’ll see,” Dan says. “But even if it looks like nothing, it’s not. Protesting is survival.”

I pour hot sauce over my pasta and take too big of a bite.

“Slow down,” Jules says to me. “You’ll choke.”

“Don’t tell him how to eat, he’s a grown animal.” Dan winks at me.

It’s true I feel hungrier than I’ve ever been and I can’t slow down. I am hungry! I could eat my own arm, I could eat the moon. This pasta will do nothing for me.

“We could watch a movie,” Jules says.

“We could watch the game,” Dan says.

“It’s my night to choose,” Jules says.

“Let’s let West choose. Why are you so quiet, West? You should take a cue from Jules and speak up more. Jews know how to talk. It’s why we’re so smart, isn’t it?” he sort of asks Jules. “It’s how we learn. You can’t form ideas with only you in your head.”

Is he insinuating he knows something about my mind? I want to tell him that it’s just as hard when it’s not just you in your head.

“Do you have any meat?” I ask.

“Yes!” Dan says, as if he’s won an argument.

And then I realize what I’ve been throwing down my gullet. His food, in his kitchen. Would Dan hurt me? How can I take the chance? I spit out the bite I just took into my napkin.

“What’s the matter?” Jules asks. “It’s good.”

I think I’m going to be sick.

“I’m not hungry anymore.”

After cleaning the dishes, I’m about to close my eyes on the couch when Jules comes out of the bedroom cradling a big book. She sits on the arm. Dan’s out of focus, reading the sports section at the table, eavesdropping.

She speaks quietly, looking at the coffee table. “I called your doctor. We think — Dan and I think — that you should go back to the hospital. Before things get worse.”

I sit up. “How’d you know I wasn’t sleeping? You might have woken me up just now.”

“And, West? Dan and I, we’re taking a…” She looks at Dan, who is no longer pretending to read. “A vacation.”

“Where are you going?”

She drums her fingers on her knees, stalling. “Well, nowhere. What I mean is, we need some time. From everything. We’re under a lot of stress. Dan thinks maybe—”

“ We think,” Dan says.

“We think that you, your illness, might be causing me too much stress. And right now I don’t feel good and need to try resting. West. For me. Do you understand?”

“Because of the baby?” I ask. Jules just stares at me.

What if the baby ends up like me? That’s what they’re thinking.

“You told him?” Dan asks.

“No,” Jules says, still staring. “He just knows.” She looks at me the way she does. “Tomorrow — hospital. I’ll go with you. It’ll be better this time, shorter. To get you back on track.”

This is all Dan’s doing. He wants me out of the picture. I shake my head. “Tomorrow’s no good. Big project at work.”

“Is there?” Dan says, coming toward the couch.

“Why do you care?” I ask.

“West, please.” Jules touches her stomach lightly, looking down like she’s calling it West. “I’m sorri I upset you. But you can’t act like this. You’re lying to me again.”

“You’re the real liar,” I say, “keeping your big secret.”

“Do you hear yourself? You sound like a child. You sound like yourself. That’s how he always used to talk to me,” she says to Dan.

She’s right — but how can I help that my old child-self possesses me like a ghost?

“How did you know I was pregnant?” Jules asks. “You better not have told Mom yet.”

“I’m glad he knows,” Dan says. He grabs a blanket off an armchair and drapes it over Jules’s shoulders and says, “Now he and I can celebrate with some wine, and you can watch.” He throws me a grin, to throw me off. His teeth are too big.

Jules shoos Dan away, but her shoulders relax. “I want to show West something.” She opens the book she’s brought, pointing at a glossy group photo with both of us tucked in the middle. It’s a high school yearbook. “Key club, or whatever, remember? Mom made us join.”

“You look dumb,” I say and try to smile.

“You look dumb,” she says.

“Why do you have this out?”

“One of my old classmates just died. We weren’t really friends, but—”

The book on my lap, I flip to my class photos — it’s from my senior year and Jules’s freshman. All the kids look like jerks in their photos, even Miles and Ralph. Nicolette’s picture is the only one that doesn’t make her look jerky, she just looks like her — Nicolette.