Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

Claire didn’t want to see the house through his eyes, each corner symbolizing some part of Elsa’s disease, some danger. She had her own symbols to keep track of. Dusk had settled and she instinctively reached a hand up to draw the rough burlap-style curtains together. She ran her finger along the frame of the black screen leaning under the windowsill. Beneath each window in the house were screens like this, taken out so storm glass could be put in. Her father must have done that; maybe it was the last chore he ever did. In the spring, Claire would replace them, undo his work. But for now, they rested there — a second, darker window that looked out onto nothing.

Claire showed the nurse sleepily to the door. On the porch, Michael said he’d check in every three days. Claire hummed in agreement, too tired to make an enemy of him now.

“We can’t get a full medical history,” Michael said. “Your mother pretty thoroughly disposed of all her paperwork. I don’t understand it. And your grandmother’s records from the old psychiatric hospital are so incomprehensive it’s amazing they knew her name. Anything you know would be helpful.”

Claire could see her breath in the cold. She hugged herself in the doorway. Michael didn’t seem cold at all.

“All I was told is that it was a head trauma,” Claire said. “Not Huntington’s, if that’s what the paperwork says. She died of pneumonia.”

“There are resources at the clinic I work for,” he said, so soft that Claire had to lean in to hear. “It can be hard to reconcile the hereditary nature of it. I can bring you some brochures. Different methods of warding it off yourself for a time, and there’s a support group for caretakers. Coping with this news yourself, that’s a hard thing. You don’t have to do it alone.”

“You said the old psychiatric hospital. Has it closed?”

There was a pause, and his cheeks seemed to settle into place, as if he hadn’t known how to hold his facial muscles until then. “They’re fighting for landmark status.” Then he touched her shoulder. Something told her it was the same touch she’d seen him use with her mother. He smiled. “You’ll be fine.”

Pity. That was what that look was. He’d decided, even before she had the chance to prove him wrong, that she would fail at this. She watched him drive away.

Claire thought of going to get the one last item she’d left in her car. She felt, briefly, sorry for it, as if it were a sentient being she’d bound and gagged and locked away in her trunk. Glancing at the driveway, she half expected to see it propped against the car, an escaped prisoner. She dug her heels into the matted porch snow. No, she would not show her mother the painting. It would only upset her. What happened, Claire wondered, to canvas when it froze?

She fell, somehow, into the habit of calling her mother by her first name, as Michael did. Elsa. It felt appropriate — Elsa — since they hadn’t seen each other in a decade. And since her mother was a different person now, with a different mind.

Each day began with berries and sour, dry yogurt. Each morning, Claire carefully set the table, which Elsa had taken to calling the bed. The long wooden table her father had made — a reject commission he’d brought home from the shop. He was always disappointed by his work, which Claire could find no flaw in. She loved running her hand over the wood — bird’s eye maple — slick from touch, but old and deeply grooved, stories of meals buried in its wrinkles.

Each day the berries, every morning the sleeping trees in the yard. Trees so dead they were alive, with brittle twigs like bunches of blooming flowers. Their window reflections leaned over Claire as she prepared breakfast, reminding her of her own winter body. Claire saw her morning-self setting the table. She saw her dry winter hands, the stealthy veins beginning to rise from her skin like waves, the new texture of age, laying down the shallow bowl and thick plastic plate. It made a hollow noise on the wood.

It was getting late, but Claire padded slowly toward her mother’s bedroom, stopping at each window, breathing into a momentary quiet — another habit-cum-ritual she’d adopted — making a point, before seeing Elsa, to stand and watch the yard fill up with light.

As soon as she walked into Elsa’s room, she knew she’d taken too long. It was the second Tuesday in January. She’d been there two weeks and still she hadn’t learned.

Elsa was sitting up against the headboard, watching the door. Her legs were straight, wrapped and weighed with many blankets. They looked separated from her torso, like pieces of a child’s toy detached from its plastic body. She looked at Claire expectantly, waiting, it seemed, for Claire to make the first move. Claire inched timidly toward the lumps of Elsa’s covered feet; they made her think of animals under snow.

A hand moved. Claire saw it travel toward the nightstand, the alarm clock. She saw what was going to happen before it happened, and yet had no power to stop it, not even to lift an arm to shield herself. Elsa grabbed the clock and pulled her arm back, fluid as a ball player, as if the motion were practiced. The shining metal arced across the room. Hit Claire in the forearm hard. Clanged to the floor. The metal bell cried out once.

Slowly, Claire looked at her arm. A small scrape, no blood, but it would bruise. She wouldn’t yell. She walked to the bed and pulled the covers back. Throwing the clock seemed, to Claire, like something Elsa had always been capable of and would have done many times over if she’d ever given herself permission. The only difference now was that Elsa had stopped arguing with herself.

“You have good aim,” Claire said.

“I’m hungry,” Elsa said. “Stop dawdling.”

Elsa still knew Claire, but sometimes she only seemed to know her. And for the trust Elsa put in her — a trust that was evident despite the throwing of alarm clocks, even if Elsa had little choice in the matter — Claire felt grateful, privileged even. But, on occasions like this, when Elsa revealed her aggression, that trust felt manipulative, as if Elsa were only feigning obedience while planning her secret escape. The house was a prison, and Claire the warden.

The nurse had said not to take these acts personally, to find the immediate cause and change the focus. But what if the alarm clock was an act of revenge?

Now the focus was on dressing. Elsa’s nightgown rode up above her knees, which were pale and brittle. Elsa was all knees. Claire helped her slide to the edge of the bed, lower her legs, put on her slippers. She laid out two cotton shirts — one blue, one white — and asked, which one? After five minutes deliberating, Elsa chose “the blue , natürlich ,” over the white. Claire set each item of clothing on the bed in the order that Elsa was to put them on, then pretended to be busy organizing the bureau while her mother dressed. It didn’t matter if something was on backward or if dressing took half an hour, Elsa was to do it herself.

In the kitchen, Elsa stared blankly into her floral-patterned bowl of yogurt and berries. Claire watched her dip her spoon gingerly into it, nearly coming up empty.

“What’s the matter? You don’t want it?”

Elsa scowled at her. “I am hungry. I said this already.”

“This is what you like. You like blueberries in the morning.”

“I cannot have this,” Elsa said, pushing it away.

“I’ll get you something else.” Claire tried not to sound exasperated. She was about to dump the food in the garbage when she saw she’d forgotten yet another rule: how difficult it was for Elsa to see food on any patterned bowl.

Elsa was too proud to admit, or simply couldn’t articulate, that she needed help understanding breakfast. Each day, Claire added a new item to her own list of failures.