Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

Claire transferred the yogurt to a solid blue bowl, then sat beside Elsa, watching the slow procedure of spoon to mouth, wondering when her mother would forget how to swallow.

After breakfast, in front of the fire in the living room, Claire would read the local paper out loud if it seemed Elsa was interested. First the feature pieces, then the weather. Elsa would listen calmly, staring into the fire. Sometimes, in her more lucid moments, she would interject with criticism. In the middle of an article about the recession, Elsa said, “I don’t like this one. I prefer the one you read yesterday. Read it again.”

“It’s probably in the bin already,” said Claire.

“I liked it better when he talked about Reagan. I know you worked for Carter. You look guilty. Good thing they didn’t shoot Reagan with better bullets, otherwise we would have lost—” Elsa faltered, searching.

“Another president?” Claire tried.

“Otherwise, we would have lost a great man.”

Claire leaned over the arm of Elsa’s chair to show her a photo of Jeremy Wendell, a man of the community who was found in the late January snow, stuck under his garden fence where he’d had a stroke. Elsa laughed strangely. The same, awkward laugh she’d used at dinner that first night.

“That’s not nice,” Claire said, pulling the paper away. “He’s dying.”

Elsa nodded and laughed again.

Claire had assumed that by a month in she’d be jabbering to herself with cabin fever. Instead, she became more self-conscious of her language, second-guessing every verb and preposition she used with Elsa. Was it “than” or “then?” Did she pronounce the word “prerogative” correctly?

It was the prerogative of elected officials to propose cuts to the federal budget and announce a $91 billion deficit on Monday. On Wednesday, the “freeway killer” was convicted. Then, in a town just down the road, thousands of gallons of radioactive water were released into the drainage system and radioactive steam into the atmosphere when a tube burst at the local nuclear power plant, no danger to the public! There were stories of war veterans being mistreated or untreated, but not enough coverage in Claire’s opinion. She often thought of Bird and had an urge to tell Elsa about him. She’d looked him up years ago and found he’d come home wounded in ’68, but the details of his injury were confidential.

Again, Elsa laughed.

Midmorning, Claire would leave Elsa with the TV and the dying fire to go outside and chop wood. The ax — leaning against the house like some bent and broken man — was brought out to an upright log resting in the snow. Her father had taught her to chop wood when she was six years old.

She arched her lower back, tried to let the cold numb the ache crawling up from her femur. She bent her knees, touched the cold raw-metal tip with her bowed forefinger, swung up and around like the arc of the sun. That’s how he’d taught her — he said she was the earth and the ax head the sun. She’d corrected him — and was sorry for it later — saying that what he meant was the ax was our perception of the sun. That if he thought about it, the ax head was the earth and he was the sun, pulling it in orbit.

Breaking something to pieces, breaking through the wood, destroying its shape into usefulness. It was a muscle memory that had never left, not in the forty-some years since she’d last lifted an ax. Her hips ached — yet another joint she’d taken for granted until it troubled her. But for a moment, she felt strong. Falling on something with all her weight in one unified motion, every ounce of strength needed to get the clean cut. She hadn’t felt this sensation in years, hadn’t known it was something she missed, desired. This was it, this was all there was. Engaging with the world, fixing on a task, finishing it. She felt her father in the swing.

She brought the logs inside and put them by the fire, under the old bread oven, to dry. And she could smell him dripping and drying after he came in from the cold. Her father smelled like thawing wood. He must have sat here on the couch, where Claire sat now. He must have held her mother’s hands in both of his.

They said he called the ambulance himself while it was happening, his heart attack — he didn’t want to burden Elsa. He took care of her for more than a year before he passed two months ago, and he’d never told Claire about Elsa’s disease.

It was time for Elsa’s midday medicine but Claire didn’t feel like moving her body. She felt Elsa’s stare on the side of her face just as she felt the flames from the fireplace in front of her, indifferent and hot. Claire could tell Elsa was getting ready to speak from the rough word-searching noise she made with her jaw.

“I’ve got to get ready.”

Claire was surprised each time by the abrupt silence of the house, how it sat with them, in the space between words. The house-sounds and snow-sounds, the throat-sounds Elsa made, were bound up with the silence. The soft creaking of the old wood roof. The guttural sound of the pipes. It was so silent that when a car passed, it caused a shock. Then the massive silence retrieved itself, like a woman gathering up her big skirts before sitting back down.

“Ready for what?” Claire asked lazily.

There was a long pause. It seemed, for Elsa, that each word was a great search, always starting at the beginning of an internal dictionary. Elsa said slowly in her sand voice, “We’re going to celebrate. We’re going to the theater.”

The fire crackled and ticked, keeping time.

“We are?” Claire said, turning to her now.

“Not you. Me and Ernest.”

She said his name as if he were alive. “How old are you?” Claire asked calmly. Locate her in time, the nurse had said. Pull her back. Or not.

Elsa said, smiling, “Fifty-four. Ernest says I look thirty-nine.” She reached for the box of tissues on the arm of the chair and began pulling them out and ripping them in half, one by one. Paper dust floated around her.

Claire took the box away gently. “Why don’t you fold your towels?” she said, grabbing the stack of clean washcloths from the coffee table.

Elsa shook her head. “I don’t have time. I must get ready.” She still held half a tissue tightly in her hand.

What would her father have done? Had he fueled Elsa’s delusions and entered the past with her, or corrected her and said no, here we are, old and still in love? At fifty-four, what would they have been celebrating? Perhaps that was when Elsa and Claire’s father had finally bought the land they’d always rented. Thirty years ago — long after Claire had left. What had she been doing at that time? Something she was indifferent about, surely, in the city with Freddie.

“Were you celebrating the house?” Claire asked.

It made perfect sense that Elsa would not return to a year when Claire lived there, when they were struggling with money and her grandmother. Who would choose to go back to that? But it hurt, just a little, that she and Elsa would never choose to lob themselves back in time, do it over again.

“He’ll expect me to be ready at six,” Elsa said more confidently. “I must get dressed. The new production opens at the theater tonight.”

Still — there was a movement inside, some small, buried thrill. A lightness in Claire residing right beside the hurt. She wanted to indulge this delusion. She was almost giddy about it; they could do whatever they wanted. And they were going to have a good time at it if it killed them.

“Let’s get you ready then, hurry up,” Claire said. She helped her mother out of her chair and into the bedroom. A painful giddiness in her chest. Desperate, suddenly, to help Elsa stay inside that day she remembered so earnestly. Was there salvation there, if she could help her mother live in a pleasant memory?