Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

The jump only carried me back twenty seconds. It was, like you said, an instructional video — training for a much bigger jump. A bigger risk. But where and when?

A bee is crawling across my window. How did you get in here? You’re supposed to have disappeared, bee, you’re one of the disappeared — for what are you following me around? Don’t buzz at me, I know your pain. But perhaps the bee is on to something.

“I wish you weren’t going back so soon,” my mom says for the one-hundredth time.

“You’re the one who’s making me!”

Which isn’t true — I don’t know where next to go, but the portal isn’t here. I must head east, back towards my future Nicolette.

“You’ll find a way to give that thing back without getting in trouble, right? West?”

I tap the window with my knuckle near the bee. “So, Dad’s seeing someone new? What happened to Kathy?”

“Who knows?”

“I think Dad must be unhappy.”

She cackles like it’s a joke. “You’re right, he must be. But it’s no excuse for the way he acts.”

“But he hasn’t seen me since before.”

“What about me? You think it’s not hard on me?”

Her cell vibrates in the cup holder. It’s him — I can tell from the way her nostrils flare. He’s listening in and doesn’t want us talking about him behind his back. His voice is muffled, squashed between the phone and her ear, he’s speaking from deep inside my pocket. By this point, my dad’s probably saying, “What’s this about Jules being pregnant? I can’t believe she told you and not me.”

My mom gapes at me. “What? Jules is pregnant?”

I take the phone from her hand and hang it up.

“Honey, what?” My mom keeps turning her whole body toward me but tries to keep her eyes on the road. “Jules is what?”

“She’s not pregnant. I was lying. I don’t know why. I was mad.” I watch her face scrunch, thinking about this.

“That’s not very nice, even if your dad is a jerk.” She hits the top of the steering wheel. “You shouldn’t have seen him. I knew it would upset you.”

“It’s fine. We talked about the toilet seat.”

“Not the rats again.”

Along the road the forests are swallowed by farmland. I try to smile at her. She pulls down her windshield visor. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant. Are you seeing anyone? I’m sure there are plenty of fish in the big concrete sea.” Her smile takes forever to spread across her face. I watch the origin of it, each fold of skin and segment of lip stretching almost to breaking, all these movements affecting the next but also the prior, the slow pull of face.

“No,” I say. “I was, but not now.” The bee is a professional eavesdropper. I open my window until it flies out.

“You were? You never told me that.”

“Why would I?”

“Because we tell each other things. Don’t we? What’s her name? What was her name?”

Suddenly every cloud in the sky morphs into Nicolette’s face. If it wasn’t real and therefore scary, it might be romantic. Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it. “Nicolette,” I say.

Nicolette has taken the place of my hazy reflection in the partly rolled-down passenger window. If I tell my mom about Nicolette would we all vanish? Beside me, Nicolette nods, telling me it’s all right. “I’m trying to find her again,” I say.

“Where is she?”

“Disappeared.”

“You know what your father used to do to win me over in a fight? He’d show up at my door just like we were old friends. I had no choice but to invite him in, and things were right back how they always were. Maybe she’d think that’s romantic.” My mom is bobbing her head like we’re listening to music. “Nicolette. That name sounds familiar.”

The birds are on the wires. Wires stretching out before us — strings on a guitar and the road is the fret board.

The phone starts vibrating again. “It’s him,” she says.

“Don’t answer it.”

“I want to tell him you were kidding. What if he calls Jules?”

“Let him then. Don’t answer. Answer is the key. And keys open or lock.” She squints at the road but doesn’t touch the phone.

I feel strong . Just like I always felt with Nicolette. Like she’s holding my hand again and we’re running across a big freeway, laughing. I don’t know where to go, but she is guiding me.

Instead of speaking to my mom, I try to think to her. I tell her to veer left, and she does. I tell the trees to give us shade, and they do. I tell the wind to whistle a tune from my childhood and it picks up “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I feel an overwhelming sorrow for the birds on the wires — for all birds. I pity them so much I could cry.

You say, Fly, bird . “That’s funny,” I say.

“What is?”

How the trees listen but aren’t silent.

How the road is a song beneath us.

How there’s a man with a shadow for a face sitting outside my window.

I say this: “What would you say if I ran out of pills? Ran away from home.”

“Did you forget them? Should we turn around?” Her mouth moves even after she finishes speaking, a dubbed-over kung fu movie.

“They’re waiting for me in New York. Waiting happens all the time. We’re always waiting. It’s not hard.” For tomorrow will be new again. That’s good. I can’t wait, really. I will hit my cheek on concrete. Just to feel it. I will rub my cheek on New York bubblegummed cobblestone. I’m there now already, as I’m here in the car. I can feel it right now, thrown out of my seat in an accident, the cement on my face. The sting of those darts of light in stone. The beautiful light inside asphalt: bees. Hundreds of bees. Swarming underground, waiting for their moment.

Causation is reversed. Things yet to happen upset moments in the past. I feel so close to Nicolette. Can you feel her too? She’s near, telling me to follow the sound of her voice. But not too close. To touch her would be to evaporate. To hold onto her would be to hold onto the infinity between moments.

The world is opening its locked doors. Secrets are being revealed.

“What do you do if you miss a pill? What does your doctor say?” My mother is looking at me and the road both. She has two faces, one for each direction. “Stop looking at me like that,” she says.

Here’s the truth: we’re all connected, but not in a straight line. More like constellations, or islands. My thoughts fill the gaps like water; each movement of hers is connected to mine.

The man with the shadow for a face is sitting in my window. Is that you taking over my reflection? Nicolette got evicted. You, shadow face, are telling me to fly.

So I do. I unbuckle my seatbelt and leave myself behind. But, you remind me, I didn’t need to unbuckle because seatbelts don’t hold in essences.

Below me, I’m sitting by my mother in the van. The shadow fills me up. It’s you, filling me up. I see that frail, encumbered body, the top of a head — you have dandruff! My mother keeps glancing at that body sitting next to her, thinking it’s me. That’s not me, that’s just West, that’s just the empty vessel, the frame that holds the work of art. But it’s not necessary anymore. From up here, I hear someone say, What word then? Let’s see the scars. Rats coming up from the sewers. Honey, what’s wrong?

“Should I pull over? Tell me now.”

“I’m fine, Mom. Just drive,” vessel-me says.

“You’re scaring me. You scared me there for a second.”

It’s blinding, the cracks in the universe, the golden thread stretching on the verge of breaking. The blinding light. Underneath the light is shadow. Something is breaking apart.

“Buckle your seatbelt,” she says.