Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

15. There is one hair that grows from our back, invisible, that we pluck once a month or so.

16. We have never read all of Anna Karenina , but if you ask if we have, we will lie.

17. In our first art class, we put a booger on the canvas of the girl next to us when she wasn’t looking.

18. We have only taken one art class.

19. Once, someone loved us enough to hurt themselves.

20. We have the right to paint. We have the right to paint. We have the right to paint.

21. We stole earrings from a department store so our French roommate would think we were dangerous.

22. We have a terrible memory. But we can remember the color of any carpet of any room we’ve ever entered.

23. We have never cut ourselves, but once we told a boy we had.

24. We should have been a dog.

25. Our father, before he left for the war, touched our breast. Just once, softly.

26. Sometimes our very presence in someone’s life can cause a greater absence. We stirred up something dormant. It isn’t our fault. It is our fault. We are such a selfish bitch.

27. When we were eight, we made a friend put her favorite doll in the oven and bake it to prove she loved us more.

28. It is very important that we are who our friends tell their secrets to. We want so badly to be this person that we will let a friend hurt themselves in order for them to have a secret to tell us.

29. We are seduced by the mad ones. We speak in metaphors that become real. We want that magic. (If we steal thoughts, it is only as anyone has ever stolen a thought. We cannot read his mind.) We belittled him by romanticizing him. 4What have we done?

30. We did not ask for this. We asked for this.

31. We want someone to see us crying and forgive us. At least we want someone to see us cry.

32. Sometimes we have to leave. 5

____________

1 This is what Nicolette left when she left me. Instead of a goodbye note or an apology letter or a phone number. This.

2 Her favorite painter. Nicolette would spend long hours hanging around outside Neel’s Spanish Harlem apartment to see if she could spot her sons and make friends with them. Or paint them. They ignored her.

3 I didn’t understand this clue until now. Another time traveling tip.

4 After she left, we talked on the phone once, the only time she picked up before she changed her number, so I made sure to record it:

W: I’m looking at your picture. You’re staring right at me. Can you see me?

N: No, I can’t see you.

W: I feel like a retard.

N: You’re not a retard.

W: Are you eating? Sometimes you forget to do that.

N: I’m fine. Thanks for checking.

W: I feel like a child. Nicolette? You weren’t trying to read my mind, just then? I know you weren’t, but you should tell me.

N: I can’t read your mind. I promise.

W: But we’re connected. You and me. We still are. (Silence.)

N: I ripped up your books.

N: I was leaving them for you.

W: I can feel you. Like my face is really close to a fire. Is that you?

N: I don’t know. I don’t think so.

W: Does that freak you out? I don’t feel like I can tell anyone else that. I feel like I can ask you if you are reading my mind and you might freak out but at least you’ll let me ask.

N: You can ask me. But you have to tell your doctor. West. Do you promise?

W: Are you stealing my thoughts from my head? I’m sorri.

N: No, no. Stop saying sorri.

W: Sorri. If you can read my thoughts, which you can’t, don’t be scared of what you see.

N: I’m not. You can’t scare me.

5 False.

There was a clamoring above her, followed by rough voices. It was very distracting. She stood in the center of the narrow landing between the first and second floors, where she’d paused to catch her breath. A dime-store watercolor hung slightly crooked on the wall in front of her. It was a prairie scene with gray-green hills, a tornado in the distance. No place she’d ever been, and the dreary landscape made her tired. She was on her way to check her mail. Or had she just returned from checking it? Her studio apartment was a half-flight up and she wanted very much to sit down in her big padded rocking chair. She was very tired — from either going to or coming from checking her mail.

Two men in gray jumpsuits and large plastic gas masks appeared on the landing above her, carrying a bulky crate. They were advancing down on her quickly. Was she under arrest? But it felt more like another dime-store painting than an attack. “‘Scuse us, ma’am, coming through,” one of them said.

She now carried two great and corresponding packages in her mind. First, the decision about which direction she should go to get out of their way. (She had no mail in her hands, which meant one of two things: that she had not yet checked her mail, or that she had checked it but had received nothing, which was often the case — no one even sent her bills anymore.) The second was a package of thought she did not wish to open: doubt that there were men with gas masks at all.

The men slowed as they neared her. They tilted their crate carefully, but between her and the banister there wasn’t room to pass. Something fragile-sounding clinked around as they leveled their load. “Careful,” the man in back, two stairs taller, said to the other.

“Is there a problem?” she asked. “Are there roaches again? I cannot allow those in my apartment. Which floor has them?”

“Ma’am, can you move?” the man in back said, his voice muffled by the gas mask but clearly annoyed.

“I live here and will stand where I choose,” she said. “Now tell me which apartment is infested. Is it 2R? I always thought they were unkempt. They travel to Thailand. They could easily have brought bugs back in their luggage.”

The man carrying the front of the crate lifted his mask and smiled at her kindly. “We’re sorry, ma’am, but that’s confidential information. We can get your info, though, and come by tomorrow if you—”

“Claire.” It was the man holding the back of the crate. “Claire Bishop.”

Claire strained her neck forward and peered at him. “Who wants to know?”

He glanced to his right and left as if looking for the one who wanted to know.

“Let’s get this to the van,” the front man said to the back.

The man who knew her name puffed into his mask. “Just give me a minute.”

“Let’s shake a leg,” the first one said.

“I said give me a minute.”

The man in back must have been the boss because the other, grumbling obscenities, obliged. They backed up and set the crate on the second-floor landing. The first man huffed off past Claire and down the stairs, but only as far as the front door. From where she stood, Claire could see the bottom half of him, framed by the glass, still within hearing distance.

The masked man walked down and stood very close to Claire on the landing, bouncing from one foot to the other. His breath came loud and thick from the plastic. “How the hell are you?”

Claire took a step back from him. “Take that off if you’re going to talk to me.”

He cracked his neck several times as if preparing to jump into a boxing ring. “All right,” he said finally. He removed the mask. She squinted at his red, sweaty face, creased from the rubber. He was a middle-aged man with graying hair and a skinny moustache that wrapped itself around his mouth. He was handsome enough. But he was no one she knew.

He gave her a crackling grin. “It’s me. Jill,” he said, putting his hands up as in, ta-da , or, you caught me .

She didn’t know anyone who went by Jill, certainly no men. “Oh? Of course. Jill. How have you been these days?”