Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

The stairs pulse. There’s a hissing, someone left the gas on and then you, in an ugly, hissing voice: shove him, just shove him, you idiot. The top stair I’m teetering on is lighting up orange, I have to move now.

Jules grabs my arm and pulls me down.

At Jules and Dan’s sink, they watch to see my meds, prescription newly filled, land solidly in my stomach, when Jules’s cell rings on the counter. She looks at it askance. “It’s Dad,” she says. “What does he want?”

“Don’t answer,” I say.

She answers. I flop down on the couch.

“Hi, Dad,” Jules says. “Guess who’s with me now. There was a little trouble on the plane. He’s going back to the hospital.… Yes, he’s fine, pretending to be asleep…he said what?”

“He’s just now calling you about that? Jesus,” I say. She shoots me a look.

“He told you that? Are you sure? Because he’s mistaken. Yes. I’m not anything of the sort…I would tell you. You know how he is. He says things.… Yes, we’re all fine here. Don’t worry. Thanks for checking in.… Okay, I’ll let you go now…okay. You too.”

Jules puts the phone down calmly, walks to the couch, picks up a pillow as if to fluff it, then smacks me with it across the head. A fair punishment. Dan and I watch her huff away into the bedroom. I want to ask Dan why she didn’t tell Dad the truth, but I know everything out of his mouth will be a lie.

“You should get some sleep,” Dan says.

“I don’t need sleep. It’s ten a.m.”

“You were on a red-eye. We’ve all had a long morning.”

“Don’t you need to go to work or something?”

Dan says, “I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t remember asking for it.”

He stands over me, trying to be intimidating. His skin is from a black-and-white movie. “I don’t really care what you think of me or what your problem is, but you need to shape up your attitude with your sister.”

“You need—”

Then Jules comes out with a blanket and throws it at me on the couch before turning back into her bedroom and slamming the door.

When I wake a little later, Dan’s watching a tennis match with the volume low and Jules is reading at the kitchen table and the rain has restarted.

“Should I turn it off?” Dan asks me.

“No,” I say.

“You like tennis?”

“No,” I say. “I’m asleep.”

“Tennis is a disappearing American pastime.”

Dan turns it off anyway. I sneak a peek at the painting tube, which I slipped under the couch when Dan wasn’t watching. Dan goes over to where Jules is sitting. She stiffens. I close my eyes and listen to them talking when they think I’ve gone back to sleep.

“Why don’t you just tell him?” Dan asks quietly.

“Because. It’ll make him worse.”

“You should try thinking about yourself sometime. You should’ve told your dad.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I told him West was wrong and he was, technically. I don’t want my dad’s phony sympathy anyway. It’s not like he cares.”

“He’d want to know that his daughter had a miscarriage.”

“Dan! He can hear you.”

There’s a pause and I lie perfectly still.

“He’s asleep,” Dan says. “Anyway, he should know. He’s your older brother. He’s supposed to support you.”

One of them taps their fingers on the table to rhythm of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“I don’t know how West knew,” Jules says. “He always knows things he shouldn’t.”

There’s some shuffling and murmuring, and I peek ever so slightly to see Dan on his knees with his head in Jules’s lap and a hand on her belly. He only touches her because he thinks I’m not watching. His back is shaking and I think he’s crying. Jules leaves her hands on the arms of her chair, looking down at his head without touching him back.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he says in nearly a whimper. “My ba’al teshuva .”

“It happens to many women,” Jules says formally. “It’s God’s whatever. Not something we should break down about.” Then she lifts her eyes and looks straight into my squinted ones, or seems to. I don’t wait to find out. I shut my eyes hard and don’t open them until noon.

One time, when Nicolette had me lying supine on the hardwood floor, and it was getting cold, she put down her paints and came to lie with me. I had just finished telling her about pulling Jules’s hair and wanting her to take back what she said about me dying. She led my hand down her blouse, guided my fingers to untie it, then lift it off her. And it was as if I had lost all motor control; I would not have been able to tell my hands what to do if she wasn’t helping. I could not tell my hands from hers.

I never told her that I had a vision when I came inside her. A minor episode. It might have made me stay away from her if she hadn’t held me after like she knew. In the vision, I saw Nicolette disappearing under me. She was a ghost. And then she had never existed, sucked away from me, before and after and forever, all because I’d touched her. But when it was over, she was there, and her flesh was sweaty, and she was smiling, and she held me so tight I thought she’d break my ribs. We gripped and pulled our bodies together. Shoulders to shoulders, hips to hips. We couldn’t get close enough to each other. We couldn’t become the other.

You are absolutely right: her miscarriage was my fault. I left Jules behind and something terrible happened, just like we thought it would. I am selfish and cruel. No better than them. I couldn’t solve it in time. This is my punishment. And the cost.

But I can stop it. If I take Jules back in time with me.

The apartment is quiet. I stare out at the gray streets from the enemy’s camp. The storm’s let up, and there’s a light drizzle. I don’t like that I can’t see the rain until it hits the ground. A shadow of a man has snuck in through the front door but I don’t see Dan.

This whole apartment is oozing with red-level danger. But this is my only chance to listen to that voicemail. It’s Jill reminding me to meet him at 101st Street and Fifth Avenue at six p.m. and to bring all my meds, whatever I can scrounge up. He doesn’t say why. I’m tempted to call him back and say: this is what’s called a double-cross. But I don’t know yet what the double-cross is.

“What are you doing?” a voice behind me asks. It’s Dan, standing by the front door, the shadow hovering near him, apart from him. I have to get out of here. I’ll say anything to get out of here. I focus on his black-suited shoulders. Seems there’s a little dandruff problem there. “Just do what your sister asks today, please,” he says. “She’s had a hard few days.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“Reading. Let her rest a bit.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“It’s not my place to talk about it.” His voice is thicker and his eyes moisten. “The doctor said it might have been stress. Who knows? It couldn’t have been prevented.”

Couldn’t it have? But it seems I’m not the only one being punished.

“Why was she stressed?”

“It’s hard to say, West.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like it here.”

“She’s very happy here. Just because you’re not—” He straightens his shoulders. “I have to go. Please be gracious. Go to the hospital when Jules says it’s time. If you won’t do it for yourself, at least do it for her. It’s no good for anyone, her having to take care of you like this.”

“She doesn’t need to take care of me. I need to take care of her.”

He grabs an umbrella from beside the door. The morning’s rain falls from the metal tip.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Not that it’s your business, but I’m going to Chelsea for a lunch meeting with some colleagues, then to work.”