The Suicide of Claire Bishop

by Carmiel Banasky

  Every Sunday of Claire’s childhood (while Ernest got to stay home and listen to Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy), Elsa took Claire, dressed in their Sunday best, to visit her grandmother at the Willard Asylum. This was, to Claire, the opposite of a church. Claire’s grandmother had Huntington’s, or that’s what she’d been told—a hereditary, degenerative disease with the power to change your personality, to rob you of motor control, to riddle your mind with hallucinations. Black magic, she thought as a child. Her grandmother would often mistake Claire for Elsa. Whom she mistook Elsa for, Claire would never know. During each visit she would tell stories about training as an opera singer and she would sing an aria or two for Claire. On laundry duty, she would get into trouble for writing lines of poetry on the bands of other patients’ undergarments.

  The hospital was a large site not far from Ovid, with Gothic-style buildings as old as any in this country but which somehow felt slap-dash, fake. Grass green enough it seemed painted on. While her grandmother’s personality changed shape, the hospital never altered. Time was different there. The grounds didn’t change with the years. There was no progress, no war.

  When Claire was thirteen, she came to understand what the word “hereditary” meant. She began spending her days in the public library, missing school, hiding away in the stacks with texts on lobotomy and psychosurgeries newly discovered. It was at least warmer there than her classroom, where they couldn’t afford to fill the potbelly stove.

  According to Elsa, Claire’s grandmother had her first hallucination when she was twenty-four. This was what Claire decided she could expect as well. Elsa had not inherited it, and so it must have skipped a generation, making Claire an even more likely candidate. She imagined she would suffer doubly so. She would hear voices. She would be locked in an asylum, visited by people she didn’t know. She was the author of all the odds.

  One very sunny day, when every book glinted back at her like tin, Claire realized how much time she’d wasted sitting inside a library. And how little time she had left. Time with her mind, before it became unrecognizable, before she was someone else, like her grandmother.

  That was when Freddie, the golden-haired entrepreneur, came to town on business. Not quite seventeen, Claire would have been drawn to anything polished in her ashen little Ovid. She liked the way Freddie leaned forward, intimate with anyone who spoke to him. How he loosed his shoelaces rebelliously when he thought no one was watching. How he took the matter of making Claire smile very seriously and wasn’t afraid of the volume of his own laugh. When the draft call came, it did not take much convincing for her to make a home with him.

  In this way she left her family for a man she was forbidden to marry before she turned eighteen. Her mother grew silent even at home. Her father was so hurt he fasted the day Claire left and refused to see her off. He blamed Freddie more than her, saying the boy should know better and that Freddie had a spoiled face. But Claire was intent on growing up then and there, wed properly or not. When her mother asked why—why so foolish, why so young—Claire could not tell them. None of them knew the fear whipping around inside her. She never knew how to explain.

  They took a one-bedroom bungalow in Croton-on-Hudson, hemmed in by manors overlooking the river. Such urgency shaped their short time together before Freddie’s deployment, and he only knew the half of it. They were so new then, getting to know one another as quickly as two bodies could. She wanted him always, the thought flitting in the forefront of her mind, written across his arm as she kissed the length of it: would she still recognize him when he came back? Would she still be here?

  Claire turned eighteen the week before Freddie was deployed and they married in a rush. “We’ll last through this war together,” Freddie said in his vows. “What more do we need to know?”

  Claire did not tell her parents of the marriage until after he’d left.

  Freddie’s yearlong service morphed into four and no one voiced any resentment. Armed with Ladies’ Home Journal, she made a home for the two of them by herself. And, like other women, Claire found work during the war. She was a bus driver, transporting men too old to serve from their bedroom community down to the Bronx, where they caught the train to the city. Her cheeks, and other parts, were raw from pinching. But she liked her job well enough. She wore a transit company cap that was far too big. She was quite a good driver.

  The war was there, in the bus, because she was there. But the rides were jolly and no one ever spoke of what was happening abroad. If anyone questioned her, Claire was prepared to say her maiden name—Gabler—was English, not German. But no one ever asked. She played music in her bus on the transistor, never the news. She tried not to listen to the reports unless her friends, also military wives, told her she must hear a certain story. She frequented the movies and became a master at bridge. The war was an interruption to everyone’s plans, but Claire never had a plan. It had nothing to do with her—Freddie’s absence and her new job seemed somehow far removed from invasions and sneak attacks.

  Freddie’s letters were full only of jokes he’d learned from the other boys. He spent most of the war in India. When Claire asked him about the war, he said sharply that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. This would have made sense to Claire had it not been for the defensiveness in his voice, as if he were protecting himself from being scolded. It gave her the feeling that Freddie didn’t understand what he’d been doing, what he’d been fighting for.

  When Claire had to give up her job, she thought of taking work elsewhere. But Freddie held her close and said she’d only been playing a role while he was away and now he wanted her home where he could find her. “Working seems unnatural, don’t you think?”

  Through the war, Claire had lied to Freddie that she could not bear children, that she’d been warned it would pose terrible health risks and might even kill her. She did not tell him her real fear, that she would pass on a monstrous gene, and worse, not be around for her children, the way her own mother had been alone.

  But Freddie was determined they visit the best doctors to see what could be done. Claire obliged, and in the course of discovering that she was perfectly healthy, it became apparent that Freddie was not. Trauma he’d suffered during the war—in fact, a wrestling match with one of his Army buddies—had caused groin damage far worse than he’d previously thought. All of this, of course, came as a relief to Claire.

  The closer Claire came to the dreaded age, the closer she grew to Freddie. She’d never felt so powerful as she did in bed with him. She moved as if she owned both their bodies. She loved sitting beside him in the cinema, the smell of his collar, how rare he liked his steak. But mostly, she loved doing nothing more than lying in bed with him and wasting the day away unclothed. She ignored the thoughtlessness of his late-night work meetings, how cold he could be, how forgetful of the parties she planned. How was he to know that her time was running out?

  Every day after her twenty-fourth birthday, Claire performed a mental tally of her faculties. Everything was in working order. In fact, she was much quicker than Freddie at learning Spanish for a business trip to Cuba she didn’t have the heart to tell him they’d never take. But no initial signs presented themselves.

  Though Claire assumed that the symptoms would appear soon enough, she thought it prudent to ask her mother, as nonchalantly as possible, to repeat the details of her grandmother’s health. The trip home would also be a chance to say goodbye. While Freddie was staying in the city on business, Claire returned to Ovid for the first time in many months.

  Her father had never completely forgiven her for leaving against his wishes. Since the war, he’d managed to open his own woodworking and restoration shop, and when Claire returned, he spent most of his time there, away from home. Still, she visited him, and made a game of heckling the one old Irishman who still protested outside the shop. Ernest’s only response to him was to hang a sign in the window that read, “I’m an American-German so I know my wood,” even though Germans weren’
t particularly known for woodworking.

  When Claire asked Elsa how her grandmother was fairing, Elsa said, “She died. While you were busy.”

  Why hadn’t her mother told her? Instead, she asked, “Was it her Huntington’s Disease or something else?”

  Her mother gave a strange laugh. And then she said, “She never had Huntington’s.”

  Apparently, they’d lied to the authorities so her grandmother would be allowed to remain in the hospital, a loophole for hereditary diseases. In fact, her condition was the result of a head injury she’d suffered on the ship that brought her to America. She died of pneumonia in the end.

  Claire didn’t say a word. She walked over to Elsa. And she slapped her.

  How quickly it all changed. Now she was frozen in Freddie’s arms. What was supposed to have been a fleeting handful of years was now a life.

  Here was the man who didn’t move her. The transformation was like a loss of consciousness, but Freddie didn’t notice. She hated the smell of sweat under his collar, the way he sniffed his food before he ate it. She hated the way he moved against her, clammy and rough. His attraction to Claire petered off as well, connected as it was to hers. Now she turned a blind eye at how often he missed the last train north, stayed late at the office, slept weekly in the city.

  Twice, Claire was caught shoplifting from the grocery store in Croton—potato chips, a magazine, peppermint-flavored chewing tobacco. Once, Freddie caught her skinny-dipping in a creek by their house. Claire splashed him as he stood on the bank in his suit.

  “Why don’t you come in with me? Or are you scared?”

  “Get out of there, Claire. You look mad. You’ll catch your death.”

  “You’ll catch yours first,” Claire said. He turned to go. “Why are you dressed like that?”

  “I’m going into work.”

  “It’s Sunday.” Claire climbed out of the water. She was shivering. Freddie took off his jacket and draped it around her.

  “I think we should move,” Freddie said.

  Claire dropped his jacket to the dirt. “Because I’ve embarrassed you?”

  Freddie sighed. “Where, tell me, will you stop acting like a child?”

  To her parents, the city might as well have been another country. She spoke to Elsa and Ernest less and less, and only about the weather or Ernest’s health, resigned in the knowledge that her parents and Freddie would never know why she was the way she was.

  But Nicolette knew. Humming over the portrait, the artist had said, as if diagnosing Claire, “You lived your life afraid you’d go mad.” She leaned in close to the painting. “And now you’re disappointed.”

  3.

  The sound of coming home and shutting doors. Freddie taking off his coat. Freddie standing mockingly in the kitchen doorway. She mixed herself a drink like she was mixing herself.

  “Is that for me?” he said, eyeing the drink in her hand.

  She took a sip. Of all the nights for him to return at a reasonable hour.

  He started toward the den. Claire tripped after him into the hall, splashing gin on his suit.

  “What in the devil, Claire?”

  “You can’t look at it,” she said. Another sip.

  “Look at it?”

  “The painting. We’re not allowed until it’s done.”

  “I was heading to the shower. What’s gotten into you?”

  Claire lifted her glass to her lips in answer. The handsome, stupid man. Eyes like steel ball bearings.

  Freddie grinned. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You little cheater,” he said, so pleased with himself to have figured her out. “If you can look, I sure as hell can. I’m the one paying.”

  “We’re not allowed,” she said again, lifting her hand as he brushed passed her to the den.

  “Oh that’s garbage, not allowed. It’s our painting. Yours. We can do what we like.”

  She followed Freddie to the corner near the canvas. Claire faced the back of the easel. He lifted the drape by a gold tassel.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s it. This is not it. What is this? A prank? Did she say anything?”

  “Say anything?”

  “To explain it.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  They stood facing one another, the painting between them. She set her empty glass on the coffee table and straightened her back.

  “I think you should apologize to me,” Claire said, surprised as Freddie by the words.

  “Apologize.” Freddie grinned again. “Apologize for what?”

  Claire didn’t know. Her own head was stamping down her neck. She straightened her spine again. “Were you sleeping with her?”

  Freddie stopped grinning. “Don’t be stupid.” Nearly a whisper.

  Claire’s eyes started to prickle. She would not cry. “What does she mean by it?”

  “Don’t ask me. How should I know?” He looked at her shoulder instead of her face.

  “Fine. I’ll ask her. She’s coming back tomorrow.”

  “The hell she is.”

  “We’ll have her back tomorrow and see what she says,” Claire said firmly.

  Freddie squinted at Claire like he couldn’t quite see her. “Do what you want. I won’t be a part of it. And I’m not paying her, either. This is not what we’re paying her for.” He paused, softer. “You’re already pale as a feather. I mean ghost. I don’t know what I mean. You should eat.”

  Freddie let go of the drape, brushed by Claire, and sank into the couch where she’d posed only hours before. It was dark now and Claire saw she’d forgotten to shut the curtains. She pointed, and Freddie leaned over the arm of the couch and closed them quickly. At least he still had that kindness left in him. She was afraid to leave the windows open at night. He always said her fear was irrational and she said it was her grandmother’s fear—unexplainable, and deeply, deeply German. You look out the window on a moonless night and see what your grandmother saw.

  She sat down beside Freddie on the couch and let him run his hand up and down her arm. She imagined it was black and moonless outside and the neighboring buildings were crumbling floor by floor. She didn’t look to find out.

  Nicolette kissed Claire’s cheek as she stepped through the door at exactly eleven o’clock on the morning of their fourth session. Claire felt the autumn cold on Nicolette’s lips. She stood stiffly, not leaning in to return the kiss. She wished she’d formed a plan before being bombarded by Nicolette and her lips, parading in as if nothing were wrong, as if she hadn’t painted a devastating, insulting—but perhaps it was best to wait.

  Nicolette rolled and lit a cigarette, then set to work at the easel, barely acknowledging her. The painter hadn’t smoked in the house before, but perhaps Claire telling her Freddie hated it had changed that. She wore tight black pants and a black blouse tailored just above her waistline. When she reached up, the pale skin of her waist showed. She was so tiny. Claire was not large by any means, but she could squash her.

  “I’m going to get us something to eat,” Claire said through a clenched smile. “You don’t need me here.”

  “I need you,” Nicolette said absently. She held her cigarette in the same hand as her palette. The room hummed with tobacco and turpentine.

  Claire fetched a tray of seasoned carrots and a pimento cheese log their girl had fixed the other day, then mixed herself a drink, early as it was. She opened the breakfront to choose from her collection of forks: at least half a dozen from every restaurant in the neighborhood and several from farther uptown and other boroughs entirely. It was very simple: after finishing a meal at any given café, Claire would wipe her fork with her napkin and slip it into her purse. She did not consider this stealing. Stealing had a damaging connotation. No one was hurt in these small exploits, and she never once helped herself to a spoon. All these years and no one had ever noti
ced, especially Freddie, who couldn’t tell the difference between china and glass if his life depended on it.

  Claire was stalling, and hated that she could let herself be afraid of Nicolette. She chose two hors d’oeuvre forks once belonging to a bistro on Fifth Avenue. Carefully, she set the tray, the forks, her martini, and a glass of lemon water for Nicolette on the coffee table in the den. She added a vase of cut flowers. The stamens dusted her fingers and clothes, leaving a trail behind her. Finally, Claire settled back on the couch, holding the stem of her glass as if an extra finger would shatter it.

  The artist was not looking at her, or her forks. Nicolette could have been painting in any den, in any city or decade. She really did not need Claire.

  The painter poured more turpentine from a jug into a dish set in her easel and some of it splashed on the carpet. Freddie would be livid. Freddie would say that was the last straw and throw that jug of turpentine in Nicolette’s pretty face.

  But he wouldn’t, and Claire sat perfectly still on the couch, as if posing, flexing and unflexing her fingers.

  Nicolette smiled at Claire. “You seem more relaxed today.”

  How comfortable Claire had felt in this very room only yesterday; she could have been sitting with an old friend, someone who had seen her naked. But now, Claire’s shoulders had shoulders. She was aware of every muscle in her face. But she was proud to learn that she could act, that she had the power to fool even Nicolette.