The Suicide of Claire Bishop

by Carmiel Banasky

  You were just testing back there, Tricky Voices. Is that what it was, a test? You knew the plane door was not the right door. But what is the right door? I must get out from under Dan’s gaze in order find it.

  Dan turns to face me as much as his bulk will let him. “The least you could do is treat your sister with respect and answer her question.”

  “I don’t like the tone of her question,” I say calmly, one hand on the tube beside me.

  “He’s a shoteh,” he says, turning back to Jules.

  “Dan!” Jules looks at him sharply. “I don’t know what that means, but don’t say that.”

  “It means he’s an imbecile. He thinks he’s not responsible for his actions.”

  “It’s normal,” Jules says to him, “if you do a stupid thing like getting off your meds.”

  “I left my prescription at home,” I say. “I would have filled it when I went to visit Mom.”

  “You should have filled it days ago! And let’s not even start about how you ran off to Mom’s. I can’t believe she dropped you at the airport like this. She must have noticed. She just didn’t want to deal with you herself.” Jules glances at me in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t mean that. She probably didn’t know. How could she? She hasn’t been here.”

  “She cried. When she drove me,” I say.

  “I knew it,” Jules says. “Just once, she could have acted responsibly.”

  “Your mom always cries,” Dan offers.

  “That’s true, she always cries.” Jules looks back at me. “We’re going to the hospital.”

  I use my low and serious voice. “I can’t go today. There’s too much to do. Right, Dan?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  What a bad liar, I think loudly. “Please, Jules, just—we’ll swing by my apartment and get my prescription. Then we’ll go to your place so you can keep an eye on me like you’ve done before and it’ll be fine.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know they aren’t my own. Dan inserted the idea of going to my place. He thinks Nicolette is there, or a clue to her. Taking thoughts out of my head and replacing them with his. “I feel totally great right now, anyway. I just had a bad moment is all.”

  But it wasn’t all bad. That little slip on the airplane has put me closer to Nicolette and the portal. To loosen my mind, to rid myself of fear. It was all preparation for the right door. Just tell me where is the door!

  “You’re going to the hospital today,” Jules says. “No arguments.”

  My cell vibrates in my pocket, but Dan is watching so I can’t look at it. “Jules, you don’t know what you’re doing to me. I need a day, at least. There’s this guy. I have to find him. He owes me a bunch of money and if I don’t get it now, I’ll never see it. A lot of money. It’ll help with the hospital bills.”

  It’s the only thing I can think of to stall. I know it isn’t over. It can’t be over. I will find the portal.

  “What guy? Why does he owe you money?”

  I zip my lips, afraid they’ll know if I lie again.

  “You can have a few hours,” she breathes.

  “We didn’t discuss that,” Dan says. He’s too obviously annoyed for his annoyance to be true—he’s happy to have a close watch over me and get some answers before locking me away.

  “A few hours,” Jules says, “and then I’m taking you this afternoon. Six at the latest. All right?”

  “Not all right,” I say. It isn’t enough time to decipher Nicolette’s tableaux code, get her the painting, and save Jules, all with Dan around me every second.

  Dan’s facing front again and I peek at my phone. There’s a voicemail from a number I don’t know, which has to be Jill. I can’t risk listening now.

  “That’s my best offer,” Jules says. “Hospital right now, or hospital at six. Up to you.”

  The rain has let up and there’s a hint of sun. We peel around Bowery and onto Broome, then slam into a free space directly across from my apartment, below the psychic’s neon sign.

  “Did you feel that?” Dan asks. “I think we ran over something.”

  A man is running up to the car, flailing his arms, screaming at us in Chinese. Jules locks the car doors and stares.

  “That’s Tachi,” I say.

  “What does he want?” Dan asks.

  “How would I know?”

  Tachi pounds on my sister’s window and then mine. I roll mine down.

  “Hi, Tachi,” I say, and then remember that’s not his real name. But he doesn’t notice.

  “My car, man. My car,” he says, close to tears.

  “This is not your car, this is our car,” Jules says, tilting her face toward my open window.

  He ducks and thrashes his arms around under our car. I lean out the window a little to get a better view as he lifts his crushed remote-controlled monster truck.

  The corners of his eyes turn a bright, wet red. “You must apologize,” he says to me.

  “But,” I say. I fumble for the words. I do want to say them. But the words won’t come. “I didn’t run over it,” I say. I put my hand to my neck and shake my head. If I told them I’d like very much to say it but can’t, they wouldn’t believe me.

  Jules rolls down her window. “I didn’t see it. I feel awful. Oh, West, apologize.”

  My throat is tight and dry and I think I’m choking. “I apologize!” I yell.

  Dan leans back toward my open window. “How much?” he asks Tachi.

  Jules digs in her purse and hands Tachi a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Are you nuts? This is a hundred fifty at least,” Tachi says, still choked up.

  “One-fifty?” Jules says. “I don’t have that. You shouldn’t have been driving your toy in the middle of the street. It was bound to happen. Dan? West? Do you have any money?”

  “That’s plenty. It was an accident,” Dan says.

  Tachi scoffs. “It was not a toy.” Leaving the money, he sulks off to his stoop a few feet away, cradling his truck, and stares at us.

  This is a sign: every victory comes with a price. I am still on track.

  “I’ll run up,” Dan says, opening his door. “You two stay here.” He reaches between the front seats and holds his hand toward me, palm open. I stare at it. “Keys?”

  “Thanks a lot,” I say to Jules. “I can never show my face in this neighborhood again.” I dig into my jeans pocket and place the keys in Dan’s palm a little too hard. “It’s probably on the kitchen counter,” I tell him. “Or the nightstand. Or the windowsill.”

  “I’ll find it.” Dan sprints across the street, agile for such a burly guy.

  This is my chance to talk to Jules alone but it’s hard to figure out where to begin without wasting time. Do I tell her about the painting? Or about Dan and the Hasidim at the landmine house? Or Nicolette and time travel? But it’s a terrible thought that makes me ram my head into the back of Jules’s headrest—I just let Dan go up to the apartment. Alone. As in without me. He could be doing anything. He could be bugging the walls and mirrors. He’s probably looking in my closet for Nicolette. Ransacking for clues.

  I don’t bother shutting the car door behind me. I dash across the street and punch a bunch of numbers until someone buzzes me in. My legs are Jell-O, running up the stairs. I pull them by the knees to make them go. Jules must have caught the front door before it shut because I hear her padding up behind me. Catch my breath on the landing between the third and fourth floors. But Jules is only a flight below, huffing up, faster than me. I climb the last flight and a half—and there’s Dan, coming out of my apartment with my prescription and my messenger bag.

  “When was the last time you cleaned up in there, bud? Whewee.” He waves his hand in front of his face.

  Jules comes running up after me. “West, what are you doing?”

  “I forgot—I need—”

  “I grabbed you a few pairs of clean underwear and some shirts just in case, hope you don’t mind,” Dan says, smiling away. “Don’t know how long your
stay at the hospital will be.”

  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.”

  “Fuck,” I say. Chelsea. The gallery. The Hasidim. I rest my head on the window to cool it. It’s
too late. Is it too late?

  He shakes his head. “Try to think what you can offer to deserve the loving-kindness your sister gives you.”

  Then his face starts coming apart. I don’t know who I’ve been talking to. And then it’s Dan again.

  “Don’t hurt Jules,” I say.

  “I never would. I believe you know that.” He sounds so weak and tired, I almost believe him. Pathetic, rather than suspicious like usual. I laugh at him so he knows I’m not fooled. But he must know it’s my fault she lost the baby.

  “I’m sorry, West,” Dan says. And then he leaves.

  This is the mouth of the cave and Dan is the throbbing, prickling tongue of the dragon, angered by what I’ve cost him. I need to get Jules far away from here before Dan comes home. To another year or decade. I have to find the portal now.

  Jules is startled to see me standing over her when she wakes. “What are you doing?”

  She fell asleep with a book open on her chest: The Best of Jewish Parenting. She pulls the sheets up to her neck, even though she’s totally covered and her head in a scarf.

  “We have to leave,” I say. “Now.”

  “Then let me get ready.” She shakes her head at herself. “Letting you drag me around.”

  While I’m waiting, the rain stops. I think through all the clues, everything that happened in the last week, moving backwards through time. The plane, the bluff, visiting Mom and Ralph and Miles, stealing the painting, planning with Jill, meeting Jill, going to the gallery for the first time, talking with Jules, seeing the landmine house.

  The landmine house. My mom said it, she said it so clearly in the car—about what my dad did to win her back after a fight: I have to knock on Nicolette’s door. I have to go back to the landmine house.