Suicide Underground-Air

[00:00.00]Everyone dated the demise of our neighborhood [00:02.55]From the suicide of the Lisbon girls. [00:05.86]People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped-out elms [00:08.71]And harsh sunlight. [00:11.06]Some thought the torture tearing the Lisbon girls [00:13.44]Pointed to a simple refusal to accept [00:15.73]The world as it was handed down to them: [00:18.08]So full of flaws. [00:21.63]But the only thing we are certain of after all these years [00:24.09]Is the insufficiency of explanations. [00:28.32]'Obviously doctor, [00:30.21]You've never been a thirteen year-old girl.' [01:00.83]The Lisbon girls were 13, [01:03.40]Cecile, 14, Lux, 15, Bonnie, 16, Mary, and 17, Therese. [01:19.01]No one could understand how Mrs. [01:20.80]Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon, a math teacher, [01:25.40]Had produced such beautiful creatures. [01:29.45]From that time one, the Lisbon house began to change. [01:33.20]Almost every day, and even when she wasn't keeping an eye on Cecilia, [01:39.09]Lux would suntan on her towel wearing a swimsuit that caused [01:43.46]The knife-sharpener to give her a 15-minute demonstration for free. [01:49.08]The only reliable boy who got to know Lux was [01:51.67]Trip Fontaine, [01:53.96]For only 18 months before the suicides had emerged [01:57.01]From baby fat, to the delight of girls and mothers alike. [03:09.24]But few anticipated it would be so drastic. [03:15.25]The girls were pulled out of school, and Mrs. [03:17.33]Lisbon shut the house for maximum security isolation. [03:25.45]The girls' only contact to the outside world was through [03:28.06]The catalogs they ordered that started to fill [03:30.14]The Lisbon's mailbox with pictures of high-end [03:33.65]Fashions and brochures for exotic vacations. [03:38.51]Unable to go anywhere, [03:40.03]The girls traveled in their imaginations: [03:43.21]To gold-tipped Siamese temples or past an old man, [03:47.70]The leaf broom tidying the carpeted of Japan [03:53.50]And Cecelia hadn't died. She was a bride in Calcutta. [03:58.97]Collecting everything we could of theirs, [04:01.19]We couldn't get the Lisbon girls out of our minds, [04:04.75]But they were slipping away. [04:07.14]The colors of their eyes were fading, [04:09.25]Along with exact locations of moles and dimples. [04:13.11]From five, they had become four, [04:15.45]And they were all (the living and the dead), [04:18.41]Become shadows. We would have lost them [04:21.39]Completely if the girls hadn't contacted us. [04:36.57]Lux was the last to go. Fleeing from the house, [04:40.57]We forgot to stop at the garage. After the suicide free-for-all, [04:45.47]Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon gave up any attempt to lead a normal life. [04:50.05]They had Mr. Henry pack up the house, [04:52.14]Selling what furniture he could at a garage sale. [04:55.89]Everyone went just to look. Our parents did not buy used furniture, [05:02.05]And they certainly didn't buy furniture tainted by death. [05:09.11]We of course took the family photos that were put out with the trash. [05:12.97]Mr. Lisbon put the house on the market, [05:16.28]And it was sold to a young couple from Boston. [05:20.85]It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, [05:24.21]Or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, [05:29.74]And that they hadn't heard us call; still did not hear us, [05:34.81]Calling out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, [05:39.80]Alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, [05:45.85]And where we will never find the pieced to put them back together.