The Virgin Suicides

by Jeffrey Eugenides

“Basically, what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she’d fly.”

Victorian poet Christina Rossetti. Deborah Ferentell remembered a few lines from one poem entitled “Rest”: O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies.

Here you have them, as we knew them, as we’re still coming to know them: skittish Bonnie, shrinking from the flash; Therese, with her braincase squeezing shut the suspicious slits of her eyes; Mary, proper and posed; and Lux, looking not at the camera but up in the air.

From this “research,” she came up with the find she was most proud of: a song by the band Cruel Crux, entitled “Virgin Suicide.” The chorus follows, though neither Ms. Perl nor we have been able to determine if the album was among those Mrs. Lisbon forced Lux to burn: Virgin suicide What was that she cried? No use in stayin’ On this holocaust ride She gave me her cherry She’s my virgin suicide

The Lisbon girls made suicide familiar.

“All wisdom ends in paradox,” said Mr. Buell,

They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn’t help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us.

It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.