The Virgin Suicides

The Lisbon home continued to deteriorate, developing several leaks, and the family fell further and further into a state of isolation. Mr. Lisbon was the only one who left the house anymore, and although he faked cheerfulness at school, it was clear that he was carrying the weight of his entire family. Six weeks after the girls left school, he was asked to take a leave of absence. Several parents complained about his family history and his house, and staff complained about his strange behavior at school. With Mr. Lisbon no longer bringing life into the house, “the house truly died” (157).

Bonnie was seen coming out onto the porch and praying over the spot where her sister died early every morning when she thought no one was around to see her. A stench wafted out of the house that the text implies was the smell of incarcerated women. Evidence started to appear that Therese’s interest in talking to people from the outside as well as applying to colleges was waning, and the girls became obsessed with shopping catalogues and travel brochures, which the boys then ordered to feel as though they were traveling along with the girls. The boys lament how, even as adults, they still can’t pinpoint the exact reasons for the girls’ despair or their eventual deaths by suicide.

One of the boys’ grandmothers, known as Old Mrs. Karafilis, often took baths and talked to herself about the Lisbon girls. The boys saw her as someone waiting to die, and she seldom left the basement of the home where she lived. Old Mrs. Karafilis wasn’t confused or shocked about Cecilia’s death by suicide but by the family’s reaction to it and the overall “stubbornness of life” (169). She didn’t understand why the Lisbon girls couldn’t be heard screaming or seen trying to escape. When the other girls’ attempted to die by suicide, it was seen as a unanimous pact, but the boys insist that the girls weren’t some singular creature but individuals, fighting their own battles. A reporter referred to a song entitled “Virgin Suicide” (171), which Lux apparently liked, and this was used to defend the idea that it was a planned pact.

In a breach of the Lisbon home’s silence and isolation, the girls tore out of the house one morning to stop the removal of Cecilia’s favorite elm tree. They surrounded it and joined hands, and Therese argued that the tree would survive if left alone.

As the Lisbon girls slipped away from the world and from the people they used to be, the boys started to forget how they looked, acted, sounded, and smelled. The visions they maintained of the girls became fading memories and began to seem more like fantasy than reality. Just when they thought they’d lost touch with the girls forever, photos identical to the one that Cecilia held of the Virgin Mary begin appearing in peoples’ yards and on their windshields. Soon after this, the girls started flicking their bedroom lights on and off, and then through Cecilia’s window the boys noticed a sort of shrine with dozens of old candles dedicated to Cecilia.

The girls then started sending letters to the boys on the street, dropping them off in the middle of the night. They each contained a single phrase such as “Remember us?” (187). The boys racked their brains for a week and finally realized that they could just call the girls. The first time they called, Mr. Lisbon and his wife answered, both demanding to be left alone, but the boys could tell someone else was on the line. Sure enough, a voice said “Hi,” but little more. The second time, they played a love song about waiting by a phone and left their number, and on the third day, the girls called back with a song about a life that slowly falls apart. They played songs back and forth throughout the night, the girls sending sad tunes and the boys responding with more uplifting numbers. The grown boys realize, looking back on that time, that the girls were trying to reach out to them all along, but the boys’ infatuation clouded their vision. The last Virgin Mary photograph that the boys received stated, “Tomorrow. Midnight. Wait for our signal” (195), and the boys predicted that the girls planned to run away.

The fish flies returned and fogged up the sky the next night, and as the boys sat in the treehouse awaiting the girls’ signal, they could hardly fend off the hoards. Just after midnight, the boys saw a few flashes of light from the Lisbon home and then spotted the girls standing at the window before the house went dark again. In silence, the boys crept across the lawns to the Lisbon home and approached, the smell growing more dank with each step. When they reached the backyard, they could see Lux sitting inside, smoking a cigarette and wearing a halter top that one of the boys recalled her being banned from wearing two years earlier. One of the boys became brave enough to open the patio door and go inside, and Lux greeted them with her usual coolness. She asked them to wait while her sisters finished packing, asked about the boys’ plan to escape, and distracted one of the boys by undoing his belt and touching him before changing her mind and leaving for the garage.

The boys stood in the living room imagining their future vagabond life with the girls and began hearing continuous thuds and other noises from both upstairs and downstairs before the house suddenly fell silent. As the boys slowly crept through the house, they heard a sigh in the kitchen and made their way to the basement, where they found the food from Cecilia’s party untouched and rotting. Above hung Bonnie, no longer alive. The boys stared in shocked silence, realizing that they never knew the person before them. They realize, looking back on the night, that the sigh they heard in the kitchen was Mary (who used the oven), and that Therese was likely already dead (due to an overdose) when they arrived. Lux, they found out later, had gone to the garage and suffocated.