The Virgin Suicides

In a typical American suburb in Michigan, teen boys compare observations and artifacts about five attractive sisters, the Lisbon girls, and what might have led up to their deaths by suicide. They describe the death of each girl and outline pieces of gossip and observations they made before the girls died. The girls (Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux, and Cecilia, in descending order of age), all of whom were teens at the time, died one by one, beginning with the youngest, Cecilia.

Cecilia was 13 when she cut her wrists in a bathtub. The paramedics found her barely alive, wearing a white dress and holding a photograph of the Virgin Mary on her chest; words on the back of the photo noted how the Virgin Mary arrived to “bring peace to a crumbling world” (12). The boys watched as Cecilia was taken out on a stretcher and her mother “let out a long wail that stopped time” (4). At the hospital, Cecilia seemed numb and detached, and when asked, blamed her decision on being “a thirteen-year-old girl” (5). Cecilia was known to wear an antique wedding dress around the house, as she had on that day, and the boys have photographs that showcase how the girls looked and behaved. They describe the elm tree that the girls loved and protected, which was infested by disease and had to be cut down. It was also around this time that the suburb became overrun by fish flies, which filled the air like a black cloud.

The boys discuss the ideal and cherubic forms of the girls and how looking at them always felt like they were somehow doing something wrong. The Lisbon parents seemed not nearly beautiful enough to have produced these girls, and the boys, who watched the family as they left for church on Sundays, describe the parents as “leached of color, like photographic negatives” (6). Mr. Lisbon taught math, while Mrs. Lisbon was a homemaker who spent most of her time fretting over what the girls were wearing. A boy named Peter Sissen was once invited into the Lisbon home after helping Mr. Lisbon at school, and he conveniently found a reason to see the upstairs where the girls’ bedrooms were. There, he found all sorts of things that captured the boys’ curiosity, like the girls’ underwear, a bra hanging over a crucifix, secret stashes of makeup, and a used tampon that Peter called “a modern painting” (8). Another neighborhood boy named Paul Baldino managed to sneak into the Lisbon house using the sewer system and was the one who found Cecilia in the bathtub.

After the incident, Cecilia would come out to sit on the front lawn and stare up at the sky, and one of her sisters was always there watching over her. People in the neighborhood offered theories to the boys about the reasons for Cecilia’s actions, including the need to escape the confines of the house and not being close enough to God. A girl from Cecilia’s class at school claimed that she had developed an obsession with a boy named Dominic, and because Dominic was Italian, Cecilia had taken to eating, talking, and acting like him to gain his attention. When that didn’t work, Cecilia did what “the ancient Romans had done” (18). A psychiatrist who assessed Cecilia stated that she likely didn’t want to die and was instead calling out for an outlet and socialization. The Lisbon parents thus started allowing their daughters to behave more in accordance with their own desires and to participate in social functions.

Years later, they divorced, and when the boys spoke to Mr. Lisbon, he confessed that he found the life stifling. In particular, he found the complete lack of any other male presence suffocating and decided then to host a party for the girls. The boys were all invited, and they recall how the house was quite ordinary. Downstairs in the rec room, the lights beamed, and the boys saw the girls for the first time as individuals, rather than some unified being. They were startled to find that the girls weren’t the perfectly angelic creatures they’d imagined. Cecilia seemed uninterested in engaging and wore crayon for lipstick, along with the same wedding dress she always wore and a collection of bracelets taped to her wrist to hide her scars. A few minutes later, Cecilia went upstairs to her room and hurled herself out the window, impaling herself on the spiked fence below. Once everyone realized what had happened, guests rushed past the frozen Mrs. Lisbon and found Mr. Lisbon outside, holding his deceased daughter as best he could while she remained impaled on the fence.