heap, red ink running from color sports photographs. The metal mailbox released an odor of rust. The young woman moved the newspapers aside with her blue pump and knocked. The door opened a crack and the woman, squinting into the darkness, launched into her spiel. At some point she realized her listener was a foot shorter than where she was looking, and readjusted her gaze. She took a pocket notebook from her jacket, waving it like the faked papers spies wave in war films. It worked. The door opened a few more inches to let her in.
Linda Perl's story appeared the next day, though Mr. Larkin would never discuss his reasons for running it. It gave a detailed account of Cecilia's suicide. From the quotations in the piece (you may read it for yourself if you like; we've included it as Exhibit #9), it's clear Ms.
Perl, a staff reporter recently hired from a provincial newspaper in MacKinac, interviewed only Bonnie and Mary before Mrs. Lisbon threw her out.
The story proceeds by the logic of the many "human interest" pieces that had begun to proliferate at the time. It paints the picture of the Lisbon house in the broadest terms. Phrases such as "The tony suburb known more for debutante parties than for funerals of debutante-aged girls" and "The bright bouncy girls show little sign of the recent tragedy" give an idea of Ms. Perl's style. After rendering the most cursory description of Cecilia ("She liked to paint and write in her journal"), the piece solves the mystery of her death by giving way to conclusions such as these: "Psychologists agree that adolescence is much more fraught with pressures and complexities than in years past. Often, in today's world, the extended childhood American life has bestowed on its young turns out to be a wasteland, where the adolescent feels cut off from both childhood and adulthood. Self-expression can often be frustrated. More and more, doctors say, this frustration can lead to acts of violence whose reality the adolescent cannot separate from the intended drama.
Ostensibly, the piece avoids sensationalism by informing the readership of a common social danger. The following day a general article on teenage suicide appeared, also by Ms. Perl, complete with charts and graphs, and mentioning Cecilia only in its first sentence: "The suicide of an East Side teenager last summer has increased public awareness of a national crisis."
From then on it was a free-for-all. Articles came out listing teenage suicides statewide for the past year. Photographs ran, usually school portraits showing troubled youngsters in dress-up clothes, boys with wispy mustaches and necktie knots like goiters, girls with hair sprayed into meringue, their vulnerable necks tagged by gold chains spelling out
"Sherri" and "Gloria."
Home photos presented the teenagers smiling in happier times, often over birthday cakes flaming with conclusive candles. Because Mr. and Mrs.
Lisbon refused interviews, the papers had to obtain photographs of Cecilia from our school yearbook, Spirit. On the torn-out page (Exhibit
#4), Cecilia's penetrating face peers from between the sweatered shoulders of two cropped-out schoolmates. ngly dreary exterior of the Lisbon house, first Channel 2, then Channel 4, then finally Channel 7.
We watched to see the Lisbon house on TV, but they didn't use the footage until months later after the rest of the girls killed themselves, and by then the season was all wrong. Meanwhile, a local television show focused on the subject of teenage suicide, inviting two girls and one boy to explain their reasons for attempting it. We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth. Their answers sounded rehearsed, relying on concepts of self-esteem and other words clumsy on their tongues. One of the girls, Rannie Jilson, had tried to end her life by baking a pie full of rat poison so that she could eat it without attracting suspicion, but had served only to kill her
Linda Perl's story appeared the next day, though Mr. Larkin would never discuss his reasons for running it. It gave a detailed account of Cecilia's suicide. From the quotations in the piece (you may read it for yourself if you like; we've included it as Exhibit #9), it's clear Ms.
Perl, a staff reporter recently hired from a provincial newspaper in MacKinac, interviewed only Bonnie and Mary before Mrs. Lisbon threw her out.
The story proceeds by the logic of the many "human interest" pieces that had begun to proliferate at the time. It paints the picture of the Lisbon house in the broadest terms. Phrases such as "The tony suburb known more for debutante parties than for funerals of debutante-aged girls" and "The bright bouncy girls show little sign of the recent tragedy" give an idea of Ms. Perl's style. After rendering the most cursory description of Cecilia ("She liked to paint and write in her journal"), the piece solves the mystery of her death by giving way to conclusions such as these: "Psychologists agree that adolescence is much more fraught with pressures and complexities than in years past. Often, in today's world, the extended childhood American life has bestowed on its young turns out to be a wasteland, where the adolescent feels cut off from both childhood and adulthood. Self-expression can often be frustrated. More and more, doctors say, this frustration can lead to acts of violence whose reality the adolescent cannot separate from the intended drama.
Ostensibly, the piece avoids sensationalism by informing the readership of a common social danger. The following day a general article on teenage suicide appeared, also by Ms. Perl, complete with charts and graphs, and mentioning Cecilia only in its first sentence: "The suicide of an East Side teenager last summer has increased public awareness of a national crisis."
From then on it was a free-for-all. Articles came out listing teenage suicides statewide for the past year. Photographs ran, usually school portraits showing troubled youngsters in dress-up clothes, boys with wispy mustaches and necktie knots like goiters, girls with hair sprayed into meringue, their vulnerable necks tagged by gold chains spelling out
"Sherri" and "Gloria."
Home photos presented the teenagers smiling in happier times, often over birthday cakes flaming with conclusive candles. Because Mr. and Mrs.
Lisbon refused interviews, the papers had to obtain photographs of Cecilia from our school yearbook, Spirit. On the torn-out page (Exhibit
#4), Cecilia's penetrating face peers from between the sweatered shoulders of two cropped-out schoolmates. ngly dreary exterior of the Lisbon house, first Channel 2, then Channel 4, then finally Channel 7.
We watched to see the Lisbon house on TV, but they didn't use the footage until months later after the rest of the girls killed themselves, and by then the season was all wrong. Meanwhile, a local television show focused on the subject of teenage suicide, inviting two girls and one boy to explain their reasons for attempting it. We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth. Their answers sounded rehearsed, relying on concepts of self-esteem and other words clumsy on their tongues. One of the girls, Rannie Jilson, had tried to end her life by baking a pie full of rat poison so that she could eat it without attracting suspicion, but had served only to kill her
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