Author Note: An innocent visit home can turn into a life change when a sibling exhibits symptoms of a serious emotional illness. For our family, that visit would be Labor Day weekend, 2010. Maneuvering through the mental health establishment takes commitment, determination, and the bond of sibling blood for sisters to save a sister.
~
I scanned the scenery as the prop plane buzzed its descent into the Medford Airport. Unlike the expansion and pollution that defined Houston, nothing changed in Southern Oregon. The mountains and pine-infused air still owned the landscape of my parents’ home town. What had changed, though, was that my parents had crested the peak from senior status to elderly. My two sisters and I shared the visiting duties, but I wanted to spend some private time with them. As their middle daughter and Executrix, we needed to discuss my responsibility for their wishes. Dad had two executive heart attacks notched on his belt. Mom, an organic gardener, harvested bushels of denial about the complications from her own diabetes.
The plane bounced on the tarmac. I turned on my cell phone.
“I’m here!” I said to my Mom. “I’ll be at the house in ten minutes.”
“Are you sure you don’t want Dad to pick you up?”
“I’ll hop in a cab.”
“That’s probably better. Dad fell asleep in his chair.”
The taxi tires crunched down the driveway to my parents’ house, an eighties ranch sprawled across a hill with a view that makes city girls weep. I scanned the property, appreciating how they fussed for my visit. The seedling of the Norway spruce, a gift for their fortieth anniversary, had grown beyond the chew line of deer in only one year. The Welcome flag waved and snapped in the sunshine.
In front of the two-car garage, I spotted my younger sister’s beige Infinity. Sonny was here. She lived in San Francisco—six hours away. My heart soared as the two years since I’d seen her melted away. My mother never could keep a secret, but she’d done a good job on this one.
But then my smile faded as my gaze penetrated beyond the metal and glass. Garbage bags and clothes on their hangers stuffed the car’s interior. Daylight couldn’t squeeze through the windshield. At four-four, Sonny’s life mirrored the pages of Martha Stewart Living magazine. This wasn’t right. I knew her well because I was the same way, only eight years older. An internal alarm went off, but a rational explanation surely waited for me inside the house.
I paid the driver and retrieved my duffel bag. A blanket of marigolds greeted me as I bumped my bag to the front door, ready for rousing greetings of “hey kid!” and “here she is!” with hugs. The door was locked.
I rang the bell. Beyond the vines and prisms of the glass, Mom rippled to the door. She wrapped her arms around me and whispered, "Sonja’s here." Mom cleared her throat and called out, “Look who made it!”
“Why was the door locked?” I asked.
Mom held up her hands in a stop motion and shook her head. She marched to the den.
I left my purse and duffle in the entryway and followed her. A haze of cigarette smoke floated along the light shafts peeking through the Venetian blinds. Sonny’s two cats darted past, chased by my parents’ Persian. The dueling side-by-side computers were dark and Post-It notes covered the built-in camera lenses. The television, too, had a Post-It note over the receiver to block the remote’s signal. What the hell?
Groggy, my father pushed out of his chair and lit a cigarette. “Hey kid! You're a sight for sore eyes. How ’ya doin'?” Dad said.
“I don’t know. Everything okay?”
My sister rounded the corner, a younger, mirrored image of me: blond pageboy, aqua eyes, and sun-starved skin. Her normal crystalline gaze appeared dull.
"What's going on?' I said and moved to open the blinds. “Why's it so dark in here?”
“No!” Sonny shouted. “Keep them closed.” She lunged toward the window. “They're trying to find me."
“They? What are you talking about?”
Silence.
“Mom? Dad? What's she talking about?”
“Hell if I know,” Dad said. Mom disappeared into the kitchen.
“Sonny? Who’s trying to find you?”
“They’re trying to kill me. Did you see them when you came in?”
My sister worked for years in the world of database technology, most recently for a contractor hired by the government. Had she kicked a political hornet’s nest? Pissed off the wrong people? Or, was this a delusion of self-importance?
It was all so strange, surreal; I stopped trying to make sense and grabbed my bags. On my way to the guest bedroom, the family portraits on the walls passed in a blur. I knew the faces in those portraits. I didn't know this Sonny, though.
With Blackberry in hand, I rejoined the party in the den, but burying attention in checking e-mail became only a distraction. Sonny twisted in a swivel chair, twirling a blond tendril of her hair close to the scalp.
“Put that away,” she said and leaned to one side. “Don’t point your phone at me. It has a camera and a microphone. They’re tracking me.”
I found my mother in the kitchen and took hold her shoulders.
“Something's wrong with Sonny.”
My mother didn't seem to register the change. “The poor girl. She's exhausted.” Mom’s tone turned protective. “She needs a few days rest; a good night sleep and she'll be fine.”
“Weren’t you concerned when she showed up unannounced with two cats and all her clothes stuffed in her car—the day before I get here?”
“She's my daughter too. What could I do?”
“You’re talking about me,” Sonny said. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
Mom opened the refrigerator and hid behind the shelves.
“I have to start dinner, Honey.”
Back in the den, I tried my father. He was a rational man.
“Something's wrong with Sonny," I said. "You see it, right?”
Dad lit a cigarette and tossed the lighter on the desk. “Damn straight! Up all night before you got here, ran to every window in the house—over and over. Made us close the blinds. Damndest thing I’ve ever seen. Said snipers were in the hills across the way. Can you believe that shit? Mom and I had no idea she was driving up here. Didn’t even call. Showed up at ten o’clock last night with her two damn cats. We were in our pajamas watching TV. Damned cats better not scratch the furniture in the living room.” He took a drag and blew out the smoke with force.
Sonny stepped into the den and Dad shut down, closed his eyes, and pretended to nap. His head fell forward as if his chin and shirt were Velcroed.
Sonny twirled her hair with her jaw locked.
I stared at my father playing possum and turned on the television. The news channel might keep me grounded. Bright-red letters filled the screen: Breaking News flash—Gas Explosion Rocks San Bruno, California.
“Oh my God!” Sonny pointed to the helicopter shot of a sky-high fireball. “That’s me! They blew up my house.”
Dad continued to feign sleep.
“You don’t live anywhere near that explosion,” I said.
“They got the wrong place, but they were after meeeee!” She pointed at her chest and turned to face me. I flinched.
I stared at my sister; her behavior was all wrong, medically wrong. My sister’s identity had been erased—only to be replaced by the contents of the news scroll. She grimaced in emotional pain as her shoulders shook. There weren’t any snipers, black helicopters, or G-Men following her in Crown Victorias; she’d rounded up all of her demons in my parents’ den.
###
The next day got worse. Sonny held a glass of water. I couldn’t read her expression. Instead, I buried my head in a book; a beach of endless sand.
She pushed the glass toward me. “Here, you drink this,” she said. “See how it feels.”
“What . . . are you talking about?” I asked.
“You put something in my water. I watched you do it.”
I pushed past her, splashing the water on the rug, and bolted from the house to the back deck. The mountains stood in the same place. The garden nurtured a healthy food group. Birds pecked at the feeders. My sister was gone.
Throughout the weekend, the news scroll delivered disaster stories to Sonny. She interpreted all of them to be about her: spies, Iraq, terrorism, school shootings, and road rage. I urged them to turn off the television, but it was my parents’ only outlet to the world besides the radio. That was no better. The computers remained dark, disconnected because, according to Sonny, electronics were two-way spying devices.
I called my husband and older sister but only relayed “everything’s good” and “the place looks wonderful.” Sonny monitored every call. If I tried to sneak to the patio with my cell, she accused me of conspiring to have her committed.
We tried to convince Sonny she needed help. Not so funny a thing about mental issues, though: You can’t force help on an adult. A life-threatening crisis must unfold in order to kick-start the engine within the mental health establishment. Her behavior didn’t qualify . . . yet.
Two days later, I packed my duffel, hung a bag of guilt on the handle, and plunked myself in a cab back to the airport. I had to go home, torn about leaving home. The parting hugs from my mom and dad were accompanied with pleading eyes, “Don’t go. Do something. Fix this.” But I was helpless; my parents weren’t going to force Sonny to do anything. I had to talk to my older sister. Leaving was the only way to get help, make phone calls, talk to doctors, and educate myself. I had no clue how to deal with mental illness, and neither did my parents.
The words “she’s so beautiful and smart” rang in my ears. The comfort of family would never be the same, even if my sister regained her clarity. The threat of poisoned water poisoned me.
Trust is a fragile gem, losing its value with fractures and inclusions. Mental illness of any kind (as I found out after my sister attempted suicide) takes a hammer to the jewel called family. A crisis did unfold to place her under a competent doctor’s care.
Paranoid delusional disorder is a psychiatric condition defined in a text book as the inability to distinguish the real from the imagined. The persecutory type, from which my sister suffers, is the belief that someone, or group of individuals, is stalking the patient with intent to do harm. The diagnosis jumped off the page to infiltrate my life. Sonny wanted me to live in her world. If I didn’t, then I was one of “them”.
My sister’s paranoia and delusions became a self-fulfilling prophecy of truths. Sonny’s suspicion of me was justified: whispered conversations, calculated words, shielded emotions, and plans hatched in secret. All true.
But she was wrong about my motivation: I did it for her, not to her.
Fear is my sister’s demon. Fear is my motivation to help her.
I must help her. I must fix me. I’m the Executrix.