"How You'll Wake Up Lena When She's Fast Asleep" by Michael Capel

It won't take long.  You'll come home and Lena will be on the couch, one arm sticking out from under her like it was somebody else's, and you'll think that's strange, and then you'll notice how loud the TV is and what she's watching, or not watching, and you'll think it's even stranger that Lena, who goes out of her way to avoid the sporting goods aisle at Wal-Mart, has the cable turned to a bass-catching competition on ESPN3.  At first you'll just want to laugh.  You'll get your phone out to take a picture, and when you move in for the right angle you'll see the plastic bags on the table.  You'll squint and focus across the room and you will see through them, see that one is empty and one is half filled with brown, shriveled lumps.  They're mushrooms.  Drug mushrooms.   And then another peg will slide in.  You'll think it, and a millisecond later you'll say it out loud.  You'll say, “Holy freak Lena are you killing yourself right now?”Yes is the answer.  You'll know because you were the one who told her, not three days before, that mushrooms were indeed a surefire way to make an early exit from life.  More sure than heroin, or any other drug, and maybe even more sure than hanging or a building jump.  You told her this not because you were the worst sister in the world, but because Lena is only thirteen years old and already diagnosed bipolar, already in the squeeze of her first real depression.  A month before, your mother found thin lines of blood—straight lines—on the inside thigh of Lena's jeans.  Your mother started chatting about periods, and how you should go to the store with your sister, but you knew better.  You found the disassembled shaver in the bathroom garbage can.  You found bloody tissues and got rid of them.  This was your sister—you could take better care of her than some doctor, some psychiatrist's prescription pad. Even if you had to lie.You did what you could.  When another line of morbid questioning marched from your sister's mouth—can you really die if you mix Vodka and pills?  The kind of vodka mom has?  I bet they give you pills for a broken toe, right?—you didn't engage Lena in any serious way.  You didn't talk like your mother, who—as Lena started spending more time on the couch, then more time in her room, then more time sleeping—plunked words like change and difficult and unwell into her speech like coins.  You were the anti-mother.  If Lena's friends at school were talking about this stuff, drugs and death and how to put the two together, you were going to sit and listen.  You talked.You said, “Only mushrooms do the trick with any kind of guarantee.”“Are they like, poisonous?”“They're twelve times more poisonous than rat poison.”“Rat poison?”“Rat poison times twelve.”Lena, a skeptic and a cynic since she saw Goofy with his head off smoking a cigarette behind a trailer in Magic Kingdom, raised her head and straightened her shoulders and bolted you down with her big oval eyes.  “I call total bullshit.  Casey's sister said she saw like, a galaxy in her sno-cone.  When she ate mushrooms, I mean.  She didn't die.  She said it was fun.”“You have to take a lot,” you said.  “Two or three bags.  If you want them to be poisonous, I mean.”“She said they taste disgusting.”“Told you.  Poison.”And then you forgot it.  For three days, you and Lena didn't talk about pills, or mushrooms, or about what happens to bones when a person is cremated, if their teeth melt.  You never assumed, not for a single second, that Lena was ready to act on anything.  Not yet.  Who really commits suicide when they're twelve?  What twelve-year-old can get their hands on a bag of mushrooms, anyway, much less two or three?  Where would she get the money? You'll look again at the table and the two bags, then your motionless, softly moaning sister with the pillows over her head.  You'll tell yourself:  I was wrong. You'll tell yourself:  I can't take care of her. That second, that single second you used underestimating Lena's resources, how lock-step she already was with the black future—that second will explode in your hands like a firecracker.  It will explode and turn into smoke and spread out all around you.Then you'll try to wake up Lena.  This is how you do it: *** You'll sit down, across from Lena on the ottoman, the phone in your hand, and you'll dial a nine and a one and another one without looking. You'll pace in front of your sister, chewing your hair and talking into the phone while you do, something your mother hates because Lena does it now too.  You'll bend down and shake Lena's arm, turn her toward you and squeeze her face with your fingers, shake her head.  Her eyes will open and before you can relay what's happening to the woman on the other line, Cecilia, a name you'll never forget but wish you could, you'll hear sirens growing louder and closer to the house.  You'll see flashing light against the windows, an ambulance stampeding up the driveway.  You'll see the stretcher bounce over the draft-stopper, and the ham-shouldered paramedics, and you'll wish you called your mother instead so you could punch in her the face, so you could choke her. Then you and Lena will be in the ambulance, going through all the red lights toward the hospital.They'll ask you where she got the drugs.  They'll ask you if you gave them to her and your bad knee, the one you'll tear up in rugby, will buckle.  Then they'll pump her stomach with a long yellow tube and what sounds like gallons of liquid.  Lena will vomit.  Her voice will sound like a man's, like an animal's.  One of the nurses, rushing to get to Lena, will bump a metal cart, and it will roll into your thigh.  Then they'll ask you to leave the room.You'll wait.  You'll wait in the lobby where there are magazines.  You'll read the titles of the pamphlets—Getting Better, Escape, Starting Over—but you'll never pick one up and read what's inside.  While Lena and your mother deal with the psychiatrist, or the behaviorist, or the pharmacist, you'll resign yourself to doing as little as possible.  You'll worry that at any given meeting, any dissection of Lena's emotional state with a perfect stranger, they'll wrangle you into the room and demand answers.  Where'd the mushrooms come from?  Did you actually suggest that your sister do this?  You'll wait, and you'll worry, and you'll bite your thumbnail loud enough to make the receptionist look up from her keyboard.  You'll stop and just sit there. You'll sit and watch as Lena begins to change, thirteen, fourteen.  Her body will stretch out like taffy and she'll grow taller than your mother, your father, eventually even you.  Her basketball and soccer games will dominate the weekend.  You'll sit in bleachers with your heels tapping on the plastic seat in front of you, and watch for Lena on the court, the field.  You'll watch her face.  Her eyes.  You'll try to predict which way her mood is going but you'll fail.  She'll get red when her shin gets chopped, or when she's fouled down hard from a layup, and just as fast—faster—she'll turn gray and washed out when her team is winning.  You'll sit in the front seat on the way home and watch her bedroom door when you get there.  She'll go into the bathroom.   You'll pace quietly at your end of the hall.  You'll time her.Fifteen, sixteen—you'll go with Lena to get her license, and when the test car comes back into the parking lot with the big, hair-knuckled instructor at the wheel instead of Lena, and you see Lena's swollen eyes through the windshield, your heart will stutter so hard your shirt will move.  It will happen again and again: boom-boom, boomBOOMboom.  It'll turn into a regular tick, an alarm clock.  You'll feel it when Lena can't find a date to the Spring formal, and when she gets a 24% on her AP math final, or when they tell her at the admissions office that any and all prescriptions must be cleared by the school doctor first, and that x and y aren't covered, that they can show her where the Crisis Center is right now if she'd like.  It will always surprise you, your heart doing that little skip.  You won't get used to it.You will get used to the slow darkening of each year, the way the lights in a movie theater don't shut off all at once but just get smaller and smaller.  Eighteen will be bad for Lena.  Nineteen, worse.  After a handful of lukewarm, unfinished semesters at State, she'll hang herself unconscious in her dorm room with a pair of Corona pajama pants.  She won't die.  Someone will find her, and call another ambulance, set another pair of sirens screaming toward your sister.  But before that, someone will take a picture of Lena, her neck still tied to the doorknob, and post it online.  People will see it.  Cops and lawyers will come to your house but none of it really matters because Lena won't go back to school.  Neither will you.You'll be looking for an excuse to delay your degree, again, and you'll convince your mother that she needs you in the house. There isn't enough research available yet to really do your thesis justice, you'll say.  You need to wait.  And when she says “Well,” you'll click the “Purchase” button on the computer screen.  Blink.  You're at the airport.  Blink again and you'll be hugging Lena, down on your knees in your mother's living room.  She'll be on the couch again, making slow, watery motions and whispering to you, “I just love to ride in the ambulance, sissy.”That night, you'll go to her room.  Lena will be miles out in medicated sleep, her arms and legs tucked in a way that looks involuntary.  You'll curl up next to her and give yourself some blanket.  Lena won't move.  You'll whisper into her hair, “I'm glad your back.”“I don't want that stupid chicken,” Lena will say.  Her voice will shock you, a zooming sports car without a driver.“What are you talking about?” you'll say.“I want my chicken right the first time.”You'll turn your head back into her hair.  She'll curl even tighter and you'll say, quieter now, “I'm sorry ma'am.  We'll get right on that.”The next day you'll start off with energy, all of your muscles pulling together and your heart steady.  Medications, appointments, exercise, diet—you won't let any of it intimidate you.  Everything will get its even time.  You won't rush Lena out of bed.  You won't force her breakfast.  You'll fold laundry with your mother in the quiet mornings, and when she starts to talk about all of the wrong things—Lena going back to school, Lena finding herself a boyfriend—you'll just ignore her, or you'll agree just to agree, or you'll go outside and sweep the porch.  One day you'll notice that your mother wears the same outfit on Tuesdays, the same on Wednesdays, Thursdays.  You'll realize she has Lena doing the same.Twenty one will be bad—three hospitalizations and another attempt, this time by car and garage.  Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four:  each year will be colder and slower, Lena winnowing away to a girl who loosely resembles Lena, a Lena with more rubbery skin and drier hair, a girl too skinny to be healthy.  You'll lose weight, too.  Lena's jeans will fit you—they haven't since you were teenagers—and you'll have weight to lose, but one day you'll get on the scale and look down and you'll have to get on three more times to make sure it's right.  Another day you'll lock your keys in the car.  Another day, you'll look down at a bottle of medication that you've opened and closed three times a day for the past three years, and you won't remember how many pills to tap out.  Another day your mother will ask, “So exactly how much more school do you need for this degree?”You'll look over at Lena sleeping on the couch.  Blink.  You'll be back at the airport.Blink again.Lena will be dead.You won't see it happen.  No one will.  She'll be twenty-six, and on new medication, and in the middle of the longest patch of good days she's had since she was nine years old.  Her friends, all collected from Lena's therapy network, will take her to Montana on a hiking trip, which is strange because Lena, even on medication, would turn around if you went down the sporting goods aisle at Wal-Mart.  She'll go hiking anyway.  She'll tell you on the phone, “I need to get out.  I need some air.”  You'll believe her.  Your mother will tell you on the phone one night that Lena's in Montana, and you won't think about it much until the phone rings again, a few days later.“I didn't know there were mountains,” your mother will say.  She'll be gassed on peach wine.  Gone.  She'll sound like a slowed-down record.  “They just told me it was trails.  What kind of mountains do they have in Montana?  Are they really that high that they can kill somebody?  I mean, really?”They'll say she slipped, her friends.  They'll say she was at the end of the caravan.  Just out of sight.  No scream, nothing louder than the grind of sand and gravel, and then she'll be gone.  A slip.  You'll go and identify the body.  They'll show you just enough of Lena to know it's her, a clutch of her long, wavy black hair and the ring she always wore around her toe.  They'll ask if you want the ring.  “No,” you'll say.  “That's not mine.”You'll vomit into the hotel bathtub when you get back.  Then you'll walk to the drug store and buy some nighttime cough medicine.  You'll drink half the bottle.  Before you can take your clothes off, you'll be asleep and you won't care much if you wake up again.And then you'll dream.  You'll see it again:  the stretch of your life moving in both directions, forward and backward.  Look here:  you'll see your wedding, and your husband, and you'll see your own daughter lying in a crib.  You'll see Lena in her face; hear Lena in her wordless, unformed voice.  Now look this way:  you'll see Lena lying on the couch.  You'll see her arm sticking out from under her like it's someone else's, and you'll think that's strange, because Lena never sleeps, not anymore.  You'll look at the table and you'll see the bag, and you'll see what's inside, and when you look forward again, just a glance, a quick shift of your eyes, you'll see the firecracker come back together.  The smoke will gather in a ball, slowly, and you'll feel your knees pulling in toward it.  Your hair will rise off your shoulders and then you'll be moving, moving back to the beginning.  You'll get another chance.Try it like this: *** Sit down across from Lena on the ottoman, the phone in your hand, and dial a nine and a one.  Before you dial the second one and start the ringing on the other end of the line, hit the End button.  Put the phone back on the charger.  Hear Lena moaning and pick the phone back up.  Put it down again.Listen.She's breathing.  The same sound as when you were children, the sound you heard at night in your shared bedroom, the soft hay of Lena sleeping.  She'll live.  Grab her wrist and check for a pulse just to be sure.  It will be strong.  Shake Lena's shoulder and say, “Sissy, sissy wake up.”  Wait for a response and when none comes, don't panic.  Sit back down on the ottoman.  Pick the bag up off of the coffee table and hold it up against the light of the window.  Open it.  Put it to your face and breathe in.Drop it, get up and walk into the kitchen.  Look at your mother's work number on the refrigerator and then look back at the phone.  Unplug it from the wall.  Take a glass from the cupboard and look in the fridge.  Pull out the lemonade.  Pour your glass full enough that it trickles down the side when you drop in the ice cubes.  Take a sip and test it for strength.  Dump it out.  Pour yourself another glass without ice cubes.   Then, go back into the living room and drag the ottoman next to the coffee table.  Smell the bag again.  Pick one of the mushrooms out and roll it in the palm of your hand.  Feel how dry it is.  How light.  Say, “It's like popcorn.”  Pop it in your mouth.  Drink half the glass of lemonade to get rid of the taste.  Then dump the rest of the bag in your palm and choke them down.  Drink the rest of the pitcher.Wait.  Look out the window and look back to Lena, who's moving under the pillows now.  See the sunbeam through the blinds onto her back, segmenting her into strips of dark and light.  Keep waiting.  When the mushrooms try to come back up, drink more lemonade.  Make a pot of black coffee even though you don't drink the stuff, and have a cup of that, too.  Pace around Lena on the couch and blow off the steam.  Keep waiting.  You're close now.When the mushrooms finally hit you, do not close your eyes.  Let the edges tremble.  Let the colors wrap together and let your sitting body begin to move.  Watch Lena rise slowly from the couch, the pillows falling from her like pieces of a space rocket.  Look into her eyes, her pupils all ink now, and let her look into yours.  Let her see the empty bags on the table and the low angle of the sun.  When she asks, “Are we dead?” just say, “Not yet.”