Chapter 27 Peggy
Things were going reasonably well.
I was taking my medication. The nurses were beginning to trust me, I think, and even though this place still scares me I was starting to believe I would be released to see Sammy.
They have put up tinsel.
There is an artificial Christmas tree with safe, unbreakable baubles. A menorah with fake candles painted yellow.
I try so hard to stay calm even though every day I go over and over the many reasons why I should not be locked up in here.
I am a volunteer librarian, a mother, a wife, a writer.
And yet I have fewer rights than a violent felon.
I cannot comprehend it. People who rob and deal crack have access to a lawyer and a phone call, and I did nothing wrong and yet I am locked away.
At high school, when I was in tenth grade, I read a classic short story about a woman trapped in the walls, in yellow wallpaper, and now I cannot help seeing myself lost in these walls. Staring out, my mouth agape, screaming silently at the nurses to see me, to notice me, to hear my voice.
It was all going pretty well.
The medication makes me blurry but I can still form coherent thoughts, and I know deep in my bones that I did not take any pills that day.
I would not. Last week I told Fatima that I am not mad, and she said, “None of us are, sugar. This whole thing is an elaborate experiment. Has been for years.” I told her, “No, listen, I mean it, I am not actually crazy.” She blinked hard for a few moments and then opened her eyes wide and said, impatiently, “Oh, sure, that’s what they all say. ”
There is nothing to do here.
The air is always too warm and too stale.
Everything was bearable, though, until the meeting.
I meet with the doctor once a week. Initially it was a woman doctor.
Nice lady from Virginia, reminded me a little of Maya Angelou.
She was kind. I thought she paid attention to my stories and she made time for me.
I was getting used to her. The mellow way she spoke.
It took me all week to formulate a plan to sound reasonable and trustworthy and to ask her to be released before Christmas.
I want to spend time with my son, please, if that can be arranged.
Please. Thank you. I was going to ask her to be let go.
Monitored at home, sure, but not kept in here.
And then I had prepared to stay calm if she said no.
I would not have reacted with anger. I planned to say I understood, and instead of being released perhaps I could have day leave or an overnight stay and then return here.
That was my plan. It was a sound, reasonable plan.
Other patients come and go but I do not know how they manage it.
The tinsel moves gently in this artificial indoor breeze and someone over in the TV area sneezes.
The doctor was a man this time.
Pale face. Going bald but hiding it well with what little hair he had left.
I was a little taken aback by the change, but I remained composed.
Smiley. I even asked him how he was doing.
We talked through my mood, my medication, how I was eating and sleeping.
I stayed calm. Sweating, my palms clammy, I asked him if I could be released by Christmas.
I told him the therapy was working well, and I felt like this place was helping me to manage, and I would keep on taking the medication because even though I was initially against the idea I could now see how it helped me.
He did not respond. I waited. He looked at my notes and said he thought it might be a little too early to talk about going home.
He said I was still very sick. I became agitated but I did not stand up or show it.
At least I don’t think I did? That room has unusual wallpaper.
Room 8C. Pale yellow wallpaper with hot-air balloons.
The balloons are faint with baskets and stripes and netting and small multicolored triangular flags.
I said I understood his concerns and maybe, with all the progress I was making, I could go home just for the day, for Christmas Day, to spend it with my son, you see, to eat Christmas turkey with my boy.
He looked down at his notes again and uncrossed his legs and crossed them again.
He had a considerate face. Button-down shirt.
I willed him to say yes with every cell of my being.
Say yes, goddammit. Grant me this minuscule thing.
He cleared his throat and agreed I was making steady progress.
I nodded and remained calm. Deep breaths.
I acted reasonable. He said perhaps early in the new year I could go home for the day.
My lungs seized up and I couldn’t catch my breath.
I could not inhale. Sammy’s Christmas. I shook my head and tried, again, to remain calm.
Do not look at the wallpaper. Do not stray too close to it.
I said the new year would be great but just a few hours at Christmas, please, to be with my son.
One meal. He needed me at home for one meal.
Just a few hours of normality. And he said, New year, new start.
I did not remain calm.
I tried.
I failed.
Other people were granted leave. Some were being released forever. Back to their comfortable lives and their Chevrolets and their jobs. Was I more ill than them? No. Absolutely not. How can this doctor not see what is so patently obvious?
I told him, again, how I was improving and he nodded and said he was concerned that I was perhaps telling him things I thought he wanted to hear.
Excuse me?
I looked at the wallpaper. Stared at it. I couldn’t draw my eyes away. The balloons and the clouds, almost three-dimensional. The colors. Me in a balloon. In the basket. Untethered. Drifting higher toward the ceiling. No mooring ropes or ballast.
“What?” I said, loudly, shaking my head, standing up. I told him I was telling the truth and he said I should sit back down and we would look at it again in the new year.
We?
The new year?
And then the very next day, yesterday, I think it was, I calmly walked out when the door was open and then I ran like a fugitive, like a maniac, through the corridors, through the waiting room, outdoors, into the parking lot.
Fresh air. Lungsful of it. Cold, clean, delicious air, and a real breeze.
I sprinted.
Three nurses caught me.
I was taken back.
Restrained.
I kept seeing the wallpaper with the balloons and hearing Sammy’s sweet voice. The voice he had when he was four or five. His singing voice. They restrained me so tight I have bruises today.
The nurses looked disappointed.
He does not have a gift. I have never missed a Christmas with Sammy, never missed an hour of a Christmas.
How can he celebrate with Drew? Just the two of them?
What would that look like? He might buy him a present.
Something unsuitable, unsafe: a clawhammer or an air rifle.
If he buys him anything it will be too grown-up for a fourteen-year-old.
And then Sammy will cherish it. They will eat together at the dinette.
Two plates. Will Drew buy Christmas food?
Will they have a tree and hang lights? I need to be there to make sure it is enough.
How can I be stuck here, less than a half hour by ambulance, and they will be there? How is it possible?
An alarm goes off and nurses run through.
It is Babs, a woman with glacial blue eyes and blond hair.
She has blood dribbling down her neck. I watch them assist her.
I watch the droplets of blood fall to the floor and settle there.
She has taken a stone from the garden. I know this because she told me about it.
A small fragment of flint or gravel. I did not know she planned to do this to herself.
Did she plan it? The nurses don’t look overly concerned.
It is just a scratch. Just a blue-eyed wife with three daughters and a successful mail-order business who cut her own neck with a stone.
I watch as the blood droplets on the floor dry and develop a skin.
The television shows Christmas specials. Julia Child cooking canapés and vegetable dishes from her cozy, festive kitchen.
Someone comes to clean the floor.
When Sammy was small he would help me decorate.
We would put up chains made from colorful strips of paper.
He would lick one end and we would form a hoop and connect it to the next.
He enjoyed that. We would watch Christmas specials: Andy Williams, Bob Hope, Perry Como.
We would share a sliced-up chocolate Yule log from the gas station by the strip mall.
It felt safe. Me and him, Drew working on his book in another room, all the while knowing that although Mom was gone, we were still together in her place.
She worked so hard to buy that bungalow.
When she died and we moved in as a married couple I thanked her in my mind each and every morning.
Coffee machine on, and then I thanked her.
Drew started off content with the place, having plans for the small backyard, plans to convert the loft, but then he soured.
He would complain about the construction standards, the upkeep costs, the room layout, the drywall and brickwork.
Said the windows were rotting and the walls were not insulated properly.
He said Mom was too cheap to buy a proper place and it was a shame that we now lived in subpar accommodation.
He actually used that phrase. But Sammy and I were happy there.
He had his LEGO box in the living room so the noise would not put Drew off his work.
Sammy and I would have cozy evenings in the winters: each of us wearing thick wool socks and sweaters, laughing.
He would sing for me, terribly, and I would chase him around the sofa.
It was as though the whole universe was contained within that one small room—curtains closed, door locked—and that the universe was fundamentally good.
I will be home for Christmas.
No.
I will not.
I will be in here.
I swallow my meds and the blue-eyed lady is back with a Band-Aid on her neck. They are searching her room and she is grinning. Babs, her name is. Did I mention that? She sits smiling at me. A small win.
What is Sammy doing now? Setting the fire? Is he warm enough?
Rachel is coloring. Two days ago she had a course of electroconvulsive therapy.
That is a real thing, believe it or not.
When Fatima mentioned it to me I did not believe her.
I said that was something in the movies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the old ways, barbaric, and she said they still use it to this day.
The strange thing is that Rachel seems a little better after. Less confused.
I did nothing wrong and yet I cannot leave.
The wallpaper, in here.
Sammy, out there.