Chapter 29 Peggy
I am trying to write my thirteenth letter, but my hand will not stop shaking. I focus on the tip of the felt pen and urge it to steady. I have sent six letters to Drew and six letters to Sammy. I mailed them to the scrapyard office. Action. I will do whatever I can with the limited options I have.
I write that I will join them in the new year and that I will miss them over Christmas, but we will celebrate together in January, our own special Christmas.
I will roast a turkey, all the trimmings, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, eggnog, and we will do it properly, together.
Looking around the room today you would think this place is a community center or a college cafeteria.
People seem normal. I thought they would be terrifying, ghoulish, berserk, but most of them are merely sad.
Life is harder than we sometimes realize.
Most people here just need a break from their own daily grind for a while.
The Christmas music is extremely upsetting: “Deck the Halls,” “Jingle Bells,” “White Christmas.” The daytime TV shows talk about last-minute gift ideas, and it is like they are reaching out of the screen and pushing their fingertips into our wounds and opening them wider.
Shopping days till Christmas.
“The Little Drummer Boy.”
Bing Crosby.
They talk to me about living with borderline personality disorder.
They tell me it is most common among women, and that it is connected to attention-seeking and a distorted sense of self.
I take that to be a barbed comment about my writing career.
I told them about my publishing contract and I suspect they didn’t believe me.
They mentioned how strong emotional reactions can be associated with the disorder.
They are talking about my recent escape attempt.
They also claim that a sense of abandonment or emptiness is common, and how family history is a risk factor.
They mean Mom. They know she took her own life, so they assume I tried the same thing.
A generational curse. A pattern. Except, I never did.
They say detachment from reality can be common.
They are talking about my book again. They tell me lying is also a feature.
So how on earth do I win? Please, tell me how?
I write to Sammy and explain how my drawing is still utterly appalling but it is improving, and how Fatima taught me how to hold the pencil in a different way, and how to do shading and cross-hatching.
I tell him I have drawn a picture of our boat, the Lady Brett Ashley, moored up, a weeping willow eclipsing the well deck.
It looks more like a Greyhound bus than a boat.
A Greyhound bus wrecked on the interstate.
I do not mention how I stare at the picture before I go to sleep, imagining him inside on the dinette bed, listening to the radio on his Walkman.
I do not tell him how I yearn to fall into the picture and surprise him and hug him so tight he squirms.
There are fewer patients on the ward. Fatima says the staff try to free up beds so more people can come in.
The pressure on the public system is immense, she says.
There are overspills into private facilities, but she’s not been to them.
She has been in and out of here so many times so she knows about these things.
Band-Aid.
“Mistletoe and Wine.”
Fatima says the period after Christmas can be a busy time. Lots of family stress and pressure. People spending a string of days together for the first time in the year. Drinking. Arguments about old debts and new ones. The dark midwinter.
Sammy was born after that quiet, private time.
January 28. We thought he might be a Christmas baby, but he went full-term unlike his mother and grandmother before him.
The pregnancy was uneventful. It was a good period for us, a hopeful period.
Drew was still on a high from winning his prize, although with each passing month without an agent or publisher his confidence would fade.
Sammy was a joy to carry, pretty much. I never suffered too much with morning sickness.
We joked about how the baby would look like Drew, bald and smooth, but in the end he was born with spectacular red-blond hair, bright eyes, my mother’s eyes, and he cried as soon as the midwife smacked his behind.
Drew smiled proudly beside me. But then the midwives gathered and told me Sam needed a little extra help.
Concerned expressions. They took him away from me.
Another midwife said I was bleeding. That I needed stitches.
Where is my baby? Can you bring him? I have to see him right now.
They said I needed an operation immediately to stop the blood flow.
I was losing focus. “Where is my baby?” I asked them, my voice panicked.
They said he was being looked after and I would see him when I woke up.
My peripheral vision darkened. I did not see him when I woke up.
They told me he was in the intensive care unit.
A problem with his heartbeat, with his blood pressure.
His tiny heart. The sight of Drew’s face when I came around from the operation.
The abject fear in his eyes. I knew Drew loved our son with all of his being.
In that moment I knew it. Two long, awful days later Sammy was brought back to me.
He needed monitoring for a while, but he was out of danger.
We were together, finally, the three of us.
Our triangle.
“Last Christmas.”
“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”
Is it? Are you sure?
A man in the corner cries into the crook of his elbow.
I wonder if I will ever leave. If there might be an administrative error, some series of errors, so I will be locked in here for the rest of my days. An inquiry years after my death. An official apology and a PBS documentary. A congressional hearing. Lessons learned.
The Christmas special of a children’s nature program is on the TV. The presenter is wearing a tie with a robin on it. Seven patients watch the screen, motionless.
They have labeled me with a disorder and now I am unsure if I will ever rid myself of it, or if I will wear it with complicated pride like a tattoo or a scar.
I write in the letter about how we can take the boat away for a vacation in the spring.
How it will not be expensive, and we have canals, and thousands of miles of river, to explore.
The rest of the Midwest, the Erie Canal, down to Chesapeake even.
I know Sammy would like to see the East Coast one day.
“Joy to the World.”
“Santa Baby.”
“Jingle Bell Rock.”
Will he ever find out what happened to his grandparents?
Will Drew tell him? I am not even sure myself which version to believe.
He twists the truth and reshapes it like a blacksmith working steel in his forge.
Did he burn his house down? And if so, how can he ever explain that to his own child?
To an adult, even? From the moment he told me I knew I would never be able to leave him.
I felt it deep inside myself. I didn’t face the notion head-on, never spoke it or wrote it, but I understood my fate that day.
If Sammy is to be safe then the triangle must persist until he’s old enough to leave.
Mary-Elizabeth, one of the cleaners, stops by.
“You writing your stories, Peggy Jenkins?”
Her Afro is very short. She has curious, intelligent eyes. Bright red trainers.
“No. Just a letter.”
“Oh, good. We don’t see enough letter-writing these days, do we? Used to have much more of it. Pen pals.”
“I’m writing to my son.”
“Lucky son. I’m sure he’ll cherish it, Peggy.”
She sits down next to me and takes off her rubber gloves.
“You know, I was thinking about what you said before, about Christmas.”
I look at her.
“I might take the shift this year. Jonah’s been hinting he might want to swap. Lord knows I could do with the extra money. So, what I’m saying is, I might be here that day after all.”
I smile. “I hope you are.”
“I done it one time before, Peggy. Years ago now when money was tighter still, when my girls were still at home. It wasn’t so bad, you know. Very quiet. I think we can make it through all right.”
Sesame Street starts up on the TV.
“I’d better be off before they see me chatting,” she says. “They watch us like hawks. It’ll be OK in the end, Peggy. Always is, you’ll see. It’ll be all right in the end.”