The Peggy Yacyniak Story

  I got up early the next day to keep my promise, feeding and medicating my uncle before driving over to Peggy’s mother’s house where again I found Peggy longing on a beach chair, drink in one hand, cigarette smoldering between the fingers of her other hand. “You look exhausted,” she said, glancing at me over the top of her sunglasses. “That’s because I am.” “Maybe you should go home and get some sleep.” “What about your car?” “It’ll have to wait.” “I thought you had to dance tonight.” “I do.” “How will you get there?” “I can arrange a ride.” “With Tom?” “Maybe,” she said, hiding her eyes again behind the glasses again. “What does it matter with who?” “I suppose it doesn’t,” I mumbled, then made my way back home in a daze of weariness and worry, unable to sort through the web of emotions I was feeling, strands attached to different things inside me. Was I jealous? Or scared? Was I in a panic to get out from under this? I already felt as if I was drowning and

    For the second time in a week, the hospital beat Peggy in waking me up, telling me I needed to pick up my uncle. So, when Peggy did call finally shortly before noon, I told her I would not come to fix her car until later. I could not read her reaction when she said, “Okay,” then hung up. The trip west to Graystone was among one of the most familiar of my life, and one deeply drenched in family history. It was almost a religious experience, part of some fundamental ritual and sacrifice I was destined from birth to make. My uncle had been committed there several times during the 1980s, following in the footsteps of my mother, who had been committed numerous times when I was a young child, and her grandfather had died there. The trip only made my mood worse, and added to my confusion, mixing up how I felt about one thing with how I felt about another. The madness I’d seen in my uncle and mother was somehow connected to the madness I saw in Peggy – with me, somehow, servi