I Can’t Anymore.
Peggy woke up nauseous to Laddie’s barking in the back yard. She slowly stood up and walked deliberately but not quickly to the bathroom. Once she entered, she turned the sink on, even though her parents weren’t home; her sister was, and she proceeded to throw up. It seemed like it would never stop. This had become a regular thing for her in the last few days. By turning on the sink, she hoped to drown out the vomiting so her sister Agnes wouldn’t hear her. After it had eased up, Peg brushed her teeth, washed her face, and then went to her room to get dressed. It was now 8:00 a.m., and she could hear Agnes banging around as she packed her bags to return to New York. For an instant, Peggy thought about how unfair it was that Agnes had a life while Peggy was trapped in Dayton with her parents.
Peg’s cheeks flushed with irritation. She loved Agnes more than she could say, but she was still irritated. Peggy got dressed, braided her hair, put it up, and went out the bedroom door to head to the kitchen. Heaven knows she didn’t feel like eating, but she had to, or Aggie would ask questions Peggy didn’t want to answer. “Peg,” Agnes called down the stairs, “are you in the kitchen?” Peggy responded in a very cool tone, “Yes, what do you want?” Agnes was startled by her sister’s tone as she started down the back steps to the kitchen. Laddie barked in the backyard. Peg turned her head toward the sound as Laddie trotted to the back door, ready to greet his mistress with a wagging tail. Peggy walked to the door and opened it. Laddie came bounding in, prancing with excitement because his human was up and the day was new.
Agnes walked into the kitchen. She could tell something was wrong, but she didn’t know what, and her sister was in no mood to share. Peggy looked at Agnes and asked, “What time does your train leave?” Agnes responded with a soft “At two, and I’m nearly packed.” Peg couldn’t help herself as she chuckled at the idea of her sister being “nearly packed.” It meant Agnes had at least another hour of packing to do. “Some things never change, Agg,” said Peggy with a smile. Laddie kept jumping up on Peggy’s leg, demanding attention. She looked down at him and smiled. Agnes watched her sister intently, trying to figure out what was going on in her head! Aggie knew there was no point in asking, as Peg would only say something if she wanted to, and pushing Peg always ended up in a shouting match, which Peg always won. Agnes said, “Peg, you are so much like Mother it’s scary.” “Excuse me,” said Peggy, “What do you mean by that?” “I just mean you keep so much to yourself.” “I do NOT keep things to myself, Agnes,” screamed Peggy. A line had been crossed, and Aggie knew it. When Peggy called her Agnes, Aggie knew she would only do that if she were beyond angry. Peggy stormed out of the room and right out the front door. Agnes and Laddie were left behind, stunned.
Wednesday was already on the way to being outrageously hot in Dayton. Peggy walked down the steps of 19 Stone Mill Road and made a right on the sidewalk. She had errands to run for her Mother, so she headed toward the village. The trees were shimmering in the wind. Peg loved the sound and the shade, so she walked slower than she usually did, taking in the warm summer air like medicine for her soul. As Peg walked toward Frank’s house, she daydreamed of marrying him and having a family. It almost put a skip in her step. Peg’s mind wandered as she headed toward the village. She had a list of 5 things to do for her Mother. Once reaching the village, Peg headed down Patterson Road. Her first stop was the milliner’s to pick up a hat her Mother had ordered. She continued down the street, gathering the items one by one. When Peg had finished, she ended up directly in front of the soda fountain. Making her way in, she asked for a bottle of pop and went back outside. Peggy strolled toward home feeling accomplished.
Peggy headed back down the road from the village, slowly sipping her pop and considering a side trip. Before she could blink, she had gotten to Wyoming Road, and then she made a snap decision to see if Frank was home. She shifted the packages around so she could see more easily, then proceeded to 455 Wyoming. Peggy set her packages on the porch step and then went up to knock on the door. Before she was up to the third step, Frank appeared at the door. His face was flushed, and he had perspiration on his lip. When he got to the third step, he simply looked at Peggy and told her to leave. “Leave,” shouted Peggy, “Why should I leave Frank?” Frank looked down and mumbled, “Look, I’ll come over later, say around 3, okay?” Peg deliberated and cheerfully said, “Okay, see you later, alligator.” With that, Peggy was back down the stairs, picking up her packages and heading toward Stone Mill Road. Had she looked over her shoulder, she would have seen Frank staring at her with a look that was somewhere between sheer panic and complete defeat. Peggy had no clue what was coming at 3 o’clock.
The village clock struck 12:30, and Peggy realized she needed to get home to see her sister off. She picked up the pace of her walking and headed toward 19 Stone Mill Road. At 12:50, Peg flew in the front door. Her Mother and Father were there as well. Laddie was yipping, chasing around the house in excitement. Peggy set the packages from her errands on the kitchen table. Molly asked her to take them upstairs to her bedroom, and Peg rolled her eyes. “I swear they only had me for slave labor,” she tartly thought while trotting up the stairs. Peg placed the items on the chair beside her Mother’s side of the bed. Agnes came out of her room yelling for Peggy. “I need your help, Peg, desperately.” Peggy walked out of her parents’ room and headed across the hall to Agnes’ room. The door was open, and as usual, Agnes was running hither and yon, attempting to cram what seemed like three months of clothing into two suitcases.
The only thing Aggie had packed was her cosmetic bag. “Well, if this isn’t typical,l I don’t know what is,” snapped Peg. “What do you mean by that?” Aggie replied tartly. “I simply mean that you are awful at packing and you always have been,” Peg replied with a wink of her eye. Aggie smiled sweetly. “Thank you, sister mine.” Peggy began organizing the clothing and ultimately packed all of Aggie’s belongings. Agnes breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, AggPegg,” said Aggi,e looking at her sister. “Let’s hope you never need to find out,” said Peggy with a grin.
“Agnes, get down here this minute,” shouted Molly from the foot of the stairs, “Dwight is here to get you to the station!” “Oh my lord,” said Aggie nervously, “What time is it?” Peg looked at her watch and said, “1:10,” while laughing. “Aggie, you’d be late to your own funeral,” said Peg, chuckling. Dwight bounded up the stairs to take the trunk and suitcase to his car. When he came to Aggie’s door, he knocked on the frame and said, “Hey, good looking, where’s the stuff?”
“Right in front of you, Dwight. I see your keen powers of observation are waning,” Aggie chuckled.” Dwight looked down and blushed. There they sat, one trunk and one suitcase. Agnes always carried her makeup bag, so she was holding it. Dwight picked up the truck and said to Peg, “Hey, little bit, how about you bringing the suitcase?” said Dwight with a grin. Quoting Shakespeare, Peg shot back,” Though she be but little, she is fierce.” Dwight grinned nervously, knowing he had struck a nerve. He picked up the trunk and went down the stairs. Agnes looked at Peggy and softly asked, “Are you okay, Peg?” Peggy replied, “I’m fine. Just having a bad day, Aggie, that’s all.” Agnes didn’t believe for a moment. She knew Peggy like the back of her hand, and she was worried.
After all the goodbyes and I love yous were said to Agnes, John, Molly, and Peggy stood on the sidewalk until Dwight’s car was out of sight. Once Agnes was gone, Molly and John went back up the block to the church, and Peggy rushed inside to clean herself up for Frank. She had made up her mind that she was going to tell him about being pregnant today. “My Frankie will understand,” she thought. Peg changed her dress and powdered her nose. She brushed at her curly mass of unruly gold-red hair, struggling to get the boar bristle brush through her hair. Once Peggy had the mass of curls under control, she braided her hair into a long ponytail. At the base of the ponytail was a beautiful dusty rose-colored satin ribbon that matched her pink dress. Peg put a tiny bit of rouge on her cheeks so she would look flushed and happy. Then she waited for Frank.
Brutal Goodbye
It was 3:10 before Frank arrived. He had walked to her house instead of driving. This meant they weren’t going anywhere. Peggy tensed up from her face to her feet. Something was not right. Peg felt it in her bones when she opened the door and saw the look on Frank’s face. “Hi Peggy,” Frank stammered. She immediately looked at his hands. When Frank got nervous, he would chew his thumbnails, and Peg saw that both thumbs were completely raw with blood. Peggy swallowed and forced out, “Come in, Frank.” It felt like she had just been looked into a pressure cooker. Frank stepped in. Peggy immediately noticed that he was sweating bullets, “Are you hot? I’ve got lemonade. I made myself,” Peg said, forcing herself to sound cheerful. Frank responded with a short “No.” Peggy began to tear up. Frank felt like he was about to murder a kitten. Then he broke the silence with, “Peg, I don’t have a good way to say this, but we are through you and me.” He followed with, “I never told you this was permanent, did I?” Sniffling, Peg whispered, “No.” Peggy was dizzy, nauseous, terrified, and utterly broken.
Frank spoke one last time, “You know what, Peggy, something’s not right with you, and there is no way I would commit to a life with you and children, you’re unstable. I’ve got to think about my future.” “Your future,” said Peg with tears rolling down her face, and then everything went black. Peggy fainted dead away. Frank checked for a pulse and thought, “She’ll be alright, her parents will fix her. They fix everything.” With that, Frank spun and went straight out the door as well as right past her Father’s church. Frank had other plans. Peggy wasn’t involved in any of them, and she was still unconscious on the floor.
Peg lay on the parlor floor of the brick house at 19 Stone Mill Road. Just looking at her, you’d think she was a child because she was so small. The afternoon light lit the parlor floor surrounding her crumpled figure like a halo. Peggy lay there for five or six minutes before starting to stir. Her eyes fluttered and opened as a Laddie licked her face. In the space of a second, those eyes filled to the brim with tears. As she turned over on her back, the tears ran to the corners of her face, running down her face as a slow river meanders through the woods. She sat up and began sobbing, deep gut-wrenching, heavy, almost screaming tears exploded from her eyes as she buried her face in her hands. The small collie crawled onto her lap, trying to lick the tears from her face. “Oh, Laddie, I think you’re the only living creature who understands this pain.” Peggy drew up her legs, wrapping her arms around them as she held her pup, and she began rocking forward, then backward, howling like a wounded animal for the next fifteen minutes. Laddie howled with all his might right along with her. Peggy had been wounded so deeply that she simply had no way to deal with her current emotional state. This is the beginning of her end.
Finally, Peggy managed to set Laddie down and stood up. Every muscle in her body was vibrating with pain. Every neuron in her brain was consumed with despair. Her heart, shattered as fine porcelain, slammed against concrete. Her glasses were still lying on the floor, bent from where she had fainted on them. Peggy began to hyperventilate from crying. “Get hold of yourself before you end up face down on the floor again,” ran absent-mindedly through her head. She made her way to the divan and sat down. Laddie sat on her feet, offering the kind of love that only a beloved animal can. Peg sat there for an hour, sobbing, petting Laddie, and not moving. Lost in nightmarish thoughts of her past and her future. The problem was that she knew her past, but she couldn’t fathom any future whatsoever. There was a blank page where her future should have been.
Only 15 minutes passed, but it seemed like 15 years. Peggy had been drunk one time in her life, and that was in 1925 in California at a house party thrown by her friend from high school, Ray.
But as she tried to stand, she felt as though she was completely drunk. Peg staggered forward, nearly falling over Laddie before she got to the stairs. Laddie trotted after her. Still sobbing violently, Peg sat on the bottom step and buried her head in her hands again, Laddie trying to crawl back into her lap. “Why, why, why, God, WHY,” she wailed. “I’m so stupid,” she screamed, “How did I get here?” She looked up at Laddie, then Peg slowly made her way up the first set of stairs and sat on the landing.
The sobbing had begun to give way to tears running down her face on their own. Peg stood, went up the last four steps, then made her way to the bathroom. Laddie trotted up the stairs behind her with a worried expression and ears lying back, tail tucked in. As Peg stared at herself in the mirror, she was petrified. Looking back, she saw an image she could even recognize as her own. Swollen eyes, a bruise on the cheek from her fainting, her nose running like a two-year-old's, and her hair was wild. Peggy took a hanky from her pocket and wiped her nose, then got a washcloth to clean her face. Once her tasks were completed, she turned and went out the door to her room.
Peggy flung herself across her bed, wrinkling up the bedspread. “Mother won't be happy about that,” she thought, running a finger across the wrinkles. She was right, of course. Molly was harsh and very demanding. Her Mother never cut her a break on anything. Peggy sat up in bed, staring pensively at the two pictures in heavy wood frames that hung on the wall next to her window. They were pictures of her parents when they were much younger. As she stared at them, a look of complete panic ran across Peggy’s face, draining every ounce of color out of her face. This time, Peggy had really gone too far, and the truth was, she had no idea how to come back from it. Her parents would be ruined. Her sister would be ashamed. Peg wouldn’t be able to show her face in Dayton again. She began sobbing again.
Suddenly, the sobbing stopped, replaced by a very uncomfortable silence. There was a way around it for her, at least, and it would surely save her sister and her parents the shame of having a woman pregnant out of wedlock, for the second time in six years. The bad part was that she knew this would have repercussions; she just wasn't going to be forced to deal with it all over again. Peggy wiped her face with her hanky and stood up. She walked down to the stairs to the parlor very slowly. When Peg reached the parlor, she began to go over the debacle in her head. As she stood by the front door, she became the audience watching the tragedy unfold before her. Laddie lay at her feet as Peg fell into a sort of trance, hearing Frank’s voice say they were over, repeating in her head.
Laddie barked, and Peggy snapped out of the trance-like state she’d been in. Her world was in tiny pieces all around her. Peg knew what would happen when her Mother and Father found out she was pregnant. It involved being sent away to a place where she could have the child quietly, giving it up for adoption, and thereby not sullying her parents' good name. This was a situation she had been in before in 1923. Peg sobbed desperately again because she remembered what she had been through. “You’re a filthy little whore,” Peg screamed, “You’ve embarrassed your entire family, you worthless good-for-nothing sinner.” In that moment, Peggy snapped inside. She felt as though nothing or no one mattered one single bit.
Peg felt like she was a weight around her family's collective waist. Then that final, last desperate thought, “They would be better off if I were dead.” With tears running down her face, she went to the basement where her Mother kept all of her cleaning supplies. Peggy opened the cupboard door and scanned the items. Finally, she found a jar about the size of a spice jar filled with white powder. She took it out and closed the cupboard door. The bottle had a label that read "Bichloride of Mercury." Margaret Ann Moorehead was about to find a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
You see, once Peg made up her mind, she was reluctant to change it, and this was one of those moments. Peggy went back up the basement stairs to the kitchen with Laddie trailing behind her. She looked at her beloved dog and said, “I’m so sorry, Laddie, I have to leave. Agg will take wonderful care of you, and you will have a fantastic life. I’ll be right there with you the whole time. Laddie tilted his head the way dogs do when you say something that sounds odd to them. “You have to go outside now, Laddie,” Peg said, “I don’t want you to see what is going to happen, and I can’t risk you licking anything off the floor.” Peggy let Laddie out the kitchen door. She followed him to make sure he had water. The backyard was so shady that she knew Laddie wasn’t in the sun and felt quite comfortable leaving him to enjoy the outdoors.
Peggy walked slowly back to the house, looking at everything. She wanted to remember it all. The sky. The flowers. The grass and trees. The breeze. All of it seemed more beautiful at that moment than it had ever been before. Once she reached the house, she turned back one last time to see all of it once more. Peg entered the kitchen and got a glass from the cupboard. Then she got the lemonade from the icebox.
Peg trained as a nurse, so she knew exactly how much of the white powder to put in her lemonade. After she had filled the glass almost to the top, she poured about a quarter of the jar's contents into the lemonade and stirred. Once it looked as though she had blended it, Peggy took the glass and downed it. She made her way to the front parlor, waiting for it to start. She didn’t have to wait long.
About ten minutes later, Peggy screamed out in pain, grabbing her stomach. She doubled over and fell to the floor. Laddie had run to the kitchen screen door and was barking loudly, trying to scratch his way through the screen to no avail. Peggy had a bitter metallic taste in her mouth, and her throat was on fire. Her teeth began to hurt, too. Peggy lay on the floor in a fetal position, alternating between screaming in pain and crying hysterically. “Oh my God, what have I done?” she bellowed. Peggy tried to stand but couldn’t; then the nausea became overwhelming, and she vomited blood onto the floor. Her mouth was on fire, and her throat was raw with pain. Peggy was terrified because she knew what was coming for her. Curling up again, Peg could do little more than lie there while her body began the process of shutting down. Mercifully, the room went dark. Peg was unconscious. It was 5:00 p.m., and her parents would be home in the next fifteen minutes. At least they should have been. As fate would have it, Molly and John were delayed by about 20 minutes by a parishioner. John put on his hat, and they left the church at 1906 Brown Road. John locked up while Molly waited. John glanced at his pocket watch as he went down the stairs. It was 5:30 p.m. Molly and John strolled down the sidewalk toward 19 Stone Mill Road. They discussed the parishioner and all they had accomplished that day. It seemed very normal. That was about to change.
As Molly and John crossed the street, a sudden sense of urgency came over Molly. She stopped in the middle of the street, looked up at John, and said, “John, something terrible has happened. I feel it.” John took Molly by the arm, and they got across the remainder of the street as quickly as they could. When they reached the front of 19 Stone Mill, they could hear Laddie yelping in the backyard. John grabbed the door handle and stepped in first. What he saw took his breath away, and unbeknownst to him, he was emitting a lower guttural sound that wanted to be a full-on scream. John turned toward Molly and tried to make her go outside. “Molly, for the love of God, don’t go in there,” wailed John. Molly, being who she was, pushed right past John. She came to a stop very shortly after. There in front of them, lying on the floor, was their beloved daughter with a massive pool of bloody vomit right next to her head.
Molly let out that scream that only a Mother makes when they learn that their child is either dead or dying. She couldn’t move. John went immediately to the phone and called Dwight. Dwight was doing his residency at Miami Valley Hospital, so John had thought of that and decided to call him. Dwight was a parishioner and a friend. Dwigtht screamed up in his car a mere five minutes later. In the interim, Molly had gone into the kitchen and seen the open bottle of poison, “John,” she screamed, “She’s taken the mercury!” Dwight's head popped up at the sound. He jumped up and went into the kitchen. “Let me see that,” he said, taking the bottle from Molly.
He read the label and his heart sank. “Do you know how long it’s been?” asked Dwight. Molly and John indicated they didn’t know. Dwight scooped Peggy up in his arms, running for his car and urging John and Molly to follow him immediately. They did. Nobody knew that the next four days would be the longest of their lives.
