When she came down with a 102-degree fever and a nasty bout of diarrhea a few days later, most members of her campaign committee were convinced that she’d finally caught the virus and this would mean the end of her run. But, as often was the case, they underestimated her. A negative test and two days of bed rest later, Gwendy was back out on the road and speaking to the men and women stationed at Bath Iron Works. She told a couple of “old Maineah” jokes, which got big laughs. Her favorite was the one about moose-shit pie. In the current version, she changed the name of the lumber crew’s cook to Magowan.
Gwendy’s father—who’d moved to the first floor of the Castle Rock Meadows Nursing Home earlier in the summer—worried about his daughter, and told her so on more than one occasion. He faithfully watched her appearances on the morning and evening news programs and spoke to her almost every night on the telephone, but he couldn’t convince her to slow down. Brigette Desjardin—now taking care of Pippa, Alan Peterson’s elderly dachshund—pleaded with her best friend to make time to see a grief counselor, insisting that she was self-medicating with her hectic work schedule, but Gwendy wouldn’t hear of it. She had places to go and people to see and undecided voters to win over. Even Pete Riley, the driving force behind Gwendy’s Senate run, grew concerned after awhile and tried to talk her into easing up. She refused.
“You got me into this. No backing out now.”
“But—”
“But nothing. If you don’t want me to block your number—which would be bad, with you being my campaign manager, and all—let me do my thing.”
That was the end of that.
What her family and friends and work colleagues didn’t understand was that the engine driving her wasn’t grief over Ryan’s tragic death. Yes, she was still sad and lonely and maybe even clinically depressed, but if there was one thing Gwendy had learned during her lifetime it was that you had to move on; honor the dead by serving the living, as her mentor Patsy Follett used to say. Nor was it an inflated sense of political importance. It was the button box, of course, still hidden away on the top shelf in her garage. One day soon she would have to step up and save the world. It was ridiculous, it was absurd, it was surreal … and it seemed to be true.
On the last Friday of August, new poll numbers came out showing Gwendy only seven points behind Paul Magowan. This was cause for mighty celebration, according to an ecstatic Pete Riley and the rest of the Maine Democratic Committee. Many members of the media attributed the surge to a wave of sympathy for the recently widowed challenger. Gwendy knew that was some of it but not all of it. She was reaching out to people and a surprising number were reaching back.
By late September, the gap had narrowed to five and Gwendy realized that people weren’t just listening—they were starting to believe. As Pete Riley had predicted more than a year ago during that first exploratory meeting, the tightening poll numbers soon snagged Paul Magowan’s attention and his campaign began to play dirty. Step One was an updated series of television spots highlighting the proliferation of profane language and explicit sex scenes in several of Gwendy’s novels. “I guess they’re not big on originality,” Gwendy snarked to the press after one campaign appearance. “I thought they already ran with the ‘Peterson Is A Pervert’ angle last August?”
She wasn’t nearly as flippant two weeks later when a follow-up commercial aired on prime time television, depicting Gwendy’s late husband as a raging anarchist, offering as proof a photograph of Ryan standing next to a burning American flag on a riot-ravaged urban street, as well as his arrest two years earlier at a Chicago protest. What the ad failed to mention was that Ryan had been in Chicago on a work assignment for Time magazine, had stopped to take photographs of the burning flag and rioters, and despite having proper press credentials displayed in plain view, had been taken into custody. In the Magowan campaign photo, the credential hanging around Ryan’s neck had been artfully blurred out. Nor did the Magowan ads say anything about any charges being almost immediately dropped.
From there it only got worse. The third wave of TV and radio ads shined a glaring spotlight on Paul Magowan’s large and successful family—five children, three boys and two girls, plus sixteen grandchildren; all of whom still called the state of Maine their home—and questioned the fact that Gwendy had never had any children of her own.
“If Gwendy Peterson is such a true believer of the good things in this state and country—as she so often claims—then why hasn’t she bothered to bring new life into it? Too busy writing smut and jet-setting around the world?”
As recently as a decade ago, such a despicable ad would have torpedoed any chance of Paul Magowan holding onto his Senate seat. But this was a brave new world, populated by a brand new breed of seemingly shameless GOP candidates.
When Gwendy’s father saw the commercial for the first time during Game Three of the American League Divisional series, he became so enraged he climbed out a first-floor window at the nursing home and tried to call a taxi to pick him up. When one of the counselors escorted him back inside a short time later and asked where he had planned to go, Mr. Peterson responded, “To Magowan’s campaign headquarters to whup his fat ass.”
Gwendy reacted much more diplomatically, at least in pubic, largely because, at the age of 58, she’d already had years to come to terms with the reality of the situation. She’d always adored children and wanted kids of her own one day, even before she’d met Ryan and fallen in love. For years after they were married, they tried with no success. It was the fault of neither. They visited the right doctors and took the right tests, and the results always came back the same: Gwendy Peterson and Ryan Brown were two immensely healthy human beings and according to the rules of medical science, perfectly capable of producing healthy children. But for some reason, despite all the trying—and they tried a lot during those early years—it never happened.
There was a time, not long after the final artificial insemination attempt proved unsuccessful, that Gwendy, alone in the silence of her bedroom, broke down and allowed the tidal wave of grief and anger to crash over her. She’d kicked and screamed and thrown things. Later, after the crying stopped and she’d cleaned up the mess, she called her mother to share the sad news. Mrs. Peterson told her what she always told her: “God works in mysterious ways, Gwendy. I don’t understand why this is happening any more than you do, but we have to put our faith in the Lord’s hands.” And then she added, “I’m so sorry, honey. If anyone in this world deserves to be parents, it’s you and Ryan.”
Gwendy thanked her mom and hung up the telephone. She walked to the bedroom window overlooking the front yard and street below, and watched as a young curly-haired boy pedaled a bright yellow bicycle past their house. She watched until he disappeared around the corner.