I can’t keep lugging it around with me everywhere I go, Gwendy thinks, turning onto Carbine Street. Can’t keep it in the condo either, not when Ryan gets back. She’d stored the button box in a safe deposit box at the Bank of Rhode Island during her four years at Brown, and that worked out just fine. Maybe she’d drop by Castle Rock Savings and Loan at the beginning of next week, see what they have available.
Gwendy spots her parents’ Cape Cod ahead in the distance and breaks into a smile. Her father has really outdone himself this year. Green and red and blue Christmas bulbs outline the gutters of the roof and spiral up and down the front porch railings. A huge inflatable Santa Claus, illuminated by a series of bright spotlights, dances in the breeze at the center of the front yard. An inflatable red-nosed reindeer grazes in the snow at Santa’s feet.
He did all this for Mom, Gwendy realizes, pulling into the driveway and parking behind her father’s truck. Still smiling, she gets out and walks to the door. She’s home again.
26
MR. PETERSON IS PREPARING chicken and dumplings for dinner, Gwendy’s favorite, and the three of them catch up on everything from the two missing girls to across-the-street neighbor Betty Johnson’s sudden conversion to bleach blonde to the New England Patriots three-game losing streak. Mrs. Peterson, looking better than Gwendy has seen her look in months, complains about still needing to take daily naps and her husband’s constant coddling, but she does so with a grateful smile and an affectionate squeeze of Mr. Peterson’s forearm. She’s wearing a different wig tonight—a shade darker and a couple inches longer—than the one she was wearing the last time Gwendy was home, and it not only makes her look healthier, it makes her appear years younger. Her face lights up when Gwendy tells her so.
“Any more news from Ryan?” Mrs. Peterson asks, as her husband gets up and goes into the kitchen to silence the oven timer.
“Not since he called two nights ago,” Gwendy says.
“You still think he’ll make it home in time for Christmas?”
Gwendy shakes her head. “I don’t know, Mom. It all depends on what happens over there. I’ve been keeping an eye on the news but they haven’t reported much yet.”
Mr. Peterson walks into the dining room carrying a plate stacked high with biscuits. “Saw President Hamlin on the tube earlier this evening. I still can’t believe our Gwendy gets to work with the Commander-in-Chief.”
Mrs. Peterson gives her daughter a smile and rolls her eyes. She’s heard this spiel before. Many times. They both have.
“Have you spoken with him lately?” he asks eagerly.
“A bunch of us were in a meeting with him and the vice president last week,” Gwendy says.
Her father beams with pride.
“Trust me, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.”
As is often the case, she’s tempted to tell her father the reality of the situation: that President Hamlin is a sexist bore of a man who rarely looks Gwendy in the eyes, instead focusing on her legs if she’s wearing a dress or her chest if she’s wearing pants; that she purposely never stands too close to the Commander-in-Chief because of his tendency to touch her on the arms and shoulders when he speaks to her. She’s also tempted to tell him that the President’s as dumb as a donut and has horrible breath, but she doesn’t say any of these things. Not to her father, anyway. Now her mother is a different story.
“I liked what he said about North Korea,” Mr. Peterson says. “We need a strong leader to deal with that madman.”
“He’s acting more like a petulant child right now than a leader.”
Her father gives her a thoughtful look. “You really don’t like him, do you?”
“It’s not that…” she says. Careful, girl. “I just don’t care for his policies. He’s cut healthcare funds for the poor every year he’s been in office. He cut federal funding for AIDS clinics and reinforced anti-gay legislation across the board. He spearheaded a movement to reduce budgets for the arts in public schools. I just wish he cared more about people and less about winning every argument.”
Her father doesn’t say anything.
Gwendy shrugs. “What can I say? He’s just a muggle, Dad.”
“What’s a muggle?” he asks.
Mrs. Peterson touches his arm. “From Harry Potter, dear.”
He looks around the table. “Harry who?”
This time his wife smacks him on the arm. “Oh, stop it, you smart aleck.”
They all crack up laughing.
“Had you going for a minute,” he says, winking.
For the next several hours, Gwendy relaxes and the button box hardly crosses her mind. There’s one brief moment, when she’s standing at the kitchen window overlooking the back yard, and she spots the old oak tree towering in the distance and remembers once hiding the box in a small crevice at the base of its thick trunk. But the memory’s gone from her head as quickly as it arrives, and within seconds, she’s back in the den watching Miracle on 34th Street and working on a crossword puzzle with her father.
27
“…INITIALLY OCCURRED WHEN ANTI-INDEPENDENCE militants launched an attack on a crowd of unarmed civilians.”
An expression of grim sincerity is etched on the Channel Five newscaster’s face, as a banner headline reading BREAKING NEWS: CRISIS IN TIMOR scrolls across the bottom of the screen. “There are early reports of violence and bloodshed spreading throughout the countryside, the worst of the fighting centered in the capital city of Dili. The fighting erupted after a majority of the island’s eligible voters chose independence from Indonesia. Over two hundred civilian casualties have already been reported with that number expected to rise.”
Gwendy sits at the foot of the bed, dressed in a long flannel nightgown, the button box propped up on a pillow beside her, its twin rows of multi-colored buttons looking like teeth in the glow of the television.
The anchorman promises more breaking news from Timor just as soon as it becomes available, and then Channel Five goes to commercial.
At first, Gwendy doesn’t move, doesn’t even seem to breathe, and then she turns to the box and in an odd, toneless voice says, “Curiosity killed the cat.” She uses her pinky to pull the lever on the right side of the box.
A narrow wooden shelf slides out from the center with a silver dollar on it. Gwendy picks up the shiny coin and, without looking at it, places it beside her on the bed. The shelf slides back in without a sound.
“But satisfaction brought it back,” she recites in that same odd voice and pulls the other lever.
The wooden tray slides out again, this time dispensing a tiny piece of chocolate in the shape of a horse.
She picks up the chocolate with two steady fingers and looks at it with amazed wonder. Lifting it to her face, she closes her eyes and breathes in the sweet, otherworldly aroma. Her eyes open lazily and gaze at the chocolate with a look of naked desire. She licks her lips as they begin to part—
—and then she’s fleeing to the bathroom, hot tears streaming from her eyes, and flushing the chocolate horse down the toilet.
28