Gwendy’s Final Task

11

OF COURSE THE OPPOSITION was laying for her.

They could do that, because Gwendy was the only viable candidate for the Democratic nomination. She announced her intentions in August of 2019, with her husband by her side. She spoke from the Castle Rock bandstand on the Town Common, where she’d announced her candidacy for the House of Representatives each time she ran. There were reporters and camera crews from all the Maine television stations in attendance, plus bloggers and even a national guy, who probably just happened to be in the area: Miguel Almaguer, from NBC News. There was also an excellent turnout of locals, who cheered their fannies off. Gwendy even spotted some homemade signs. Her favorite, waved by her old friend Brigette Desjardin, read HEY, MAINE! SENDY GWENDY!

The coverage of her speech was good (local NPR stations ran the whole ten minutes that night). Paul Magowan’s comment on the late news was typically condescending: “Welcome to the race, little lady—at least you’ll have your books to fall back on when it’s over.”

The Magowan campaign would hold most of its advertising for another full year, because Mainers don’t really get interested in the local races until three or four months before the election, but they fired an opening salvo on August 27^th, the day after Gwendy’s announcement. Full-page newspaper advertisements and sixty-second TV spots began with the statement that “Maine’s Favorite Writer is Running for the United States Senate!”

Printed below it in the newspaper ads and narrated on TV for the reading challenged, was a selection from Bramble Rose, published in 2013 by Viking. Gwendy was sourly amused by the portentous tones of the narrator in the TV ad.

“Andrew embraced her from behind with one hand planted firmly on her bare midriff. With his other he stroked her bleep until she began to breathe hard.

“’I want you to bleep me now,’ she said, ‘and don’t stop until I bleep.’

He carried her to the bedroom and threw her down on the four-poster. Panting, she turned on her side and grasped his bleep, breathing, “Now, Andy. I can’t wait any longer.”

Below this in the print ads, and across an especially unflattering picture of Gwendy in the TV ads (mouth open, eyes squeezed half shut, looking mentally disabled), was a question: ISN’T THERE ALREADY ENOUGH PORNOGRAPHY IN WASHINGTON?

Gwendy was amused by the sheer scurrilousness of this attack. Her husband was not. “You ought to sue them for defamation of character!” Ryan said, throwing down the Portland Current in disgust.

“Oh, they’d love me to get down in the dirt with them,” Gwendy said. She picked up the newspaper and read the excerpt. “Do you know what this proves?”

“That Magowan will stoop to anything?” Ryan was still fuming. “That he’s low enough to put on a tall hat and crawl under a rattlesnake?”

“That’s good, but not what I was thinking of. It proves that context is everything. Bramble Rose is a better book than this suggests. Maybe not a lot, but still.”

When asked about the so-called pornography in the weeks that followed, Gwendy responded with a smile. “Based on Senator Magowan’s voting record, I’m not sure he could tell you the difference between porn and politics. And since we’re on the subject of porn, you might want to ask him about his pal Donald Trump’s romance with Stormy Daniels. See what he’s got to say about that.”

What Magowan had to say about Stormy Daniels, it turned out, was not much, and eventually the whole issue blew away, as teapot tempests have a way of doing. Both campaigns dozed as the autumn of 2019 burned away Indian Summer and brought on the first cold snap. Magowan might bring back the carefully culled passage from her book when the election run started in earnest, but based on her sharply worded retort, he might not.

Gwendy and Ryan helped serve Thanksgiving dinner that year to a hundred homeless people at the Oxford Street shelter in Portland. They got back to Castle Rock late and Ryan went right to bed. Gwendy put on her pajamas, almost got in beside him, then realized she was too wired to sleep. She decided to go downstairs and have a juice glass of wine—just two or three swallows to calm the post-event jitters she still felt even after years in the public eye.

Richard Farris was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her.

Same clothes, same round black hat, but otherwise how he’d changed. He was old.

And sick.