Gwendy's Button Box

30

Gwendy Peterson graduates from Brown summa cum laude in June of 1984. There has been no running track for her since her senior spring in high school; the knife-wound in her foot got infected while she was in the hospital, and although it cleared eventually, she lost a piece of it. She still walks with a limp, although now it is barely discernable.

She goes out to dinner with her parents after the ceremony, and they have a fine time. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson even break their long abstinence with a bottle of champagne to toast their daughter, who is bound for Columbia grad school, or—perhaps—the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She thinks she might have a novel in her. Maybe more than one.

“And is there a man in your life?” Mrs. Peterson asks. Her color is high and her eyes are bright from the unaccustomed alcohol.

Gwendy shakes her head, smiling. “No man currently.”

Nor, she thinks, will there be in the future. She already has a significant other; it’s a box with eight buttons on top and two levers on the side. She still eats the occasional chocolate, but she hasn’t taken one of the silver dollars in years. The ones she did have are gone, parceled out one or two at a time for books, rent (oh God, the luxury of a single apartment), and an upgrade from the Fiesta to a Subaru Outback (which outraged her mother, but she got over it eventually).

“Well,” says Mr. Peterson, “there’s time for that.”

“Yes.” Gwendy smiles. “I have plenty of time.”