Gwendy's Button Box

7

By the summer after her freshman year, Gwendy is feeling very fine, indeed.

For starters, she’s grown another inch since school let out and, even though it’s not yet the Fourth of July, she’s sporting a killer suntan. Unlike most of her classmates, Gwendy has never had much of a suntan before. In fact, the previous summer was the first summer of her life that she’d dared to wear a swimsuit in public, and even then, she’d settled on a modest one-piece. A granny suit, her best friend Olive had teased one afternoon at the community swimming pool.

But that was then and this is now; no more granny suits this summer. In early June, Mrs. Peterson and Gwendy drive to the mall in downtown Castle Rock and come home with matching flip-flops and a pair of colorful bikinis. Bright yellow and even brighter red with little white polka dots. The yellow bathing suit quickly becomes Gwendy’s favorite. She will never admit it to anyone else, but when Gwendy studies herself in the full-length mirror in the privacy of her bedroom, she secretly believes she resembles the girl from the Coppertone ad. This never fails to please her.

But it’s more than just bronzed legs and teeny-weenie polka dot bikinis. Other things are better, too. Take her parents, for instance. She would’ve never gone so far as to label mom and dad as alcoholics—not quite, and never out loud to anyone—but she knows they used to drink too much, and she thinks she knows the reason for this: somewhere along the way, say about the time Gwendy was finishing up the third grade, her parents had fallen out of love with each other. Just like in the movies. Nightly martinis and the business section of the newspaper (for Mr. Peterson) and sloe gin fizzes and romance novels (for Mrs. Peterson) had gradually replaced after-dinner family walks around the neighborhood and jigsaw puzzles at the dining room table.

For the better part of her elementary school years, Gwendy suffered this familial deterioration with a sense of silent worry. No one said a word to her about what was going on, and she didn’t say a word to anyone else either, especially not her mother or father. She wouldn’t even have known how to begin such a conversation.

Then, not long after the arrival of the button box, everything began to change.

Mr. Peterson showed up early from work one evening with a bouquet of daisies (Mrs. Peterson’s favorites) and news of an unexpected promotion at the insurance office. They celebrated this good fortune with a pizza dinner and ice cream sundaes and—surprise—a long walk around the neighborhood.

Then, sometime early last winter, Gwendy noticed that the drinking had stopped. Not slowed down, but completely stopped. One day after school, before her parents got home from work, she searched the house from top to bottom, and didn’t find a single bottle of booze anywhere. Even the old fridge out in the garage was empty of Mr. Peterson’s favorite beer, Black Label. It had been replaced by a case of Dad’s Root Beer.

That night, while her father was getting spaghetti from Gino’s, Gwendy asked her mother if they had really quit drinking. Mrs. Peterson laughed. “If you mean did we join AA or stand in front of Father O’Malley and take the pledge, we didn’t.”

“Well… whose idea was it? Yours or his?”

Gwendy’s mother looked vague. “I don’t think we even discussed it.”

Gwendy left it there. Another of her father’s sayings seemed applicable: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

And just a week later, the cherry on top of this minor miracle: Gwendy walked out into the back yard to ask her father for a ride to the library and was startled to find Mr. and Mrs. Peterson holding hands and smiling at each other. Just standing there in their winter coats with their breath frosting the air, looking into each other’s eyes like reunited lovers of Days of Our Lives. Gwendy, mouth gaping open, stopped in her tracks and took in this tableau. Tears prickled her eyes. She hadn’t seen them looking at each other that way in she couldn’t remember how long. Maybe never. Stopped dead in her tracks at the foot of the kitchen stoop, her earmuffs dangling from one mittened hand, she thought of Mr. Farris and his magic box.

It did this. I don’t know how or why, but it did this. It’s not just me. It’s like a kind of… I don’t know…

“An umbrella,” she whispered, and that was just right. An umbrella that could shade her family from too much sun and also keep the rain off. Everything was okay, and as long as a strong wind didn’t come up and blow the umbrella inside out, things would stay okay. And why would that happen? It won’t. It can’t. Not as long as I take care of the box. I have to. It’s my button box now.