Gwendy's Magic Feather

10

WHEN GWENDY WAS A young girl, her father hauled the old cardboard box marked SLIDES out of the attic every summer, usually some time around the Fourth of July. He set up his ancient slide projector on the coffee table in the den, positioned the pull-down screen in front of the fireplace, and turned off all the lights. He always made a big deal of the experience. Mom made popcorn and a pitcher of fresh lemonade. Dad narrated every slide with what he called his “Hollywood voice” and made shadow puppets during intermission. Gwendy usually sat on the sofa between her mother and father, but sometimes other neighborhood kids would join them, and on those occasions, she sat on the floor in front of the screen with her friends. Some of the kids grew bored and quickly made up excuses to leave (“Oops, I’m sorry, Mr. Peterson, I just remembered I promised my mom I’d clean my room tonight.”), but Gwendy was never one of them. She was fascinated by the images on the screen, and even more so by the stories those images told.

As Gwendy’s fingers close around the button box for the first time in fifteen years, it’s as if a slideshow of vibrant, flickering images—each one telling its own secret story—blooms in front of her eyes. Suddenly, it’s:

—August 22, 1974, and a strange man in a black coat and a small neat black hat is reaching under a Castle View park bench and sliding out a canvas bag with a drawstring top. He pulls it open and removes the most beautiful mahogany box…

—an early September morning, and Gwendy stands in front of her bedroom closet, dressing for school. When she’s finished, she slips a tiny piece of chocolate into her mouth and closes her eyes in ecstasy…

—middle school, as Gwendy stares at herself in a full-length dressing room mirror, and realizes she isn’t just pretty, she’s gorgeous, and no longer wearing eyeglasses…

—sophomore year of high school and she’s sitting on the den sofa, staring in horror as images of bloated, fly-covered corpses fill the television screen…

—late at night, the house graveyard quiet, and she’s sitting cross-legged in the dark on her bed with the button box resting in her lap, eyes squeezed tight in concentration, using her thumb to press the red button, and then cocking her head at the open window, listening for the rumble…

—a mild spring evening and she’s screaming hysterically as two teenaged boys crash into her night table, sending hairbrushes and make-up skittering across the bedroom floor, before reeling into the open closet, falling and pulling down dresses and skirts and pants from their plastic hangers, collapsing to the ground in a heap, and then a filthy hand with blue webbing tattooed across the back of it lifts the button box and brings it crashing down, corner first, into the crown of her boyfriend’s skull…

Gwendy gasps and she’s back in Washington D.C.—and without a moment to spare. She scrambles across her office floor on all fours and vomits into the wastebasket next to her desk.