Gwendy's Magic Feather

22

IF GWENDY’S BEING HONEST with herself—and as the King Air 200 climbs high in the clouds above a muddy twist of Potomac River she’s determined to be exactly that—she has to admit that her crummy mood this morning is coming from one overwhelming source: a long-forgotten memory from her youth.

It was a mild and breezy August day shortly before the start of her tenth-grade year in high school, and Gwendy just finished running the Suicide Stairs for the first time in months. When she reached the top, she sat and rested on the same Castle View bench where years earlier she’d first met a man named Richard Farris. She stretched her legs for a moment, and then she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of the sun and the wind on her face.

The question that had bloomed in her mind while sitting on the bench that long ago summer day resurfaced—and rather rudely—earlier this morning as Gwendy was busy cushioning the button box in her carry-on bag with rolled up wads of socks and sweaters: How much of her life is her own doing, and how much the doing of the box with its treats and buttons?

The memory—and the central thought contained within that memory—was almost enough to make Gwendy scream in rage and fling the box across the bedroom like a toddler in the midst of a temper tantrum.

No matter how she looks at it, Gwendy knows she’s led what most people would call a charmed life. There was the scholarship to Brown, the writers’ workshop in Iowa, the fast-track job at the ad agency, and of course, the books and movies and Academy Award. And then there was the election, what many pundits called the biggest political upset in Maine history.

Sure, there were failures along the way—a lost advertising account here, a film option that didn’t pan out there, and her love life before Ryan could probably best be described as a barren desert of disappointment—but there weren’t too many, and she always bounced back with an ease of which others were envious.

Even now, glaring at the button box resting securely between her feet, Gwendy believes with all her heart that the bulk of her success can be attributed to hard work and a positive attitude, not to mention thick skin and persistence.

But what if what she believes to be true… simply isn’t?