Gwendy's Button Box Read online

  “It’s nice of you to say so,” Gwendy tells her, “but I really see better without them. They hurt my eyes now.”

  Mrs. Peterson doesn’t believe it, so she takes her daughter to Dr. Emerson, the Rock’s resident optician. He doesn’t believe it, either…at least until Gwendy hands him her glasses and then reads the eye chart all the way to the bottom.

  “Well I’ll be darned,” he says. “I’ve heard of this, but it’s extremely rare. You must have been eating a lot of carrots, Gwendy.”

  “I guess that must be it,” she smiles, thinking, It’s chocolates I’ve been eating. Magic chocolate animals, and they never run out.

  6

  Gwendy’s worries about the box being discovered or stolen are like a constant background hum in her head, but those worries never come close to ruling her life. It occurs to her that might have been one of the reasons why Mr. Farris gave it to her. Why he said you are the one.

  She does well in her classes, she has a big role in the eighth grade play (and never forgets a single line), she continues to run track. Track is the best; when that runner’s high kicks in, even the background hum of worry disappears. Sometimes she resents Mr. Farris for saddling her with the responsibility of the box, but mostly she doesn’t. As he told her, it gives gifts. Small recompense, he said, but the gifts don’t seem so small to Gwendy; her memory is better, she no longer wants to eat everything in the fridge, her vision is twenty-twenty, she can run like the wind, and there’s something else, too. Her mother called her very pretty, but her friend Olive is willing to go farther.

  “Jesus, you’re gorgeous,” she says to Gwendy one day, not sounding pleased about it. They are in Olive’s room again, this time discussing the mysteries of high school, which they will soon begin to unravel. “No more glasses, and not even one frickin’ pimple. It’s not fair. You’ll have to beat the guys off with a stick.”

  Gwendy laughs it off, but she knows that Olive is onto something. She really is good-looking, and gorgeosity isn’t out of the realm of possibility at some point in the future. Perhaps by the time she gets to college. Only when she goes away to school, what will she do with the button box? She can’t simply leave it under the tree in the backyard, can she?

  Henry Dussault asks her to the freshman mixer dance on their first Friday night of high school, holds her hand on the walk home, and kisses her when they get to the Peterson house. It’s not bad, being kissed, except Henry’s breath is sort of yuck. She hopes the next boy with whom she lip-locks will be a regular Listerine user.

  She wakes up at two o’clock on the morning after the dance, with her hands pressed over her mouth to hold in a scream, still in the grip of the most vivid nightmare she’s ever had. In it, she looked out the window over the kitchen sink and saw Henry sitting in the tire swing (which Gwendy’s dad actually took down a year ago). He had the button box in his lap. Gwendy rushed out, shouting at him, telling him not to press any of the buttons, especially not the black one.

  Oh, you mean this one? Henry asked, grinning, and jammed his thumb down on the Cancer Button.

  Above them, the sky went dark. The ground began to rumble like a live thing. Gwendy knew that all over the world, famous landmarks were falling and seas were rising. In moments—mere moments—the planet was going to explode like an apple with a firecracker stuffed in it, and between Mars and Venus there would be nothing but a second asteroid belt.

  “A dream,” Gwendy says, going to her bedroom window. “A dream, a dream, nothing but a dream.”

  Yes. The tree is there, now minus the tire swing, and there’s no Henry Dussault in sight. But if he had the box, and knew what each button stood for, what would he do? Push the red one and blow up Hanoi? Or say the hell with it and push the light green one?

  “And blow up all of Asia,” she whispers. Because yes, that’s what the buttons do. She knew from the first, just as Mr. Farris said. The violet one blows up South America, the orange one blows up Europe, the red one does whatever you want, whatever you’re thinking of. And the black one?

  The black one blows up everything.

  “That can’t be,” she whispers to herself as she goes back to bed. “It’s insane.”

  Only the world is insane. You only have to watch the news to know it.

  When she comes home from school the next day, Gwendy goes down to the basement with a hammer and a chisel. The walls are stone, and she is able to pry one out in the farthest corner. She uses the chisel to deepen this hidey-hole until it’s big enough for the button box. She checks her watch constantly as she works, knowing her father will be home at five, her mother by five-thirty at the latest.

  She runs to the tree, gets the canvas bag with the button box and her silver dollars inside (the silver dollars are now much heavier than the box, although they came from the box), and runs back to the house. The hole is just big enough. And the stone fits into place like the last piece of a puzzle. For good measure, she drags an old bureau in front of it, and at last feels at peace. Henry won’t be able to find it now. Nobody will be able to find it.

  “I ought to throw the goddamned thing in Castle Lake,” she whispers as she climbs the cellar stairs. “Be done with it.” Only she knows she could never do that. It’s hers, at least unless Mr. Farris comes back to claim it. Sometimes she hopes he will. Sometimes she hopes he never will.

  When Mr. Peterson comes home, he looks at Gwendy with some concern. “You’re all sweaty,” he says. “Do you feel all right?”

  She smiles. “Been running, that’s all. I’m fine.”

  And mostly, she is.

  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.

  8

  On a Thursday night in early August, Gwendy is hauling a garbage can to the bottom of the driveway when Frankie Stone swings to the curb in front of her in his blue El Camino. The Rolling Stones are blaring from the car stereo and Gwendy catches a whiff of marijuana wafting from the open window. He turns down the music. “Wanna go for a ride, sexy?”

  Frankie Stone has grown up, but not in a good way. He sports greasy brown hair, a shotgun pattern of acne scattered across his face, and a homemade AC/DC tattoo on one arm. He also suffers from the worst case of body odor Gwendy has ever come across. There are whispers that he fed a hippie girl roofies at a concert and then raped her. Probably not true, she knows about the vicious rumors kids start, but he sure looks like someone who’d slip roofies into a girl’s wine cooler.

  “I can’t,” Gwendy says, wishing she were wearing more than just cut-off jean shorts and a tank top. “I have to do my homework.”

  “Homework?” Frankie scowls. “C’mon, who the fuck does homework in the summer?”

  “It’s…I’m taking a summer class at the community college.”

  Frankie leans out the window, and even though he’s still a good ten feet away from her, Gwendy can smell his breath. “You wouldn’t be lying to me now, would you, pretty girl?” He grins.

  “I’m not lying. Have a good night, Frankie. I better get inside and hit the books.”

  Gwendy turns and starts walking up the driveway, feeling good about the way she handled him. She hasn’t taken but four or five steps when something hard plunks her in the back of her neck. She cries out, not hurt but surprised, and turns back to the street. A beer can spins lazily at her feet, spitting foam onto the pavement.

  “Just like the rest of the stuck up bitches,” Frankie says. “I thought you were different, but you’re not. Think you’re too good for everyone.”

  Gwendy reaches up and rubs the back of her neck. A nasty bump has already risen there, and she flinches when her fingers touch it. “You need to go, Frankie. Before I get my father.”

  “Fuck your father, and fuck you, too. I knew you when you were nothin but an ugly fuckin chubber.” Frankie points a finger-gun at her and smiles. “It’ll come back, too. Fat girls turn into fat women. It never fails. See you around, Goodyear.”

  Then he’s gone, middle finger jutting out the window, tires burning rubber. Only now does Gwendy allow the tears to come as she runs inside the house.

  That night she dreams about Frankie Stone. In the dream, she doesn’t stand there helpless in the driveway with her heart in her throat. In the dream, she rushes at Frankie, and before he can peel out, she lunges through the open driver’s window and grabs his left arm. She twists until she hears—and feels—the bones snapping beneath her hands. And as he screams, she says, How’s that boner now, Frankie Stoner? More like two inches than two feet, I bet. You never should have fucked with the Queen of the Button Box.

  She wakes up in the morning and remembers the dream with a sleepy smile, but as with most dreams, it vanishes with the rising sun. She doesn’t think of it again until two weeks later, during a breakfast conversation with her father on a lazy Saturday morning. Mr. Peterson finishes his coffee and puts down the newspaper. “Your pal Frankie Stone made the news.”

  Gwendy stops in mid-chew. “He’s no pal of mine, I hate the guy. Why’s he in the paper?”

  “Car accident last night out on Hanson Road. Probably drunk, although it doesn’t say so. Hit a tree. He’s okay, but pretty banged up.”

  “How banged up?”

  “Bunch of stitches in his head and shoulder. Cuts all over his face. Broken arm. Multiple breaks, according to the story. Going to take a long time to heal. Want to see for yourself?”

  He pushes the paper across the table. Gwendy pushes it back, then carefully puts down her fork. She knows she won’t be able to eat another bite, just as she knows without asking that the broken arm Frankie Stone suffered is his left one.

  That night, in bed, trying to sweep away the troubled thoughts swirling inside her head, Gwendy counts how many days of summer vacation remain before she has to return to school.

  This is August 22nd, 1977. Exactly three years to the day from when Mr. Farris and the button box came into her life.

  9

  A week before Gwendy starts the tenth grade at Castle Rock High, she runs the Suicide Stairs for the first time in almost a year. The day is mild and breezy, and she reaches the top without breaking much of a sweat. She stretches for a brief moment and glances down the length of her body: she can see her entire damn sneakers.

  She walks to the railing and takes in the view. It’s the kind of morning that makes you wish death didn’t exist. She scans Dark Score Lake, then turns to the playground, empty now except for a young mother pushing a toddler on the baby swing. Her eyes finally settle on the bench where she met Mr. Farris. She walks over to it and sits down.

  More and more often lately, a little voice inside her head is asking questions she doesn’t have answers for. Why you, Gwendy Peterson? Out of all the people in this round world, why did he choose you?

  And there are other, scarier, questions, too: Where did he come from? Why was he keeping an eye on me? (His exact words!) What the hell is that box…and what is it doing to me?

  Gwendy sits on the bench for a long time, thinking and watching the clouds drift past. After a while, she gets up and jogs down the Suicide Stairs and home again. The questions remain: How much of her life is her own doing, and how much the doing of the box with its treats and buttons?

  10

  Sophomore year opens with a bang. Within a month of the first day of classes, Gwendy is elected Class President, named captain of the junior varsity soccer team, and asked to the homecoming dance by Harold Perkins, a handsome senior on the football squad (alas, the homecoming date never happens, as Gwendy dumps poor Harold af
ter he repeatedly tries to feel her up at a drive-in showing of Damnation Alley on their first date). Plenty of time for touchie-feelie later, as her mother likes to say.

  For her sixteenth birthday in October, she gets a poster of the Eagles standing in front of Hotel California (“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”), a new stereo with both eight track and cassette decks, and a promise from her father to teach her how to drive now that she’s of legal age.

  The chocolate treats continue to come, no two ever the same, the detail always amazing. The tiny slice of heaven Gwendy devoured just this morning before school was a giraffe, and she purposely skipped brushing her teeth afterward. She wanted to savor the remarkable taste for as long as she could.

  Gwendy doesn’t pull the other small lever nearly as often as she once did, for no other reason than she’s finally run out of space to hide the silver coins. For now, the chocolate is enough.

  She still thinks about Mr. Farris, not quite as often and usually in the long, empty hours of the night when she tries to remember exactly what he looked like or how his voice sounded. She’s almost sure she once saw him in the crowd at the Castle Rock Halloween Fair, but she was high atop the Ferris wheel at that moment, and by the time the ride ended, he was gone, swallowed by the hordes of people flocking down the midway. Another time she went into a Portland coin shop with one of the silver dollars. The worth had gone up; the man offered her $750 for one of her 1891 Morgans, saying he’d never seen a better one. Gwendy refused, telling him (on the spur of the moment) that it was a gift from her grandfather and she only wanted to know what it was worth. Leaving, she saw a man looking at her from across the street, a man wearing a neat little black hat. Farris—if it was Farris—gave her a fleeting smile, and disappeared around the corner.

  Watching her? Keeping track? Is it possible? She thinks it is.