Gwendy’s Final Task

Gwendy brushes her teeth, rinses the night-cream off of her face, and ties her hair back in a ponytail. Then she dresses in blue shorts and an Eagle Heavy tee. She figures a vigorous walk around the outer rim might help to keep her head clear and increase her appetite for breakfast. She never seems to be hungry anymore, and that worries her. Take last night for example. She enjoyed her time at the dinner table—especially poking Gareth Winston, that was the high point—but she barely touched the food in her tray. She will this morning, appetite or no appetite. Only three more days until her space walk with the Pocket Rocket, and she can use all the calories she can get.

Gwendy doesn’t even consider going for a run. That little act of misguided lunacy—chocolates or no chocolates—could have easily backfired and ended in disaster. She can picture the scene without even trying: The Senator from Maine floating on her back, unresponsive as her misfiring sixty-four-year-old heart sputters. Dale Glen, surrounded by the other crew members, dutifully administering epinephrin and doing CPR. Alas, the sputtering heart quits. After a few more minutes of trying to jump-start it, a grim-faced Dr. Glen calls it. Kathy Lundgren hurries back to Spoke One to tearfully notify Eileen Braddock at Mission Control. Before the body of Maine’s junior senator has even had time to grow cold in the infirmary (Gwendy assumes that’s where she’d be taken), Gareth Winston slips into her suite and steals away with the button box. End of story. Maybe the end of everything.

Pure crap of course, her heart checked out fine after half a dozen treadmill stress tests. Plus, paranoid fantasies sometimes accompany Alzheimer’s. That was just one of the fun facts about the illness she discovered (and now wishes she hadn’t) on the Internet. There’s even a name for it: sundowning. And since sundown up here happens roughly every 90 minutes, that leaves plenty of opportunity for weird thoughts.

I am not sundowning!

Maybe not, but still, no running. Best to be safe.

A brisk walk will do me fine, she thinks, sitting down on the edge of the sofa cushion. Bending over, she slips on her sneakers, first the right, then the left. Then she reaches down, picks up the laces—and stops. She has no idea what to do with them.

“Oh, come on,” she admonishes herself. “Of course you know how.” What was that shoe-tying rhyme she learned in preschool? Something about bunny ears, wasn’t it? The bunny ears being the loops you made in the laces? She can’t remember, only that it ended beautiful and bold. Right now Gwendy doesn’t feel beautiful or bold. Just scared. She tries—at least a half dozen times—but doesn’t even come close.

Finally, after a brief bout of crying and a thoroughly unsatisfying temper tantrum, in which she kicks off both sneakers and sends them floating across the sitting room, Gwendy pulls up a YouTube tutorial on her laptop. The girl in the video is five years old. Her name is Mallory and she’s from Atlanta, Georgia. The Senator watches the ninety-second video three times from start to finish, murmuring the words to the accompanying song, which she now remembers perfectly: Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me. Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole, popped out the other side beautiful and bold.

She finally manages to tie her Reeboks. Even then, they’re a little loose.

By the time she heads out the door, half an hour later than planned, Gwendy Peterson is daydreaming about the button box again. And singing about bunny ears.

37

SHE’S HALFWAY AROUND THE outer corridor when Adesh Patel catches up with her.

“Good morning, Senator. Mind some company?”

“Not at all,” Gwendy says.