An Ocean in Iowa (23 page)

Scotty joined the others in saying, “Yes, Mrs. Boyden.”

“Next year you have multiplication and writing cursive. You have so much to look forward to, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Boyden,” the kids said.

“I’ve been teaching over thirty-five years,” Mrs. Boyden announced, “and each year I improve a tiny bit. And thirty-five years of tiny improvements add up.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Boyden,” David Bumgartner said out loud.

“No need to thank me, David. I’m just passing it on. That’s what we’re called to do, as teachers, I think.”

The last day was always emotional for Mrs. Boyden—particularly the moment when she passed out their teacher assignments for the coming year.

Carole Staley, Dan Burkhett, Tom Conway, Jimmy Lamson were among the others who would be Scotty’s classmates in Mrs. Tompkins’s third grade class. Mrs. Tompkins was the most popular teacher at Clover Hills Elementary. Scotty was pleased.

With seconds left, she said her final words misty-eyed, “Good luck, sweet children.” Then the bell rang and the children were gone.

(3)

The picnic had been Joan’s idea. What better way to celebrate the completion of another year of studies? It would be nice, she thought, to honor her children who, as the Judge liked to say, “get smarter every day.”

The plans had been agreed to a week in advance. Joan had discussed the specifics with Claire, who passed the phone to the Judge to make it official. Joan was to do the cooking, a menu of the kids’ favorites: She’d bring silverware, napkins, paper plates, the requisite red-checkered tablecloth and wicker picnic basket. She’d bring everything except beverages. A time and place were determined. The Judge would drop the children
off and Joan would return them. The Judge asked that they be home by dark. Joan said, “Of course,” and then hung up.

On the appointed Saturday, Claire filled a thermos with lemonade, another thermos with black cherry Kool-Aid. Maggie was sent to find Scotty. She stood on the porch and yelled for him. She listened for an answer. She prepared to yell again when she saw the top of Scotty’s head inside the Judge’s car.

Stupids, Scotty thought, I’m ready.

***

“This was the park of your mother’s childhood,” the Judge told them as they drove across town. “It will have special meaning for her.”

In Des Moines proper, near Joan’s childhood home, Green Valley Park sat at the end of a street of one-story homes. The park had a few rusty swings, a slide, a chin-up bar, a shelter for rainy days, and a small pond, where Joan had learned to ice-skate when she was a girl.

The Judge checked his watch and said, “What time do you have?”

Scotty looked at his watch. “Two minutes after.”

“Go ahead, Dad,” Claire said. “We’ll be fine.”

The kids climbed out of the car.

“If you need anything, I’ll be at my office.”

“Good-bye, Dad.”

The Judge forced a smile, shifted gears, and drove off to an afternoon of work. At his office, he moved around stacks of papers and sorted mail. He wasn’t to get much done that day. Thoughts of his children with his ex-wife consumed him. He considered returning to Green Valley Park, and leaving his car on a side street. He’d peer around a tree or crouch behind
bushes: He’d watch how his children behaved when they were with their mother. He feared what he’d see. The only thing he had on a healthy Joan was his dependability. When she was on her best behavior, there was laughter and games. He knew the children would choose her over him, even with the swimming pool.

***

At the pond, Maggie pointed out the colored fish. “Look, that one is gold and silver. That one is gold.” She claimed to have seen a fish with black-and-white spots. Claire reported all she knew about fish. Ignoring them, Scotty gathered a handful of rocks and tried to skip them. The first one plopped. The second sank with barely a sound.

“You need flatter rocks,” Maggie said to Scotty.

Claire nodded. “She’s right, Scotty. If you want them to skip, you’ve got to use the appropriate rock. Flat rocks skip farther than round ones.”

The girls had begun to move around the pond. Maggie held a stick, pointing out more fish.

Scotty moved to the edge of the park and stood on the curb. He looked up the street in the direction of where he guessed his mother would be coming.

“Scotty, come here! There’s a whole school of fish!”

“No!” Scotty shouted back.

His hands, he realized, were dirty from the rocks. He wiped them on his shorts but they were still dirty. Was anyone looking his way? No. He dropped a ball of spit into his cupped hands. He rubbed the spit all around. This washed most of the dirt away. He dried his hands using his shirt. His fingers felt sticky—but better sticky than dirty.

“Scotty, you’re missing something special!”

Scotty didn’t hear her. He was staring at a speck of yellow at the top of the hill. Was it her? Could it be a mirage? He watched as the yellow speck came closer. The moan of the broken muffler and orange sparks from the dragging tailpipe did not convince him. Even when he thought he could make out her face through the windshield, he didn’t believe.

This must be a mirage.

The car swerved from one side of the street to the other. It must be windy, Scotty thought. But the tree branches above him and the bushes to the side of him did not move. Even his hair, combed in his mother’s favorite way, wasn’t being blown about. There was no wind.

Joan Ocean didn’t see Scotty. She was busy trying to drive straight. When she suddenly hit the brakes, the tires screeched. The girls, who were still at the pond, looked in Scotty’s direction and saw their mother’s car stop in front of him, only feet away.

“You came outta nowhere,” Joan said with a smile. “Outta nowhere!”

He walked around to the side. She kicked open her car door, pulled his head toward her with her hands, said, “Hello, baby,” then planted a long kiss on his mouth. Scotty thought, This is how a girlfriend is supposed to kiss me.

He helped Joan carry the picnic basket to the nearest picnic table. Claire and Maggie came walking from the pond. Joan shouted to them, “I made your favorites!” Claire looked to Maggie. They knew immediately. Yes, their mother had been drinking, but at least she was playful and funny. At least, she wasn’t
that
drunk.

Everyone helped unpack the picnic basket.

Claire told Joan she had news and for her to guess.

Joan said, “Mother doesn’t like to guess.”

“But guess what? Guess what?”

Joan took the last cigarette from a pack of Salems.

“I got my uhm…”

Joan searched for matches in her purse.

“My (period)”—Claire mouthed the word.

Joan looked at Claire, who smiled. Maggie jumped up and down. Scotty felt instinctively that the women were speaking in code.

“Oh honey, I’m so proud,” Joan said, lighting the wrong end of the cigarette. It flamed like a flare. She threw it to the ground. “You got to warn me about that, kids! Help your mother!”

Claire said three
sorry
s, and then, after getting a hug from Joan, stepped back and smiled.

“I’m so proud,” Joan said. “And Maggie, you’re next.”

Maggie pretended she didn’t care. But in truth, she couldn’t wait. If she were alone with Joan, she would confess as much and tell about her first boyfriend, Andrew Crow.

Scotty, too, had a surprise, and it was in his pocket. He would wait his turn.

Joan stood up, her fingers gripping the checkered tablecloth, and recited the litany of foods: potato salad, coleslaw, rolls. “And my specialty,” she said, setting down the dish with the fried chicken. “Favorites for my favorites.” She lifted the lid in grand fashion. “Who wants what? We have legs, breasts, thighs. Who wants what?”

Joan stabbed a wing with her fork and held it up. The chicken had been partially rolled in flour and partially dipped in breadcrumbs. Egg batter dripped off it.

“Mom,” Claire asked, “is it cooked?”

“Of course, honey. You want the wing?”

“I do,” said Scotty.

She plunked the wing down on the plate and used her fingers to hold it as she pulled the fork away. “There.”

“I mean,” Claire said, “did you cook it… enough?”

“Of course. Who wants a drumstick?”

“I do,” said Scotty.

Claire shook her head at Scotty, mouthing “No.”

“More, Mom.”

Joan loaded up Scotty’s plate. “That’s my little love.”

Claire poked Maggie, signaling her to stop Scotty.

“Maggie, Claire—what will it be?”

“Mom,” Claire said, “it’s not cooked enough.”

“Yes it is.”

“Mom, I think it’s raw.”

“Eat up,” Joan said. “Eat! Come on! It’s your favorite! Please eat! Scotty?”

Then Scotty said, “I’ll eat it.”

“Don’t,” Claire said.

“Why shouldn’t he? It’s perfectly good.”

Scotty kept saying “I’ll eat it” as Claire wrestled the chicken from him. “I’ll eat it.”

Suddenly Joan stopped and sat down on the picnic bench. Claire hugged her. It was hard to understand Joan when she cried, but she kept saying the word “pool,” and how she wished she could give them one.

Claire said, “But we don’t need two pools.”

Joan kept saying, “I know. I know.”

They hugged for a long time. Finally, Maggie took Claire’s place. Joan kept going, and there was no hint of stopping.

Claire walked away.

Scotty reached in his pocket and pulled out his “Best Boy
Artist” certificate. After unfolding it, he held it up. At some point, when Joan looked over, he thought, this is what she’d see.

Claire walked to the Roosevelt Shopping Center where she called the Judge from a pay phone. “Dad, it’s Claire. You better come get us.”

(4)

Everyone got up early the morning construction was to begin. On his way out to sit on the curb, Scotty was stopped by Claire, who made a prediction: “Life-size Tonka trucks.” In truth, they didn’t know what equipment to expect, but they did know that that day the hole for the pool would be dug, and some kind of tractor or earth mover would be arriving soon.

Sitting on the curb, Scotty was in for a different kind of surprise. An Iowa Realty
FOR SALE
sign had been stuck in the Crows’ front yard. He ran to get Claire, who was still eating her breakfast of cantaloupe and yogurt. She came to the porch and glanced over at the sign. “So what,” she said. “It’s no big deal.” Then she went back inside.

But when Maggie got the news, she locked herself in her room and cried the entire morning.

Andrew Crow came outside when the yellow backhoe arrived on the back of a flatbed truck. He didn’t seem upset, telling Scotty, “We move every year. It’s no biggie. Anyway, Cedar Rapids is a much better city.” He also explained his theories on moving. “I don’t believe in saying good-bye. Can’t stand to see all the kids crying.”

Scotty knew only Maggie was crying, and even she was to
recover quickly. In fact, by the end of that day, both she and Claire were to develop huge crushes on the long-haired, tanned construction worker who operated the backhoe.

“Dreamy” was Claire’s word to describe how he pulled the levers that guided the metal bucket that dug up their backyard.

Scotty shouted at the man, “I got a quicker way to dig a hole.”

The man nodded and smiled but kept working.

“I can do it faster.”

“Shut up, Scotty,” his sisters said. “Let the guy do his thing.”

Kids from a several-block radius gathered to watch the digging. Tom Conway told Scotty that he should have sold lemonade.

***

Inside the house the phone rang. Joan was calling. “I’m sorry about the picnic,” she told Claire, who passed the phone to Scotty. “It’s for you.”

“Who is this?”

“Me.”

“Hi, Scotty,” she said. Then she told him how proud she was of his certificate. Scotty had left it under her windshield wiper.

Scotty had other things on his mind: “Mom, this guy… he’s digging… he’s got a machine… it’s yellow… he’s scooped up the dirt… like ‘Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel’… you should see it!”

“I’m in Iowa City, Scotty.”

“I know. Hey, Mom.” Scotty whispered the following: “Nobody believes me, but I can dig a quicker hole.”

“I believe you, Scotty.”

***

That night, an enthusiastic discussion took place recounting the day’s digging. And during the dinners that followed, everyone offered their assessments of the progress of the pool. The arrival of the stainless steel ladder and the diving board kept them talking late into the night. The day the blue fiberglass slide was unpacked from its box, Maggie suggested they eat outside. They stared at it as they ate. It was better than they had imagined.

On slower days when the electricians worked on wiring or the technicians installed the filtration system and the heavy-duty pump, only Scotty watched. For the neighbor kids these days were not particularly exciting. But for Scotty, who asked numerous questions and who wanted to understand everything, it was heaven.

At night the Judge leaned back, feeling genuine satisfaction, and listened as Scotty described in detail his interpretation of how it all was going.

***

The Judge had wanted a “state-of-the-art” pool and that meant Gunite. A newly developed material used in constructing concrete pools, Gunite was a cementlike substance mixed with sand that the workers could spray with a hose. An extensive network of metal rods had been laid around the bottom and sides of the hole, becoming “the bones” of the pool, and on which the Gunite would stick.

“The advantage of Gunite,” a worker explained to Scotty, “is that it can be molded easily.”

Another large crowd of curious neighbors gathered the next
day as the crew did its work. In no time the future pool went from being a big hole to looking smooth and curved.

The Ocean children couldn’t help but get more excited. They barely noticed the moving van arrive and take away the Crows’ belongings. Andrew and his parents had left quietly the day before. The last thing he said to Scotty was “Our house in Cedar Rapids has a pool, and it’s bigger.”

Scotty told his sisters what Andrew had said, and Maggie said, defiantly, “Yes, but his pool doesn’t have
us
!”