An Ocean in Iowa (7 page)

“Scotty, later, okay? We’ll do it later.”

“MEASURE ME. MEASURE ME NOW!”

***

Joan Ocean finished a fifth beer before measuring Scotty for the final time. Holding the book proved nearly impossible. She dropped it twice, which she found hysterically funny. Scotty joined her, imitating her laugh and stomping the floor in an identical way.

“Stretch even higher,” she told him. “One day you’ll be taller than everybody, taller than your father.”

Scotty yelled, “Yes!” rose on tiptoe with his shoes still on, as Joan drew the straightest line she could.

Afterward, as he stood admiring his new height, he heard a strange sound, a mixture of hacking and gagging, and thought
My mom is dying.
He ran down the hallway to Joan, who was down on all fours, the final webs of vomit strung out her mouth.

He tried to wipe up the mess. Then he helped her to bed where he washed her face with a wet washcloth.

“Scotty is growing,” she said, before falling off to sleep. “Look at Scotty grow.”

(9)

Apart from Craig Hunt, Dan Burkhett was the first of Scotty’s friends to turn eight. For his party, Dan invited only boys from his class. He started the celebration by opening his gifts. As he tore off the first handful of wrapping paper, he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Eight is great.”

Dan Burkhett’s mother smiled. She had hair like a grandmother, gray and white, but her face was young and sweet with
thin creases around her eyes when she smiled. She never raised her voice. As the librarian at West Glen Junior High, she always spoke in a whisper—even, it was said, while cheering at the University of Nebraska football games. Her husband, Jerry, had been the punter for the team in the early 1950s. Jerry Burkhett, a proud trustee for the university, outfitted his kids with University of Nebraska jerseys, T-shirts, caps, and key rings. Around their home the favorite phrase was “Go Big Red.” Jerry Burkhett spent his weekends during football season kicking footballs high in the air. He had a nylon bag full of ten or twelve footballs. The Burkhetts lived next door to an empty lot.

For Dan’s eighth birthday, his mom brought out a plate of Rice Krispie treats, a gallon of milk, and Nestlé’s Quik. The backyard was full of yellow and orange and brown leaves, and the boys, in sweaters and sweatshirts, made crunching noises when they ran. Jerry Burkhett emerged from the tool shed with his nylon bag of footballs. Dan Burkhett’s friends, Scotty included, spread out over the empty lot.

Jerry Burkhett began booting footballs, kicking an occasional spiral, but usually end-over-end spins. The boys would yell, “I got it!” Then they would run under the ball, and always, at the last second, let the ball bounce on the ground.

“Come on, boys. Be men. Is there a man among you!” Jerry Burkhett shouted.

Then Dan positioned himself under a ball that sailed above him. While he was trying to catch it, the football bulleted into his chest. The wind knocked out of him, Dan buckled over.

Evidence enough, Scotty thought. Eight wasn’t so great.

Dan’s mom ran out to him and hugged him and whispered things into his ear and suddenly the party was over.

(10)

Had he dreamt it? Scotty didn’t know, but when he woke up the day after Dan Burkhett’s party, he had a vague memory of his mother climbing in bed with him, her beer breath, her crying and him patting her back and saying, “It’s okay.” Over and over he said it, “It’s okay.” That is what he was trying to remember as Claire stood over his bed, poking him with her pointer finger. She’d been trying to wake him for some time.

“Scotty, Dad wants us in the living room.”

Scotty was slow to rise, and Claire pulled him by the wrist, and said it was urgent.

“Ow,” Scotty said, as he sleepily made his way down the hall, thudded down the stairs into the living room where Maggie sat in the sofa waiting, her back rigid, like a teen model. She didn’t look at Scotty.

Claire shouted out, “Dad, Scotty’s up.”

“One minute,” the Judge called from the bathroom.

Scotty crossed to the TV. Tom and Jerry cartoons on a Sunday morning.

“No TV,” Claire said.

Scotty pushed the “on” button anyway.

Claire lunged to the TV and turned it off. “No, Scotty,” she said.

He looked to Maggie for support but she seemed lost in thought. Something was wrong. The muted sound of the downstairs toilet being flushed jumped in volume as the Judge swung open the bathroom door. He walked down the hall and stood in the living room. He was dressed for church. He straddled a wooden chair that had been brought in from the
kitchen. He looked at all three children and tried to smile. But his empty eyes didn’t agree with his mouth, and the smile had a forced quality. Claire thought it looked phony. “Wipe that smile off your face!” Maggie wanted to shout.

Claire sat in the middle of the sofa, an arm draped over Maggie’s shoulder and a hand resting on Scotty’s knee. Scotty’s feet dangled off the sofa and he thought, One day my feet will touch.

The Judge took in a breath and sighed. “I know you all must be worried about your mother.”

He’d only said the “m” in mother when Maggie started to cry. Claire tried to calm her. The Judge asked Maggie to please stop. “We’re upset,” Claire said, “and don’t expect us to be all smiles.”

“Of course,” the Judge said.

Maggie said, “You got to tell us where she went, Daddy.”

The Judge stopped smiling.

Scotty calmly asked, “Where’s Mom?”

The Judge paused.

“Where’s Mom?” Scotty repeated.

“I don’t know.”

And the Judge didn’t know. He only knew she was gone and that earlier, while he was on the toilet reading the paper, he had heard a noise. He flipped on the porch light and Joan turned like a deer frozen in headlights. A small suitcase in hand, she was packing up her car.

“What the hell…?”

Joan shrugged as if she might start laughing, and said, “There’s a note on the kitchen table.” Then she climbed in her yellow convertible and drove away.

The Judge headed to the kitchen. He opened the envelope,
which read, “Walter.” He unfolded the paper. Written in Joan’s hand, her cursive that flowed and circled and looped, was one word—“Good-bye.”

Other sealed envelopes—thicker, more pages—had been left for the children. Holding Claire’s letter up to the light, the Judge saw words, whole sentences even. The children got explanations, but he only got one word.

He tore open Claire’s letter. Words like “diminished” and “inevitable.” In Maggie’s, Joan advised her not to hurry with boys—that if she chose too quickly, she might regret—and there was nothing worse than regret. In her note to Scotty, she had made a drawing of a boy and his mother holding hands. She wrote that there would be between them, always, a love, and then she kissed the paper, leaving her lipstick lips. Both girls were told to look after Scotty, because to be a boy in a house full of big sisters was no easy thing. Each letter was signed, “Love, Mom.”

The Judge sat motionless and tried to figure out what to do. Stunned, he hid the notes in the sugar bowl and waited until it was time to wake the children.

He could think of no nice way to tell them.

“Why?” Claire kept asking.

“The pressures. Worry. I don’t know.”

“Did you do something to her?”

“No, of course not,” the Judge said.

“Why did she leave?”

Scotty sat quietly. He had an idea why.

“What we have to do is pull ourselves together. If she calls, tell her you miss her, but tell her we’re fine.”

Claire said, “Are you telling us what to say?”

“I’m making a suggestion.”

“I hate it when you tell us what to say!”

The Judge was flustered.

“You don’t know why she left!” Claire shouted.

Maggie held her face in her hands. Her crying sounded like she was laughing.

And Scotty said, “Where did she go?”

“She’s going to miss us. You watch, she’ll be back soon. She just needs some time.”

Maggie stopped crying. “Why, Daddy?”

Scotty started to slap at his head.

“Listen, kids—I’m suggesting that we pull ourselves together. Scotty, stop it.”

Scotty continued his slapping.

“She’ll miss us because she’ll know we’re having all the… uhm… fun.”

“Fun!” Claire shouted. Maggie wailed. Scotty slapped his head harder. Claire stormed out of the house, letting the screen door slam. And the Judge thought, Bad word choice, fun.

“Come back,” the Judge said loudly. “Claire, come back here!”

Claire continued up the street and Maggie wedged her face between the sofa cushions, muting her sounds. As the Judge sighed, Scotty felt the facts sink in. His mom was gone. And he knew why.

(1)

Even though the Judge had no culinary skills, he took over the cooking. Several days were needed to gather recipes from Marjorie, his secretary, and other workers at the courthouse, so during the first week, he took the children to an assortment of restaurants: Shakey’s Pizza, Sambo’s, and McDonald’s twice. By mid-October, a simple menu could be managed, and while most foods were overcooked, the Judge succeeded in making meals his children would eat.

And it was during those first days that the Judge took his children to the movies. In the two weeks after Joan left, they would see nine: first, Dick Van Dyke in
Some Kind of a Nut
at the Ingersoll Theater, then Julie Andrews in
Those Were the Happy Times
at the Plaza. That Saturday he dropped them off at the special kiddie matinee at the Wakonda, where for seventy-five cents, they saw
The Three Stooges in Orbit
and
Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion.
Claire and Maggie disliked the
kiddie matinee, but Claire understood that the Judge had work to do.
Doctor Dolittle
was revived at the Varsity and the Plaza brought back
Darby O’Gill and the Little People
, which Scotty especially liked. Claire begged to see
Change of Habit
at the Pioneer drive-in, arguing “They say it’s the first good movie Elvis has made.” But the Judge didn’t think a drive-in a good idea. It was getting cold at night.

At the Galaxy they saw
One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
The best movie ever, Scotty announced. Until the next day when he saw
The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
, which then became the best movie ever. Maggie said they all can’t be the best, and Claire stepped on Maggie’s foot to silence her. And then they waited for the Judge to drive up in the Dodge.

But Scotty knew the two he liked best, better than any other movies ever made—
The Battle of Britain
and
Tora! Tora! Tora!
—which they saw on successive Saturdays at the River Hill Theater, Des Moines’s finest movie house. These were great movies, bloody and loud.

However, the experience of watching these two war movies left the girl Oceans embittered.

“Surely we could see something other than war movies.”

“Surely there is something other…”

Then the frequency of moviegoing slowed. Scotty believed it was because of his sisters’ complaints, but the truth was the Judge had taken them to every movie in the Des Moines area that was suitable for family viewing.

At home, much television was watched. The Judge made nightly bowls of popcorn, and during commercial breaks he would play the piano. Scotty requested a bouncy song called “Alley Cat,” which the Judge played with enthusiasm. Once was fine, but after six or seven times, Maggie complained, “Daddy, learn another song.”

The Judge believed that if he could keep the family occupied, Joan would come to her senses and return. If she drove by at night and looked in the window, she would see that the Ocean house was the place to be.

***

One night while supper was cooking, the Judge entered the living room and said he had an idea for an activity. He held a book in one hand, a pen in the other. “Who wants to go first?”

Claire did, then Maggie.

“Both of you have grown,” the Judge said.

They looked at their new heights. Claire said she hadn’t needed the measurement to confirm what she’d already felt—she was taller. Maggie wasn’t interested in growing taller—she dreamt of growing in other directions.

“Scotty?” the Judge called out.

“No thank you,” he yelled back.

“Scotty, it’s a family activity. I
insist.
”

As Scotty stood with his back to the kitchen closet door, the Judge placed a book, one from Claire’s Nancy Drew collection, on top of Scotty’s head. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” the Judge asked.

“Oh yeah,” Scotty said, kicking off his shoes. As the Judge took a pen from his pocket, Scotty stretched as high as he could.

“Scotty’s trying to cheat,” said Maggie, who had been standing unnoticed by the refrigerator.

“No,” Scotty barked.

“Is to. Tried to wear his shoes. Now he’s standing on his toes. Scotty is a cheater!”

The Judge smiled. “There is nothing wrong, Maggie, with wanting to grow.”

***

(Within weeks Maggie would begin stuffing concentrated amounts of Kleenex into a borrowed bra. Her father’s words, having echoed in her head, would give her the needed permission.

In late February, while wandering around Kmart, Scotty would notice a tuft of tissue sticking out from Maggie’s blouse. He’d approach her, pull on it while many people, mostly boys, watched. He’d hold the confiscated goods for all to see. Maggie would know then the feeling Scotty was having now. And she’d flinch when her own words returned to haunt: “Maggie is a cheater. Maggie is a cheater.”

But that day was months away.)

***

So it was with great regret that Scotty Ocean stood his actual height. He listened to the sound of the Judge drawing the line above his head. The line was drawn in red ink.

Scotty stepped away and looked up. His new mark was two inches lower than his previous measurement, the one Joan had just taken.

“Well I’ll be,” the Judge said with suspicion. “Somebody’s getting smaller.”

***

At dinner, the Judge couldn’t ignore Scotty, who sat with his head down. Yes, Scotty had been deceptive—and yes, he’d tried to distort his true height, and that wasn’t to be encouraged. But enough was enough, and the Judge spoke: “My dear and very special children…”