An Ocean in Iowa (4 page)

Only Jimmy Lamson and Tom Conway were left with Scotty in the circle when the bomb went off in Scotty’s hands. He tucked it close to his stomach, broke from the circle, and in the middle of the yard, he did his best imitation of an actual explosion. He threw the Time Bomb in the air, while adding his own spit-filled sound effects—his arms stretched in opposite directions, he landed in the grass on his stomach with his legs splayed. “Blown to bits,” he announced to his friends as he pushed up on his arms. “Mom!” he called out—he saw she was watching from the back porch. “
I was blown to bits.
”

Joan smiled.

Scotty made a face at her as if to say, No dummy—you don’t understand. “I’m gone, Mom. I’m in little pieces all over the yard.”

Joan smiled and said, “That’s too bad. I guess you’ll miss the cake.”

As the other boys ran toward the Ocean house, Scotty walked confidently, because he knew there would be no cake until he blew out the candles.

Tom Conway picked up the Time Bomb and followed after Scotty, saying, “Better be careful. Otherwise you’ll break it.”

***

From the kitchen the Judge called out, “Scotty, never seen a cake like this!”

The curtains had been drawn. Joan flipped off the lights and from the kitchen a comet of cake and flames moved toward the dining room where Scotty and his friends sat waiting.

Everything about the moon-landing cake was unique. It seemed larger than the usual birthday offering (it wasn’t). Lit only by candles, the cake’s craters of frosting appeared even more lifelike. One could imagine it already becoming a kind of benchmark—the cake to which all other cakes would be compared.

The Judge led the singing. Joan snapped a picture of Scotty staring at it, stunned, his hands holding his head.

The wax from the seven candles had begun to drip on the frosting.

“You better hurry,” Maggie said.

Joan said, “Make a wish.”

Scotty thought for a moment.

“Hurry,” the party guests urged.

Joan took a second picture as Scotty blew with all his might, his cheeks puffed, putting out the candles.

Dan Burkhett asked Scotty what he wished for.

“If you tell, it won’t come true,” Tom Conway said.

Scotty pressed his lips together and said nothing.

When Scotty saw the Judge lift the knife, he shouted, “No!”

The Judge stopped.

“Don’t! Don’t cut it.”

The Judge smiled. “There are traditions, Scotty, boys—at birthday parties you eat the cake. It’s what people do.”

And with that, he brought the knife to the frosting a second time.

Scotty screamed, “No! Leave it alone!”

No one wanted to eat the moon.

And when Joan tried to say as much, the Judge glanced at her, rage in his eyes, a smile pasted on his face.

Joan turned away.

Holding the cake knife, the Judge said, “Cakes are meant to be eaten.” Then he methodically cut equal pieces. Once the first piece was put on a plate, it became more cake than moon, and Scotty forgot his objections. He took the cake in his hands. A shaken Joan readied the camera and there was a bright flash when Scotty took the first bite.

(2)

He’d been seven for two days and everything had been perfect.

“And now this,” Scotty said, sitting Indian-style in front of the television.

“Yes,” Joan said, watching from the sofa. “And now this.”

The Judge had gone upstairs to wake the girls.

Scotty touched the screen and said, “They’re already in there.” Smoke billowed out of the rocket. “It’s about to blast off—”

“Scotty,” Joan said, “those numbers on the TV tell us how long it’ll be. We’ve still got thirty-two minutes.”

“Oh.”

“Time for another bowl of cereal if you want.”

With his eyes fixed on the television screen, Scotty lifted the empty bowl above his head. Joan knew the signal. She took the bowl, went to the kitchen where she poured him more
cereal and milk, and put the bowl back in his hands, which had stayed in the air waiting.

The Judge came downstairs and said with a shrug, “Claire’s in the shower. And Maggie won’t wake up. They don’t seem excited.”

“Scotty’s excited,” Joan said as she disappeared into the kitchen.

On the television screen, Spiro Agnew sat with other dignitaries on a special platform.

The Judge sat on the sofa, pointed to the TV, and said, “There’s our Vice President.”

“Call if something happens,” the Judge said. He stood and went into the kitchen.

Soon Scotty heard the sharp tones of his father’s voice, the slamming of a cupboard, and he knew it was an argument. He could only hear the Judge’s side because Joan always whispered when she was upset.

Scotty decided to keep his parents posted. “Twenty-seven minutes,” he shouted. “Twenty-four minutes!” He forgot about what was on TV; only the clock in the corner of the screen held his attention. “Stop fighting,” he wanted to shout, but he only managed to give his updates. “Twenty minutes!”

At seventeen minutes and counting, the Judge emerged from the kitchen and smiled his fake smile. He touched Scotty on the top of his head and said, “You’re the man in the family while I’m at work. Okay, Scotty?”

“Okay.”

The Judge smiled. He walked to the doorway. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, he shouted, “Girls! You don’t want to miss history!”

After the Judge left the house, Joan emerged from the
kitchen. She lit a cigarette the moment the Judge’s car started. She smoked three in a row. Before she went back into the kitchen, she told Scotty to call her when it got close.

“Sure, Mom.”

He watched her walk away.

As the blast-off got closer, Scotty felt a sudden distrust for the clock. What if Neil Armstrong or Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin hit the wrong lever and the rocket accidentally took off? It could happen. He’d made this argument the previous day with Tom Conway, whose father was fighting in Vietnam. Tom said, “Mistakes don’t happen in outer space.” Scotty disagreed and threw a stick at him, cutting Tom’s forehead. Tom ran home to tell his mother, who called Joan who spanked Scotty and then kissed him.

***

When Claire, her hair wet from the shower, and Maggie, still in pajamas, thumped down the stairs, Scotty called out, “Mom, it’s close.”

His sisters plopped down on the sofa. Maggie yawned. Claire cracked her back.

“Mom, it’s thirty seconds!”

Claire told Scotty to move as he was blocking the TV.

“Mom,” Scotty shouted. “It’s almost countdown.”

At “ten… nine,” he screamed for her.

At “six… five,” Joan came in the living room from the kitchen and saw Scotty holding his breath.

“Three… two… one.”

“Sweetie, breathe.”

The camera tracked the rocket. It started slowly—smoke and flames—it shot straight up, then it began to veer to the right. As it went higher, it got smaller.

Scotty shook his head. He couldn’t imagine how they’d get back to earth. “How will they get back?”

“Getting out of the atmosphere. That’s the tough part,” Claire said. “Once you’re out, you don’t need much fuel.”

“That’s right,” Joan said. “It’s the getting away.”

“Yeah,” said Scotty.

Maggie smirked at Scotty. “What do
you
know,” she said.

***

Later, after his sisters bicycled to Holiday Pool to swim, Scotty stayed fixed to the television. He wouldn’t relax until the Apollo 11 splashed down, until Neil and Michael and especially Buzz Aldrin were back on earth, safe and sound.

During an interview with a scientist, Scotty broke away from the TV and headed toward the kitchen. There he saw his mother slouched in a chair, smoking and staring down.

He moved to the center of the room. His hands contracted into fists. He threw one hand up as the other came down all the while bobbing his head and shaking his left leg, his right, his left, his right.

“The seven dance,” he said.

Joan Ocean tried to smile, but couldn’t.

So Scotty knelt before her, wrapped his arms around her extended legs, and began kissing her white tennis sneakers while she smoked and cried. “Kissing machine,” Scotty said. With his lips, he moved to her ankles, to her knees where he sucked a kneecap—he moved up her thighs. Using her free hand, she pushed on his head to keep him from going any higher. He smooched the air, making his exaggerated version of the kiss sound. But he pressed against her hand; he was strong and determined, and Joan was tired. She gave way and
his lips shot for her stomach. When he tried to lift her flowered shirt, she stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and shouted, “No! Scotty, no!”

He froze. The tone in her voice did not sound like his mother. He looked up at her. She didn’t smile. So he turned, ran out of the room, and waited at the top of the stairs for her to come after him. When she didn’t, he ran to his closet and hid. It’ll take hours for her to find me, he decided, and when she does, she’ll say she’s sorry. She’ll feel bad. Then we’ll go downstairs and watch TV, or maybe go for a ride to the Lil’ Red Barn for gum and candy bars, or maybe she’ll take me to the top of Buffalo Road and we’ll speed down the hill with the top down.

Scotty crouched in his closet.

So much time passed that Scotty could see it: His hair turned gray, spots formed on his hands, wrinkles cut across his face, and his ears grew big and hairy. I’ll be a skeleton, he thought, if she doesn’t come soon. He stared at his hands, squeezed his eyes open and shut, blinking away the age.

With no sign that his mother would come for him, Scotty snuck back to the top of the stairs. He could hear Joan talking, but he didn’t hear anyone talking back. Scotty moved down a step at a time until he was at the base of the stairs. He tiptoed down the hall. He peeked around the corner and saw her standing at the kitchen sink, the phone cord stretched to its limit, her back toward him. She spoke softly. She sounded upset. He knew what to do. Quietly opening the basement door, he snuck down the darkened stairs. Light poured in from two small basement windows. He made his way to the far corner of the back room where a second refrigerator stood, humming, almost purring. He pulled at the handle and the light from
inside forced him to squint. The cool air washed over his face. He closed his eyes and with his hands located a can and pulled it from its plastic holder.

He moved fast across the basement floor, bumping into two barstools and a stack of old encyclopedias. She heard me, he thought. But he crept up the stairs slowly, just in case.

At the top, he cracked the door and saw that his mother had wrapped herself in the phone cord. He watched as she listened, her face in pain. “But,” she said. “What do I do? My paintings don’t make money.”

She was talking to Liz Conway, he decided. Because this was how she always talked to Liz Conway.

She unwound herself from the cord with the phone away from her ear. When she freed herself, she put the receiver to her mouth and said a chilly “Easy for you to say.”

After hanging up, she breathed out a heavy sigh and sat at the kitchen table. Scotty slowly pushed open the basement door. She didn’t hear him. He moved behind her, inches from her head. He lifted the beer can to the heavens, pulled back the tab—it made a
click
sound—then the whoosh of compressed air releasing—Joan snapped her head in his direction. This she’d heard. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and a smile formed, the look of relief, and she said, “Little love, you just read my mind.”

(3)

Joan’s studio was a small apartmentlike space on University Avenue in the neighboring town of Windsor Heights. Located behind a row of stores (Anjo’s Restaurant, Wirtz’s Rexall drugstore,
Doug’s Toy World, and a State Farm Insurance office), it was ideal for her purposes.

“It’s my place to escape,” she liked to say.

Whenever Joan had painting to do, she’d leave Scotty, and sometimes Maggie, to play at their neighbors’, the Conways.

Liz Conway was the red-haired mother of Tom Conway. They lived with Tom’s red-haired sister in a split-level house across the street and three lots down. The Conways moved into the neighborhood in 1967, about the time their father, Sergeant Conway, had left to serve in Vietnam.

Tom Conway had shoeboxes full of miniature green plastic army men. It seemed that whenever he missed his father, the sergeant, his mother would bring him home another bag of them. He had plastic tanks and jeeps, too. And a truck for transporting troops. One inch tall, these molded men were frozen in action: rifles pointed, bazookas held, grenades about to be tossed.

That summer Scotty and Tom played war most days. They traded off who got to be the United States. They moved the army men to their liking. A pretend explosion often ended the day’s fighting. One boy would knock over the other boy’s men—“Boom!” they would say.

Then, as they licked cherry and orange Popsicles, Scotty and Tom often discussed their fathers’ war experiences.

“My dad’s in Vietnam,” Tom bragged. “He’s killing people.”

“So?”

“My dad kills people every day.”

“Yeah, my dad killed people, too.”

(The Judge had driven a jeep in World War II and worked in counterintelligence during the Korean War.)

“How many? My dad kills tons of people.”

“My dad killed a lot of ’em, too.”

“Liar.”

“Am not.”

“Liar!”

“Am not!”

The same thing usually happened: Scotty and Tom would fall on each other. Tom would run inside, his nose or some other part of him bloody, and Scotty, arms scraped, knees skinned, would walk home and wait for his mother to come driving up the street in her yellow convertible. Then he would tell his mother how he hated Tom Conway.

“Guess what I think, Scotty?” Joan asked once from inside her car. Her sunglasses were large and oval; her hair was pulled back with a light blue scarf. She had returned from a day of painting, and she smelled of cigarette smoke and turpentine.

“I think you’re mad at
me
, not Tom Conway….”

Scotty climbed over the car door and into the passenger seat.

“You take it out on Tom. But I’m the one who leaves you with them. You’re
mad
at me.”