What Scotty Said When he was four or thereabouts, Scotty Ocean liked to stand on the piano bench while his mother, a painter of abstracts, played the only song she knew. She practiced it daily, her eyes closed, a Salem cigarette burning in the nearby ashtray. For Scotty there was no place better to be than at her side, where he might tug at her blouse or whisper in her ear or pound the black keys with his fists. But it hardly mattered what he did because when Joan Ocean played her song, everything -- even Scotty -- disappeared. One day he said something that brought her to a stop. She made him say it again. This time she watched closely as his pink lips shaped the sounds. She would never forget it. Later it would haunt her: his eyes, his voice, and the words, spoken simply... "Seven is going to be my year." Copyright © 1998 by Peter Hedges Almost Heaven (I) In the summer of 1969, if you had asked the then six-year-old Scotty Ocean what a judge actually did, he couldn't have told you -- and why his parents never hugged or kissed, he would have been at a loss -- and why his sisters kept whispering, giggling about girl matters, he would've had no idea. Scotty Ocean was not in possession of all the facts. But he knew some things. He knew where he came from. He knew his mother had made him. In her art studio. The same way she made paintings and sculptures. "You made me, right?" Joan always nodded a gentle yes. "But just you." Joan would try to include the Judge but Scotty would cover his ears and scrunch his face, insisting -- "Only you made me." Soon Joan stopped trying to tell him otherwise. For Scotty, the particulars always changed. When his mother experimented with sculpting marble, he was convinced that he, too, had been chiseled, and the unused parts of him had fallen to the floor like the slivers and chunks in the corner of Joan's studio. When she worked at her pottery wheel, he watched the way she would wet her fingers and stick a thumb in the spinning lump of clay -- suddenly a shape. He would shout over the blaring radio, "This is how you made me." Joan didn't bother to correct him. Scotty's beliefs were creative and she was the featured player in his wanderings -- this charmed her, and why, she thought, why, as she popped open the next can of beer, why tell him the facts. He had his whole life to live with the facts. (2) The Judge had been standing at the top of the stairs, calling down to his wife for some time. "Joan," he said. "Come here." Joan pretended she hadn't heard him. "Honey," the Judge pleaded. Joan called back, "We're in the middle of dishes." Claire, their older daughter, helped clear the table while Maggie played on the kitchen floor. "Honey, come here," the Judge begged. "It'll only take a minute." Joan looked at her daughters both occupied and the dishes half washed. Then she turned and headed out of the kitchen. She went because in West Glen, Iowa, in 1961, when called, wives went. "What is it?" Joan asked, climbing the stairs. Judge Ocean did not answer. "What do you want?" She looked for him in the bathroom. She walked into their bedroom. "Walter?" He was nowhere to be found. "This is no time for games." She sensed something behind her moving, so she turned in time to see the linen closet door swing open, only to find her husband standing in front of her, naked and erect. She removed her apron and bent over their bed. While he moved above her, she thought about the flowers she would plant the coming spring. When he finished, the Judge, gasping for breath, leaned over and stuck his tongue in her ear. "Don't," she said, and pulled up her underwear. That night Joan sat on the living room sofa. In the kitchen, the Judge made popcorn using a pressure cooker. The sound of kernels popping had the girls jumping up and down. "Mommy," they shrieked. "What are we!" Joan drew in on her cigarette and said nothing. "We're popcorn!" The girls slowed their dancing, then stopped. They studied their mother, who stared blankly at the turned-off TV, cigarette smoke leaking out her mouth. Claire asked, "Mommy, what is it?" "Nothing, honey." But it was hardly nothing. She knew it; she felt it deep inside. She had conceived. When the Judge rounded the corner with his nightly bowl full, his girls leapt toward him, their little hands reaching up for the corn. With a girl on either side, he settled into the sofa. He lifted up the saltshaker. "Let me," the girls squealed. As each daughter took their turn, Joan Ocean started to cry. * * * Her first pregnancies had been remarkable experiences. In 1957, after reading the book Childbirth Without Fear, Joan informed her obstetrician, Dr. Charles Vernon, exactly how she intended her baby to be born. Dr. Vernon argued with her. He believed Joan was making a mistake. But in thirty years of delivering babies, he'd rarely met a woman so determined. When it came time, Joan requested three pillows and refused to lie down and submit to the common medical practices of the day. With proper breathing and an unshakable belief that childbirth couldn't hurt too much, that for millions of years women had been giving birth, and that she was just another, a link in a long line, she gave birth to Claire the "natural" way in an eleven-hour period. Nurses who had been skeptical looked at her with a much deserved respect. "Your wife is unusual," Dr. Vernon later told the Judge. Maggie's birth proved even easier, done in eight and a half hours, and it confirmed Joan's thought that there was nothing nicer than giving birth. But Scotty's labor would be different. Joan, all sweaty and exhausted, shouted and moaned -- endless contractions -- she was to endure hours of pain. "The little brat doesn't want to come out." Dr. Vernon said, "You know, Joan, this doesn't have to hurt so much." She shook her head, determined, her hands clenching the steel sides of her hospital bed. "You know we can kill the pain...." "No!" Joan held out. She had gone into labor on July 10, 1962, and Scotty was delivered just after midnight on the twelfth. Twenty-nine hours -- it was as if Scotty didn't want to be born. Perhaps he knew he wasn't welcome, Joan told herself. Between contractions she vowed to work extra hard to like her child. Fortunately her guilt for wanting a miscarriage, her self-hate for wishing this baby had never existed, evaporated the first moment Scotty was set on her chest and went for her breast and missed. "He'll learn," she told the Judge, who wiped her sweaty face with his handkerchief. "Of course," he replied. On the drive home from the hospital, the Judge remarked, "The doctor said you have an unbelievably high tolerance for pain." The Judge turned onto their street. "I thought you should know that's what he said. Very few people could take what you withstood. He was impressed." Joan forced a smile for her husband. She knew he was proud of how she delivered. The girls stood with Joan's parents on the porch. A sign hung on the garage door, painted in bright red and blue: WE'VE GOT A BROTHER. WELCOME HOME, SCOTT. Later that afternoon, the Judge painted on a Y, explaining to the girls who watched, "Your grandfather, my father, was also named Scott. So we'll call your brother Scotty. Scotteee." Then the Judge went back inside, and the girls practiced saying their little brother's name. Joan received visitors for most of that afternoon. Neighbors and friends stopped over. The Judge's secretary came with balloons. All guests were served pink lemonade and cookies compliments of Joan's parents. While the Judge told the entire birth experience from his perspective (which consisted of his pacing the halls and napping in the waiting room), Joan sat at the kitchen table. The noise of children playing and the Judge talking in the living room blurred for her, and she looked down at her boy asleep in her arms, his crooked face, tiny eyes, his lips and nose so little. In the living room, the consensus among the guests was that Scotty's looks favored his father, but the Judge was quick to disagree: "He doesn't look a thing like me. He looks like an hors d'oeuvre." Hearing this, Joan thought the following, and pledged it to herself, as both prayer and promise: You will be loved, Scotty Ocean. And while the guests laughed at the Judge's remark, Joan leaned over and softly whispered to her newborn son, "You will be loved." (3) On his last day as six, Scotty tagged along with his mother as she ran an afternoon of errands. At Kmart, he stuck his hand in the back pocket of her blue jeans and gripped tight. They came to a stop at the party supply section and picked out paper plates, party hats, and noisemakers. At the cash register, while his mom paid with a personal check, Scotty wandered off, and Joan was forced to look for him, checking Toys, Pets, and Sporting Goods. When she finally found him in Appliances, he was standing, mouth open in awe, staring at images of astronauts practicing weightlessness at their training facility. Sixteen television screens, different sizes with various hues and tints, but the same image -- these were the astronauts of Apollo 11. "Scotty?" Scotty didn't answer. He imagined he was bouncing around in the aisles of Kmart, floating like the astronauts in their simulation tank. "Scotty?" He turned to his mother and waved in slow motion. "Let's go," Joan said. At Kenny Rayburn's, where Scotty got his hair cut monthly, Joan sat outside in front of the twirling candy stripe that spun forever upward. Inside, Kenny Rayburn used an electric razor to shave the back of Scotty's head. Using scissors he trimmed Scotty's bangs. In the parking lot of Safeway, Scotty finished off a bottle of 7-UP and then asked for a sip of his mother's beer. They talked about Buzz Aldrin. At Magill's Bakery, Scotty begged his mother to put the top down on her yellow convertible, and Joan couldn't deny him. She unlatched the car top. She nodded to Scotty, who pushed the button that started it all moving. The black top rose up, folded back into itself, and Scotty could see the sky, which was gray, bruised with rain clouds. She told him to wait right there. He stood up inside the car. She watched as he flailed his arms and shook his head. "You know what I'm doing?" "No, I don't." A palsy, Joan wanted to say. Something spastic. It was the beginnings of a dance. "Seven," he said. "I'm seven." "You're still six," Joan reminded him. Then she walked quickly to the store. The sound of thunder came from above. It would rain in minutes. Before going into the bakery, she turned to check on him. Scotty had continued his dance alone. Joan gasped. Any guilt for not baking her own cake disappeared the minute she saw the detailed frosting design. She turned to the baker Jerry Magill and exclaimed, "It's wonderful!" Using gray dye in the frosting, Jerry had created the surface of the moon. Frosting craters; a miniature lunar module built out of toothpicks; an astronaut figurine and seven candles with small American flags taped to the sides. "It's a work of art," she said. Jerry smiled. He'd been so pleased with the cake that earlier he'd photographed it for his scrapbook. "It's a crime to eat it," Joan said. "This cake could be framed." "That's quite a compliment coming from you." Joan Ocean began painting the year Scotty was born, working in a rented studio behind a toy store and an Italian restaurant in Windsor Heights, an adjoining suburb. Her work had a small following, and Jerry Magill and his wife were two of her most loyal supporters. "I want it to be a surprise," Joan said. So Jerry Magill carefully set the moon cake in a box, taped it shut, then wrapped it in a white sack. On the drive home, the cake box sat in Scotty's lap. He wanted to open it but he knew better than to ask. He had to wait. Scotty put his hand on the stick shift so that when Joan needed to change gears, her hand would wrap around his and they would shift together. In the distance, east of town, lightning flashed. "Let's go down Buffalo Road!" Scotty shouted. Buffalo Road was an unpaved back road that had as its highlight a bump. Whenever Joan sped over the bump at full speed, Scotty would lift off his seat several inches. "Go fast, Mom." "Not today." "Pretty please," Scotty begged. He knew she was the only mother who would speed over the bump on Buffalo Road. "Honey," Joan said, "I have to take it slow." "No!" he demanded. "Take it fast!" Joan simply pointed to the cake box resting on Scotty's lap, the cake box that covered up two thirds of her boy. Lightning flashed closer and a rumble of thunder followed. Scotty looked down. "Let's go slow," he said. As Joan Ocean drove slowly, winding and curving as the road dictated, Scotty studied the cake box. He wanted to open it, to prove what he suspected to be true. But he needed no proof, for he knew from his mother's expression when she came outside, he knew from the triumphant manner in which she lit her cigarette, he knew that in his lap was the cake of his dreams. (4) "I don't remember," Maggie Ocean said, after biting into a corn muffin. "Uhm. Much about. Seven was the year I got to..." "Maggie, chew before speaking," the Judge said. "Okay, uhm..." "Swallow." They waited for Maggie. At ten, her blond hair was shoulder length; her bangs were cut like Scotty's, a wedge across the forehead. She had a few large freckles. Tall for her age, skinny, narrow shoulders, she was all bone and eyes. Finished swallowing, Maggie said, "Okay! Seven was good, I think? I think it was good?" "Is it a question, Maggie?" "No, Daddy, it was good." The Judge turned to Claire, who wiped her mouth with a napkin before speaking. "Seven was a year of tremendous change. The Vietnam War accelerated, Martin Luther King gave the 'I have a dream' speech -- " Joan interrupted, "Honey, that was 1966." "Yes, but Maggie was seven for much of 1966. I was speaking for Maggie." "That's correct," the Judge said. "I thought you meant you were seven..." Claire smiled at her mother. "No, it would have been 1963 for me. Two weeks after Kennedy's assassination. How could I forget that?" "I stand corrected," Joan said. "But let Maggie speak for Maggie, and you speak for yourself." Without missing a beat, Claire said, "Seven was a great year for me. Boys weren't an issue, they were still smaller than the girls, and it was the year I began to read real books. So I remember liking seven." Scotty stared at Claire, who at twelve looked like her mother. She wore her hair in the same style, straight, bangs behind the ears, and her mouth had the same thick lips. "Uhm, you know what I think?" Maggie said. "I think..." She paused as she struggled for the right words. Tired of waiting for Maggie to finish her thought, Scotty clinked his glass with his salad fork. His family turned to him as he shouted, "Me. Me, me, me!" And it was then that the Scotty stories began. The Judge told about a much younger Scotty trying to revive the dead rabbit. Claire remembered when on his fourth birthday Scotty tried to direct the traffic on Ashworth Road using a plastic police whistle. Joan recounted the time Scotty came home from kindergarten, packed a suitcase, and ran away. Later, when he was returned home, Joan opened the suitcase to find one side filled with his favorite toys. On the other side -- and this was the detail that got them all to laughing -- he'd packed only one thing: a large photograph of himself. (5) Their favorite Scotty story had taken place the previous February, when Scotty, a first grader, stepped outside during a sleet storm. His two sisters watched from the living room picture window. Bundled up in his winter jacket, a tasseled stocking cap, and his wool mittens, Scotty leaned over and licked the mailbox. His wet tongue fused with the cold metal. He could not move. Claire and Maggie knew right away they hadn't thought it through, for they had dared him, and if he didn't get loose before their parents returned home, they would be blamed. In moments the sisters were outside. Claire tried to uproot the mailbox. As she pulled at the wooden base, grunting and sputtering, she explained her thinking: "If we can get the box inside, his tongue will thaw." But even with Maggie helping, the mailbox was not to be moved. The previous summer the mailbox base had been set in concrete. While the girls shouted frantically, Scotty struggled to be understood. "It's cold" is what he tried to say. But with his tongue stuck, it sounded like "ooosss koohhhd." Joan and the Judge had gone to a Sunday brunch with friends. They would be home shortly, in good spirits probably, unless of course they saw their boy frozen to the mailbox. So Claire and Maggie had no choice. They each grabbed a shoulder and hooked under an elbow and yanked suddenly without warning. Scotty brought his hands quickly to his mouth. All three stood quietly staring at the miniature pink circle of flesh still stuck on the mailbox. "It looks like a little pizza," said Maggie without thinking. As Scotty's eyes filled and his skin flushed bright red, he began to jump about in the slush. He fell on his knees in a remaining patch of snow. Later, while wrapped in blankets, Scotty lay on the kitchen floor, his hand crammed in his mouth squeezing the tongue. He breathed in short, quick spurts, and didn't move. A steady stream of tears ran down his face. Claire checked the cabinet that contained medicines and Band-Aids. She removed a medicine bottle and said, "Mom uses this on cuts." Maggie said, "Let's try it." So they propped Scotty up. Claire opened the medicine called tincture of Merthiolate. It came in a dropper. Its smell brought with it the memory of every bike crash and knee scrape. It would leave an orange stain but it would sterilize. And Claire thought it was important to sterilize. But when she dropped the Merthiolate onto Scotty's outstretched tongue, he jerked back, stood up, and began to slap at his mouth. He ran around the house. His face turned purple and he finally dropped to the floor and thrashed about wildly. As Maggie begged him to calm down -- "PLEASE, PLEASE" -- Claire knew she had no choice. She dialed the operator. When the Judge turned his Dodge Dart at the bottom of the street, he was the first to see the flashing lights. Then Joan noticed and knew immediately who was hurt. "Scotty," she said. Two paramedics were loading him into the ambulance as the Ocean car pulled into the driveway. Claire and Maggie began to cry the minute they saw the car. The girls tried to explain, they apologized, in desperation they lied and said it was Scotty's idea; Claire finished the explanation by recalling a TV show where the kid didn't get stuck. Even TV was to blame. The Judge told everyone to calm down. "The body knows how to heal," he said. "The body knows best and we've got to get out of its way." Joan rode in the ambulance while the Judge stayed home. She kept her eyes on Scotty, who stared back at her. The ambulance worker had wrapped Scotty's tongue with gauze. Joan said sweetly, "This is one time you can stick it out and not get in trouble." Later that day, after dressing in a parka and matching scarf, the Judge stepped outside. It was time for him to do his part. Since the incident, the weather hadn't cooperated. The sleet turned to a hard falling snow that had begun to blanket car windshields and sidewalks and the street. The Judge found the bad weather fitting. It felt Shakespearean, Greek. Brushing away the accumulated snow with his gloved hand, the Judge stared at the mailbox, studying for a moment the sliver of Scotty's tongue. Then he prayed without kneeling (for his knees would get wet), but he prayed all the same: Please make this the deepest pain my boy will ever feel. Back inside the house, the Judge boiled water. Using his gloves as potholders, he carried the pan out the front door and poured the hot water over the mailbox. Steam rose. He waited a moment and then using the pancake spatula, he scraped the mailbox clean. The girls had gone to their rooms where they waited for news of their brother. At the hospital, Scotty lay on a stretcher. As an overhead light blurred his eyesight, as a nurse with several tiny black hairs on her chin poked around in his mouth, as the intercom called for a certain doctor to go to a certain room and another doctor to go to another room, Scotty made a gesture that no one saw. He wanted his mother. Joan had gone to the pay phone outside of the emergency room. Digging around the bottom of her purse, she found a nickel, put it in the coin slot, and dialed. "Judge Ocean speaking." Joan said, her voice shaky, "The doctors want to keep Scotty a little longer. It's more procedural than anything." "Oh," the Judge said. It was silent on the other end. Neither of them knew what to say. Then the Judge spoke: "I disposed of the tongue." There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Joan said, "Would you like to say something to Scotty?" The Judge said, "No." He thought it was better for Scotty to rest. But before hanging up, the Judge said, "Tell him Bonanza is on tonight." The Judge wrote the girls' orders down on a napkin and went to McDonald's. He didn't cook, and the girls loved McDonald's, and it would be his way to help begin the healing. For in the Ocean household, when one child hurt, everyone suffered in their own way. It was during Bonanza, however, that the Judge felt a rush of regret. After all, Scotty's tongue had been torn up, not his ears -- Scotty could hear. The Judge, angry at himself, wished he had said something to Scotty. During a commercial he dialed the hospital and the operator put the call through to Scotty's room. "Let me talk to Scotty." "You can't," Joan said. "Please let me talk to him." "He's asleep now." "Oh," the Judge said. "Damn." The Judge paused. "When Scotty wakes up, tell him Bonanza wasn't much this week. Tell him he didn't miss a thing." After hanging up, the Judge hurried back to the television. It was the best Bonanza episode he could remember -- the best one in years. When word spread the following day at Clover Hills Elementary, a pack of boys -- third and fourth graders mainly -- made a pilgrimage after school. They sent Scotty's best friends, Dan Burkhett and Jimmy Lamson, ahead. The boys reported back that the mailbox had no tongue on it. This news noted, the gang of boys scattered and headed to their respective homes, disappointed. Even though his doctor said he could resume talking immediately, Scotty said nothing for days. The only time he opened his mouth was to insert the straw used to drink his vitamin milk shakes. For the time being all his meals were to be liquid. Scotty's first grade teacher, Mrs. Marilyn Sands, felt sorry for Scotty and only asked him yes or no questions. And even though he frequently gave the wrong answer, he was at least nodding and shaking -- he was trying. His classmates left him alone. They knew he had suffered in unthinkable ways, and that one day they, too, might lose a portion of their tongue on a mailbox. That Wednesday, however, Mary Beth Swift came to school with her arm in a sling. She had broken her wrist the day before while roller-skating. Sympathies quickly switched to Mary Beth, who offered her classmates a choice of different-colored markers with which to sign her plaster cast. On Thursday morning when Joan woke Scotty, he made a face like he didn't feel well. "Then you'd better stay home," she said. She worked for his trust. Gaining it, she thought, he would confide in her -- he would eventually speak. So she took him on secret trips. They drove all over West Glen and Windsor Heights playing the car radio loud. They drove to the liquor store and bought extra six-packs of beer. She hid them in the basement in suitcases. That Thursday night Scotty sat silently at dinner, slurping at his liquid diet. The girls hated the constant attention he was receiving. Any kindness showed Scotty felt like a slap at them, punishment for daring him to lick the mailbox, punishment for being beautiful and smart and clever and popular. As the girls battled for attention, they began talking faster at dinner, fabricating stories. The meal became chaos. The Judge said dinner was over and that the next night there would be a constructive discussion about the future. He asked his children to think about what they wanted to be when they grew up. He excused the girls, who began to clear the table. That Friday, Scotty went with his mother to her studio. He watched her squeeze out the oil paints. He liked watching her mix colors, the big thick globs of paint stirred into every color imaginable. Joan set him up with a miniature easel and several containers of finger paints. When she finished a painting, Scotty hurried to finish one, too. They hung their work side by side. She explained why his paintings were brilliant. "The color," she would say. "The feeling underneath." That afternoon, while Joan talked on the phone, Scotty put his nose up to her palette of oil paints and inhaled deeply. He loved the smell so he breathed in several times fast. He grew dizzy. He danced a bit. He thought sentences but said nothing. This was the closest he'd come to saying words. At dinner the Judge asked his children the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Maggie said a model. Claire had many goals, numerous interests. Joan said it would take three lifetimes to do all that Claire wanted. Then the Judge spoke again: "And you know what?" "What?" Claire and Maggie said. "You," he said, fighting a smile, "Can. Be. Anything." He smiled, shouted, "ANYTHING!" and then turned to Scotty. "Young man, what do you want to be when you grow up?" Scotty didn't answer. The Judge told him to answer. Scotty didn't move. "Don't be shy. Tell me what you want to be." He put his arm around Scotty and pulled him close. Joan started to object. The Judge said, "Shhhh." Scotty squirmed in an effort to get away. But the Judge was strong. There was no escape. The more Scotty tried to wiggle free, the more his sisters laughed. "You can be anything you want to be," the Judge said. "Imagine that. You can be anything." "Yeah," the girls said. The Judge said, "You just have to be something." Scotty began to hold his breath. Joan whispered, "Walter." The Judge waved his hand for her to be quiet. "You don't want to grow up, Scotty, is that it? You don't have dreams?" Scotty had begun to turn blue. Sensing that this was nowhere near working, the Judge patted Scotty on the top of the head, grinned for the family, excused the girls to start clearing the table, and sent Scotty to his room. Everyone did as the Judge said, except for Scotty, who sat motionless. "You don't have to talk," the Judge said, annoyed. "But you have to go to your room." Scotty began to move his mouth. No one could hear him, not even the Judge, who was spooning the last of the mashed potatoes onto his plate. "Look," Maggie said. "Scotty's trying to talk." Scotty's mouth moved more. Joan leaned over and listened. Scotty's voice was a whisper. Joan said, "Something about heaven?" Scotty shook his head. The Judge interrupted, "Heaven comes after you die. What do you want to do before that?" "No," Scotty said just loud enough for everyone to hear. "Seven. I want to be seven." (6) Even now, after six months, they loved to retell the story. Claire did an imitation of Scotty announcing "I want to be seven!" which caught Maggie off guard. A stream of orange Hi-C shot out Maggie's nose and everyone started laughing. The Judge almost fell out of his chair. Joan wiped at her eyes and begged, "Stop, please." When everyone caught their breath, the Judge raised his glass and said, "So, Scotty, tomorrow you finally get what you want." Scotty smiled, revealing his uneven teeth. "Let's drink to that, what do you say?" They all lifted their glasses -- clink. That night Joan used a remaining shard of soap to lather her hands. "Let it go, Mom," Scotty said. She let the soap drop. Scotty searched the bottom of the tub. Finding it near the drain, he raised his arms into the air, holding the soap sliver like a trophy. "Wash me," he said. With her hands appropriately lathered, Joan began to soap Scotty's back. "Starting tomorrow, Mom, I won't need this anymore." "No?" "No," Scotty said, "I'll do it by myself." "Oh, you will, will you?" "You'll see. I'll do most things by myself." She soaped his pale arms and chest. Using her fingernails, she scratched lightly over his shoulders, and she considered that one day these boy-shoulders would be broad. Soon his sweet face would grow hair, his voice would drop, and his hands would get rough and callused. How, she thought, how do I keep you, Scotty, just the way you are? But there was one habit of Scotty's that Joan wanted to stop. In the middle of most nights, he found his way to his parents' bed and climbed in between them. The Judge had discussed putting a lock on the door. But Joan felt there must be a gentler way. So that night she asked him as she tucked him in, "Do you know the history of this bed?" Scotty shook his head. "When I was your age, it was mine." "You weren't my age." "Yes, of course I was." She combed back his wet bangs with her fingers and smiled. "And this was my bed." "But now it's mine." "No, it's my bed, Scotty. I'm loaning it to you." Scotty said nothing. How could she tell him that he wasn't wanted anymore in their bed? She kissed his lips, click went the light, and with her hand on the doorknob, and moments before all would be dark, she said, "Scotty?" "Yes, Mom?" "Will you do me a favor?" He nodded, for he would do any favor, anything, for her. "You will?" "I'll do you a favor," he said. "Will you take care of this bed." "Yes." Joan said, "Will you keep it warm for me?" Copyright © 1998 by Peter Hedges Excerpted from An Ocean in Iowa by Peter Hedges All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
