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"We know the value of a promise in this house, too, don't we, Scott?"
He nodded again and then raised his eyes to see how I was reacting to this little cross-examination his mother was holding.
His mother settled back on the settee, pulling the light blanket she had at her knees up a bit, and turned her attention more to me.
"Scott says you just recently learned about yourself. Is that true. Willow?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
"It's not an easy thing to live with. I know, Everyone treats it differently, I suppose. and I suppose no one should know better about that than a man like your father, but we thought it was better for Scott to know everything as soon as we thought he would understand, because we wanted him to know without a doubt that we couldn't love him any more than we already did.
"Besides," she continued, smiling at Scott, "I had him in my arms moments after he was born, anyway. I gave him his first bottle and I changed his first diaper."
She stopped smiling and turned back to me.
"When other people find out about you, some of them are going to look at you differently. That's because they won't know what to expect. Too often children get measured in terms of their parents. If someone's father is a good athlete, they expect his son to be, or if a girl's mother has a nice singing voice, they expect she'll have one, too.
"But you're a bit of a mystery, and that sometimes makes other people uncomfortable. Scott and I and his father have talked about these things many times, haven't we, Scott?"
"Yes," he said.
"We want him to be comfortable with himself. I suppose your father will be doing something similar with you, if he hasn't already, and your mother." she added.
I wanted to tell her, no, my mother would never do anything like that, but I was ashamed of it, especially there and then in the slow of the love she and Scott obviously shared. I don't think I ever felt as poor as I did that moment. I had a bigger home and we had so many more expensive things in it. but Scott Lawrence was far wealthier than I was, I thought.
"Why don't you show Willow your and your father's electric trains," his mother said, closing her eyes a bit and sinking in the settee. "I need a little rest. honey."
"Yeah," Scott said. "C'mon."
He grabbed my hand and tugged me roughly off the chair to lead me through the house. In a room down from the kitchen. Scott and his father had installed one of the most elaborate and wonderful sets of electric trains I had ever seen. The trains ran through a miniature city with tiny people, cars, buses, even school buses. There was so much to see.
Scott went to the controls and put on a train engineer's cap.
"Here we go," he declared, and started the engine that pulled boxcars and flat cars and passenger cars with people in the little windows. He began a second train that ran under and around the first. They even made sounds and sent little puffs of smoke up in the air. Some of the storefronts had lights that flickered on. "How long did it take to make this?" I asked.
"Me and Dad been workin' on it for years and years." he said proudly. "You want to work this?" he offered, showing me the controls, "Go on, try it."
I did, and while I did, he went to a partially constructed new building, a lumberyard company, and started to work on the tiny sticks.
"I told Dad I'd finish this one before he got home from work today," he said.
What impressed me most about the tiny toy city and the trains was the obvious love and care that had gone into it, that was still going into it. How many, many hours must Scott and his father have spent here together, I thought. How jealous it made me.
Scott's mother was very sick, but there was so much less darkness in this house than there was in mine. No wonder he couldn't care less about his being an adopted child, I thought, There were probably dozens of children in our class who were naturally born to their parents and did not share half as much of their love and life.
I visited Scott's house often after that. I wanted to invite him to mine, but my adopted mother did not like the idea of my having friends over. It would be years before she relented, and only after the Doctor assured her they wouldn't be tracking in any dirt or touching any of her expensive things. When I did have friends over. I always thought of areas of the house as having invisible tape roping them off We could look into the rooms, but not set foot in them. I was sure my friends never felt half as comfortable as I did at Scott's or at their houses. and I understood why coming to my house was not something they were eager to do.
About a year after I had met Scott's mother, she died. I knew she had been taken to the hospital. During those days and weeks, he became a very withdrawn person. barely saying anything to anyone but me. Our teachers knew of the difficulties he and his father were facing, and they didn't call upon him or pressure him in class.
The day I heard his mother had died. I rode my bike to his house. Some of his father's and his mother's relatives had already arrived and were setting up food and preparing for the funeral
. Scott had closed himself in his room. His father was happy I had come and hoped I would be able to bring him out. I didn't know what I was going to say to him. The only death in our family I knew about was the Doctor's uncle, his father's brother. and I had seen him only once. He was in his late eighties when he died, and there wasn't much if any grief in anyone's face at the funeral, especially not my adaptive mother's face.
This was far different, of course. I knocked on his door and waited after I called to him, but he didn't respond. I was undecided about what to do. Should I continue to knock or should I try the door to see if it was unlocked?
"I just want to tell you how sorry I am. Scott," I said to the closed door.
I was about to turn and walk away when it opened. It seemed to open by itself. because he wasn't standing there.. I walked in and saw he had gone back to his bed, where he was sprawled on his back, looking up at the ceiling. His eyes were red, but there were no tears.
