The Kindness Club

by Courtney Sheinmel

  Across the table, Dad stopped singing and grinned. “It’s a deal.”

  The next day, Dad dropped me off at Mom’s earlier than usual. He had a dental convention to attend in Orlando, so he needed to get to the airport. But he’d be back in time for our dinner on Wednesday, which would be “just us,” he promised me.

  CHAPTER 23

  Mom was at the front door waiting when Dad dropped me off. When she asked me how the weekend was, I told her we’d seen Gloria and Sage, and that they’d both loved the cookies. “That’s good to hear,” Mom said.

  “Do you think if you get a boyfriend that he’ll have kids?”

  “I don’t think I’ll get to pick and choose the family my new boyfriend comes with,” she told me.

  “But you wouldn’t mind if he had kids, right?”

  “I don’t mind the idea of dating someone with kids, no,” Mom said. “After all, my kid is the best thing I’ve got going for me. But right now I’m not thinking about dating. I’m still settling into life without a husband.”

  Her voice had taken on a wistful tone. “Just so you know, it’s okay with me if you never get a boyfriend,” I told her.

  “Why thank you, Chloe,” Mom said, now smiling. “But never is a long time. I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I just meant it’s okay with me, no matter what. As long as he’s kind.”

  “You think I’d date someone who wasn’t kind?”

  “No. Definitely not.” She gave me a little hug.

  “Speaking of kind. Did you notice the flowers in the window boxes?”

  I hadn’t, but when I peeked around to look, there they were. Yellow ones. “Is that what you did when I was gone?” I asked.

  “It was your friend Lucy,” Mom said. “I was out running errands and when I got home she was almost done. She said she wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “I can’t believe she did that,” I said. “It’s so . . . so kind.”

  “You’re a kind girl,” Mom said. “It doesn’t surprise me that you have kind friends.”

  “I should call her to say thank you,” I said. Then I paused. “Am I allowed to?”

  “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “Because I’m grounded.”

  “I forgot about that. But I think a phone call back to your friend is okay.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I started to walk away, but I stopped to tell her one more thing. “You know, Lucy’s mom died.”

  “Oh, how awful,” Mom said.

  “I know. She doesn’t ever talk about it. I think it happened a long time ago, and her grandmother lives with her family now. But I was thinking, maybe we can plan a mother/daughter day sometime, and invite her along.”

  “I think that would be lovely,” Mom said.

  I went into the kitchen to grab the school directory, along with some lettuce for Captain Carrot, and headed upstairs. Lucy’s grandmother answered: “Hello, Tanaka residence.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Tanaka,” I said. “This is Chloe Silver. Lucy’s friend.”

  “Oh, hello, Chloe,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, how are you?”

  “Fine, thank you, dear. But I’m guessing you didn’t call to chitchat with me, and you want Lucy. She just left to help our neighbor in her backyard.”

  “You don’t mean Mrs. Gallagher, do you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “And you’re part of that kindness project, too, aren’t you?”

  I felt a little bit guilty as I said, “Yes.”

  “I think it’s wonderful,” Mrs. Tanaka said. “As soon as Lucy gets back, I’ll tell her you called.”

  I’d barely hung up the phone when it rang again, and I pressed to answer. “Hello?”

  “Chloe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Monroe. It’s so good you’re home. We just called an official meeting of the It Girls.”

  “I thought meetings were on Tuesday and Thursdays.”

  “And lunch,” Monroe said. “And whenever things come up. Like today, Anjali’s aunt just invited her to be a junior bridesmaid in her wedding and we need to look online at dresses.”

  “That’s so cool,” I said. “Tell Anjali congratulations.”

  “You just did,” Monroe said. “You’re on speaker.”

  “Oh, hi,” I said.

  “Hi, Chloe.”

  “I’m really sorry, but I can’t make it today.”

  “Chloe, now that you’re an official It Girl, these meetings are mandatory,” Monroe said. “You only get two excused absences a semester. I don’t think you should use one now, especially since you have to go to your dad’s so often, and you might have to use them for that later. Besides which, this might not even fall under the category of ‘excused.’ What do you have to do right now that’s more important?”

  “I’m sort of grounded,” I said.

  “All right,” Monroe said. “Grounded is an excusable absence.”

  “What are unexcusable absences?” I asked.

  “Hanging out with other people besides us,” Anjali told me.

  “We don’t have to worry about that with Chloe,” Monroe said. “We have an understanding.”

  “Was that the doorbell?” I heard Anjali ask.

  “Rachael must be here,” Monroe said.

  “I better get off the phone anyway,” I said. “My mom probably won’t want me on so long.”

  There was a click, and for a second I thought they’d hung up on me, but then Monroe said, “Okay, I just took you off speaker. Listen, Chloe, you only have one excused absence left. Any more than that, and you’re kicked out. Remember that.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said.

  I hung up and looked over at Cappy. He was munching on his snack, but he paused to look up at me. “I know what you’re thinking,” I told him. “I’m thinking the same thing.” I stood to give him a pat, and then I headed downstairs to make another batch of cookies, with the ingredients left over from Thursday. I told Mom I wanted to bring them to Lucy. “Hold on,” Mom said. “I know I’m not experienced at this grounding thing, but seventy hours of grounding doesn’t seem like quite enough for what you put your Dad and me through. Perhaps you can deliver the cookies to Lucy in school tomorrow?”

  “I could,” I admitted. “But right now I know she’s gardening at her neighbor’s house. It’s part of our project, and I want to go over before she’s done.”

  “All right,” Mom said. “As long as you share one of those cookies with me first.”

  “You got it,” I said.

  I rang the bell at Lucy’s house. Mrs. Tanaka answered, and led me to the backdoor. I spotted Lucy, Mrs. Gallagher, and Theo in the backyard on the other side of the fence. “Hello? Hello?” I called over to them, clutching the package of cookies.

  Lucy looked up. “Chloe!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I made you cookies to thank you for the flowers,” I said. “And I came to help, if you want me to.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. “I mean, we still have the Kindness Club until tomorrow, right?”

  Lucy grinned and wiped her brow. “Hey, Mrs. G, is it okay if my friend Chloe comes over?”

  I made a move to climb over the fence, but Mrs. Gallagher tsk-tsked. “Come around to the front door and I’ll let you in,” she told me.

  When I got to the backyard, Lucy and Theo took a quick break to each have a cookie, and then we got back to work, pulling weeds. “Mrs. G said you have to be careful not to pull up weeds too fast, or the roots break off and they’ll just grow again,” Lucy told me.

  Mrs. Gallagher had gone back to her seat on the porch, and I turned to look at her, watching us. “When did she call you?” I asked Lucy, my voice lowered.

  “She didn’t,” Lucy replied, just above a whisper. “I called her. Actually, my grandmother did. When we were in school on Friday, she called to see if Mrs. G wan
ted her to pick the basket up from her front porch. Mrs. G said yes, and she said that she thought my grandmother should keep a better eye on me, and that we should have a talk about the importance of my being kind to my neighbors. Of course my grandma didn’t understand that at all, since I had been being kind—we all had been!” Lucy’s voice raised, and she lowered it again. “The whole time she thought we were playing a prank on her. She couldn’t believe we actually meant it when we offered to do nice things. But my grandmother told her about our project, and the club, and she said we could come over after all.”

  I pulled the weeds, slowly and firmly, and added them to the growing pile at the side of the yard. Lucy said she was planning to plant an herb garden for Mrs. Gallagher, once the place was cleaned up. After a little while, we took a break again. There was fresh lemonade set out, to wash down the cookies.

  “Aah, that hits the spot,” Lucy said, wiping her upper lip with the back of her palm.

  “Did you make this?” Theo asked Mrs. Gallagher.

  “Who do you think made it?” she said. “The maid I’m hiding in the kitchen?”

  “It’s delicious,” I said.

  “The cookies were, too,” Lucy told me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No, thank you.”

  Mrs. Gallagher surveyed the backyard.

  “What do you think?” Theo asked her.

  “It’s starting to look less like a disaster area,” she said.

  “So you’re happy Lucy helped you?”

  “Of course I am,” she said. “What else would I be?”

  “You weren’t happy at first,” Lucy reminded her.

  “It was hard for me to imagine,” Mrs. Gallagher said. “Kids in this town don’t usually offer any help. They don’t so much as offer a wave or a smile.”

  “Well, Mrs. G,” Lucy started. “You don’t exactly wave or smile at us. You usually yell instead.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Gallagher said softly. She had a look on her face like she had something more to say, but wasn’t sure if she should say it. Finally, she did. “I’ll tell you something, though. I wasn’t always this way. Sometimes things happen to a person, awful things, and they change you. You see, my husband . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “You have a husband?” Lucy asked.

  “I had one,” Mrs. Gallagher said. “There was an accident. He was driving on Falls Road. It’s a busy road, as you probably know. Not the kind of road you should play ball on, but some kids were—without parents there to watch them, I might add. They were kicking a soccer ball around on the side, and the ball rolled into the street. One of the boys darted out to retrieve it, just as my husband was coming around the curve. He wasn’t speeding, but still, he had to swerve to miss hitting the boy, and his car went into a utility pole. It happened just like that.”

  “He died,” Theo said.

  Mrs. Gallagher nodded. “My husband, he was the type of person that would rather hurt himself than hurt another person. He didn’t want to hurt anything, ever. You would’ve wanted him in your little kindness club. He’d spend an hour coaxing a fly back out the window before he’d swat it. Once I got so impatient with him, I picked up a shoe to take care of it myself, and he named it. ‘May I introduce you to Clement?’ he said, because he knew I’d never kill something he’d named—even if that thing was a fly. Thomas was . . .” Mrs. Gallagher paused and took a breath. “He was certainly a better person than I ever was. He was the best person I’ve ever known, and what happened to him didn’t have to happen. Those kids should never have been playing so close to the road. They never should’ve kicked that ball my husband’s way.”

  “That’s why you yelled at Ollie when his soccer ball ended up in your yard,” Lucy said.

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “I don’t think he knew what happened to your husband,” Lucy said. “I didn’t.”

  “Yes, well,” Mrs. Gallagher said. “I’m a fairly private person, as you probably know. I don’t like to talk about my private life with many people. I certainly shouldn’t talk about it with the three of you. You’re too young to be bothered with the sadness of an old woman.”

  “I’m glad you did tell us,” Lucy said. “I wish we’d talked before. I would’ve . . . I would’ve been kinder all along, if I’d known.”

  I remembered the quote I’d found on the day we’d started the Kindness Club: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” I understood what Plato, whoever he was, meant now. He meant that life is hard for everyone, even in ways you can’t see. Life was hard for Mrs. Gallagher, because she missed her husband. Life was hard for Sage, because she missed her dad. Life was hard for Monroe, too. And it was important to be kind.

  “I’m glad we got to help you today,” I told Mrs. Gallagher. “And I’m sorry about your husband.”

  “Me too,” Theo said.

  Lucy smiled a sad smile. “Me three.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Gallagher said. “You know, the three of you taught me something I didn’t know before today. At my age, it’s not often you learn something new, but I did. I didn’t think I’d ever find a reason to be happy again, after Thomas died. But today, watching you in the yard, I did. You kids . . . you don’t know how this feels.”

  “We do,” Theo said. “And we know why, too. It’s the serotonin in your brain.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “But you did more than change my backyard today. You changed my life.” Then she frowned. “A shame fall is coming and the leaves will mess up the yard again.”

  “But the colors will be so pretty,” I said.

  “Do you always try to find the bright side of things?” Mrs. Gallagher asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “My husband was like that. He used to tell me to look for the silver linings.”

  “I found one!” Lucy said. “A Chloe Silver lining!”

  By then it was starting to get late—not dark yet, but if we waited too much longer, it would be. We put the pulled-up weeds in a garbage bag and brought it out to the curb. Mrs. Gallagher thanked us again. Theo and I walked Lucy to her door. “So we’re all set for tomorrow, right?” Theo said. “I’ll bring the report, and then the three of us can talk about what happened with Mrs. Gallagher.”

  “Yup,” Lucy said.

  “We can go over it more at lunch,” I said.

  “You won’t be sitting with the It Girls?” Lucy asked.

  I shook my head. “Did you plant the flowers at my house because you wanted to get my serotonin level up?”

  “Did it work?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes,” I told her. “Being your friend makes me happy, and I can’t sit with the It Girls at lunch tomorrow, because I’ll be with my other club.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The next day, lunch went exactly as you would expect. After I got my sandwich, instead of going to the It Girls table, I headed over to the members of the Kindness Club. Lucy was wearing two of Oliver’s ties around her neck, one yellow and one green, like yellow and green pencil cases, or like yellow flowers and their green stems. Theo was talking about a storm that was gathering strength in the Atlantic Ocean. “It’s Tropical Storm Doris right now,” he said. “But it may turn into Hurricane Doris soon.”

  Lucy speared a cubed piece of cheese with her fork, but paused before popping it into her mouth. “Why do they name storms anyway?”

  “It’s easier to track them that way,” Theo said. “Before the nineteen-fifties, they just referred to storms by year and the order they occurred.”

  “Hmm,” Lucy said. “I guess it’s a bit easier to remember where you were for Hurricane Stanley, than where you were for the second storm of two thousand and twelve.”

  “It’s massively easier,” Theo said. “Storms can occur at the same time, for one thing. And for another, humans process memories—”

  “Chloe,” a voice behind us said gravely. Monroe’s voice.
r />   Theo didn’t finish his thought. I turned around. “Hi, Monroe,” I said. “Theo was just telling us a true story about tropical storms.”

  Lucy and Theo both smiled, but Monroe did not. “I like your necklace,” Lucy told her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That I like it,” Lucy said.

  Monroe slipped it into her shirt so you couldn’t see it anymore. “Is this some sort of last-minute science project meeting?” she asked me.

  “Sort of,” I said. “But mostly because I wanted to have lunch with them.”

  “Chloe, we discussed this.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But nothing,” she told me. “You know, I wasn’t supposed to invite anyone into the club unless all members approved the invitation first. It’s a rule. I wrote that rule.”

  “I know.”

  “I made an exception for you.”

  “I really appreciate it,” I told her. “I want to be in your club, and I want to be in this one. You could be in the Kindness Club, too. I mean, it’s also up to my fellow club members, but if you want—”

  “You must be kidding me,” Monroe said. “I don’t want to be in the stupid club you have with them. And it’s not possible for you to be in both, either. You have to pick. Their club, or my club.”

  I felt everyone’s eyes on me. “Well then,” I said, “I’m sorry, but if I can’t be in both, I pick the Kindness Club.”

  “So you lied again. You told me you wanted to be an It Girl. Well, don’t think for a second that you’re rejecting me right now, because I’m rejecting you. I’m taking back your invitation. And what’s more—”

  Her voice caught, and for a moment I thought she might cry.

  But she just narrowed her eyes, and went on. “What’s more is this. I went out on a limb for you—twice. But there won’t be a third chance. I won’t ever make the mistake of being your friend again. But you guys—” Her eyes shifted between Lucy, Theo, and me. “You guys deserve each other.”

  And with that, she turned on her heels and left us.

  “Whoa,” Lucy said softly. I didn’t speak. I just followed Monroe with my eyes, as she walked back to her table. There was a part of me that felt a little bit unkind, for wanting her to make the exception, and then letting her down. After all, Monroe was fighting battles, too.