by Dyan Sheldon
“Get your own!” screams Molly. “Mom! Mom! Make her leave me alone!”
Mrs Baraberra’s eyes stay on the road. “Leave Molly alone, Maya.” From the tone of her voice it seems likely that she has probably given this command before.
Maya faces the front again, thumping and harrumphing. You’d think that her mother would be thanking her for giving up a Saturday morning to help her with the shopping. Really, why couldn’t she have a family like Cody’s – aware, concerned and principled – instead of the one she has – unaware, unconcerned and with the principles of cold callers? “I only wanted to see what’s in it.”
Molly kicks her seat. “Cereal’s in it.”
The car seems almost to sigh as they turn into the parking lot. “By now you’d think you’d know what’s in it,” says Mrs Baraberra. For a woman known for her sunny disposition, she sounds a little bitter.
Maya’s conversation with Cody about the hidden contents of pea soup and bread rolls may have convinced Sicilee that even pretending to be vegan was too much like hard work, but for Maya it was a moment of revelation. She had never given a thought to what was in the soup or the roll or anything else before. She’d assumed that if something wasn’t dripping blood, it was meat-free. Now Maya reads all labels as if they are the Dead Sea Scrolls. She was surprised to discover just how many things that she assumed are vegetarian aren’t. Cody is right, you can’t be too careful. This is why Mrs Baraberra sounds a little bitter. It’s bad enough that Maya’s suddenly decided to reject things she’s always loved, like scrambled eggs and cheese and chicken casserole, but now she questions her mother about every single thing that comes into the house. But does it have whey? Does it have lactose? Oleic acid? Keratin? Was it processed with lard? With animal charcoal? With Isinglass? How much sugar’s in it? How many additives? Is it carcinogenic? Toxic? Is it from a sustainable source? Was it flown thousands of miles or is it locally sourced? Mrs Baraberra is beginning to feel as if Maya’s the Royal Inquisitor and she’s the heretic.
“You are what you eat, you know,” says Maya, though, in fact, she could assume that her mother does know this by now. “It’s really important that we watch what we put into our bodies.” Reading labels has proved to be not only addictive, but informative as well. “Especially older people like you and Dad. Arthritis and heart disease are only a part of the fate that could await you if you don’t have a healthy diet.”
Mrs Baraberra pulls into an empty space. “Your father and I appreciate your concern.”
The bitterness, now tinged with sarcasm, in her mother’s voice doesn’t go unnoticed by Maya. “I’m only trying to help, you know.”
“Don’t.” Mrs Baraberra turns off the engine. “You just worry about you, and I’ll take care of the rest of us.”
Once inside the supermarket, Mrs Baraberra and Molly go off to buy all the things that make Maya grimace and pretend to gag, and Maya goes to search for things that she can eat.
“We’ll meet you by the frozen foods in half an hour,” says Mrs Baraberra.
But half an hour later, she and Molly stand in front of the freezers of ice cream by themselves.
Maya, as it happens, has got no further than aisle B.
Her mother finally finds her scrutinizing the contents of a package of tortillas like Sherlock Holmes studying a pile of cigar ash. “For God’s sake, Maya. What are you doing? They’re just flour and water.”
“I told you, you can’t be too careful.” Maya holds out the tortillas. “Look. They have milk in them.”
Mrs Baraberra doesn’t look. “We don’t have all day, Maya. We’ll meet you by the bread in ten minutes.”
Twenty minutes later, Molly is sent as a scout. Maya has made it out of aisle B and is reading her twelfth box of cereal with the avidity of a gambler checking the racing results.
“Mom’s getting mad,” announces Molly. “She says you’d better hurry up.”
“Tell her that I need just five more minutes,” says Maya. “No, make that ten. I’m almost done.”
Twenty-five minutes later, Mrs Baraberra marches down aisle E to tell Maya what time it is.
“But it’s not my fault,” argues Maya. “This store doesn’t have any sugar that I can eat. It’s—”
“So don’t eat it. You’re the one who’s always telling us how bad it’s supposed to be.” Maya’s mother thrusts some notes into her hands. “Molly and I will be in the car. If you’re not out in fifteen minutes, we’re going home without you.”
It is possible that Maya has spent the longest amount of time selecting the smallest amount of goods in the history of Clifton Springs, but this isn’t only because she’s been hypnotized by the small print on wrappers, cans and boxes. Maya got up this morning with one of her hunches. I’m going to run into Cody Lightfoot today, she thought as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She could feel it in her bones. And there would be no Sicilee Kewe to interfere; no Sicilee Kewe trailing behind him like toxic fumes. He’d be all by himself. It would be just her and Cody. The way it’s meant to be.
So when Mrs Baraberra suggested that she come shopping with her and pick out her own stuff, Maya immediately recognized the finger of Fate, stirring up the waters of her life. Cody’ll be in the supermarket, Maya decided immediately. Shopping with his dad. She was ready to go before her mother had finished writing out her shopping list. And so she has lingered longer than she needed, giving Fate a chance to get Cody out of bed, out of the house and, at least metaphorically, into her arms – thinking that at any minute she would look up to find him beside her and they’d laugh together over what was in that box of crackers or can of soup. On the other hand, it’s a bitter winter’s day and Maya doesn’t want to have to walk home. She speeds through the last few aisles, grabbing things she already knows she can eat, and comes out in Baked Goods at the far side of the store.
She is checking the breads – pick one up and put it down, pick one up and put it down – when she becomes aware of someone behind her, so close that she can feel his breath against her cheek. Her heart flaps and flutters like a chicken surprised by a fox.
“What the hell are you doing, Maya? You look like you’re the bread inspector.”
She turns around. Fate has been toying with her again. She can hardly hide her disappointment.
“Just pick a loaf,” says Jason. “They’re all the same.”
Maya explains that this isn’t true. “Not if you’re vegan.”
“Vegan?” Usually, when he smiles like that, Maya thinks Jason looks really cute. Today, he just looks annoying. “You never told me about that.”
“Well, you knew I was a vegetarian,” says Maya. “It’s not that big a difference really. I didn’t feel it needed a public announcement.”
“No, I guess it didn’t.” He laughs. “But isn’t it kind of extreme?”
“Isn’t the death of the planet kind of extreme?” Maya has been doing her homework. “It’s not just about not eating meat, you know. The way we produce our meat not only pollutes the atmosphere, it pollutes the ground and water, too – and takes up tons of land that could be used in a more productive and sustainable way.”
“Oh, right. I guess that slipped my mind.” Jason looks as if he’s sorry he asked. “So how long has this been going on?”
She shrugs. “A while.”
Up until now, Jason’s expression has been perplexed but good-humoured. Now it becomes thoughtful in a wait-a-minute kind of way. “You mean since you joined the Saviours of Planet Earth, right?”
Like Sicilee’s friends, Maya’s are pretty much unanimous in thinking that she’s crazy for joining the Environmental Club. Mallory said that it was about as cool as wearing pantyhose. Shayla said that it was more like wearing surgical stockings. Finn wanted to know if she’d lost a bet. Shelby said that he, for one, had better things to do than fish tin cans out of the Pascasett River. Brion said he could think of better things to hug than trees. But it’s Jason who’s been the most sarcastic and scat
hing. Jason who said that, if he didn’t know better, he’d think she only joined because she had a crush on Clemens – and said it without any hint of a smile.
“Anybody who’s serious about what’s happening knows that going vegan is one of the best things you can do. Even the UN says so.”
Jason nods. “So that means your friend Cody Lightfoot’s vegan, right?”
Maya can feel herself starting to blush. “Cody? What makes you say that?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” Jason gestures vaguely. “Maybe the fact that every other sentence out of your mouth is: Cody says this or Cody says that…”
“I’m really sorry, but I have to go,” says Maya, already starting to push her cart. “My mother’s waiting in the car.”
Chapter Twenty-five
If you don’t know the words, hum the tune
Sicilee’s mother, though very fond of her, of course, has always been a little worried that her only child lacks a certain amount of depth. Or, as Sicilee’s father put it after the fight about enlarging her closet, “The only thing she’s really serious about is being superficial.” Since the beginning of the new year, however, Sicilee has started to blossom in ways neither of her parents could have predicted. Mrs Kewe can’t get over the change.
“I certainly never expected you to join an environmental club,” she admitted when she heard the news. “I never thought you had any interest in helping nature.” Possibly because the only thing Sicilee has ever been known to do in the backyard is lie in a deckchair by the pool. “Or in stopping climate change,” she added.
Sicilee hadn’t planned to tell her mother about the club – when dealing with her parents, Sicilee believes that the less she says, the less she has to lie – but in the end she had no choice: it was that or starve.
“I’ve become aware of how precious and vulnerable our planet is, and have learned to care,” said Sicilee, paraphrasing something Cody said at the first meeting. And then, continuing to paraphrase him, added, “I don’t want to sit in the back of the world bus while pollution and over-consumption drive it over a cliff.”
“Well, that really is something. You certainly are developing and maturing.” Her mother beamed. “I can’t tell you how proud and pleased I am.”
“I’m only trying to be a responsible citizen,” said Sicilee, paraphrasing herself.
“But what brought all this about?” asked her mother. “I can understand that you’d be concerned about global warming and melting glaciers – all of us are. But do you think there might be a little more to it than the zeitgeist? Perhaps it’s realizing that you’re growing up and that your future will be what you make it? Or perhaps you’re beginning to come to grips with mortality.”
Sicilee sighed.
This is an example of why she wasn’t going to mention anything about saving the planet or eating vegetables to her mother. Margot Kewe, being a psychoanalyst, is a thoughtful, questioning kind of person. It isn’t enough for her to know what you did, she always wants to know why as well. As if the simplest action has some complex, hidden meaning. As if the fact that you left your cell phone out in the rain three times last summer must mean that you were tired of talking to your friends and not just that you forgot about it because your mind was on something else.
But Sicilee couldn’t eat old lettuce and tomatoes and flexible carrots for lunch for the rest of the semester. Sweet Mary, she’s a growing girl; she needs more sustenance than that. The problem was that if she told her mother that she wasn’t eating meat at lunch – and only at lunch – her mother would have wanted to know why. Even if Sicilee could have come up with a plausible excuse, her mother would then have wanted to explore her motives even further. So she told her mother about the Environmental Club and that she’d decided to become a vegetarian and would need some suitable things for her lunches. Those salads they do at the gourmet deli, for instance. Or the vegetable sushi at the Japanese restaurant.
“You really are serious, aren’t you?” Her mother shook her head as if she was the one who’d been asked a question. “You know, I’ve been reading a lot about vegetarianism lately. Apparently, meat production is one of the greatest contributors to global warming.”
“That’s right,” agreed Sicilee, who, as luck would have it, had had a conversation with Cody only that morning that touched on this very topic. “It’s responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transport system of the whole world.”
“Well, listen to you!” Her mother was obviously impressed. “You sound like an expert!”
“I’m working on it,” said Sicilee.
Sicilee’s mother, wanting to encourage her, decided to help Sicilee become an expert. The very next day she came home with the current issue of VegNews.
“Wow,” said Sicilee. “I didn’t know we had our own magazine.”
And a day or two later, she presented Sicilee with three books that she thought Sicilee would like.
“I was only going to get the book about living with the Earth,” her mother explained, “but they all looked so interesting…”
“Gee…” said Sicilee. She smiled, but she smiled wanly. They are all very long books. “How can I ever thank you?”
Her mother said she doesn’t have to. Just seeing her push herself in new and selfless directions is thanks enough.
* * *
The new and selfless direction in which Sicilee has pushed herself at the moment is the corner of a sofa she is sharing with Cody Lightfoot, whose arm stretches casually along the back of the couch, coming so close to her that she would hardly have to move to lean forward and kiss his fingers. Cody is talking – warmly … passionately … intimately… And Sicilee, her eyes wide and expression intense, is listening as if memorizing his every word for the quiz that follows.
In fact, Sicilee has to concentrate just to hear him over the joyous thudding of her heart. She can’t believe it’s just the two of them. No klutzy boys noisily interrupting or chatter of girls surrounding him the way they usually do. No freaking Maya Baraberra waylaying Cody like some kind of environmental highwayman the way she always does – Oh, Cody, I wanted to ask you… Oh, Cody, I thought you’d like to see this… Cody, what do you think about that… Oh, I think so, too – flashing her HELP THE EARTH FIGHT BACK and BE KIND TO ANIMALS – DON’T EAT THEM pins and acting like she was born with a carrot in her mouth.
This private moment, almost foot-to-foot and knee-to-knee, eyes staring into eyes, hearts beating as one, is like a dream come true. In fact, it is like several dreams come true. The ones that end with Cody taking her in his arms and Sicilee waking with a smile on her face. One of the big differences between those dreams and this moment, however, is that the dreams always take place in some secluded corner by candlelight or on a deserted, moonlit beach – not in the student lounge in the middle of the day.
“Then, after we made the bicycle-powered generator,” Cody is saying, “in seventh grade, for our science project, my friend and I made this wind turbine.” This would be another difference; in Sicilee’s dreams they talk about love and how wonderful each thinks the other is, not the environmental movement. “We figured that it was way cooler because we didn’t have to pedal. It wasn’t big or very sophisticated, but it worked just dandy.”
“A wind turbine! Wow. Really? That is so awesome.”
Sicilee has had several small successes in the past weeks – walking with Cody, talking to Cody, once even making him laugh with a joke she heard on the radio about how many Green activists it takes to change a light bulb (none, they use candles) – but this is the longest one-to-one Sicilee has ever had with him. It has ranged from endangered species to plastics to innovative solutions to our energy problems, but Sicilee’s part in it has consisted largely of words like wow, really and awesome – and a good deal of earnest head-shaking. Which is not the way it’s supposed to be. Indeed, to avoid this very situation, Sicilee has spent over a week sitting at home with only Lucy, her cat, for company, actually reading the boo
ks her mother bought her instead of hanging out with her friends and enjoying herself. The idea was that this would make it possible for her always to have something relevant to say to Cody or at least an intelligent question to ask. But instead, it has proved to be an endless, exhausting and, apparently, futile task. There is just too much to know. And most of it, as far as Sicilee can tell, is terminally boring. Statistics. Facts. Pages of information with footnotes and references. Bibliographies. Things only someone like Clemens Reis would want to know. She often falls asleep after only a paragraph or two. Even if she rehearses a couple of relevant comments and intelligent questions, she forgets what they were the minute Cody opens his mouth.
“After that we made a bigger one that we put on the roof of the garage, and we powered the light over our workbench and a radio with that.”
Sicilee’s smile goes into rigor mortis as she frantically rummages through the files of her mind for something Greener and more savvy to say than “Wow!” Something to show how much she knows about alternative sources of energy. Which, as it turns out, is not all that much (and largely based on a rant of her father’s about the cost of solar panels). “Obviously, it’s, like, so totally worthwhile, but they must’ve been really expensive to build.”
“Nah.” Cody shakes his handsome head. “It was pennies – even the bigger one – a handful of Lincolns. Most of it we made from stuff we got from the dump or found on the street.” He shakes his handsome head again, but this time in disappointment and disbelief. “It’s, like, so totally amazing what people throw out. Perfectly good, usable stuff. You’d think they’d never heard the Green mantra.”
This, of course, is Sicilee’s cue, but instead of reciting she simply smiles. She is smiling so much that her cheeks ache. It seems that, for all her reading, she has never heard the Green mantra, either.
“Reduce. Reuse. Recycle,” says a voice right behind them.
Cody raises his head. “Exacto!” he grins, sticking up both his thumbs. “The Three Rs.”
