The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

by Dyan Sheldon

  Rather graciously, Joy Marie doesn’t point out that Waneeda could have made this discovery a year ago if she had ever listened to a word that Joy Marie said.

  “Anyway, it’s Cody who’s done all the schmoozing, isn’t it? Getting Dr Firestone on our side and buttering up the faculty and getting all the big sponsors on board and everything.” Joy Marie takes a sip. It is definitely chamomile tea. “It stands to reason that he’d get most of the credit.”

  Schmoozing, like delegating, is one of Cody’s great talents. If Sicilee is someone who could talk a turtle out of its shell, Cody could probably talk it out of its skin and into a soup pot. Not only has he persuaded the local radio station to plug the Earth Day celebration every hour for the next two weeks, he is going to be interviewed about the club on “The Morning Show”, the most popular breakfast radio show in the county.

  “While everybody else does all the real work,” grumbles Waneeda. “Let’s be honest here. It’s all the girls who joined because of him who are making Earth Day happen. Like Sicilee and Maya with their popular supergirl powers – look how much money and donations they’ve raised! Half the workshops are down to them.” And most amazing of all, they’ve stayed in the club, even though they must have figured out by now that Cody has no real interest in either of them. “I just don’t think it’s right,” persists Waneeda. “Clemens is the president. And you’re the vice-president. You’re both really smart and dedicated. And you’re the ones who did all the hard stuff. How come you and Clemens aren’t being interviewed?”

  “You know I don’t want to be interviewed. It’s my idea of hell,” says Joy Marie. “And nobody in their right mind would want to interview Clemens. You never know what he’s going to say. Besides, Clemens looks like a geek and Cody looks like a movie star.”

  “Um … duh, Joy Marie,” says Waneeda. “It’s radio.”

  “OK…” Joy Marie smiles. “Then maybe they’ve heard about Clemens’ speech last Earth Day and they don’t want to risk alienating their entire audience.”

  “Oh, ha ha ha.” Waneeda scowls over her mug.

  “The thing is that Cody’s really charismatic…” Joy Marie peers at the bowl on the tray. It seems to be filled with nuts and raisins. Was every store in Clifton Springs out of candy? “He’ll probably grow up to be President.”

  “So I guess that means Clemens will be his entire cabinet,” says Waneeda.

  Joy Marie chews thoughtfully on a cashew. “He’ll probably be Vice-President and Secretary of State, too.”

  It isn’t until she’s getting ready to go that Joy Marie notices the egg cartons covered with plastic on top of the bookcase by the bedroom window. “What is that?”

  “It’s my nursery.”

  Joy Marie isn’t sure whether this is a joke or not, so she only smiles with half her mouth. “Your nursery? You’re hatching chicks?”

  “Yeah. And next I’m going to get some burger boxes and grow cows.” Waneeda peels back the plastic from one of the crates so Joy Marie can see the tiny seedling underneath. “See?” She points to each box in line. “I have basil, corn, beans, zucchini, cucumber, peppers and tomatoes.” She beams like a proud mother. “I’ve started a garden in the backyard. These’ll be ready to go outside pretty soon. And then I’m going to plant some pumpkins. And some flowers too. I already put some bulbs by the fence.”

  “You? You’re growing vegetables and flowers?” Although by now she is certain that Waneeda isn’t joking, Joy Marie laughs. “Waneeda, you’ve never grown anything in your life. Not even your nails.”

  “Well, now I am.” She points out of the window. “Look! See, I’ve dug up the beds! And I’ve already planted the onions and potatoes. See there where I have those stakes in the ground?”

  Joy Marie looks down at the freshly made beds where the grass used to grow. “You got down on your knees and dug all that up? Waneeda, you didn’t used to eat vegetables, let alone grow them.”

  “It’s very meditative,” says Waneeda. “Plus, my parents are afraid of nature, so I get a lot of peace and quiet.”

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “I don’t know.” She doesn’t. “But this growing thing is really incredible.” Waneeda picks up an open packet from the bookcase and shakes a few seeds into her hand. She points at one of them. “Look at that, Joy Marie. That’s going to be a tomato plant. Can you believe it? That tiny little dot is going to be a tomato plant. Don’t you think that’s amazing?”

  Joy Marie’s eyes move from Waneeda’s hair, fluffed out around her head like a cloud, to the original Clemens Reis T-shirt she’s wearing and, instead of her usual tracksuit bottoms, the long, floral skirt. “It’s not the only thing that’s amazing,” says Joy Marie.

  Chapter Forty

  Spring brings more than bugs, buds and birds

  Joy Marie is off sick today, so Clemens and Waneeda are on their own for the walk to school.

  Waneeda smiles into the shower of blossoms falling down on them like confetti as they near the school. “You know, I really love this time of year,” she says. “Everything looks so pretty.”

  Everything looks so pretty, indeed. Spring has officially arrived, humming and buzzing, and dressed in blue skies and sunshine and swathes of green and bursts of blossoms. Even here, deep in the suburbs, where the roads are all paved and the houses trail one another up and down and back and forth like an army of ants, you can smell the new growth and feel the world busy as it emerges from its winter’s rest.

  Waneeda holds out a hand to catch some blossoms. “It’s almost like the planet’s getting all dressed up for Earth Day, isn’t it?”

  Not that long ago, Clemens’ response to that question would have been that every day is Earth Day, but now what he says is, “I guess that I have to admit I was wrong.” Not about the destruction of the planet, of course, but about things like the Earth Day celebration. They turn up the school drive. “I wasn’t a hundred per cent on board with Cody’s ideas to start with, but now I’m kind of changing my mind. Maybe they’re not as frivolous and shallow as I thought.” Given all the enthusiasm and general hullabaloo, it has to be said that Cody’s laid-back, just-turn-off-that-light method has more merit than Clemens imagined. “Not all of them, at least.” And what, in the end, is wrong with making saving the world seem like fun? “Even all my parents’ friends are coming to the fair and the closest any of them get to anything Green is playing golf.”

  “I guess Joy Marie was right,” says Waneeda. “You catch more flies with organic, fairtrade honey than you do without.”

  “So maybe people really are starting to be aware, which is better than if they weren’t.” Clemens’ smile shrugs. “Well, you know … a lot more aware than they were last year.”

  And last year – long before she freed her hair and exchanged her tracksuit bottoms for gypsy skirts and started planting potatoes – Waneeda would have said, Well, that wouldn’t be hard. But now what she says is, “Like me.”

  “Not like—” Clemens’ sentence breaks off like a twig in a heavy wind and he stops short, squinting ahead of him in a who-stuck-the-Statue-of-Liberty-in-the-middle-of-the-track? kind of way. Only it isn’t, of course, the Statue of Liberty that he sees.

  “What are those men and trucks doing over there?” asks Waneeda. “Are those chainsaws? Is that a crane?”

  “They can’t be,” says Clemens. “We got a stay of execution. They can’t do anything until after the vote and that’s like a month away.”

  Needless to say, he doesn’t go on to say what else the things they see might be if they aren’t men, trucks, chainsaws and a crane. Instead, he starts moving again, slowly, as though it’s been a few weeks since he used his legs, but now he is walking not towards the school but the huddle of trees near the tennis court.

  “We got all those signatures…” Clemens mumbles. “We won the appeal…”

  It is Waneeda who starts to run.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Clemens makes a spont
aneous decision

  The beauty of this day hasn’t been lost on Maya or Sicilee either. Maya has been taking her time this morning, pedalling slowly and enjoying the sunshine and the new-green breeze, and Sicilee has stopped twice – once to pet Bob the Jack Russell and once to watch the ducklings on the pond. It is safe to say that, despite the fact that neither of them has seen any snails this morning or would recognize a lark if it landed on her head, today both Sicilee and Maya are inclined to agree with Robert Browning that all is pretty right with the world.

  This is not an opinion they are going to have for long.

  They arrive at the entrance to the campus within seconds of each other. Like dogs trained to associate the clinking of a metal bowl with supper, the sight of the school immediately makes both Maya and Sicilee think of Cody Lightfoot. Out of habit rather than hope, Sicilee pauses at the bottom of the drive to smoothe out her skirt and check her make-up in the tiny compact she keeps in her pocket. Also out of habit rather than hope, Maya glides to a stop behind her, getting off her bike and smiling to herself as she takes off her helmet and shakes out her hair.

  It is as she’s about to stride past Sicilee that Maya notices Clemens and Waneeda, walking slowly in the wrong direction. Where are they going? Neither of them is likely to have a game of tennis or a run around the track before the first bell. And then she sees the men and the machines over at the edge of the school grounds.

  “Do you see that?” In her surprise at what it is she sees, Maya forgets that she doesn’t usually speak to Sicilee unless it’s snidely or totally unavoidable. But the sight of the stump grinders, saws and cranes is as shocking to her as finding a bunch of white men on their land must have been for the Lenni Lenape. Unlike the Lenni Lenape, however, Maya has a pretty good idea of what’s likely to happen next. “They’re going to cut down those trees.”

  Sicilee looks over. “But they can’t do that. We all signed Clemens’ petition. The town’s going to have a vote.”

  Maya tightens her grip on the handlebars. “Then what do you think those chainsaws are for?”

  “But they can’t be going to cut the trees,” Sicilee says again – as if just the repetition will make it true. She is experiencing one of those moments when even though you know what is happening, you don’t want it to happen with such an intensity that you refuse to believe that it is. “There must be some other explanation.”

  “And what’s that? They’re going to mow the lawn?” In the distance, Waneeda suddenly starts to run. By now, Maya, too, has heard enough of Clemens’ arguments for saving the trees to have been persuaded. She rolls her bike forward. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”

  Sicilee snaps her compact shut. “I’m coming with you.”

  Clemens is talking to the foreman, a large, bored-looking man in a yellow vest and matching hard hat. Waneeda stands beside him, looking like a gypsy who is working on a curse. The other men in the crew, likewise dressed in yellow vests and matching hard hats, lean against their trucks, drinking coffee from paper cups and looking amused.

  Clemens’ voice, though calm, is strong and clear, as though he is not a skinny boy in baggy corduroys and a faded flannel over one of his homemade T-shirts, but a grown man himself, bursting with righteousness and reason.

  “You’re not listening to me,” Clemens is saying. “These aren’t just trees. They represent every single thing that we’ve destroyed on this planet. Every animal, bird, fish, insect and plant that’s vanished from the Earth for ever because we thought it was our right to do whatever we wanted with them. Because we wanted to wear their skins to show off our wealth. Because we hunted out of greed, not need. Because we wanted the land where they lived to build something that we’d then rebuild in twenty years.”

  “Whoa … whoa…” The foreman holds up his hands, palms out. “I think you’re getting a little carried away here, son.”

  “You’re the ones who are getting carried away,” says Clemens. “Look at you!” One hand sweeps across the huddle of trucks, equipment and men. “You look like soldiers. Man used to be in harmony with nature, not at war with it. These trees are a reminder of that. They’re a symbol. They’re a warning. They—”

  “I know, I know.” The foreman’s sigh is as heavy as the thud of a felled oak. “I heard you the first time. But like I’ve been trying to tell you, none of that crap cuts any ice with me or my men. We have a job to do.”

  “But they promised to reconsider,” Clemens fairly wails. “We got thousands of signatures. The town council agreed to have another meeting.”

  “Well, I guess they had their meeting without you,” says the foreman. “Because I’ve got my orders. Those trees are coming down.”

  “Do you always follow orders?”

  Clemens and Waneeda turn around to see Sicilee, looking like a walking garden in her floral suit and matching shoes, striding towards them. The foreman, of course, has only to raise his eyes over their heads to see the unlikely source of this outburst.

  But the next outburst comes from Maya.

  “Would you follow orders if you were told to burn down the school?” she says, wheeling the pink-and-blue bike to a stop beside Waneeda.

  The men leaning against the trucks snigger softly; the foreman gives another of his dead-tree sighs.

  “Look, ladies,” he says, “as I’ve been trying to tell your friends here, I’m not the one you’ve got the beef with. I don’t make the decisions. I just carry them out.”

  “But you can’t cut down these trees.” Sicilee doesn’t come to a stop, but continues walking until (because the shoes decorated in flowers are four-inch platforms) she is staring the foreman right in the eye. “Do you know how old these trees are?”

  “Five hundred years. At least.” The foreman sounds so weary you’d think he’d been alive for those five hundred years himself. “And before you get going, I know all about how if they could talk they’d tell us all about the Indians and the pigeons and what Paul Revere looked like and how we should eat berries and not McDonald’s and stuff like that. But they can’t talk, honey. No matter what your friend thinks, they’re just trees.”

  “There is no such thing as ‘just trees’,” contradicts Sicilee. “Trees store carbon dioxide. Every time you cut one down you release those emissions into the atmosphere. You—”

  “Don’t you kids hear right? They’re going to plant more trees. More trees than we’re taking down.”

  “But these trees are special,” snaps Waneeda. “They’re living history.”

  “Not for much longer they aren’t,” says the foreman.

  All the other men laugh in a way that even those who love them most would call unkind.

  Although Dr Firestone may see Clemens as a hotheaded activist, in reality he has always been more of an eco-worrier than an eco-warrior. He watches the documentaries and reads the books and articles; he makes T-shirts and writes letters and instigates petitions. But, except for joining one climate change march last spring (carrying a sign that said: THERE IS NO PLANET B), that’s all he’s done. Until now.

  “Oh, yeah?” What’s the sense of only talking if all your talk is going to get you is lies or laughter? “We’ll see about that.” And Clemens turns and hurls himself at the nearest tree, wrapping his arms around it as far as they’ll go.

  The crew erupts in whoops of laughter.

  “Whoowhee…” shouts one of the men. “Looks like we got ourselves a real tree hugger here.”

  “Too bad you can’t get your arms around it!” shouts another.

  “Ah gees…” The foreman groans. “Don’t start with this crap, sonny. We can pick you off that tree like you’re no bigger than an ant.”

  Waneeda takes a step forward – a step that might seem more menacing if she didn’t look as though she should be carrying a crystal ball or a tambourine. “We know our rights,” says Waneeda. “You lay a hand on him and we’ll have you for assault.”

  “Christ…” The foreman pushes his hat ba
ck on his head and wipes his forehead with his sleeve, as though he already knows just how long and difficult this day is going to be. “Look, girly girl, we don’t want no trouble. Just come away from the trees and go to your classes and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  “Forget what ever happened?” asks Sicilee.

  “Nothing’s happened – yet,” adds Maya.

  The foreman pulls his phone from his pocket. “I’m gonna have to call the cops, you know.”

  “What are they going to charge us with?” asks Clemens. “Trespassing on school property?”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Dr Firestone isn’t the only one up a tree

  It isn’t the police who are called first, but Dr Firestone.

  He marches across the campus in his dark grey suit, brightened by a tie that is a tumble of flowers startlingly similar to the pattern on Sicilee Kewe’s linen suit. As this is a serious matter calling for all his years of professional experience, Dr Firestone isn’t smiling, but he looks no more worried than a man whose breakfast has been disturbed by the buzzing of a fly. Dr Firestone doesn’t want to call the police. Police at a high school never make parents or school boards feel good about the school or the way it’s being run. And now, of course, is an especially delicate time, with the new budget coming up for a vote. Dr Firestone, however, is sure that there’s no need for law enforcers. It is, after all, only Clemens Reis, born troublemaker, going off at the deep end as usual – once more disrupting the smooth running of the machine that is Clifton Springs High School (as well as the machines that have come to bring down the small grove of oaks). Clemens, though a thorn in Dr Firestone’s side, is a thorn he feels he can pull out by himself.

  The foreman walks out to meet him, and he and Dr Firestone stop together some distance from the target of trees, the yellow hard hat leaning towards the principal’s greying head as they discuss the situation in low voices.