Slick (6 page)

“Sweetie, it's not that simple.” Mom sighs. “Sure, I wish he didn't use pesticides, but I can't just tell him to stop. He's got to decide for himself.”

“He's fake, fake, fake,” I rage. “He bought herb sachets from the boys. What does he need with a rosemary sachet? He's trying to buy our love or something.” Silas and Leland have been selling homemade sachets to raise money for a pogo stick.

“He's just trying to get to know you. And, guess what? The guy has sachets in all his clothes drawers.”

“
Really
?” I ask.

“Yeah! Especially his lingerie drawer.” Mom winks. I have to laugh. “I want to show you something,” she says, firing up her laptop to YouTube.

She shows me a video. An artist in Sweden has turned a set of stairs in a subway station into a giant piano. When someone steps on a stair, a note rings out. It is so fun, everyone starts using the stairs instead of the escalator beside it.

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” Mom says. “People don't listen to things that make them feel bad. They hear the people who make them laugh.”

“Like the basketball hoop you put over the laundry basket,” I say. “Way more fun to shoot dirty socks through the hoop than drop them on the floor.”

“Yeah. Make it fun, make it easy, make it irresistible,” Mom chanted. “Rather than gripe, ‘Don't Spray Pesticides,' how about you sing, ‘Garden with Soul'?”

“I get it,” I say. “Still, you have to speak up when something's wrong. Ms. Catalla says if you don't, you're part of the problem.”

“You need to speak up, yes. But be patient, choose the right time. In the meantime, show by example.”

“How do you know all this, Mom?”

“I've rocked the boat a little in my time,” she says. “But mostly I learned it by being a mother.”

Chapter Twelve

Twenty-four girls—with twenty-four bikes—show up for Girls on Wheels. Luckily, Darryl has lots of tools. He's funny and keeps us laughing. Tuning up our bikes is a breeze. We timed the workshop for the last Friday of the month, so afterward we head out for a “critical mass” ride. Every month, thousands of cyclists in over three hundred cities join up to pedal around town, filling the streets with a healthy vibe. This time, GRRR! is among them. Darryl leads.

“Pedal Power All the Way!” we yell. ”No emissions! No noise! No roadkill!” And, “Whose streets? Our streets!”

It's exhilarating! Plenty of cars honk—some to cheer us on, others to curse us.

“We're traffic too!” we answer. It isn't until we get to the Legislature grounds and stop to say our goodbyes that I realize how cold it is. December is around the corner.

“That was the best!” Olive exclaims.

“You're positively rosy!” I tell her.

“I want to do it again next month!” she cries.

But as we ride home, she quiets. “My parents won't like it,” she says. “They'll say it's dangerous, or too public.”

“Olive, it's a bike ride,” I say soothingly. “How can that be bad?”

“You're right. Just a bike ride. That's what I'll say.”

We stop at the corner to say goodbye.

“That was great of your mom's boyfriend to organize the workshop,” Olive enthuses.

“Whatever,” I say. “He just wants me on his side. He's buying me off so he can have my mom.”

“When my parents and I moved into the neighborhood, you baked us a blackberry crumble,” Olive says. “Were you just trying to buy us?”

“I was being friendly. You know that. Neighborly.”

“ So may be Robert's being neighborly.”

“Yeah, well, I don't want him in the neighborhood.”

“Liza Maybird, it sounds like
you're
the one with the problem. Not him.”

I feel myself turn red. I want to hide. I want to scream and say it isn't true.

“You sure are good at fixing your bike,” Olive says then, raising her eyebrows thoughtfully. And I know what she's trying to say. She's saying that she sees the real me, whether I'm being smart, like when I'm fixing my bike, or whether I'm being stupid.

At supper, Mom drops a little bomb. “This Christmas, I'd like Robert to come to the Great Bear Rainforest with us.” She watches us nervously.

I feel like my breath has been sucked out of me. I want to leave the room.

“Yippee!” the boys start screaming. But when they see my face, they quiet down.

“We all know that Liza isn't fond of Robert, so this isn't exciting news for her,” Mom says gently.

“It's lousy news,” I yell, bursting into tears. “The worst!” I run from the room.

Minutes later, Leland visits me. I'm facedown on my bed, sobbing. “Cake for 'Iza?” Leland asks, holding out a plate of chocolate cake. He calls me 'Iza as a pet name. It's how he said my name when he was a baby.

“Thanks, Lee-Lee, I'm not hungry.”

Silas comes in with a mug of mint tea. “Thanks,” I say, sitting up. “You really like that guy, eh?” I ask them.

“Yeah, he's fun. Not as fun as Dad,” Silas says. “But Dad's far away.”

“The tea's good. Thanks,” I say.

“I put extra honey in it for you,” Silas says.

Mom finally comes in and sits on the edge of my bed. “Sweetie, tell me what you're feeling.”

“Mad,” I blubber. “He's always in our lives now. Here for supper, at the boys' soccer games, at parties. Whenever you get a free moment, you're on the phone with him, or getting your hair done for him. I never see you, just
you
, anymore. It's never just
us
. He comes first, and we just get pushed aside for him. You drive up to his house, and I get in the backseat! It sucks!”

I don't think. I just talk. And Mom doesn't argue. She doesn't interrupt to say it isn't that bad or that I'm just tired. She's really listening. Finally I'm talked out, and Mom's sitting there, crying a little and nodding. The boys are spellbound.

At last, Mom speaks. “Liza, I am so proud of you for telling me how you feel. I understand. And I'm sorry. I was so excited about meeting someone who makes me laugh and feel good, that I jumped in quickly. And left you guys on the shore sometimes.

“How about this: how about Robert just comes up to Great Bear for two nights. We're there for a whole week. Would that be acceptable?”

“I'd rather not see him at all,” I pout.

“Okay, then, three nights,” Mom says, cracking a smile.

“Two!” I laugh. “I can handle him for two.”

Silas and Leland start whooping then and jumping on my bed. After a bit, Mom and I join in—until the bed makes an evil-sounding crack. We freeze and then fall into a giggling heap.

For Immediate Release
Friday, December 10, 2010

Attn. Media: Keep Our Coast Tanker-Free
(Victoria, BC)
GRRR! is at it again. On Friday at Arbutus Beach, under a full moon, Girls for Renewable Resources, Really! will set afloat three hundred origami boats. The seaweed-paper boats represent the three hundred tankers that may soon travel our coast each year— at our peril.

If the oil industry gets its way, enormous tankers filled with oil from the Alberta tar sands will travel our rocky coast in all kinds of weather, through the territory of the Gitga'at, past the exact place where the BC Ferry
Queen of the North
smashed into Gil Rock.

An oil spill is inevitable. It will kill plankton, salmon, otters, whales, seabirds and also the wolves and bears on shore that feed on salmon.

Already, tankers of condensate travel our coast for use at the Alberta tar sands.

Join us in solemn recognition and joyful celebration of the four elements—air, fire, earth and WATER.

GRRR! will be joined by BRRR!—Boys for Renewable Resources, Really!—and at the exact same time, in Seattle, a sister chapter of GRRR! will also launch boats.

Chapter Thirteen

Mom is at an auction, so Slick picks me and the boys up from soccer. It is eleven o'clock on a freezing Saturday morning in December, but he takes us out for ice cream!

“Cool!” Leland says when Slick pulls into Beacon Drive In.

“More like ‘cold!'” Silas jokes.

“Br-r-right idea!” I say, making an effort to join in. Slick brought four golf putters and we play mini-golf in Beacon Hill Park. A squirrel and a crow fight over the last of our cones, and Slick shows Leland how to make a whistle from a blade of grass. Slick sucks at golf.

“I've tried,” he says. “It's how the oil bosses hobnob. But I just can't get it.”

“Golf courses are weird,” I comment. “Giant lawns with holes.”

“A dead dreamland,” Leland says.

We go to Slick's house for lunch. “I've got a surprise for you,” he says. In his backyard, he's hung three handmade swings from his Garry oak trees. Our names are painted on them in swirling letters. Mine is a beautiful curved piece of arbutus.

“Reclaimed wood,” Slick said. “I scavenged it. Loggers leave a lot behind.”

“I didn't know you could—,” I started.

“Make things?” Slick smiles. “I grew up on a farm. We were very poor. We did everything ourselves. I didn't have a piece of clothing that wasn't a hand-me-down until I was fourteen. A white Oxford shirt, for my first job.”

“What was it?” asked Silas. “Your first job?”

“Gofer.”

“
What?
” we chorus.

“Go for this, go for that. Errand boy, in a field office of the very company I work for today. Argenta Oil has been my bread and butter since I was fourteen.”

“Butter?” I asked. “Don't you mean oil?”

“Get out of here, you!” Slick laughs. “Let me make lunch.”

We swing high in the backyard while Slick makes peanut-butter sandwiches. We eat outside, wrapped in blankets.

“Nothing like a picnic,” Slick sighs. Leland plucks a piece of grass from the yard and puts it to his lips.

“Don't!” Slick cries. “It's been sprayed.”

“Pesticides,” I say.

“You mean—” Leland looks bewildered. “You poison your own lawn?”

Slick is at a loss for words. “That reminds me!” I leap in, reaching into my jacket pocket. “I printed this off for you! It's from the Canadian Cancer Society website. You know, the organization you did that run for? They want Canada to ban the use of pesticides for ‘cosmetic reasons'—like making lawns and parks,
and
golf courses, pretty. Pesticides can make kids get leukemia.”

But I was supposed to make the message fun, right? “And, uh, guess what? For Christmas, I'm giving you four hours of weeding by
moi
.”

Slick is reading and shaking his head. Finally he looks up. “Four hours of weeding sounds like an excellent gift,” he said. “Thank you.”

Holy cow. I just gave Slick, my hated enemy, a Christmas present.

What is getting into me?

Later that night, Olive arrives at the GRRR! boat-folding meeting early, tearful and livid.

“Why did you post those photos of the bike ride on your Facebook page?” she hisses at me. “Did you forget my parents are your Facebook friends?”

“Yeah,” I stammer. “Kind of. I mean, I wasn't worried about who would see them.”

“They saw we were riding in the middle of the street. You
knew
I wasn't going to tell them the whole story! I'm grounded,” she fumes. “I can't go to the flotilla launch.”

“Wow. That
really
sucks,” I say. “Is there any way you can change their minds? Do more chores or something?”

“No. They think I'm in over my head, that I'm going with the crowd because I'm not ‘centered.'”

“That's what you get when your dad's a psychiatrist,” I say, half-smiling, half-commiserating.

“At least I can help fold boats.” Olive sighs. “Let's get to it.”

Chapter Fourteen

On Sunday evening, Leland, Silas and I are the first to arrive at Arbutus Beach. Mom drops us off with the box of paper boats and heads out for a coffee with Slick. It's a cold, clear night. The moon is a bright coin in the black sky. The beach glows silver, and the waves seem to lap at the moonlight. To keep warm, the boys and I run along the logs on shore. Suddenly we hear a splash. Out in the dark ocean we spy the glistening wet head of a seal. She seems to see us too, then disappears beneath the water. Finally she bobs up again in a different spot, looks at us and disappears again.

“It's like she's sewing. Up and down,” Leland remarks.

Silas agrees. “Like she's lashing together the underwater world and our world above.”

“Do you think she knows we're here, Liza? What we're doing?” Leland asks.

“I do think she knows,” I muse. “Even if she doesn't know she knows.”

“I kind of get that,” says Silas.

“Me too,” Leland says. “It makes me shivery. Magic shivery.”

We squat side by side and wait for the seal to pop up again. I realize that my arms are over my brothers' shoulders.

“I'm warm,” says Silas.

“Me too,” I say.

“Me three,” Leland chimes in.

Then a man's voice rises cheerfully behind us. “Is this the launch site for three hundred boats?” It's Darryl, and about twelve others! “My soccer team,” Darryl explains, slightly out of breath. “We just finished a game.”

The beach soon gets busy. The girls from GRRR! arrive, other kids from school, their parents, and even Ms. Catalla! Our babysitter Rachael arrives with four friends from music school. They have violins and violas and begin playing.

“
Water Music
by Handel,” Rachael announces.

Melissa, Emma and I hand out boats. Even the news reporters take them. The boys of BRRR! arrive with Mr. McCartney in tow. “I like your boat design,” Niall tells me shyly. “Sturdy, but elegant.” He gives me a strange smile. I smile back, but my lips do something weird—they kind of quiver.