Brownie Points Read online

  “Did you have fun?” I asked Logan, though it was clear he did. He had a bounce in his step that told the world two things: He was happy, and he was gay.

  “Did we have Girl Scouts in San Francisco?” he asked “’Cause this is the bomb!”

  Michelle chimed in. “Girl Scouts are everywhere. And you, my friend, are welcome to visit our troop any time you like,” she said, placing her finger on his nose, a gesture that would have earned me a Logan eye roll. “Now, go get your family crest to show your mother.”

  As Logan trotted off, Michelle bubbled again. “I had my little ones Pristine and Rain here for the first half of the meeting and Logan was adorable with them.”

  Maya sauntered over. She had quickly adopted the Utopia tween chick uniform that Ashley was also sporting that day: frayed jeans embroidered with flowers, white t-shirt and a pink crocheted half-sweater that tied just under her ribs. And what outfit would be complete without the pink Ugg boots? When I took her shopping, I simply let her pick what she liked. Never did I stop to question if her choices were truly what Maya liked, or what she was expected to like. I was torn between overanalyzing it and just thinking she looked adorable. “Hey Mom, wanna see my family crest?”

  “Hello and how are you to you too, Miss Thing,” I said, giving her a quick kiss.

  Maya sighed, bored with my constant correction of her poor manners. “Hello. How are you? Now, wanna see my family crest?”

  I smiled. “More than life itself.”

  Maya returned with her crest while Logan helped clean the scrap paper off the tables. “Wow, that’s beautiful!” Maya’s family crest was sweet and colorful, but I had no idea what an ad for Juicy Couture had to do with our family values. Her crest was artfully done, but focused on teen pop culture, so I sort of thought she missed the point of the project. Then I looked around at the other girls’ family crests and Maya’s was pretty typical. I was quite sure that Paris Hilton was not a member of Ashley Brennan’s family, yet there she was prominently placed on her family crest. At least Bianca started with the right idea. In the center of her collage she painted the word “Friendship.” Then she lost track and surrounded the swirling thick pink letters with pictures of young models. I did find it somewhat heartening that Ashley chose models of different races for her friendship crest, but also wondered if she wasn’t simply pandering to my kids.Michelle was right. Logan’s family crest was remarkably different from the others. His was simple in concept and execution, but there was something haunting and powerful about the way it all came together. Apparently, Michelle gave the girls a copy of Rolling Stone to clip from, along with Teen People, Cosmo Girl and Jane. At the center of Logan’s family crest was a picture of Jimi Hendrix jumping in the air with his mouth wide open singing. Michelle told me that Logan convinced Rain to sell him her Firefighter Barbie’s red hat, then broke it down the seam and glued the front half onto Jimi’s head. Swirling from the center were Van Gogh-like thick layers of red, orange and yellow paint that were clearly meant to look like fire, but had too much fluidity to be truly representational. Under Jimi’s airborne legs, Logan pasted “Let me stand next to your fire,” in bomb-letter style.

  “This is incredible,” I remarked.

  “Like it?” Logan asked, not a real question, but rather an invitation for further comment.

  “I love it. You didn’t use a brush for the fire, did you?”

  Michelle placed her arm on Logan’s shoulder. “Tell your mother how you got those flames so wild.”

  “A spork,” Logan said proudly.

  “A spork?”

  “One of those combination spoon and forks,” Michelle explained.

  “No, I know what a spork is, I was just —” my words trailed off as I took in the rest. “Logan, I am really impressed.” Would it be parentally incorrect to hang Logan’s piece in the family room while suggesting Maya hang hers in her bedroom? My daughter’s was indeed lovely, but Logan’s was art. “This is going to take days to dry, you know, right?”

  “I know,” Logan replied.

  “You didn’t spray it with anything, did you?”

  “Hello,” he said rolling his eyes and holding out a hand signaling for me to stop. He reminded me of a young Jorge — God willing, minus the Mighty Mouse fantasies.

  ™˜

  That night at dinner, I was both thrilled and relieved that Jason was duly impressed with Logan’s family crest. Sometimes when he comes home from work, he’s so exhausted he barely makes it through a meal with a few grunts of agreement. “That’s some deep stuff, buddy,” Jason said, tapping his fist against his heart twice. “Mind if I take this to the station and hang it up?”

  “Oh,” I said with extended disappointment. “I wanted to hang it in the family room.”

  “It’s too small for the family room,” Logan said. “Daddy can bring it to the station.”

  “Thanks,” Jason said, ruffling Logan’s curls. Turning to Maya, he asked, “You do one too?”

  “Mine sucks,” she said.

  “It does not suck!” I protested.

  “It ain’t deep,” she said, mimicking her father’s words.

  “Lemme see it, Maya,” he said.

  When she brought it to the table, I could hear Jason’s internal debate as he scanned the collage that seemed to say: With the right outfit, you too can have girl power! It looked like it could be a CD cover for a new band called the Fashion Grrrls. On one hand, Jason didn’t want to hurt Maya’s feelings by telling her that her artwork was not, in fact, poignant like her brother’s. On the other hand, we both felt that kids are pretty good bullshit detectors and that lying to them only undermined our credibility. As Jason looked at Maya’s collage, I wondered what he would say.

  “Not everything needs to be deep,” he said, handing it back to her. “It looks good. Definitely makes a statement about who you are right now. I like it, and I love the artist.”

  He always knew the perfect thing to say to Maya. I hoped when the time came Jason would have just the right words for Logan too.

  ™˜

  That night I went into Maya’s bedroom to tuck her in, something she reluctantly admitted that she still enjoyed, but also promised me that she’d die of humiliation if I ever revealed. “You still awake?” I whispered as I stood in her bedroom doorway.

  “Yeah, come in,” she whispered back. “Can you tickle my arm?” As I sat on the side of her bed, stroking her arm, I asked how she liked our new home. “I love it.”

  “You seem to have found your niche here,” I said. “Ashley and Bianca are nice girls.”

  “They are,” she purred.

  “So what are the other kids in your grade like?”

  “Nice,” she said, sprawling herself out like a cat on the sunny spot on the rug.

  “Nice to you, or nice to everyone?”

  “Nice to everyone,” she said before yawning.

  “Nice to Logan?”

  “A couple of kids pick on him, but he hasn’t been beaten up since that first day,” she said.

  “Maya, that was last week,” I reminded her. “What do you mean by picking on him?”

  “They call him names, but Logan doesn’t really care.”

  “What do you mean they call him names?” I said, a bit more urgently. “What kind of names?”

  “Mom, I’m telling you, Logan doesn’t care. He just ignores them.”

  “Okay, but what names do they call him?”

  “First they called him the Clean Queen ’cause of what happened at Max’s party, with the horse poo,” Maya reported. “But I guess that was too long, so now they just call him Froot Loops.”

  “Froot Loops?!” I repeated, horrified both by the name and my daughter’s casual acceptance of this.

  “It’s a cereal, Mom.”

  “I know what Froot Loops are. I’m at the supermarket twice a week. Maya, why do they call him Froot Loops?” I asked only to gauge her understanding of the situation.

  “Because he’s fr
uity,” she said.

  “Fruity?”

  “You know, faggy?”

  The arm tickling stopped.

  “Faggy?” I repeated. “What do you mean Logan is faggy?”

  Maya sat up in her bed. “Mom, you never noticed that Logan is totally gay?”

  “Maya!” I said aghast, only because I had absolutely nothing meaningful to say.

  “I thought you’d be cool with it since half your friends back in the city are gay. You took us to Jorge and Finn’s wedding. Why are you suddenly all upset about Logan being gay?”

  “I’m not, it’s just—” I began. “I mean, I didn’t know you ... Did he ever say anything to you about it? I mean, has he ever come out to you?”

  “Was he ever in?”

  “Maya, are you just incredibly precocious or is this what thirteen-year-olds are like these days?”

  “I’m precious,” she said. “But we all pretty much know the deal about this kind of stuff by fifth grade.”

  “What do you do when the kids at school call him …” I started, recoiling before I could finish, “Froot Loops.”

  “What do you mean what do I do?” Maya’s response told me what I dreaded most. She did nothing.

  “I mean what do you do? Do you tell them to back off or you’ll karate kick them in the face?” My jaw was clenched and my lips pursed, imagining the satisfaction I would get from seriously kicking some thirteen-year-old ass. “You do help your brother, don’t you, Maya?” I already knew the answer. I only asked to let her know that I expected her to stand up for her brother—that these were our family values, not Juicy Couture sweatpants and MAC lip gloss.

  “Logan doesn’t need my help, Mom. He ignores them and walks away. It’s not like any of it bothers him. Logan’s cool.”

  I inhaled, trying to gather my patience and remember that however worldly Maya seemed, she was still thirteen. “I know Logan is cool. Nonetheless, as his sister, it would be nice if you could have his back at school.”

  “Mom, Logan’s fine. You saw him today at Girl Scouts. He’s like the most popular kid there. Stop worrying, it’s all good.”

  There was a moment of silence where I tried to absorb this possibility. Maybe Logan was fine. Maybe he just had a completely asymptomatic case of the flu last week. Maybe he was able to shrug off the cruel remarks of shit-throwing imbeciles like Max McDoyle. Maybe it was all good.

  After Maya drifted off, I peeked my head into Logan’s room and asked if he was still awake. “Yeah, come on in,” he said, lifting his sleep mask.

  “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going,” Logan replied.

  “Did you have fun at school today?”

  “Oh yeah, it was a thrill a minute.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I hate it here, Mom.”

  I wondered if it would be helpful for me to share that I couldn’t stand it here either. I remember when the kids were toddlers, I read an article in Kiddo magazine that advised parents to agree with their children when they asserted that cookies were preferable to broccoli. The child development specialist said that parents should put themselves in the picture and ratchet things up, adding something like, “I wish we could have five million cookies and build a big cookie castle!” Should I tell Logan I think it would be great fun to hang Max McDoyle by his feet and beat him like a piñata? Or should I confide that I’d like to throw a brick through the window of the Answer store? It seemed disingenuous to tell him that things would get better because, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure they would. For now, at least, we lived in the land of sheep, and I had to help him focus on what was positive about here.

  “You seemed to have fun at Maya’s Girl Scout meeting today.”

  Logan’s expression softened. “Yeah, that was fun. This place sucks, but Girl Scouts was cool.”

  Maybe Maya was right. Maybe Logan was fine.

  “Today was the first time I had a good time here.” Then flippantly, Logan added, “Actually, it was the first time since we moved that I didn’t wish I was dead.”

  Then again, maybe Logan wasn’t fine.

  Chapter Seven

  October

  Neither Logan nor I could catch a break trying to find our place here. It was as if every time we tried to carve out a space where we belonged, Utopia rushed in to fill it. I had a dream that I was planting azaleas in the back yard, and as soon as I dug a hole, a marigold appeared in it.

  We searched for a fencing academy for Logan, but the closest thing was a retired Marine who staged battle reenactments in his back yard thirty miles away. Needless to say, my son passed on the invitation to paint his face blue and play an angry Scotsman at the annual Braveheart Festival.

  The school chess club was so poorly attended that the detention center used the club room as an overflow facility. Anytime there were too many thugs condemned to after-school penance, they were sent to Miss Penn’s Chess Room. In a Hollywood movie, the prehistoric spinster with seven inches of white cotton candy hair would inspire the troublemakers to seek redemption through chess. In reality, the teacher was one step away from assisted living, and both chess club members frequently left with pawns firmly shoved up their nostrils.

  Our last hope was the drama club, but they didn’t even start auditioning for their musical until second semester.

  Jason helped me build a small studio in the garage, which was quickly condemned by Val Monroe’s CC&Rs Enforcement Committee. I swore I saw Ellie and Stacey driving past the house every day, taking notes as Jason and I constructed the frame and hammered plywood walls. But Val’s human accessories waited until we finished before the two slipped a Notice of Code Violation under the front door.

  I found moments of refuge from Utopia working on a new sculpture in a spare bedroom. Logan sought comfort in the weekly Girl Scout meetings, where he earned more merit badges than any of the other members. Maya and Jason were acclimated by their first week, but Logan and I were still scavenging for moments when we fit in.

  ™˜

  By the middle of the month, Indian summer was officially over and the air had a cold bite. Yet Maya insisted it was warm enough to go trick-or-treating dressed as a scantily clad pirate. It’s never easy to see your daughter making the transition to womanhood, but Maya made matters worse by squeezing her young breasts into a tiny black pleather bustier and covering her legs with torn fishnet stockings. With a little makeup she would have looked like a page from Playboy’s “Girls of the High Seas” issue. The night she came downstairs to model her costume, my poor husband almost choked on his drink.

  “Get yourself upstairs and put on some clothes,” Jason demanded after he stopped coughing.

  “Why? It’s for Halloween,” she protested.

  “Maya, you look like a street walker!”

  “I’m a pirate,” she said, feigning innocence.

  I chimed in. “A plank walker then. Maya, there’s no way you’re wearing something like that at thirteen years old.”

  “She’s not wearing that get-up at any age,” Jason barked.

  “This is so unfair!” Maya cried. “Bianca, Ashley and I are going trick-or-treating as pirates together. No one else’s parents are being all Amish about it.”

  Logan suppressed a laugh and gave Maya a look as if to say he’d told her so. Nonetheless he tried to come to his sister’s defense and explain life in the tween lane to us. “You guys don’t understand how important Halloween is for girls,” he said. “They get to dress super-slutty without anyone talking smack about them the next day.”

  Jason lowered his reading glasses and looked at Logan in disbelief. Did he actually think this line of reasoning was going to work with us? Then Jason returned his glare back at our daughter. “You looked beautiful as Snow White last year,” he said.

  “Daddy, I was five!”

  “Weren’t you the Little Mermaid once?” Jason asked.

  “That was Logan,” Maya said. “And he was eight. You guys, don’t make such a big d
eal out of this.”

  Jason straightened himself in his chair and held the arm rests, as if to brace himself from the double whammy of recalling his son’s past Halloween costume and seeing his daughter’s present one. “I’m not making any deal of it. You’re not wearing that thing out of this house. Hell, you’re not wearing it in the house. Go upstairs and get yourself dressed!”

  “You guys suck,” Maya said stomping off to her room.

  “That’s it, you’re going as an astronaut, young lady,” Jason shouted after her. Turning to me, he asked, “Did she say we ‘suck’?”

  Jason looked at Logan, who was sitting quietly at the kitchen counter. “So what do you want to be for Halloween, a pimp?”

  “Actually, I’ve been wanting to talk to you guys, but maybe this isn’t the right time,” Logan said, pausing for us to invite him to continue.

  “Shoot, buddy,” Jason said.

  “Well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this —” Logan said.

  “Go ’head,” I coaxed.

  “So, I’ve been thinking what I really want to be is a Girl Scout.”

  Jason and I simultaneously repeated our son’s words in disbelief. “A Girl Scout?”

  “Doesn’t anyone in this family want to be a ghost or a goblin or anything halfway normal?” Jason cried.

  Logan laughed nervously. “I don’t mean for Halloween.”

  “Oh, good,” Jason said with a sigh.

  Wait a minute. If he doesn’t want to be a Girl Scout for Halloween, then …

  “I want to be a Girl Scout for real.”

  Chapter Eight

  “He wants to be a Girl Scout for real?!” Jason said after I hurried him upstairs to our room. “He wants to be a Girl Scout for real?!” It did our son no good to see Jason repeating these words like the victim of an earthquake, still in shock from watching his house crumble. “He wants to be a Girl Scout for real?”