Brownie Points (24 page)

“Jorge?!” I said, finally catching his eye. He and Finn fought their way up the stairs to us. Actually, it wasn’t too hard for them to make it through the crowd. When people see a two-hundred-fifty pound block of muscle lumbering toward them, they tend to move.

“Li-li, I have been calling you for days. You don’t answer your phone for Jorge anymore, big media superstar?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked them.

“Mom, we need to get inside,” Maya urged.

To Jorge and Finn I said, “Come with us.”

A Hot Collar guy shouted, “That’s Finn Ayres!”

“No shit?” another added.

“Finn Ayres from the Niners?!”

Finn turned to the crowd and smiled, raising his beefy hand bejeweled with Super Bowl rings. “Uh, hello everybody.”

Jorge smacked his lips. “Not now, Finnegan. We need to get inside.”

As the front door of the courthouse closed behind us, we rushed onto the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor. Jason looked at his watch. “One minute,” he said. “Let’s hope it’s a short hallway.”

“Guys, it’s so good to see you,” I said breathlessly. “Finn, you’re looking well. Jorge?” I said, checking his duds. “Why are you dressed like that?”

He shrugged. “It’s my rhinestone cowboy look. Too much?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Goodness,” Wax said, rushing to meet us at the elevator door. “You tryin’ to give an old man a heart attack? Come on, come, come.” He escorted us to the front of a courtroom with closed dark-wood doors and hard benches outside. The walls were painted the color of dust and the golden seal of the State of California hung, muted by age. Still, our group of Jason, Michelle, Jorge, Finn and the kids buzzed with excitement. And nerves. Wax was the only one unfazed by the inside of the courthouse.

“Michelle, what are you doing here?” I asked, relieved at the sight of her.

“I’m the Girl Scout leader,” she said. “I’m leading.”

The bailiff came out and announced that the judge was stuck in traffic and would be at the courthouse as soon as possible. I shuddered at the thought of Amy jumping on her windshield to get an interview for
Dateline
.

I gasped, catching the attention of a woman I’d only seen on
Larry King Live
and in newspaper photos. Standing beside a woman in a Girl Scout-green power suit was Lexie Stein, the feminist lawyer famous for taking on high-profile cases like public breastfeeding, frozen embryo custody and the Hollywood lesbian divorce. She was about forty and stood less than five feet with the body of a ballerina. She was the lawyer who coined the term the “thong defense” when she got an acquittal for the trophy bride who gunned down her husband and his mistress while they were shopping at Victoria’s Secret. Wax whispered, “They brought in the big guns for this one. Means they take us seriously.”

“Wax,” Lexie Stein said, striding toward us in her stiletto heels and black silk pants suit. “I see we’re on opposite sides of this brawl.” Then she leaned in and kissed his cheek. “How’s Kate?”

“Kate’s well, vera well, Lexie,” he said. “And how’s Layla?”

“Pain in the ass as always, but that’s one of the things I love about her,” she laughed. “You must be the mother,” she said to me.

I nodded. “Lisa Taylor.”

“Good to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand.

We were now joined by the woman in green, who smiled warmly and said, “I’m Julia Landau, president of Girl Scouts of America.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, deciding not to ask if she saw the O’Mally guys lynching her in effigy.

“Enough with the love fest,” Lexie said. “Lisa, Wax, bottom line, what does the kid want? Can’t we find some way to work this out and go home unbloodied?”

As they spoke, my eyes darted around the waiting area where Michelle was playing cards with Logan and Ashley while Maya inspected pictures on the wall. My daughter found that the glass doors led out to a small balcony. As she opened the doors, the raucous sounds of protesters flooded in with force. “Hey, look!” Maya exclaimed at the sight of the growing crowd below. “I feel like Evita!” She stepped outside, lifted her hands overhead and began singing, “Don’t cry for me Argenti—”

“Maya!” Jason snapped. “Close that door and get inside, young lady.”

“I thought I’d distract the reporters,” Maya said. “They’re all gathered around Olivia and those gross boys. Looks like they’re interviewing Max’s big brother.”

Michelle looked up from her card game. “Want me to go down there and find out what’s going on?”

“Would you?!” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, motioning me to take her hand of cards. Whispering to me, Michelle said, “Act like you’ve got a bad hand, okay?”

“Um, okay,” I replied. “What are you playing?”

“Poker.”

™˜

Maya sat down next to Wax and gave him the once over. “Can I ask you something?” Maya began.

Wax glanced at her over his reading glasses, put down his papers and said, “Sure, Maya. What’s on your mind?”

“Was Martin Luther King really all calm and cool twenty-four/seven? I mean, that brother saw some messed-up stuff. I totally get all the Jesusy peace and nonviolence stuff in his speeches, but when you guys were alone, did he ever let down his guard and be all, ‘Homes, I’m gonna pop me a cap on that motherfucker.’ ”

Wax pondered this for a moment. “People didn’t really talk like that back then.”

Maya persisted. “You know what I mean. Did he ever get pissed off and want to go Malcolm on those white dudes?” Catching herself, she qualified, “The nasty ones, I mean. You’re cool.”

I was impressed by how seriously he took Maya’s question. During Black History Month, her teacher considered her constant questions a nuisance, suggesting that Maya was posing them simply to be difficult in class. “Dr. King was pissed off about the plight of African-American people in this country,” Wax told Maya. “So were a lot of people, but we felt that meaningful, lasting change came through peaceful protest. So no, he never thought about popping his cap. At least not that he shared with me anyway.”

“So, were there civil rights groupies?” Maya asked, causing Wax to burst into laughter.

“Ah yes, plenty of those,” he joked. “Some of my fondest memories involve hot tubbing with Freedom Riders.” Wax furrowed his brow and got serious with her. “Listen, Maya, you don’t get into this line of work to live like a rock star. When I die, I don’t much care if anyone remembers my name. What matters to me is if people’s lives are better, and our world is a kinder place because of the work I’ve done.”

“Wow,” Maya said, awed. “That’s so beauty pageant.”

™˜

Michelle returned after twenty minutes and gave us a report on Olivia. “She says that if Logan wins today, she’s going to file suit so that those four boys can join too. She might even file an amicus brief.”

“What?!” Logan cried. “Why?”

Michelle explained, “She said she wants to give America a clear visual of how it looks to have boys joining Girl Scouts.”

“So, it’s a PR stunt?” Maya asked.

“Is that why they brought the frogs?” Logan asked.

“They’ve got plastic snakes and spiders down there too. They’re having a distance spitting contest in a few minutes. The British media is eating it up. The image, um, not the spit. They’re lighting their farts at noon.”

Logan sighed. “They will too, won’t they? They’ll really go through with it and join.”

Knowing my son the way I did, I could see him imagining what this would mean to girls like Spencer Fields. He shook his head in disgust. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

™˜

The judge finally saw us. She was a hard looking woman with black hair slicked back into a tight bun. She smiled reassuringly at Logan, but the black robe was still intimidating. I sat in the front row of the courtroom with Michelle, Jorge and Finn, while Jason and Logan joined Wax at the counsel table. Lexie Stein and Julia Landau were joined by Girl Scouts’ general counsel, Clare Parkins, at the opposite table.

“Good morning,” the judge began. She scanned the papers in front of her and said, “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Logan Taylor is a fourteen-year-old boy seeking membership in the Girl Scouts, which has denied his membership on the grounds that he is not a girl. Is that right?”

“Yes, your honor,” Wax replied, and Lexie echoed.

“I’ll hear from you first, Ms. Stein.”

“Your honor, Girl Scouts of America exists for the sole purpose of empowering girls, and one of the key tenets of that is providing an environment where girls grow stronger in the company of other girls. If boys are permitted to join Girl Scouts, that is destroyed. There are boys downstairs with snakes and frogs right now saying they want to join the troop too.”

Suddenly I had a flash from every Passover Seder I’d ever attended. As we read from the Haggadah, we dipped our finger in the red wine, recalling the plagues on the Egyptians. Everyone around the table said, “Frogs. Boils. Death.” Olivia McDoyle and her posse of boys were my family’s plagues.

Stein continued, “Several recent studies support that girls take more risks and perform better socially and academically when they’re in a single-sex setting. If we make an exception for Logan, then we have to admit all boys or else we really will be discriminating.” She looked at Logan softly and continued. “Logan seems like a terrific kid, one who can socialize with his female friends at school, at home and through a myriad of other after-school programs and activities. If he’s allowed to join Girl Scouts, it ceases to be
Girl
Scouts and the organization becomes just another after-school club for kids. Make no mistake, there are many benefits to these co-ed programs, but what they fail to deliver is the unique experience that comes from girls being among other girls.” She sat.

Jorge whispered to me, “Doesn’t she remind you of Jenna Moore from Berkeley?”

“Who?” I whispered.

“Jenna Moore,” he whispered. “She ran the Women’s Center and was always spouting all those facts and figures. She was like a feminist encyclopedia.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “What’s your point?”

“No point,” Jorge whispered. “This lady reminds me of her, the way she talks and all. So serious.”

“Shhhh,” I urged him. Could he ever just sit still and be quiet?

“Counsel?” the judge prompted, addressing Wax.

“Girl Scouts does provide something very special for its members,” Wax began, “which is exactly why my client is so passionate about joining that he’s gone so far as to sue. The question isn’t whether Girl Scouts benefits girls. It does. The issue here is—”

The judge interrupted Wax. “Logan, I’d like to hear from you. Do you understand why Girl Scouts—”

Wax interrupted the judge like the retired legend that he was. “Yaw Honor, this is a demurrer hearing.”

“In
my
courtroom,” she finished. “I understand this is unorthodox, but this is an unusual case. Now, Logan, tell me, why are you suing to be a Girl Scout?”

Wax dropped his hand on the table with a bit too much weight. “Come on, yaw Honor. Has the trial started and someone forgot to tell me?”