Curse of the PTA (2 page)

“Where? Let me see that.” Claudia half stood and grabbed the folder. “Where does it
say that? I don’t see it anywhere.”

“Page four,” I murmured, earning a thumbs-up from Marina.

“Four? I don’t see it. You’re wrong about this. You must be.”

I tucked my lips between my teeth, leaned over, and pointed out the pertinent paragraph.

“No, this only talks about . . . oh.” Claudia slapped the folder shut. “Fine,” she
said. “We’ll vote. Something like this, it has to be a board vote, right? I vote for
Tina. Randy, how about you?”

Randy, who’d been busy collecting the last crumbs of his corn chips on the end of
his thumb, grunted.

“There,” Claudia said. “Randy votes for her, too. That’s two votes and that’s enough.
Tina, you’re the new PTA secretary. Come on up.” Smiling, she pointed at the empty
chair.

I dreamed a short dream of a distant and secluded island populated only by Claudia.
She’d be happy there, after a short period of adjustment. And even if she wasn’t,
I’d be comforted by my own happiness in knowing that she’d never attend another PTA
meeting.

“Page five of the bylaws,” I said, “states quite clearly that multiple nominations
will be voted upon by the PTA membership.”

“It can’t.” Claudia snatched at the bylaws and flipped through the pages. “It just
can’t.”

“Page five,” I said. “Robert’s Rules of Order concurs. I can find the section number
if you’d like.”

Claudia didn’t answer; she was too busy running her finger down the text on page five,
muttering as she went. “Nominate . . . office of . . . multiple . . . PTA.” Her finger
stopped right where I knew it would.

After a moment, her chin went up. Grim-faced, she looked out at the people in the
audience, one by one. “All right, then,” she said. “We’ll vote.”

“By secret ballot,” I said.

“Oh, absolutely,” she said, smiling.

I watched her smile turn into more of a smirk and wondered what she was up to. Coercion
by narrow-eyed glare? Telepathic mind control? Please. But Claudia looked far too
confident for my comfort. What if . . . ? I shook my head and concentrated on the
task at hand.

In short order, Claudia, Randy, and I rounded up paper, ripped the pieces into quarters,
wrote down the names of both candidates on each one, folded each ballot in half, and
passed one to each PTA member in the room.

There was a rustle while women fished through purses for pens, a few murmurings as
the men present asked to borrow a pen from their wives; then the ballots were refolded
and passed to the front, where they were deposited on the table in front of me.

I looked at the pile. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the ballots were given
to me. I was president, after all, but somehow it I wasn’t ready for this. Part of
me still thought the presidency thing was a mistake of some kind. Erica Hale was president.
She’d been PTA president for years. Surely she was going to walk in the room any second
and motion me aside.

Only that wasn’t going to happen. Erica had made it quite clear that she was done
with the PTA. “I’ll be in Italy from mid-August through October,” she’d said. “You’re
on your own. And don’t look like that. You’ll do fine.”

So. It was up to me to run this meeting and make sure it was run smoothly. I looked
at the ballots and reached out to take the first one.

“You think you’re the one who should count?” Claudia asked.

My hand froze.

“Don’t the bylaws have something in them about counting votes?”

I revised my earlier fantasy involving Claudia and a distant island. It didn’t have
to be far away. A close one would do. And it didn’t even have to be an island. It
just had to be somewhere that Claudia was and I wasn’t.

“We’ll all count,” I said. “You, me, and Randy; we’ll each make a tally, then compare.
A triple check.”

She started to protest, but the audience was nodding in collective agreement. I felt
an odd rush of pleasure. Maybe I could do this. Maybe I wouldn’t want to crawl into
the back of the closet when I got home.

Turning to a fresh sheet on my legal pad, I wrote the names of both nominees at the
top and drew a vertical line down the middle of the page, dividing it in half. Tina
on the left, Summer on the right.

Out in the audience, murmurs of conversation started up and grew in volume. Marina
was asking Carol and Nick about their summer vacation to Nova Scotia, and Summer was
asking someone about an upcoming ski swap. Good. Being eyeballed throughout this process
wouldn’t have been good for my blood pressure.

An errant breeze made the ballots shift in their loose pile. If Tina won, it’d be
Claudia and Tina against Beth the entire school year. Randy would swing between being
a tying vote and a three-to-one vote in favor of whatever Claudia wanted to do, and
since Randy wasn’t big on confrontation, there’d be three-to-one votes from now until
June.

Icky didn’t begin to cover how I’d feel about that. Okay, maybe Claudia and I didn’t
disagree on everything. We agreed on some things. Like . . . like . . .

I gave up the effort, took a shallow breath, and reached for the first slip of paper.

•   •   •

A few short minutes later, I was steepling my fingers and dreaming more island dreams,
this time with me on the island along with my children, our cat, our dog, and an enormous
pile of books. My pleasant reverie was interrupted when Claudia and Randy handed their
tallies to me. I unfolded their papers and looked at their totals. Both agreed with
mine. Exactly.

I signed all three tallies and had Claudia and Randy also sign all three. Better to
cross the T’s with too long of a cross and dot the I’s with too big of a dot than
to be called up later for not doing things properly.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, and waited for the chatting to die down.

I could have used the gavel, but something in me balked at the idea. At the June meeting,
the one in which I’d been voted president, Erica had ceremoniously handed me her gavel.
“Use it wisely,” she said, smiling, “but not too well.” Since I wasn’t the gavel-banging
type, I didn’t want to use it at all. Before tonight’s meeting started, I’d felt like
a poseur pulling it out of the diaper bag and setting it on the table. Me as president
was weird enough. Me wielding a gavel was ridiculous.

When everyone was facing front, I stood.

For a moment, I didn’t say anything. All eyes were upon me, and surprisingly, I didn’t
feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want to speak fast and sit down as quickly as I could,
I didn’t feel as if I were undergoing a sort of Marina-induced torture, and I had
an odd confidence that I wasn’t going to say anything deathly embarrassing in the
next two minutes.

Wonders, truly, never cease.

“I’d like,” I said, “to announce the name of the new secretary of Tarver Elementary’s
PTA.”

Chapter 2

I
looked at the nominees for PTA secretary. Tina and Summer had similar expressions
on their faces: two parts apprehension and one part excitement. How could you not
want to win, once you’re running for an office? How could you not be nervous about
the possibility of winning?

“And this year’s secretary will be . . .” Maybe it was Marina’s presence that made
me do it. Or maybe it was the teensy-weensy, almost nonexistent part of me that wanted
to be in show business. For whatever reason, I took a dramatic pause and looked around
the room, taking in the caught breaths and eager faces.

“This year’s PTA secretary will be . . . Summer Lang.”

A smattering of light applause went around the room. Claudia drew a long line across
the agenda item and didn’t say anything. Randy nodded sideways at the chair next to
him. “All yours,” he said.

“Tonight, you mean?” Summer’s straight brown hair seemed to straighten a bit more.
“Like right now?”

I sensed that Claudia’s mouth was about to open. “Yes,” I said, speaking quickly so
that Summer could be inaugurated without a snide comment. “Go ahead.”

“Oh. Okay.” Summer stood slowly, walked to the front of the room slowly, and sat down
the same way. She looked at the audience. Blinked. Looked at the table. “Oh,” she
said. “I don’t—”

But I was way ahead of her. “Here.” I passed down my extra legal pad and a pen. The
secretary’s copy of the agenda was already in front of her. “Do your best to take
notes.” I gestured at the ancient tape recorder on the table, doing its creaky best
to record everything we said. “If you miss something, this should help.”

“Um. Good. Thanks, I mean.” She uncapped the pen, drew a little squiggle, peered at
the mark she’d made, and gave herself a small nod.

I tried not to beam like a proud parent. Summer would do fine. And I would never tell
a soul what the vote count had been. Did anyone need to know that Tina had received
all of two votes? No, they did not. Tina wasn’t my favorite person by any means, but
no one needed to be smacked with a defeat like that.

Then I started wondering who had cast those two votes.

The only certainty was Claudia. If Randy had truly grunted assent for Tina’s nomination,
wouldn’t he have voted for her? And if he had, that meant Tina hadn’t voted for herself.
But if Tina
had
voted for herself, that meant Randy . . .

I shook my head. There was no point in thinking about it. Claudia’s attempt to stack
the PTA board had failed. Full stop. Time to move on.

“Okay, folks,” I said. “If you’ll look at your agendas, you’ll see that the next item
is PTA financial investments. The storybook project is generating enough money that
we might want to consider investing a portion of it in something other than a savings
account that makes us basically nothing in interest.”

“What kind of investments?” Nick Casassa asked.

“Exactly what we need to find out,” I said. “We have a guest tonight who will give
us a short course in investments for nonprofit organizations.” I nodded to the man
sitting in the back of the room who’d been wearing a bemused expression for the last
fifteen minutes. “This is Dennis Halpern, a Madison-based financial consultant. Dennis
recently opened an office here in Rynwood. He’s also the author of a book on investing
and was gracious enough to agree to speak to us. Dennis, thanks for sitting through
the first part of our meeting. Welcome.”

“Thank you, Beth.” Dennis made his way forward to the teacher’s desk. The four board
members screeched our chairs around to face him.

He was sixtyish, average height, slope-shouldered, and the fat around his midsection
was starting to droop over his belt. Unimpressive physical stature aside, he projected
an air of intelligence and alertness.

I squinted at him, trying to figure out how he did that, and came to the conclusion
that it was what his eyes were doing. He was paying attention not only to everyone,
but to everything. His gaze flicked over the posters tacked up on the wall, taking
in the map of the United States, an exploded diagram of the parts of a skyscraper,
and pictures of Yellowstone National Park. I saw him take note of the flowers and
books on the teacher’s desk, the box in the back corner labeled
LOST AND FOUND
, and saw how he quickly scanned each face in the room.

An observant man, I thought, and was pleased that I’d been able to talk him into attending
the meeting.

“So,” he said. “I hear you folks have a lot of money.”

Marina thrust her fist into the air. “We’re rich! We’re wealthy!”

“Comfortably well off, perhaps,” Dennis said. “But not rich.”

Randy moved his chair around a little farther, making the feet screech horribly. “Richer
than a lot of PTAs.”

“Which is why I’m here.” Dennis leaned back against the desk. “Your president asked
me to talk about possible investments.”

“Is that legal?” Claudia asked. “I mean, can we even do that with PTA money?”

Dennis nodded. “Good question. My advice is to run options past your attorney. That
way you can get a legal opinion before a decision is finalized.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it. Erica. As a retired attorney, she’d always provided
the PTA with legal counsel. Was she going to charge us for advice, now that she was
off the PTA? If so, how much? And why hadn’t I thought about this before? There was
no way I was qualified to lead this group. I had no idea what I was doing and—

Stop that,
I told myself.
Cut it out right now. You’re president and people are depending on you. So . . . figure
it out.

“But that can wait,” Dennis said easily, talking over my small crisis of confidence.
“All I want to do tonight is present a few simple options.”

“I like simple,” Randy said.

Dennis laughed. “You’re not alone. And that is certainly something to consider as
we move along in this decision-making process.”

“I have a question.” Carol raised her hand. “What are we going to do with all that
money? I mean, before we invest it somewhere, shouldn’t we think about what we want
to do?”

“Yeah,” Claudia said. “It doesn’t make sense to invest money if we’re just going to
take it out and spend it. We might have to pay penalties.”

Why hadn’t I seen this coming? If I could have turned back time, I would have gone
back about ten minutes and told everyone that tonight was just for informational purposes,
that educating ourselves about investments would be a good thing, that once we knew
the possibilities, we could make a well-informed decision about what would be best
for the PTA.

Tina’s hand shot up. “My mom? She took money out of her 401(k) once and had to pay
all sorts of penalties. If the PTA did that, it’d probably be a crime or something,
wouldn’t it? I mean, public money, right? You can’t be doing that.”

I wanted to bang my head against the table.

Dennis didn’t flinch. The man, clearly, was a professional. “Helping you understand
different investment vehicles is the reason I’m here.”

“Vehicles?” Natalie’s friend asked, frowning. “We’re investing in cars?”

Yes, it was true. Inviting Dennis to speak had been one of my worst ideas ever. Worse
than my idea of painting the family room lime green and way worse than the day I’d
decided it would be a good idea to take Spot to the bookstore. Not quite as bad as
the time I’d chosen to eat the slightly off-color chip dip in the back of the refrigerator,
but it had to be close.

Claudia gave a wheezing cough.

“I think we should decide what we’re going to do with the money,” Tina said.

“Good idea,” Claudia said quickly, and I got the sneaking suspicion that Tina had
been primed to speak up on cue. “We should buy new soccer goals. And we have lots
of money to pay for new playground equipment. I found this place online that has these
really great slides. And we could even pay for some special-needs equipment.”

“All worthy projects,” Dennis said. “But if you’d like to have a sustainable base
for—”

Summer raised her hand. “I think we should pay for a music teacher.”

“We applied to the Tarver Foundation for that,” Claudia said.

“And they still haven’t made a decision. We have the money, why should we wait for
them?”

“Because that’s not something the PTA should pay for,” Claudia snapped.

Summer put her chin up. “I’m guessing a whole bunch of people don’t agree with you.
And what’s the PTA’s mission, anyway? To promote the health, well-being, and educational
successes of our kids through strong parent, family, and community involvement.”

What Summer had said was one of PTA National’s values, not the mission statement,
but I was impressed, nonetheless.

“I don’t see how buying soccer goals fits into that,” Summer said, shaking her head.
“I just don’t.”

“And I don’t see how a music teacher fits into it,” Claudia said.

“I do,” Carol said.

Tina turned to look at her. “Well, I don’t.”

In one sudden surge, the room erupted with sound. Claudia was telling Summer that
if she (Summer) didn’t know how important soccer was to the health of children that
her children must have no athletic ability at all. Summer was giving it right back
to her, saying that anyone with an ounce of sense understood the importance of music
and the arts to a child’s development. Randy, stuck between them, was turning his
head back and forth, trying to sneak in a short word every so often. His bursts of
“It’s—,” “Both are—,” and “Don’t—” were completely ignored by the two women.

Out in the audience, Tina and Carol were going at it hammer and tongs over the merits
of swim lessons for toddlers. Nick was volubly discussing designated hitters with
a young father who’d never once said a word at a meeting. Red-faced and shouting,
they were getting to their feet with clenched fists. Marina was alternating between
telling the mother on her left that buying a drum set for her daughter would be an
excellent idea and debating the father on her right about the best Green Bay Packer
quarterback ever.

I looked at the melee in disbelief. All this, over a disagreement on how to spend
money? What was wrong with these people? And it was going on much too long. Why wasn’t
Erica doing anything about it? She never let a meeting get out of hand like this,
why wasn’t she—

Oh. Right.

As Tina shrieked out, “There should be laws to keep people like you from even having
kids,” I wrapped my fingers around the wooden handle.

When Carol called back, “It’s people like me that keep people like you from becoming
a menace to society,” I raised the gavel and swung.

Crack!

A few sets of eyes darted glances my way, but there was no decrease in the din.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

“Order!” I shouted. “That’s enough, people! This is not the time or place for this
kind of argument!”

The noise level went down several notches, then fell away to complete silence. I realized
that I was standing up, one hand flat on the table, the other curled around the upraised
gavel, leaning forward in a pose of intimidation. When that had happened, I had no
idea.

“We have a guest,” I said pointedly. “This is a sad way to introduce him to the Tarver
PTA.” I heard a few mumbles that might have been apologies, but I was too angry to
pay attention. “And what kind of example are we setting for our children? Is this
the way we want them to act?” I sat down with a thump, disgusted by the whole group.

“We’re going to take an unscheduled break,” I said. “The meeting will reconvene in
ten minutes.” Since I still had the gavel in my hand, I gave it another crack. “Ten
minutes,” I repeated, and pushed my chair away from the table.

I turned to Dennis. “I am so sorry.”

He smiled. “Don’t be. Meetings are rarely so entertaining.”

Spoken like a true bystander. “Well, I still apologize. We don’t usually behave like
this.”

He brushed off my apology and asked for directions to the closest restroom. I pointed
left for the nearest boys’ room and pointed right for the closest adult-male-sized
facility. I watched him walk out the classroom door and turn unhesitatingly right.

By that time, the room was mostly empty. Other than Natalie’s friend and Whitney Heer,
who were huddled together in a back corner, and Randy, still in his seat and opening
a bag of cashews, the only other person in the room was Marina.

“Well, that was fun,” she said, a grin brightening her plump face.

I looked at her, wondering for the millionth time how we’d ever become best friends.

“Oh, come on.” She hitched her chair close enough to the front table to rest her elbows
on the agenda. “You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that at least a little.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Quit that,” she said. “Where’s a video camera when you need one, anyway? You should
have seen yourself up there, whacking that hammer on the table.”

“Gavel,” I murmured.

“‘Not the time or place,’” she quoted me. “Ha! ‘A sad way to introduce our guest.’”
She threw her head back and laughed. “And the way you stood up and looked at all of
us? It was wonderful.”

“Glad I could bring some pleasure into your life,” I said dryly.

“Only thing is, you could have let it go a little longer. I really wanted to see who
was going to win, Tina or Carol. I had no idea Carol had such a temper. Did you?”

Randy
umph
ed to his feet. “Carol’s just like her mama,” he said, and walked out.

Marina and I looked at each other, and for some reason, we burst into laughter. When
our giggles subsided, I flicked a glance to the back corner, but the two women were
deep in a discussion regarding cupcake recipes.

“When Tina brought up the topic of how to spend the money,” I said, “I got the feeling
that—”

“That Claudia had loaded her with the question? That Claudia’s obviously fake cough
was a cue for her to ask it? Why, yes, Virginia, there was a plot afoot. Clear as
the freckles on your pretty little face.”