Miranda's War (13 page)

She introduced herself to everyone at the school, parents picking up their kids, onlookers stopping by on their bikes to get an early glimpse of what an emergency town meeting looked like, and Garrett Tristan's film crew already setting the scene for what was to follow.

But nobody needed to be told who she was. Everyone knew her by sight from all the Internet activity. The feedback was either positive or completely undecided. Three people even used the phrase “white elephant” to describe the Pierce Estate.

At 4:00 she went home to shower and change for the reception. She set her iPod to song #118, “The Girl From Ipanema,” her favorite piece of jazz. Archer once told her she was that girl when they were dating. He'd been captivated. It was physical and intellectual. They would talk for hours about everything: literature, wine, their favorite cities, the Spanish Steps in Rome, the Tower of London. She knew the major battle sites in England. He'd never met any woman who did. She tried to lift a wallet from Neiman Marcus one night, for the thrill, she had said. He caught her just as they were about to leave the store. She confided her impulse-control disorder. Archer then had a decision to make, and decided he could live with it. She was too attractive, too smart and just too much fun not to be around.

The sound circulated through all the speakers throughout the house. She tried on different things, color schemes, tops, bottoms, and decided to wear an eggplant ruched jacket with a matching skirt, several strands of pearls and scrimshaw earrings.

She went into Cody's room, found him playing a computer game with Asa and told them she was leaving.

“You know this is the big night. I want you to know I'm doing this for Lincoln and for you.”

“Dad says it's an ego trip,” said Cody, looking up from the screen.

“Is that what you think?”

He demurred.

“You can watch it live, we're streaming at townoflincoln.org, or you can come over with Dad at 7.”

“He's not going; so I guess I'll watch it from here.”

“Aren't you going to wish me luck?”

“Good luck, Mom. Knock 'em dead.”

Asa jumped up and gave her a big hug. Her eyes filled with tears, and she closed them so he wouldn't see.

The parking lot was full when she arrived five minutes later. There was a black limousine, presumably for Garrett Tristan. She went inside and for the first time experienced warmth in the building instead of isolation. Everyone in Garrett's party surrounded her. He was dark-complexioned, lean, and as he leaned in for a kiss on her cheek, she noticed the redness around the eyes of a man who'd had too much to drink every night for thirty years.

“Madame Dalton.”

“Mr. Tristan, welcome to Lincoln.”

“It's most appealing, much like some of the finer villages in my native Aquitaine.”

“I've been to a few, and that is high praise. Have you met my colleagues on the Conservation Commission?”

She looked around the room and saw everyone except Karl.

“I've spoken to them all. But this is a Miranda production in every sense. I want to know what you're thinking and feeling right now.”

Three cameras engulfed her from different angles; Bayard edged in from behind. Julia looked in her direction waiting for some sort of pronouncement to set the tone.

“I'm anxious; who wouldn't be? But I know this town. The people will approve.”

He asked her if she felt like Hester Prynne.

She laughed.

“Not if the vote goes my way.”

“There's a rumor you are showing a film tonight, true?”

“True.”

“Tell me about it?”

“Sorry, you'll have to wait.”

“Is it provocative?” he asked with a slight smile.

“Sure is.”

“Ah, and the filmmaker?”

“He'll be there.”

“What have you said to Karl Anderson since he issued the decree?”

“I've held my ground. What has he said to you?” she asked.

Tristan smiled again and moved his crew to Julia.

Stephen Rokeby walked in and introduced himself around the room. They made eye contact but he did not speak to her. He wasn't supposed to arrive until the meeting was underway. Eventually Tristan reached him and the film crew followed. And then it was time to go in.

Chapter Twenty-Six

They took their places on the stage: a long table on one side for the five Selectmen, a long table on the other side for the five Commissioners, with Miranda at the very end. Karl was at the opposite end, close enough to the Selectmen for eye contact. The town moderator stood between the two tables at a podium and explained the rules. Karl and Miranda would each have thirty minutes. Commissioner Dalton had decided to show a video for half of her time. There would be questions, and then a vote on the two resolutions. Every seat in the auditorium was taken and the aisles were filled with standing residents. The crowd was restive as the temperature rose by the minute. They were fixated on her. And she was terrified of slipping up, of seeming shrewish, of allowing her contempt for Karl to come through.

Karl was recognized. He talked about the mission statement, the privilege of working “cooperatively for the public good,” and how he'd done it for twenty-three twenty-four years as a Selectman, and a member of three commissions, rising to chairmanship twelve years ago. He didn't need to dwell on his day jobs; everybody knew what they were.

“I appointed Mrs. Dalton to the Commission a few months ago. The circumstances of her appointment are unique. They need to be sketched out in detail. She had applied to serve on the Conservation Commission every time we had an opening since she and her family moved into town. I turned her down. I come from the Elliot Richardson school of public service. A person should live here long enough to understand this unique town before trying to serve it. And service should begin by listening to one's fellow citizens. You don't join an important body with an agenda. I was a federal judge for a number of years. Some of my cases involved weighty constitutional issues. Were people's constitutional rights being abridged because of police misconduct? Could I compel the Mayor of Boston to be deposed for ordering the police to arrest demonstrators? I had my own beliefs, and if I were free to make constitutional law, I would have ruled more often against the government. But I wasn't. My job was to follow precedents set down by higher courts.

“The people I want on this Commission are open-minded and aware they serve the town at a middling level. We're not the Selectmen. We don't pass ordinances. We're certainly not state officials. Our job is to manage the property owned by the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust. There's some room for disagreement about how to do that, but not very much. Trustees carry out the wishes of those who created the trust. Anyone who joins this body and thinks they can change the way this town operates is not fulfilling his or her obligation. They should run for higher office or write an op-ed.

“Which brings me back to Mrs. Dalton. Every time I turned down her application to join the Commission, I wrote her and recommended she attend our meetings for a couple of more years and listen to what was going on in town. She never did. She would turn up now and again at Town Hall, but she didn't get involved with any of the smaller boards and commissions. There are lots of them. Any resident of Lincoln who wants to serve the town is welcome. We'll find a place for them. But she wanted a high-profile appointment or nothing.

“This year she told people she planned to run for the Board of Selectmen if I didn't appoint her to succeed the late Maynard Collins. My first instinct was, go ahead and let her run. I wasn't in the habit of being extorted. I also thought if she threw her hat into the ring for Selectman it would turn into an undignified slugfest. She would have waged a high-profile but undignified fight, slinging mud, making unfounded accusations.

“We're above that in Lincoln. Chairman Cahill was so concerned, he asked me if I thought she had the credentials to serve on the Commission. My answer was she has splendid qualifications on paper. But a résumé does not tell the whole story. Talk to references. That's one thing I've learned over my long career. There is no substitute for fact-finding. Every judge should have the parties and their lawyers before them a few times before deciding a case. You learn a lot about what's really going on. And every professor should call on every student several times in a semester.

“Let me say that in checking out her references, those she gave us and some she didn't, I had some very delicate conversations about Mrs. Dalton. She has had difficulty with those around her in several settings: social, in charitable work and even closer to home. She was asked to leave two boards.”

His voice trailed off as the sentence concluded. He was so uneasy that he blushed, pulled off his black bifocals and wiped his brow. Miranda actually felt a tinge of respect for him. This was as close as he could come to being less than saintly. He would not cross the line, not even against her.

“I acquiesced to Chairman Cahill's request and appointed Mrs. Dalton to the Commission three months ago. We're here tonight because Mrs. Dalton is just incapable of working cooperatively or in the public interest. She answers to herself, not to our mission statement, to the municipal code or to me. Her first act on the Commission was to cite the owners of the famous Trapelo Road barn with the peace sign because it was, in her view, out of compliance with the color code. This was confrontational, unnecessary and self-aggrandizing. We all wondered what her second act could be. It was to sell the Pierce Estate without approval. She went on her own to New England Properties and solicited an offer for $14.5 million. Then she met with two colleagues individually and sold the idea to them. By the time I found out, it was a
fait accompli
. There was no public debate, no feasibility study and to this day no explanation of what we will do with the money. Mrs. Dalton has designs on it. I can tell the town that. But she is vague. She wants to buy more conservation land. There are no details. Again no feasibility study, no public debate, none of our usual courses have been followed for such a transaction. We have never operated so surreptitiously before. The mission statement says we will conduct our business in public and for the benefit of the town. If this town meeting really wants this carried out, then it cannot have me on the Board. I cannot and will not work with her. And if it wants Mrs. Dalton's furtive deal-making and showmanship, then it's time for me to exit. Instead, I ask that you vote for the resolutions.”

There was applause, first gradual and then it built like a wave. Miranda was overcome with numbing fear for the first time in many years. He turned around, met her gaze momentarily, seemed quite self-satisfied and then glanced over at the Selectmen, all of whom were applauding. He took his seat and nodded.

“Mrs. Dalton, it's your moment,” said the moderator.

Julia whispered, “Good luck” into her ear and grabbed her right hand. She stood and walked up to the podium looking out at the sea of people. They were deeply skeptical of her. She thought they would be bored by Karl, that he would come off as stuffy and she could wow them with a tech-savvy retort. Not so.

“My fellow citizens of Lincoln, these are not ordinary times,” she began in a steady voice. “The legislature is considering something ominously titled the anti-snob zoning bill. That would mean we can't zone over one-half of an acre, and this town is going to change drastically in the next two decades. When property is sold it will have to be subdivided. Mr. Anderson says this is not our business. I think it is. Our mission statement doesn't tell us we need to plan for a state-sponsored attack, but I'm not a formalist. I don't read documents literally. The town established the Conservation Commission to conserve as much of Lincoln from development as possible. We've done that fairly well for forty-four years. Our town is unique. We're semi-rural and only twelve miles from Boston. But what are we supposed to do now that the enemy is the state? Hire a lobbyist? Mr. Anderson prefers not to even think about it.

“Why sell the Pierce Estate? Because it loses money and needs repairs. The Pierce family left it to the Commission to preserve. We rent it out for weddings from time to time, but we don't market it well. Admittedly, that's not in our mission statement. Now it needs $243,000 in repairs. That just won't pass any cost-benefit analysis. Anybody dedicated to preserving as much of the town as possible would be derelict in not considering a sale. I wonder how many of you would maintain a vacation home that you barely used and was about to cost that much money. Why did I solicit an offer secretly? Because Mr. Anderson wouldn't allow any public discussion of anything that deviates from strict construction of the mission statement. Because it does not specifically state we can sell anything. But it does require us to preserve as much land as we can. So what do we do?

“Formalism, adherence to a document that was written by people who are no longer here to judge our situation, all is repugnant to me. I didn't join this Commission to read our trustees' reports with an accountant's eye. We have an accountant for that. We don't have much cash on hand and retailers are looking at buying land along Route 2, and this anti-snob zoning bill is pending. It's my mission to deal with those realities. Now I would like to present a short movie that depicts how we got here.”

The lights went down, she stepped away from the podium and the screen filled with beautiful aerial images of Lincoln on a sunny day: the library surrounded by rolling meadows of conservation land and well-dressed people coming out of the Unitarian church, Flint's Pond with a single sailboat and fishing rod, bicyclists, hikers and horses on the paths. Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 played in the background.

“This is only twelve miles from Boston,” Miranda narrated. “This town is the product of long-term planning in response to sprawl.” There were images of a Conservation Commission meeting, of town meeting, of the headquarters of the Ford Foundation, which had underwritten part of their budget, of academics going in and out of ivy-covered buildings in Harvard Yard.