Poison at the PTA (7 page)

T
uesday afternoon’s outing with the kids went a little better, as it involved more doing and less talking. I splurged for admission to a water park and we spent the afternoon and part of the evening running and splashing and sliding. Dinner was sub sandwiches on the way home and we fell into bed exhausted but happy.

Wednesday’s fun was more low-key: I picked the kids up at their schools and drove them home. After first getting promises of dish-doing, I let the youngsters each pick what they most wanted for lunch. Jenna wanted a three-cheese grilled sandwich and tomato soup; Oliver wanted macaroni and cheese. By the time we’d cooked, eaten, and cleaned up, their father was in the driveway, having left work early to spend some extra time with his children.

I gave both kids a hug and a kiss and waved at them from the kitchen window as Richard backed out of the driveway. Then I went back to the store.

“What are you doing here?” Lois asked. Her attire was a simple cable-knit sweater over brown tweed pants. The only eye-catching thing about the ensemble was a bracelet of ancient pull tabs from soda cans. That morning she’d said everything she wore came from the seventies. I’d desperately wanted to ask about her underwear, but the phone had rung and the moment had passed.

Now I pulled off my gloves and shoved them into my coat pockets. “I work here, remember? Matter of fact, if I recall correctly, the owner of the store and I share the same name.”

“You’re supposed to be spending time with your children this afternoon, not working.”

“Richard took the kids and they won’t be back home until tomorrow after school.” My former husband lived in a three-bedroom condo and kept the kids overnight on Wednesdays and his weekends. From all accounts, they spent a lot of time playing video games and watching television while Richard fussed with paperwork from his office, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

Lois grunted. “Then why didn’t you stay home and take a nap or something? I told you we had the store covered.”

Before I could come up with a good response, the bells on the front door jingled and a tall, wide, bald man walked in. Saved by the bells. “Aha!” He pointed a long Ghost of Christmas Past finger at me. “There she is!”

“Hello, Glenn.” I eyed the insurance man warily. Glenn Kettunen was funny, smart, and interesting. He also couldn’t keep a secret if the lives of ten thousand people depended on it. “What’s up?”

He sidled close. “I hear you have the inside scoop on what happened to Cookie Van Doorne. Tell all to your Uncle Glenn, dearie.”

“What makes you think I know anything?”

He spread his hands, palms up. “Come on, Beth. Everybody knows you took Cookie home that night, that you went to see her in the hospital, and that Gus came in here to talk to you the other morning. Patient man that I am”—he crossed one ankle over the other, stuck his hands in his pockets, looked at the ceiling, and hummed for three seconds before breaking the pose—“I’ve waited two days for you to seek me out. Now here I am, still waiting.” He drummed his fingers on the glass counter.

There was a petty part of me that wanted to let him wait until doomsday, but I relented and said, “It was an accidental overdose.”

“Overdose of what?” Glenn asked. “Heroin? Crack?” He rubbed his hands. “Meth? Come on, you gotta tell me.”

“Acetaminophen,” I said. “Gus said it’s actually fairly easy to overdose on it. It’s in a lot of other medications and if you’re susceptible you can OD and not even know what you’re doing.”

Glenn’s face had gone still. “Plain old acetaminophen? I take that stuff all the time.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” I reassured him, “as long as you don’t take too much. If you have any other meds, check to see if it’s in there. I’m sure you’re fine.” But my last words were said to his back because he was already rushing out the door.

Lois cackled. “Did you see the look on his face?” She slapped her thigh. “Never seen ol’ Glenn look so scared.”

Great. Now I’d started a panic.

And a very small part of me, way deep down inside, smiled.

•   •   •

That night was the regular January PTA meeting, the second meeting to have Claudia’s indelible stamp on it. During the November meeting, Claudia had insisted on adding “refreshments” to the agenda. “Food will add to the PTA camaraderie,” she’d stated. “We’ll get to know each other better.”

Treasurer Randy Jarvis, his mouth half-full of corn chips, had agreed. Secretary Summer Lang had shot me an apologetic look. “I like the idea.”

I didn’t. I thought it added even more burden to the already busy PTA members and had the potential to add pounds to my hips, but I’d been outvoted three to one on the topic of having coffee and some sort of dessert snack after every meeting.

In December I’d had the will to stay away from the Christmas cookies. Tonight, however, Carol Casassa had brought dark, gooey brownies. With walnuts.

There they were, on the far side of the classroom we commandeered for the meeting, on the table Claudia had persuaded Harry, Tarver’s janitor, to set up for us. The table sat directly underneath the cabinet that Claudia had coerced the classroom’s teacher to let us have Harry install. The cabinet was small, but large enough to hold coffee supplies, napkins, and the multitude of other items that went along with having refreshments. The only thing that didn’t fit in the cabinet was the coffeemaker itself, but Claudia had convinced the school to let us store it in the kitchen.

I called the meeting to order. All went smoothly until we came to the only agenda item of any real importance. “Storybook Sale Proceeds.”

Just under a year ago, the PTA had paired Tarver Elementary students with residents of Sunny Rest Assisted Living. The end product was a paperbound book telling the life stories of the residents as seen through the eyes of the children. Sales had done much better than expected. and for the first time ever, the Tarver PTA had serious money.

But, as everyone except me had probably anticipated, not all was rosy. Half of the PTA wanted to spend the money on sports-oriented projects. The other half wanted to spend the money on fine arts projects. The two viewpoints had split our group apart with name-calling and other conduct unbecoming to PTA members and I was past fed up with the entire mess.

I fingered the gavel’s handle and looked out at the group. It was like a church wedding with a twist: pro-sports on that side, pro–fine arts on the other. Marina sat on the artsy side, Tina Heller on the sports. Nick Casassa and his wife, Carol, sat on different sides. “As most of you know,” I began, “last fall we had two committees draw up two different plans for disbursement of the storybook monies. Each of you should have a copy in front of you.”

There was a rustling and all the heads went down.

“If you were on a committee,” I went on, “you’ll notice one thing—”

“Half our stuff is gone!” Tina said. “Where’s my suggestion for a zip line? And what about the climbing wall?”

“Where’s the line item for purchasing instruments?” Carol asked. “How can we build a strong music program without instruments?”

I’d known there would be objections, which was why I’d met with the rest of the PTA board an hour earlier to review this pared-down list. There had been grumblings, of course, but they’d seen the necessity.

“What both committees handed in was a wish list,” I said. “Even if we spent every dime of the storybook money, the PTA couldn’t afford half the total items.” To my left, I could feel Claudia stir, so I kept talking. “We have to be realistic. We have to be wise and we have to think of what will most benefit the children of Tarver, the children of today and the children of the future.”

“Exactly,” Claudia said into the pause I’d created when I stopped to draw in a breath. “That’s why—”

I gave up on getting a full breath and kept going. “That’s why I approached the Tarver Foundation with this.” I tapped the paper of short-listed projects. “The two top projects are new playground equipment and the hiring of a part-time music teacher for a minimum of five years. The next projects are an irrigated soccer field and the creation of a summer arts camp.”

The original lists had gone on and on. Accessible playground equipment. Hiring a full-time art teacher. A disc golf course on school property. A swimming pool. Having weekly dance instruction. Bus trips to Milwaukee and Chicago for everything from attending professional sporting events to attending ballets. The estimated dollar amounts had made my eyes bug out and I’d almost crunched both lists into cat toys and e-mailed the committees to start over again.

But I’d walked away from the fantasy lists, then gone back to them a few hours later with a fresh viewpoint. I’d told both committees they wouldn’t get everything they asked for, and had told them so more than once. I’d been on the fine arts committee myself and had had to rein them in from pie in the sky.

Now I put down the list and looked at the audience. “Yesterday I had an appointment with the Tarver Foundation and I have some good news. The foundation has agreed to match our funds. If we choose, we can fund all four of these projects.”

There was a short moment of pregnant silence, and then the room filled with applause and cheers and shouts of joy. I heard “Atta girl!” and “Bet even Erica couldn’t have done that,” which made my head swell with pride until I heard Claudia mutter to Randy that “If it’s that easy to get money, why haven’t we done it before?”

When the noise started to subside, Rachel Helmstetter waved for recognition. “Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but you said ‘
some
good news.’ Does that mean there’s also some bad?”

“Not bad bad,” I said. “Not exactly, anyway.”

The energy in the room whooshed out so fast I thought my ears might pop. What had been a happy band of PTA smiling members was now a glum group presenting me with a wall of stony silence.

“What does that mean?” Claudia asked.

“There are some strings.”

Simultaneously, the audience slid down in their chairs six inches.

“Not huge strings,” I hastened to add. “Just . . . foundation strings. They’re not horrible—really they’re not. We just have to be held accountable, and that seems reasonable to me. If the board votes to accept their offer, that is.” I nodded down at the other three board members.

“What do you mean, ‘accountable’?” Randy asked. As treasurer, he would be the one stuck with the bulk of the paperwork, and he knew it.

I checked my notes from yesterday’s meeting and outlined the basics of what the foundation wanted. Estimated costs, receipts, time sheets, weekly progress reports, monthly progress reports, quarterly progress reports, anticipated outcomes, estimated completion dates, actual completion dates, actual outcome, and unintended outcomes. All done on the computer, please, in the latest version of Excel.

Randy’s face remained placid. When I was done, he shrugged. “We can do all that.”

Claudia slapped the table with her open palm. “We can, but why should we have to? Don’t they trust us? We’re the PTA, for crying out loud! Do they really think we’re going to cheat them?”

I tried to soothe her. “Starting this year, the foundation has tightened up their grant disbursement policies. We’re no different than any other group that—”

“No different?” Claudia fairly shrieked. “Of course we’re different! We’re the PTA! We’re parents of the future parents. We’re here to do what’s best for our kids. How dare they question our honesty? If they’re going to call us thieves, why don’t they do it to our faces instead of through you?”

I let her talk. Interrupting Claudia in midrant would take more energy than I wanted to expend.

“Honestly, Beth, what were you thinking?” she went on. “You handled this all wrong. You should have shown them that we’re doing them a favor by giving them a chance to fund our projects, not gone to them all wishy-washy and pretty-please-give-us-your-spare-change.”

My eyebrows went up. Letting her talk was one thing. Letting her launch a personal attack was something else.

“And you shouldn’t have gone in the first place.” Claudia gave the table a thump with her fist. “If anyone was going to present anything to the foundation, it should have been the entire PTA board and it should have been after the entire membership voted on it.”

I flashed back to the meeting I’d had yesterday morning with the board of the Tarver Foundation. The very citified and straitlaced businesswomen and -men who wielded the power behind the foundation’s extremely deep pockets. The financially conservative people who didn’t waste their time on projects they didn’t deem worthy. The extremely proper people who didn’t care for hyperbole or exaggeration or any shade of gray. Picturing Claudia in front of that prim group brought the phrase “bull in a china shop” to mind. No way would the board have handed the PTA money after Claudia got done with her demands, and demands they would have been.

But she was right about one thing. I should have waited until the membership voted. And, if the situation had been as she described, I would have.

“My appointment with the foundation,” I said, making sure I was speaking loudly enough to be heard even by the father half-asleep in the back row, “was strictly for fact-finding. My only intention was to get information on applying for funding.”