Chapter 14: The Board Meeting
The Willow Bend clubhouse was built for parties of forty, and on a Tuesday in July it held ninety people and one long table at which the board sat like defendants not yet told the charge.
Dan had not called the meeting. The bylaws had — sixty-one signatures on a member petition, collected by Eleanor Vance, who had a clipboard and a lifetime’s practice at refusing no, had forced the board to put "landscaping enforcement practices" on the agenda. The room smelled of coffee and folding chairs. Lily had wanted to come; Priya had ruled it a school night for civic upheaval, and Dan arrived alone, glad of it, with the file in a black binder, its tabs colored like a seed catalog.
Janice Okafor called the meeting to order in a voice that did not shake, which Dan admired, because her hands did. Brenda sat at the center of the table in a cream blazer, a self-bought gavel by her water glass, smiling the smile of a woman who had chaired a hundred meetings and meant to chair this one into the ground.
"We’ll have order," she said. "We have a process, and the process—"
"The process begins with the item," Hal Pruitt said mildly, from the far end, and the room shifted at hearing Hal go first. "Mr. Whitaker petitioned. Let him speak."
Dan stood. He had taught photosynthesis to eleven-year-olds for fifteen years; he knew attention is a garden you do not shout at. He opened the binder and began, page by page, the way Naomi had rehearsed him, timer and all, in her office.
"Page one," he said. "The survey of my lot, recorded with the county, showing six trees inside my line." He laid it down. "Page two. The violation notice I received in April, alleging the trees violated the uniformity guidelines." He laid it down. "Page three. The minutes of the May board meeting — this board — suspending that notice pending a full review that never happened." A murmur, quickly gone. "Page four. The GreenEdge work order for May fourteenth, for my address, describing my trees as non-conforming and authorizing their removal."
He held that page a moment longer than the others, not high, not dramatically — just long enough.
"You’ll see it carries one signature," he said. "Mine is not on it. The board’s minute reference box is empty. The second signature line is empty. Page five is the invoice the association paid." He set the last page down with the others, and the five pages lay in a row like a hand of cards no one wanted to pick up. "I came because those are my trees, and this is your paper, and I would like the two reconciled in public."
The room went very quiet. It was not an angry quiet. Dan knew angrier rooms, from school board budget fights, and this was different — it was the quiet of ninety people doing arithmetic at the same time and arriving, together, at the same sum.
Brenda broke it with a laugh that did not find company. "Well," she said. "I think we can clear this up. Presidents have discretionary authority for maintenance matters; that has always been this board’s practice. There was a clerical misunderstanding in the filing, and frankly, Daniel, I am sorry your feelings—"
"My trees," Dan said, gently. "Not my feelings."
"—your trees were under guideline review, which this board—" She reached for the gavel, set it down again. "The board approved the uniformity program in principle. Everyone in this room wants a neighborhood that looks cared for. Some of us have carried that work alone for years."
Then Janice Okafor spoke, from the table, in her secretary’s voice, the voice of the minutes.
"Point of information," she said. Her own binder was open, her pen uncapped, and she was looking at the binder, not at Brenda, which somehow made it worse. "I have kept the minutes of this board for four years. I would like it on the record that I cannot find the vote." She turned a page. "I have looked under landscaping, maintenance, new business, and the president’s report, for every meeting since March. So I am asking, on the record, as secretary: when did this board vote to remove the Whitaker trees? If we voted, I failed to record it, and that is a serious error I should correct tonight. And if we did not vote—" she looked up at last, "—then I would like to know whose decision it was, while we are all still here to hear it."
Nobody moved. The coffee urn ticked as it cooled. Brenda’s smile had gone somewhere to be repaired, and what was left was older and tired and, for the first time since Dan had known her, without an answer prepared.
"The meeting will recess for ten minutes," Hal said into the silence, and nobody argued, and the chairs scraped like a wave going out.