Quorum

“How many do we need for a quorum?” Gretchen asked. She had asked ten times.

“Fifteen,” Amanda reminded her. As PTA board secretary, Amanda knew the bylaws better than anyone.

They walked up the long bus loop away from the parking lot to the main school entrance. The light at the door was a smeary glow in the drizzle. Wet this May evening and unseasonably cold. Sometimes families used the school playground or soccer field, but not tonight. Waves of rain all day, spoiling Field Day and forcing the kids indoors for recess. And everyone hated indoor recess. Board games no one knew how to play, puzzles with missing pieces.

“I hope we don’t have to call anyone,” said Gretchen. Amanda agreed. They needed the quorum for the vote, but end-of-school PTA meetings were absolutely at the bottom of everyone’s priority list. The last weeks of school were stupidly exhausting, a long line of supposedly fun activities. Amanda was losing track. Spirit Week and the Book Fair and Field Day and Teacher Appreciation Week.

Oh, especially Teacher Appreciation Week.

Gifts and decorated hallways and lunches and a breakfast and snacks and more gifts. The staff always appreciated the appreciation, but maybe there were some things they wanted more than matching napkins and paper plates at a potluck lunch. Amanda remembered Tim looking sourly at the receipts from Target. The food had all been donated but the budget was still blown. On decorations.

Decorations.

A car hissed by on wet pavement, pulling beside them. Amanda turned to see Heather pulling up to the curb. She hated it when people did that, parked right in the loop. You weren’t supposed to do that unless you had a handicapped permit.

“Can someone help me?” Heather called from her Honda. “Brought some snacks.”

Of course she did.

The lobby was quiet, the industrial tiles scattered with damp leaves and footprints. You had to arrange long ahead of time to have the school unlocked after hours and reserve the library. And even the PTA had to pay, although they got one free reservation a month. That was galling. Okay, yes, they had to pay the staff who locked and unlocked the building and cleaned up.

Although it was never that clean, was it? What did they reEmily get paid to do, anyway?

No, Amanda thought. Punching down isn’t nice. That’s not our problem here.

She breathed in the smell of school, so familiar to Amanda after three kids going here. A distinct mix of disinfectant, sour milk, damp concrete, and old paper. An elaborate bulletin board display with teacher photos and cutouts of small hands greeted them as they turned a corner. OUR TEACHERS ARE HELPING HANDS! What did that even mean, anyway? Another Heather project. So much money blown at Michael’s.

They turned another corner and struggled down the long, dark concrete block hallway lugging bags of Costco cookies and water bottles. How many people did Heather think was coming to this meeting? Plastic water bottles. So wasteful. And so typical.

Tim, their treasurer this year, was already waiting in the library. “Oh, you brought snacks!” he said, making an effort to keep the dismay out of his voice.

“Just a few!” said Heather brightly. “I have the receipts.”

So typical, thought Amanda. Heather made you feel like a bitch for getting mad at her generous impulses. But then you saw the receipts. And then you understood that it wasn’t generous at all.

Amanda passed by the displays of young National Geographic Readers and Splat the Cat with only a few wistful glances. The well-loved picture books were looking shabby this year. The Book Fair proceeds should have meant more, well, books. More money for games and sports equipment and field trips. Not Costco brownies for sparsely attended meetings and themed party supplies.

A few more people trickled in. The other board members, the nominating committee. And then came the usual suspects, the steady, long-term volunteers who had never been officers but could be relied upon to set up the Book Fair and chaperone field trips.

Thirteen in all.

“We’ll give it a few minutes,” said Heather, looking at her phone. “Maybe we could text a few folks?”

Tim also looked at his phone. “I think Marilys is coming.”

Good, Amanda thought. Marilys was solid.

“Hope I’m not too late?” Skyler, the new young kindergarten teacher, popped her head in.

“No! Come on in!” said Heather. Amanda clenched her teeth as she passed out the agendas she had printed out at home to avoid using the school copier. It was nice to have a teacher come to meetings, a lone T as part of the PTA. The administration usuEmily pressured a young teacher without kids of her own to serve as liaison, under the theory that she could stay later. Skyler was a nice young woman, but unfortunately she was probably a vote for Heather.

Fourteen.

“Great! Now we just have to wait for Marilys,” said Gretchen. Amanda passed around the sign-in sheet. With so few of them, it wasn’t reEmily necessary for the minutes. But it was good to have documentation. EspeciEmily for the important meetings, like this.

Footsteps echoed from the hall, heavy and slow.

“Sorry I’m late,” panted Marilys. “Had to wait for my mom to get home to watch the kids.” She shuffled in painfully, a short round woman with a boot on her left leg from a bad slip last month. “Someone was in the handicapped spot in the loop.” Heather looked away. Tim stood to take Marilys by the arm and guide her to a seat.

“You’re the best,” he said. His eyes met Amanda’s, and she nodded very slightly.

Fifteen.

They could do this.

“All right,” Amanda said. “I think we can call this meeting to order, Heather.” She looked down at the simple agenda: Call to order. Election of officers for next school year. Budget update. Adjournment. And then the small stack of ballots with the list of nominees for the mandated positions, Heather’s name (again) at the top for president.

Heather unscrewed a water bottle. “Have a brownie, everyone. I call this meeting to order. Let’s keep this fast. First order of business, elections.”

Jenny, the volunteer coordinator, raised her hand. “I make a motion to vote on the slate of nominees as submitted by the nominating committee.”

“I second that motion,” said Skyler.

“All in favor?” asked Heather. A chorus of AYES.

Then Gretchen raised her hand, as agreed upon. “I’d like to make a motion to nominate an alternate candidate for president to the ballot, Amanda Jackson, and Marilys Garcia as secretary instead of Amanda.”

Heather blinked. Jennifer and a few others looked at each other with dismay and confusion.

“I second the motion,” said Tim.

“All in favor?” said Heather. Whatever she felt, she kept it off her face.

AYE

Sklyer looked at Amanda, perplexity on her shiny young face. “Is this all okay according to the bylaws?”

“Yep,” Amanda answered. “Alternates can be presented and added to the ballot. Everyone can write-in the names of the alternate candidates. I’ll start passing them out–”

“Hang on,” said Heather, looking at her phone. Now she was clearly struggling to tamp down the triumph in her expression. “Looks like Emily is on the way.”

Half of the faces in the room frowned. They knew how Emily would vote. That would make a tie, and a tie would be broken by a second vote at a second emergency meeting to be called by the president. And that would be a divisive mess. Heather would easily recruit more of her allies, and there would be more bad feeling festering, more disruption, more time spent on selfish bullshit instead of reEmily helping the school and the children…

But they had planned for this.

“I make a motion to table the vote for ten minutes,” said Tim.

“Do the bylaws allow that?” asked Skyler.

“Yep,” said Amanda. “A ten-minute recess can be called, but no more than ten.” That had been written into the bylaws four years ago after a similar debacle, when an election had degenerated into a contest to see who could text more people to come vote. They had nearly lost their accreditation from the state PTA for that fiasco.

“I second the motion,” said Gretchen.

Tim stood and stretched. It was easy to forget how big he was when he was crouched down in a child’s chair, but now he towered above them all, a former high school linebacker soft but still strong. His thick arms could brush the ceiling. “I’m gonna hit the restroom while we wait,” he said. He left and the rest remained, eating brownies and checking their phones, or talking in quiet pairs.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” said Marilys, shifting uncomfortably.

“Being secretary’s not so bad,” said Amanda. “It’s nice to be in charge of the rules.”

“Oooh, the power,” said Marilys.

“I appreciate you taking this on,” said Amanda. “You’ll be amazing.”

Marilys looked at her phone. “I gotta get back home.”

“Not much longer,” said Amanda. She also looked at her phone.

After nine minutes had passed, Tim came back into the library. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead.

“Anyone else think it’s hot in here tonight?” he asked. He picked up one of the water bottles.

“It’s still cool outside, so guess the AC won’t kick in,” said Gretchen.

“That’s ten,” said Amanda. She tried not to look at Tim.

“Where’s Emily?” muttered Heather. “Did you see her in the parking lot? She texted she was coming.” She looked up from the phone at Tim, and her eyes widened. “What happened? Tim, are you okay?” She patted her left cheek.

“Hm?” Tim patted his own left cheek. “Oh yeah. That. The light wasn’t on. Hit my damn face on the door. You know, that sharp metal edge we’ve been asking them to fix for years.” He leaned back to grab a tissue from a box on the librarian’s desk and dabbed at his cheek.

“We need to get back to the vote,” Amanda said.

“But Emily,” said Heather. “She’s coming.”

“Bylaws are bylaws, Heather,” said Gretchen.

Amanda stood to pass out ballots. “Anyway,” she said. “The most important thing is that we have a quorum.”