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Word for Word
Episode 1 of 3 of Let the Record Show by Joan Pemberton · free to read
The steno machine came out of its case for the first time in six years, and Norm Garrity looked at it like I had brought a harp.
“What is that, a typewriter?”
“A stenotype,” I said.
“Theresa,” he said. “We usually just jot.”
“The bylaws say verbatim.”
“The bylaws say a lot of things.”
“Section four point three,” I said. “The Secretary shall keep a complete and verbatim record of all proceedings.”
I had read them the night before. All fifty-two pages, typed in 1987 by someone who used the word heretofore on every one of them.
Nobody else on the board had read them. You could tell, because Norm called the treasurer’s report the treasury report and nobody corrected him.
I was a court reporter for twenty-eight years. I can take down a homeowners association.
There were seven residents in the folding chairs and four of us at the table. Norm in the middle, because he had been president since before the clubhouse had air conditioning.
Gus Hollis on his left, vice president, who had been dozing gently through the agenda since 2009. Mrs. Mercer, treasurer, with a calculator she held like a hymnal. And me.
We got to the pond.
It was a decorative pond, with a fountain that worked in May and ducks that worked all year, and a little wooden duck house on a post that Arlene Sprague’s late husband had put there.
Mrs. Mercer said aeration and algae treatment came to forty-two hundred dollars a year. Norm had heard about algae every month for a decade, and his face said so.
“I move we just pave the whole thing,” he said, “and be done with it.”
“Second,” Gus said.
Gus seconded everything. He once seconded the Christmas party, the fire drill, and a woman who stood up to say her cat was missing.
Everybody laughed. I wrote it all down, the laugh too, because I wrote everything down.
Then we talked about mailbox colors for forty minutes. The choices were black, a darker black, and a green that one resident described as the color of a hospital in a movie. We tabled it. We always tabled it.
“Is the typewriter getting all this?” Norm said.
“Stenotype,” I said. “Every word.”
At eight fifteen Norm stood up and said, “Well, that’s that,” the way he always did, and went for the coffee.
Norm never said adjourned. He thought it sounded like a judge.
My friend Arlene waited for me by the door. She lived across the pond from me and fed the ducks every morning at seven, in a robe, with the dignity of a bishop, and she still called that duck house Lenny’s.
“You got the part about paving?” she said.
“I got every word.”
“Good. It was funny.” She buttoned her coat. “Norm is funny about once a year. Somebody should have it bronzed.”
I typed up the minutes that night and emailed them to the management company the next morning, because section four point six said I had to within three days.
I am not a person who skips sections.
In section six point two I found the part I had read too fast the night before.
Any motion so recorded, seconded, and not objected to before adjournment shall stand as adopted.
I read it three times. Then I called Arlene.
“How many people objected to paving the pond?” I said.
“Nobody objects to Norm. It just encourages him.”
“So nobody.”
“Theresa. It was a joke.”
“The bylaws don’t have a section on jokes.”
There was a long pause on her end, the kind she did when a duck walked into her kitchen.
“Call the management company,” she said.
I did. The young man was very polite. He said he had my minutes right there. He said they were the most thorough minutes he had ever received from any association in his portfolio, and he meant it as a compliment.
He said Norm had a standing signature for anything the board adopted under fifty thousand dollars, so there was no need to bother him.
“About the pond,” I said.
“Already on it,” he said. “We had a contractor out this morning to measure. He says he has never paved a pond before. He is taking pictures for his website.”
I sat down on my kitchen floor, which I had not done since 1994.
“Ma’am?”
“When,” I said.
“The fourteenth,” he said.