(1993) Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend

by Robert James Waller

  "I did indeed. Thank you. You looked well and happy." He didn't say anything about hanging it on his wall. This was an intricate dance along the halls of ambiguity, and Michael was feeling his way, not wanting to open up things too rapidly.

  "Yes, I am feeling well. I ran into one of my old friends from India on the tube in London. She got me back into yoga, and it does wonders for my body and my mind."

  Oh, Jellie, Jellie, he was thinking, don't say anything about your body. Give a poor man space to breathe, space to be less wicked than you already have made him in his impure thoughts.

  "Michael, any chance we might meet somewhere? I'd like to talk, but I don't want to come to your office since I suspect Jimmy will be up at the university as soon as he comes to."

  "Sure, anyplace. You name it."

  "How about the bar at the Ramada out by the shopping center?"

  "Fine. When?"

  "What time is it now?"

  He looked at his watch. "Twenty to eleven."

  Silence on the other end for a few seconds. "Would eleven push you too hard? I'd like to be gone when Jimmy wakes up so I don't have to think up some reason for going out."

  "No, that's fine. I have the Shadow tied down outside the building. Eleven, then?"

  "Yes . . . Michael?"

  "I'm here." Too cool, being way too cool.

  "I'm looking forward to seeing you."

  "Me too, Jellie. See you in twenty minutes."

  It was only a ten-minute ride out to the Ramada, so he went down to the mailboxes, collected a pile of book advertisements and a very pleasant invitation from The Atlantic editor to send some more pieces. That got him thinking for a moment: maybe he could hack it as a free-lance writer. Not enough in that to keep him going, probably, but he could take early retirement, annuitize his retirement fund, and maybe pick up ten or fifteen grand a year just by fiddling around with his word processor.

  There was also a letter from the University of California Department of Economics inviting all of its Ph. D. alumni to a reception at the winter meetings in Las Vegas. The usual, Michael got it every year.

  But he never went, even though he was grateful for the degree and sent them money when they asked for it.

  He pulled the Shadow out into traffic getting heavier as the students returned for the fall semester and rolled down Thirty-second Street, bumping into Route 81 about ten blocks farther on. The highway ran a winding route through one of the nicer sections of Cedar Bend, and he leaned the Shadow into the curves, noticing a slight valve tick needing attention.

  Jellie was already seated when he got there. It was dark in the lounge, and he couldn't see her at first, partly because she was back in one of the corner booths off to his right.

  "Michael, over here."

  Jellie. After all these months, there she was and calling out to him. Black hair gathered high, big-hooped silver earrings, light yellow summer dress with sandals. Walking toward her, feeling clumsy, estranged from her. She held out her hand, Michael took it and slid in beside her. She kissed him on the cheek, then, butterfly-quick, leaned back and looked at him. He was gone again, over the hill just seeing her, hands sweating and heart valves ticking like the Black Shadow.

  "You're all suntanned, Michael. You look great, just wonderful, and no preschool haircut yet."

  "Nah, I've been putting it off. I hate going to barbers, something to do with loss of manhood, maybe. More likely because, when I was about four years old, the only barber in Custer threatened to cut off my ears if I didn't sit still while he was working on me."

  She laughed. "Really? Did that really happen?"

  "Yes. it did. My childhood was one long charge through the brambles of anxiety after that. You look wonderful, too, Jellie. I've thought about you a lot."

  She looked down, then up at Michael, then down again. The bartender came around the bar and over to where they sat, lighted a small candle on the table-top, and asked what she could get for them. Jellie ordered a club soda with lime. Michael asked for a St. Pauli Girl, which the bartender didn't have, so he settled on a Miller's.

  While they waited for their drinks, Jellie asked him about his spring and summer. He told her about the two articles, and her eyes widened when he mentioned The Atlantic. "Hey, that's the big time. Congratulations."

  The bartender came back. Jellie insisted on paying the check, so he let her.

  Michael held up his beer, and she touched her glass to his. "What shall we drink to, Michael?"

  "How about survival. If not that, retirement."

  "Michael, you're just the same." Her chastisement was gentle. "How about we drink to a nice summer day and your success in writing."

  "And to your safe return," he said.

  "How's the Shadow running?"

  "Good, overall. It's a perpetual battle, but good. I took it down into Tennessee this summer, but didn't stay long. The Smokies are a nightmare; they're thinking of limiting the number of tourists that can visit there. Then I rode it out to Custer and stayed a week with my mother."

  "How is she?"

  "Old, and getting more fragile every day. I'm afraid we're not more than two years away from a nursing home or something along those lines."

  Jellie didn't say anything for a while. He drank his beer, she drank her club soda and lime. He took out his cigarettes and offered her one. She refused. "I've stopped smoking. Something about yoga that leads to that, not sure what it is."

  He nodded and flipped open the Zippo, lit his, and leaned back against the padded booth. She slid over farther so she could turn and look straight at him.

  Michael was tired of the dancing. "Where are we, Jellie, the two of us? It's been a long nine months for me." After he said it he wished he'd moved into this a little slower. Typical male fashion-no fore-play.

  She didn't say anything for a moment. He'd forgotten just how gray her eyes were until she kept them on his for at least ten seconds.

  "I've done a lot of thinking, Michael." Those were bad-news words, he could tell. Something in the words themselves, something in the way she said them. What they felt for each other didn't require thinking. It required acting, not thinking. The happiness from seeing her again started draining down and out of him.

  She paused, then went on. "I had the words all ready to say, but it's much harder than I thought it would be. I'd convinced myself the way I felt about you was a kind of girlish infatuation with a different sort of man than I'd ever encountered before, or at least not for a long time. But with you here looking at me with those good brown eyes, your hair drifting over your shirt collar and all, it's more difficult . . . a lot more difficult."

  "Say it, Jellie. I already know what's coming."

  "I suppose you do, and I'm going to say what I have to say before I get to the point I can't say it. We've got to cut this clean before real trouble starts." He was prepared for it, but that didn't stop the harpoon from entering his chest and going out the other side. "Jimmy asked me several times in the days before we left for England if there was anything wrong with me. He said I was acting a little strange. It was you, Michael-no, us. I was thinking about us, fantasizing about things I don't even want to mention."

  "That's all right, Jellie, I've had the same kind of images in my mind since the day I first saw you. Mine would just blow you away if I started talking about them."

  "Women have those thoughts, too. Let me go on. In ways you'll never know, and I don't want to talk about, I owe Jimmy a lot. Look, we both know Jimmy. He's a little goofy in certain ways, but he's very kind to me.

  "Jimmy was crushed when the best schools wouldn't accept him for his doctorate. His grades were good, but only because he worked sq hard. God, his parents just hammered and hammered at him about the whole idea of success. But Jimmy does not have a truly fine intellect. He knows that and has come to terms with it, though it bothers him because of the world in which he's chosen to earn a living, a world where he's constantly reminded of his limitations just by being aroun
d people like you, Michael."

  "Oh, hell, Jellie ..." He started to do a foot shuffle into something resembling modesty, a little dance called the South Dakota backstep. But she'd have none of it and interrupted him.

  "Michael Tillman, don't play the country boy with me, please. It's not becoming, and I know better. You scare Jimmy. He knows he's not in your league. He could write all his life and never get an article accepted by the journals in which you've published. I don't mean to imply you don't work hard, I know you do, in spite of the casual way you seem to operate. And Jimmy likes you. He likes you a lot, and he's appreciative of the good ideas you give him. If he ever makes full professor, you'll be responsible for it in good part."

  "Jimmy's all right, Jellie. He's a lot different than me, but I respect him for the way he keeps his head down and the numbers crunching. I couldn't do that."

  He lit another. Merit and took a drink of his beer. This was turning into something a little unpleasant, and he didn't want that to happen with Jellie. She was floating off, getting loyalty and Jimmy's shortcomings and her own emotions all tangled up. Chewing on him in small ways as a means of protecting herself from her own feelings.

  "Jellie, let me try and say what I think you're telling me. You feel good things for Jimmy, among them at least a kind of love, I'm sure. You're a loving person. And you feel a gratefulness toward him for something I don't know about and won't ask about. Though I have a feeling India works into it somehow-I figure you'd tell me if you wanted me to know, even though it wouldn't affect how I feel about you no matter what it is. And you want to make sure our feelings for each other don't go any further than just that-feelings. Have I got it right?"

  She nodded, tears in her eyes.

  He had momentum and kept rolling. "Here's the bottom line, Jellie Markham Braden: I'm in love with you, truly and powerfully in love. I guess I knew it when you walked in the dean's kitchen a year ago in your blue suit and black boots, knew it when we sat on the back steps that day. Christ, teeter-totters in the park. Do you have any idea of how much I've wanted you, all of you, everything that makes you up, tangible and otherwise? The whole works, that's what I want. As much as I can get in the years I have left, and I'm no youngster anymore. Do you understand that, Jellie, how deeply I feel?"

  "Michael . . . don't." She reached in her purse, took out a handkerchief, and put it against her eyes for a moment. The bartender was not insensitive; she had a feel for what was going on and turned up the television to cover their conversation. Michael nodded at her in thanks, and she gave him a little wave.

  He put his hand on Jellie's neck, the first time he'd ever touched her in that way. Her skin felt exactly as he'd known it would, and the sensation ran up his arm, went down somewhere inside of him, and made a low, sad sound for all the times he'd never feel it again. "It's okay, Jellie. We'll make it work. We'll put some bandages on the cuts and promise not to look under them ever again. I'm not sure I can stay in the same town with you, but I'll try. Really, I'll try, Jellie. Maybe we can eventually work it out so we can have coffee at Beano's now and then. Maybe it'll spiral down and we can do that."

  She stuffed her hanky back in her purse and reached out for his left hand, holding it tight in both of hers. "You're right, Michael, in everything you said. Damnit, I know why people get frustrated with you sometimes and are secretly afraid of you. Your mind is like a rifle bullet when you decide to let it run full tilt, and that's scary. Carolyn, the dean's wife, said that about you the first day I met you. She said, 'Michael Tillman frightens the hell out of Arthur, and Arthur retaliates in mean little ways.' The dean was going to turn you down for full professor on those grounds alone, even though you'd done twice as much work as it took to qualify. Carolyn told him, 'Arthur, you pull that piece of crap on Michael and you'll see me waving from the first train out of Cedar Bend.' "

  Now they had Carolyn and Arthur into it. Jellie kept wandering away from the subject, but he understood why. There was a door closing behind them, and she wanted to keep it open all the while she was pulling it shut.

  "Jellie, let's let it rest where it is. You know where to find me. Come by if you feel you can. Hell, I just like to be around you, to look at you, to smell your perfume when I get close, which I haven't done nearly enough."

  "I don't think so. There's something about being in each other's presence that's just too strong for me-for both of us. I came off the plane clear-headed and ready to tell you exactly how I felt and what I was going to do, now here I am turning into mud pie. I've got to get my life organized again. I'm going to take another class this fall, so I'll be on campus three days a week. If I feel okay about it, I'll stop by to see you. If I don't, and I probably won't, it's not because I'm not thinking about you. You understand that, don't you?"

  "Yes. I understand, Jellie. I don't like it, but I understand. And I'll be thinking about you, too. That's all I ever seem to do anymore."

  As they left the Ramada bar, Jellie pulled a small package from her purse and handed it to him. "I forgot to give you this."

  He tore open the wrapping. Inside was a belt made of English bridle leather with Orville hand-tooled on the back.

  Michael took the Shadow out of town and let it go all the way to Des Moines, where he turned around and came back into Cedar Bend through one of those soft August twilights. Going home past the campus, he could hear the marching band practicing, getting ready for the first football game. They were playing some old song from some old movie. Michael Tillman couldn't remember the name of either the song or the movie, because he was thinking about Jellie Braden and wondering how he was going to get through the years ahead without her.

  The lights in Bingley Hall flickered on, and the race to December got under way. Jimmy Braden came by Michael's office for new ideas, and the football team was doing well. On those Saturdays when the team was playing at home, the streets were packed with Cadillacs and Lincolns, driven by overweight men who wrote out large checks to the athletic department and whose daughters were in the best sororities.

  Michael paced the classroom, tossing a piece of chalk up and down in his right hand. "Consider, for a moment, the nature of systemic problems, the elements of a puzzling issue and the subtle, intricate relationships among those elements. What we must do is learn how to overcome what I long ago began to call the Archimedean Dilemma." He always hesitated at this point and looked out at the class. "Who, by the way, was Archimedes?" They all focused on their notebooks, pretending to be doing something.

  He pushed and prodded, and finally a young man (bad complexion, front row) said hesitantly, "Wasn't he some kind of scientist or something?"

  Michael gave them a two-minute capsule on the life and times of the Greek mathematician. After that, he picked up the thread of the lecture again. "Archimedes said, 'Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world.' That's what structural modeling is all about, finding a lever, a place to stand, an angle of entry into complexity." He paused, thinking of Jellie, while the students wrote in their notebooks and wondered if he would ask about Archimedes on the first examination.

  During the second week of school he was looking out the window while covering a fine point in Boolean algebra, looking at nothing except the quaver of now turning leaves in the wind of September, and saw her. At first it didn't register, since he was working hard at getting the students to appreciate the intellectual leavings of one George Boole, the nineteenth-century mathematician who took formal logic up about fifty notches. But the long-legged walk and tweed cap finally got his attention-Jellie. He stopped talking, he wasn't sure how long, and watched her wind along a sidewalk, knapsack over her shoulder. Jellie from a distance, always from a distance. When she moved out of sight, he turned back to the class. They were all looking at him in a strange kind of way. His face, maybe, or his body. They saw something, in his eyes or the momentary sag of his shoulders, and they knew they hadn't seen it before. Michael glanced at the wall clock. Five minutes to go. "That'll
be all for today," he said. As he scraped up lecture notes from the desk in front, they filed out, some of them giving him sidelong glances and talking to one another. A young woman whispered, "Did you see how he looked? What happened to him all of a sudden?"

  Michael hadn't realized how much it showed. Jellie was right in believing they had to stay apart. Aside from protecting themselves from each other, people would start to pick up on how they felt, even if they were merely in the same room together. He'd been looking at advertisements for faculty positions in the Chronicle, but at his salary and rank it would be difficult to make a move. Besides, with his mother's health declining, he felt a responsibility to stay in the middle of the country and not be too far from her. Still there might be something somewhere that met his requirements and took him away from the town where Jellie Braden lived.

  It's hard to say where all this might have gone if it hadn't been for the ducks. Probably to the same place by a different route. The history of the situation is this: University presidents relish new buildings, so do Boards of Education. Bingley Hall was just fine-old, but with a patina of learning and struggle rubbed into its corridors and heavy in its air. Still, the president decided one of his premier colleges needed a new building. Presidents don't bequeath knowledge or grateful students to the world, they leave behind bricks and mortar. Whether those bricks and mortar are actually necessary is irrelevant. The important thing is to get money and build buildings carrying the names either of heavy donors to the university or members of the administration who served the university loyally, though not necessarily brilliantly. The Arthur J. Wilcox College of Business and Economics-you could see the lettering in the dean's rodentlike eyes as he scooted around Bingley Hall with rolled-up blueprints clutched in his sweaty paws. Fat chance.

  The money could have been used for faculty salaries or student financial aid, but that's never in the cards. As the president was fond of saying, privately, of course, "It's much easier to get money for buildings than it is for faculty salaries." But, in spite of hard economic times in the state, the board floated a bond issue and ponied up $18 million for a new building. That had occurred the previous winter, and final construction plans were now being drawn.