Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend

by Robert James Waller

  Jellie came on line. “Mom bailed me out, though. She convinced me that my nickname was spelled with an i-e on the end instead of a y and that it was really a French name pronounced with a soft J—JahLAY— even though we kept the American pronunciation. I liked that idea and began to take pride in my new name. It stuck with me, and I’ve used it ever since.”

  “Then what’s your real name?”

  For God’s sake, Michael thought, looking at the accountant who had been dumb enough to ask the question. Leave it alone. If she wanted you to know, she’d already have mentioned it.

  “I never tell.” Jellie laughed. “Jimmy, everyone needs more brandy. I’ll get some more coffee.” That gave the fans time to pull on their jockstraps, backward, of course, and get the television cooking: “Third-and-six on the Dallas five. Heeerrre’s the pitch-out.…”

  The sociologist had papers to grade, Pat Sanchez and her date decided on a walk. Jellie and her mother were cleaning up in the kitchen. Michael went outside for a smoke, and when he returned the rest of them, except Jellie and her parents, were watching the game. Michael sat at the dining room table with Leonard Markham and asked about fishing for brook trout, saying he used to do a little trout fishing in the Black Hills. Mr. Markham knew how to talk about what interested him, giving Michael the right amount of information without getting boring. He’d have made a good teacher instead of the paper box manufacturer he was, Michael thought. He liked Leonard Mark-ham.

  Later, Jellie and her mother joined them at the table, Jellie sitting across from Michael. This is what he’d come for, the chance simply to look at Jellie Markham Braden on a cold autumn day in 1980. He was careful, though, because once or twice her mother caught him staring at Jellie in a way not related to the conversation. And mothers know about the secret thoughts of men, particularly when those thoughts concern the daughters of the mothers.

  Struggling for something to talk about, Michael brought up India and watched Eleanor Markham’s face go dark—just a little, but still there—when he mentioned it. Jellie quickly turned the conversation in a different direction. That was the second time he’d picked up something strange about her India days. Something that made her reluctant to go into it other than acknowledging she’d been to India and stayed for three years.

  Michael could only tolerate being in Jellie’s general vicinity for relatively short periods of time back then. His feelings toward her were just too overpowering, escalating in intensity minute by minute, and he was half-afraid he’d blurt out something obvious and stupid, some unseemly remark tipping off her husband or somebody else, including Jellie, about the way he felt. He wanted to be able to see her, be around her as often as he could, without feeling any more surreptitious than he already did. So about six o’clock he excused himself under the pretense of going home to feed his animals.

  Jellie wrapped her arms around herself and shivered on the front steps when she said good-bye to him. “Thank you for coming, Michael. I know these affairs aren’t your style, but I wanted my parents to meet you. You’re a different sort than they normally come into contact with.… I didn’t say that quite right. I didn’t mean to imply you’re a curiosity piece, just that you’re different. My dad said to me a few minutes ago, ‘I like that Michael Tillman; he’s got some fiber to him.’ I knew he’d like you.”

  Michael understood what she meant. “I like him, too, Jellie. Thank you for inviting me, I had a nice time.” He couldn’t help looking hard at her once more before leaving. He just couldn’t help it, wanting to put his arms around her and say, “Don’t go back in the house. Come home with me, I’ll kiss your mouth and your breasts and what surely is your soft, round belly and tear you to pieces and put you back together again. Afterwards we’ll go down the road, far away, doesn’t matter where.”

  Jellie set her gray eyes on Michael’s for maybe five seconds, her face almost serious. A different look than she’d ever given him before, as if she were half seeing into his thoughts. She said nothing, just looked at him, then dropped her eyes and smiled a little before opening the door and going back inside.

  A year later he was west of Madurai and pushing hard into southwest India looking for her. The driver spoke only a few words of English, so it was a quiet ride except for the ceaseless roar of wind through the open windows. Fifty miles out the driver stopped, went over to a roadside shrine, and left some coins. “Bad spirits,” he said, getting in. “Evil.” He shifted gears, looking back at the shrine.

  In Virudunagar the driver had breakfast and the car had a flat tire. Apparently the donation at the shrine had been insufficient. The spare was shot, so it took a major expedition through the streets until a garage was located. After the obligatory haggling over price, the tire was hauled to the shop and cold-patched. That’ll be good for another sixty miles, Michael thought. Their stop in Virudunagar had taken nearly two hours.

  Michael leaned back on the red vinyl car seat and looked at villages and farm country going by. Near Rajapalaiyam the driver slowed and halted on a bridge over a wide, shallow river. A woman ahead of them was driving a flock of geese across the bridge. On the sandbars below, other women, their skirts hiked up, were doing laundry, waving clothing over their heads and slapping it hard against rocks.

  The geese were almost across, moving slowly. Too slowly for the driver. He honked. The woman pushing the geese along turned, giving them a nasty look. Only rich folks rode in cars, and she was having none of it. The beat of life in village India is in adagio time. Only rich folks from somewhere else are in a hurry.

  A woman came toward them across the bridge. She wore a torn red sari of the cheapest cloth, toe rings on her brown feet, and carried a load of sticks on her head. One arm was raised to balance the load, the other swung beside her, bracelets jingling. She was stunning. Beautiful by any standards anywhere. The way Bardot looked in her salad days. She glanced through the car window at Michael, and he smiled, couldn’t help smiling. He thought she might smile back. She looked as if she might for a moment, but then turned her head and stared straight down the road as she moved past the car.

  He leaned forward and saw the Western Ghats rising up far ahead. Somewhere in those mountains was Jellie, near a place called Thekkady, or at least she was supposed to be there. And what she was doing there he didn’t know and still wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

  An hour more and they were into the foothills, climbing slowly and carefully around hairpin curves, waiting for huge, roaring Indian tour buses demanding the road and giving no quarter. Cooler now. Three thousand feet, maybe, pine trees right outside the car windows. Michael didn’t know Jellie had walked this same road in terror fifteen years earlier. She had called herself by another name then.

  Five

  Following her first Thanksgiving in Cedar Bend, Jellie didn’t stop at Michael’s office for nearly two weeks. Her pattern had been to come by for coffee and a smoke at least once a week, and he decided he’d really screwed it up, that Jellie and maybe other people were beginning to see how he felt and she’d decided to quash anything and everything of that sort right at the front end.

  When Jimmy Braden called and asked if they could talk for a few minutes, he was sure Jellie had said something to him. He sat there waiting for the blows, waiting for Jimmy to say Jellie was uncomfortable with the way he looked at her and that she wouldn’t be stopping by anymore, let alone sending invitations to subsequent Thanksgiving dinners.

  But Jimmy didn’t want that. In some ways the news was worse. He was going to teach in London for the spring semester, and Jellie was going with him. He’d applied for a visiting professorship the previous year and cut a deal with Arthur on his way in, allowing him to do the London job if it came through. His application had been lost in the British bureaucracy. But finally it had worked out at the last minute. Now Jimmy was looking for faculty members who would shift their teaching loads around to cover his absence.

  Michael had a tight gut just thinking about Jellie being ou
t of his sight for that long, thinking about her black hair blowing in winds coming off the North Sea, about her laughing and going to the theater and never thinking of him, though there was no particular reason she should. Selfish stuff, he knew that, but he recovered and said he’d pick up Jimmy’s intro-level course in econometrics or find a graduate student who could do it. Jimmy promised to reciprocate some time, and Michael had no doubt he would.

  “Thanks a lot, Michael. That fixes everything up. We’re leaving in ten days, right after the semester is over, be back in August. We’re going to travel during the summer.”

  Jellie in Scotland, Jellie along the hedgerows, Jellie in Paris… Jellie where he couldn’t see her. An hour later she rapped on Michael’s door. “Hi, motorcycle man. How’s the war?”

  “The war is being won, Jellie. I’m whipping the students up the hills of December, and victory is mine, or will be in less than two weeks.” She stood in the doorway instead of coming in and flopping down on a chair the way she usually did.

  “Sorry I haven’t been by to say hello. I’ve been getting ready for my final exams, and Jim said he told you about the London trip. God, what a mess, finding a house sitter on short notice, getting bills paid and things set up at the bank. I’ve been running for days with no letup. What are you going to do over the holidays? Any big plans?”

  “No, not much at all. It’s too damn cold to crank up the bike and ride it someplace. I’ll probably try to finish the paper I’m doing on comparing complex structures so I can present it at the fall meetings. Get my trimonthly haircut, spend a few days with my mother out in Custer over Christmas. Other than that, watch the snow fall, I guess, and listen to the Miles Davis tapes I ordered while I spruce up my lectures for the class I’ll be covering for Jim. My notes in that area are a little yellowed. It’ll go by pretty fast, it always does.” He wanted to say he’d be thinking about her every other minute, but he didn’t.

  “Sounds pretty low key. No special Christmas wishes?”

  He looked at the ceiling for a moment, struggling, trying to pull himself up and out of a self-indulgent funk. Michael had wishes all right, but nothing he could talk about. He recovered and leaned back in his chair, fingers locked behind his head, forcing a little grin. “Well, sometime I’d like a leather belt with Orville tooled on the back. Used to be a guy in Custer had one, and I thought it was pretty neat when I was a kid.”

  Jellie grinned back. “Only you, Michael, of all the people I know, would say something like that. God, it’s almost surreal.”

  “Well, life is surreal, Jellie. Except for Orville. He didn’t dwell on those things, just drove his grain truck and whistled a lot.”

  “I think Orville had it all worked out. I’d like to hear more about him, but I’ve got to run. I’ll try to stop in before we leave. Take care, Michael, and say hello to Orville if you see him. Ask if he’ll write a self-help book for the rest of the world.”

  He watched her jeans as she left and walked down the hall, then got to his feet and went to the door so he could watch her a little while longer. She looked back once, as if she knew he’d be standing there and fluttered her hand in a final wave as she turned the corner, heading for the office of solid, steady James Braden.

  Michael ran into her the following week in a small shopping area near the campus. They had coffee at Beano’s, sitting in a back booth in midafternoon. Her exams were over and preparations for London were well along, so she was a little calmer and seemed in no hurry this time. She was wearing one of her standard winter outfits: jeans, long-sleeved undershirt beneath a flannel shirt, down vest.

  He leaned against the wall, one foot on the seat of the booth, and glanced at all the old posters of campus events plastered on the walls. The undergraduates—those who were finished with exams and some who weren’t—were drinking beer. Two men, gay activists from the philosophy department, were playing chess at a table next to them.

  Jellie asked if he had any suggestions for London restaurants. He told her, except for a day here and there on his way through, his experience with London was mostly limited to making connections at Heathrow and he didn’t know the city well. Michael’s tastes ran to societies less well organized than those in the West, and most of his traveling had been in southeast Asia. He didn’t mention the women in Bangkok with their long hair and compliant ways. He glanced at his watch and said he had to give his last final examination in twenty-two minutes, starting to make departure motions.

  “Michael, I’ll miss our talks over coffee, and I’ll miss you, truly I will.”

  He looked at her for a long while. For the first time he really didn’t care what she or anyone else thought about him looking at her in a certain way.

  She took a deep breath and started to say something, then paused for a moment before continuing, as if she were trying to decide whether or not to speak at all. “I don’t want to get deeply into this now, but…” She hesitated.

  His hands were shaking for reasons he wasn’t sure of, and he held them under the table where she couldn’t see them. He could feel a small tic in a cheek muscle, just below his left eye. In the spaces of a man’s life there are moments when things shift into some other gear. He sensed that was happening now.

  “What are you talking about, Jellie? What don’t you want to get into?”

  “What I’m trying to say… is that… that I’m not going to just miss you. I’m going to miss you. I know more than you may think I know about how you feel about some things… how I feel… Oh, good God, I’m making a muddle of this.…”

  He got his hands quieted down and reached for one of hers. She put it out to meet him halfway. He laid his other hand on the little bundle forming on the table. “C’mon, Jellie, say what you’ve got to say. I want to hear it, whatever it is.”

  “Michael, it all sounds a little presumptuous, what I’m trying to get across. If I’m wrong, please forget I ever said it. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She added her other hand to the stack on the table and stared at them, cleared her throat. “Behind all the laughter and light talk we share with each other, there’s something else going on, isn’t there?”

  He stayed quiet, looked at her. She had the stage, and he wasn’t about to climb up on it right at the moment. He wanted her to finish what she had to say, to let it run wherever it was going. Good or bad, it was time for that. A waitress going into the kitchen dropped a stack of dishes, and every head in Beano’s, except two, turned to see the disaster. He could see the second hand on his watch going by. Fifteen minutes until his examination on the other side of campus.

  “Damnit… isn’t there? There’s something else going on between us, isn’t there?” She squeezed his hands in both of hers and rapped them lightly on the table.

  He nodded.

  “It’s been there since we first met at the dean’s reception in late August, hasn’t it?”

  He nodded again and talked straight: “You walked through the door and something started to hum inside me. The hum has now escalated into a symphonic scream I can’t turn off.”

  “Oh, Michael… Michael.” She looked away from him, at the wall, then at the ceiling. Twelve minutes to exam time. He didn’t move. The last fly of a summer past, surviving on the largesse of Beano’s, landed on his coffee cup and walked an endless path around the rim.

  “My mother saw it at Thanksgiving, something about the way you were looking at me, and I guess the way I looked back. No, that’s not being honest enough—I was looking back at you the way you were looking at me. When we were doing dishes in the kitchen, she mentioned it to me and said, ‘Be careful, Jellie, be very careful.’

  Two forty-seven. Beano’s was clearing out as about half the crowd hustled off to the three o’clock exams. “Michael, maybe this will all settle down while I’m gone. It just has to, doesn’t it?”

  He said nothing, shrugging his shoulders, smiling at her.

  She stood, pulling on her parka and mumbling, “I
feel like a schoolgirl.” She looked down at him. “I’m glad I said what I said, Michael. And I’m glad you said what you said and for the way you’ve handled it the past few months. You like to think you’re a little rough around the edges, but you’re actually pretty smooth. You’re a damn fine man, Michael Till-man, attractive and kind and everything else—isn’t there a woman out there somewhere for you? I mean someone other than…” She left off the me— couldn’t bring herself to say it, though he wished she had said it—and let her voice circle down to nothing.

  “I understand what you mean. Who knows? All I know now is how I feel about you.” He picked up his coat and started sliding out of the booth, disoriented, thinking the distance to next August could only be measured in light-years.

  She bent over and kissed him on the cheek. “Ride easy. I’ll send you a card.” And she was gone then, working her way through the tables and out the front door of Beano’s.

  He left two bucks on the table and began an easy run through the campus, feet on the sidewalk, mind and heart somewhere else. Across the creek, along the duck pond, and only one minute late into a room where he would ask of students what they knew.

  Six

  The Bradens lifted off for England on December 20, the day Michael finished grading final exams. Depression over Jellie’s leaving was momentarily lightened by several strong performances in both the decision-making and quantitative methods courses. He expected good work from the graduate students, but the undergraduates overcame their senior blues and rose to the task, surprising and pleasing him.