Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend (6 page)

The accountant’s wife interrupted him. “Where was that?”

“Custer… just outside of Rapid City in the Black Hills.”

“It’s pretty out there, isn’t it?” With a mind like chaff in a high wind, she was now into travelogues.

The sociologist came out of her corner with a hard leftist jab: “It’s where we stole the Native Americans’ land in the nineteenth
century.”

“Yes, it’s very pretty,” Michael said, looking at the accountant’s wife. “Though unfortunately my parents’ small house sat
on land stolen from the La-kota Sioux.” He waited a moment for additional questions about the Black Hills. There were none.

“By the time I got to eighth grade I was totally bored with school and small-town life in general. So I started shooting baskets
in the city park. Then my father helped me put up a basket in the backyard of our house. He took a real interest in the whole
affair and installed a yard light so I could practice in the evenings. I seemed to have a knack for the jumpshot and got pretty
good at it. My high school coach had graduated from Wichita State and sent them films of two or three of my better games.
They offered me a scholarship, which was about the only way I was going to get to college. I played there for three and a
half years until I banged up my knee pretty bad. That’s it.” He took another drink of wine and waited for the assemblage to
move on to matters of greater importance, but they wouldn’t let it go.

“What position did you play, Michael?”

“Guard.”

“What are you, about six three?”

“Six two, in my socks.”

“Were you an Ail-American or anything?”

“I made the All-Missouri Valley Conference Team my junior year.”

Jellie put her hand on his and squeezed it. “Michael, you were a star, then!“

He couldn’t tell if she was being genuine or mildly sarcastic. He hoped it was the latter and decided it was, with just a
little bit of the former mixed in. “I never thought of it that way. I was just earning room and board, books and tuition.”

“I’ll bet your parents were very proud of you. Ever think about turning pro?” The operations researcher had found a real live
veteran of wars that mean nothing, right at the Thanksgiving table.

“My dad pasted pictures of me from the
Wichita Eagle
all over Tillman’s Texaco. My mother was more concerned about my grades. She always thought athletics was a pretty dumb way
for people to spend their time.”

The operations researcher had batted only one for two and was troubled by that. He plainly wondered how any mother could not
love her son enough to applaud his exploits in short pants under the lights of several hundred gymnasiums during his formative
years and felt sorry for Michael, believing he’d been deprived of maternal affection.

“As for becoming a professional, I had no interest, plus my first step wasn’t quick enough for the big leagues. The phone
from the pros never rang, and I wouldn’t have answered it if it had.”

“Don’t you miss playing, Michael?” Jellie’s mother was looking at him.

“No, I don’t, Mrs. Markham. I truly don’t. In fact, I couldn’t wait for it to be over so I could get on with my life. Somewhere
around my sophomore year in college I discovered I didn’t like playing basketball and never really had. I just liked fooling
around with the art and physics of the long-range jumpshot. It was a boy’s tool for a boy’s game, and I haven’t touched a
basketball in twenty years.”

Jelly said, “That’s an interesting point of view… the art and physics of the long-range jumpshot is all that really mattered.
Michael, you ought to do an article on that sometime.”

If Jellie had put her hand back on his at that moment, he’d have written an essay about now-fading jumpshots on the linen
tablecloth with a turkey bone. But she didn’t and changed the conversation by listing the selection of desserts available.
Michael went for sour cream raisin pie. Jellie had made it from her grandmother’s recipe, and it was a knockout.

Over coffee and brandy, someone asked Jellie about her name and where it came from. Her parents laughed, and Jellie pointed
at both of them. It fell to her mother to tell the story.

“When Jellie was about seven years old, she went through a plump stage. Her father started calling her his ‘little bowl of
Jelly.’ The neighborhood children picked it up and teased her by calling her Jelly-Belly and Jellyroll and Jellybean and just
about everything else you could imagine. She used to come in from playing with tears streaming down her face. As soon as that
began happening, Leonard quit calling her Jelly and felt bad he’d ever started the whole business. But the kids wouldn’t drop
it.”

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.

F
ollowing 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 out 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.