The Waltz I Could Only Feel

Four Copies

On Wednesday I drove the papers to the courthouse in Orsino, nineteen miles, to have them recorded. A woman at the counter took them and stamped them and typed for a few minutes, and the recording fee came to $52.

Then she asked me a question. She was behind glass, and she looked down at her keyboard when she said it. I caught “copies” and a number. I said “Four, please,” and she said “Four?” and I nodded, and she took another $20.

I walked out to the truck feeling pleased with myself, and then I thought about it, and I sat in the cab for a good while, and then I laughed until I had to wipe my eyes. I had meant to ask for two, one for Gerda and one for me. I had said four because I thought the woman was asking if I wanted them stapled.

It was $72 in all. I was out twenty dollars I had not meant to spend, and I did not mind it, because it turned out that four copies was exactly the right number. One for Gerda. One for me. One for Wesley, who read his twice at the kitchen table and said nothing and went outside for a while. And one that I carried in my shirt pocket for nine days without knowing what it was for.

I found out on Friday. It was for a girl at a coat rack with her arms folded.

The Girl by the Coat Rack

On Friday the thirteenth of November I put on my pressed plaid shirt at six o’clock and sat in my truck in front of the hall for twenty minutes before I went in. I was afraid, and I will say so. It was the fear of a man who has agreed to be looked at by a daughter.

She came in at ten to eight. I felt the door through the floorboards before I saw her. She was a woman in her middle forties in a work coat, with Gerda’s round face, Gerda’s blue eyes and her mother’s stubborn chin, and she stood against the wall by the coat rack with her arms folded and her eyes on me.

Then I remembered the way Gerda had walked into that hall two months before, and sat by the door, and kept coming back. So I crossed the floor, and I did not hurry, and I stopped in front of the girl and held out my hand.

“You must be Sheryl,” I said. “I am Ivan. Your mother keeps better time than I do, and I would be obliged if you would watch us and tell her what you think.”

I went back to Gerda and said, “Mrs. Stromberg?”

Odell Tennant began a waltz on the accordion. I knew it only by the bellows moving.