TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma. Olivia’s classes began at ten. On the third day she got out of bed early and tiptoed around trying not to wake Bobby. “I went to The Shak for breakfast,” she wrote in a note.
Meet me by the statue of Sequoyah at twelve-fifteen and don’t worry about anything. You’ll get a job and you’ll be great in school. There are free tutors in everything. Go meet them. It creates jobs to use them. It keeps graduate students off the streets. Love, Olivia.
P.S. Remember I have to go to Tulsa tomorrow afternoon to see that shrink. You don’t have to go unless you want to. I act funny when I’ve been talking to shrinks. You might not want to be around me right after I talk to one. Doctor Carlyn used to tell me jokes, these stupid jokes I can’t stop thinking about. About cows, for God’s sake.
It was eight-thirty when Olivia got to The Shak. There was a new car parked by the front door. A red MG with Arkansas license plates and two straw hats piled in the backseat. The fender of the car was plastered with bumper stickers. Every politically correct stance of the last five years was represented.
I bet it’s someone from Fayetteville, Olivia decided. Someone coming to write about the Cherokees. This is the time of year when they start showing up.
She opened the door to The Shak. It was very crowded. Every table was full. Olivia spotted her new anthropology professor sitting at a table by the window. A tall blond woman with rimless half-glasses holding a small stick between her fingers and reading a stack of papers as she ate. Ms. Georgia Jones, M.D., Ph.D. “Ignore this stick,” she had told the class the first day. “I’m trying to quit smoking. I think the feel of the cylinder is part of the obsession.”
The woman spotted Olivia and smiled and waved. “That’s a nice car,” Olivia said. “Is that your car? That MG?”
“It’s my boyfriend’s car. I traded with him. I wouldn’t put a bumper sticker on a car for all the tea in China. Sit down. I’m almost finished. Go on. I’d like some company.” Georgia gestured toward the empty chair. Olivia sat down in it. “I was told everyone in town came here,” Georgia continued. “Well, I’m glad to see you. I’ve been afraid there won’t be enough students for the class if anyone else backs out. So let me buy you breakfast. I don’t want anybody else dropping the class.” She laughed as though that were the funniest thing in the world. “What else are you taking?”
“Navajo. I’m trying to learn the language this summer. But I want to take your class too. I won’t drop it.”
“It’s going to be a crip. Anthropology. What a joke. The whole discipline’s a joke. Everything’s a joke except literature, music, painting, and pure science. Mathematics. I’m a medical doctor, did you know that? I quit two years ago and decided to teach for a while. I taught last year in Fayetteville and now I’m teaching here.” She stuck her legs out into the aisle between the tables. She was wearing long silk slacks. On her feet were brown leather sandals. Everything she was wearing looked rich. “Actually, as soon as I got to Fayetteville, I fell in love. Wouldn’t you know it. So I’m here to rethink that.”
“What’s wrong? What happened to it?”
“The war in the Persian Gulf. My love affair is a casualty of the war. Actually, it wasn’t perfect before that. Now it’s really a mess.”
“He had to go?”
“No. He led the protest. The war’s over and he’s still protesting. He’s a nuclear physicist, if that makes it any clearer. He was working on a superconductor, happy as a clam, making a new tool for mankind. Then he went crazy when they started the war. He’s this gorgeous guy. He’s unbelievably beautiful. I’m a fool for beauty. He’s got this dazzling smile, gorgeous nose. Fabulous in bed—at least at first. I thought I had it made. We were spending every night together. Then that war. Next thing I knew he started dragging in every night at two or three, too tired to fuck me. Fuck the war, I told him finally. Let them have the war. Let the nukes proliferate. What difference does it make if you can’t even find time to make love to me. That helped for about a month. Then the war ran out and he started in on the environment with the same group that had been protesting the war. So I came over here. Let him miss me. Let him see if his little politically correct half-educated friends can keep him warm. It looks like a waitress would come and at least take your order, doesn’t it?”
“That’s okay. I guess you just have to love him like he is, or break up with him. This psychiatrist I went to in Carolina said wanting to change someone is just trying to control them. If you can’t like them like they are, you might as well quit. How old is he? Maybe he’s having a midlife crisis.”
“I thought of that. He’s forty-nine. I’m forty-seven. I’ve already been through mine. Unless you could call what I’m doing now the last wave of it. Until I go back to Memphis and, as we say, resume practice. I guess I can’t talk. But I didn’t get out on the streets every night. With my face painted white. I didn’t carry a cross everywhere I went or wear black armbands. He’s a tenured professor of physics, for God’s sake. It’s too much.”
“So are you broken up?” Olivia was leaned halfway across the table. She had completely forgotten she was talking to her professor, much less someone she had never spoken to before. Georgia’s every word was so intense she swept Olivia into her obsession.
“No, we’re still supposed to be in love. I don’t know, sometimes I think I’m an emotional coward. I can’t stand to be in love. It drives me crazy to be happy. It drives me crazy to love this man.”
“I guess I better order breakfast,” Olivia said. “What time is it? Your class starts at ten.”
“It’s nine-fifteen. Listen, I’m in here every day. Eight-thirty. Come find me. I have to have some structure in my life, so this is it. I’m going to eat breakfast at the same place every day. In the first place I don’t like to cook and in the second place I have to have some structure in my life, so this is it. I’ll eat breakfast at the same place at the same time every day. The rest of the time I’m free.”
“To do what?”
“I’m not sure yet. Stay away from Fayetteville, I guess. Try not to barter the self for the relationship, as we say.”
“To do what?”
“The central problem of romantic love. To maintain autonomy while getting bonding energy. It may not be possible. If it was easy I wouldn’t have had to go a hundred miles away for the summer. Actually, I’m going to see him Friday.” Georgia was gathering her papers, getting up. A waitress appeared to take Olivia’s order. “I’ll see you in class,” Georgia said. “I need to get on over to my office and put some of this stuff away. Don’t hurry. Eat breakfast first.”
“I read the assignment,” Olivia said. “It was really interesting.”
“Yeah, Dyson’s hot. Next I want to give you some of Robert Coles’s studies of children. That’s the bitch about this subject. There isn’t a decent text. I have to xerox everything I need. Well, see you in a while.” Georgia was gone, weaving her way to the door, smiling back at Olivia over a stack of books and papers. Why do I need to see a shrink? Olivia wondered. When I have this woman for a teacher.
The waitress appeared with Olivia’s muffins. “I heard you and Bobby made up,” the waitress said. “I sure am glad. Everybody’s glad.”
“Where’d you hear that? Well, I forgot. The Tahlequah grapevine. Yeah, we made up. I’m glad you’re glad. Bobby and I are too.”
“I heard you got a ring.”
“Yeah, I did. You want to see it?”
“Sure. Where is it?”
“In my purse. I don’t wear it all the time.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it means, I guess. Anyway, here it is.” Olivia took the velvet box from her purse and removed the ring and put it on her finger and held it out to be admired. The waitress, whose name was Castell Carter, marveled at it. Then the other two waitresses, whose names were Jayne Anne and Emily, also came over to admire it. Food service stopped at The Shak. Jayne Anne had been a cheerleader with Olivia and Castell had been on her soccer team. “I always knew you and Bobby were meant for each other,” Castell said. “We all thought it was a shame when you left him.”
“She had to go,” Emily said. “She went to meet her dad.”