Джоан Силбер - Improvement

I didn’t hear a word from Boyd or any of them for five days. I could phone all I wanted, no answer. On the sixth day I came home from work and I heard a rustle in the bedroom, and there was Boyd packing his clothes into a big piece of luggage. He didn’t even look up. “It’s worse than you think,” he said. “You don’t know what’s gone down.”

I didn’t know that outside Baltimore Claude had tried to turn onto I-95 from a rest stop and he’d collided with a truck, smashed into it so hard that he died with his seat belt on before an ambulance even got there. Maxwell was a mess, he was still in the hospital, but he was okay.

I followed Boyd’s voice, dry as sand, and I sobbed as loud as an adult ever sobs. Boyd put his arm around me stiffly, he did his best, as if I were a relative he wasn’t crazy for. “You got to watch out for Lynnette,” he said. “She’s all broken up and she doesn’t like you.”

They’d had the funeral already. The mother from Philadelphia had made an unholy racket and Lynnette had been like a ghost, all sedated. In the days since then she seemed to have to talk to everyone nonstop, phoning at all hours, showing up whenever. “Shouldn’t have taken her off those drugs so soon.”

The stiff hug was over. I was a wreck of smeared tears. We looked at each other, bowed down with horror at all of it. I wanted to think he was sorry to lose me. I was in the grip of a longing to go back in time, to undo what I’d done, and this wish was slashing my innards.

After Boyd left, I wanted to ask about the funeral—which church? What could any minister have said over Claude? A boy so unformed and goofy and shallow that dying seemed deeper than anything he’d know how to do. Who had told the girl in Richmond, or was she still waiting?

And the money was probably still in the car. In whatever junkyard the car had been hauled to. All their cleverness had come to nothing—Claude, of course, had never been the clever part. But he might’ve smartened up, in time. If this accident hadn’t killed him, it might have taught him.

They had kept me from even a back seat in the church. Boyd could have argued for me, if he’d wanted, except that I’d put him in a bad spot too. I was like someone who sets a fire by mistake: not her fault but it is her fault.

Oliver kept asking where Boyd was. “Away for a while,” I said. I didn’t believe in lying to children but it was too hard to explain, your mother didn’t know herself as well as she thought she did, so someone died, and Boyd doesn’t like it.

On the street a few nights later I saw Lynnette at the crosswalk, stepping out ahead of me. She was looking very skinny in purple leggings and she was talking nonstop, as Boyd had described, holding forth to some guy walking with her. She was so intent she didn’t see me, and I could hear her rasping, “Not gonna take that shit,” over and over. Her voice was hoarse and crazy-sounding (the woman was in mourning, she was entitled), and I was afraid of her.

One afternoon when I came into work at the vet’s, the girl who was on the front desk told me a man had come in asking for me and hadn’t left his name. What did he look like? “African American,” she said, “in a T-shirt.” Not much of a description. It might be Maxwell, but he’d be bruised or bandaged if he was out by now. It wasn’t Boyd, who had my phone number and could just call. One of Claude’s friends? I didn’t like it.

It might be nothing. It might be a happy pet owner wanting to thank me for past niceness. I was edgy all day, on guard every time I had to buzz someone in. I lived in a mist of dread, didn’t I, and I didn’t know how to guess about things. Nothing happened that day but when I went home I told Oliver I had a summer plan for us.

My aunt had gone off to Cape Cod with her friend, Pat, and how long was she going to be gone? I was wondering if it might not be a good idea to apartment-sit for Kiki, get out of my neighborhood. I told my father I wanted Oliver nearer the playgrounds downtown, which were safer. (This was a racist fib—the playgrounds near us were fine.)

Kiki sounded cheerful when I called her. She was having great walks on the beach, eating fried clams and that great Portuguese soup—did I still have a key? I did. “Well, just go right over,” she said. “Of course.” I promised not to let Oliver trash the place.

“You always think I trash things,” Oliver said, while I was talking. “It’s not me.”

I thought of Claude every day. His shambling self had been released into the world, to wait outside every bodega, lope around every corner. If anyone had unfinished business, he did. If anyone needed more time, he did. He was going to wander for years at the edge of my line of sight.

When I moved into Kiki’s apartment with Oliver, the hardest part was trying to carry enough of his toys. Her place was much less modern than where we lived, homier, more lopsided. I was comforted by the cluttered kitchen with its hanging pots, by the Turkish carpet with its Kiki-history. I made a big game out of bedding Oliver down on the living room futon, and he was sort of okay. At night, under Kiki’s sheets, I missed Boyd in secret desperation, Boyd who was never coming back and who was farther away than ever. I didn’t think this was the worst of it—that I’d lost Boyd—but knowing that didn’t make it any less bitter.

The day I took the long subway ride back up to my apartment in Harlem to get more clothes, I walked in and wondered all over again if any cash had been left behind. I looked in the freezer; I looked in all the drawers; I looked in the top of the toilet tank. But Boyd had taken it, if there’d been any left.

How pleased both of us had been, in our glory days. I was innocent then of what I knew about myself, where showing off could go. That was over, that innocence. If I ever found any money in the house, I’d send it straight to Lynnette.

I would, too. Claude would want every bit of it sent to his sister—Lynnette was always broke. She had a job, but it barely kept her above water. She was a “beauty technician,” which meant she plucked people’s eyebrows and extended their lashes.

I wouldn’t let Lynnette near my eyes, but customers probably wanted her; she could be flashy in a fabulous way. Once, for Claude’s birthday, she wore rhinestone earrings long as bananas and a polo shirt with lights on it that spelled out CLAUDE . Claude said her outfit made her look like Times Square. It was his twenty-fourth birthday.

Boyd had toasted him with some ridiculous birthday rap. Got to say it loud, power to the Claude . And would Boyd and I get to meet again in this life? Maybe sixty years from now. It was hard to think of Boyd old, but I could do it, I could picture him gray and gaunt, looking out from an armchair, braving the worst. I knew how he’d be; I knew him. He’d be glad to see me by then, more than glad. I could feel myself wishing it were that time now.

When Claude didn’t show up at the bar, Darisse was plenty upset. She was all dolled up, as her grandmother would say, in a little itty-bitty skirt and a halter top and her hair gelled into a loop. Where was Claude? She walked up and down; she peered around the tables in the back. He never came late, however long it took to drive from New York to Richmond. No sign of his friends anywhere in the bar either. The place was packed, but she looked hard. No answer to her texts. She rang and she just got his message, over and over.

People were known to change their minds. Say one thing, do another. Could happen. The guy who smiled all over himself when he saw her? The guy who sent her hot love texts every single day? Maybe he panicked because he’d fallen for her so hard. Maybe being too crazy about her scared the shit out of him. None of her girlfriends were buying that explanation. Darisse didn’t either, by the end of the night. She tried not to drink too much but she was tearful by the last message she left him. Wr r u at?