Джоан Силбер - Improvement

“I had to go to Sunday school,” Amanda wheezed, “when I was little. And Bible camp too. You wouldn’t believe. What we got up to. At Bible camp.”

Silas said, “Nothing more exciting than what you’re not supposed to do.”

“I see that all the time with my daughter,” Darisse said. “Just say no and she wants it big-time.”

Shit. She didn’t make a habit of telling men right away that she had a kid.

Silas (why would he care anyway?) was writing out his report. Amanda said, “Were your parents upset when you left the church?”

“I still play keyboard in church on Sundays,” he said. “Keeps everybody happy. We don’t talk about how I play in bars too.”

“What bars?” Darisse said.

“Just every now and then. Not so often.”

“I think that’s wonderful,” Amanda said.

“What bars?” Darisse said.

It wasn’t even a bar she had ever heard of, but that was the beginning. Some friends of his who weren’t bad at all were playing next week, in case she ever wanted to go hear music. She might just. They said this at the door and he took her number into his phone. “Well,” he said, “we will talk.”

It turned out to be jazz, which she wasn’t crazy for, but so what? When he picked her up at the apartment, he was wearing a pressed shirt in a silvery gray color, a big upgrade from his scrubs. He shook her grandmother’s hand—how old was he? That was the first thing she asked him in the car. “Guess,” he said.

Thirty-two, ten years older than she was. Probably an ex-wife somewhere, maybe getting alimony from him. When they walked into the club, they had to shut up while the music played, strangers though they still were. The music sounded too thick, too much going on at once, until all the playing cleared for the piano and she could follow a tune as it twisted around beautifully. But she didn’t know why people applauded after—what had just happened? She told him she liked it.

By the time the music was over she’d had too many drinks but she could keep it together. (She never had to keep anything together for Claude.) Was Silas from Richmond? Yes, but he’d lived in Charlotte; his kids (uh-huh) were still in Charlotte with their mom. “Amanda thinks you’re smarter than the doctor,” Darisse said. They weren’t actually supposed to talk about patients outside the job.

“Nice lady,” he said.

Darisse was thinking, Hope she stays nice . You couldn’t ever tell how people were going to get. She’d had one man, ninety years old and pale as a fish (she’d lied to Claude about not being sent to men), who was prone to what the agency called racial epithets. And there was a darling African American granny who accused her of stealing.

Silas wanted to know how long she’d been a home health aide, did she like it? And did she plan to work for herself someday instead of the agency? She hated this part, the conversation that was like an interview. She missed Claude very much in the midst of this.

“I might move to New York,” she said.

“You want some place bigger?” he said. “I can understand that.”

“Maybe I just have to make my own head bigger,” she said.

She didn’t mean that either, but they got to talking about hat sizes—he wore a 7-3/8? really? his head didn’t look that large—and hats they had loved. Baltimore Orioles for him, for her a white flowered concoction she’d worn for church as a child.

Then they had to go meet his friends, who were standing at the bar by now, had to tell them how great they’d been. The drummer looked old enough to be everybody’s father; the others were Silas’s age. They shook her hand. Silas wanted to know why they changed the bass solo on “Willow Weep” and what fool did the sound check. And that was the rest of the night.

But at the very end, when he walked to her door, there was a real kiss—a sudden revelation of him in tongue and lip. She hadn’t even expected it, and she was glad for herself then, proud. Not such a bad evening after all. Okay, okay, something was going to happen. Another date—that was how he did things. One step at a time.

The next week unfolded, day after day, and where were his phone calls? Nothing nothing. She was sick of making guesses about the motives of men. She hadn’t been totally sure she liked him anyway.

In her phone were still the texts Claude had sent her. Some of the old ones had slipped out of sight, but Cant cant wait 2 c u was there if she wanted to look at it, which she did. And several MUSL ’s, missing you shitloads. The texts were from weeks and weeks ago, an era now very distant, buried in the past, over long since. But reading them was irresistible because joy still lurked in the compressed words, and it wasn’t fake joy.

She took Jeshauna to church with her on their next weekend. Her grandmother was delighted (not something Darisse saw often) and ironed Jeshauna’s dress before they went. Jeshauna was pretty good in church—she liked the singing, everyone liked the singing. All the swaying, all the surging choruses. Darisse only hoped she didn’t catch the words to “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” which had too much violence for a little kid. Jeshauna’s good behavior didn’t last all the way to the sermon, and Darisse walked her out to the hallway and whispered her down from too much loudness. She put a game on the tablet for her.

The minister’s voice, gravelly and full, came through to Darisse over Jeshauna’s babbling. He was talking about how Bathsheba was married to Uriah the Hittite (the what?) but King David saw her in the bath and lusted for her and when she got pregnant afterward he sent her husband into the frontlines to get killed. And was David punished for this? He was. The infant died soon after birth. And years later his beloved son Absalom led a civil war against him, and to show his right to the throne he had sexual intercourse in public with ten of his father’s concubines.

It said that in the Bible? What an ugly story. “What do we take from this?” the minister said. “One, nobody gets away with anything. Not kings. Two, Jesus Christ is from the House of David. He came out of that .”

Darisse had gone expecting something a lot sweeter and wasn’t sure church had been such a great idea. Afterward her grandmother stood around in the foyer where the cake was set out, gabbing (probably about her) with the other hat-ladies, and Jeshauna was picking the icing off her piece.

Darisse already knew the part about nobody getting away with anything. Every mistake of hers had come back to bite her. In her teenage days she’d stolen Lionel from her friend Vanessa, and it hadn’t been easy either. And look how that worked out. In the first months after her daughter was born, she wasn’t the best mother; she turned away too often, she minded too much the way a baby had to be, reaching and needing. Now she’d give everything she had to be with Jeshauna more.

On the way home from church Jeshauna was allowed to eat a whole packet of cookies while she sat in her stroller, because she’d just been so good. Even Darisse’s grandmother said so.

Maybe church helped (oh, she didn’t believe that), because that very Sunday night she got a phone call from what’s-his-name Silas. They were short in the hospice service unit and he’d been working extra shifts and the time just got away from him, he meant to call sooner. Whatever.

But the next date with him was better. They went to a movie they both thought was funny; they drank beer and ate chicken wings and looked each other over. “I like these movies where people do stupid things,” she said (the leading man had thrown a briefcase full of cash into the wrong car), “and you get to laugh instead of just wanting to yell at them.”