Джоан Силбер - Improvement

He sent Leah a text— truck fine miss u like alwys april too all my lv —and none of it was a lie. There were burning truths in that message.

He couldn’t stay in the restaurant booth forever so he went out into what was turning into a very nice summer night, clear and soft. He sat on a bench at the edge of the parking lot, with bushes at the border and the traffic roaring farther down. The accident had happened not too far from here, hadn’t it? In fact the driver had probably been exiting from here, while Teddy rolled on below.

April had friends who said they believed in ghosts, and Teddy scoffed at them. But he wished the dead boy could know that the truck was all fixed up and he the driver was perfectly fine. Don’t worry , he wanted to say to the boy, since you always heard ghosts were restless. Have a good time in heaven, don’t bother resting in peace. We’re done, no unfinished business , as if they could shake hands across the Great Divide.

Above the highway the moon, almost full, was floating in the dark night, with no stars visible. Teddy was thinking about Sally and about how a life as long as his (which wasn’t even that long) contained so much old time, great hoards of it filling out the spaces in his head; he didn’t feel his younger days as lost exactly. Except that now he’d lost Sally, the later Sally; he did feel that. Too bad for him, that was the way it was, he’d be glad eventually, but he wasn’t now.

He didn’t sleep very well in the truck, but when his phone alarm woke him at five thirty, he could see the rosy pink of the waking sky, which looked good anywhere. He got cleaned up in the rest area, drank a coffee from a machine since no food place was open, and texted Leah to say he’d be home before lunch. And when he had his foot on the brake at the entry ramp, staying slow to gauge when to merge with traffic, he thought, There’s no justice in who dies, where did I get my luck from? and then he was on the highway with everybody else.

When he got home, everybody was having a big fat Sunday brunch. The sun was getting hotter, but they were on the screened back porch with fans around them. At the table were April and her friend, Nellie; Leah’s friend, Barbara; and Leah, who’d cooked the stuff—before them were decimated plates of bacon and pancakes and blackberries and whipped cream. “Plenty left for you,” Leah said.

He wasn’t quite ready for all these people. Nellie, April’s friend, said, “Do you think Washington, D.C., would be a good place to live?”

April snorted. “He doesn’t notice that,” she said. “He just drives.”

Before Teddy went on the road the next week, his lawyer had a little news for him over the phone. The payment was always slower for property damage than for injuries. Had he noticed any delayed symptoms—headaches, seizures, seeing double, bouts of dizziness? Sometimes these took a while to appear. Teddy was thinking what a sleaze the lawyer was. Jackson, straight as an arrow himself, had recommended him. Money made everybody want to be so smart. “I have chronic indigestion from paying a fortune for my truck,” Teddy said. All the fake whining would be a lost cause; he was healthy as a horse.

The lawyer, who had been paid a retainer, was looking into it further. Teddy wasn’t eager to pay him more. He had to pay the bank for his repairs loan, he had to keep paying his truck insurance, he had to keep paying off the truck, he helped Leah with the mortgage, and they got hit for April’s tuition before the summer even ended. He had plenty of work, at least—no slowdown from contractors this year—he was on the road as much as he could stand. But he had the sloppy feeling he was waiting for his ship to come in. This was always a chump’s position.

April asked him, “Did you ever almost die?”

Teddy thought she’d heard too many war stories from old junkies at her meetings. April herself had straightened up before she bottomed out really thoroughly, so maybe she was a little jealous.

“Not really,” Teddy said, “unless you count the time I met Bigfoot when I got out of the truck to pee near Spokane. He wasn’t friendly.”

“Oh, please.”

“I never told you that story?”

“The guy who hit your truck,” April said, “do you think he knew what was happening?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think he was thinking?”

“Maybe he was asking God for a last-minute break. People try to bargain, we all do.”

“God doesn’t make deals,” April said. “I don’t know why people bother with all the repenting and promising.”

“I know,” Teddy said.

No payment yet from the insurance. He had collision coverage, he knew he did, but there was a high deductible and apparently room for debate on certain issues, according to the lawyer. “Try not to obsess,” Leah said.

“How can a person not think about money?” he said. They were having this conversation while walking through a supermarket, buying food for a Thanksgiving dinner. Leah planned to feed eighteen people.

“What if you died the day after tomorrow?” Leah said, throwing two quarts of heavy cream into the cart. “Would you want your mourners to talk about what a skimpy meal they had at your house?” She was throwing two pounds of butter in too.

Teddy was living in two worlds, a tidy house overflowing with abundance and behind the walls a hidden boneyard of bills and strained credit. “Everybody lives that way,” Leah said. Not much of a defense.

And right on Thanksgiving an email from Sally appeared on his phone. Maybe I’ve been too hard on you , she wrote. First time he’d heard that from her. The truck is your livelihood. You’re a hardworking person . This was a lot of crap, but the point was that she wouldn’t shut the door on him if he happened to be driving south any time. If he was still interested.

Teddy didn’t answer, but all through Thanksgiving dinner he was a man overstuffed with tempting offers, a man who had more opportunities than he could begin to swallow. The masses of food on the table made sense to him; he laughed at the clutter of sweet potatoes, white potatoes, Brussels sprouts, creamed onions, corn pudding, green bean casserole, white meat, dark meat, stuffing, two kinds of cranberry sauce. That was the beauty of it. “ Dad ,” April said. “Will you stop putting gravy all over my plate?”

“Everybody, eat,” he said. “No leftovers!”

He didn’t answer Sally right away, he’d get to it when he knew what he wanted to say. He was thinking about the time he ran over her little fancy black dress. He’d been so angry at the dress, which was hanging on the closet door, ready for her to put on when she went out with her friends. He hated the way she was with her friends, hyped-up and full of herself and showing off to any men. She was screaming at him when he grabbed the dress and dashed out the door to throw it down in the driveway. “You asshole fucking loser,” she screamed. But she stayed away from the moving truck; she was afraid of the truck. He couldn’t remember being a person like that. Yes, he could.

After he wrote her the ninth-step letter of apology, someone at a meeting said that he should’ve replaced the dress, sent a new one. But who wanted an item of clothing from an ex-husband? And a check would have been insulting in another way. Somebody said a gift certificate (a what?). He’d assumed his genuine remorse was enough—it was a lot, from him—but how much of life was weighable and concrete and physical and how much was the-thought-that-counted? He was still figuring that one out.

On the other hand, maybe he understood it as far as he needed, since he wasn’t about to see Sally in person again. He’d decided that, despite all the haunting she did of his mind. Why be a jerk if you didn’t have to be? The logic of this was strong in him when he finally wrote. And probably she was already mad from waiting too long for him to answer. She hated waiting.