Джоан Силбер - Improvement

My first thought was that Wiley, that shithead, was giving love a bad name.

The man didn’t have a sincere bone in his body. But maybe I had it backward. Maybe love was raising him up, turning him around, starting him over.

“I guess that’s good news,” I said. I didn’t say: If he hadn’t met her, Claude would still be around. It did no good to unknot and rewind everything that way, I knew that.

Boyd said, “Could last. Nobody knows about these things.”

Oh, were we going to have a talk about love? I stood looking at Boyd, trying to read his familiar face, while Oliver was starting to climb his leg like a tree.

“Nobody does know,” I said. “Oliver, take it easy. Sometimes things continue underground.”

“That they do.”

“You think so?”

“Not everything gets acted out in this life,” he said. “ Underground is a good word.”

I was enormously flattered. We agreed about this thing. Buried love. Its eternal zombie life.

“I always think I’m going to live to be very old,” I said.

“I bet you do,” he said. “And do it well.”

“And you too, I wish you that.” It was a meaningless conversation about love.

“Got a long time ahead of us,” he said. “People living to be a hundred these days.”

Till rivers all run dry . We were making great vows without the trouble of having to live with each other. But we were making them, standing on high ground to look down at the passage of time, years unfolding in the mortal valley below us.

I wasn’t going to look that good when I was a hundred. I knew that wasn’t the point, for me to worry how he might see me, if he could see.

“A hundred what?” Oliver said. “Can I have a hundred dollars?”

“Sure, right away,” I said. “You still at the diner, Boyd?”

“Place couldn’t go on without me.”

I laughed, of all things to do. He couldn’t guess how much I’d missed him. Maybe he could. There was no hope of ever being with him again—not a particle of likelihood—so why was I so gone with joy at the sight of him? There I was, smiling away.

Oliver said, “Did you know I hate naps?”

“I didn’t know,” Boyd said. “I’m so glad you told me.” He was hoisting Oliver up to stand on his shoes (Oliver crowed) while Boyd walked him around in giant steps, the way he used to. Just to remind me why I liked him better than any other man in the world.

So everybody was going to Wiley’s wedding. I heard this from Tania a week later, outside the classroom where we’d both dropped our kids off in the morning. “It’s just a city hall thing,” Tania said. “But they’re having a party at somebody’s that night.” No one was set against Wiley the way people were set against me. Same old Wiley. I was pretty cut up about this.

“What’s she like?” I said.

“Very pretty. I only met her for a second and she was hanging on Wiley’s neck like a boa constrictor.”

“The man could use some choking,” I said.

I heard how this came out, beyond bitchy, and Tania looked startled.

“Well, he’s getting strangled with love,” I said, a very lame do-over on my part. I was trying in some ridiculous way to sound more like my aunt.

“I might go to the party,” Tania said.

When Boyd was at Rikers, I came with Oliver to see him one day when we had to wait for hours. A fight had broken out somewhere and one section was under lockdown or maybe they all were, I didn’t know. Anyway Oliver and I were stuck on a bench in a room that had a soda machine and a clock and maybe ten other worn-down visitors. I was supposed to meet Sabina for supper and I couldn’t tell her how late (getting later by the minute) I’d be. My phone, my watch, my purse, Oliver’s dinosaur, were all in a locker we couldn’t get to, and we couldn’t turn back even if we wanted. I had to keep Oliver occupied. I didn’t have a pen or a pencil or a shred of paper. “I spy with my little eye,” I said, “something blue. What is it?”

Oliver was not impressed. “That man’s dungarees,” he said. “So what?”

I goaded him into finding two more blue things—the guard’s uniform, the paint on a doorframe—but he wasn’t playing after that. “This is boring,” he decided to inform me.

“Pretend you’re a famous person,” I said, “and I have to guess who you are.” Was this too advanced for him?

“Okay, okay.”

Living or dead? Living. Boy or girl? Boy. Grown-up or kid? Grown-up. Not on TV, not in movies, not in video games. Not in a story they read in daycare. Would everybody in the world know him? Yes. Was it the president? No. Did everybody in the world like him? Yes, yes. I was going to guess Jesus, in case Hector’s family had sneaked that in. “You know,” he said. “Boyd!”

Well, of course, what person would we wait for all day like this but the king of the world?

“I really didn’t guess,” I said. “You’re so smart.”

When I told this to Boyd later, I tried to do it in a way that didn’t make fun of Oliver. It made the day so much better. Boyd said, “I’d never guess either.” Oliver thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, Boyd not guessing himself.

In October, I got an email that came from Maxwell. Best Brow Bar in Philly Now Open , the subject line said. I must have been on his mailing list. I was dazzled by the words, a vision from my head turned real suddenly. As if a language I only spoke to myself was now being muttered all around me. The email showed a brick wall painted spring-green with a gold-framed mirror, a glass dressing table, a big Boston fern on a stand. Welcome to the salon.

You could click the menu to read a list of services, and you could see a photo of someone’s perfect eyebrow. There was a bio of Lynnette, detailing her long service in the chic venue of Midtown New York and her passion to bring her skills back to the town of her youth. Customers who came on opening day could enjoy a glass of bubbly to hail the new arrival.

The bio made Lynnette sound happy and triumphant, so it was great reading for me. She’d be wearing some fabulous outfit at the opening, something sexy and shimmering, with slashes in the fabric and fringes. After one drink she’d probably be blessing everybody. She might make a speech about hard times and getting back on her feet and thank the special people she needed to thank, Maxwell and Boyd and somebody she couldn’t name. “Miracles happen. Every one of you has to believe,” she would say. Someone might start to whisper and laugh at this, and Lynnette would say, “Cut it. I’m right.” Her crazy mother would toast to big, big success. I was making this up but it gave me great pleasure, and it probably wasn’t all that far from whatever happened. Claude would’ve been so glad to see all of it. Look at that now, he would’ve said to me, I knew it all along.

I want to thank Myra Goldberg as ever for her astute and essential advice and her patience in reading. I also owe great thanks to Andrea Barrett, Kathleen Hill, Margarite Landry, and Chuck Wachtel. I am grateful to my editor, Dan Smetanka, and everyone at Counterpoint, and to my agent, Geri Thoma, and Andrea Morrison. Special thanks to Levent Kocabaş, Seref Ufuk Altug, and Aydın Can for teaching me about Turkey. And thanks to the MacDowell colony for a residency during the writing of this book.

Portions of this novel have appeared previously in magazines. The first chapter appeared under the title “About My Aunt” in Tin House and was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 and The Best American Short Stories 2015 . The fourth chapter appeared under the title “Coverage” in the Colorado Review .