Джоан Силбер - Improvement

“It’s amazing what people get money for.”

“If Osman had wanted to do that,” she said, “he wouldn’t have become a farmer. It was the farming that made me leave, by the way.”

I was very pleased that she told me.

“And he left off farming five years later,” she said. “Wasn’t that ironic?”

“It was,” I said.

“I still write to Osman. He’s a great letter-writer.”

This was news. Did she have all the letters, how hot were they, did he email now? Of course, I was thinking: Maybe you two should get back together . It’s a human impulse, isn’t it, to want to set the world in couples.

“The wife he has now is much younger,” Kiki said.

By December I’d gotten a new tattoo in honor of Boyd’s impending release from Rikers. It was quite beautiful—a birdcage with the door open and a whole line of tiny birds going up toward my wrist. Some people designed their body art so it all fit together, but I did mine piecemeal, like my life, and it looked fine.

Kiki noticed it when it was a week old and still swollen. She had just made supper for us (overcooked hamburgers but Oliver liked them) and I was doing the dishes, keeping that arm out of the water. Soaking too soon was bad for it.

“And when Boyd is out of the picture,” Kiki said, “you’ll be stuck with this ink that won’t go away.”

“It’s my history,” I said. “My arm is an album.” I got my first tattoo when I was sixteen, the tiger lily, when I ran away with a boyfriend who made off with his father’s truck to take us to a chilly beach in Maine for a week. I loved that tattoo. And the olive branch for Oliver had been done a month after his birth, when I wanted to remind myself to be happy.

“What if Boyd doesn’t like this one?”

“It’s for me ,” I said. “All of these are mine .”

“Don’t be a carpet,” she said.

“You don’t really know very much about this,” I said, “if you don’t mind my saying.”

Why would I take advice from a woman who slept every night alone in her bed, cuddling up with some copy of Aristotle? What could she possibly tell me that I could use? And she was getting older by the minute, with her squinty eyes and her short hair stuck too close to her head.

It was snowing the day Boyd got released from Rikers. I was home with Oliver when his friend Maxwell went to pick him up. He didn’t want me and Oliver seeing him then, with his bag of items, with his humbling paperwork, with the guards leaning over every detail. By the time I got to view Boyd he was in our local coffee shop with Maxwell, eating a cheeseburger, looking happy and greasy. Oliver went berserk, leaping all over him, smearing his little snowy boots all over Boyd’s pants. I leaped a little too. “Don’t knock me over,” Boyd said. “Nah, knock me over. Go ahead.”

“Show him no mercy,” Maxwell said.

Already Boyd looked vastly better than he had in jail, and he’d only been out an hour. “Can’t believe it,” he said. “Can’t believe I was ever there.” He fed French fries to Oliver, who pretended to be a dog. Boyd had his other hand on my knee. We could do that now. “Hey, girl,” he said. The snow outside the window gave everything a lunar brightness.

The first night he stayed with me, after it took forever to get Oliver asleep in the other room, I was madly eager when we made our way to each other at last. How did it go, this dream, did we still know how to do this? We knew just fine, we knew all along, but there were fumbles and pauses, little laughing hesitations. I had imagined Boyd would be hungry and even rough, but, no, he was careful, careful; he looped around and circled back and took some sweet byways before settling on his goal. He was trying, it seemed to me, to make this first contact very particular, trying to recognize me. I didn’t expect this from him, which showed what I knew.

At my job in the vet’s office my fellow workers teased me about being sleepy at the desk. They all knew my boyfriend had returned after a long trip. Any yawn brought on group hilarity. “Look how she walks, she hobbles,” one of the techs said. What a raunchy office I worked in, people who dealt with animals. All I said was, “Laugh away, you’re green with envy.”

I was distracted, full of wayward thoughts—Boyd and I starting a restaurant together, Boyd and I running off to Thailand, Boyd and I having a kid together, maybe a girl, what would we name her, Oliver would like this, or would he? I lost focus while I was doing my tasks at the computer and had to put up with everyone saying how sleepy I was.

Jail doesn’t always change people in good ways, but in Boyd’s case it made him quieter and less apt to throw his weight around. He had to find a new job (no alcohol), which was a big challenge to his stylish self. I was sort of proud of him when he started in as a waiter in a diner just north of our neighborhood. This was definitely a step down for him, which he bore grudgingly but not bitterly. His hair at night smelled of frying oil and broiler smoke. His home was not exactly with me—he was officially camped out at his cousin’s, since his own apartment was gone—but he spent a lot of nights at my place. I liked the cousin (Maxwell, who had sometimes babysat for Oliver), but he had a tendency to drag Boyd out to clubs at night. In my younger days I liked to go clubbing same as anyone but once I had Oliver it pretty much lost its appeal. I had reason to imagine girls in little itty-bitty outfits were busy throwing themselves at Boyd in these clubs, but it turned out that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Maxwell had a scheme for increasing Boyd’s admittedly paltry income. It had to do with smuggling cigarettes from Virginia to New York, of all idiotic ways to make a profit. Just to cash in on the tax difference. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” I said. “You want to violate probation?”

“Don’t shout,” Boyd said.

“Crossing state lines. Are you crazy?”

“That’s it,” Boyd said. “You always have opinions. Topic closed. Forget I said a word.”

I didn’t take well to being shushed. I snapped at him and he got stony and went home early that night. “A man needs peace, is that too much to ask?” When would he be back? Did I give a fuck?

“You think I give a fuck?” I said.

I was with Kiki the next day, having lunch near my office. She was checking up on me these days as much as she could, which included treating me to the mixed falafel plate. I told her about the dog I’d met at my job who knew three languages. It could sit, lie down, and beg in English, Spanish, and ASL. “A pit bull mix. They’re very smart.”

“You know what I think?” Kiki said. “I think you should go live somewhere where you’d learn another language. Everyone should really.”

“Someday,” I said.

“I still have a friend in Istanbul. I bet you and Oliver could go camp out at her place. For a little while. It’s a very kid-friendly culture.”

“I don’t think so. My life is here.”

“It doesn’t have to be Istanbul, that was my place, it’s not everyone’s. There are other places. I’d stake you with some cash if you wanted to take off for a while.”

I wasn’t even tempted.

“It’s very good of you,” I said.

“You’ll be sorry later if you don’t do it,” she said.

She wanted to get me away from Boyd, which might happen on its own anyway. I was touched and insulted, both at once. And then I was trying to imagine myself in a new city. Taking Oliver to a park in Rome. Having interesting chats with the locals while I sat on the bench. Laughing away in Italian.

My phone interrupted us with the ping sound that meant I was getting a text. “Sorry,” I said to Kiki. “I just need to check.” It was Boyd, and I was so excited that I said, “Oh! From Boyd!” out loud. Sorry, Baby was in the message, and some extra parts that I certainly wasn’t reading to Kiki. But I chuckled in joy, tickled to death—I could feel myself getting flushed. How funny he could be when he wanted. That Boyd.