Джоан Силбер - Improvement

“Is something not all right?” I said.

“No problem,” she said. “Everything’s fine.”

Meanwhile, Boyd was so much at ease these days that on the Monday we wanted to go ice-skating but couldn’t because it was already too warm, he took Oliver and me to hang out at the café in Brooklyn where my friend Sabina worked, and we had a Williamsburg afternoon, which was not his thing at all. But he was cool with everything—panini with almost nothing to eat between the bread, Sabina whining about having no money, white guys with hair combed forward like Napoleon (I hated that haircut), Oliver running around like a little maniac.

I thanked Boyd for his patience when we got home. “Hey, don’t worry,” he said.

It was only when I left Oliver at my neighbor’s one night and I joined the crew at Maxwell’s—a bunch of guys and a few girls around the edges—that I got a feel for what was improving Boyd’s attitude. Anyone could see he was much more with it now, and it was the promise of criminal glory that was giving him his style back. I should’ve known; maybe I had known. They were all talking about getting some vehicle to go to Virginia with. Could they get hold of a truck, did they need a van, what about a car with a big trunk? Could they borrow a car from anybody?

I didn’t say to Boyd, “Well, you can’t even fucking drive,” since he was touchy about remarks in front of his friends. Everyone knew his license was suspended for six months (they did that to drug offenders, even minor ones like him) and he wasn’t supposed to go out of state either, unless he had special approval. The man had every reason to stay put.

Lots of New Yorkers never learned how to drive. It turned out Maxwell, Mr. Mastermind, was one of them. Claude said, “I can do it, you know.”

Lynnette, his sister—and why was she here?—said, “You’re the worst driver in the world, ask the whole neighborhood.”

“Like you’re any better,” he said.

They weren’t going to get this together. It didn’t strike me as a serious discussion, with everyone and his girlfriend putting in their two cents. In my own opinion, which I did utter aloud, just because the same pack of cigarettes had a $0.30 tax in Virginia and a $5.85 tax in New York City (kind of amazing) didn’t mean any of them should get anywhere near this idea.

“And you really think a bunch of guys like you with New York plates are going to be invisible to cops on the highways of Virginia?” I said.

“No law against driving,” Claude said.

“You ever drive a truck?” Maxwell said to me.

In fact, I had. In high school I had a beloved boyfriend whose father was a contractor, the one I ran away to Maine with, and we both liked the goofiness of me behind the wheel. I should’ve kept this fact to myself, but what I said was, “Of course.”

This made them laugh. They were looking at Boyd, who’d brought me into this. I’d stuck by him when lots of girls never bothered making the long trek to Rikers. I wasn’t the only white person in the room either (Maxwell’s friend Wiley was with a pretty Dominican, a mix of everything, and there was a blond guy from the Bronx who was somebody’s buddy). They were used to me, all of them, for better and worse. Lynnette never liked me, but I didn’t think her reasons were racial.

And then somebody wanted to know how much gas cost in Virginia, and didn’t a truck have the worst mpg of anything you could think of? Claude got all caught up in checking statistics on his smartphone. None of them knew about cars.

Lynnette said, “Wait a few months and then Boyd can do it. He’ll be fine.”

Boyd gave one of his slow smiles. Well, anyone liked praise.

I called my parents to ask if they had any clue what was up with Kiki. She wasn’t old—sixties weren’t old nowadays—why was she talking about death?

“Kiki doesn’t tell me anything,” my father said. “But she gets like this before she sees her friend Pat. They’ve known each other so long. Tempus fugit , she’s thinking.”

Pat was her old best friend from Turkey, and every summer they went off to Cape Cod together to hang out at the beach. They’d been doing this for thirty years.

“I bet they just talk about their ex-husbands,” my mother said. “Obsolete gossip. How’s Oliver? You never tell us how Oliver is.”

“Kiki’s healthy, right?”

“You always worry about her,” my mother said. “Do you worry about us?”

Oliver had started asking me if I could get him a brother. “Older or younger?”

“Both!” he said. His friend Hector at daycare had a big messy family Oliver wanted.

“Not the worst idea,” Boyd said, and he put his hand on my hip.

I practically teared up, I was that touched and surprised. Except that it actually was the worst idea.

“ I don’t have a brother or sister,” I said to Oliver. “Boyd has a brother in the army he never sees.”

“Don’t just give him the negative,” Boyd said. “Look at Claude and Lynnette.”

Lynnette would never be my favorite, but it was true she went ballistic at anyone who spoke a word against her brother, and when Claude got arrested for shoplifting a coat, it was Lynnette who went to the police station, Lynnette who took care of it. When Lynnette got fired from a job, when Lynnette burned through all her credit, it was Claude who kept her fed. They bickered when they were together—Claude said, “Shut it, girl,” and Lynnette said, “What a dick you can be”—but this was their coziness.

Oliver said, “I never get anything I want.”

In April, Maxwell started talking about how somebody’s brother-in-law would sell them his old Ford Taurus for a good price. Did we know how big the trunks were on those dopey little machines? Bigger than you’d think. They just needed investors to chip in for the car. Who had savings? Did I have savings?

“If you’re partners with us,” Maxwell said to me, “we share the profits. I know you’re doing okay with the dogs and cats, but a person can see you could use a little more cash. You got Oliver there.”

We were sitting on a bench at the edge of a playground during this discussion. Oliver was climbing up an overdesigned modern jungle gym, and I had an eye on him and the other kids to make sure there was no pushing on the ladder. The guys—Maxwell and Claude and Boyd—had come to visit me where I had to be; they were extending themselves, for guys. As well they might. “Maybe you don’t have money,” Maxwell said. I did not. “But you could help in other ways. Like if the car is in your name, everything is simpler for us. Just your name, it’s nothing.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Okay?”

“Sure,” Maxwell said. “No pressure.”

Later, at home, when Boyd had his head in my lap while he lay on the sofa watching TV, he said, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Then I’d rather not,” I said.

The words came out just like that. I hadn’t known they were so ready to land. I was a free person, it so happened, and I wasn’t afraid of Boyd either.

“I’ve seen enough of Rikers just visiting,” I said. “I’m a mother, you know?”

“It’s fine,” Boyd said. “No big deal.”

He was murmuring into my jeans. I put my hand on his head, and he turned his face to kiss it. Who would think my saying no would have us acting so fond with each other? But we both seemed eager to show we were above financial disputes, we were better than that. He kept his lips against my palm for a good five minutes, while men ran around a green field on TV.

Lynnette didn’t mind at all putting her name on the car’s registration. They wanted someone with no record (that let out Boyd and Claude), just to keep anything from getting flagged, and Maxwell said it looked too weird for someone like him without a license to own a car. They were paying off the car in installments. For how long?