“You’re jealous of them, aren’t you?” he said to her once, and he wasn’t even kidding. “I think you actually see them as rivals.”
“Yeah, they’re little Lolitas,” she’d said. “Thirty-eight little Lolitas. One of these days, you’re going to come home, and I’m going to have them all out on the table, all waiting to be admired and petted.”
“Please,” he’d said. “Don’t even joke about that.”
She looks at him now across the pillow, at the deep crease between his eyebrows, the lines etched underneath his eyes, and the way his lips are pursed in slight disapproval. His life is like one big fat NO. And what’s going to happen if they don’t even have sex to pull them back together?
“Do you want to get up and go get breakfast?” she says.
Maybe he hears something in her voice, because he says, “Not yet. I want to pretend it’s the past, and we don’t know about Caller ID or Google.” He moves on top of her and looks down into her eyes, cradling her head in his gentle potter’s hands.
“Impossible—” she begins, but he puts his mouth on hers and gives her a long, slow, unlikely kiss, and with so many years of experience, of habit, the automatic-pilot part of them takes over, and somehow, despite everything, the familiar rhythms begin again.
He gets up and gets the scented oil, and the air fills with the fragrance of roses and lemons as he massages her. He sweeps her long brown hair out of the way, and leans down and kisses her cheeks and neck and that spot he loves by her collarbone, and by the time he has worked his way down, they are suffused with a drowsy passion.
Afterward, they lie there quietly, touching each other, watching the way the sun slants in, how at this time of year it’s beginning to catch the glint from the river down below and flash its wavy patterns above them. In the next few months, she knows, the light will become sharper and will move all the way across the ceiling, jiggling and bouncing in the wake of the boats that will come. Another year will have gone by.
“Oh my God,” says Jonathan. He sits up. “Uh-oh. You know what happened? I forgot to put on another condom.”
The wavy patterns shudder on the ceiling. “You forgot?” she says. “How could you forget?” But she knows why. He’s not used to them. Mostly she uses a diaphragm, but a couple of weeks ago when she was washing it, she noticed it had a hole in it, but she couldn’t get an appointment for another right away, and so Jonathan said he’d wear a condom in the meantime.
She looks at him in dismay.
“Yeah. Well, we forgot,” he says. “You could have mentioned it, too.”
There’s something she’s supposed to do at a moment like this—go out and get some morning-after pill or something. Does she really have to jump up and hurry to a clinic? She’s got better things to do. He’s watching her, biting his lip again, waiting for the verdict.
“I think it’s all right,” she says after a moment. “One of the good things about being so damn old is that I don’t think I’m in danger of getting pregnant.”
“Why? When does menopause come?”
“Oh, it comes when it wants to. My periods are already weird. I think I’m halfway in menopause already.”
“But you don’t know?”
“You never know. It’s all mysterious with periods. They do what they want.”
“I don’t know how you women cope,” he says.
“Us? I don’t see how you guys get along with those things flapping around on the front of you. That’s way worse.” She looks at him and smiles. “Oh hell. Let’s just get up and go have some breakfast,” she says. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he says. “Could I Google Andres Schultz first, do you think?”
“Do you have to?”
He smiles at her, and yes, she sees how much it means to him that Cup Number Thirty-nine might be waiting out there in San Diego, might right now be sitting in a white box that will come and join the others in their living room. For a moment, she feels what it must mean to him.
She’s about to say it’s fine, he should go ahead and Google Andres Schultz, but then she doesn’t have to. “Nah, you’re right. I’ll wait,” he says. “Let’s go eat.”
[two]
Once they’ve walked down the hill and are sitting in their usual comfy booth at Ruby’s Café, with coffee and the New York Times spread around them, she can’t help herself. She says, “Would you possibly consider coming with me to Soapie’s this afternoon? You can meet Mrs. Cynthia Lamb and watch her audition for the part. Might be fun.”
“Rosieeeee,” he says, making a face. “I’ve got things to do. I’m a busy man.”
“Come on,” she says. “Sometimes we have to stick together. It’s family.”
It’s so unfair. Jonathan is from a huge family, with whole battalions of people to shoulder the burdens of life with—a mother, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, all of whom call him whenever they please—but she only has this one old lady. He’s always ducking calls from his brothers who want to schmooze about their cars, and his mother, who likes to chat endlessly about her theories about life and death and celebrity divorces. He says that family is the real reason Caller ID was invented.
Suddenly a curly-haired toddler in a pink tutu materializes at Rosie’s side and hands her a doll and one half-smashed blueberry.
“I wanna sit in the window,” she says.
Surprised, Rosie lifts her up and sets her down on the cushion next to the window. From across the room, the child’s mother stands up and shrugs, mouthing, Is this okay? over the din. Rosie smiles back at her and gestures that it’s fine, suddenly noticing that the place is crawling with young families today. Babies in strollers are tucked into all the available corners, kids lean out of backpacks and high chairs, and young couples, harried from the task of keeping everybody sorted out, hand babies back and forth across the table.
“Jesus, it’s like they’re giving out babies with the breakfasts,” says Jonathan. “Be careful how you phrase your order. I think they’re doing a very loose interpretation of the word eggs.”
The little girl looks up and claps her hands. She has a smudge on her nose that might be syrup.
“You’re very cute, you know that?” Rosie says.
Jonathan shakes his head and whispers, “What, is this the one they’re giving us? Don’t we get to pick, at least?”
“Sssh, this one’s lovely,” she says to him.
“She may be damaged, though. Look at that mark on her nose.”
“Would you stop? It’s syrup.” She laughs and wipes it off with the corner of her napkin.
He’s frowning, looking at the little girl as though she’s a wild feral animal.
“What if you just make a quick appearance, Jonathan? In and out. Say hi, smile at Mrs. Cynthia Lamb, tell her you hope she ends up working with Soapie, and then you can leave,” Rosie says.
“I’ve got a million things to do today. I work all week, and my Saturdays—”
“What? Really, what?”
He’s quiet for a moment, looking longingly at the sections of the newspaper strewn out across their table. They have a brilliant system for sharing the Times each week, which they’ve perfected over the years, and Rosie can see he’s trying to surreptitiously locate the Style section for her so that he can shut her up and get on with his precious Arts section. She puts her hand down on top of the paper and looks him in the eye. Finally he clears his throat and says, “No, no, no. This is not going to be a negotiation, where I say what I’m doing and then you say it’s not important.”
“I already know what you’re doing today. You’re going to Google Andres Schultz and then you’re going to blog about teacups. And no, it isn’t as important as human beings, Jonathan. We have to stick together sometimes. We have families, you know.”
“My name is Sega,” says the little girl, getting up on her knees and tugging on Rosie’s sleeve. “What’s your name?”
“Sega?” Jonathan says in a low voice. “Sega? Seriousl
y? After the video game system?” He gives Rosie his head-exploding look and talks in a low voice. “Do you hear this? People are naming their kids after games now?”
“Sssh,” she says. “Her family is right over there.”
“That’s another thing. Do we look like unoccupied babysitters or something? Maybe we should go over and tell them our hourly rate.” He looks down at the little girl. “Do you have a sibling named Nintendo?”
She puts her fingers in her mouth and shakes her head.
“You will, just wait.” Just then, his cell phone bleats from his pocket, and he grabs it and holds it at arm’s length so he can read it before he flips it open. His face lights up. “Hello? Yes, this is Jonathan Morrow.” He leans over and mouths to Rosie, “Andres Schultz,” before he takes his mug of coffee, scrambles to his feet, and heads outside with the phone. She watches him through the window as he paces around, frowning and gesturing with his cup of coffee.
Ruby shows up then holding plates of eggs Florentine, and Sega’s mother comes over to get her daughter.
“I hope your husband didn’t mind,” says the mom. She’s so young and seamless that she looks like she could be Greta’s daughter, Sandrine. It startles Rosie for a moment, the realization that their friends have kids who are nearly old enough to have children of their own.
When Jonathan comes back a few minutes later, his face is so pink it looks as though he’s spent time under a radiant magic light. He sits down at the table, picking up his fork very precisely, as if he’s trying to keep from openly quivering.
“Well?” she says. “So does Andres Schultz have the Ming Dynasty cup that will make our lives here on earth worthwhile?”
“Nope,” he says. He takes a sip of his coffee and leans forward. “Actually, Rosie, he’s opening a museum in San Diego. From scratch.”
“Oh.” This is even more boring.
“No, no. Hear me out. He wants my teacups to be on permanent display there.” He puts down his fork and then picks it up again.
“Really! The Lolitas get to go on display somewhere? Are you going to just send them off, then?”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t get it. Schultz wants me.” His eyes are so bright they’re practically shooting sparks. “I guess he was at that conference I attended in Toledo and he said that ever since then, he’s been thinking of doing this museum. And he says he’s now got the property and the building, and some backers, and he says he’s ready for me.”
“Does he have teacups, too?” She straightens her floral cloth napkin next to her plate, pressing down on its folds, thinking how it is that when your life starts to change, the surfaces of everything around you take on such meaning.
“No. He collects something else. Painted pottery, I think. Plates.”
She takes another stab at her eggs, but they slide off the fork, and she doesn’t seem capable of figuring out how to get them back on it. Finally she puts her fork down and puts her hands in her lap.
“Look, I’m sorry,” she says. “I have to be honest. I can’t wrap my head around this. You’re seriously considering this? You want to move to California after one five-minute phone call? To work in some guy’s museum?”
“To start a museum,” he says. “That’s the exciting part. To be in on the startup of a whole museum, and then to curate it.”
“But is this what you really want? You used to be a potter, not some museum guy.”
He starts rolling out words about all the blanks not being filled in yet, how they’ll talk later, et cetera, et cetera. Museum, upkeep, expenses. Pedestals for the teacups. Not a done deal. More talks to come, gauging interest, blah blah blah.
“You seem really interested to me. You’ve actually turned another color. You’ve pinkened.”
“Have I?” he says, pleased. He drains his coffee cup and looks at her, folding his hands in a steeple in front of him. “Maybe so. I feel pink.”
She looks at him. “Well, Mr. Pink, so you’d leave everything and move there? Just like that?”
“Us. We would move there. You can get a job teaching, and I’ll do this museum.”
“Are you crazy? I have a life here—”
“Yeah, but we’re stagnating. You’ve said it yourself, that we need something new,” he says. He takes her hands and leans across the table. “I can’t get it together here anymore, Rosie. I’m getting old, and I feel like I’m falling in a hole. I need something big and important to happen.”
“But this—I can’t—”
He doesn’t even hear her. “You know what? We’ll get married. Let’s get married!”
Marriage! She laughs a little. The last time they spoke of getting married was at Lynn and Greg’s wedding thirteen years ago, in Mexico, and they were tipsy on the dance floor, caught up in the champagne and the mariachi band and the moon rising through the clouds. They’d go the next day to Tijuana, he whispered, keep the celebration going. But the next morning everybody was hungover, and they all sat together at brunch, moaning and drinking mimosas and squinting in the white-hot sunlight. As the day drained away, so did the jazzy, impromptu wedding she’d imagined. It was never going to happen, not with her and Jonathan. And really, who cared? They weren’t the marrying types, so why pretend?
Since then, when people rib them about why they don’t just go ahead and do it, one of them invariably laughs and says, “Omigod! Did we forget to get married? I knew there was something we were supposed to do.” They don’t even have to plan out a response anymore.
And now he’s looking at Rosie as if he doesn’t remember who they are. He’s delirious, is what.
“Look,” she says. “We may need a change, but moving to California is crazy. We’ll be away from all our friends, and I have my classes, and Soapie needs me, Jonathan. She’s frail and—”
“Oh, now don’t go invoking your grandmother on me,” he says. “If Soapie thought you were even thinking of giving up one single opportunity because of her, she’d run you down with her convertible. And as for your friends—there’s e-mail and Facebook and cell phones.”
“But I love my job,” she says.
“Two months tops, and you’ll love your new California students, too. Come on. This is what we need. I know it is.”
He stands up and pulls her to him, holding her right there in the aisle between the tables. His face is mashed right up into hers, and his voice is low and urgent. “We can do this. Soapie doesn’t want to see you waste any more of your life.”
But has this been a waste? Is that the lesson of today, that they’ve been wasting time living this life, while they waited for some guy from California to wade in and offer up a solution?
“Please … don’t,” she says. “I have to think.”
He pulls her hair back from her face and smiles down at her, and her breath catches. This isn’t like him; he hates public displays. The café has come to a complete halt.
“Marry me, Rosie Kelley,” he says in a rough, shy voice.
The café waits to hear her answer. He is staring into her eyes and holding her in his grip.
“Don’t do it this way,” she whispers.
He presses his forehead down against hers and whispers, “Say yes. Why won’t you just say yes?”
“Because I don’t know,” she whispers. “You don’t even know. It might not work.”
“It’s worked for fifteen years,” he says. “It worked pretty well this morning, didn’t it?”
People laugh.
His eyes are like a stallion’s, and his fingertips press into her arms. And then it hits her. He has said no to absolutely everything imaginable for so long now—to sex, to parties, to pieces of pie after dinner, to creativity, even to the little girl at their table this morning. He walks through life with a big chilly NO on his lips, and now, by God, he has said yes to something, and he needs her to say it, too.
He’s the introvert suddenly bathed in public adoration. Oh, he’s a pink man today, and the whole café is watching him.<
br />
“All right. Yes,” she says. She wants the moment to be over. He kisses her, and everybody starts cheering, and then Ruby is at her side, grabbing onto Rosie’s arm and smiling and dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her apron, and little Sega and her mother rush over, and so do about a zillion other people. There are babies and toddlers riding on people’s hips and mugs clanking as they’re being toasted, and people applaud and whistle.
“Wow. Are you really getting married?” Sega’s mother asks Rosie.
Rosie wants to tell her that she doesn’t know. Jonathan is the kind of guy who might change his mind, or forget. But she looks at him, smiling, being the center of congratulations, shaking hands, and she says, “Yes. Yes, I am.”
And she’s startled to realize she’s—oh, probably 99 percent happy about it.
[three]
By the time she gets to Soapie’s house an hour later, she’s decided she’s probably 99.8 percent happy about getting married, and she’d gladly round up to 100 percent except for the worry about Soapie. But Jonathan’s right: her grandmother is not one of those cuddly, needy old ladies who would put up with Rosie not living her life. And if she agrees to have a health aide, as her doctor thinks she should, then what’s the problem?
A new start. Lolitas out of the boxes. California.
Rosie makes her way up the white gravel driveway to the back door of Soapie’s four-bedroom colonial, lugging the bags of food she’s cooked for her this week, along with the treats and peace offerings—chocolate bars with almonds, honey-roasted peanuts, and macaroons.
And then her heart stops. Through the windowpanes of the back door, she sees Soapie lying on the kitchen floor, perfectly, chillingly still. Her grandmother is wearing a lavender workout suit, and her white-blond hair is splayed across the tile floor, and—this is the horrible part—her cold blue eyes are fixed on the ceiling.
The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel Page 2
