The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  Fear rises in Rosie like floodwater. Her hands start shaking so badly she can barely balance the bags of groceries on her knee as she turns the key in the lock. So this is the way it ends, she thinks. Shit.

  She rams the door with her shoulder, but even before she’s managed to get inside, Soapie moves. Her lavender-clad arm is fluttering upward and then floats there in midair, fingers splayed. She looks like a woman possibly admiring her manicure.

  “Oh my God!” says Rosie.

  “Oh, hi,” Soapie says in an oddly flat, thick voice, like someone awakening from sleep. “You’re here.”

  “Jesus, are you all right?” Rosie says. “I thought you were dead. Are you okay?” She drops the bags on the counter and rushes over to her grandmother. Soapie doesn’t seem to be bleeding from anywhere that she can see, and her color is good. Better than Rosie’s just now, most likely. “Did you hit your head when you fell? Do have any idea how long you’ve been down here? Do you know what day it is?” She takes her wrist and holds it, but of course Soapie pulls it away.

  “Stop it. I’m fine, just fine,” she says, and she does sound perfectly well now, just a little sleepy.

  “My heart just about stopped. How long have you been down there?”

  “I slipped, is all. And now don’t you go making a big deal out of it.”

  “But what if I hadn’t come along right now? Why aren’t you wearing that Life bracelet thingie?”

  “Why? Because I loathe it.”

  “But why? What harm does it do? Someone could come and help—Here, do you want to get up? Let me help you.”

  “Rosie. Stop,” she says. “Come sit down. Stop twittering. You’re making me nervous.”

  “You’re making me nervous,” Rosie says, but she gets down on the floor next to her grandmother, inhaling her signature whiff of Jean Naté. The floor is a beautiful Italian tile that Soapie had installed last year, part of a whole cosmetic redo of the house that included nothing that might be considered reasonable for a woman in her late eighties: things like shower chairs, higher toilets, or stair railings. No, she went for track lighting, marble countertops, and Italian tile hard as cement.

  “Listen to me,” Soapie says, and Rosie’s almost relieved to hear that her voice is as scrappy and rough as ever. “You have got to stop worrying about me all the time. If something is going to happen to me, then it’s going to happen.”

  Soapie’s eyes are crystal blue, perhaps a little foggier than they had once been, but still fringed with mascara-laden black lashes and a span of turquoise eye shadow coagulating in the wrinkled creases of her eyelid. Rosie takes in the web of wrinkles, the sagging jawline, the bright blotches of misplaced rouge—and all of it pierces her.

  “I know that sounds like it makes perfect sense,” she says, “but how can I not worry when I come in here and find you on the floor? What if I hadn’t been here? You might have died today.”

  “First of all,” says Soapie, “I wouldn’t have died because my yoga class is coming here in an hour, and they would have picked me up—”

  “Your yoga class? How could they save you? The door is locked.”

  “I would have yelled to them where the key is hidden. And,” Soapie says firmly, “second of all—I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care about what?”

  “How I die. When you get to be my age, one way is as good as another. If it’s going to be a fall on the floor, then that’s just one way it might happen.”

  “Some ways, it seems to me, are worse than others. And lying here, not being able to get help—”

  “Stop it. Listen to me. I’m not afraid of death. I know I’m having little strokes. I do see what’s happening, and it’s fine with me. Remember this. When you hear that I’ve died, just be grateful that I went the way I wanted to. Not in some nursing home or being kept alive by machines. Okay?”

  Rosie grimaces. “Let’s get up off this cold floor. Please? Can’t we please get up and sit down at the table or something? I’ll make you a cup of tea, and we can talk sense.”

  “All right. I need to get the Bloody Marys made anyhow. Pull me up, will you?”

  Rosie guides her slowly up to a sitting position. “We’re having Bloody Marys?”

  “For the yoga class. I told you.”

  “Wait,” Rosie says. “You have a yoga class that drinks?”

  “Yes. This is one of the advantages of being so fucking old.” Soapie reaches up and gathers the wisps of white-blond hair that have straggled out of her topknot and twists them back with her trademark rhinestone clip, just the way Rosie has seen her do a million times before. “You can cuss if you want to, and you get to drink when you do yoga, because it’s not about enlightenment or whatever the hell makes people do that stuff.”

  “I think most people who do yoga are looking to tone their muscles and maybe get themselves to calm down.”

  “Yeah, well, we like to get drunk while we do that. It’s quicker.” Soapie holds out her arms and Rosie scoops her up and gently brings her to a standing position. Her grandmother is so frail that it feels as though she’s constructed of chicken bones and coat hanger wires held together with Scotch tape, but she’s also tough, like a wild animal that’s about to bolt.

  “There,” Rosie says. “Lean on me for a minute. Are you okay?”

  “Stop treating me like an invalid.” But Rosie notices she keeps leaning against her, and after a moment she wraps her arms around her grandmother. Soapie bats Rosie’s arm away. “Obviously I’m not going to die today. So just stop it.”

  “But you’re falling more often,” Rosie says. She swallows and plunges in. “Listen, Dr. Vance has recommended a woman who can help you, and she’s coming by this afternoon to meet you. She can make sure you’re okay, get your medications for you, and be a companion—”

  “No.” Soapie makes her way over to the sink.

  Rosie follows. “Dr. Vance says she’s very qualified, very …” What had he said about her? What adjective was it that was going to make this all right with Soapie? Fun? Cultured? Tolerant of old people’s crazy-ass opinions?

  “No! Absolutely not.”

  Rosie tries a new tack. “But just to have somebody here, who can help with things you don’t want to do? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Soapie takes the celery out of the refrigerator. “Nope. Forget it. That’s all taken care of. I’ve got a boy living here now,” she says in a clipped voice.

  “Wait, what? What boy?”

  “Oh, somebody my yoga teacher knows.” She puts the bag of celery down on the counter and turns to face Rosie. Her still-beautiful face is flushed. “I forget who he is. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, he’s staying here.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since—oh, I don’t know. A week or so, I think.”

  “But do you even know this kid?”

  “I know he can pour a mean gin and tonic, and he can pick me up off the floor. Also, he’s funny. He makes me laugh.”

  “No, no, no. Soapie, we have to get somebody from an agency, somebody who’s qualified to get you the help you need. A companion who can get your medications for you, and see that your blood pressure is okay—”

  “You’re not listening to me, darling. I am going to live out the rest of my life doing exactly what I please, and it does not involve being cared for by some idiot paid companion who thinks her purpose on God’s earth is to keep other people from doing what they want. No.”

  “But I want you to be happy—”

  “No, you don’t. You want me to be safe, and that’s a whole different thing. And now that I’m a thousand years old, I’m going to start having me some fun, and I am not hiring some nurse to follow me around. If I want to drink and smoke and have sex, then it’s nobody else’s goddamned—”

  “Sex?” Rosie says. “You’re having sex?”

  Soapie looks at her with amused, narrowed eyes. “Well, I really got your attention now, haven’t I?” She reaches for her cigarette pack on
the counter, and Rosie sighs as her grandmother lights up a Virginia Slim with shaking hands. “You’re too preoccupied with my life, Rosie. I woke up in the middle of the night and it hit me, what’s wrong with you.”

  “Nothing is wrong with me.”

  “No. You do have something terribly, terribly wrong with you. For one thing, you have the perfect life—free as anything, no husband, no children, no demanding job—the life I would have killed for, and yet you’re stuck. But I think I’ve finally figured out why. You hang around here because you think you’re sacrificing for me.” She takes a long drag off her cigarette.

  “That’s not it at all.”

  “It is. And it hit me how unfair it is for you that I had to live this long and keep you tied here, turning into a worrier. You’re such a worried person, Rosie. So just go. Please! Go to Paris and write a book or something. Or go travel around Africa looking at lions. Take the money I’m going to leave you, and just take off.” She waves her arms in the air, as if she could fling Rosie overseas.

  “I don’t want to go look at lions.”

  “Then go somewhere! You must have something you want to do. I don’t get why you don’t enjoy your freedom. Here, pour this vodka for me, will you? Eight glasses.” She puts down her cigarette on the edge of the sink and starts chopping up the celery stalks into haphazard little sticks. Rosie can barely stand to watch her operating the knife. “Life is too short for this. And if Jonathan is what’s holding you back, get rid of him.” She stops and shakes the knife at Rosie. “No, seriously. You’re still a good-looking woman, especially if you paid attention and fixed yourself up, and you could still have a fun life for yourself.”

  “Okay, just stop. Stop, stop, stop. I wasn’t going to tell you this right now, but he asked me to marry him this morning.”

  Soapie barks out a laugh. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “No. He did. Proposed while we were out at breakfast. Big public scene and everything.”

  Soapie stubs out her half-smoked cigarette in one of the many decorative ashtrays that are on nearly every surface in the house. “I suppose he’d never understand that this is not what you want. We’ll have to strategize about how to break it to him.”

  “But I—I think I do want it. I want it a hell of a lot more than I want lions.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Rosie, you’ve lived with this man for fifteen years. Are you trying to tell me you’ve just been waiting for him to get down on one knee?”

  “No, that’s not it. We didn’t even think about marriage before now. And then today we did. And so we’re going to. I said yes, and that’s that.” She lines up the glasses on the counter and pours a small amount of vodka into each one.

  “Come on, you don’t want this. And for what? Security? Ha! You think that piece of paper brings you security?”

  “Soapie, why can’t you be happy for me?”

  “Because I raised you not to run after a man. And why the hell now anyway?”

  Rosie sighs. “Because he’s been invited to start a museum in San Diego with his teacups and he wants me to go with him,” she says.

  “A museum!” She snorts. “So this is your dream come true? Living in a museum with Jonathan’s teacups? You amaze me. You really do.”

  “Why? Why does that amaze you? I love him, and he loves me. This is what people do.”

  The doorbell rings then, conveniently—it’s no doubt the alcohol-drinking yoga class—but she and Soapie continue to stare at each other, and then Soapie shakes her head and makes a tsking sound as she makes her way down the entry hall to the front door.

  Rosie hears Soapie sweeping the yoga ladies inside the living room, ordering them around, and they’re all laughing and talking at once, shedding sweaters and canes, allowing themselves to be herded into place. The door closes with a bang.

  Rosie sighs and puts on the kettle for tea. While she’s waiting for it to boil, she loads up the Bloody Mary glasses onto a tray, and then she places them on the table outside the louvered doors. She can hear the women all talking at once, and Soapie urging them to sit down and get comfortable.

  She sighs and goes back to the kitchen, where she makes herself a cup of Earl Grey and takes it with her to Soapie’s office at the back of the house, off the laundry room. This is the official headquarters of Dustcloth Diva Industries, a room so cluttered and dusty that it would alarm readers and health departments everywhere. Rosie sits down in the swivel chair at the desk to drink her tea and pay the bills, as she does every month.

  It’s a daunting task. There are papers strewn and stacked everywhere, books flowing off the shelves, leaning in precarious towers on the floor. Letters and bills are all over the desk, and so are pages of a possible new manuscript. There’s a stack of copies of Soapie’s first book, The Dustcloth Diva Tackles Dirt and Dust and Still Has Time for a Life, ready to topple, and Rosie reaches over and steadies it. That book had sold more than five million copies. The image of a young Soapie smiles out from the cover, wearing a hot-pink blouse, pearls, and white pants and holding a martini glass in one hand and an ostrich feather duster in the other. She’s been long known for her catchphrase, delivered in her deep, dry, cigarette voice: “Clean it like you mean it, darling—and then take the rest of the day off!”

  On an impulse, Rosie digs her cell phone out of her purse and punches in Jonathan’s number. He answers on the second ring.

  “Well, I did it,” she says to him. “I told her we’re leaving.”

  “Great. So she’s agreed to have that woman—um, Mrs. Cynthia Lamb then?” he says. She can tell he’s looking at his laptop while they’re talking.

  “Well. Not so much,” Rosie says. “It’s way more complicated than that.”

  He clears his throat. “Don’t back down. She’s got to have someone there. You know that.”

  She can’t possibly explain to him right then how her own heart practically stopped when she arrived at the back door and found Soapie on the floor, possibly dead. In fact, he’s never understood that Soapie is exciting, maddening, and terrifying—and how it is that sometimes Rosie feels that she herself is the old woman, the person about to turn into a ghost, while Soapie is the one full of life, full of plans and ideas. Bloody Mary yoga! Sex at ninety! Jonathan won’t want to hear about the “boy” living here, pouring vodka martinis and picking her up off the floor if he’s ever around, and how Rosie can see how that could be enough.

  While she’s talking she sees some papers all balled up in the trash can and reaches down to pull them out. They are Soapie’s unfilled prescriptions, for the meds she has to take every single day. And right beside them—her breath sucks in so violently she starts coughing—there’s a bright, fluorescent orange speeding ticket, torn in half. She picks it up and looks at it. Soapie had gone out one night two weeks ago and driven fifty-five miles per hour in a residential zone.

  “Oh my God,” she says quietly, and then, despite knowing what Jonathan will say, she can’t seem to stop herself from telling him.

  Sure enough, he says it all: She has to take action. This stuff is only going to get worse. Soapie is not in her right mind anymore; she has to be protected from herself. And—what? A kid is staying there? Somebody who’s hoping to bleed her dry, that’s who! Hasn’t she ever heard of scams like this, guys who show up, flatter an old lady, and then take her money? Soapie could be in actual danger.

  Maybe, he says, she should call the police. He would. He will, if she wants him to. He can have a cop over there in twenty minutes, start getting this guy out of there. Why, just last week, there was a story on the news of an older woman—

  No, she doesn’t want the cops. She’ll figure it all out, she says, irritated. And when she finally manages to get him off the phone, she sits there staring out the window at the terrace and the trees, the pool, the lawn.

  Then she punches in the cell phone number of Mrs. Cynthia Lamb. The call goes to voice mail. She had hoped to ask her advice, but instead, after the beep
she says, “Hello, this is Rosie Kelley. I’ve talked to my grandmother, and I’m sorry it’s not convenient for us to meet with you today after all.” She hesitates for a moment, then lets her voice go into a lower octave, one with authority and power. She says, “But I’d like you to start on Monday anyway. I think that my grandmother will accept the idea when she meets you. I’ll be working, but I’ll talk to you afterward. Just arrive at nine a.m. and tell her Dr. Vance sent you. She’ll be surprised, but I think that’s for the best.”

  This takes so much out of her that after she clicks the phone closed, she opens the bottom drawer of her grandmother’s desk and pulls out the photo hidden at the very bottom, in the rattiest manila folder tucked down way in the back, the one remaining photo Soapie kept of her only child. The last picture of Serena she didn’t destroy in the rampage.

  Her mother’s young, slightly pouty face stares back at her. Serena looks to be about twenty in the photo, with long, blond, slightly stringy hair tucked behind her ears, and giant hoop earrings—and just by the look of her scowling blue eyes and the lift of her chin and her folded arms, you can see that she’s furious. It must have been Soapie holding the camera—Soapie, who has never once told a story about Serena that didn’t involve some kind of fuss between them. There’s no glorifying the dead with Soapie, or overlooking their teenage mistakes.

  Oh, Mama. Why in the world aren’t you here helping me out with her now, where you should be?

  [four]

  Serena didn’t go in any of the ordinary ways young people usually pick to die: some rare, exotic cancer, or drug overdose, or car accident. Instead, she was walking down the street in New York City, going to meet a friend for a Coke, and a piece of a building broke off from twelve stories above and smashed into her head, killing her instantly.

  Death by building. Seriously. What were the chances?