The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  “Wait. Her what?” Rosie says.

  “Her gentleman friend. Tony,” says Mrs. Lamb. “He’s starting a gardening business.”

  It takes Rosie a moment to remember. “Oh, him! No, no. He’s just a kid who’s staying there, somebody in need of a place to stay.”

  “No, dear, he lives there. Both of them have made it clear that Mrs. Baldwin-Kelley doesn’t need my services.”

  “You don’t want the job?”

  “Dear, they don’t want me.”

  “Mrs. Lamb, my grandmother is a mess, and I’m moving across the country soon. I need to know that she has somebody who’s qualified taking care of her. That gentleman friend is just a guy that nobody even knows.”

  “But, Miss Kelley, I don’t force myself on people who don’t want to be served.”

  “Please,” Rosie says. “Just do me one favor, will you? Tell me that man’s last name, and his cell phone number, and I’ll go and talk to him. Trust me. He is not qualified to be her caregiver.”

  There is an uncomfortable pause, and then Mrs. Lamb says, “Ask your grandmum his name. I am not at liberty to say any more about the situation.”

  “Mrs. Lamb.” She swallows. “My grandmother won’t tell me his name.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “Pretend I want him to be my gardener. Who is he?”

  Papers rustle. Rosie hears a long sigh. Then Mrs. Cynthia Lamb says, “Well, I don’t know what harm it could do to tell you, but I’d like to tell you that I hope I’m in as good a shape as your grandmum when I get to be eighty-eight. His name is Tony Cavaletti. Now don’t ask me anything else.” And then she hangs up the phone.

  [six]

  It takes a few days to track down Tony Cavaletti. She knows better than to stage an ambush at Soapie’s house, even though Jonathan is convinced that Tony Cavaletti is out to fleece Soapie and thinks Rosie should march in with the authorities and demand that he leave. Soapie would never stand for that. There would be nothing left of Rosie but an echoing scream and a little greasy spot on the rug. She has to be sneaky. She drives past the house at different times to get a look at his car, and when she discovers a red pickup truck parked in the driveway with a rake shoved haphazardly in the back, she knows she’s got her man.

  And then, on the day that Andres Schultz flies into JFK airport and Jonathan drives all the way to New York to pick him up so he can come and meet the Lolitas for himself, bingo! Rosie sees the red truck parked in front of the Starbucks in Branford—and she pulls into the parking lot, checks her teeth in the mirror, squares her shoulders, and heads inside, her heart pounding.

  Which customer could possibly be Tony Cavaletti? There’s a dark-haired guy in jeans and an orange Syracuse sweatshirt drinking an iced coffee and staring at a laptop screen, a couple of young women texting, an older man in one of the armchairs snoozing with his mouth open, and some guys playing chess. She gets her coffee and makes her way over to Syracuse Laptop Guy.

  “Excuse me. Are you Tony Cavaletti?” she asks.

  He looks up blankly and then shakes his head.

  “Outside,” one of the chess players calls out to her. He jabs a thumb toward a courtyard where there are chairs and tables scattered about. Sure enough, sitting at one of them is a youngish man with dark brown hair underneath a Red Sox hat turned backward. He’s in some kind of intense conversation with two women sitting across from him. One of them, with short pixieish black hair, is wearing a long skirt and sitting with her knees up and she looks like she might be crying, and the other one, with pinned-up blond hair and a blue sweater and jeans, has her arms folded over her chest and is staring off into the traffic. Rosie stands at the glass window, tapping on her paper cup, unsure of what to do.

  “Go save him,” says the chess man, and the others laugh. Another says, “Yeah, get him away from those chicks before they make him wish he was never born.”

  “Are you his friends?” Rosie asks, turning to them, and they get quiet. Finally a guy in a faded green T-shirt clears his throat and says, “Nah. We don’t know him. We overheard those women working him over pretty good, so we feel bad for him.”

  Rosie wants to ask what the subject was of this workover. Were the women yelling at him about abuse of the elderly? Toxic freeloadery? She looks back out the window and sees that now the blond woman with the jeans has gotten up and is walking away, swinging her arms angrily. The other woman turns around and calls to her, and then she says something to the guy and then she leaves, too. He watches her walk away and picks up his phone.

  She pushes her way out of the door and goes outside. “Are you Tony Cavaletti?” she says to him, all business. He looks up, startled. Now that she’s closer to him, she can see that his eyes are so dark they look almost black. He’s also not as young as she had been expecting. Handsome, she’ll give him that, but in a scruffy way—and certainly not a kid, except perhaps to somebody who’s close to ninety.

  “Guilty as charged,” he says.

  “My name is Rosie Kelley,” she says. She likes the tone of voice that she’s using, firm and strong; she’d practiced it in the car on the way over. “I believe you’re living with my grandmother. Sophie Baldwin-Kelley.”

  “Did anything happen to her?” he says, and there’s a flicker of alarm in his eyes.

  “No. I’ve just got to talk to you about her.”

  “What’d you say your name was again?”

  “Rosie Kelley.”

  “Ah, the infamous Rosie,” he says. He puts his phone down and smiles. “I know all about you.”

  “Actually, it’s pronounced infamous,” she says. “Accent on the first syllable.”

  He looks at her for a long moment, smiling. “So what can I do for you?”

  Okay. She takes a deep breath and says, “I’m afraid I have to ask you to move out of my grandmother’s house.” When he doesn’t say anything, she throws in, “I’m sure that you most likely didn’t understand the situation when you moved in there, but she is really quite frail, and she needs a trained, qualified caregiver—”

  “Not just some dumb guy, is that what you’re saying?” he says, still smiling.

  She doesn’t let herself be swayed by this blatant fishing for compliments. “I need to hire somebody official to come and take care of her. And while I’m sure that you’re very nice and all”—which she is not sure of, not in the least—“you’re simply not qualified to do the kind of care that I think is needed at this time.”

  “How do you know I’m not qualified?” he says.

  “Well, with all due respect, you seem to be somebody who’s trying to find work as a gardener, and considering the fact that my grandmother has all these health needs at the moment that are not being addressed, I can say with some assuredness that I need to find somebody who can do more than take care of the roses.”

  He’s silently fiddling with his phone, so she takes a deep breath and continues, “So I would appreciate it if you could come up with a plausible excuse to tell her why you need to move out, and then I would like you to leave her house as soon as you can.” She stops, having run out of things to say. It was genius on her part, she thinks, to remember that Soapie is going to need to hear some excuse for why he’s leaving.

  He waits for another long moment, looking at her face and then looking away, possibly checking out his image in the window of the Starbucks, which is reflecting back at them like some giant mirror giving off heat.

  After a while he drums his fingers on the table and says, “So, if I may ask … what does your grandmother want? She say she wants me to leave?”

  “Well, that doesn’t really matter, because she—”

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean, it doesn’t really matter?”

  “No. You see, she’s not really in a position to judge what she needs right now. I don’t know if you realize it, but she’s had several very dangerous falls lately, and she’s not taking her medications, and what she needs is somebody from an agency, somebody
who’s qualified to take care of her.”

  “Wait. Hold up a minute. How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “How do you know whether she’s in a position to judge what she needs or not? People get to say what they need.”

  Rosie shifts her weight to the other foot. “Mr. Cavatelli,” she says.

  “Cavaletti,” he says. “The L is in the middle.”

  Just then a young Goth couple with hair so black it’s as though they mistook the shoe polish for hair dye comes tripping out through the glass door, laughing, and make their way, stumbling, over to a table by the window. They’re both wearing black capes, and the girl has on purple lipstick and earrings that look like they were made from bat wings, and to Rosie’s surprise, the boy grabs at her and kind of nudges her up against the window and then starts kissing her, while they both keep giggling. It’s a fascinating sight, and neither Rosie nor Tony Cavaletti can quite bring themselves to look away.

  When she does manage to tear her eyes away and looks back at him, he’s shaking his head. “Young love. You remember being like that?” he says under his breath, and shrugs.

  “Not really,” she says. “I think I always had more self-control than that.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, infamous Rosie.”

  She’s trying to remember where they were in their discussion—or where she was in her monologue, but it’s hard with all the kissing noises and laughter so close to them, and then she doesn’t have to, because Tony Cavaletti suddenly gives up and says in a tired tone of voice, “So bottom line: you want me out of your grandmother’s house,” he says. “I get it. Okay. Consider it done.”

  “Oh! Well, it’s nothing personal—”

  “No, no. I understand completely. I’m outta there. I was only gonna be there for probably another coupla weeks anyways. At the outside. It’s fine.”

  He picks up his phone, but instead of making a call, he turns it over in his palm, staring at it like it’s some kind of artifact. She waits, but he doesn’t say anything else.

  Go! Go now, you idiot. He said he’s leaving, so just thank him and go.

  “Well, thank you,” she says. “For understanding. And you’ll think of some reason to tell her? For why you’re leaving?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry. I won’t tell her that you tracked me down and fired me.” He looks up from his phone and smiles at her, painfully.

  “I just wanted to explain what she—” she begins, but he shakes his head and waves her away, still smiling. “Thank you,” she says again, and heads to the door, but the Goth couple is in her way, sitting down and making out against the door now, and she can’t get by.

  That’s when Tony Cavaletti pipes up again. “But by the way, just so you know,” he calls to her, “you may not realize it now, but I’m the guy you want there, believe it or not. I’ve picked her up off the floor like five times.”

  She turns.

  “And not for nothin’ but I’m the one gets her to eat. I cook her meals, you know.”

  “Well … thank you,” she says.

  “Yeah, and George and I are even getting it so she doesn’t drive places anymore because she’s really not safe behind the wheel, even though she won’t admit it. And—”

  She walks back to the table. “Wait. George? Who is George?”

  He lets a long beat of silence go by, and then he looks down at his sneaker and straightens out the tangled laces. “See,” he says, “I’m wondering if you really know all that much about your grandmother, infamous Rosie. Maybe you’ve got everything all figured out, but then it turns out you don’t know squat about what’s going on. Like, were you the person who sent over that British lady the other day? Because that was never, ever going to work out.”

  Rosie feels the color bloom in her face. “Look, I try. She’s a difficult woman, all right? And, just so you know, if you’re thinking you and this George are keeping her from driving, you’re certainly not doing a very good job of it. She went out the other night and was going fifty-five in a residential zone at eleven thirty at night, and then she threw the ticket away. What about that?”

  “Yeah. I heard about that. That was a night when I was down in Fairfield, and the next day she tells me about it at breakfast. I’m there making blueberry waffles for her, and she’s all, ‘Ohhh, Tony, I got me a ticket!’ ”

  “And are you the one who told her to throw it away?”

  “No, what do you take me for? I told her to pay it.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, perhaps you don’t know Sophie Baldwin-Kelley doesn’t pay her own bills. I do that for her.”

  His eyes flash. “Hmm. Wonder if that could be why she threw it out. Probably didn’t want you to see because it’s pretty clear that would be something that would sure get you ticked off.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t care if I get ‘ticked off,’ as you call it. And by the way, she also threw out all her prescriptions, too. She’s got some kind of death wish, is what I think.”

  “Nah, she’s just forgetful. And a little bit cranky. She wants fun. And who doesn’t need fun?”

  “No, she told me she doesn’t care how she dies. She says one way is as good as another, and she’s not letting anybody tell her what to do.”

  He studies her face. “Well, but she doesn’t really want to die. You should see her with George. She’s happy.”

  “So tell me. Who is this George?” Rosie says. “Do I even want to know?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know him. They’re old, old friends, she said. His wife is in some kind of home with Old Timers’ Disease.”

  “Alzheimer’s?” she says.

  He flushes. “Alzheimer’s, Old Timers’, whatever. Louise? I think that’s her name.”

  “George Tarkinian?” she says. “He’s the one who’s hanging around?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Oh my God. I do know him. But he’s married. He’s been married to Louise forever.”

  “I know. That’s kinda what I meant when I said his wife was in some kind of home. When I used that word, it convened they had a marriage.”

  “What do you mean, it convened they had a marriage?”

  “Oh, here we go. So I used the wrong word. Do you make it a habit of correcting everything people say?”

  “I teach English,” she says. “It’s an occupational hazard.” She sinks into the chair opposite him. “And so he’s now hanging out with my grandmother?”

  “Yeah. That’s right. They’re kind of sweet on each other.”

  “Sweet on each other? What, are you from the 1940s or something?”

  “My mom used to say that. It’s nice. Certainly better than saying what people say nowadays: they’re hooking up, or they’re—”

  “Please,” she says. “Are they—?”

  “Are they what?”

  “You know.”

  “What? You think I check up on people? That’s the worst thing you’ve said yet.”

  His phone rings, making a mooing sound, and she’s fascinated to see that his whole face changes when he looks down and sees the number. He flips it open. “Milo! Hey, buddy! Are you with the sitter? Did Mrs. Dolan pick you up? Good.” He gets up and paces around rocking up and down on his toes, his face going through all kinds of contortions. And then he says, “Yeah, well, Mommy’s on her way home. She and Dena got tied up here for a bit. They’ll be along. No, no. You know I don’t think you should play Angry Birds on Mrs. Dolan’s phone. Why don’t you ask her to take you outside?” He puts his mouth down close to the phone, like he would crawl into it if he could. Rosie looks away. “I know,” he whispers. “I miss you, too, kid. Naw. Well, maybe. Maybe. We’ll see. I know. I talked to her about it. I love you, baby. Yeah. I love you a million dinosaurs, too. No, two million. Okay, three million and infinity. Bye.” He closes the phone and it takes a moment for him to rearrange his face back to a normal expression. “That was my kid,” he says. “Want to see his picture? Here. Look at the phone
here.”

  “Sure, okay,” she says.

  “Yeah. Look at that little mutt face,” he says, and holds out his phone, where a young kid who looks just like him is smiling and holding a toy dinosaur. Barney, maybe? She’s not sure.

  “He’s cute,” she says.

  “Yep. Sweet little Milo.” He gazes at the picture. “He’s five. Lives in Fairfield with his mom. We split up. She was the one who was here—one of them—”

  “Aww,” she says. “I bet you miss him.”

  He sighs. “Yep. Correctamundo. But I’m trying to work out some stuff with her. That’s why I said I might leave in a few weeks. I can’t stay away from this guy.” He stares down at the phone.

  He reminds her of her younger students, always with domestic complications they talk so openly about, and suddenly she feels everything shift a bit in her head. Jonathan is simply wrong about this guy being out to rob Soapie. He’s clearly not dangerous. And besides that, he’s getting Soapie to eat and picking her up off the floor, and it’s not like she has anybody to replace him with anyway. And, after all, Soapie likes him. And George is there, too.

  “Tony,” she says, and stops. “So listen,” she says, and swallows. She lays out the plan, tells him about how she’s getting married and going to California, so could he just live with Soapie for two or three weeks longer? By then, surely she can find someone more official. What does he think? She’s twisting her purse strap around and around her fingers, cutting off the circulation.

  He looks over at her, no emotion on his face. “What? Because I showed you the picture of my kid?”

  She says no. Well, maybe.

  “All right,” he says slowly. “I guess I could do that,” he says. He seems suddenly shy. “That’ll give me time to work out some stuff.”

  “Well, thank you,” she says.

  Jonathan will have a fit, but let him, she thinks.

  “Don’t tell her I was here,” she says. “And, oh yeah, don’t let her drive. Okay?”

  “You should really stop doing that to your own finger,” he says. “You gotta calm down.”