The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  That night she gets home to find that Andres Schultz has moved into their apartment, and the Lolitas, amazingly, are perched on tables, nested in open boxes, and one of them, shockingly, is in Andres Schultz’s pink, plump hand.

  Rosie has to keep herself from rushing over and grabbing it back to safety, so deeply has this been ingrained in her.

  “This is Andres!” says Jonathan, who has turned pink again. “And this is Rosie.”

  “Well, hi, Rosa,” he says. Andres, a pudgy, shiny-faced guy with a round baby face, stands up and takes approximately a full minute to elaborately set the teacup on the table—and all three of them watch, holding their collective breath, as he does so. Then he exhales loudly, grins at her, and shakes her hand, and then he pulls her into a damp, exuberant hug. He smells of aftershave and airports and rumpled clothing.

  “I already feel as though you’re family,” he says. He’s in his fifties, she guesses, and intense in a nerdy kind of way. He probably sleeps on Star Wars sheets and stands in line at midnight for the Harry Potter movies. “You and Jonathan! It’s been such a divine pleasure to meet Jonathan and to get to see up close these very, very …” Words seem to fail him as he gestures toward the piles of opened white boxes.

  They talk, then, about Andres’s flight and about the conference where they met last year, and about the daringness of what they’re about to do. You’d think they were going to scale Mount Kilimanjaro, to hear the hushed way they speak of this venture. She stands, still holding on to her purse and smiling a frozen, exhausted smile.

  Then Jonathan—the new, expansive, excited Jonathan—starts recounting every single second since he first laid eyes on Andres Schultz at the airport, how they recognized each other (clever Andres was holding up a cardboard teacup), and what they said at first, what they said next, and next, and next.

  She thinks she might pass out from sheer minutiae overload.

  “By the time we pulled out of the parking garage and started for New Haven—” Jonathan begins.

  “We knew we had to work together,” finishes Andres.

  “And then, by the time we got on the Bruckner, I was asking if Andres wanted to stay at our apartment instead of going to a hotel,” says Jonathan.

  “I readily agreed. And by the time we stopped for dinner in, which was in—”

  “Bridgeport.”

  “Yah, Bridgeport, by then we were composing our business plan,” says Andres.

  “We wrote it on a napkin,” says Jonathan.

  She feels a little dizzy. Jonathan tells her that Andres will stay for three days or so, during which they’ll finish up the business plan for the benefit of Andres’s backers, and then Jonathan will give notice at his job. He’s got vacation time accrued, so he’ll get a decent check to start out with. He rubs his hands together, red-faced, beaming. A buddy at work knows somebody who’s looking for an apartment and could move right in so the landlord shouldn’t mind … and Rosie’s classes will be over in another week, right?

  Ah, but she’s signed up to teach the summer session, she says, and Jonathan says, “But you can totally get out of that.” He looks at Andres. “We’re available!”

  Wait. Is she really actually doing this? Like, in the next few weeks, packing up all her stuff and … moving?

  “Well,” she says. “Wow.”

  Later, she’s brushing her teeth in the bathroom when Jonathan comes and leans against the doorjamb. “So you’re okay with everything?” he says.

  She stares at him in the mirror. His eyes are still too bright, and he has patches of color on his cheeks.

  “Well. Is it my imagination, or did our lives just start running at warp speed?” She dries her mouth on the towel.

  “I think they call it momentum,” he says. “The building is available, the guys giving money are itching to write the checks for some kind of write-off, and—well, I think Andres is the kind of person who gets things done.”

  “But you’re not,” she whispers.

  “See? I’m trying to change.”

  She bites her lip. “You’re not coming to bed?” She goes and turns the covers down and slides under the sheet.

  He comes over and nuzzles her neck. “Andres is a talker. And I’m too excited to sleep anyway,” he says.

  “I wanted to tell you about meeting Tony Cavaletti today.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “No. It’s too late. And you’re so … distracted. And buzzy. You’ve turned pink again.”

  “So, hey, what I came in here to say was—well, I was telling Andres about our … proposal scene the other day in the diner, and then I thought, well, that was kind of weird, and I—well, I wanted to ask you the right way. So here goes. Ready?” He closes his eyes and kneels down beside the bed. “Will you marry me, Rosie?”

  She laughs at his scrunched-up face. “Get up. I told you I would.”

  “Okay, now this. Will you marry me this weekend?”

  “Jonathan! This soon? Can’t we—”

  “I want to do it now because things are going to get crazy. We’re leaving in three weeks, and I want to run down to the courthouse Saturday morning and do the ceremony, and then if you want, we could invite some friends over for a beer or something. Okay?” He runs his index finger along her arm, down to her knuckles, where he draws little circles.

  “I think I want something a little more festive than just a beer,” she says.

  “Well, nothing huge …”

  “No, no, not huge. But friends and family should be there. We could have a luncheon or something at Soapie’s house, something simple—”

  He blanches. “Really? Because I want us to leave for California in three weeks. We don’t have time.”

  “Wow,” she says. “You’re like somebody who’s put his life on speed dial or something. I want to slow everything down and think about it.”

  “No. No think. Just do.” He wiggles his ears, a trick he can usually only be persuaded to do on New Year’s Eve when he’s had too much to drink.

  She can feel herself caving.

  “This weekend?” he says.

  “Maybe the weekend after. I have to make sandwiches, you know.” She looks at the indentation on the ceiling, from the time they had champagne in bed, and the cork flew up and dented the stucco ceiling. What had they been celebrating then? She can’t even remember. Some pottery show he’d gotten into. It was a long time ago. This place, this place. Home. All the days, all the hours, all the memories. Don’t think about that.

  “And I need a dress. And we need a license—”

  “I knew you’d get into it,” he says, and then suddenly kisses her. It was meant to be a quick, grazing cheek kiss, but then it turns into one of those movie kisses, deep and real. She puts her arms around his neck, overcome with emotion. She wants to ask him one little thing: What if it turns out that they’ve waited too long, and they don’t know how to go somewhere new and set up a new life? What if it’s too late?

  Instead, when he pulls away from her and is getting ready to go back to Andres Schultz, she hears herself saying, in a casual, bright voice, “Oh, by the way, Tony Cavaletti turns out to be a really nice guy. I asked him to stay with Soapie until we go, and he said yes.”

  He looks back at her blankly, his hand on the doorknob. “Oh. Great. Whatever.”

  “He’s got a little kid. And he’s getting Soapie to eat, and picking her up off the floor.”

  “Well, that’s good then,” he says, as though he’d never had even the slightest objection.

  “And he’s very, very cute,” she says, but of course Jonathan is already gone, which is fine. He didn’t need to hear that anyway.

  [seven]

  “Now don’t take this the wrong way, but your prospective husband is certainly going about this wedding in the most Jonathan way possible,” says Greta, smiling, and taking dress number three off the hanger—a white satin number with a frothy full skirt that looks like it was made in a blender rather than on a sewing m
achine. “This is him at his most Jonathanish. I mean, he waits fifteen years to marry you and then gives you a week to plan it all. What the hell?”

  They’re in the fitting room at Landon’s Bridal Shop, which is ridiculous, Rosie thinks. The only other customers are twenty-something brides being tended by enthusiastic girlfriends and twittering moms, people who are not criticizing the groom—not within earshot, at least. Nothing like a bridal shop to make a forty-four-year-old feel like a big, lumpy, geriatric impostor. She should have gone over to Target one afternoon when school was out and picked out something to wear, without Greta.

  Rosie plows through the piles of dresses, saying no to each one. “That one would only look nice on a seven-year-old at a ballet recital … that one looks like it was made of fattening dairy products … that one with the red beads at the neck would look like I was wearing a bandage and bleeding out the top of it. Like I’d been decapitated.”

  “Okay. Jesus. Some brides have no sense of humor at all. This is for that zombie-theme wedding that’s all the rage just now.”

  See? There are reasons to love Greta, she thinks. And they explode in laughter, and of course the saleswoman is instantly outside the curtain, calling to them, “Girls! How are you doing in there? Can I get you anything else?”

  “No,” says Rosie. She whispers to Greta, “We have to get out of here. The more I think about it, the more I think wearing white or cream is such a cliché. I think I want something red so I can wear my red cowboy boots.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Maybe a nice red blouse with jeans. I’d even be willing to iron a crease in them for the occasion.” She’s surprised to realize she actually means this. It’s the first thing today that has felt authentic.

  “You are not wearing a red blouse with jeans to your own wedding, even if you are marrying Jonathan Morrow,” says Greta. “I cannot risk my reputation with my children by standing up next to a bride in jeans, and I’m assuming I’m the matron of honor since I’ve been waiting for my whole life for this.”

  “So I’m stuck with you. Is that what you’re saying?” Rosie is still smiling.

  “You are. Who is going to stand up with Jonathan? Do you know?”

  “Oh, Greta. It’s not that kind of thing at all. This is … us, remember? This is just a quick thing. It probably shouldn’t even be called a wedding, the way you’re thinking of it. We’re simply saying some words to each other.”

  Greta sits down on the spare chair, pushes a strand of curly brown hair out of her face, and looks at Rosie in exasperation. “No, you’re not simply saying some words to each other. Listen, this is your wedding, and even if Jonathan doesn’t take it seriously, the rest of us do and you should, too. This is what he’s always doing to you. He minimizes things of importance. He makes you wait to get married, and then he decides on his timetable, and you all of a sudden have to figure everything out like it’s an emergency. It makes me mad for you that you have to do it this way.”

  “Nope, it’s not that,” says Rosie. “I want my red boots, and okay, no jeans. I want a red short skirt with ruffles—and I want Indian food.” She’s surprised at the vehemence in her own voice.

  “Indian food?” Greta sounds a little hysterical. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Look,” says Rosie, “can’t we just get the hell out of here? I can’t look at these stupid white dresses anymore. I hate this.”

  “What, you’re mad at me?” Greta says. “I never said you had to have a white dress!”

  “But you liked them.”

  “I did not. I thought the zombie one was hideous. We were laughing. We were just laughing one second ago, Rosie.”

  “I just want to get out of here. I can’t talk about this anymore.” Rosie’s pulling on her denim skirt and blue cotton sweater and sticking her feet into her slides. She grabs her purse.

  “Fine, then,” Greta says in her calm, competent, resident adult voice, and she carefully places the dresses into one big stack, and Rosie, who has flung back the curtain and is marching through the store, feels Greta walking more slowly behind her. She’s no doubt fingering the fabrics, stopping to look at other dresses on the rack, nodding to the saleswoman, perhaps even apologizing for her friend who’s, you know, so temperamental.

  She and the saleswoman might smile knowingly at each other. Bridezilla.

  Yes, and the older ones marrying lunatics are the very worst.

  They patch it up, though, later. Suzanne and Lynn meet them for lunch—a ladies’ lunch, as Greta puts it, not anything even close to a bridal shower, although they order champagne and do some toasts, and then it turns out that they’ve brought little gifts, too. Rosie slides her eyes over to Greta, who is beaming at her: she’d arranged this whole quasi shower for her, and is now acting pretend-scared that Rosie will be mad about that. Which of course she isn’t. She’s grateful that people take this wedding seriously—she just doesn’t want them to try to take it over, or to pity her for it not being exactly what they would want.

  She realizes that she’s actually happy. In seven days, she’ll be getting married, and then in another week after that, she’ll be leaving for California. She almost has to pinch herself to believe it. Everybody is smiling and laughing and yes, teasing her a little, and she is basking in it, laughing right along, even when they start calling it another episode of The Jonathan and Rosie Show. This started years ago, actually, when the eight of them were going on vacation together to the beach, and the rest had watched in dumbfounded fascination as Jonathan packed up the car in his crazy, obsessive way: making sure he had his water shoes, his special fiber towel, the sunscreen that has about a billion SPFs, the sun hat with the flaps for the ears and the back of the neck, his wraparound sunglasses that looked like they had been designed for Stevie Wonder. And Rosie, they said, was hardly better, with her sacks of poetry books to read and Jonathan’s art books, her string bags and her lotions.

  It became an episode ever after referred to as “How Jonathan and Rosie Go on Vacation,” followed a few months after that with “How Jonathan and Rosie Throw a Dinner Party” (hilariously casually, without even thinking if they have enough chairs), and “How Jonathan and Rosie Get Ready for Work in the Morning.”

  “ ‘How Jonathan and Rosie Put on a Wedding’ is the coup de grâce,” says Lynn.

  The answer: It’s going to be crazy! No two people have ever or will ever put on such a hilarious rendition of a wedding. The bride will wear a red skirt with ruffles and red cowboy boots, and the bridegroom will likely show up with rings he’s fashioned from aluminum foil, all because he forgot to go to a jewelry store in time.

  “Sorry, but it is funny,” says Greta.

  “It’s hilarious,” says Rosie. “More likely he will make it to the jewelry store, but then he’ll decide that aluminum foil rings are more artsy and creative, so he spends so much time making them that he forgets to take a shower before the ceremony.”

  Lynn says, “You know what’s going to be the hardest? We’re not going to get to see up close the show ‘How Jonathan and Rosie Adapt to Married Life.’ ”

  “I’m quite sure our lives will go on much the same. Believe me. You won’t miss much.”

  “Oh, come on,” says Greta the expert. “You’ll be surprised how it changes things.”

  “You’ll find your fights are way more—how should I put this?—loud,” says Lynn. “He may stop bathing altogether and start eating macaroni and cheese three times a day.”

  “Oh, stop. Rosie and Jonathan don’t fight,” says Greta.

  “It’s true,” says Suzanne. “All the rest of us are having dramas all the time, and you guys just sail along.”

  It is true that Rosie has often felt that she and Jonathan were mostly audience members in their friends’ lives, watching as they went through one life-changing situation after another. They bought and renovated houses. They got jobs, shifted to others, moved on, got promotions, moved on again. Children came: Greta and Jo
e have four kids, Suzanne and Hinton three, and Lynn and Greg two.

  And oh, the crises that came up! One year Hinton had a crush on a colleague, and Suzanne almost left him. But that blew over, as did the time that Greta’s husband Joe, a physician, almost died from a tick bite. And then Lynn’s mother was killed in a car accident, Greg lost his job, and Joe’s father moved in with Greta and Joe and grew senile there, until they had to put him in a nursing home.

  Sandrine, Greta’s daughter, started making herself throw up after eating, and Lynn’s son was expelled for bringing a bow and arrow to school. Over the years there have been plenty of lesser emergencies, too: bad grades, mean camp counselors, sleepovers during which no one got any sleep—not to mention the bouts of flu and possible food allergies, dogs that died, unfair eliminations from soccer teams, best friends who turned into bullies, devastating eyebrow piercings ranking right up there with tonsillectomies, torn ACLs, and twisted ankles.

  For years as she’s watched, bearing witness, babysitting their toddlers, attending Little League games, consulting on lunch box shopping, there have been times—though not as many as her friends probably imagine—that she’s tried to picture herself padding around in their mammoth houses, driving their minivans, and cuddling children, that maybe she’s felt a little twinge. But that was it, just a tiny twinge from time to time.

  More often, she and Jonathan would come back home from their friends’ houses, and she’d walk through their silent apartment, its four rooms clean and plain, and find herself grateful for its smooth emptiness, for her freedom to write, for the pens neatly arranged on her desk. In the evenings, she’d smile across the living room at Jonathan, who was also reading under the lamplight, and one of them would say, “Letterman or Leno?” and off they’d go to bed, snuggled under the sheets, watching television until they fell asleep, their books, old wineglasses, and stained coffee cups balanced beside their bed.

  When she moves to California and makes new friends, she’ll be a whole new person, Jonathan’s wife, and no one will know about The Jonathan and Rosie Show. No one will guess that they are adorably incompetent and eccentric. At last they’ll be free to be themselves.