The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  Not menopause? Not menopause!

  She looks around Soapie’s bathroom, at the pink tile walls with their white grout, at her sandals kicked off and lying sideways on the fluffy pink rug over the mosaic tile floor, the white sink with stripes of turquoise toothpaste smeared on the side, her leggings, her sleeveless sundress with its blue dancing print, the one she put on last night, which seems like years ago now—and everything has changed. She can hardly take it all in. She looks up in the mirror at her unkempt hair coming loose from last night’s braid, her wide blue eyes with their dark circles, and at her white, white face, the O of her mouth. Lips, tongue, teeth, all there and accounted for. Her hands, unbidden, fly up near her face, smooth out her hair, tuck a strand behind her left ear.

  She hears Tony bounding up the stairs and knocking at the bathroom door. “Well?” he says. “Can you open the door?”

  She puts the test strip down on the counter and opens the door. He’s standing outside, with arms outstretched, and she goes straight into them, sniffling, limping, melting.

  “No, really, how did you know?” she says.

  “How did you not know?” he says back.

  So this, this, is what her body has been doing, while she’s been running around, eating inappropriate foods and crying, breaking up with a man and then regretting it, trying to exist in her old childhood home, trying to understand the maniacal woman who raised her. This? It has been busily making life, this crazy old body: churning out cells as fast as a little factory, putting together a human being.

  It was nine weeks ago that Jonathan flung the condom across the room and then asked her to marry him at the diner. Nine weeks of cells spinning out their hopeful little destiny inside her.

  Damn.

  The next few days, she drifts around in a kind of fog. She lifts her shirt and massages her abdomen as much as she can. Poor little geriatric reproductive organs, she thinks, thinking it was their chance at last to do what they’d been made for. So misguided of them. She actually feels sorry for them.

  She pictures the one little egg all dolled up, a cartoon ovum in a sexy red dress, sashaying her way down the Fallopian tube and luring Jonathan’s sperm over to join her. “Come on, boys, it’s almost too late,” says this little ovum in a Mae West voice. And then one of Jonathan’s slacker, teacup-loving, obsessive-compulsive, sarcastic guys stops leaning against the Fallopian tube wall, tosses out his cigarette butt, and decides what the hell. He lopes over, takes her hand.

  Never mind it’s years too late. These two don’t care.

  “How Jonathan and Rosie Prove They Are Even More Clueless Than Ever.”

  “How Jonathan and Rosie Mess Up Their Lives.”

  She starts to laugh out loud. She might be out of her mind.

  Tony says, “It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it?”

  What does he know about it? He and his wife were in their twenties when Milo was born.

  She lays out the facts for him, in case he has any illusions. It makes no sense to have a baby at her age. She’s single, she’s old, she’s unemployed, she’s … well, she’s unequipped in every way measurable: financially, emotionally, physically, psychologically, spiritually, probably even pharmaceutically. She doesn’t have the slightest idea about prenatal vitamins, just for starters, or how you get babies to not spit out their liquid antibiotic drops. And fluoride: is it an evil killer, or did it save the world’s teeth? She can’t even remember.

  He smiles.

  But amid the shock, the dread, the deep knowledge that she can’t have, you know, an actual baby, because she’s so old and ill-equipped, there’s something else. Three mornings in a row, she wakes up watching the sun beaming through the curtains, and she discovers that in an odd little way—before she lets the practical side of herself wake up fully—it’s fun to think about it.

  Truly—what a thing to have happen! Scientifically speaking, it really is a statistical miracle, just like the Internet claimed. One slipup with birth control—one teeny tiny mistake at a time in life when anyone sane might expect that she’s entering her infertile years—and bingo! She’s pregnant. She’s like a champion in the fertility sweepstakes. Her endocrine system could give lessons to other endocrine systems. She wants to alert the Internet, with all its gloomy talk about fertility rates and menopause and impossible statistics.

  Here’s something else that’s surprising: the clinic she calls to make an appointment calls it a “procedure.” She hadn’t expected such linguistic bashfulness in the face of something they see every day.

  And another surprising thing: they can see her on Friday for a consultation. Just two days away.

  “Will you be doing the procedure then?” she whispers, and the receptionist, a cheery woman with a warm voice, perfect for this job, says, “Oh, no, honey. You have to meet with the health care provider first. After all, we have to make sure you’re really pregnant, don’t we?”

  One not surprising thing: it’s so easy not to tell Jonathan.

  Another surprising thing: it makes her cry when she realizes life is so mean, giving her this now.

  She wants to issue an apology to the cells that are growing and dividing inside her, to beg their forgiveness because she’s not able to let them keep going. So sorry, she would say. So very, very sorry.

  She goes to visit Soapie, who is in a regular hospital room now that she’s post-op. Somehow, during all the pregnancy test drama, the hospital staff managed to go about its business as needed, putting a plate somewhere in Soapie’s hip or thigh bone or wherever, and now they say she has to get out of the bed and walk every day, even if she goes inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter.

  It seems like cruel and unusual punishment for an old lady, but Rosie goes and helps hold on to the IV pole as she and Soapie shuffle down the hallway, eyes straight ahead before them.

  And every day when Rosie goes to see her, Soapie seems more confused.

  “Not to worry,” says the doc. “She’ll go to rehab for a while, and do some occupational therapy, and then we’ll see how much comes back.”

  “How much comes back?”

  “Well, she’s quite elderly …” He pats her arm. “Let’s hope for the best, shall we?”

  Later, Soapie motions Rosie over to the bed. “I … must … tell you this. Serena didn’t really die,” she whispers. She raises her eyebrows to show great significance. “Hiding.”

  Rosie, startled, draws back.

  “Sssh. I saw her today at Kohl’s. Cashier now … manager soon,” she says, and shrugs. She makes a big show of swallowing and then, after a sip of water, she manages a long sentence: “I thought she’d do more with her life, but I guess it’s good they’re promoting her.”

  The doctor, when Rosie tracks him down, explains it. No, this isn’t part of the symptoms from the broken hip, the surgery, or the medications they have her on. Sad to say, there has been a little unforeseen problem with her grandmother’s sodium level. It’s dropped way down, interfering with brain function.

  “She might do and say strange things for a while,” he says. “We’re working on bringing it back up.”

  But it would have been so nice to believe in her words, she wants to tell him. This had been her fantasy, too, that one day she would simply be approached by a woman stepping out of the crowd—and why not the cashier at Kohl’s?—and the woman would smile at her and say, “Hi, Rosie, I’m your mama. I’ve been trying to find you for years.”

  When she gets back to the room, though, Soapie has forgotten all about it.

  Instead, she flutters her gnarled, big-knuckled hands over the bedspread, as if she’s trying to scoop up words and use them. She’s smiling, but it’s not her real smile. It’s as though somebody else is behind her eyes, somebody vague and uncertain.

  Rosie sits next to her, holding her hand, long into the night, watching the flicker of the television set, and waiting for another bulletin about her mother. Tony and George come for a visit, pat everyone’s hands, say nice t
hings, and leave. But Soapie just dozes, wakes up, and dozes again. So Rosie waits.

  A woman is beaming and telling the television audience that she was forty-five when she had her twins. In vitro, but it all worked out fine. Easy C-section delivery, normal babies, everything perfect. Two adorable, towheaded moppets come out from behind the curtain, and the audience roars its approval and leaps to its feet. The mom’s face has broken into a million sunshine beams, and the host of the show, an Asian woman, dabs at her eyes.

  Rosie, tearing up, too, wishes the television had a button that allowed you to get a true close-up. She needs to see if the woman is exhausted. Can you see pain and suffering in her eyes, or is she really, truly happy that she had these babies? Maybe if Rosie Googles her name, she’ll find that the woman keeps a blog where she reveals the real truth: My life is a living hell. I cry day and night, and my husband wants to leave me.

  Jonathan calls on her cell phone, and she takes the phone outside and down to the cafeteria to talk to him. It is midafternoon, and she, George, and Tony had been playing Scrabble in Soapie’s room, but Rosie is glad to get away. It kills her to see the blank, pleasant look on Soapie’s face as she watches them play without even once insisting that she wants to join in. So much territory has been lost. Rosie even misses Soapie’s cheating and the way she used to knock the board over if she hated her letters.

  “Hullo,” Jonathan says. “So here’s the latest. You know those little cards that museums have that tell you all the historical features you’re looking at?”

  “The what?” She squints at the sun coming through the atrium windows. Around her, people in scrubs are carrying trays to tables.

  “The cards. Did you ever really notice those?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I guess so.”

  “I’m spending my days writing those now. I love this job!”

  “Well,” she says. “That’s nice.” She feels queasy from all the food smells around her, so she sits down in an orange plastic chair and contemplates the crumbs left on the table.

  “This is really going to be a freaking teacup museum!”

  “That’s great,” she says. “I already knew it was going to be a museum.”

  She means that she knew it was a museum because she’s heard little else from him for two months now—from the middle of May until now, nearly the end of July—but he takes it to mean that she’s always believed in him and the teacups. He thanks her for that.

  Then she tells him about Soapie’s broken hip and the low sodium, and how it looks like she’ll have a long stint in rehab. He listens and then says that he knows this is hard, but it’s the way things are going to go. Sad to say, but she’s not long for this world, most likely.

  “I’ll tell her you said hello and sent your best,” she says coldly.

  “No, no. Did that sound awful on my part? I didn’t mean it to. But, babe, she’s nearly ninety. People don’t last much longer than that, especially when they have a broken hip. Me, I’d be thrilled to get to that age.”

  “So you’re saying she should be so busy being grateful she got old that she shouldn’t feel bad that she hurts and that she’s confined to bed all the time and can’t live her life?”

  “I’m just saying that it’s realistic to think—” he starts, and then he sighs and stops talking. “I’m sorry. I’m being horrible, aren’t I? This is your grandmother, and she’s suffering. Please tell her I love her and I hope she gets better.”

  She’s taken off guard. “Well, okay, I will,” she says.

  “I’m working on not being such a negative asshole,” he says cheerfully. “Public relations 101: don’t tell people they should be happy with their lot in life when they’re not.”

  “Well—”

  “Like next time, when you and I go to get married? Even if there are a thousand teacups in a flood in Texas, and even if they all need saving—I’m going to get married to you before I go to pick up the teacups.”

  “Ha,” she says.

  “And, if you sprain your ankle, I won’t say that you can just wear any old shoes to get married in when you wanted your red boots,” he says.

  She’s quiet.

  “Even if I don’t see the point of the red boots, they mean something to you, and I should accept that.”

  “Have you figured anything out about the oven?” she teases.

  “No. A dirty oven is an abomination and is worth nothing.”

  For one tiny moment, perhaps a fourth of a nanosecond, she toys with the idea of telling him about the pregnancy, but then she knows it would be the wrong thing. She has to just do what she needs to do, she has to endure the fear and the dread all by herself; she doesn’t think she could bear hearing his panicky voice, the resounding NO he reserves for anything that might be risky.

  “I really do love you,” he says before they hang up.

  “Me, too, you,” she says, which is what they always used to say to each other, back when he used to refer to the two of them as a couple known as “Rosiethan.”

  They were like Bennifer or Brangelina, he had said.

  But that was a long time ago. He probably doesn’t even remember.

  Little losses everywhere. And some too big to even imagine.

  “Okay, let’s review,” says Tony on Thursday night, the night before the “procedure” itself. She had seen the doctor the week before and had the pregnancy confirmed and the date set for the abortion. And now she just has to get through one more night of waiting.

  It’s beastly hot outside, and Tony’s just come home from fertilizing the rosebushes of everybody Soapie knows, he says. He’s taken a shower and put on nonsweaty clothing and come back downstairs with his hair all slicked down and his Red Sox cap on backward as usual. Rosie is frightened and anxious—no, she’s beyond frightened and anxious. She’s become mentally ill, sitting there huddled in the living room, with only one lamp on, and even that one lamp giving off only the most depressing, pale puddle of light. He gets a bag of potato chips and brings it in and holds it out to her.

  She shakes her head.

  “No, you gotta eat salt. If what happened to your grandmother has taught us anything, it’s that salt is very important.”

  She doesn’t think that salt intake has anything to do with what’s wrong with Soapie, but potato chips are good, so she takes a handful and he goes and sits down on the ottoman across from her and watches her. He has a way of sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands dangling down, and his back hunched over that makes him look as though he’s about to be spring-loaded into the air.

  “God, it’s dark in here,” he says. “Can I turn on another light?”

  “I don’t care.”

  He doesn’t move. “Ohhhh. You’re having a really hard time, huh?”

  “I’m scared out of my mind.”

  “Yeah. Listen, about that, can we just have a quick review of the facts as we now know them? Could we do that?”

  “What facts?”

  “The fact that you are currently pregnant, for one. And second, you’re hormonal as all hell while you try to make the hardest decision of your life.”

  “I made the decision, and it wasn’t that hard.”

  “Did you? I wonder,” he says. “I think you have a whole lot of mixed feelings, and I think you should know that if you want the baby, it’s not too late.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want,” she says. “If things were different, if I were younger, if I were married, if I hadn’t been so screwed up in childhood, if I’d saved up more money …”

  “That’s just the fear talking.”

  “Well, so what? The fear is real. Just give it up, Tony. I don’t know how to do it. When other little girls were playing house and rocking baby dolls, you know what I was doing? I was holding séances and trying to talk to my dead mother. I didn’t want to have a baby. I wanted to be the baby. I wanted to be the one being taken care of.”

  “Maybe you have to give yourself some credit for taking c
are of yourself,” he says.

  “But I didn’t. Look at me! My life is a mess. I tripped and hurt my ankle so I left the man I love, all so I could stay here with Soapie, who then got seriously hurt because I wasn’t home and watching out for her, because I was out with my friends trying to have some fun, which I did not deserve to have anyway—and then I find out that because I was so stupid, I got pregnant, and all my friends with kids all have regular, great lives, and I never even owned a house, or a new car even. I don’t do things the right way, don’t you get it? I need somebody competent to move into my brain and take over. I need a brain transplant at the very least.”

  “Whoa. If I could just interrupt for a minute, I’d like to say that you do not need a brain transplant. That guy left you. Maybe it’s just me, but I myself would not have gone to California leaving behind the woman I love who couldn’t come with me right then for whatever reason. The guy’s a moron.”

  “I made him go. Also, he’d rented the truck already.”

  “And I don’t think your job was ever to keep your grandmother from falling down every single time,” he says. “How you gonna do that, huh?”

  “But I wasn’t even here—and I stayed behind specifically so I could keep an eye on her, and then I wasn’t here when she needed me the most. She could have bled to death here.”

  “So all this means in your head that you can’t have a baby? Are you some kind of superhero that you always gotta save everybody all the damn time?” He shakes his head. “You think anybody on earth knows more about it than you do? People figure it out as they go along. Nobody’s got some magic ability to know what they’re gonna do.”

  “But I’m old. My eggs are probably like those dried-up eggs you’d buy from Ocean State Job Lot in the bargain bin.”

  “Lots of people are old when they have a baby. And sometimes they’re too young, or too broke, or too busy, or too sick. But they do it, and sometimes it works out great.”

  “How old are you?” she says.

  “I’m thirty-three.”