The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  The top of her head feels like maybe it’s missing; the air seems to blow in through her and around her. She’s almost giddy with relief.

  “I changed my mind, I changed my mind,” she says as she walks all the way outside, where it’s no longer raining, and the hot summer air hitting her air-conditioned frozen face feels so good it should be illegal. She’s realized that if she says that over and over, like a mantra, it keeps her from having to answer the big question, like how the hell is she supposed to live her life now?

  She’s about to call Greta when she sees Tony out of the corner of her eye. He unfolds himself from sitting on a bench near the side of the building and smiles tentatively, questioningly, as he comes over to her. “That was quick,” he says.

  “I thought you were gonna be gone,” she says.

  “Nah. I stayed.”

  God, what has she done? She feels so weird, clammy and breathless. She walks quickly over to his truck, and he unlocks the doors and helps her get in. He thinks she’s had the procedure, she realizes, by the way he’s holding her elbow and searching her face.

  He goes around and gets in the driver’s seat and looks at her.

  “Please,” she says. “Drive away fast.” She just wants to get far enough away that the staff of the clinic won’t see her and come and yell at her. She should have stopped at the desk, she should have told the nurse, she shouldn’t have run out that way. They might be worried about her. She’s being an idiot.

  “How are you? Was it bad?” he says softly. But at least he is moving the truck, backing it up, then turning the wheel, exiting the parking lot. He has to stop for a car to pass.

  “Hurry,” she says. “Please hurry.”

  He shifts into first gear, and the truck lurches out into traffic, caught up in the flow of other cars. Safe, she thinks.

  “I’m having the baby,” she says, and then looks out the window of the truck.

  When she looks back, she sees him smiling.

  “I have to. We don’t have enough people in our family,” she says. “The doctor says Soapie needs some relatives. Also, can we stop at the hospital and say hello to her, do you think?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes, we can.” After a moment, he shakes his head and pounds on the steering wheel. “God, life is so interesting, isn’t it? Wowie zowie.”

  The next Monday, Soapie is taken by van to the rehab center, which is much nicer than the hospital. More laid-back and informal. It’s easier for all of them to visit her there, and so most evenings Rosie, George, and Tony go have dinner with her in her room. Rosie brings a basket of food and some of Soapie’s favorite treats—macaroons, chocolate-covered walnuts, lemon bars. George manages to charm the nurses into allowing him to set up a music player in there, and he plays tapes of Sinatra and Frankie Laine to cheer her up.

  “It won’t be long before we’re up and dancing again, sweetheart,” he tells her. It’s been hard on poor George, having both loves of his life hospitalized. He sits, smiling through his moist, teddy bear eyes as Soapie sits propped up on pillows, wearing a pink peignoir and smiling at all of them placidly. It would be great, that smile, if it weren’t so disturbing. It’s as if her essence has dissipated along with her sodium, and they just have to wait for Soapie’s natural saltiness to come back.

  Rosie and Tony go down to the cafeteria so they can let Soapie and George be alone. Tony drums his fingers on the table and watches her wrestle open a box of chocolate chip cookies.

  “So,” he says, “have you told Jonathan yet?”

  She grimaces.

  “So that’s a no,” he says. “I think you might want to practice.”

  “Okay, let’s practice,” she says, and swallows her bite of cookie, which is divinely chewy and nutty all at once, with lots of gooey chocolate bits. “Jonathan,” she says, “I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  “No. More casual-like,” says Tony. “Don’t sound like you’re announcing a tragedy.”

  She sits up straighter. “It’s hard, Tony.”

  “I know. That’s why you gotta do it just right. You don’t want to have a million convos on this with him. One and done!”

  She watches as a woman on crutches sinks down at a table by the window, and then she turns back to Tony and makes a pretend phone with her thumb and little finger. “Okay, how’s this? Hi, Jonathan! How’s it going? Listen, are you busy? Because I thought I’d just give you a call with some news—Jonathan, I’m pregnant.”

  “That’s good. I like the way you dive right in.”

  “Yes, I’m pregnant. No, of course you’re the father!”

  The woman with the crutches looks up, startled.

  “Maybe you should be a little quieter, so you don’t give the nice people here heart attacks,” Tony says. “Also, he wouldn’t say that.”

  “We don’t know what he’ll say. This is all new territory.”

  He leans forward. “So had you two ever talked about having children?”

  “Only to decide we didn’t want them. He’s a great guy, but he just isn’t father material, you know? He doesn’t even like his own family.”

  “Okay. Whatever.”

  “He’s artistic and creative. He lives in his own head, which is where he also stores a bunch of numbers and statistics, and that’s why he can’t really do the family thing like other people. It interrupts his head space. He’s actually probably quite brilliant.”

  “Okay. Get to the next part, about how you’re going to have the baby.”

  She activates the finger phone again. “Jonathan, I’m going to have the baby,” she says, and falls silent.

  “Now what do you think he’s going to say?”

  “Nothing,” she says after a moment. “I think he just dropped dead.”

  Tony rubs his face with both hands. “Just do me one favor when you tell him, and don’t do the girl thing. Do not ask his permission.”

  “The girl thing?” She laughs. “Did Annie do ‘the girl thing’ with you and ask your permission to start sleeping with her friend?”

  “I wish. I’d have said no way.”

  “Well, then, what girls are you referring to, exactly?”

  “I know how you girls are,” he says. “I’ve watched you people for years. You ask permission when you don’t need to, even when you don’t care what the other person thinks, and you’re going to do what you please anyhow.”

  “Tony, you do know that you kind of irritate the hell out of the other humans with all this know-it-all stuff, right? I think after we get my life squared away, we’re going to have to work on your style.”

  “Fine. Beg him to let you keep the baby. What do I care?”

  “Fine. You go plot the takeover of the world.”

  “It’s not the world I’m interested in taking over. Just my one pitiful household.”

  “Hmm. I may have some insights for you on why that isn’t working so well.”

  “By the way, you know you’ve got to start going to the doctor, right? You’re officially a prenatal person now. The medicos might take an interest in that box of cookies you just devoured.”

  “They won’t know.”

  “Oh, they’ll know all right,” he says. “God. Am I going to have to manage everything with you?”

  She can’t get a doctor’s appointment for two more weeks.

  “Even though I’m a high-risk pregnant woman?” she asks the receptionist, a woman named Pearl, whom she actually knows from her years of going to this OB-GYN practice, the same woman who had finally back in May okayed the renewal of the prescription for the diaphragm, even without an office visit. Talk about locking the barn door!

  “Why are you high risk?”

  “Because I’m way old.”

  Pearl laughs. “You’re not all that old. As long as you’re not having any problems, we can wait to see you in two weeks. Dr. Stinson can call in a prescription for prenatal vitamins.”

  “I’m already taking those.”

&n
bsp; “Well, then, you’re ahead of the game. See you on the twenty-seventh.”

  Rosie hangs up. She’d expected just a little more fanfare from the medical establishment, thank you very much. Perhaps a modicum of concerned hand-wringing, even if it had to involve a bit of theater.

  Then, a week later—the week that the Internet pregnancy sites tell her that her baby has ears and is now the size of a Brussels sprout—she’s on the phone to Jonathan, and he’s going on and on again about how the museum is having a “soft opening,” whatever that is—it certainly sounds like something that would apply more to her situation than to his—and she just snaps and comes out with it: “Listen, you,” she says. “I’m pregnant.”

  Funny how all the rehearsing and worrying just leads to this moment, like the vast universe flying from everywhere and coming to rest in one microscopic dot. She feels the words go out over the huge, intercontinental network of wires and lights, traveling so fast through the stratosphere of their relationship, landing on him, like a blanket of prickly, hot little stars. She waits while it hits him.

  He doesn’t seem to catch it at first; he’s still talking over her, and then a beat or two later he says, “You’re what? Did you say you’re pregnant?”

  Direct hit. And she hadn’t even told him to sit down first.

  “I did. Yes.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “This isn’t my usual joke material, so no.”

  “How in the hell did you end up pregnant?”

  “I believe there was sex involved. And you.”

  There’s a long silence. She waits him out. Tap, tap, tap.

  He sighs. “Hold on.” She hears him put the phone down and close a door somewhere, and all the background noise—construction sounds—disappear. “How did you get pregnant?”

  “You know how sex works, right?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “Well, there was that time … you remember …”

  “That time? That one time? You got pregnant then?”

  “Well, it was unprotected sexual intercourse, so apparently yes.”

  “I thought you told me you were in menopause.”

  “I didn’t promise.”

  “You didn’t promise? That’s your excuse here?”

  “Jonathan. I told you I didn’t know. No one knows about menopause or … any of this stuff apparently. It’s all mysterious. Anyway, if we’re assigning blame here, you were the one who threw out the condom.”

  “Yeah, but you—oh, never mind. It’s no good arguing about this. You got pregnant.” He sighs again. “God, this is heavy.”

  “It is.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” He says this as though the words are actually painful to utter.

  “Well, Jonathan, I’m going to have a baby.” She squeezes her eyes closed and waits.

  He’s quiet for a long, long time. She silently counts to thirty. Then, just as she’s thinking he really might have dropped dead, he lets loose with a massive expulsion of sighing, and he says, “Have you thought this through? I mean, no offense, but you’re kind of old for this, aren’t you?”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve thought of very little else for a long time now.”

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks for reminding me that I’m just an incidental part of this. Of course you’ve known for a long time. And shouldn’t I technically have been part of this decision you’ve apparently made on your own?”

  “It was something I needed to think about by myself first.”

  “So basically it doesn’t matter what I say, is that what you’re telling me? You’re having the baby, and all I can do is just stand aside?”

  “You can help me. It’s your baby, too.”

  “Rosie, why are you doing this to us? Why now? I mean, what the fuck?”

  “To tell you the truth, every time I think of doing anything else, I just can’t. I actually signed up for an abortion, and I went to the appointment, and then everybody there was a teenager, and they put me in a room by myself to get ready for the thing, and then Soapie called wanting to look at pictures of her relatives, and all of a sudden I knew that I wasn’t going to even have any relatives after she died, and so I put on my clothes and drove away.”

  “I don’t think you should do this.”

  “I know. But I am.”

  “Jesus, God in heaven. How far along are you?”

  “About twelve weeks.”

  “You—Rosie, I don’t think you really want this. I know you. Sweetie, you’re not and I’m not—parent material. We aren’t.”

  “Jonathan, be very, very careful what you say to me right now, because all this is going to be stuff I remember for our whole lives. We’re both going to remember it.”

  “I don’t care if we remember it. I want us to remember it. Listen. Hear me out. You know us. We’re the uncommitted do-nothingers of life. Sweetie, we’re Gen Xers! Go ask Greta and Joe. Look at all our friends, as a matter of fact. We didn’t want that life. On purpose we didn’t want it. You can’t just change your mind right now and decide to go after something that didn’t even make sense twenty years ago, and now is probably certifiably insane.”

  “I can change my mind, and I did.”

  “Rosie.” He’s quiet for a long time. Then he says in a level voice, “When you went to that—that clinic place, did people try to talk you out of an abortion? Is that what this is about? Did you look at their evil pictures or something?”

  “Nobody tried to talk me out of anything, Jonathan. That’s not what this is about.”

  “Well, then, what the fuck is it about? Why are you ruining our lives?”

  “I’m not ruining our lives. Jonathan, this happened to me, and I can’t let it go. I just can’t.”

  “Listen to me: You are ruining our lives. This is the definition of ruining your life. You can’t change the rules for your life like this. Get it?”

  She hangs up on him and, for good measure, throws the phone at the wall. All that happens is that the back comes off and the battery lands under the bed. She wishes the whole thing had splintered apart so it could never get calls again, and she considers hurling it one more time. But she’s too tired, tireder than she’s ever been in her whole life. It’s like her arms and her legs simply have decided to shut down operations. She lies down on her bed, in the fetal position, staring into the darkness.

  Fine. Fuck him. She’ll do this alone. She can change the rules for her life anytime she wants.

  For Greta, who knows how to organize things and run a household of four kids and a busy physician, mobilizing an unexpected pregnancy is a piece of cake. She brings over a box of early-pregnancy maternity clothes, a load of books (including a very premature one on baby names), a chocolate cake made with flax seeds and health-giving carob instead of chocolate, and a list of instructors for Lamaze classes. And then she sits across the kitchen table from Rosie and says a bunch of comforting things, ticking them off like they’re in a list of The Etiquette of What You Should Say to Your Unexpectedly Expectant Friend.

  “I know you can do this … you were always meant for motherhood … it’s going to be great,” she says, but none of it sounds at all convincing. Rosie has made the two of them a cup of pregnancy tea (also brought by Greta), and they sit drinking it together on the patio with the summer sun beating down on them.

  “I know, I know,” Rosie keeps saying without any conviction. “I can do it.”

  “Oh, hell. You’ve got to be scared out of your mind. So what does Jonathan think?”

  Rosie doesn’t answer just right away. She’s busy tracing her forefinger along the water track left by her cup of tea. She allows two grains of sugar to join the trail, and she imagines they are grateful.

  “Oh, God, he’s being a dick about this, isn’t he?” says Greta. “I was afraid that might happen.”

  Rosie is sick of the Jonathan-bashing their friends do, but she can’t think of anything to say in his defense. They’ve been right about h
im all along. So she just sits quietly, feeling herself cut off like she’s building a barrier of sandbags around her heart. She doesn’t look up.

  Greta’s cell phone rings, and she answers it and then gets her Official Mother voice on, having to explain to Sandrine how to start the chili recipe—“No! Don’t turn on the burner before you start chopping up the onions!”—and then she hollers about how Marco shouldn’t ride his skateboard without his helmet, and at one point she actually gets so worked up that she has to stand up and pace with the phone while she shouts down a child who’s determined to perform some other death-defying action. Perhaps it’s Henry inviting zombies for dinner, or has he outgrown that phase? Rosie doesn’t know.

  She sits and waits for the storms of mobile mothering to subside, and then she gets up and goes inside, to the refrigerator, and pulls out some leftovers to heat up for dinner. She can’t remember if Tony will be home or not. Maybe this is a day he goes to secretly stare at Milo while he talks to him on the cell phone just yards away.

  Greta follows her. She finally closes her cell phone and looks at Rosie. “Does this just scare you out of your mind when you see what you’re truly getting into?” she says. “Look at what I’ve turned into.”

  “You love it.”

  “Yeah, but it’s scary. And you’re going to be doing this same thing. I can’t wait to hear these sentences coming out of your mouth.”

  “Not me. My child is going to behave itself and never turn on the burner before it chops the onions.”

  That’s when Tony comes in the back door—he of the shaggy hair and the backward Red Sox cap and the hoodie sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped out of it. Greta’s eyes widen, and Rosie lamely makes the introductions while Greta is telegraphing Rosie little sparky-eye messages the whole time. Tony, of course, has never looked more Tony-ish, like an exaggerated version of himself, brash and young, and talking in his put-on New Jersey accent, telling about traffic all the way back from Fairfield.

  “So you’re staying here?” Greta says to him coolly.

  “Yes. He’s kind of the caregiver for Soapie,” says Rosie.