The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  Rosie feels like she did the day she went on the Tilt-A-Whirl five times in a row. She would like to quietly get out of the car and maybe throw up politely on the sidewalk. “George? You mean Eddie?”

  Soapie makes a fist and pounds on her hand. “Eddie. Of course, Eddie! Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. Why can’t I keep it straight?” She looks at Rosie. “I can show you so many places. You can write in the cafés, and I can just be there with you. I can show you things.”

  “Oh, Soapie—”

  “We could do it. It could be our trip. Our last trip.”

  “No, no, don’t. Please. We can’t. We could never manage it, with your broken hip and … trying to get around … oh my God, the walker and stairs and maps … the trains … Jesus.”

  “And I could die there, and then I wouldn’t have to go into a nursing home. I bet Paris is a good place to die.”

  “No. No, we can’t do that.”

  Soapie’s eyes are glowing now. “Stop saying no! Yes! We can go there! You’re always selling yourself short. We can make a big change if we want to! It’s the thing I’ve always tried to get you to see, and you never want to take any chances. Let’s do this! Our final thing. It could make the difference for us, for our whole lives.” She’s talking louder now, and she starts beating one hand against the other, in a karate chop, over and over.

  “Soapie, no, no, listen to me. I’m pregnant. I’m having a baby in five months. In February.”

  There’s such a long silence that at first Rosie isn’t sure for a while that Soapie understands. But then she sees the precise moment that the news lands. Soapie’s face undergoes a range of expressions, everything from shock to anger to surprise, landing somewhere near defeat before she looks down at the crumpled-up hamburger paper in her lap. “This can’t be what you want.”

  “It is, yes.”

  “You’re going to tie yourself into a thousand knots, doing this, you know.”

  “I—”

  “You’re way old for this nonsense, don’t you think?”

  “I am. But I’m doing it.” She strokes the baby, making sure it’s real. “I’m the age you were when I was born. And you did it. You raised me.”

  “Why are you doing this? What are you trying to prove? You’ll hate it, and then it’ll be too late.”

  “It’ll be different for me,” she says calmly. “This will be my child.” She tries to say it kindly; she means it’s not some burden, some grandchild who’s an orphan, but Soapie turns and looks at her with such a flash of anger that everything in the car wobbles for a moment.

  “How dare you say that to me? How dare you? Listen—no. Just take me home, okay?”

  “What? I meant that—”

  “No. I know what you meant.”

  “I meant that because I’m choosing—”

  “Take me home.”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll take you home.”

  Rosie starts the car. She’s humming under her breath. She’s thinking that she withstood the abortion room, she withstood Jonathan’s fury, and she can withstand Soapie’s continued disappointment in her, too.

  “No. First throw away this bag. There’s no sense in keeping junk like this around. I never let my car get all cluttered up the way you do.”

  “I know. Here, give it to me.” She takes the bag and steps out of the car and walks down the parking lot to the trash can. Her heart is pounding, so she makes herself stop and take in a good, deep breath.

  When she gets back to the car, her grandmother is shrunken down, leaning against the door with one hand resting against her head, her eyes closed.

  [eighteen]

  Leila, the pregnant cashier at the health food store, is Rosie’s new BFF. She confides in Rosie that no one thinks she should be having a baby either, especially since her boyfriend left her. So now they high-five each other and call each other “BFF” whenever Rosie comes in for her weekly supply of organic kale and chia seeds and all the rest of the stuff the Internet says she should be eating. (These are definitely the kinds of foods you’d like to see your baby composed of. Your better humans all have internal organs composed of kale these days.)

  She and Leila are getting so friendly that soon Rosie is sure they’re going to do a belly bump right there in the store. And it’s so great to have someone to compare symptoms with. Even though Leila is age-appropriate for pregnancy and will not be receiving her AARP card in the next few years, she still feels just as alone and scared as Rosie does most days.

  Leila has a boyfriend who’s nothing but trouble, to hear her tell it.

  “Big mistake, that guy,” she says. “But he’s gone for good. I think. For a while it was on and off, off and on, but now I think he’s pretty much decided to split. Which is fine. I said to him, dude, either help me or get out of my way. And I think he picked out of my way.”

  Rosie can’t for the life of her think why talking about all this is fun, but it is. She tells Leila about Jonathan and how freaked out he got when he found out. Fifteen years together, and one condom fail, and now he’s decided he’s not going to play daddy.

  “Men!” says Leila. “How nice for them, that they get to rethink the whole thing, huh?”

  Then they get to listing their various ailments and aches and pains since they saw each other last. Laughing, Leila tells her that the manager is about to move her off the cash registers and to the back room, where she can supervise the high school employees and serve as their model of what not to do.

  “You’ve heard how if you can’t be a good example, you just have to be a cautionary tale? Well, that’s me,” she says with her eyes shining. “The managers want me to whine about pregnancy all the time, how hard it is, how much my back hurts. Isn’t that brilliant?”

  It isn’t until Rosie’s back in her car with the groceries that it hits her. Leila and Tony would make such a great couple. She’s so cute and young, and he’s so enamored of pregnancy—they’d be delightful together.

  She thinks she’ll go right home and announce that she’s met his future wife—except then, luckily, she realizes in time that would never work with him. Even as lonely as he is, he would just balk. No, she’ll have to think of a much more subtle way to get the two of them to meet. By accident.

  As she’s falling asleep that night, she hears him get up and come out of his room and go down the hall into the bathroom. The door closes with a soft click, and then opens again after a minute or so, and he walks past her room again. She holds her breath and stares at the ceiling. It is possible that she might be missing those nights when he slept next to her. His bare warm hands on her belly, waiting for the baby to move. How had she managed not to turn to him and start madly kissing him?

  She squeezes her eyes closed. She has to get him a girlfriend. For everybody’s sake.

  A week after Soapie comes home, she and Rosie are walking slowly down the path outside by the rosebushes, Soapie inching along with her walker and frowning at how hard it all is, and Rosie is talking about the baby and how pleased she is. And then she swallows and says, “Soapie, I am really so sorry that it didn’t work out about us going to Paris. I know that’s something you really wanted, and I would have loved to be able to do that with you. If only our timing had been a little better, you know?”

  Soapie looks up at her in complete bafflement. After a while she says, “Who’s going to Paris? What are you talking about?”

  It hits her like a body slam, how much has gone and in such a short time. She has to turn away.

  There’s no mistaking the difference in Soapie now. They’re not the amusing little Gang of Four anymore, dancing and singing and cheating at Scrabble. George’s eyes look shiny all the time, like he’s holding all his tears right there behind them. He has that smiling-through-adversity deal down perfectly, which makes him seem almost pathologically sunny and optimistic, like the singing orphans in Oliver Twist. He flits back and forth in his little double life, as Tony calls it, looking like a vaudeville performer who’s just about
to grab a baton and break into a song-and-dance routine.

  “George, my man George, now he’s living the dream! Two ladies in his life, and they both love him to death!” That’s what Tony says.

  “And neither one has an ounce of her right mind left,” says George, and it makes them all laugh, even Soapie. They do this riff nearly every day now because they all enjoy it so much.

  In an odd way, life seems even better than before, the way a warm, sunny day in winter might catch you by surprise in between snowstorms.

  Rosie and Tony cook each night now, and the four of them eat together just as they used to do, except now Soapie is easygoing and quiet, and the rest of them hover around her, cutting up her food, patting her hand, stopping to give her kisses. There is, Rosie thinks, a kind of surprising sweetness in the house that she never felt before, when she can be still enough to let it in. It’s the sweetness that comes when something can’t be permanent; it comes attached to an ache.

  One day, eating at a Chinese restaurant, she gets a fortune that says: “Be happy in the middle because the end will crack you open.”

  Greta, who is sitting across from her, says that’s the best description of pregnancy and childbirth she’s ever heard.

  But Rosie knows that the fortune is really about Soapie, and that where they are now, this is the middle, and she is responsible for noting all the possible happiness while she’s passing through here. There are worse things.

  At night, after dinner, they all still try to play Scrabble, but as she says to Tony, it’s Scrabble for Idiots, perhaps bordering on Scrabble for Those in a Vegetative State. Nobody would dare come up with a hard word. They used to be so hilariously competitive, mostly because Soapie said they had to be, but now they only form baby words and they happily give Soapie loads of extra time when it’s her turn. Usually, that’s when Rosie goes and does the dishes, and Tony brings in another beer for him and George. People lie back on cushions, change the record from Mel Tormé to Michael Bublé. The plants get watered. E-mails are answered.

  Then Soapie says, “Damn it, you people, you know I need that book,” and someone goes and gets the large-print dictionary that is sitting on the floor not two feet away, just where it was last night when Soapie needed it.

  And then after another long time goes by, she yells, “Okay! I got it! Zak. Huge points for that.”

  “But what is a zak?” says Rosie.

  “Oh, hell, Rosie. It’s one of those big hairy animals,” says Soapie.

  “That’s a—never mind.” She sees Tony and George frowning at her and shuts up.

  “They’re in the north,” says Soapie. “The big north maybe. You’ve probably never seen one.”

  “Great word!” says George, and Tony’s eyes crinkle up as he pats George on the back. They both start humming “The Way You Look Tonight,” which was playing an hour ago on the stereo, both of them probably not even realizing they’re doing it. And then George breaks into song as he leans down and studies his tiles for his next turn.

  “Someday … when I’m awfully low … la la la la la.”

  Rosie looks up at the table, and for a moment she sees the scene before her go all blurry, as if it were an Impressionist painting. She’s like the cameraman on one of those movie cranes, looking down and backing up at the same time. There is the brightly lit living room with its rows of bookshelves and its low-slung modern birch-colored furniture, the butter-colored walls, the dramatic color of the red geraniums in blue pots near the French doors. The dark of the night just beyond, and the reflections of all of them right there, bending over their tiles, frowning or smiling. Oh, these faces. All this feeling.

  We’re all such pitiful wretches, she thinks: Tony battered from his trips to Fairfield, where he still goes a few times a week to stealthily watch Milo talk to him on the phone; Soapie, fading away so fast, like some big cosmic eraser is following her around, disappearing her life; and George, dear, placid, adorable George, who just keeps plodding along with the wet, sad smiles behind his eyes.

  How is it ever going to be bearable? And what is she doing, bringing a baby into this world? Are these people glad they were born? Is there anyone who says, “No, I wish it hadn’t happened to me”?

  “I’ve got to go to sleep. I’m exhausted,” says Rosie. It’s not true, but she’s always the first one who wants to turn in these evenings, since just looking around the living room at the lined, sad faces of the old people, and at Tony’s strong arms and hands, makes her want to weep—and how can she, when everyone else is smiling instead.

  Grief is always such a surprise.

  “I’m going a little crazy here,” says Tony one night, two weeks after Soapie comes home. “Let’s celebrate October by going out and seeing a flick or something. Once we put the old people to bed.”

  It’s actually wonderful being out. They go to the Cineplex, not even knowing what’s playing, and decide to watch a thriller because the only other films are romantic comedies, and she refuses. “I don’t believe in all that stuff, and I don’t want to be made to laugh at it,” she says.

  “What do you mean, you don’t believe in it?” he says. “Of course you do.”

  “No, I don’t. I think romantic love is just some kind of bullshit Hollywood tries to make us believe so we perpetuate the species.”

  He laughs and pays for the tickets to one of the Bourne movies. Car chases and Matt Damon, maybe. “Who do you think you’re kidding?” he says as they walk to the theater, right past the snack bar, without even stopping. “Look at you, all pregnant and having a baby! That’s romance right there. You have to believe in romance to have a kid.”

  “What? They come repossess the baby if you don’t?” she says. “This baby didn’t come from romance, it turns out. It came from somebody forgetting to put a condom back on and now he’s very, very sorry about that lapse.”

  “Aww,” says Tony, and he follows her up the steps of the stadium seats all the way to the back row, which is where she always likes to sit, so people don’t kick her seat. “Really? This was a condom fail situation?” he says when they’re settled.

  “Yes. Failure to have one on in the first place. Possibly due to a kind of premature senility.”

  “You know what they say about those babies. Meant to be, then.”

  “No. Not according to him.”

  He laughs. “Oh, Rosie, Rosie! When did you get to be such a hard-assed cynic?”

  “I believe it was back in May.”

  “But you’re not fooling me one bit,” he says, grinning. “How could we not believe in romance when we get to see Sophie and George every night acting it out for us, even through all the trouble and sickness?” He rests his hand lightly on the back of her seat.

  “Soapie and George?” she says, moving slightly forward to avoid his touch. “They’re another tragedy.”

  “Well, that’s what romance is sometimes. But they’re the real deal. George told me they’d been at this for forty-something years. But she was tied up with raising you, and he’s Catholic so he couldn’t get a divorce.”

  “What? He’s been seeing her all that time? That is such a waste.”

  “Well, maybe not seeing, like you’re thinking. But he loved her.”

  “Jesus. What some people do to themselves! And you call that romance?”

  “Sssh. The movie’s gonna start. But yes. It is.”

  “It makes me mad,” she whispers. “All that wasted energy. And here’s something else: all those years, she never told me about it at all. She always acted like she didn’t need men or sex or fun or any of it. She told me nothing. Nothing that could help me with life or men or anything! Do you know how much I hate that?”

  “She’s a pipster, that’s for sure.”

  A pipster. That makes her smile. “I’m going to sit here and try very hard to forgive her.”

  “Okay. You do that. And I’m going to sit here and try to forgive my ex.”

  After a moment, she leans over to him an
d whispers, “Don’t even tell me that she still won’t let you see Milo.”

  “Sssh!” says a man down the row.

  They’re quiet for a bit, watching the fourth and fifth trailers.

  “I’m going to go get some popcorn,” says Rosie. “I’m starving.”

  “You shouldn’t eat that. Popcorn has too much fat.”

  “I won’t get it with butter. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Even without butter. You know what they pop that stuff in? Pure grease. Lard.”

  “But it’s fiber. Fiber wins over lard. Like rock wins over scissors.”

  “Would you please be quiet?” the man says again.

  “It’s just the trailers,” Tony says to him.

  “I don’t care. I like the trailers!” says the man.

  “I’ll be right back,” says Rosie.

  “I’m coming with you. I’m paper. Paper wins over rock.”

  “No. Stay here. Save our seats.” She stands up, facing him, and slings her purse over her shoulder.

  “Oh my God!” he says out loud. “Look at you! You’re really, really pregnant!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” says the man. “Maybe you two shouldn’t have come to the movies. Go out to dinner if you want to talk. Or go back home and make another baby.”

  “We already ate dinner, and you can’t make another one, sir, when one is already in the oven,” Tony tells him, and Rosie says, “Come on, Tone. Let’s go get the popcorn.”

  But once they’re out in the hallway, he says, “I didn’t want to see that movie anyway. Not with people like that in there. They ruint it for me.”

  “Ruint? Is that what you said? Ruint?” She laughs. “That guy thought it was our baby. Did you catch that?”

  “Yeah. That happens. Not a lot of pregnant women go out on dates with another guy. Come on. Let’s go play the video games.”

  “Video games? You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, this is better than a movie because I’m gonna beat your ass on these machines. I’m the champ.”