The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  Then, in another part of the living room, Soapie runs over Louise’s toe with her walker, and Louise howls just like a toddler would, with big tears spouting out of her eyes.

  But all this gets fixed somehow. Joe is stalwart and comforting, and Sandrine, defiant and red-eyed, watches the party going on around her, and after a while Greta slowly stops looking as though the end of the world has come. Tomas holds Carmen’s hand and listens as she tells stories about her sweet old dog. And George, bless him, manages somehow to soothe both Soapie and Louise with his patient smiles.

  And then Leila arrives, hours late, thin and willowy despite her round belly, and everything starts to go to hell all over again.

  She is accompanied by a surprise guest, her off-again but now on-again boyfriend, a guy named Clem, who is disheveled, unshaven, and in a bad mood. Rosie can’t believe this bad luck. Also, the guy turns out not to be the most perfect Thanksgiving add-on guest. For instance, when he follows Tony into the kitchen to get a beer, he discovers what he calls “the brutally murdered turkey” resting in the pan after being roasted, and he delves into a full-scale lecture about the conditions in which turkeys live and die, and also a description of the many turkey parasites that a lot of people might not know about.

  “Also,” he says, loudly enough for everybody to hear, “I’m sorry, man, but why would anybody have to kill something, when you already have Tofurky?” Leila, cheeks flushed, comes over to subdue him by patting his arm, but he shakes her off. “Leila, you told me they were vegetarians! I mean, what the fuck?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Leila whispers to Rosie. “He just showed up as I was leaving. He’s the … you know, my baby’s father, and he said he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Maybe we’ll just leave.”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” says Rosie, perhaps with a tad too much vehemence. “You relax and don’t worry about a thing. We’re glad you’re here.”

  But once they’re all seated at the table, Clem, now with some beers backing him up, wants to discuss the political party system, specifically whether there’s enough difference between the two parties as to make elections even worthwhile. And that leads the two mommies to explain that, as a matter of actual fact, the Democrats have made gay marriage possible, which is wonderful.

  They sit there smiling at each other, and Rosie’s heart sinks, knowing what’s coming next. And it does.

  “As a matter of fact,” says Dena, sliding her eyes over to Annie, “we’d like to announce that we’re going to have a wedding very soon.”

  “As soon as one of the brides gets divorced,” says Tony in a low voice.

  “They’re what?” says Soapie. “Did they say they’re getting married? How is that a good idea?”

  “Shh. Girls can marry girls now,” says George. “It’s a good thing.”

  “But is it a good idea?” says Soapie, undeterred. “Marriage is highly—”

  “Yes,” says Rosie. “It’s a good idea.” She turns to Annie and Dena. “My grandmother doesn’t believe anybody should get married. Ever.”

  But all this leads Clem, bleary-eyed but passionate, back into his real beef with life, which is that government shouldn’t have any say whatsoever in how people live their lives in the first place.

  Rosie tries to beam a thought over to Tony: Talk to Leila. Turn to Leila and talk to her. She’s wonderful.

  But he doesn’t. People start earnestly passing dishes back and forth and eating their food, but now Louise’s Alzheimer’s starts acting up, possibly because Clem is talking loudly again and waving his arms, reflecting on the plight of the Native Americans.

  George goes all Greatest Generation on Clem and tells him that he must settle himself down some, and that makes Joe leave his seat and come over to take Louise’s pulse, which triggers some primordial fear in her, and she jerks back, and her water glass falls over, as well as one wineglass, which spills into the Tofurky, possibly making it even more ruined than it already is.

  But it’s all okay. That’s the thing to remember, that this dinner is going to end and that they will all survive it. Soapie stands up and starts dumping the salt shaker over the tablecloth, quoting herself from the first Dustcloth Diva book, looking pleased.

  “ ‘To get red wine out of a tablecloth, you need to pour salt over the stain,’ ” she says loudly. “ ‘And then let it sit overnight, and rinse it out in the morning. Of course, pouring white wine over the stain also works, but better you should drink the white wine while you wait for the salt to do the work.’ ” She beams at them all, and then says, “I should write another book. Rosie, weren’t you going to help me write another Dustcloth Diva book?”

  “We tried that,” says Rosie. “It didn’t work, remember?”

  “Wait, you’re the Dustcloth Diva?” says Dena. “My mother had all those books!”

  “Oh, thank you, dear! We were going to write another one,” says Soapie. “This one would have stain tips as well as information about not wasting your life on cleaning all the time. Where is that book, Rosie?”

  “The editor changed her mind,” says Rosie.

  “What are you talking about? I’ve got all the notes.”

  “It’s okay,” says Rosie. “They said they’ll just release the first one again.” This is a lie, but she’s proud of thinking of it on the spot like this, and Soapie smiles, confusedly placated.

  But then there’s Clem again. “I’m not sure red wine goes with Tofurky,” he says.

  Tony laughs and says, “No color of wine goes with Tofurky, man. Beer is the best Tofurky can hope for.”

  Rosie’s heart leaps up when she sees Leila smile at Tony and he smiles back at her, but then he claps his hand across Clem’s shoulders and says something in his ear that makes them both laugh.

  Rosie feels that the universe is really missing one of its better chances to make something good happen. Really, how hard would it have been for Clem to get mad and insulted and leave the premises, to have Tony and Leila get to talking, for them to both realize how much they needed each other? Here she is, months from giving birth, and he’s over there suffering because the two mommies have just dropped a bombshell on him. And instead of getting to know her, there he is, talking instead with the bad boyfriend, and Leila isn’t even looking their way.

  The children come into the dining room just then and say they want pumpkin pie, and Greta goes off to the kitchen to get all the desserts. Carmen and Sandrine start clearing the dishes away, and Tomas asks if he can put the coffeepot on.

  Rosie looks around the table, feeling as though she’s an anthropologist watching the native species through binoculars from very far away. Leila, between the two mommies, is talking about pregnancy, and Dena says that she’d like to give it a try herself, and they’re thinking of looking at sperm donors soon. Tony, heading to the kitchen with a handful of wineglasses, seems once more like a truck has hit him, and he gives Rosie one of his looks, like a man drowning in feeling. She touches her fingers to her lips and holds them out toward him in a comradely salute.

  George adjusts the napkin draped across Louise’s chest, and as his fingers lightly brush her magnificent, dowager bust, Rosie has a sudden image of the two of them as young lovers decades ago, Louise bright and shiny and bosomy, and George, eager and ardent—isn’t that what Soapie said?—without that shadow behind his eyes. Back when he was full-tilt happy.

  Soapie looks over at them and smiles fondly, a crooked, generous, stroke-patient smile, and Rosie sees something she never realized before, that they all three once had a story for this little three-way dance they’re in. And maybe the story was that George just had more love to spend than he could give away and everybody was fine with him having two women, or maybe they’d all been jealous and mean and secretive. Who knows?

  Rosie feels tears spring into her eyes.

  We all tell ourselves such ridiculous stories, she thinks, true and untrue, all the stories piling up like leaves along the curb. Carmen and Tomas are a couple, alrea
dy writing themselves a romance. And Tony, bruised and unable to move on with his life, might any minute turn and look at Leila and see that she needs rescuing from Clem, and his story might get rewritten starting tonight. And if he doesn’t? Will Leila decide to keep going on with Clem, or might she find the courage to tell herself the story of how she and the baby don’t need him?

  Soapie and Louise and George will die.

  Rosie’s baby, propelled by a force quite outside herself, is going to live.

  Rosie will resume her life with Jonathan, both of them changed now, and he’ll get used to the idea of what it means to be a father, and his heart will expand exponentially.

  Dena and Annie will marry; Dena will have a child, and she and Annie and Milo will be cemented together in a way that will wound Tony, who simply has got to find his own story.

  Greta and Joe have lived in the thick of family life and busyness, but now their kids are spinning slowly into their own orbits. Already Sandrine, with her alienated eyes, her marijuana, and her defiant chin, is mostly an adult, and the boys—who have left their sports jackets out in the dirt in the darkness—are not far behind.

  And all of it—all of it—will someday blow away, like dandelion fluff, with only the remnants of the stories of love and trouble remaining, if anybody sees fit to pass them down.

  She can’t figure out why this makes her so happy—or why she feels her eyes filling up with tears. Maybe it’s that she now feels she has a part in this huge circle of stories. She’s part of a chain, in a way she never thought she’d be—she and Soapie and Serena and the new baby, who kicks gleefully inside her.

  [twenty-three]

  The next week, after Rosie and Soapie have had tea and toast and have watched The View, and then watched the rain running down the windowpanes, Rosie takes a deep breath and, unable to help herself any longer, says, “Do you remember anything about my mother? Is there anything you can tell me?” Just saying that takes so much effort that she has to stretch out on the sofa. She is so hungry for a fact about her mother that she can’t even get herself to look at Soapie.

  Soapie says, after a moment, “Oh, Lord. I really don’t remember much about her anymore.”

  “But you must remember some things. Was she—when she was pregnant with me—was she happy to be having a baby?”

  “Oh, I don’t have any idea. Honestly. Why do you ask that? I suppose she was. Any woman might think it was going to be a great adventure.”

  “What about my father?”

  “What about him?”

  “What was he like, Soapie?”

  She lets out a loud sigh. “He was one of those men who knew how to get what he wanted. He talked your mother into things.”

  “Like having me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  Rosie looks over at her. Soapie has closed her eyes, gone away somewhere. “Listen,” Rosie says softly. “You think it doesn’t matter, because I lost them so young. But they always exist for me. They’re—they’re like these people-sized holes in my heart. You knew your mother and father. But can you imagine what it would be like if you knew hardly anything about them, and yet there was a person right there with you who actually knew them but who wouldn’t talk about them?”

  “I don’t remember much about them.”

  Oh, God. She’s going to cry. “But you must remember some things. Tell me what they liked to do.”

  “Oh, Rosie! What do you want from me? I’m old and I’m tired, and I can’t give you what you want. She wanted you. Everybody loves their own kids, right? They weren’t together long. He had long hair and he laughed a lot. She was one of those girls who didn’t talk much. She was moody.”

  “She was shy, you think?”

  “Probably. I don’t know.”

  Rosie sits up. “Listen, I kept a box—I still have it—I kept a box of things that might have belonged to my mother. Objects that you—that you once said might have been hers. Did you know that?”

  Soapie opens her eyes and stares at her. Her face is all contorted with something—pain, maybe, or fear. But she’s watching.

  “Here, I’m going to get it for you.”

  “What do you mean, you kept a box?”

  “I did. I kept a box.” She goes into her bedroom and finds the box, which has been stored at the back of her closet. She brings it back into the living room and sets it down.

  “Here,” she says. “Let’s look at this together.”

  “No. I don’t want to drag all that stuff up from the past.”

  “It’s not going to be bad. Here, it’s just some things. Look.” She starts taking out the photographs, the scarf, the hair clasp, the cassette tape, and laying them out on the table, looking at Soapie’s face. “I just picked these things up. Some of them, you mentioned … I thought they were things that she’d—that she’d touched.”

  Soapie is looking at her, alarmed. “Where did you get this stuff? I didn’t want any of those things around us! Just poisons things, keeps people from starting over.”

  “But we did start over. That’s done. And I know that’s how you saw it, but I just always thought maybe I’d find a little bit of her …” She stops talking because her throat has closed up. Then she begins again. “I kind of remember her, a little. I think she sang me a lullaby, one time.”

  “She did. She sang.” She pushes the box away, as if it might be full of snakes. “I don’t think looking at this stuff is going to do either of us any good. It just makes us sad after all these ye—Christ sake. What do you have here, anyway? These weren’t hers, you know.” She peers in.

  “No? Are you sure? I guess I just needed something back then. I told myself they were hers.”

  “No. That was my hair clasp. And that scarf—well, maybe she wore that. I can’t remember.”

  “There’s a tape of her singing. Would you like to hear it?”

  “No. God no. Put this stuff away, will you?”

  “Did she—did she love me?” Rosie can barely say the words.

  Soapie looks up from the box and something shifts in her eyes. “Oh, don’t be silly. Of course she loved you. What the hell does love mean anyway?” She stops and swallows and lowers her voice. “All right, I’ll tell you what I remember. But it won’t do you any good, just stirring all this up. She loved you just fine. But it ruined her—you know, with him. Your father not sticking around. Because of the—because of the … the times …”

  “The draft?”

  “Yes. He could have done other things, I don’t know, gotten a lawyer, got out of it. But he takes the coward’s way out and goes to Canada. And he tells her he can’t come back. Not ever. So she wants to go there, too, but he says no. He’s got some other plan for them, he says. Keeps putting her off and asking her to wait. And so she’s living with me and saving money and planning to go. Anybody could see what’s happening, but not Serena. No sir. She could be so stubborn about things.” Soapie closes her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “But did he ever know what happened? To her? Did you tell him? Did he ever try to be my father?”

  Soapie is silent. Her lips clamp together tightly. “I can’t, I won’t,” she says at last. “It doesn’t do anybody any good. All that hurt dragged out again.”

  One day, after Rosie is tired of looking up local assisted-living facilities for Soapie that will allow a person to have both overnight visitors and alcohol, which Soapie is still insisting upon—she types into Google “diamonds from peanut butter.”

  And holy bling! It turns out that there are lots of sites that say you can turn peanut butter into diamonds—but that to do it right, you’d need the pressure of fifty elephants for one square inch of peanut butter, and a temperature source that could get to two thousand degrees.

  Or a microwave you don’t care anything about, and the courage of Superman. She watches a YouTube video that makes her put her head in her hands.

  “Totally not worth it,” she reports t
o Tony, who has also looked it up and, being Superman, of course wants to do it. “You’ve got to do it outside, and it involves fire and electrical cords and, if it goes wrong, you probably won’t have any eyebrows for the rest of your life.”

  He says, “Hmmm.”

  “The two mommies will have a fit when they hear about it,” she says.

  He says “Hmmm” again, like somebody who can pretty much do anything he wants. He’s been out painting a house all week, and it looks as though his house-painting business is taking off. A real estate agent called him and said she’s going to recommend him to all her clients who need to get their houses in shape before they go on the market, and he’s thrilled.

  She argues just the same, knowing she can’t win. It’s dangerous … lighter fluid? … blow up a microwave? How is this sane? Also, any custody matter that later comes up will be sure to mention the day that Tony lost his mind. Judges, she points out, are always looking for that sort of evidence.

  He laughs. He tells her he visited the kindergarten class, and every one of the nineteen children in the class and Amelia Minton were talking of nothing else but Milo’s peanut butter diamonds.

  Like that matters, she says.

  And then when Milo comes over to visit the following Saturday, Tony says, “Get in the car—we’re heading out for a secondhand microwave, a jar of peanut butter, some charcoal, and a bottle of lighter fluid! The Cavaletti men are going for broke!”

  When he and Milo get back, they set up everything on the patio, snaking a long cord out there so they can plug in the microwave.

  Milo is so excited he’s like somebody on a pogo stick. Soapie and George are in the house, peeking out the window, and Rosie goes outside and helps Tony smear the briquettes with peanut butter. Milo does a somersault across the yard, and then another and another.

  “Can we sleep outside again, Dad?” he calls.