The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  “But I’ve got to be with Jonathan. He’s the dad, and if you’ve shown me anything, it’s that fathers are important. I see you with Milo, and how you’re starting to fight for him, and I’m so freaking proud of you for that, and I’ve got to give Jonathan that chance, too.”

  “Rosie, all that is very interesting, but it doesn’t have one single thing to do with who you love.”

  “Yes, it does—”

  “No, no. Don’t you get it? We don’t get to pick who we love. The heart just goes on doing what it does best, falling in love and opening itself up, and it doesn’t give a shit about who we’re supposed to be with. It’s just happy to go on churning out all this love.”

  The snow has made the car into a cocoon. He takes her hand and squeezes it, and she knows that they could so start kissing right then and not stop for a week, but he doesn’t even lean toward her. “All right,” he says. “Now let’s go into this nursing home and see if it’s any good.”

  “You’ll come with me?”

  “Yes.” He closes his eyes. “Apparently I will always come with you.”

  They get out of the car, and he comes around and takes her arm so she won’t slip on the pavement with her off-balanced, front-heavy self. Walking up the path to the front door underneath the pavilion, he’s smiling and whistling like he’s the freaking Dalai Lama of love or something. It must be exhausting having to be him and have all those emotions all over the place. Nothing like Jonathan, who of course has feelings, but he’s so much more able to bear them. Even this—even though she’s just told him that she doesn’t love him, he’s walking along beside her, humming a little bit and (she can tell) he’s having feelings about the potted plants in their giant concrete tubs, about the spray of the fountain just ahead and to the left, about the woman wearing long braids and wrapped in a plaid wool shawl who is wheeling herself in her wheelchair toward them as though she’s in a race.

  There’s nothing else for Rosie to do but plod along beside him, holding on, concentrating on not falling.

  Harbor View is pretty damn good, and, miraculously, it has an opening for the end of January for a room with a porch, far enough away from the dining room that no boiled vegetables will come wafting down to depress anyone. No one looks deranged, and there’s no click of walkers because there is soft carpeting, no hooded eyes looking blankly into her own. Rosie signs the contract pending Soapie’s approval, and later—just because they’re on a roll—they head to Tony’s real estate agent friend and put the house on the market. And they try not to think about how this is the start of everything coming to an end.

  [twenty-four]

  The next day, Greta calls and says they have to meet for lunch, away from home. So they go to Chestnut Foods in New Haven. Rosie puts on her best sweater, the long turquoise one that does not have any toothpaste droppings across her middle. She actually applies lipstick and mascara, puts her hair up in a ponytail, and grabs one of Tony’s coats, which still fits around her middle. She looks pretty fabulous, if she does say so herself.

  Greta’s late, and she comes flying in, all business and consternation, apologizing, harried.

  “Here, sit down, breathe,” says Rosie. “What’s the matter?”

  “Everything. My life. Our men. Joe. Jonathan. Did you order yet?”

  “No.” Rosie feels a flicker of fear. “What’s wrong with Joe and Jonathan?”

  “Let’s get some paninis or something. Sorry, I don’t have a lot of time, so I have to get to the point. I caught Sandrine smoking pot again, and now apparently, there’s also a guy, so I’m insisting on picking her up every day from school myself. I really don’t even have time to eat.”

  “See? This is why I won’t even let my kid out of the womb.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably what I should have done,” says Greta.

  “Next time you’ll know,” says Rosie. “So, what’s with Joe and Jonathan?”

  Greta goes over to the food case and orders them eggplant and arugula paninis with melted mozzarella without even asking Rosie if that’s what she wants. Short on time; no time to ask. Rosie folds her napkin and tries to arrange her face into a pleasant, open smile. Fortunately she likes the eggplant and arugula paninis; otherwise she would have to murder Greta.

  “Okay,” Greta says as she comes back. “I’ve gotta tell you this: Joe woke me up in the middle of the night and said he just figured out that you’re sleeping with Tony. And this is Clueless Joe, who has never detected sex in his life, up to and including when it was happening to him.”

  “Is that it? Trust me. I’m not sleeping with Tony.”

  “Well, I know that. When he told me what he’d been thinking, I told him all the reasons that you weren’t sleeping with Tony, which are …” She pauses for a moment, seeing if Rosie is going to jump in and fill in the reasons, but when she doesn’t, Greta sees that having come this far into the sentence, she now has to go on—“which are: he’s too young; he’s kind of … well, he’s not your real type; also, he’s got a seriously complicated home life; and he wouldn’t really fit in with the other guys in the posse. Which is important after all these years.” She sits back. “There. Did I miss anything?”

  “I don’t believe so,” says Rosie coldly.

  Greta peers at her. “So are you and Jonathan … all right? I mean, I know it must be awful being separated like this—I can’t even imagine how lonely you must be, going through all this. And Joe was really upset with me that I wasn’t seeing enough of you. He said that I was your best friend, and that he and all the rest of us needed to step in and support you during this time, while you wait to go join Jonathan and all.”

  “We’re all right,” says Rosie. “I mean, as you recall, it took him a little while to come around to the idea of family and fatherhood.”

  “Well, sure. I mean, this is Jonathan we’re talking about. He’s cautious. And babies aren’t like teacups, let’s face it.”

  “But he’s into it now,” she says.

  “Well, that’s good,” says Greta. “Joe’s calling him tonight, in the name of the sacred brotherhood and all, to tell him how he has to step up his game. Antlers, you know. When one female is thought to be perhaps falling out of the pack, the other males circle around. Or something. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “No,” says Rosie.

  “This is just Joe’s fantasy life probably. Forget it. Listen, though, more importantly, I’ve found a woman who gives Lamaze classes in her house. Same person I used way back when, she’s still giving classes, thank God. You don’t want to just take the hospital course, trust me on this. It’s four weeks, and I can go with you because it’s in the evening, and Joe has said that he’ll watch the kids.”

  “How very nice of you.”

  “Yes, it’ll be our weekly outing. I’m looking forward to it.”

  The sandwiches show up just then, and they get busy eating.

  “How old is Tony anyway?” says Greta with her mouth full.

  “Oh. Nineteen,” says Rosie.

  “Stop it. Okay, I deserved that. So I take it that he and that pregnant woman at Thanksgiving didn’t hit it off, huh? The one you were fixing him up with?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Tough when her idiot boyfriend was there. Man, that guy was a piece of work, wasn’t he?” She puts down the rest of her sandwich and starts wrapping it up in the paper to take along. “Hey, so Lamaze starts this week, on Wednesday night. I’ll pick you up?”

  “Okay.” Rosie feels like a sullen teenager, like Sandrine must feel. Really, she’d like to maybe take the kid out for a Coke and they could compare notes about Greta.

  Greta is studying her. “You look good, you know that? That color is nice on you. I wish I had your freedom right now, I’ll tell you that. It’s just run, run, run all over the place lately.” Then she stops and lowers her voice and leans in. “Rosie. Do not fuck him. I remember how pregnancy hormones are, and I saw the way he looks at you. Joe might not k
now what he’s talking about, but he is on to something. I know this guy might look good when Jonathan is so clueless, but you can train Jonathan. And here’s the big one: Jonathan is the father of your child.”

  The Lamaze teacher, Starla Jones, is about the same age as Rosie, but of course her children—she has five of them—were all born long ago, and, according to her speech at the start of the class, their births were joyous, calm, almost religious experiences. She is firm in her spiritual conviction that a person can breathe her way through pain. In fact, she tells the class—a motley assortment of five young, hugely pregnant couples and then Greta and Rosie—that pain isn’t even going to be a word they use. Ever.

  “Do you know what word we’re going to use instead?” she says.

  “Discomfort?” asks one of the pregnant women, who has a long blond ponytail and looks as though she’s possibly going to deliver a hippopotamus in the very near future.

  Starla Jones frowns. “No, our words are too powerful to use them so negatively,” she says. She looks around, one eyebrow arched, and raises and lowers her arms slowly, as though she’s parting the Red Sea. “We’ll just call them openings. We’re opening to our new lives. We’ll develop mantras and focal points to help us through.”

  The class meets in her condo, and once all the women are lying on the living room floor with their pillows and their massive bellies sticking up, Rosie thinks the place looks like a balloon factory showroom. Children’s artwork is everywhere, tacked up on the walls. Down the hall, they can hear the sound of kids squabbling, and periodically a deep male voice issuing a command for quiet.

  “Does this really work?” asks one man in a squeaky voice, and the rest of the group laughs.

  “Does it work!” says Starla Jones. “Does it work! I could show you my home movies of every single one of my births, and you’d be convinced.”

  Oh, please no, Rosie thinks. She and Greta widen their eyes at each other, which makes Rosie laugh. She’s grateful, really, that Greta is going along with her to the Lamaze classes, even though when she told Tony about it, he pointed out that he remembers every single thing there is to know about Lamaze. She stretches out on the floor in Starla Jones’s living room and follows the directions, relaxing her left side, then tensing her muscles, and then relaxing her right side.

  “Breathe,” commands Greta in a soft voice close to her ear, and she does.

  “Why is there a For Sale sign in the front yard?” Soapie asks her one morning.

  They have been over this about a dozen times. “Because we are selling this house, honey,” Rosie says gently. “You said we should sell the house, because you are going to live at the Harbor View. Remember the nice apartment there? It’s going to be available at the end of January.”

  “The end of January? Why do I have to wait?”

  Rosie looks at her. There is no telling when they start these conversations exactly which way they’re going to go. Sometimes Rosie finds herself talking to the Soapie who wants to move immediately, or sometimes it’s the Soapie who can’t remember she’s going at all. So far, at least, she hasn’t had the Soapie she’d dreaded the most: the one who says she’s not going after all. Sometimes there seem to be storm clouds behind her eyes, but she never argues or complains about it. It breaks Rosie’s heart, this bravery.

  “We have to wait because that’s the date they’re going to have your apartment ready,” she says.

  “And you’re really going to California?” Soapie asks, as though this is just a normal conversation they might have once had on the pros and cons of moving. “Where is Tony going?”

  “He’s getting his own place.”

  “And George?”

  “George will be coming to see you every day.”

  “Will he spend the night?”

  “I expect he will. If you want him to.”

  “What I want is for us to go to Paris,” says Soapie, swiveling her head over to Rosie and fixing her with a filmy-eyed stare. “That is the only thing I believe I ever asked you for.”

  “It’s true, you did ask for that,” says Rosie.

  “It was too much to ask,” says Soapie, and she looks away. Her face these days has changed. It’s lost a lot of the tension that used to hold her muscles in place and sags now, as if everything on her is simply tired of holding itself together. Rosie hopes that the promises she’s made to her can really come true—that she’ll truly be able to live independently at Harbor View, that George will be able to visit, that there will be vodka and dancing—and that she won’t have to go so quickly into the more restricted nursing home unit. Sometimes, though, it seems as if door after door is quietly closing in the room of Soapie’s mind, never to be opened again.

  Oh, it is all so hard.

  The baby rolls around inside her now, flipping over like an acrobat. Tony calls her a prizefighter baby. Sometimes she has hiccups, which is so interesting—as though after Rosie’s gone to sleep, the baby has gone clubbing, and now the two of them together are experiencing the hiccupping. Also, there are times now when Rosie’s belly gets tight like a basketball and hardens there, gripping hold of the baby. Braxton-Hicks contractions, says Starla Jones. Practice for labor.

  It’s good, that practice, it shows that even her old and inexperienced body seems to have the idea of what it needs to do: fire up those uterine muscles and get them ready to push the baby out. Start the milk-production mechanism. Cue the maternal hormones that never dreamed they’d be called into service. But here they are, showing up for active duty, standing in formation, saluting her.

  She and Tony go get a Christmas tree together. He is supposed to be simply there to lug it to the car, but then it turns out he has a million thoughts about trees. He likes the big, showy ones and the kind that smell good, and the kind with needles that don’t hurt. She has allotted approximately fifteen minutes for picking out this tree, which she explains to him. She is in the mood to look at exactly one tree and then buy it on the spot.

  “And here’s why this doesn’t matter. We’re all about to move out,” she says to him, standing in the drizzly parking lot of Home Depot, where the plastic-covered Fraser fir trees behind the chain-link fence remind her of recreation time in the prison yard. “It’s crazy even to get a tree. I’m supposed to be spending all my time throwing things out—”

  “If we don’t get a tree, we might as well just throw in the towel on life,” he says. “Come on. Where’s your Christmas spirit?”

  “Tony,” she says, “look at us. We’re all pathetic. It’s the end. The credits are running.”

  “That’s when Christmas spirit comes in the handiest,” he says. “Let’s get this eight-foot one. It’s Soapie’s last tree. Think of that.”

  “Soapie,” she says, “never did even care for trees. She has no Christmas spirit to her, that woman. She wrote Dustcloth Diva columns on how to avoid the mess of Christmas. If you could keep a tree out of your house, so much the better.”

  “I like this huge one,” he says, as if he hadn’t even heard her.

  “But it costs so much. Look at it.”

  But he just laughs. “This is the biggest one here. We’re getting it even if we have to go get a bank loan.”

  “We don’t have enough ornaments.”

  “We’ll cover it with lights. That’s prettier anyway.”

  “White ones? I only like the white ones.”

  “Nope. Colored ones. And icicles.”

  “But those are so gaudy and they make such a mess. Tony, please. I have so much to do. And now I’ll have to both put up a tree and take it down.”

  “Oh, Rosie! It’s Christmas. By the way, I don’t know if you know, but you cannot have any eggnog this year. Raw eggs are not good for you.”

  “I hate eggnog.”

  “Well, then, you’ve got that going for you.” He goes and tells one of the workers that this is the tree for them, and the two guys drag it over to a machine that puts even more net on it. She stands on one foot and t
hen the other. It’s cold, and she left her gloves in the car, so she tucks her hands inside the sleeves of her coat. Jonathan has never once argued about Christmas trees with her. She wonders if he even bothered to pack up their ornaments, or if he just threw them away.

  When their tree is finally loaded on top of the car, Tony drives to the drugstore and turns the car off. “I’m going in for lights and icicles, and while I’m gone, you should do ten minutes of stage one breathing, and then if I’m still not back, go into the hee-hee-hoo breaths. Okay?”

  She laughs. “I can’t believe you remember all this just from Milo’s birth.”

  “Rosie,” he says seriously, “Milo’s birth was a turning point in my life. Of course I remember everything about it.”

  He gets out and then comes to her side and raps on the window. “And don’t forget the cleansing breaths,” he says when she opens it. “You always forget those when we practice, and I don’t know what’s going to become of you if you try to go into labor without the cleansing—”

  “O-kay!” she says. “Go get your lights. I’ve gotta pee.”

  He comes back with ten boxes of colored lights—ten!—and a bag full of silver icicles, a Christmas candle, and a can of spray that says it smells like fir trees, since he doesn’t think this tree has quite enough of a fragrance for him.

  They do hee-hee-hoo breathing all the way home, even when she starts laughing so hard that she loses all semblance of bladder control.

  He just looks at her and laughs. “God, you’re a hot mess,” he says. “Never mind. All those muscles are relaxing. You’re getting ready for the baby.”

  “No one ever told me about the humiliation factor,” she says.

  “Yeah, well, you’ll be fine,” he says. “Everybody survives. Most people.”

  He turns up the radio—“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is playing, which she tells him has got to be the most melancholy Christmas song around, and shouldn’t have even qualified for being a holiday song. When it gets around to that part about being together again if the fates allow, he joins in singing.