The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  And then, bingo, you’re healed—maybe not completely, but well enough, certainly better than you were before it all happened, and so you can resume, carry on with your regularly scheduled life. Love with eyes wide open.

  She would like to stay in her room, healing herself with him all the time, but of course that’s impossible. They have Soapie to take care of and monitor. Ever since the conversation about Serena, Soapie seems more checked out than ever, content to simply stay for long hours in the den, looking out the window at the birds or talking with George. She doesn’t want to play games anymore or watch television. She sits in her chair, running her hands along the brocade armrests and looking peaceful.

  Time seems to stand still, as though it’s all just a string of moments illuminated and electrified by the fact that they’re limited. When Rosie and Tony aren’t making love or lying in her bed talking, they have taken to cooking divine meals, the more outrageous the better: lobster dinners with pots of drawn butter; cheesecakes dripping with strawberries and cream cheese; puddings that you can dig both hands into. She bakes bread with raisins and cinnamon, and they eat it while it is still hot, pulling it apart in chunks because they can’t wait until it’s cool enough to slice.

  They can’t wait for anything. They are greedy for everything: food, love, talking, sex, experiences, textures, kisses. Kisses and more kisses.

  On Wednesday he brings home meatball subs, and they eat them on the laundry room floor, and then that leads to making love on the pile of quilts that had just come out of the dryer. Laughing and whispering, so Soapie and George, just two rooms away, won’t hear them.

  “Why would they start hearing things now?” whispers Rosie.

  At night he sleeps next to her, curled around her; spoons. She has to get up at least twice each night to pee, and he waits for her, sliding over to keep her part of the bed warm for her, so that it’s not such a shock when she comes to get back in. One night she is sick and throws up, and he goes with her into the bathroom and holds her hair back, and when she’s finished, he puts toothpaste on her toothbrush and stands there holding her while she brushes her teeth, and then tucks her back into bed, into himself.

  She gazes at him, touches his face. Then she closes her eyes and sleeps and sleeps.

  Soapie and George never mention anything about the new arrangement, even when things get really crazy, when they are all but kissing on the living room dance floor after dinner.

  And then one day when she’s helping Soapie into her chair downstairs, Soapie looks right at her and says, “You’ve got to stop this, you know.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Your men. This sloppy life.”

  Rosie laughs, but for a moment she feels as if she’s been slapped. Then she puts her chin up and says, “I know. But it’s not sloppy if you’re learning something about yourself, and I am. This is like a college seminar for me, actually. It’s part of my education.”

  Soapie snorts. “Well. But you have to pick. You’ve gotta get you some joie de vivre. Don’t sit around and let your whole life dribble away. Find what makes you happy, what gives you passion. Why can’t you ever get that through your head?”

  “It’s going to be all right. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I do worry. I’m leaving you. I want things to work out.”

  “Yeah, but what would working out mean to you? You thought I needed Paris, and it turns out that all I needed was—well, this.”

  “I know. You need this baby. God knows why, but you do.”

  “Yes.”

  Soapie’s tired out, and she lolls her head back on the chair. “Move this fleece thing. I’m cold. You’ve never taken my advice, but I have one more piece of it for you. Pick a man, goddamn it, and make it work. Doesn’t matter which one, but it’s for your girl. And also, don’t glorify the past like you do, when I’m gone. I’m just your old, used-up family.”

  On Friday Tony says, “I’ve been thinking about something. What if everything is unfolding exactly as it’s supposed to?

  Did you ever think of that?”

  “What, all of it?” she says.

  “Yeah. All of it. What if even your mom lived life for as long as she was supposed to, and then she left when she was done, and maybe it had to be that way so a whole lot of other stuff could happen in the world.” He takes her hand and holds it against his lips and thinks. “It wouldn’t keep it from being sad, but maybe when bad stuff like that happens, maybe it’s because something else big needed to happen and it couldn’t get started. Like … well, what if Soapie had to raise you, or you wouldn’t have turned into the person you are? And then you wouldn’t have had this baby, this very person that’s right here in between us.”

  “Kicking us,” she says.

  “Beanie the prizefighter baby.”

  “But how would we know that?”

  He kisses each of her fingers. “Oh, well, we wouldn’t. But what could it hurt, thinking that way?”

  “Soapie said my mother ruined our lives.”

  “But she didn’t. She only ended her own, if we look at it this way. Your life isn’t ruined.”

  “And so you and me … me and Jonathan …”

  “Well, let’s not go too far,” he says, and laughs. And then he kisses her again. “But yes. It takes away the agita, if you think it’s all okay,” he says. “You just let it exist alongside everything else about you. You don’t let it reach in and grab your happiness.”

  “Even if it kind of sucks?” she says.

  “No, no suckage. It’s perfect so it can’t suck anymore. It’s what I do, with the two mommies. I say to myself that this is the way it was supposed to be. Love for everybody. There’s always enough.”

  “Yeah, well, that might be the craziest thing you’ve ever said,” she tells him, but she can’t quite explain why his words make her heart start beating harder. She closes her eyes.

  “Clearly you need to work on this a bit more,” he says.

  Jonathan calls the next day. She chats with him, surprised only slightly at how easy it is to talk and to listen, how a different part of her brain seems willing and able to take over. It’s the usual stuff: teacups, museum ticket prices, patrons’ remarks at seeing the displays of teacups. Context, he tells her, is everything. You might not think so … you might think it’s all about the cup itself. But no. It’s context.

  “Oh,” she says. “That’s really so interesting.” And the funny thing is, she means it.

  Then suddenly he switches gears and says, “So, just so you know, I sold the National Geographics, and I bought us a crib.” He says, “It’s just an oak crib. I hope that’s okay. No frills or anything. Nice, sturdy lines.” He’s striving for nonchalance, but she can hear in his voice a shaky pride in himself, for his sacrifice.

  For a moment she can’t take this in. The National Geographics? The obsession before the teacup obsession is now gone. She didn’t know they could disappear. She thought the obsessions just piled up, climbed one over the other, vying for prominence.

  “You still there?” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that okay? I mean, I know it’s okay. I wanted to let you know that I’m—I’m part of this. With you. I’m in.”

  “Wow,” she says. “I’m really pleased.”

  He says, “If it’s seemed like I wasn’t, you know, fully engaged, it’s because I think I was angry before that—well, you didn’t tell me about all this until it was too late for—well, for us to do anything to stop it. That really was a kick in the head, you know. But then I guess I started thinking about it, and I realized that I wouldn’t have told me about it either.” He laughs a little.

  “What are you saying?”

  “That I’ve been selfish, and I’m sorry. I thought about what you said, how life’s been all about me. I’ve been a shit. So—well, I sold the magazines, and it didn’t kill me.” He laughs again. “I was never going to read them again anyway. So now I can’t. They’re gone, and we�
�re having a baby. And there’s something kind of—well, kind of fitting about that.”

  “Magazines for babies.”

  “Ba-by,” he says. “Singular. Right?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  They’re quiet a moment. Then she says, experimentally, “I’m afraid I’ve had some hard news.”

  “Hard news?” he says. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, it’s not about me. It’s about my mom.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Yes.” For a moment she wishes she hadn’t started in on this. His reactions are never the way she wants them to be. But she’s come too far now to go back. “My mom—well, Soapie told me that she killed herself.”

  “She what?”

  “She didn’t die when a building fell on her.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Wow.”

  A beat of silence goes by, and she squeezes her eyes closed. “So that’s kind of a surprise, huh?” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s bad, but I suppose we should have known. And it doesn’t really matter, right? Not in the whole scheme of things. I mean, dead is dead. No matter the cause.”

  “I know, but it hit me pretty hard. It means she left me on purpose.”

  “You don’t know what she was thinking,” he says. “Also, Soapie is demented now. It might not even be true. Please don’t let this bring you down. She was a person you didn’t even know.”

  “Didn’t I know her? I mean, back then I did. I think of what I missed, everything I didn’t get—”

  “Yeah, but that’s not new news. It’s okay. You made it through just fine.”

  “You think I made it through fine?”

  He laughs. “Jesus in heaven, I can’t think of what you want me to say. Yes, you made it through. You’re smart and funny and people love you, and you’re a good person, and you did all that without a mother. Give yourself some credit. Lots of people who had perfectly good moms aren’t nearly as put-together as you. Me, for instance.”

  “Well, you,” she says. “You’re just a little bit obsessed with stuff, but you’re okay. I don’t think we can blame your mom for that.”

  “Oh, speaking of obsessions, I’ve been reading about pregnancy. And I learned that by the time you’re at the stage or pregnancy you’re in, you have fifty percent more blood in your body than you did when you started out. How’s that? And also that your estrogen and prolactin levels have nearly tripled, and that if we were together, just being around you would mean that my testosterone would automatically start lowering. That’s how nature gets men into daddy mode. Isn’t that something?”

  “Daddy mode? Are you kidding me?”

  “Yeah, so we guys will help take care of the offspring, and not eat it or something.”

  “Very ingenious. I’d forgotten to worry about you possibly eating the baby.”

  “And so, what I was thinking was that just being around you at Christmas lowered my testosterone enough that I wanted to part with my National Geographics so I could buy a crib. I do not think this was a coincidence.”

  She laughs.

  “Yeah, so there’s that. Just so you know. I’m coming around.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I love you. Who knows? Maybe I’m going to go buy a baby name book tonight.”

  When she hangs up, she thinks it’s lovely how hard he is trying, and that she’ll be happy to see him again—just not yet. Not yet.

  “Tony,” she says later that night.

  “Hmmm?” He’s drowsing next to her in bed after painting her toenails, which she can no longer begin to reach. He made them a nice lavender color, he said. She insists she can’t see them.

  “Do you think we’re having an affair?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Because an affair usually means that one or both of the people is married. So I think we get off on a technicality, and we’re not.”

  “But you’re engaged,” he says. “Wouldn’t you say that counts?”

  “Yeah.” She sighs. “I guess it does.”

  “Do you want this to be an affair?”

  “I don’t know. The word is kind of sordid, isn’t it?”

  “Sorted? Sorted into what?”

  She hauls herself up close to him on the pillow. “Also, Jonathan bought a crib. Sold one of his collections and bought a crib. So there’s that.”

  “Wow. He’s aces.”

  “I think if I have to fill out a questionnaire about whether I’ve had an affair, I’ll say no, with an asterisk. And then if I have to explain, I’ll say I enjoyed a Peace Corps of the heart.”

  He lifts his head up. “What kind of questionnaire makes you answer that?”

  “You know. The kind you give yourself. When you think of all you did in life.”

  “I’ve never given myself a questionnaire.”

  “I know. I like that about you. You just do stuff. I’ve always got to think about it, analyze it, give it a name, and figure out why I did it.”

  “So, if I may ask you: what does the crib have to do with the affair?”

  “Who said it did?”

  “Well, you told me both at the same time. So I think it does.”

  “Hmmm. It makes it more … wicked?”

  “It makes you feel guilty because a man is buying a crib for your baby, and you’re here in bed with me.”

  “No!” she says. “Not at all. The guilt isn’t in that direction. Amazingly enough. I’m feeling guilty because one day in about a week, I’m going to say good-bye to you, and it’s going to be the hardest thing I ever did, because you are going to be here all alone, and I am at least going to have a man with a crib and then a new baby.”

  They lie there for a moment, looking at each other. Then he says, “I’ll still have Milo, you know.”

  The next morning, she fixes Soapie her favorite breakfast: a cup of green tea and a poached egg, a cinnamon roll, and a glass of Coke—yes, it’s the breakfast of somebody who doesn’t care anymore what makes sense—and she takes it into the den, where Soapie is in her recliner, her fleece throw over her lap. She’s staring out the window, watching the birds at the feeder.

  “The cinnamon roll has all the sugar on one side, and none on the other,” says Soapie slowly. She’s staring at the roll as if it’s a curiously defective piece of art, not something to eat.

  “Huh. Want me to spread it around a bit?”

  “No. I don’t really care.”

  Later Rosie will both want to remember and want to forget this day, but for now she sits perched on the side of the couch watching her grandmother’s face, and then looking down at the cinnamon roll, with its sugar perfectly centered all around the roll. Not defective. As soon as she gets Soapie fed, and when George comes down, she is going to go back upstairs and crawl back into bed with Tony.

  “And the coffee is too hot.”

  “There isn’t any coffee,” Rosie says. “It’s green tea, but I can put an ice cube in it.”

  “Do I even like green tea?”

  “You do. At least you said you do.”

  “Green tea is a hoax. It’s that stuff they pick up after—using that machine thing? The mower?”

  Rosie laughs. “A hoax tea made of grass clippings? It does taste that way sometimes,” she agrees. But Soapie is already looking at the cardinals at the feeder and tilting her head toward them, smiling. They talk about the birds—how the male and the female take turns pecking at the seeds, while the greedy squirrels sit on the ground, eating the husks that fall. Every now and then, one of the squirrels gets frustrated with waiting and figures a way to shimmy up the pole, using pure animal magic to scare the birds away and get the seeds.

  The snow is crusted up on the pine tree branches. Soapie sees it. Then she says something Rosie can’t really hear, about Ruth the editor. Then something about Serena’s doll when she was a little girl. She loved that doll. A pair of sunglasses that Soapie used to have, wi
th rhinestones in the corners. Cat glasses, someone called them.

  “I don’t … want … today. Not the grass apple, not cinnamon roll.”

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Where’s George?”

  “He’s upstairs.”

  “Coffee? And no hot.” She puts a trembling hand to her head, squints.

  “Sure. Do you want me to call George?”

  Soapie doesn’t answer. She stares out the window.

  “I’ll get him.” Rosie goes to the stairs and calls up, “George? George, you decent?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, and then she hears the shower go on.

  She goes back into the kitchen and calls back to Soapie, “I think he’s in the shower. Did you want me to bring you an ice cube?” There’s no answer, so she puts a piece of bread into the toaster for herself, and goes back into the den. Soapie is sitting in the same position as she was before, her head just slightly turned toward the window.

  Rosie says, “He’s in the shower,” and goes over to her grandmother. “Soapie?”

  There’s no answer.

  She reaches over and touches her. “Soapie?” and that’s when she realizes that her grandmother is dead.

  She puts her hand to her own chest.

  Dead. Gone, just like that. Just sitting there in the chair, just the same as she was, only somehow … dead. So this can really happen, Rosie thinks, amazed: you can die suddenly, with no fanfare; as you’re sitting watching the outside, you can just make your exit, your heart beating its last, your last breath coming without any warning. A stroke, a heart attack—some interior explosion had stopped everything, and she is sitting there with her head leaning back against the cushion, her hair flowing out from its bun, her blue eyes staring straight ahead, her mouth slightly open.

  Rosie softly cries out, “Oh!” And starts to cry. It’s a few days before the scheduled nursing home move. That’s what she thinks of first, and then once she finishes thinking that thought, she thinks, Well, good for you, Soapie. You never did intend to go to the nursing home, did you? You beat that deadline. Which is a crazy thing to think, but there you go.