The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel

by Dawson, Maddie

  It all went so fast. Wasn’t that what Soapie had said, the night of the meltdown and the dancing?

  It’s over. The person who had stayed with her throughout is gone, and it all went so fast. She reaches over and strokes her grandmother’s hand, holds it to her cheek and waits in that moment of in-between she knows so well, that moment when you wait just to see if the tears are going to come and how awful they’re going to feel.

  [twenty-nine]

  Jonathan, as the fiancé of the bereaved, flies in the next evening, and she goes to pick him up at the airport. Outwardly, to the other passengers and their friends and families, she thinks that she probably doesn’t look like someone who has just lost a whole part of herself. She has lost not only her grandmother, but she’s lost the Peace Corps of the heart, and yet she probably looks like somebody who has everything to live for, heavy and careful with pregnancy. Her brown hair falls over her pale skin, and she is wearing light pink lipstick and a billowing maternity coat. She is waiting and then she is being spotted and kissed and hugged by a handsome man, a man who hurries toward her and tips her face up to his.

  On the walk through the terminal, he tells her that January is one of the most common months for people to die. He Googled this fact. Then he tells her that, speaking just for himself, this death—regrettable but also inevitable, surely she will agree—is actually perfect timing because now she can come back with him before time runs out for her to be able to fly on an airplane. He tells her he misses her terribly and then says that San Diego is beautiful at this time of year. He bets she won’t even miss Connecticut at all.

  They are walking through the terminal at Bradley International Airport in Hartford, and she is thinking that the overheated air is too dry and thin, that it actually hurts on her skin. Jonathan keeps looking at her. And then even in public, he stops walking and hugs her.

  “You’re even bigger than you were three weeks ago,” he says.

  “Yes,” she says. “That’s the idea, I guess.”

  “Are you uncomfortable? All that extra blood volume weighing you down?” He says this while they’re waiting to cross the street to get to her car in short-term parking. It’s snowing lightly, and the flakes landing on his padded parka shoulders are like little stars. People are walking by, having conversations about their lives and where they parked the car and whether it will still be snowing when they get to Vermont, and all the ordinary things people talk about. Some people smile at her. They are thinking, New baby. They are thinking: A couple reunited.

  But she is nearly eight months pregnant, and her story has come unraveled all of a sudden.

  “What’s the matter?” he says.

  “I just miss her,” she says.

  “I thought we were talking pregnancy symptoms,” he says.

  “Those are okay. Manageable,” she says. “It’s Soapie.”

  “Look, she was a difficult woman, and just be glad you survived her,” he says. The light changes, they cross the street. He hoists his duffel bag into the car trunk when they get there, and he comes around to the passenger side and asks her for the keys so he can let her in. He’ll drive, he says.

  She wonders what would happen if she just told him what’s been going on. If she could make him understand what she’s needed, and then what she’s taken for herself. Maybe he even has a right to know. Maybe it’s the kind of truth—like her mother’s suicide—that hurts but that, even so, has to be known by all affected parties.

  She waits to see if she says anything, but then she’s not surprised to see that she doesn’t mention it.

  “If there’s a silver lining,” he’s saying, “it’s that this way now we can go back together. I can help you pack up the rest of the house, if needed, after the funeral, and then we can fly together. I was worried about you having to do all that packing and then flying by yourself.”

  She can’t tell him. It would needlessly hurt him.

  “Yeah, okay,” she says. She closes her eyes and leans back against the seat. He turns on the radio after a while.

  Tony told her this morning that he was going to go back to his apartment.

  “Our two weeks,” she had said.

  “We had what we needed,” he said. “Most people don’t get that much.”

  When she gets back to the house, she knows George will be gone, too. It’s as though everybody fled, knowing that Jonathan was coming back into the picture, as if they’d only been serving as a placeholder for him all along. The house will be huge and lonely with just her and Jonathan there to fill it up.

  Here’s where we made the spinach lasagna that time, here’s where we stood when I found out I was pregnant, here’s where I found Soapie on the floor for the first time, here’s where Tony and I made meatball sub love …

  That night at dinner, Jonathan takes her hand across the table and looks into her eyes. “I’m very sorry,” he says. “If anything I’ve said has sounded like I don’t know what a huge loss this is for you, I’m truly sorry. I know that you and Soapie loved each other.”

  She tears up.

  “And I’m here to help you in any way I can,” he says. “I shouldn’t have rushed into talking about how you’ll come back with me. I mean, I hope you will. But I know you’ve got a lot of stuff to process. This can’t be easy.”

  She wipes her eyes on her napkin. “I just didn’t see it coming,” she says. “She was eating her breakfast and complaining about everything, and I went back into the kitchen, and when I came back in the living room, she was just … dead. Gone.”

  “It’s probably a blessing, to go that way,” he says.

  “Please don’t say it was a blessing,” she says. “I hate when people say that about somebody dying.” But what she really wants to say is, Don’t go being perfect at this stage. I’ve been so … so … not perfect.

  He holds her all night, his hands warm and soft on her body.

  Surprise. Soapie had the funeral all planned: which songs were to be sung, which passages and poems were to be read. It was all written down on a piece of paper she left in her bedside table drawer, known only to George, of course. She liked a poem by Walt Whitman and something from “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nothing religious, she had written. And no talk about the hereafter or how she was now in God’s hands. Also, the entire congregation was required to sing “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” which made everybody laugh, even while they were sad.

  Everybody came: Ruth, the editor, and Carlene, the publisher of the Dustcloth Diva series; Matt Lauer even came, showing up in a Lincoln Town Car, and leaving before the reception even began. He gave Rosie a kiss on the cheek and said he would always remember the day her grandmother came on his show and before she went on the air Matt told her there was nothing to be scared about, she was such a sweet old lady who at least wouldn’t swear, and she’d said, “Fuck you, I’ll swear if I want!” And laughed. They’d all laughed. And she’d come on three more times after that and made them laugh every time. Rosie has heard this story so many times, but she knows this might be the last time she hears it, and that is suddenly a huge loss. She’ll have to be the one telling it from now on. How old will her daughter have to be before she can tell this story? Maybe she’ll tell it to her the first day, in the hospital, and every year after.

  People all come back to the house, and Jonathan builds a fire. A bunch of food materializes—everything from ham and turkey slices to bowls of macaroni salad and chips, slabs of cheese and bread. Someone makes coffee, and Jonathan opens a few bottles of wine and gets down the glasses from the high cabinet shelf. Greta’s and Suzanne’s kids walk around with trays of food with toothpicks in them. But who did all this?

  Rosie can’t imagine. She’s so tired, and she sits on the stool in the kitchen, talking to first one group of people and then another. Whenever she looks up, she sees Jonathan, dressed in his dapper navy blue suit, presiding over everything, making sure people have drinks and that the older people find places to s
it down. He brings her a plate of food, which is fortunate because she’s just about to get that late-afternoon low blood sugar that makes her want to burst into tears so often. But how does Jonathan know that? Tony was the one who used to make sure she kept her blood sugar on track. But now it’s Jonathan. He just seems to be everywhere at once, comforting people, being comforted by them, joining groups, watching out for how everyone’s doing.

  Tony’s there, too—or an impression of him is, at least. He seems ghostly, almost wafting across the room like someone who is not quite there. Of course he must feel unwelcome, she thinks, with Jonathan there as the resident man of the house all of a sudden. Even George seems moved to the background. Jonathan and Rosie are the couple running this funeral. Nothing could be more clear. Frankly, Rosie thinks, it’s a little intimidating. All this confident Jonathan-ness in a suit.

  Much later, she sees Tony go upstairs to the bathroom, and she goes up and waits outside the door. When he comes out, she pushes him back in and goes in and closes and locks the door.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he says.

  “I know. I came to see how you are.”

  “I’m okay. In shock.”

  “At me? Going?”

  “No. I knew. The suddenality. Like a curtain came down.”

  “I know. I suppose I have to pick him,” she says, and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

  “No, no. You have to. He’s the father. He’s the guy. Look at how he’s handling this funeral.” He puts his hand over hers, stopping her from doing more.

  “If we’d had our two full weeks, maybe we’d have been ready for this. We were robbed.”

  He tries to laugh. “Yeah, just another few days, and I totally would have been sick of you.”

  “Me, too, you,” she says, and then realizes that that’s what she and Jonathan always used to say to each other, and feels ashamed. Who is she the most disloyal to today?

  “Look,” he says. “Jonathan’s going to be a good dad. He’s come a long way. Look at him out there, running things. He looks like he’s ready to coach the kid’s soccer team or something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you—you’re going to be a fantastic mom.” He lifts his hand up, about to stroke her cheek, and then hastily puts it back down again, remembering.

  “Don’t say that. I don’t know what I’m doing. And anyway, this is getting too sentimental. I can’t stand to be sentimental anymore today. I’ve had my quota of crying.”

  “Tough nuts. That’s what funerals are for.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t the funeral,” she says. “It’s you and me in the bathroom doing a postmortem on our …” She leans against the wall and just looks at him, all dressed up in a suit, with his hair slicked down. So un-Tonylike, and yet she wants so badly to touch him.

  He laughs. “Our what? We decided it wasn’t an affair, remember?”

  “On our stint in the Peace Corps.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Okay.”

  “I’ll write to Milo. I didn’t get to say good-bye. And the two mommies. I’ll write to them, too.” She closes her eyes.

  “And me?”

  “I think you and I are going to have to take a little break, don’t you? While I adjust.”

  “But you’ll let me know when the baby comes!”

  “Oh, sure, of course I will. God! Did you think I wouldn’t tell you something like that?”

  “No. You will. I know it.” He gazes at her, and she can’t help it, she starts rubbing his shoulder.

  “Listen,” she says. “I know we’ll miss each other a lot, but I can’t bear it if you don’t move on. I know I was insanely jealous before, but I do know that you’ve got to find your own family. No more experiencing family only through the car window, okay? Please don’t keep thinking of me.”

  He laughs a little. “You can’t tell me how much to think of you,” he says. He reaches over for her and she puts her head on his shoulder, but he shifts his body so they aren’t touching all the way down. Then he moves his hands underneath her shirt and touches her rounded belly and caresses it. Then he bends down and kisses her abdomen all over, a trail of kisses.

  “Be happy,” he says, and she doesn’t know if he’s talking to her or to the baby inside. “Please, please be happy.”

  When it’s time, she walks out of the bathroom first and joins Jonathan and the posse in the kitchen. Her knees are still shaky. Lots of people have left by now, and Joe and Hinton and Greg are washing the dishes, of all amazing things, and Greta and Suzanne are wrapping up the food. Everybody turns to see her, and for a moment she’s sure they can tell everything she’s feeling.

  “Look at you,” says Greta. “You’ve made it through, haven’t you, honey?” She squeezes Rosie’s shoulder.

  “Let’s go out to dinner!” says Joe. He throws his arms around Jonathan’s and Greta’s shoulders at the same time. “This time we’ll see these two off right, so it’ll take. We owe that to them, don’t you think?”

  “We’re not leaving tonight,” says Rosie, alarmed. “I have tons of things to do before I go.”

  Jonathan clears his throat. “Just the business with the real estate agent and signing the papers, and the will …”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” says Joe. “I’m just saying we learned our lesson from last time. We’re not dropping you off and assuming you leave together. This time I think I need to see all four of your legs walking through the terminal to get on that plane.”

  “Not a problem,” says Jonathan. He comes and puts his arm around Rosie and smiles down at her. “We’re ready for this.”

  [thirty]

  “So when do you think we should get married?” Jonathan says at breakfast.

  Ten days have passed, and they have already found another diner, their San Diego diner, although it’s nothing like Ruby’s. But that’s okay. It’s nice. Things are just different, that’s all. It’ll take forever, she thinks, before they know the cook. One thing that’s missing is the downtrodden, slightly hopeless look that Ruby’s had, the worn tiles on the floor, the peeling paint—all that ambiance that made you feel right at home.

  But that may just be the way California is. Even their condo looks like it was manufactured at Disneyland and placed at the edge of a golf course, simply for their viewing pleasure. No polluted river outside their sliding door, no wooden boats, no restaurant across the water with braying karaoke singers belting out tunes all night long. Their condominium complex even has a name, Palm Desert Flower Estates—four words that she puts in a different wrong order every time—and it’s made of blindingly white stucco and has smooth, even sidewalks, streetlights, and mailboxes in a respectable row, with names all uniformly typed out by a little label machine. There’s even an office, with a manager and a full-time, smiling secretary, and a glittering turquoise pool in the back, with white plastic lounge chairs, always empty.

  Their apartment—number 3295 B, one little box in such a huge number of apartments—has standard-issue white walls and tan carpet and drapes, a sliding glass door out to a little balcony overlooking the verdant golf course with its palm trees, sand traps, and a pond with a fountain. It all looks fake, of course, like a movie set. This is what can happen to a landscape when the sun shines on it all year long without letup. Even the air here is different: warm, dried out, too painfully bright. She hasn’t seen a cloud yet.

  She’s pleased to see that their furniture makes it seem like home, or a reasonable facsimile, at least: the sofa bed, dining room table, their queen-sized bed. She’d missed their furniture, its old-fashioned, rounded, familiar edges—dear, dear end tables!—and the framed photographs of bluebirds hung over the couch. The butcher board table for the kitchen.

  She feels as though she’s spent the first few days there, taking score—ticking off the wins and the losses.

  Jonathan wears polo shirts now and looks like a proud, golf-playing Republican: a loss. Beach in the wintertime: a win.

  Frozen yogurt stand
s everywhere: a win.

  He buys her gauzy summertime maternity clothes, even though it’s January: a win.

  She meets her new obstetrician, who is a guy and a stranger and not even remotely like Dr. Stinson: a loss.

  Andres and Judith Schultz met them at the airport upon their arrival and Judith, who is very nice, said that Rosie can join her book group, if she’d like. A possible win.

  Jonathan takes her to the museum to see the Lolitas, in all their show-offy glory, perched on pedestals like they’ve always wanted to be: okay, a win.

  He talks nonstop about the museum in whole new categories now: the advertising budget, the need for social media exposure, the tweets, the blogs, the Facebook posts, the alarming fact that they still need more teacups. The Lolitas aren’t even the point anymore. A huge loss, incalculable.

  She misses rainy days, her students, her friends, her waistline, playing Scrabble, the river, cold air, Ruby’s Diner, the color she painted the guest bathroom, Milo, and laughing about the diamond they made in the microwave. When Jonathan takes her on the eight-lane freeway, she misses the bucolic beauty of the Merritt Parkway with its shade trees and interesting overpasses.

  She misses Soapie. George. Greta.

  Tony. Oh my God, she misses Tony so much that sometimes the longing for him backs up in her throat and she can’t speak.

  She takes a sip of green tea as Jonathan says, “I know what. Let’s just haul off and get married this weekend, make our baby legitimate. What do you say?”

  “But I didn’t bring my red cowboy boots,” she says.

  He looks pained. “Are those absolutely necessary, do you think?”

  “I’m kidding.”

  He strives for a smile, but his face ends up looking even more pained, and she feels bad that she really has to try harder to remember to smile at him more and to quell her tendency to be sarcastic. They have to get used to each other all over again. It requires a kind of carefulness she’s not used to. None of this is his fault.