The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel (41 page)

In just over two weeks—sixteen days—she will put away this glorious vacation of love, this foray into living in the present, and she will simply pack up her life and leave for California. It is so simple. She wishes everyone in the world had had this opportunity. She tells him it’s like going into the Peace Corps—the Peace Corps of the heart, where you get to be your own sweet caseworker, ministering to all the hurt and ruined places, rebuilding the infrastructure, and soothing the natives, teaching them about irrigation and communication and how to stop crying inside.

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.”