The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel (17 page)

He lets out a sigh, says what she would have expected, like a doctor in a TV show reading from a script.

Broken hip. Needs surgery to put a metal plate in. Surgery soon, maybe today. Managing the pain. She’s knocked out. We’ll know more in a few days. Get some rest. We’ll take good care of her. We’ll call you when we’ve got her on the schedule. Or if there’s a change.

Can I kiss her good-bye?

Of course.

Is she going to be all right?

We’ll know more in a few days. Surgery later. She’s
knocked out. Get some rest. We’ll take good care of her.

We’ll call you if there’s any change.

“Well, thank you,” she says.

She doesn’t remember the pregnancy test until she gets home. And frankly, the only reason she remembers it then is because Tony Cavaletti is down on his knees, wiping up the blood from the floor and the test is on the table next to where he’s kneeling. He gets up, eyes huge and brown, his hair sticking up everywhere.

“What happened?” he says. “I’ve been calling you. I’ve been out of my mind—”

“I had to turn my cell off. She fell and broke her hip. But she’s alive. She’s stable. They’re keeping her in the hospital. Doing surgery soon. They’ll know more in a few days.”

“That’s what they always say.”

“I know.” She goes over to the sink and fixes herself a glass of water.

“How does she look?”

“She looks like a person who’s unconscious and who has a bandage on her head. She looks kind of like a drunken sailor, actually—with that bandage.”

“Were you here, when it happened?”

This is the hard part to tell him. But she does, the whole bit of it.

His eyes bug out. “She was
alone
when this happened? Even George wasn’t here?”

“No. No one was here.”

“Well, where was everybody? She needs to be watched. You told me that yourself, that somebody needed to be with her—”

“Yeah, but none of us knew the others weren’t going to be here. You see? It’s just impossible, taking care of somebody the right way.” Oh, hell, she’s starting to cry again. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gone out for so many hours. But she’s been doing so well. I should have checked with you and George to see if
somebody
was going to be around. I let her down.”

He stares at her. “Look, look, it’s okay. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I woulda been here if I’d’a known. Don’t blame yourself for this. Nobody can do it all. And you’ve got a ton on your plate just now. You got a baby coming.” He nods toward the pregnancy test.

“No,” she says. “It’s just a pregnancy test. I didn’t take it yet.”

“You should take it,” he says.

“I—I will. I’m just waiting.”

“What are you waiting for? The contractions to start pushing the kid out?”

“It’s not going to be positive,” she says.

“Yeah, well,” he says.

“I’m too old.” But even as she says that, she’s feeling sick and clammy. Oh God.

“When you’re too old, nature takes away the privilege, is the way I always understood the way the system works. I think you should take the test, see if Mother Nature thinks you’re too old.”

“Okay,” she says. “But I think I want to be alone.”

He actually laughs. “Come to your senses, woman. Gah! You think I’m gonna sit there with you while you pee on a stick?”

And then two pink lines bloom on the stick.

Right away, bold as you please.

Hi
, they say.
Guess what
.

She checks. Yes, the back of the box is pretty definite about the meaning of these two lines. She reads all the text, the fine print, the manufacturer’s information and address, everything.

Huh. She feels a kind of preternatural calm, like maybe she really did know this all along and had just been fooling herself with all the thoughts of menopause. Or—here’s another possibility—perhaps she’s just in shock.

Not menopause? Not menopause!

She looks around Soapie’s bathroom, at the pink tile walls with their white grout, at her sandals kicked off and lying sideways on the fluffy pink rug over the mosaic tile floor, the white sink with stripes of turquoise toothpaste smeared on the side, her leggings, her sleeveless sundress with its blue dancing print, the one she put on last night, which seems like years ago now—and everything has changed. She can hardly take it all in. She looks up in the mirror at her unkempt hair coming loose from last night’s braid, her wide blue eyes with their dark circles, and at her white, white face, the O of her mouth. Lips, tongue, teeth, all there and accounted for. Her hands, unbidden, fly up near her face, smooth out her hair, tuck a strand behind her left ear.

She hears Tony bounding up the stairs and knocking at the bathroom door. “Well?” he says. “Can you open the door?”

She puts the test strip down on the counter and opens the door. He’s standing outside, with arms outstretched, and she goes straight into them, sniffling, limping, melting.

“No, really, how did you know?” she says.

“How did you
not
know?” he says back.

So this,
this
, is what her body has been doing, while she’s been running around, eating inappropriate foods and crying, breaking up with a man and then regretting it, trying to exist in her old childhood home, trying to understand the maniacal woman who raised her.
This?
It has been busily making life, this crazy old body: churning out cells as fast as a little factory, putting together a human being.

It was nine weeks ago that Jonathan flung the condom across the room and then asked her to marry him at the diner. Nine weeks of cells spinning out their hopeful little destiny inside her.

Damn
.

The next few days, she drifts around in a kind of fog. She lifts her shirt and massages her abdomen as much as she can. Poor little geriatric reproductive organs, she thinks, thinking it was their chance at last to do what they’d been made for. So misguided of them. She actually feels sorry for them.

She pictures the one little egg all dolled up, a cartoon ovum in a sexy red dress, sashaying her way down the Fallopian tube and luring Jonathan’s sperm over to join her. “Come on, boys, it’s almost too
late
,” says this little ovum
in a Mae West voice. And then one of Jonathan’s slacker, teacup-loving, obsessive-compulsive, sarcastic guys stops leaning against the Fallopian tube wall, tosses out his cigarette butt, and decides what the hell. He lopes over, takes her hand.

Never mind it’s
years
too late. These two don’t care.

“How Jonathan and Rosie Prove They Are Even More Clueless Than Ever.”

“How Jonathan and Rosie Mess Up Their Lives.”

She starts to laugh out loud. She might be out of her mind.

Tony says, “It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it?”

What does he know about it? He and his wife were in their twenties when Milo was born.

She lays out the facts for him, in case he has any illusions. It makes
no
sense to have a baby at her age. She’s single, she’s old, she’s unemployed, she’s … well, she’s unequipped in every way measurable: financially, emotionally, physically, psychologically, spiritually, probably even pharmaceutically. She doesn’t have the slightest idea about prenatal vitamins, just for starters, or how you get babies to not spit out their liquid antibiotic drops. And fluoride: is it an evil killer, or did it save the world’s teeth? She can’t even remember.

He smiles.

But amid the shock, the dread, the deep knowledge that she can’t have, you know, an actual baby, because she’s so old and ill-equipped, there’s something else. Three mornings in a row, she wakes up watching the sun beaming through the curtains, and she discovers that in an odd little way—before she lets the practical side of herself wake up fully—it’s fun to think about it.

Truly—what a thing to have happen! Scientifically speaking, it really is a statistical miracle, just like the Internet claimed.
One
slipup with birth control—one teeny tiny
mistake at a time in life when anyone sane might expect that she’s entering her infertile years—and
bingo!
She’s pregnant. She’s like a champion in the fertility sweepstakes. Her endocrine system could give lessons to other endocrine systems. She wants to alert the Internet, with all its gloomy talk about fertility rates and menopause and impossible statistics.

Here’s something else that’s surprising: the clinic she calls to make an appointment calls it a “procedure.” She hadn’t expected such linguistic bashfulness in the face of something they see every day.

And another surprising thing: they can see her on Friday for a consultation. Just two days away.

“Will you be doing the
procedure
then?” she whispers, and the receptionist, a cheery woman with a warm voice, perfect for this job, says, “Oh, no, honey. You have to meet with the health care provider first. After all, we have to make sure you’re really pregnant, don’t we?”

One
not
surprising thing: it’s so easy
not
to tell Jonathan.

Another surprising thing: it makes her cry when she realizes life is so mean, giving her this
now
.

She wants to issue an apology to the cells that are growing and dividing inside her, to beg their forgiveness because she’s not able to let them keep going.
So sorry
, she would say.
So very, very sorry
.

She goes to visit Soapie, who is in a regular hospital room now that she’s post-op. Somehow, during all the pregnancy test drama, the hospital staff managed to go about its business as needed, putting a plate somewhere in Soapie’s hip or thigh bone or wherever, and now they say she has to get out
of the bed and walk every day, even if she goes inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter.

It seems like cruel and unusual punishment for an old lady, but Rosie goes and helps hold on to the IV pole as she and Soapie shuffle down the hallway, eyes straight ahead before them.

And every day when Rosie goes to see her, Soapie seems more confused.

“Not to worry,” says the doc. “She’ll go to rehab for a while, and do some occupational therapy, and then we’ll see how much comes back.”

“How much comes back?”

“Well, she’s quite elderly …” He pats her arm. “Let’s hope for the best, shall we?”

Later, Soapie motions Rosie over to the bed. “I … must … tell you this. Serena didn’t really die,” she whispers. She raises her eyebrows to show great significance. “Hiding.”

Rosie, startled, draws back.

“Sssh. I saw her today at Kohl’s. Cashier now … manager soon,” she says, and shrugs. She makes a big show of swallowing and then, after a sip of water, she manages a long sentence: “I thought she’d do more with her life, but I guess it’s good they’re promoting her.”

The doctor, when Rosie tracks him down, explains it. No, this isn’t part of the symptoms from the broken hip, the surgery, or the medications they have her on. Sad to say, there has been a little unforeseen problem with her grandmother’s sodium level. It’s dropped way down, interfering with brain function.

“She might do and say strange things for a while,” he says. “We’re working on bringing it back up.”