The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel (27 page)

Once they get home, she takes Milo on a tour of the house. He immediately seems to know it’s a house meant for kids to slide down the banister and to throw as many objects as
possible down the laundry chute and then race downstairs to the laundry room to see where they land. He is stunned—
stunned
—by the claw feet on the upstairs bathtub, as well as the window seat in the dining room and the fireplace in the guest room.

When he gets to the kitchen, though, he elbows Rosie as they’re standing in front of the counter. He points to the microwave and whispers, “That’s where we could make our diamonds.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“But a kid did it with his uncle. Don’t you
want
a diamond?”

She does not really want a diamond, as a matter of fact, and she really doesn’t want a diamond that she makes in the microwave, but looking at him makes her laugh. She says she’ll think about it and watches his face darken.

“That means no,” he says.

“How do you know it means no?” she says. “Maybe it means that I am really going to think about it. Anyway, why don’t you ask your dad?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t do it,” Milo says.

Tony comes down just then, having liberated a tent from the attic. He and Milo are planning to sleep in the yard like the manly men they are. “What wouldn’t I do?” he says.

“Nothing,” says Milo, and he gives Rosie a meaningful look.

“Nothing,” she says.

They cook hamburgers and hot dogs outside on the grill after Tony gets the tent put up, and Soapie and George come out, too, and they all eat at the picnic table, even though it’s slightly late in the year for this, and Tony ends up running inside and fetching everybody’s sweatshirts.

Soapie, weak and frail, keeps getting confused about who Milo is and has to have Tony’s marital situation explained to her over and over again. Milo tells Soapie that he has two mommies, except that you can’t really
have
two mommies, you can only have one.

George finds that a riot.

Soapie looks at Milo. “You are very, very cute, young man. Now
who
are you again? And why are you here in my house?”

“Now, now,” says Rosie, and she explains everything again.

“I don’t understand children,” says Soapie. “Never did, never will.”

“And soon there’s going to be one around here full time,” says George. He had been so pleased when Rosie told him about the pregnancy, and now he smiles at her. Maybe, just maybe, he can be pressed into service as a great-grandfather figure. It’s occurred to her she may need to start lining up family members in advance. She maybe should get a sign-up sheet.

Tony gives Milo a bath in the claw-foot tub, and after they go outside to get settled, Rosie gathers up extra blankets and pillows for them.

It looks cozy in the tent, with the lantern lit and the sleeping bags all unfurled. Milo, in his pajamas now, is getting ready to play Go Fish, with his wet hair all slicked back just like Tony’s. Tony is lying on his back with his arms behind his head, looking contented.

“Is this just the greatest thing, or what?” he says. “I don’t know why I haven’t slept here all summer long.”

“Rosie, you should come sleep here, too,” says Milo.

“No, I can’t,” she says.

“But why why why?”

“It’s too crowded,” Tony says quickly, like maybe he doesn’t trust Rosie not to accept. “And besides that, remember when I told you Rosie was going to have a baby? She needs to sleep in a soft bed so she can be comfy.”

“Oh,” says Milo. He looks at her. “What if you bring like seventy-five pillows? And you could have my sleeping bag.”

“Thank you,” she says. “But the tent is just big enough for two, I think.”

She walks back to the house slowly. This is what is crazy hard and keeps breaking her fool heart over and over again every time she thinks of it. She and Leila might laugh and do belly bumps and high fives all they want, but right underneath the surface is the sad question: is her baby ever going to know the presence of a gentle, involved father willing to sleep in a tent outside on an early-fall night?

It’s optional, she knows. A lot of people are missing worse things than that. She missed it, for instance, and turned out mostly all right. But right at this moment, closing the door to her room, it seems like such a horrible thing to have to miss out on, like not having the color red or chocolate ice cream.

And once she’s gotten in her bed and turned out the light, there’s no way around the wild grief that comes. She’s going to be doing it alone, and that’s all there is to it, and she puts the pillow on her head and cries with her fist in her mouth until the dark overtakes her and she doesn’t know anything anymore.

The phone wakes her up later that night. She struggles to see what time it is and is shocked when she sees it’s only 11:05. She feels as though she’s been in a deep sleep for hours—the hard, cracked sleep of the cried-out—and her heart starts thumping like a tennis shoe in the dryer as she grabs for the phone on the dresser top, knocking over her glass of water and her set of silver bracelets.

She punches the button, still not fully awake. “Hullo?”

“So,” says Jonathan, “are you still speaking to me?”

“I dunno,” she says, and flops back down on the pillow. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you have to say.”

“Well. Maybe I’m in luck because I’m calling to say I’m sorry and to ask if you’re still pregnant. Did I wake you up?”

“Yes. Both.”

“Oh, sorry. Should I call you back tomorrow?”

“No, it’s okay,” she says. She heaves herself over on her side and tucks the phone under her ear on the pillow. “I’m pretty much awake now.”

“Why did you go to sleep so early? Nothing’s wrong, is there? You sound like you have a cold.”

“No. Just tired. Long day. And eleven isn’t early.”

“Well, I—uh, I’ve been worried about you a little bit. I was reading that the chances of miscarriage are kind of high with these pregnancies.”

She’s wide awake now, irritated as hell. “What do you mean by ‘
these
pregnancies’?” she asks. “I’m only having one pregnancy, and it’s doing fine, thank you very much.
And
I’m hanging up now.”

She hears him swallow. “Wow,” he says. “So touchy. Let’s go back to my apology, okay? I’m sorry about what … well, what I said before. And maybe that wasn’t the best way to begin, but what I’m trying to say is that I’m worried about you.”

She stays silent.

“I shouldn’t have told you that you can’t handle this, because I know very well that you can,” he says, clearing his throat.

“I think I don’t want to talk to you until you can talk to me better than this.”

“Better than
this
?” he says. “Like what? This might be my best stuff. What am I supposed to say?”

“How about, ‘How
are
you, Rosie?’ ‘How are you feeling?’ Or try, ‘Do you need anything? What can I do to help you?’ ”

He does an exaggerated sigh. “How are you, Rosie? How are you feeling? And wait, what was the last one?”

“Never mind,” she says. “Forget it. I’m fine. Just stop worrying about me.”

“See? How can we have a conversation if you’re not going to give me any more than that? How are you really? What’s going on there? How is Soapie?”

In short, clipped sentences, she tells him then that Soapie’s just come home from rehab, and it’s taking all of their best efforts—hers and Tony’s and George’s—to take care of her.

“And who are Tony and George?” he says. “Wait. Am I supposed to know who they are, or have I missed a couple of chapters?”

“Well, Tony is the caregiver guy she hired, the one you said was going to steal her blind, but so far he hasn’t, and George is her lover.”

“Her what?”

“Yes. Soapie has a lover.”

“Even in her state?”

“It makes it even more romantic and beautiful, or so I’m told.”

“Well,” he says. “Huh.” Then his voice changes, gets all serious, and he says, “I just want to say that I’m really sorry about what I said before. I love you, you know, and, well, I also was thinking that, well, if you’re having a baby, then I want in on it.”

“You want in on it? Nice of you.”

“You know what I mean. Come on, Rosie. I’m trying to say the right thing here. I want to be with you. It turns out I love you.”

“How interesting of you,” she says. “That hasn’t been especially evident lately.”

“And I’m so sorry I didn’t marry you the way you wanted me to—”

“Wait a minute. The way
I
wanted you to?”

“No, no. What I mean is
in the manner
that you wanted it to happen. With the party and all that. The red skirt and the boots. All that.”

“Because if you’re trying to say that
I
was the one who thought we should get married—”

“No, no, no,” he says. “It was all me. Listen, where do you get these ideas that I’m the one resisting? I
love
you. I’m the one who begged and begged you to come out here with me. You’re the one who walked out on me. Remember that?”

“I
limped
out on you,” she says. “As I recall, I couldn’t
very well walk back then. But you’re the one who drove away in the truck.”

“Yes,” he says. “It was all very unfortunate.”

She tucks the phone under her chin and fluffs her pillow and props it against the wall. “But, Jonathan, never mind the wedding, I haven’t talked to you for—how many weeks? Six? Seven? I can’t even remember. The last I heard from you, you were telling me I’d ruined our lives.”

“I know. And in my history of telling lies and being a general fuckwad, that may have been the worst overstatement I’ve ever been guilty of.”

She doesn’t say anything.

He sucks in his breath. “So what I’m calling to say is that I’m so sorry about that, about all of it. Listen, in my defense, I’m old and crotchety, and I don’t do well with change, and that’s a problem I have. And you
did
make a unilateral decision about our lives without even consulting me.”

“It
is
my body.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “But it’s more than your
body
we’re talking about when we’re talking about a baby. And you can understand that
the father
might like to be included on the ground floor of these momentous discussions.”

“You were just going to say no.”

“And you had made up your mind, I know,” he says. There’s a silence, and then he says, “Anyway, I don’t want us to get stuck back in that loop. I’m calling because I want us to be together. The wedding with the red boots, the red velvet cupcakes, the impending baby, the furnished apartment, family, you name it, the whole nine yards.”

She closes her eyes and stretches out on the bed, rubs her belly, her new talisman. What is she supposed to say? The baby thumps.
This is your father
, she beams to it.
I am sorry
to tell you that he needs a lot of rehabbing before he’ll be any good to either of us. He is possibly a hopeless case, and I’m sorry you have to hear any of this
.

He clears his throat again and says in a low voice, “Listen, you. I’ve thought of little else but of the stupid mistakes I made. One, I should have insisted on us getting married when we were supposed to. And two, when you told me you were pregnant, I should have realized that if you want a baby, then I shouldn’t just look at my own selfish … self. I should trust you and go with it. I should always trust you and go with things. You’ve been right over and over again.”

She tries to stifle the laugh that comes up from out of nowhere.

“I mean, I myself will most likely be a klutz and have no idea what I’m doing, but maybe you do, and if you do, we can probably muddle through. I admit, it’s taken me longer than most to get used to the idea—”

“Seven weeks actually,” she says.

“Okay, it took me seven weeks because I’m extra-stupid and hardheaded, but I—I think we can do this. If you say we can, then we probably can. What more can I say to convince you? Because that’s all I got.”

She turns over in bed and waits, thinking.

“And may I add that if you say yes, this time I’m going to marry you so long and hard that we’re going to stay married forever. Nobody will be as married as you and me. Ever.”

Blame it on hormones, but something is lumping up in her throat. Damn it, she’s touched by his words. She doesn’t want to be, but she could hardly be in a more vulnerable state of mind. She’s been pretty much marinating in fatherhood for this whole day—fathers coaxing children, taking them to the bathroom, comforting them, cheering for them as they flew on spaceships, walking them through mazes,
running after their wayward Ping-Pong balls. Sleeping in a tent in her very backyard. Kissing her in the book nook.

And now here is a man on the phone begging for his chance to be one of these creatures. Awkwardly. And a guy who has no shot at knowing what he’s in for, true. But who
is
in fact the other half of the DNA profile of this trampoline artist who has taken up residence inside her. This is, after all, a guy who has a stake in the outcome, even if he is a reluctant novice. He could learn.
Maybe
he could learn.

She winds the phone cord around her index finger. And also, frankly, there’s the sex to take into consideration. They had such good, good sex for such a long time. And they could—might—again. Put clinically, here in the cold bracing reality of a lonely night, who else
really
is likely to step up to the plate and be interested in her that way again? Even Tony’s one-off sweet kiss was just a token of thanks.

“I don’t know,” she says, although she does know. She’s already caved. She’s like one of those YouTube videos showing the thawing of the Arctic ice caps, all that crashing and melting going on.

“It could work,” he says. “If you let it.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “The baby’s a girl,” she says softly.

“A girl? No shit!”

“Yep.”

He says, “Holy shit! You know it’s a girl? For sure?”

“I do. I had that amnio thing.”

“Rosie, listen! We should be together for this pregnancy. What would it take to get you to come out here now? I have us an apartment. We’ll set things up, get a crib, buy a decent couch, have this baby. You know. The wacky American dream and all that.”