The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel (29 page)

The elementary school that Milo attends is just like the one Rosie had attended: a nice, low-slung, concrete-block suburban school with a big green lawn, playing fields, a circular driveway, and white-and-tan tile floors and mint green walls all decorated with bulletin boards and posters about how fun reading is. From the gym, they can hear a whistle blowing and the sound of kids laughing and running.

“This place gives me the willies,” Tony says as they walk down the hall. “Listen, the real reason I want you here?” he whispers. “I don’t want to get all explainy about my stupid life, you know, how I used to live there with the two of ’em, you know? And how I drive to Fairfield all the time, okay? And how I don’t have a real job right now. If you hear me
start to say inappropriate things, will you just interrupt or something?”

“I’ll try,” she says.

“Good. I just want to look respectable, like good dad material.”

The kindergarten room has a bank of windows with construction paper autumn leaves stuck on them, and little tables with chairs for eight children at each. There’s a circle area with a rug, and a felt board with a sun, a rain cloud, snowflakes, and raindrops, all ready to be pressed into their meteorological duties. And best of all, there is Miss Minton, according to the sign on the board, striding toward them wearing leggings and a long red sweater, with her black hair cut in a sharp angled bob.

“Come in! Come in!” she says, smiling like a girl in a shampoo ad, Rosie thinks. “You’re Milo’s dad, and …?”

“I’m just Rosie, a friend.”

“How nice,” she says. “I met Milo’s mom and her partner last week, and I’m always so glad to meet the other pair, as well.”

“Oh, no, we’re not—” she begins, but Tony has already plopped himself down in one of those ridiculously little kindergarten chairs Miss Minton is pointing to, and is leaning forward, tenting his fingers and tapping his thumbs together. “Must make for a lot more conferences these days, what with so many kids having two homes,” he says.

“That’s true,” says Miss Minton, still smiling steadily. “But I really don’t mind. It’s important for me to understand my students’ lives and everybody who’s important to them. Shall we?” She brings out a folder of work that Milo has done, including a portrait of his family. “So, you’ve been divorced for how long?” she asks. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Um, well, it’s complicated,” says Tony. He licks his lips. “We’re just separated now. But she just told me she’s filing the papers. So …” He shrugs. “Who knows what’s up for us? I told her that I won’t fight her on things, but that I want to make sure she gives me a lot of time with my son. Which hasn’t been happening so much, so I really wanted to be here, you know, to see how he’s doing and stuff.”

Rosie slides her foot over to his and nudges his sneaker, and he shuts up.

“These things are always complicated,” Miss Minton says, and waits to see if he wants to say more. When he doesn’t, she opens the folder. “Well,” she says, “he’s clearly adorable, and he’s very smart, and he’s energetic and engaged here. He seems to like coming to school, and he’s making lots of friends. The other kids like him.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“I hear a
but
coming. Is something wrong?”

“No, no, nothing’s wrong. It’s all new to him, that’s all. It’s a breaking-in period. First weeks of kindergarten, we’re just trying to get them all comfortable.”

“And is he?”

“Yes, I’d, ah, say he’s more or less comfortable. Mostly.”

“What’s the matter then?”

“Tony,” says Rosie.

“No, she’s acting like something’s wrong, and I know something’s wrong, and I think I know what it is, but I don’t know how to fix it.”

Miss Minton opens her eyes a bit wider. “If there’s something …”

Tony leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees, letting his hands fall. “Look, I gotta level with you. It’s tough right now. His mom, as you know, has this partner who’s
kind of … well, she’s a child life specialist or something, and she thinks that they’ve got to prove they’re the main parents. She doesn’t want me around much.”

Rosie clears her throat, but he pats her knee to quiet her and goes on.

“Now, I myself like both of them. They’re great moms, but I’m trying to have a relationship with my son. A real relationship. I’ve supported them and helped them, and I respect them for what they’re trying to do, but it’s getting all legal-ish, and I don’t want to lose out on getting custody of my son. I want a place in his life.”

“Tony,” says Miss Minton. “It’s okay. You absolutely need a place in his life.”

“And I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

“You have to have a place in his life. It’s very important that he knows how much you love him.”

“I call him every day, and I—I’m on time for visitation, but just this past week—well, that was the first time all summer they’d let me take him away from their house, and even then it was because Rosie here made all the arrangements. It’s like I’m gonna steal him or something, and I’m not. I just—I just—”

“Look, look,” says Miss Minton. She opens the folder and shows him the picture Milo drew of his family. There’s a picture of Annie with spiky hair, right in the center, and then a picture of Milo himself, standing right next to her, and then next to Annie on the other side is Dena, with squiggly long lines for hair. Way off to the side, and drawn in a tiny, spidery way, is a stick figure with a big rectangle next to the round head.

“That’s you,” says Miss Minton. “See? You’re in the picture. That’s you on the phone.”

“That’s how he sees me? I’m that little wavy guy on
the phone?” Tony says. He looks away, unable to speak just then. Rosie wants to reach over and touch him, but she doesn’t dare.

“But here’s the thing you should know,” says Miss Minton, looking at his face. “He talks about you all the time and how you call him every day. He adores you. When he was going to visit you last weekend, he told everybody. Even the lunch ladies knew he was going to stay at his dad’s house, and then that Monday when he came back to school, he talked about sleeping outside in a tent and how you let him have apple pancakes. It was a big deal. A really big deal.”

Tony’s nose gets red. He looks up at the ceiling.

“A lot of these kids don’t even get to talk to their dads on the phone,” she goes on in her silky voice, like she’s somebody who doesn’t know she’s got a guy just about to burst into tears right in front of her. Or maybe she doesn’t mind seeing grown men cry, Rosie thinks. “A lot of dads don’t even get included in the family portrait! Really. Sometimes it’s because of divorce, but a lot of times it’s just that they’re working so many hours and they don’t have time to see their kids,” Miss Minton says. “Milo is one of those kids who knows he’s loved, but he misses you a lot.”

“He misses me,” he says flatly.

She nods. “Yeah. He’s a little sad, I think.”

Tony hits his fist into his other palm and gets up, taking a ragged breath that Rosie is sure will turn into a sob if they stay any longer. “Thank you, Miss Minton. Thank you very much.”

“Call me Amelia. And listen,” she says quickly, “life is messy for kids, and that’s just the way it is these days. And it’s okay. The important thing is that you give him lots of love and that he knows he can count on you. That’s the whole secret to parenthood: showing up. Don’t give up. If you have
time to volunteer in the classroom, that could be another way you get face time with him, maybe.”

“Okay,” he says. “That would be better than what I do now, which is driving around seeing him in the playground. But then I can’t talk to him because I’m in the car.”

Rosie reaches over and touches him again, more insistently this time. Miss Minton turns to her. “And Milo talked about you, too. He said you and he were going to make diamonds? In the microwave?”

“You are?” says Tony.

“Well,” says Rosie. “I’m afraid I’m not a permanent person in his life. I’m just a friend, while Tony is taking care of my grandmother who is dying … long story short, my boyfriend lives in California, and I’m supposed to join him, but then for the longest time he wasn’t sure if he can handle having a baby, because we sort of never talked about it, but now … well, he thinks he can … but we weren’t sure with my grandmother dying, only now she’s going into a nursing home, and now the baby is coming, but now it looks like I’ll be leaving …” She stops talking and wipes her nose, which has started to drip a little, and says, “Yes. Diamonds in the microwave. We’re using peanut butter.”

“Wow! Well, I think we did superbly,” she says to Tony on their way out to the car. “We didn’t reveal anything odd about our personal lives whatsoever! Clearly we’re totally sane.”

“I was afraid you were going to tell her about the condom breaking in another minute or so,” he says.

“And I was afraid you were going to be sobbing on the desk in another minute,” she says. “Also, for the record, it
didn’t break. Don’t you remember? He forgot to put one on. I told you.”

He opens the car door and slides in. “Not for nothing, but how does a guy forget to put a condom on? Not that it’s any of my business, but there just aren’t that many responsibilities guys have, and if they don’t want kids, that’s pretty much job one.”

“Long story,” she says. “Oh my God. I feel like I’ve got to call Jonathan right this second and tell him how important he is to our kid. I had no idea! He’s got to step up his game like a thousand percent.”

“Yeah,” says Tony. “Fathers. We’re what it’s all about.”

“Jesus.”

“So,” he says after another minute, “so that was our dry run. When we get to the OB office, we’ll try to hold it together better.”

“Ohhhhh no, you are so not coming in with me.”

But of course, before he can drive out of town, he is constitutionally incapable of
not
driving by Milo’s babysitter’s house just so he can make sure Milo got there all right. And sure enough, they get a glimpse of him in the backyard, standing next to another boy, a little red-haired kid. The two of them are looking at a shrub, and they have something in their hands.

“Are they pissing on that bush?” Tony asks. He starts to pull the car over.

“No, no. It looks like they’ve got a magnifying glass. This is very good, scientific exploration they’re doing here. No worries,” says Rosie.

“I just got to drive by another time,” he says, turning down a side street.

“This is what you do, all the time then?” she says.

“Yeah. I drive around the block a few times, and then I park sometimes across the street and eat a sandwich and just watch him to make sure everything’s okay.”

“This is, what? Parenting by car?” she says.

He pulls up across the street from the house. “Too bad we don’t have a sandwich.”

“Really, Tony,” she says after another few minutes have gone by. “You have to get a handle on this custody stuff with Annie. You need a lawyer and a plan. This is ridiculous. You can’t just watch your family through the car window. You can’t.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“We’ve got to get you out of the car. You need a regular visitation schedule, where he comes to you.”

“How’m I gonna get Dena to do that without pissing her off?”

“Maybe you can’t. Maybe lawyers can do it, though. Whatever. You just have to.”

“You can be my lawyer. You handled the first thing great. Now we just need to do it again.”

“You know what? I’m gonna invite them to Thanksgiving dinner. In fact—here’s a great idea—let’s you and me have a huge Thanksgiving thing, invite everybody we know, decorate the house, cook a bunch of food, have a big blowout. Really! We’ll go for broke.”

“Really?” He looks at her sideways.

“Yeah. Let’s do it. I’ve never cooked Thanksgiving dinner before. Jonathan hated the whole idea. Oh, wait. Feel right here. The baby’s kicking.”

He reaches his hand over, and it’s large and warm and
when he moves it around, searching for the kicks, she almost moans. “What’s the dude got against Thanksgiving?”

She pulls herself together. “Oh, I don’t know. Something about how he doesn’t want the American culture dictating anything about what he’s supposed to be doing or thinking, up to and including eating turkey and mashed potatoes,” she says. “Really, though, it’s about how he hated having to dress up and act special for anything. Called it enforced fun.”