The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel (48 page)

“But why is everything on your terms? Why are
you
picking the time for sex and then just telling me that’s what we’re going to do?”

“Why? Why am I picking this time for sex? Maybe because it’s nighttime, and we had a nice evening out, and I
was
feeling good and relaxed, and feeling good about us and the fact that we could get away together for an evening—”

“See? Why is it all about getting away?
This
is where we’re supposed to be, getting used to everything.” She flings out her arms, in a gesture meant to take in the whole apartment.

“Playing house, you mean?”

“Maybe. Except for real. And now you can’t even hide how excited you are about this trip to Cincinnati, too. You know, I don’t know why you wanted me to come here in the first place.”

He sighs and rubs his head and then looks away from her. “Okay, forget it,” he says. “Forget I said anything about sex. I don’t want it anymore. But I would just like to remind you that when I came to see you in Connecticut,
you
were the one who wanted sex all the time,
you
were the one who went batshit crazy when I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. What happened to that woman, huh?”

“She had a baby.”

“Yeah, she had a baby. And maybe she had something else, too.” He gets up off the bed, walking with a heaviness she hasn’t noticed in him before. He goes over to the desk in the corner, the bill-paying desk, which is covered with papers and letters and things for the museum. It takes him a moment of rifling through the papers, and then he picks up an envelope and brings it over to her. “A love letter for you from the cell phone company,” he says.

Time starts to unspool so slowly.

“Open it,” he says.

“I don’t want to read it,” she says. Something has gone cold in the pit of her stomach.

For a moment he just stands there and looks at her. And then he says, “You don’t love me, do you? We can pretend some more, but it’s really over, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean, it’s over? We’re just starting with a new baby, it’s always like this, it’s a tough transition. I do love you, it’s just—”

“No,” he says. “It’s not. I could have waited that out. But you’re so unhappy, you’re so distracted. You love him. You don’t love me anymore.”

“I do love you,” she says dully, mechanically.

“But look at this,” he says. He holds out the bill. “You talk to him
every day
. You called him from the hospital, even though I was there with you every single minute. How did you even manage to do that?”

She glances down at the line of numbers, Tony’s cell phone number repeated over and over again, calls received, calls sent out, all dutifully recorded in their official capacity. She takes a deep breath; everything in the room has gone a little bit hazy, and she knows she needs to be sharp.

“Look,” she says, making her voice sound reasonable, “he went through the pregnancy with me. We got to be friends.
I miss talking to him. Why shouldn’t I? He was the one who went with me to the doctor’s visits and who listened to me complain—you weren’t there, remember?”

“That’s bullshit,” he says. “Life doesn’t work that way. If it were just a friendship, you’d call him when I was around, wouldn’t you? I know you. I see the signs. I tried to ignore it when I was there at Christmas, but I saw how you looked at each other.”

She feels herself spiraling down. She doesn’t have the stamina for this right now; she can’t do it, it’s too soon, she’s too breakable, life is fragile, she needs time to think.

The baby starts to cry then, little piercing cries of hunger. Rosie gets up and goes in and picks her up from the bassinet. Beanie roots around, looking frantically for the breast, and Rosie sits down in the rocking glider and pulls open her nightgown, and Beanie clamps on as if for dear life, snuffling and sucking as hard as she can. Rosie winces at the sting of her breasts releasing the milk, and then she settles back in the glider in the dark, feeling both the pain and the relief.

She can hear Jonathan go into the bathroom and close the door. After a while, the door opens, and for a moment, she thinks maybe he’ll come to see her and the baby. Maybe this talk went further than he meant it to, and he knows now he can’t live without her and Beanie. He’ll come in and say he wants her to stay with him.

But he doesn’t come in. She hears him snap off the light in the bedroom and close the door against her, and for one tiny moment, she closes her eyes, consumed with guilt. Maybe she should take the baby and go into the bedroom and sit down on the bed with him and tell him how sorry she is for hurting him. She’s not supposed to leave people; they’ve always gotten to leave her instead. Maybe she could promise to forget about Tony and to care more about the
museum, to work harder at making friends here, to simply make herself
adjust
. She can be what he wants. She will just try harder and harder.

Then, rocking in the dark, she thinks of Tony—Tony, who wants the biggest Christmas tree, the funniest stories, the deepest kisses, the wackiest Scrabble words for Soapie, the most complicated tomato sauce, each and every ultrasound picture, the peanut butter diamonds. Tony, in Jonathan’s place, would try to make things work. He would throw himself at love. He would say this is what the heart does, it can’t help it. He’d be the one bringing apologies and promises and back rubs and love, he would come up with a theory, he would sit by her side all night long and watch the baby gulping milk. He would have come into the baby’s room when he came home tonight, too. He would have stood beside Rosie, and nuzzled her neck, reached over and unbuttoned her dress, waltzed her to the bedroom, where he would have gently eased her down onto the bed, kissing every expanse of her.

He’s a man who wants family so much that he’s spent the last ten months experiencing parenthood through the windshield, and he loves her so much that he agreed to two weeks, and bowed out gracefully when it turned out to be only one.

Soapie said:
Pick one of those men, either one, just pick
. And:
Get you some joie de vivre
. And:
Don’t sit around and let your whole life dribble away. Find what makes you happy, what gives you passion
.

And most devastating of all:
I know it was bad to lie to you. But I wanted to protect you, I guess
.

She looks out the window at the turquoise swimming pool, shining below like a fake jewel in the artificial lights.
A siren Dopplers itself down the street, and a door slams somewhere in the building. A woman laughs.

Life went by so fast
, Soapie said. The whole damn eighty-eight years—you’d think it would be endless, but it flew by, she said.
Rosie, it goes so fast
.

Over the next few days she knows she and Jonathan will make all the necessary arrangements; they’ll pack up her stuff and have the tough conversations. It’ll be very civilized—he doesn’t like messy scenes. It’s a separation, they’ll say to other people; she’s going back home to take care of some things at her grandmother’s house.

But to Jonathan, she has to be honest. She’ll be her own caseworker again, leading herself gently through to where she’s supposed to be. And it will be hard and messy and honest and ultimately glorious.

“Yes, I fell in love with Tony,” she will say bravely. “I should have told you before. I thought it would just go away. But you deserve to know the truth.”

All these years of trying to adjust the shape of herself into a square peg when what she needed was a round hole she could slip through.

He may seem upset at first, but he’ll also be relieved in a way, at what wasn’t asked of him, at what he escaped. He’s happy here. After all, there are new teacups to be looked at in Cincinnati, there are new ways of attracting visitors to the museum, and there will always be more discoveries and fascinating facts for him.

He won’t even miss the baby, not really. She thinks she should feel sad about this, and maybe later it will hit her harder—that there’s yet another little girl whose father won’t be present. But for right now, she hears Tony’s voice in her head. He’d say love can swoop down anytime. And
if Jonathan can’t love the flesh-and-blood, messy, squalling and fragile little life in front of him, maybe he’ll turn into the more “official” father, the kind of father who wants to read her school papers and discuss the best summer camps and arrangements, the guy who can’t hear about the prom dates but who will care deeply about the SATs. Whatever level of involvement he’ll choose, that will be fine.

She reaches down and strokes Beanie’s cheek, and is surprised when a tear falls right on the baby’s curled-up little fist. She didn’t even know she was crying. Smiling and crying at the same time. So this is how it’s going to be.

The airport is crowded for a weekday afternoon, she thinks. She straps the baby into the front pack, the funny one that ties all around and around, like the baby is an accessory you can just attach to yourself. It’s good because your hands are free for the diaper bag and the purse. And even better, you can tip your face down and feel that velvety head next to your skin, like ripe peaches in the sunshine.

A week has gone by. Jonathan drives her and Beanie to the airport and unloads their stuff at the curbside. It reminds her of the night he left her at Soapie’s. She feels that same sense of being freed from something, the same sense of the glorious unknown. And when he says to her, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” it feels all too familiar. Déjà vu all over again, she tells him.

This time, though, she reaches over and kisses him. He takes her hand and puts it next to his cheek.

“Call me when you get in,” he says, and she promises that she will. He looks at her for a long moment, but she doesn’t
cry even when he looks as though he might. They’re all cried out. Now it’s time to simply take the first steps away.

She’s all the way into the terminal, her red boots clicking as she hurries along the automatic moving walkway, before she realizes he didn’t even lean down to look at the baby. Not even one last look.

Tony is in her ear on the phone while she waits for the flight to be called. When she told him she was coming back, he said he and Milo would meet the plane when she gets in, and if she wants, and if the baby thinks it’s a good idea, they’ll go get some dinner. “You’ll be hungry,” he said. “I hear they don’t feed people on planes anymore.”

“I might cry sometimes,” she says. “I could be a bit of a wreck.”

“That’s okay. I’ve seen you eat and cry at the same time,” Tony says.

“I might be insane to do this,” she says. But even as she’s saying it, she knows it’s not true. She’s planned it all out. She has the house to live in, and she can support herself by teaching. For now she can bring the baby along in a basket to her classes. Her students can pass her around.

“Actually, you seem kind of sane to me,” he says. Which has always been one of the best things about him, she realizes: he always thinks things are falling into place. “Who knows what will happen? We’ll take it a day at a time,” he says.

It’s not until she gets out in the middle of the country that she knows for sure it’s going to be all right. Somewhere over the Mississippi River—that big crack in the middle of
the United States—she has a moment. She’ll ask Tony when she gets there, if he and Milo want to move in with her. Tony can paint houses, and she can keep the children and write. They’ll cook together and set up the baby swing on the patio, and play catch in the grass when summer comes …

Is this crazy to dream like this? Or could it be that this is her story after all, rising up to meet her in midair?

Serena Sophia, who had been nursing peacefully, suddenly falls asleep and yanks her mouth off the breast and flings herself backward, arms outstretched and milk dribbling down her chin.

It’s as if she’s a drunken sailor on shore leave, absolutely inebriated with the abundance before her, smiling her toothless grin like somebody who just knows all the good things that are coming.

I am so lucky to have people in my life who love to read early drafts and don’t mind being asked—okay, forced—to give their opinions and constructive help. Alice Mattison, Kim Steffen, Leslie Connor, Nancy Hall, Allison Meade, Stephanie Shelton, Mary Rose Meade, Holly Robinson, Nancy Antle, Susanne Davis, Sharon Massoth, and Diane Cyr are among the very best readers and commenters a writer can have. Thank you for your love as well as your endless patience and humor, and for not hiding when you saw me coming.