The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel (10 page)

“I hope you know I’m not going to be able to carry one single box down the stairs,” she says to him on the Tuesday before they’re set to leave.

He greets this news with a stoic silence.

“So that means you need to get some movers. Jonathan. I’m talking to
you
. You have to get the movers. I’ve done everything else. I’ve—”

“I will, I will.” Sigh, then a put-upon tone. Then he says, “Why are you being like this? Has anything ever
not
worked out for us? I mean, ultimately?”

The top of her head explodes. “Well, for starters, just looking at last week
alone
, there’s the wedding! That didn’t exactly work out for us.”

“
That’s
what’s bothering you, isn’t it?” he says. “Well, then, get your purse. Let’s go down to town hall right now and find a justice of the peace. We’ll do it right this minute.” He gets up from his chair.

“No,” she says. “It’s not that, and you know it.”

“I don’t know it.”

“I wanted the red velvet cupcakes. I wanted the party.”

He stares at her. “We could have had the cupcakes if you hadn’t donated them.”

“But I can’t wear the red boots. They don’t fit on my foot anymore.” It sounds so ridiculous, and it is, but it’s the truth. He shakes his head and goes back to his laptop.

And then there is Soapie. How can she even begin to say good-bye to her grouchy old grandmother, knowing she’s falling down all over the place, knowing that she’s probably in more need of Rosie than she’s ever been before, and yet is
now even less able to admit to any of it? Is she really supposed to be able to say, “Bye! Hope you don’t get seriously hurt!”—and then leave?

One morning as Rosie is hobbling around on crutches, trying to put things in boxes, Soapie calls on the phone and says, “Well, the boy is leaving me. I guess you know that.”

“Tony?”

“Yes.”

“Is he going back to his wife?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing. I have to go take a nap when he starts talking about his life. It’s too complicated for any ordinary human being to follow. But that’s not why I called you. He says that I should tell you that I’m having that British woman come when he goes.”

“What? You’re having Mrs. Cynthia Lamb come back?”

“Yes, her. Whatever her name is. She starts tomorrow.”

“Oh. Well, that’s great,” Rosie says, trying not to show how relieved she feels.

“It’s great until she tries to keep me from doing things I need to do, and then she’s out of here. I won’t have it.”

“Of course,” says Rosie, smiling. “So that’s when Tony is leaving?”

But Soapie doesn’t hear her. Instead she just starts in on how she hopes Rosie’s not going to get maudlin with good-byes, because nobody likes good-byes. They’re stupid and pointless, and they just stir up stuff that doesn’t need to be stirred up.

“Well, I do need to come over and bring some of my coats to store at your house, if that’s okay,” Rosie says, “but I promise I won’t say good-bye to you.”

“I mean it. When you walk out the door, just don’t say anything. Don’t even let me see when you go.” Soapie’s voice has gotten rough. “We’re not having drama.”

When she gets there on Thursday evening to drop off the coats, she expects to see Mrs. Cynthia Lamb in the kitchen making dinner—bangers and mash, perhaps—and Soapie resting on the couch, downing gin and tonics. But instead, Tony’s there, and he and Soapie are standing in the garden, looking at the rosebushes, heads together, conferring about something. Rosie parks the car, and as she gets out, she hears Soapie laughing.

Then Tony says, “No, no, forget it!” and he’s shaking his head and laughing so hard that his backward baseball cap falls off, and he has to stoop down to pick it up off the lawn. Soapie, who’s wearing a red chiffon blouse and white pants, reaches down and cuffs him on the shoulder as Rosie comes hobbling over, fighting her crutches, which keep sinking into the soft grass.

“Rosie!” Soapie calls. “Tell Tony that he needs to go over and steal some of Helen’s peonies for me.”

“I am not stealing peonies from somebody else’s garden,” he says. “You’re crazy!”

“It’s not polite to call people crazy. And I need them,” Soapie says in her wheedling voice. “They go with these roses so beautifully. Think how nice they’ll look together in a vase. Tell him, Rosie.”

“I can’t, I can’t,” he says. “You know Helen will come after me. She already thinks I’m charging her too much for gardening—which is due to
you
telling me what to ask for, by the way.”

“I did you a favor. And you can tell her you’re putting in overtime, pruning her peonies for her,” says Soapie, and then they both dissolve again into laughter.

“It’s nice to see the two of you having such a good time,” Rosie says.

“Yeah, well. It’s all a good time until she gets me put in jail,” says Tony.

“You know what? I’m going to march over there and get them myself,” says Soapie. “I’ve been stealing Helen’s flowers for years, but usually I wait until she’s at church. If she comes out, I’m just going to pretend I’ve gone senile. You both can come and lead me away.”

“Why don’t I just go and buy you some peonies?” Rosie says, but Soapie takes the shears away from Tony and makes her way across the yard. She has her mouth fixed in a serious pout, but she’s clearly in danger of bursting out laughing again, and she’s doing an exaggerated tiptoe walk, like something from the Pink Panther movies. They watch her slip into the flower bed and start snipping Helen Benson’s glorious light pink peonies.

Rosie shakes her head. “I can’t believe she’s doing this,” she says. “Look at her.”

“Shoplifting in other people’s gardens. She’s bad-ass.”

“Incorrigible, really,” says Rosie. She looks over at him. “Hey, I’m surprised you’re still here. I suppose Mrs. Lamb is in the house cooking dinner?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s wincing at Soapie, who is now right up next to Helen’s living room window snipping away.

“Wasn’t she going to start today?” Rosie says.

“Well,” he says. Soapie waves in triumph from the peony bushes and starts making her way back. “Oh God,” Tony says. “She’s got five of the biggest flowers.”

“I got greedy,” says Soapie. “I have got to stop being awful, you know that?” She looks at Rosie’s face. “Yes, I see you agree. Let me just get these inside before the cops get here. Tony, you were no help at all. None.”

“Be sure you tell that to the cops,” he says, and the
three of them go inside, and Rosie says, “Really, where is Mrs. Lamb?”

“Oh, we changed our minds about having her,” says Soapie. “Find me a vase, will you? I think the big green one is under the sink.”

“What do you mean, you changed your mind?” Rosie digs out the vase and puts it on the counter.

Soapie starts arranging the flowers one by one without looking over at Rosie. “Oh, she called me last night and started making up rules and drawing up schedules and talking about bedtime and the four food groups and all the
cultural outings
we’d take.
I
don’t need her to take me on cultural outings, and I certainly don’t need anybody telling me when I have to go to bed at night or what I’m supposed to be eating.”

“But what—?”

“Tony can stay, it turns out. And we’re fine, except that he appears to be kind of a coward when it comes to getting flowers. But we’ll work on it.”

Rosie turns and looks at him, and he ducks his head and smiles. “It’s all good,” he says. “Today she fell, but we got her right up and she was fine, and then we went and got her prescription filled, and she took her medicine.”

“But how long are you planning to stay?” Rosie asks him in dismay. “I thought it was all settled—”

“Don’t start this,” says Soapie. “I’m fine, and you know it.”

“I have to go,” says Rosie. She feels so heavy, it’s as though one of those x-ray dental aprons has been put on her chest, and she’s staggering under the weight of it.

“No scenes, no scenes,” says Soapie. “Make Jonathan stop every couple of hours so you can stretch your legs, and drink lots of water, and call every now and then so I’ll at least know you’re alive.”

“Soapie, I—”

“No!” her grandmother yells. “I told you
no
. I can’t and I won’t. Just go
now
. Get out!”

Soapie stalks out of the kitchen, waving her arms in the air like she’s trying to bat away spiderwebs. Rosie feels her eyes stinging with tears.

“She makes me so crazy,” she whispers. “Why can’t she just hug me and act like she’s going to miss me?”

“She’s just upset,” Tony says. “She’s already missing you so much.”

“Then why can’t she show it like other people?”

“You know why,” he says, like he knows anything about them at all, like even one minute of their history would make sense to him.

“You seem to get along with her pretty well!” she says accusingly.

But he just smiles. “Other people’s old people are always easier. That’s all. She doesn’t love me.”

Two days later, on moving day, Jonathan gets up early and gets ready to head out to pick up the U-Haul truck. She calls out to him, “So how many movers did you hire? And when are they getting here?”

“No movers. I got our friends to help,” he calls from the bedroom.

She feels her blood stop cold in her veins. She hauls herself over to the bedroom door and stands there glaring at him so hard that she hopes his eyeballs fall out of his head when he sees how mad she is.
“What?”
she says. “You are
not
calling in our friends. Don’t you even know how they make
fun of us? The whole day is going to be how first we didn’t have the wedding we said we were going to have, and now we didn’t hire movers?”

“But they’re already coming,” he says. “They didn’t mind at all. And who cares if they make fun of us? We’re funny.”

“Jonathan, you are so freaking unconscious all the time! What is the
matter
with you?”

“Oh my God, Rosie,” he says, and starts laughing very hard. “Is this going to end up being the red-boots-and-wedding conversation
again
?”

She is too mad even to speak.

“What’s the matter with you?” he says, and his eyes are rounded in amazement that he has to explain these facts to her. “Friends help each other move. It’s a time-honored thing. Beer and pizza. Laughing together. Don’t you know these guys would be insulted if I didn’t ask for their help?”

“Trust me. They would not be insulted.”

Greta and Joe arrive first, and when they’re still crossing the yard below, Rosie sees that Greta is dressed in a white sundress and sandals and carrying a tray of iced coffees—not at all like somebody who’s planning on putting in a day of packing and carrying boxes. “Just think of this,” Joe says loudly when they get upstairs. “This is the last time we climb up here. Brings sort of a tear to the eye.”

“Well, you mean maybe after
today
it’s the last trip you make up these stairs,” says Jonathan. “You’ve got a few up-and-down trips to make today, old man.” He claps Joe on the shoulder. “We’ve got all these boxes and all this furniture to load on the truck.”

“You’re kidding me, man,” says Joe, and he laughs. “I’m already wiped out. How are we supposed to get all this shit down these stairs?”

“Also,” says Greta, “sorry, but we’ve got a soccer parents’
meeting to get to this afternoon. If you don’t get there on time, you get assigned all the worst jobs for the whole next season.”

The other four come in then, trailed by Jonathan’s younger brother, Patrick, a quiet guy in his twenties who always gets dragged into helping.

“Did you guys know we’re s’posed to pack all this crap on the truck?” says Joe. He pushes his expensive sunglasses up on his head.

“As always, there’ll be beer and pizza at the end of it for you,” says Jonathan. “Play your cards right, and it’ll have bacon
and
pepperoni. No expense spared!”

Hinton, Suzanne’s husband, a scientist who always seems to be in the middle of complex calculations, says, “I don’t think I’ve worked for beer and pizza for quite a while.”

“Jesus. Not only is there the queen-sized bed and the foldout couch, but there are three dressers, a desk, and boxes and boxes and
boxes
of these crazy goddamned fragile teacups,” says Joe, who’s been walking around the apartment, peeking into rooms. “You’re trusting us with these precious teacups?”

“I am,” says Jonathan. “What choice do I have?”

Patrick, who weighs about a hundred pounds and still has acne and plays in a rock band, who has been restlessly bouncing from one foot to another and cracking his knuckles, says, “Come on, man. You and I can do this by ourselves. It’s okay.” He grabs one end of the kitchen table, and Jonathan reaches over and picks up the other end.

“Rosie,” he says, “when you order the pizza, see if you can get them to add some testosterone to it for these guys.”

Rosie scowls at him. How could he not know that his friends are all in their adult lives now, the world where men prove their manhood by hiring others to do the inconvenient
tasks? He’s clung to his grad student existence as though it were an ethical stance.

Lynn’s cell phone rings then and she gets embroiled in a feisty conversation with Brittany, her high-school-age daughter, who wants to spend the day alone with her boyfriend.