The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel (34 page)

She stops breathing and puts her head in her hands.

“I love the way you look in the morning when you wake up and you’re all discombed and walking around, rubbing your belly. And I love how you walk across a room. And I love how you laugh, and how you take care of Soapie, even when she’s horrible to you. And how you eat those stupid kale omelets and pretend you like them, even though no one could because kale was only meant to be a decoration on plates and not something people really eat. And I love how you talk about your students, and how you miss your mom, even though your mom has been dead for so—”

She looks up. “Wait. Kale is good—”

“—for so many years and you never even knew her, but how you think she’s right here with you. And kale is not good; it tastes like stems and grass. But that’s okay, because it’s nice to see you pretending. And, Rosie, I love how brave you were that day you went to have the abortion, and then how much braver it was when you didn’t have it—and the way your eyes filled up with tears when we saw the baby’s face on the ultrasound, and how you think you can turn Jonathan into a father, and how hard you’re trying—”

“Tony, Tony, you’re going to be so sorry you said all this to me. We can’t. We just can’t.”
How is it that he doesn’t have the filters and shields that come as standard equipment on most of the other humans?

“I’m not going to be sorry.” He smiles at her. “I thought I’d be sorry, but I’m anything but. This is me, Rosie, falling at your feet. Ka-boom.”

“But I’ve got to be with Jonathan. He’s the dad, and if you’ve shown me anything, it’s that fathers are important. I
see you with Milo, and how you’re starting to fight for him, and I’m so freaking proud of you for that, and I’ve got to give Jonathan that chance, too.”

“Rosie, all that is very interesting, but it doesn’t have one single thing to do with who you love.”

“Yes, it does—”

“No, no. Don’t you get it? We don’t get to pick who we love. The heart just goes on doing what it does best, falling in love and opening itself up, and it doesn’t give a shit about who we’re supposed to be with. It’s just happy to go on churning out all this love.”

The snow has made the car into a cocoon. He takes her hand and squeezes it, and she knows that they could so start kissing right then and not stop for a week, but he doesn’t even lean toward her. “All right,” he says. “Now let’s go into this nursing home and see if it’s any good.”

“You’ll come with me?”

“Yes.” He closes his eyes. “Apparently I will always come with you.”

They get out of the car, and he comes around and takes her arm so she won’t slip on the pavement with her off-balanced, front-heavy self. Walking up the path to the front door underneath the pavilion, he’s smiling and whistling like he’s the freaking Dalai Lama of love or something. It must be exhausting having to be him and have all those emotions all over the place. Nothing like Jonathan, who of course has feelings, but he’s so much more able to bear them. Even this—even though she’s just told him that she doesn’t love him, he’s walking along beside her, humming a little bit and (she can tell) he’s having feelings about the potted plants in their giant concrete tubs, about the spray of the fountain just ahead and to the left, about the woman
wearing long braids and wrapped in a plaid wool shawl who is wheeling herself in her wheelchair toward them as though she’s in a race.

There’s nothing else for Rosie to do but plod along beside him, holding on, concentrating on not falling.

Harbor View is pretty damn good, and, miraculously, it has an opening for the end of January for a room with a porch, far enough away from the dining room that no boiled vegetables will come wafting down to depress anyone. No one looks deranged, and there’s no click of walkers because there is soft carpeting, no hooded eyes looking blankly into her own. Rosie signs the contract pending Soapie’s approval, and later—just because they’re on a roll—they head to Tony’s real estate agent friend and put the house on the market. And they try not to think about how this is the start of everything coming to an end.

The next day, Greta calls and says they have to meet for lunch, away from home. So they go to Chestnut Foods in New Haven. Rosie puts on her best sweater, the long turquoise one that does not have any toothpaste droppings across her middle. She actually applies lipstick and mascara, puts her hair up in a ponytail, and grabs one of Tony’s coats, which still fits around her middle. She looks pretty fabulous, if she does say so herself.

Greta’s late, and she comes flying in, all business and consternation, apologizing, harried.

“Here, sit down, breathe,” says Rosie. “What’s the matter?”

“Everything. My life. Our men. Joe. Jonathan. Did you order yet?”

“No.” Rosie feels a flicker of fear. “What’s wrong with Joe and Jonathan?”

“Let’s get some paninis or something. Sorry, I don’t have a lot of time, so I have to get to the point. I caught Sandrine smoking pot again, and now apparently, there’s also a
guy
, so I’m insisting on picking her up every day from school myself. I really don’t even have time to eat.”

“See? This is why I won’t even let my kid out of the womb.”

“Yeah, that’s probably what I should have done,” says Greta.

“Next time you’ll know,” says Rosie. “So, what’s with Joe and Jonathan?”

Greta goes over to the food case and orders them eggplant and arugula paninis with melted mozzarella without even asking Rosie if that’s what she wants. Short on time; no time to ask. Rosie folds her napkin and tries to arrange her face into a pleasant, open smile. Fortunately she likes the eggplant and arugula paninis; otherwise she would have to murder Greta.

“Okay,” Greta says as she comes back. “I’ve gotta tell you this: Joe woke me up in the middle of the night and said he just figured out that you’re sleeping with Tony. And this is Clueless Joe, who has never detected sex in his life, up to and including when it was happening to him.”

“Is that it? Trust me. I’m not sleeping with Tony.”

“Well,
I
know that. When he told me what he’d been thinking, I told him all the reasons that you
weren’t
sleeping with Tony, which are …” She pauses for a moment, seeing if Rosie is going to jump in and fill in the reasons, but when she doesn’t, Greta sees that having come this far into the sentence, she now has to go on—“which
are
: he’s too young; he’s kind of … well, he’s not your real
type
; also, he’s got a seriously complicated home life;
and
he wouldn’t really fit in with the other guys in the posse. Which is important after all these years.” She sits back. “There. Did I miss anything?”

“I don’t believe so,” says Rosie coldly.

Greta peers at her. “So are you and Jonathan … all right? I mean, I know it must be awful being separated like this—I can’t even imagine how lonely you must be, going through all this. And Joe was really upset with me that I wasn’t seeing enough of you. He said that I was your best friend, and that he and all the rest of us needed to step in and support you during this time, while you wait to go join Jonathan and all.”

“We’re all right,” says Rosie. “I mean, as you recall, it took him a little while to come around to the idea of family and fatherhood.”

“Well, sure. I mean, this is Jonathan we’re talking about. He’s cautious. And babies aren’t like teacups, let’s face it.”

“But he’s into it now,” she says.

“Well, that’s good,” says Greta. “Joe’s calling him tonight, in the name of the sacred brotherhood and all, to tell him how he has to step up his game. Antlers, you know. When one female is thought to be perhaps falling out of the pack, the other males circle around. Or something. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“No,” says Rosie.

“This is just Joe’s fantasy life probably. Forget it. Listen, though, more importantly, I’ve found a woman who gives Lamaze classes in her house. Same person I used way back when, she’s still giving classes, thank God. You don’t want to just take the hospital course, trust me on this. It’s four weeks, and I can go with you because it’s in the evening, and Joe has said that he’ll watch the kids.”

“How very nice of you.”

“Yes, it’ll be our weekly outing. I’m looking forward to it.”

The sandwiches show up just then, and they get busy eating.

“How old
is
Tony anyway?” says Greta with her mouth full.

“Oh. Nineteen,” says Rosie.

“Stop it. Okay, I deserved that. So I take it that he and that pregnant woman at Thanksgiving didn’t hit it off, huh? The one you were fixing him up with?”

“Not so much.”

“Tough when her idiot boyfriend was there. Man, that
guy was a piece of work, wasn’t he?” She puts down the rest of her sandwich and starts wrapping it up in the paper to take along. “Hey, so Lamaze starts this week, on Wednesday night. I’ll pick you up?”

“Okay.” Rosie feels like a sullen teenager, like Sandrine must feel. Really, she’d like to maybe take the kid out for a Coke and they could compare notes about Greta.

Greta is studying her. “You look good, you know that? That color is nice on you. I wish I had your freedom right now, I’ll tell you that. It’s just run, run, run all over the place lately.” Then she stops and lowers her voice and leans in. “Rosie. Do not fuck him. I remember how pregnancy hormones are, and I saw the way he looks at you. Joe might not know what he’s talking about, but he
is
on to something. I know this guy might look good when Jonathan is so clueless, but you can train Jonathan. And here’s the big one: Jonathan is the
father of your child
.”

The Lamaze teacher, Starla Jones, is about the same age as Rosie, but of course her children—she has five of them—were all born long ago, and, according to her speech at the start of the class, their births were joyous, calm, almost religious experiences. She is firm in her spiritual conviction that a person can breathe her way through pain. In fact, she tells the class—a motley assortment of five young, hugely pregnant couples and then Greta and Rosie—that
pain
isn’t even going to be a word they use. Ever.

“Do you know what word we’re going to use instead?” she says.

“Discomfort?” asks one of the pregnant women, who
has a long blond ponytail and looks as though she’s possibly going to deliver a hippopotamus in the very near future.

Starla Jones frowns. “No, our words are too powerful to use them so negatively,” she says. She looks around, one eyebrow arched, and raises and lowers her arms slowly, as though she’s parting the Red Sea. “We’ll just call them
openings
. We’re opening to our new lives. We’ll develop mantras and focal points to help us through.”

The class meets in her condo, and once all the women are lying on the living room floor with their pillows and their massive bellies sticking up, Rosie thinks the place looks like a balloon factory showroom. Children’s artwork is everywhere, tacked up on the walls. Down the hall, they can hear the sound of kids squabbling, and periodically a deep male voice issuing a command for quiet.

“Does this really work?” asks one man in a squeaky voice, and the rest of the group laughs.

“Does it
work
!” says Starla Jones. “Does it work! I could show you my home movies of every single one of my births, and you’d be convinced.”

Oh, please no
, Rosie thinks. She and Greta widen their eyes at each other, which makes Rosie laugh. She’s grateful, really, that Greta is going along with her to the Lamaze classes, even though when she told Tony about it, he pointed out that he remembers every single thing there is to know about Lamaze. She stretches out on the floor in Starla Jones’s living room and follows the directions, relaxing her left side, then tensing her muscles, and then relaxing her right side.