“Then I won’t come.”
“So we’re breaking up, then? Just like that?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know! It just hit me, how you really are, and what this is going to be like. I can’t get in that truck and drive across country with you and deal with that twerp of a man while you and he set up some museum. I can’t.”
“Twerp?” He laughs. “This is all about Andres Schultz again? And don’t tell me, there’s going to be a part about the wedding, too. And red boots! There is, isn’t there?” She knows what he’s doing: he’s trying to jolly her into laughing, and then she will be disarmed, and then after a few more jokes and maybe some hugs and some halfhearted promises that look fullhearted, she’ll willingly go and get in the truck. She knows he thinks this. She knows it has worked for him before. But she is not a puppy dog. No more.
“Just stop it,” she says.
He looks out the window and then drums his fingers on the countertop, calculating. Then he sighs and says, “Okay. Fine. You want to change the whole plan right here at the eleventh hour and ruin what we’ve been planning for weeks, then great. You go right ahead. I’m taking you at your word.”
“Thank you,” she says. She gets up and makes her way to the truck, banging her way down the stairs on her crutches, and then he comes down and unlocks it and gets in, without even once looking at her.
Riding back to Soapie’s, with the wind blowing her hair, she feels as free as she’s felt in a long, long time.
[nine]
Soapie’s house is dark and quiet as they pull up. Jonathan drives the truck around back, and Rosie winces at the crunching sound the tires make on the gravel drive, the way the whole thing rattles and shudders when he turns the key off, and mostly at the white gleam of the headlights against the bank of kitchen windows. The sensor lights come on, and she is braced for even worse: that Soapie herself might come charging out of the house in her nightgown, demanding to know what’s going on. The old Soapie would have done that. But when it doesn’t happen, Rosie says quietly, “Okay, well, let’s get this over with.”
Jonathan, who has been grimly silent all the way over, climbs out of his seat and goes around to the back. She hears the rolling door go up, hears him plunking boxes down onto the ground. Has he forgotten that she needs help disembarking from the seat? Or maybe he’s too angry to come and help her. He’s ready to be done with her. Whenever she dared to look over at him during the drive, she saw his jaw working back and forth, his eyes staring straight ahead.
After a while, she opens the truck door, places her crutch down on the running board, braced against the frame of the truck, and then leans herself on it and eases her way down. Just as she’s almost to the ground, though, the crutch slips out of its place, and she is sent sprawling on the gravel, landing on her stomach. She’s skinned her knees and her hands, which she put down to break her own fall. And she has to stifle herself from crying out.
He’s not anywhere near, thank goodness. He’s carrying boxes over to the back door and stacking them up on the porch. There aren’t many, really. They’ve agreed that he’ll take all the furniture with him to California, and she’ll keep only her clothing and some of her books.
She gets up gingerly, and takes the crutches and limps her way over to the back door. Through the window she sees that only the stove light is on, and she can see that the dinner dishes are still all lined up, dirty, on the countertop, with pots and the frying pan stacked on the stove. She gets out her key and turns it in the lock, ever so quietly.
Jonathan comes back from the truck with two more boxes and sets them down as she gets the door open.
“Okay,” he says. “What do you want me to do with all this?”
“Just leave them on the porch.”
“But how are you and Soapie going to get them in tomorrow? You’re both physical wrecks, you know.”
“Look, we’ll manage,” she says. “I don’t want any more of this long strung-out good-bye. Okay? It is what it is.”
“Great. The porch it is.” Then he looks at her. “So, you’re sure about this? You realize what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, so … good-bye then, Rosie Kelley.” He turns on his heel and gets back in the truck, and she steps inside the cool haven of Soapie’s kitchen, closing the back door without once looking at the truck backing down the driveway. She can hear the spray of gravel signaling that he’s going too fast. She’s never felt so honest-to-God free, except for the tiny fact that she has to go throw up.
Afterward, she goes back outside and stares at the boxes, trying to remember which one might hold her toothbrush and her nightgown, but she has no idea. She realizes she doesn’t even care. She’ll sleep in her clothes, she thinks, making her way across the dark kitchen and into the hallway and up the stairs. Soapie’s door is closed at the end of the hallway, and she can hear snoring. With difficulty, she goes to her old room and turns the doorknob, hits the light.
Oh God, it’s Tony Cavaletti. In her bed.
“What the—? Who?” he yells, leaping up like he’s going to have a heart attack. “What? What’s going on?”
“Sorry,” she says in a whisper. “Tony, it’s Rosie. Sorry to scare you.”
His hair is sticking up all over, and his eyes are squinting in the light. “What are you doing here?” he says. And then he looks afraid again and says, “Wait. Did something happen to Sophie? Did I sleep through—” and starts to get out of bed.
“No, no,” she says, and holds up her hand to stop him. “I just came back here to sleep. But it’s okay. I’ll go to the guest room. You go back to sleep.”
She turns out the light, and she can hear him settle back down in the bed.
Then he says, “Wait. Weren’t you, like, moving to California today?”
“Yes,” she whispers thickly, “but I didn’t go. Long story.”
“Is this your old bed? I’ll go to the guest room if you want.”
“Yes. No. I’ll talk about it in two or three weeks, which is how long I’m planning to sleep.” She closes the door and goes down the hall to the room that was always saved for Ruthie, Soapie’s editor, whenever she would come. It’s a boring, generic room with hardly any personality to it: brown mahogany furniture, a highboy, and the kind of long, low-slung dresser that was popular when Soapie was young.
Rosie pulls down the white crocheted bedspread to discover that there are no sheets underneath. She collapses on top anyway, wrapping herself up in the cover, not having the energy to haul herself out to the hall closet, search for clean sheets, and then figure out how to manipulate them onto the bed.
It’s all she can do to lie down and squeeze her eyes shut, and hope that maybe she can remember how relieved she feels, so that then she won’t be sad.
“What in the world are you doing? Are you planning to sleep forever? What’s the matter with you anyway?”
It’s Soapie, and the blinding shards of light and crack of pain are Soapie, too, because she’s flung open the curtains and released the window shades with such force that they have clattered and banged their way to the top of the glass, landing with the approximate decibel level of buckshot. Rosie buries her head under the pillow and groans.
“What’s going on here?” Soapie comes over and shakes her foot. “For Christ’s sake, you don’t even have any sheets on this bed.” Rosie lifts the pillow, shielding her eyes with her hand. She’d flailed around in the covers all night long, freezing and then broiling, and she doesn’t think she’s really slept at all. Maybe only in the last twenty minutes or so, and now Soapie is going to keep that from happening again.
“I thought you went to California. Why didn’t you tell me you were going to come here?”
“Because it was the middle of the night,” says Rosie. “I decided to stay here and help you.”
“Help me with what? That’s the biggest crock I e
ver heard,” says Soapie. “I didn’t even know you were here until I saw all those boxes on the porch, and Tony told me you were in the guest room. What’s got into you?”
“My foot hurts. I didn’t go.”
“You came to your senses, you mean.”
“No, I really did come to take care of you. I’m going to stay here for a while.”
“You’re not taking care of me,” says Soapie. “You can stay here for a while if you want to, but I have a life. Get up and come downstairs and have something to eat. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“No.”
“It’s nearly noon.” She works her way through the room, Dustcloth Diva–style, picking up Rosie’s flip-flops and putting them down again by the closet door, restacking the magazines that are on the dresser, using the elbow of her sweater to dust off the highboy, and peering into the empty trash can. Then she shakes her head and says, “Come on downstairs. You need to eat,” and finally leaves.
Rosie manages to sit up and swing her legs over to the side of the bed and consider the landscape of the bedroom in the daytime. Utterly charmless, except for the unusable brick fireplace in the corner—a nice touch by 1880s standards, when this place was built.
Well, she should see to fixing this place up. When she’s better, of course. She’ll help Soapie with setting things right again. And she’ll make meals for the two of them—nice, healthy, vegetarian foods that will help them both feel better, and she’ll serve them in the garden this summer on the wrought-iron table. And monitor the medication, mow the lawn, drive Soapie to all her social engagements. Buy peonies at the nursery. Tony can resume his life, go back to his wife, or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing.
She lies back on the pillow for just a moment longer, hoping that if she closes her eyes for another few minutes, she can stop picturing Jonathan’s stunned good-bye and actually feel good about what was probably the best decision she ever made in her life.
Later that day, she sits out on the patio with Soapie, who has insisted she at least look at a tuna fish sandwich and a mound of potato chips. Soapie, she of the elegant cheekbones and the slim ankles, is drinking a Bloody Mary, and looking serene and put-together in her khaki pedal pushers and white crewneck shirt, exclaiming about the bright sunlight and the dry air and the warm temperatures, as though she herself has managed to engineer them. Her hair is done, and her nails are painted a neon orange that actually makes her speckled hands look dangerous, as if they have pointed weapons on the tips.
“At least drink that tea. You look dehydrated,” says Soapie. “God, I’m the one who’s going to have to take care of you, aren’t I? I can’t believe you didn’t even put sheets on that bed. You were all curled up in there, like some animal.”
“Well, there was a man in my real bed,” says Rosie, yawning. She cannot stop yawning. “I guess you won’t need him anymore, now that I’m staying here. He can go back to his wife.”
“I like him,” says Soapie.
“Well, I know you like him, but that doesn’t mean he gets to stay here and live with you forever. Doesn’t he have a life?”
“He’s got a complicated domestic situation apparently. There are at least two women involved and some little boy—I don’t know. It’s ugly, I take it. I can’t fathom what happened to your generation, why none of you ever learned to cope. And what the hell is the matter with you anyway?”
“I don’t know. I’m having an early midlife crisis maybe.”
“You’re so melodramatic. Seriously. Did Jonathan break up with you?”
“I may have broken up with him.”
“You did not.”
“I kind of did, actually.”
“Was it because he wouldn’t marry you?”
“No. He wanted us to get married last week. I said no.”
“You did, huh? I wish I believed that. For God’s sake, will you eat that sandwich?” Soapie takes a long sip of her Bloody Mary and then gives Rosie a long look. “So you called everything off, then? Well, if that’s true, I have to say I’m proud of you.”
Rosie shakes her head. “Thank you,” she says. “It’s nice to have you finally proud of me for something, even though a lot of people would see this as me being a coward. But thank you.”
“Well, it remains to be seen whether you stick with it. This is a short-lived declaration against marriage on your part, I suspect.”
“Yeah, probably.” She takes a sip of her iced tea. “While we’re on the topic, maybe you can tell me why you hate men so much.”
“Where’d you get the idea I hate men?”
“Oh, maybe the fact that you never had any around, and also maybe the thousand warnings you gave me about them. ‘They’re all out for one thing! Give ’em an inch …’ Greta and I still recite that to each other when we’ve had too much to drink.”
“I had to tell you that. It was a legal requirement back then that girls get their safety warnings.” She stretches out on her chaise and massages her temples. “Actually, I like men a hell of a lot better than I like women. You don’t see men losing their minds in the name of almighty love and romance. Men don’t play those stupid little games women play—all that hard-to-get crap. I’ve watched women my whole life, and there’s not any one of them that doesn’t have some tragic love story they can’t wait to sit you down and tell you.”
“Speaking of which …”
“What?”
Rosie looks right at her. “I understand that your old pal George Tarkinian comes over all the time now.”
Soapie narrows her eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing. Just why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why should I tell you? It’s none of your business.”
“You know, sometimes people who are related tell each other about their lives because they like to share information. It’s called love and communication. Plus, I had to hear you were seeing George Tarkinian from Tony Cavaletti, and that was pretty embarrassing. He said it was clear I don’t know anything about you.”
Soapie actually laughs. “You certainly don’t know as much as you think you know.”
“So, how’s his … um, wife doing?”
“Rosie, if you are trying to get me riled up, you are not succeeding. George and I have fun together. Okay? Don’t even try to make this seem like something you can manufacture a sordid little drama out of, because you can’t. His wife has Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t even know him anymore.”
“I’m not looking to manufacture a sordid little drama!”
“The hell you say.”
“I just wish you told me things … you know … about yourself. Why do I have to hear it from Tony, when I’m the one who loves you?” She can feel the tears behind her eyes, so she looks down and starts picking at the scrape on the palm of her hand, gotten when she fell out of the truck last night. When she looks up, Soapie is actually smiling at her. And then she leans over to Rosie and says, in a mischievous way that might be considered almost girlfriendish, if Soapie had that category to her: “He dances good. I kind of like that about him. Also—well, he’s … ardent.”
“Really now?” Rosie says, fascinated. “Ardent, huh? There’s a word you don’t hear much. So what do you call him? Would you say he’s your boyfriend?”
“God, that’s so distasteful in people over thirty, isn’t it?”
“Well, what do you prefer then? Lover? Partner?”
“God, no. Lover is way too clinical, and partner makes it sound like we went into business together.”
“Wow. This is big-time, isn’t it? Soapie Baldwin-Kelley falls in love at long last. It’s been a long dry spell since Grandpa. Good for you.”
“I guess he’s my main squeeze. That’s it.” Soapie settles back in her chair, looks at her nails for a long time. “That has the right touch of joie de vivre, I think. That, by the way, in case you haven’t figured it out, is what was wrong with you and Jonathan.”
“That I didn’t ca
ll him my main squeeze?”
“No. That you don’t have joie de vivre with him.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have eyes, Rosie. You want more out of life than he could ever give you. He’s a nice enough guy, but he’s limited. Pitifully limited.”
“Well, in some ways maybe, but we’re all …”
“No. Just look at his thing about teacups in boxes, and you’ll see everything you need to know about him. He’s a dry man. No spirit! He’s like an arid desert of a human being. Now that you’re done with him, I can tell you the truth. I never knew what you saw in him. I always thought you were settling.”
“Come on, he’s funny,” Rosie protests. “Mostly. Or sometimes.”
Soapie sighs and lights a cigarette. “Uh-oh, now you think you need to defend him. I just think he’s not the love of your life, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Huh. I didn’t know you believed in the concept of ‘love of your life.’ ”
“I’m not sure I do. But you do. And you’re way better off without him. Even today, with your hair like that. If you’d get your hair done, eat some decent food, and buy some decent clothes, you could start having a little fun and then you’ll see what life can really be like. Get you some joie de vivre. You could have adventures.”
Seriously? Rosie wants to say. You think I should take life advice from a woman who’s nearly ninety years old and after fifty dry years is only now discovering how great it is to have a man in the bed?
Two days later, she finds herself in the kitchen with Tony Cavaletti, who is making a pot of coffee and a pan of cinnamon buns for breakfast. After two days of having no appetite, she has been brought to her knees by the smell of the cinnamon. She’s pretty sure she can gather enough self-control to keep herself from grabbing all of them and running upstairs once they’re done, but she can’t promise that at some point she won’t be licking the pan. She just hopes she can wait until after Tony leaves for work before she starts in on it.
The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel Page 9