The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel by Dawson Maddie

Author:Dawson, Maddie [Dawson, Maddie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780770437695
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

A week after Soapie comes home, she and Rosie are walking slowly down the path outside by the rosebushes, Soapie inching along with her walker and frowning at how hard it all is, and Rosie is talking about the baby and how pleased she is. And then she swallows and says, “Soapie, I am really so sorry that it didn’t work out about us going to Paris. I know that’s something you really wanted, and I would have loved to be able to do that with you. If only our timing had been a little better, you know?”

Soapie looks up at her in complete bafflement. After a while she says, “Who’s going to Paris? What are you talking about?”

It hits her like a body slam, how much has gone and in such a short time. She has to turn away.

There’s no mistaking the difference in Soapie now. They’re not the amusing little Gang of Four anymore, dancing and singing and cheating at Scrabble. George’s eyes look shiny all the time, like he’s holding all his tears right there behind them. He has that smiling-through-adversity deal down perfectly, which makes him seem almost pathologically sunny and optimistic, like the singing orphans in Oliver Twist. He flits back and forth in his little double life, as Tony calls it, looking like a vaudeville performer who’s just about to grab a baton and break into a song-and-dance routine.

“George, my man George, now he’s living the dream! Two ladies in his life, and they both love him to death!” That’s what Tony says.

“And neither one has an ounce of her right mind left,” says George, and it makes them all laugh, even Soapie. They do this riff nearly every day now because they all enjoy it so much.

In an odd way, life seems even better than before, the way a warm, sunny day in winter might catch you by surprise in between snowstorms.

Rosie and Tony cook each night now, and the four of them eat together just as they used to do, except now Soapie is easygoing and quiet, and the rest of them hover around her, cutting up her food, patting her hand, stopping to give her kisses. There is, Rosie thinks, a kind of surprising sweetness in the house that she never felt before, when she can be still enough to let it in. It’s the sweetness that comes when something can’t be permanent; it comes attached to an ache.

One day, eating at a Chinese restaurant, she gets a fortune that says: “Be happy in the middle because the end will crack you open.”

Greta, who is sitting across from her, says that’s the best description of pregnancy and childbirth she’s ever heard.

But Rosie knows that the fortune is really about Soapie, and that where they are now, this is the middle, and she is responsible for noting all the possible happiness while she’s passing through here. There are worse things.

At night, after dinner, they all still try to play Scrabble, but as

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