Free The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel by Maddie Dawson Page B

toddlers, attending Little League games, consulting on lunch box shopping, there have been times—though not as many as her friends probably imagine—that she’s tried to picture herself padding around in their mammoth houses, driving their minivans, and cuddling children, that
maybe
she’s felt a little twinge. But that was it, just a tiny twinge from time to time.
    More often, she and Jonathan would come back home from their friends’ houses, and she’d walk through their silent apartment, its four rooms clean and plain, and find herself grateful for its smooth emptiness, for her freedomto write, for the pens neatly arranged on her desk. In the evenings, she’d smile across the living room at Jonathan, who was also reading under the lamplight, and one of them would say, “Letterman or Leno?” and off they’d go to bed, snuggled under the sheets, watching television until they fell asleep, their books, old wineglasses, and stained coffee cups balanced beside their bed.
    When she moves to California and makes new friends, she’ll be a whole new person, Jonathan’s wife, and no one will know about
The Jonathan and Rosie Show
. No one will guess that they are adorably incompetent and eccentric. At last they’ll be free to be themselves.

    Funny, how something like a wedding can fall apart in a hundred ways.
    After it happens, she rather thinks of it as like a Slinky on the stairs, picking up momentum and speed, bumping its way to the bottom, slowly and inevitably at first, and then … well, it’s over.
    Andres Schultz—he who seems to be the chief change catalyst of her life right now—stays and stays at the apartment. For some reason, on day three, which is officially the day when houseguests and fish begin to stink, Andres Schultz, not realizing he had outworn his welcome, declared he was staying for at least another week. And then another. He continued to use up their oxygen supply, continued to refer to her as “Rosa,” continued to stride through the living room, bellowing into his cell phone. By then he had even commandeered the little office that belonged exclusively toRosie. He had backers to talk to and cajole, and apparently there were other teacup men who needed to be dragooned into participating or donating, as well. Rosie can’t keep track of it all.
    And why should she? Thanks to him, she’s busy planning a wedding and a move, and quitting her job, announcing the news to her students and her friends, even to her grandmother’s doctors and neighbors. She has to get boxes, she has to hire a caterer, she has to let the landlord know they’re leaving, she has to clean the apartment so it can be shown. And she needs to figure out who will marry them; somehow she knows a guy who knows a guy who’s a friendly, cool justice of the peace (because Jonathan says you can’t just have
any
old justice of the peace) and this person
might
be free on Saturday, although it’s short notice. Oh, yes, and big big BIG on the list is finding the right caregiver for Soapie. Are they renting a U-Haul truck for the move? Should they sell one car or should they drive separately? Where are they going to stay when they get to San Diego? Did Jonathan extend his health insurance benefits to cover him in California when he told the human resources department at his company that he was quitting?
    All this has to be done while stepping around, in front of, and behind Andres Schultz, who only stops pacing and talking on the telephone long enough to offer his personal observation about the way life can
whiplash
you around, flinging you into a better place you didn’t even know was there.
    He has, she realizes, a bland, slow-talking positivity that gives her headaches. And, worse, he finds nouns and verbs to be interchangeable. He
meetings
with people. He and Jonathan need to do a lot of
teacupping
because, let’s face it, thirty-eight teacups might not
platform
spectacularly.
    Never mind the grammar,
this
was news.