The Six Rules of Maybe

someone’s car won’t start.
    Kevin Frink’s Volkswagen was still parked by the curb in the morning, its rounded top shiny and wet with dew. He was asking for it; I’m sure he knew. Everyone in my life was asking for it. Maybe even me.
    Downstairs, Mom looked like hell. She was blowing her nose like she had the start of a cold, and her eyes were flat and tired. Her hair was shoved up in the back like it had been forced against its will to participate in morning. I looked at her hand—no ring. But I saw it there on the counter. A small black velvet box. Funny how a small black velvet box can have the power of a loaded gun.
    “So, the new Mrs. Neuhaus?” I said.
    She gave a little shudder.
    “That’s a good sign,” I said.
    “What,” she said into her coffee cup. The word was as flat as her eyes.
    “You just shuddered,” I said.
    “I didn’t shudder.” But it sounded like a question.
    “Yes, you did.”
    “I didn’t shudder.”
    I let this drop. No one was making pancakes or eggs or some great breakfast this Sunday morning. A big breakfast required optimism. Our house seemed to be lacking that. No, this would be a Shredded Wheat morning, something punishing like that, a spiky bird’s nest rectangle with milk on top.
    “You know, my first date with Dean? We went out to this little café. He said, ‘I’ll have what you’re having,’ and I said, ‘I’m just having coffee.’ And he said, ‘I don’t want just coffee.’”
    “Uh-huh,” I said. I barely dared to speak. The truth seemed to be sitting there right at the end of my tongue, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to let it out and about. I had done that last night with Juliet, spoken the truth, and all I had gotten from it was the feeling I still had—my heart exposed and hurting. No wonder people stayed hidden.
    “The second date, he told me I held my fork wrong. He showed me the proper way. Upside down, like the British. The way I did it looked lower class .”
    “ We’re all lower class too,” I said. “Look.” I swigged out of the orange juice carton without a glass.
    “Scarlet,” she said.
    I tried to burp loudly too, but it didn’t happen. It was quietand unimpressive. I was never very good at that.
    “Use a glass,” she said in her mother voice, but it was her amused one.
    “Does this mean Dean’s not my new daddy?”
    “I thought I was in a bad mood,” she said. She eyed the little box as if it were one of Kevin Frink’s explosive devices. “I told him I would think about it.”
    “Think about it? Isn’t that one of those things you either know or you don’t?”
    “There’s a lot to consider.”
    What was there to consider, just how completely destroyed and unhappy we all would be? The actual degree of destruction? Is that what needed to be considered? And, wasn’t this supposed to be one of those blissful moments of celebration? When the man you supposedly loved asked you to be his wife? She looked horrible. She looked like her personal world had been bombed.
    “Well, I can see how overjoyed you are,” I said. It seemed obvious to me, if not so obvious to anyone else. Happiness shouldn’t make you so miserable.
    “It’s complicated. Dean has a lot of great qualities. He can offer us a lot.”
    Right—he could offer us the chance to feel like crap about ourselves on a twenty-four-hour basis. If there was a time for honesty, right then was it, no matter what the consequences. This wasn’t just her life anyway. “Like what? What can he offer us?” I said, but she didn’t answer. We were interrupted by the sound of Juliet coming up from the basement, the thud of her feet on the stairs. For such a frail-looking person, Juliet had a heavy step, she’d always had. She actually looked pretty great, after last night. She wore a sweet white nightgown and a soft pink robe untied over her belly.
    “Oh, I feel like a sea lion,” she moaned, as if she were in distress. But she didn’t look distressed. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes sugar-crystal bright. “Coffee …”
    “You’re not supposed to drink coffee,” I said. “The baby ingests whatever you do. His system is too delicate for caffeine.”
    “In moderation it’s okay,” she said. “I looked it up.”
    “You looked it up?” I was surprised.
    “Bring that baby over here,” Mom said. She put her hands on each side of Juliet, rubbed, bent down, and gave that tummy a kiss. “Good morning, baby.”
    “Okay, enough,” Juliet said. But