One True Theory of Love

by Laura Fitzgerald

  A pang of love and a lifetime of memories hit Meg when she saw him from behind. As always, he wore his navy blue team shirt. As always, he covered his mostly bald head with a UA baseball cap. As always, he sat alone in his season-ticket spot directly behind the home team batter-up box.

  Ever hopeful, he bought two seats each season, but one mostly sat empty. Meg and Henry joined him as often as they could. She loved the whiteness of the ball against the greenness of the grass, and the organ music, and the crack of the bat smacking the ball. She loved the very purity and simplicity of the sport. What she loved most, however, was seeing her dad so content.

  Henry bounded down the stadium stairs ahead of Meg and threw his arms around his grandfather from behind. “Hi, Grandpa!”

  “Hey!” Pleased to see him, Phillip happily patted Henry’s forearm and ignored the spilled popcorn his exuberant greeting had caused. “Hi, you two! Nice to see you! What’re you two up to? Want some popcorn? It’s tasty tonight.”

  He scooted over a seat. Henry plopped into the chair he’d vacated and dug into the bag of popcorn. Arriving, Meg nudged Henry, who stood to allow her to sit and then plunked his lanky body onto her lap.

  “How’re you doing, Dad?” Meg asked, accepting a handful of popcorn from the bag he offered.

  “Good. I’m doing good.” Phillip adjusted his glasses, his most notable nervous habit.

  “Mom tells me you have aspirations of being a painter in Paris.”

  Calmly, her dad shook his head. “I never said I wanted to be a painter. I simply said, more than once, who knows what I might want to do with this next part of my life? I’ve worked very hard for many, many years. Tax season’s hell, pardon my French, and—”

  “That wasn’t French,” Henry pointed out.

  “Don’t interrupt,” Meg scolded.

  Phillip shrugged. “I was just making a point, which your mother didn’t get, as usual.”

  “I think I get it, Dad,” Meg said. “You’re having your well-deserved midlife crisis.”

  She’d said it teasingly, but his return look was direct and even. “Do I look like I’m in crisis?”

  Meg peered at him. His eyes were calm, his skin was smooth, and nothing about him suggested crisis. “No,” she said, “you don’t.”

  “That’s because I’m not. I’m just thinking through some things.”

  “In your usual well-reasoned, contemplative way,” she said.

  “One hopes,” her father said.

  Henry leapt up from Meg’s lap. “Can I get an eegee and then try to catch foul balls with those kids over there?”

  Phillip immediately reached for his wallet. He loved to buy treats for Henry. He’d always bought them for Meg when she was little, too. Cotton candy, giant Pixie Stix, those ridiculous plastic-crap rings in gumball machines—anything to give her an easy joy. Her mother, on the other hand, had been the queen of no.

  After Henry left, Phillip slid his gaze back to the game. “Nice breeze tonight, isn’t there?” he said. “I’ve always felt best when there’s a little bit of a breeze in the air. Keeps the world from feeling too stale, too stagnant.”

  “Dad?” He raised his eyebrows to acknowledge he’d heard her, but he kept his eyes on the game. “What kind of things are you thinking through?”

  His glance to her was quick and a little uncertain, and his swallow came thick and hard. “I’m trying to figure out how to make a few changes in my life without hurting anyone.”

  “It’s okay to put yourself first once in a while, Dad,” Meg said. “Do what you need to in order to be happy. If you want to sell your accounting practice or pare it back, go right ahead.”

  “It’s not work so much,” he said. “Your mother and I haven’t been happy together for a very long time. You know that, right?”

  Yes, Dad. Everyone knows that. He was thinking divorce. Or separation, or something big. The startling hugeness of whatever it was, even though it wasn’t entirely unexpected, thudded through Meg’s brain and threatened to waylay the supportive response she wanted to give. She took a moment to center herself before she replied.

  “You’ve got such a big heart,” she said. “I hope you make room in it for joy on a scale you’ve not yet experienced.”

  Phillip pressed his hands against his heart, touched. “You always see the best in people.”

  “I get that from you,” she said.

  He turned back to the game, pressing his lips together to keep his emotions in check. Meg studied him thoughtfully. He’d bottled himself up for years, decades, a lifetime. The idea of making a change—of feeling deeply—had to be scary.

  “You’ve got a safety net, Dad,” she said. “I hope you know that. When you’re ready to make a leap, I’ll be there for you.”

  Without taking his eyes from the game, he patted her knee. Inexplicably, Meg found herself wanting to cry.

  After the game, Phillip declined Meg’s invitation to join them at Starbucks, so Meg and Henry settled on the patio after ordering a Mocha Mint Frappuccino for her and an apple juice for him.

  For a few minutes, they sat quietly. University Boulevard vibrated with the laughter of college students and the smell of the hookah from Sinbad’s and the occasional ding-ding as the trolley came by. While taking it in, Meg also ran through the conversation she wanted to have with Henry. Spending time with Ahmed that day certainly had stirred something in her, but it also seemed to have stirred something in him. Several times since then he’d mentioned Ahmed—how nice he was, how brave to fly on an airplane alone, and, more than once, how he wasn’t married and wasn’t that a pretty neat thing? Henry was smitten with Ahmed in a way Meg found disconcerting.

  “Henry?”

  He met her eyes. “Mom?”

  “On a scale from one to ten, how happy would you say you are?”

  Henry, who loved these sorts of questions, got an adorably thoughtful look on his face. “I’d say probably a nine.”

  Meg laughed, delighted. “What would it take for you to say ten?”

  “An iPod,” Henry said. “Violet’s dad just bought her one, and I want one, too.”

  “That’s it?” Meg said. “Just an iPod?”

  Henry nodded. “Will you get me one?”

  “I’m fine with you being a nine on the happiness scale,” Meg said. “Any happier and you’d be living in la-la land.”

  “How about for my birthday?”

  “I’m not spending a hundred fifty dollars on an iPod, Henry.” They didn’t even have a computer at home to download music; for e-mail and Web searches, Meg relied on her computer at work. “I can’t even remember the last time I spent that much on myself. We don’t have that kind of money, kiddo.”

  Henry’s lower lip protruded in a pout, and Meg’s mind immediately began doing loop-de-loops about the iPod. It wasn’t totally about the money. She wanted their world low-tech and high-touch and for Henry’s mind to remain unfettered, hence her limits on TV and video games. Stripping away the distracting gadgets resulted in an in-your-face relationship, and while Henry’s spirited independence was without question a bit much sometimes, Meg wouldn’t trade it for anything. She knew his teenage years would come fast enough and she felt an overpowering urge to

  s-l-o-w

  l-i-f-e

  d-o-w-n.

  But life was not cooperating. Henry was catapulting to puberty and Meg knew she’d soon enough lose his affection. Now it was so precious. His class was working on poetry and he’d written “An Ode to My Mother: My mom is like a telephone wire. She connects me to the ones I love.” It was taped on the wall outside his classroom. How many more poems like that could she count on? If he had an iPod, he’d walk around with those white ear buds stuck in his ears. She’d become an annoyance to him, an interruption. And then he’d stop writing poetry about her. You have flowers in your heart, he’d told her just last week. She’d written it down so she’d never forget.

  “Mom?” he said.

  “Henry?”
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  “Maybe I’m not a nine for being happy. Maybe I’m an eight. Or a seven. Or a one.”

  The flowers in Meg’s heart wilted. “Henry, please. You’re still very young. Maybe when you’re twelve we’ll get you an iPod.”

  “It’s not that.” He twisted his clear plastic apple juice glass. Meg waited him out, vaguely frightened. “Some kid at Violet’s school likes her. I mean, he like likes her. Like, he likes her.”

  Meg suppressed a laugh but couldn’t help smiling. Fourth grade. This was the age it all began. “And that bothers you because . . . ?”

  “Because I like her! Hello!” He looked at Meg like she’d gone AWOL.

  “She’s your best friend,” Meg said. “That’s different than like-liking her. Are you saying you have other feelings for her?”

  Henry sighed. “I just know that the kid at her school needs to butt out.”

  Ah, jealousy. Really, a fear of . . . a fear of loss, right? Of something being taken away. His friendship with Violet was priceless to him.

  “You want things to stay just as they are,” Meg said. The dejection in Henry’s nod nearly broke Meg’s heart. She, too, wanted things to stay the same. Their life was innocent and simple and so very, very good. Please don’t grow up, Henry. Please don’t change. Except—blossom.

  “It’s tough when someone comes along and throws everything out of whack and makes you feel things you might not be ready to feel, isn’t it?” Henry nodded morosely again. “You’ve got to stick to who you are,” Meg said, “because who you are is really special, and Violet knows that. If you change to try and keep her, you’ll end up losing her. Does that make any sense?”

  “Sort of,” Henry said. “Not really, but sort of.”

  Meg let out her breath in a disappointed exhalation at how the conversation had gone—maybe a B-minus on the mom report card. An A for effort, but a B-minus for helping Henry make sense of his world, because there just weren’t always easy answers where the heart was concerned.

  “The same holds true for me, Henry,” she said. “You know Ahmed, that guy we met today at LuLu’s?”

  “Of course I know him!” Henry said. “I was sitting right there at the same table as you—you think I can’t remember who I met, like, five hours ago? Um, duh!”

  “You and your grandmother are so literal that sometimes it makes me want to scream,” Meg said. “What I want to know is what you were up to by telling him we’re single and wanting his phone number. What was that about?”

  Henry shrugged one shoulder. “I liked him.”

  “I liked him, too,” Meg said. “But I also like our life just as it is. We don’t need any complications right now. If we run into him at LuLu’s again, great. If not, that’s fine, too. But we don’t need to exchange phone numbers and you don’t need to be telling him where you play soccer. It’s not even safe, to tell people we don’t know very well things like that. So don’t do it anymore. Okay?”

  Henry made a maybe/maybe-not face at her, telling her without words that understanding was one thing while agreement was something else entirely.

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  Henry extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Serious. I’m Henry.”

  I think Henry might be having father issues,” Meg told Amy the next day. They were in Amy’s kitchen, with Meg seated at the breakfast bar and Amy standing behind it, chopping vegetables for a salad.

  Meg always tried to arrive before Clarabelle and Phillip, because, while Henry played with his cousins, Maggie and Kelly, ages two and four, and while Amy’s husband, David, got the grill ready or tinkered with something in the garage, it gave Meg and Amy time to catch each other up on their respective lives before Clarabelle showed up with her intrusive opinions.

  Meg looked forward to the time when she could indulge again in long lunch dates with women friends as she had before she’d had Henry, but at the moment, when she was so busy being the single mother of a nine-year-old, it seemed the only friendships that worked were those that came easy and by circumstance. She was friendly with her fellow teachers and the female staff at Foundation, and of course she had the Loop Group and other assorted residents at the apartment complex to socialize with, but otherwise, she pretty much just had Amy.

  At Meg’s declaration that Henry might be having father issues, Amy looked up from the carrot she was slicing. “Did he ask to see Jonathan?”

  “No!” Meg said. “God, no!”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “You say that like it would be the worst thing in the world.”

  “Hell will freeze before Jonathan gets near my son,” Meg said.

  Amy arched an eyebrow. “Henry’s his kid, too.”

  “Can you say unwitting sperm donor?” Meg said. “No, Jonathan had his chance to be a dad and chose not to take it. Thankfully, he has no interest in Henry, so it’s a moot point, anyway. But no—we met this guy yesterday, this very sexy guy, and Henry basically threw himself at him. I felt sorry for him, actually.”

  “For Henry or for the very sexy guy?” Amy asked. “And what made him sexy? Give me some spice. My life is sorely lacking in spice.”

  “I meant the guy. Ahmed.” Meg looked out the kitchen window at Henry, who was playing some sort of fetch game with his cousins. “Should I feel sorry for Henry?”

  “Of course not,” Amy said. “It just wasn’t clear from how you said it.”

  “Let’s see,” Meg mused, “what made him sexy? Well, his looks, of course. His father’s Iranian, so he’s got those nice dark features. Thick black eyebrows. He looks like a prince. But that’s only part of it. He had this really hard life growing up—his mom died when he was six and he got sent to the U.S. from Iran when he was ten, all alone, and he . . . I don’t know. He has this sensitivity to him that’s really charming. And he doesn’t shy away from opening up, which you don’t often see in guys unless it’s some sort of get-you-into-bed strategy, or unless the guy’s an emotional basket case. He was just, like, open, and okay with himself, and, I don’t know, even-keeled in a way I found very calming.”

  “Because you’re so not even-keeled,” Amy said, laughing.

  “Hey!” But Amy was right. Meg sometimes thought she was just a grown-up version of Henry and that was why she understood him so well and forgave him so fast. They were mother-and-son bobbleheads, springing this way and that as their passions seized them. “I’m working on it,” she said.

  “This guy’s your yin,” Amy said. “Or your yang. You know—your complementary thingamajig.”

  “It felt that way,” Meg mused. “It was the oddest thing, but I felt that if I could just tuck myself into him somehow, everything would be okay.”

  Amy stopped chopping the celery and gave Meg a long look. “Don’t freak out, but that’s exactly how I felt when I met David. Remember? Didn’t I tell you that?”

  Meg shrugged. “I was in the midst of crashing and burning while you were falling in love with David.” Even now, ten years later, she flinched as she remembered how bad it had been.

  “That was so rude of me, wasn’t it?” Amy joked.

  “Yes,” Meg said. “It was.”

  Amy grinned. “He was wearing this crisp white dress shirt and he’d come into the bank and he was all fresh for the day and I just wanted his arm around me. Literally, that white-shirt-sleeved arm. I swear, I must have missed half of what he said, because all I could think of was how to get it around me. It was weird.”

  “I was all shaky,” Meg said.

  “Me, too,” Amy said. “Shaky’s good.”

  “Shaky’s very bad, actually,” Meg said.

  “Come on. You’re ready,” Amy said. “When do you see him again?” She sounded out his name. “Ah-med. Ah. Med. Ahmed.”

  “I don’t,” Meg said. “We didn’t exchange phone numbers. That was another problem. Henry liked him too much.”

  “Come on, go out with him,” Amy said in a pleading tone. “For my sake. I need some vicarious romance in my life. My love lif
e’s the pits.”

  Meg laughed. According to Amy, since having kids, her sex life had trickled to near-drought status. David had recently suggested they mark on a calendar two days a week to have sex. Amy refused. You need to woo me, she’d told him. Do the laundry once in a while. That’s incredible foreplay. Since then he’d folded the laundry exactly twice. It hadn’t helped matters when Amy found a stack of Playboys and Penthouses shoved in their back closet, asked David why he’d not mentioned them, and he’d mumbled something about how he figured that if Amy knew about them, she’d make him mop the floors before letting him indulge. If you won’t come hither, at least let me have them, he’d said. With no housework required.

  His reasoning hadn’t gone over well with Amy, to say the least. She felt he should Help Out rather than Jack Off.

  “Did you hear about Dad?” Meg asked, changing the subject.

  “About how he’s having an affair?” Amy rolled her eyes. “Yes, a million times.”

  “He’s not having an affair! Don’t even joke about that.” Clarabelle tossed out the affair accusation fairly regularly, and it always infuriated Meg. Jonathan had affairs, not her father. “I saw him last night, and I have the feeling he’s honestly thinking about moving out. Mom said he’s been talking about do-overs and second chances.”

  “Promise you’ll shoot me if my marriage ever turns into theirs,” Amy said.

  It was already heading in that direction, from what Meg could tell. “Hire a housecleaner,” she advised. “And have more sex.”

  As Amy smirked at her, Clarabelle’s ten-year-old Honda Civic pulled into the driveway, and their mother climbed out. She was alone, a most unusual Sunday-morning occurrence.

  “Speak of the devil,” Amy said.

  “Where’s Dad?” Meg asked Amy.

  “Having his affair.”

  “Amy,” Meg rebuked, “knock it off.”

  “I will,” Amy said, “if you’ll take off your rose-colored glasses and grow up.”

  “Geez,” Meg said. “Unnecessary.” She did her best flounce off and went to the door to greet Clarabelle. “Hi, Mom,” she said. “Where’s my dad?”