One True Theory of Love

by Laura Fitzgerald

  Clarabelle brushed past Meg and set the bowl of potato salad she’d brought on the counter. “Your father’s cleaning out the garage. After thirty years, all of a sudden he’s in a rush to clean out the garage.”

  He’s moving out, Meg thought. He’s definitely getting ready to move out.

  “Better late than never, right?” Amy said.

  Clarabelle slapped her palm on the counter. “That’s exactly what he said.” Without another word—without even waiting for Meg to pour a glass of wine for her from the bottle of chardonnay she and Amy had tapped into—Clarabelle headed to the backyard, where the kids were playing.

  “There’s trouble in paradise,” Meg said. “Mark my words.”

  “There’s always been trouble,” Amy said. “And it’s never been paradise.”

  Meg went through the week as if Ahmed were a fly on the wall watching her every move. She always dressed cute for her kindergartners—kind of bouncy, kind of bopsy—but that week, she took extra time in the morning to make sure her skirts were ironed and to blink on a little mascara. She wore heels to school and reapplied her tinted lip gloss during breaks.

  The fantasy she had of Ahmed observing her caused Meg’s mood to heighten as well. Colors were brighter. She was funnier. Kinder. Sexier. Quite simply, the very idea of him enriched her life.

  Meg realized exactly what she was doing—performing for a guy she’d spent less than an hour with and who, oh, by the way, wasn’t there. But what was the harm? It didn’t hurt anybody.

  In fact, it helped everyone. Meg’s students got extra attention, in particular sweet Marita, who’d taken to sitting with Meg on the bench outside at recess until Meg joined in the jump-roping and four-squaring and hula-hooping. Only then would Marita participate. When he pestered, Henry got that extra bowl of ice cream and Meg even refrained from commenting more than once a day about the dirty underwear he felt compelled to leave on the bathroom floor.

  Meg fantasized about looking to her classroom door and finding Ahmed there, leaning against the doorframe, maybe holding a sprig of daisies. He’d admire the passion with which she taught. She fantasized, too, of Ahmed passing by the pool while she was there with her Loop Group friends, perhaps visiting a friend of his own. Their boisterousness would catch his attention. He’d see Meg midlaugh, her head thrown back, pure living-in-the-moment emanating from her being. And he’d think, I want that. I want her.

  And then he’d come to her.

  It was the pursuit Meg fantasized about—only the pursuit. Him wanting her and finding her worthy.

  But in reality, Ahmed had no idea where she lived and no idea where she taught. The only link that could possibly bring them together was the coffee shop. Frequently throughout the week, Meg wondered whether she should go to LuLu’s the following Saturday.

  Ultimately, she decided not to. Daydreaming about him was enough. In her fantasies, she could keep him perfect in a way the real world would never allow.

  Henry’s soccer practice was the only black mark against the week. At his first practice, he’d thrown an embarrassing temper tantrum at Bradley, a boy who continually blocked the ball with his hands. Henry had spent most of practice on the sidelines, not an auspicious start to the season.

  So this week, Meg made brownies to take as a snack, sort of as an apology and sort of to earn them a do-over. When they arrived, Henry took off at a sprint, dropped the juice boxes near the parents, and ran to join the other kids, who were climbing the fence behind the baseball diamond. Meg’s heart lightened when she saw that the kids didn’t seem to be holding a grudge.

  “Afternoon, everyone!” Meg called to the parents, who were almost uniformly seeking refuge in a strip of shade generated by the lone palm tree near the practice field. “Hot enough for ya?”

  Anytime the temperature was over ninety-five degrees, as it was that day, that was what people said. Hot enough for ya? It was the standard Tucson greeting.

  “It’s ridiculous,” said one mom. She was a stressed-out yoga-mom type, seated on the ground with her legs in a strange contortion. Her eyes remained focused on the text message she was punching out with her thumbs.

  “I left my purse in the car today for ten minutes and my lipstick melted,” said another. “It was my new Clinique, too!”

  “I hate when that happens,” said the only dad there. Everyone laughed—dads were always popular among the moms—and Meg was hopeful she’d been forgiven for Henry’s outburst the previous week.

  “Is Coach Debbie not coming today?” she said. “Should we maybe run a few drills with the kids?”

  “She’s just late,” said the yoga mom. “She’s always late. Drops her kids off late to school every day.”

  “She’ll be here. She’s got four kids, you know.” This from the team parent. Meg couldn’t recall the woman’s name but knew the type: on a power trip, with a fake smile. Wound up. Maybe she needed a chocolate fix. Meg gave her a big smile and extended the prettily arranged tray. “Would you like a brownie?”

  “We don’t do brownies on this team,” the woman said. “Did you not read the e-mail?”

  What was this chick’s name? Cindy? Connie? Something with a C. Whoever she was, she was rude, and uncalled-for rudeness was Meg’s ultimate pet peeve.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a tone that perhaps indicated otherwise. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “It’s Catherine,” the woman said.

  “Well, Catherine, I suppose I did miss the e-mail. Was it the same one that contained the snack sign-up sheet? Because I haven’t seen that, either.”

  “I think it was very nice of you to bring something,” said a mom.

  “Thank you,” Meg said to her new ally. “Would you like a brownie?”

  “No, thank you.” The woman smiled apologetically. “I’m sort of macrobiotic in my eating.” She gave Catherine a pointed look. “Where is the snack sheet? I like to plan for these things.”

  “I left it on my printer last week, but I have it right here.” Catherine pulled it out of her team-parent binder, handed it to the macrobiotic woman, and then turned to Meg. “I have to ask you not to offer anyone else a brownie. Please.”

  Meg met Catherine’s firm gaze. Oh, the things she would not say! They were delightful to think of, anyway.

  “Catherine, I get the sense that you’re personally offended by my brownies.”

  As the other parents laughed, Catherine sneered. “We don’t do sugar on this team,” she said. “We do organic fruit. Otherwise the kids go crazy. We witnessed some of that last week, remember?”

  Meg’s mouth dropped open. The nerve of this woman! “You mean Henry? My son?”

  Catherine nodded smugly.

  Unbelievable! Did her kid never misbehave?

  “Oh!” Meg chastised herself for taking so long to figure it out. “Let me guess. Your son’s Bradley, isn’t he? The one Henry yelled at?”

  “That’s right,” Catherine said. “And he was very upset afterward.”

  She stepped closer and bulked up her shoulders, and all of a sudden, it turned into the full-fledged mom’s equivalent of a pissing contest. One version of Meg’s imagination had her throwing down the plate of brownies and tackling Catherine.

  It was not the response she chose, of course.

  “How about we get the boys together for a playdate soon?” she said. “Maybe Bradley can come over and swim.”

  “We’ll see,” Catherine said. “I don’t know that he’d feel comfortable.”

  “Have you looked at him recently?” Meg said. “He seems pretty happy to me.”

  While the other kids ran around and sprayed one another with their water bottles, Henry and Bradley kicked a soccer ball back and forth. Bradley was positively beaming. To Meg, it looked like the start of a beautiful friendship.

  “Look.” Meg pointed them out. “They’ve let bygones be bygones. Forgiveness comes so much easier to kids than it does to us grownups, doesn’t it, Catherine?”

 
Catherine ignored the saccharine smile on Meg’s face and didn’t answer, but when the lone dad on the team winked and grinned at Meg, it took absolutely every single ounce of self-control she had not to offer him a brownie.

  “Organic fruit,” Meg complained to her Loop Group friends as she chomped on a rejected brownie that night down by the pool. “I can’t even afford organic fruit for myself, much less for fifteen kids. What planet are these people from?”

  “They’re from the land of plenty.” This from Kat—Crazy Kat, Crazy Sexy Kat—who had a penchant for short skirts, high heels, low-cut tops, and men who were into that sort of thing, as were most men, from what Meg could tell. Kat was a parole officer, tough and strong, African-American, and with the most solid thighs Meg had ever seen on a woman. Meg wondered about her motives in choosing to wear such provocative clothes to work, as it very much seemed to be asking for trouble, but parole officers were a breed unto themselves. Besides, Kat was a girl with a gun. She packed heat and her aim was fearless. No one messed with Kat.

  Also at the table was Harley, resident manager of the complex. He’d gone by Jeff until a few years ago when he got a divorce and bought a motorcycle and grew his hair ponytail-long and stuck pirate-hoop earrings in both ears and let someone ink a string of tattoos down his arms. Now he brought home women who wore superblack eyeliner.

  Absent from the table was Opera Bob, a man whose age Meg couldn’t quite figure out and for whatever reason felt she shouldn’t ask. He had a pregnant-man paunch and worked by day as a phone technical-support representative, a faceless voice to those crying out from the nanotech wilderness. At night, he watched the national news—Meg often saw him alone in his apartment, leaning forward on his beige couch, letting his senses be bombarded for thirty minutes with everything that had gone wrong in the world that day. When it ended, he turned off the TV, stepped outside, and for the next twenty minutes wandered the paths of the apartment complex singing the most beautiful arias Meg expected she’d ever hear in her life. That was what he was doing at the moment, serenading them all as he strolled through the complex grounds.

  Henry was on the opposite end of the pool playing cards with Violet. They’d had two brownies each—and look! No craziness! The land of plenty, indeed.

  “So that makes me from where?” Meg said. “The land of not enough?”

  “You’re from the land of single motherhood,” Kat said. “And from the land of underpaid teacher-hood.”

  Meg laughed. That pretty well summed her up, all right. “There’s a very exciting rumor going around that we might get a one percent pay raise this year. I think that would put me officially above minimum wage.”

  “Woo-hoo! Organic fruit for everyone!” Harley held up his bottle of Corona in a toast. Meg clinked her plastic margarita glass against it and happily took a sip.

  Life was good, with or without a one percent pay raise. She had a job she loved and was good at. She got summers off, and she did make more than minimum wage—she just felt poor in comparison with her friends who’d majored in marketing and business and in comparison with Jonathan, whom she imagined was by now a high-end defense lawyer in New York. It didn’t help that early on he’d reneged on paying child support and she’d been such a wimp that she’d let him.

  But money meant little to Meg in the overall scheme of things. She had a boy she was crazy about, and a boy who was crazy about her. She got the gift of lingering watercolor sunsets each night with her Loop Group friends.

  She had opera. She had the warm desert breeze and the comforting smell of fabric softener, which wafted over from the nearby laundry room. Meg felt pretty sure she’d already attained her little slice of heaven. Sure, it wasn’t how she’d expected her life would go, but it was a good life nonetheless. She and Henry were not only surviving—they were thriving, and that was even without the benefit of eating organic fruit.

  On the morning of Henry’s first soccer game, Meg stepped on her patio and was thrilled to see the sky bursting with clouds. And while there wasn’t a chill in the air, there was a noticeable lack of hotness. This was it! The official end of Tucson’s six-month summer. She and Henry could walk the six blocks to Rincon Market at high noon without frying like eggs on the sidewalk. The animals would emerge from their shaded corners and move around their habitats at the zoo, making going there fun again. Tucson came alive at summer’s end, and it always felt like a well-earned reward for having endured the summer.

  Henry was so nervous about the game that he couldn’t stop eating. He ate four hard-boiled eggs before Meg noticed.

  “Hey, stop,” she said. “You’ll throw up if you eat any more.”

  “Do you think I’ll start?”

  “That depends,” Meg said. “If Coach Debbie goes with who’s the best, you’ll definitely start.”

  Henry slumped. “She won’t start me. She hates me.”

  When they arrived at the park, Coach Debbie was changing her toddler’s diaper while the kids on Henry’s team played keep-away. Meg set up their blanket as far away from Catherine as possible. Henry stayed nearby and hopped up and down until the referee blew his whistle for the players to line up and have their cleats checked.

  When Meg saw a huge smile erupt on Henry’s face during the team huddle, she knew he’d start, which was a good thing, because within minutes it was clear that if they had any hope of winning, Henry would have to carry the team. The others ran around like headless chickens, bunched up around the ball, kicking it for the sake of kicking it. Not a bit of strategy or discipline was evident. Meg understood perfectly well why Henry got so frustrated.

  “Well, hey,” a voice behind Meg said. “Funny running into you here. I can hardly believe the coincidence.”

  Meg, recognizing Ahmed’s voice, smiled even before she turned and saw him. He was in runner mode, wearing a T-shirt and running shorts, which showed off rock-hard thighs that would be nice to bump up against. Heart pounding, she scrambled to her feet and put out her hand for a handshake, and yowsa, the chemistry was still there.

  “A coincidence, indeed,” she said with a tease in her voice. “Exactly how many times have you run through the park this morning looking for just such a coincidence?”

  “Every hour on the hour starting at seven.” There was pride in his voice.

  In-corrigible, Meg thought, laughing. It was ten o’clock now. “How did you know we’d be here?”

  “Henry told me, remember?”

  “Ah, yes,” Meg said. “My son. The boy who needs to learn discretion. That was shortly before he asked if you were married, right?”

  “Right,” Ahmed said. “Which I’m not.”

  “Right,” Meg said. “Hence the lack of a ring.”

  They exchanged the dopiest of smiles. Meg’s embarrassment was huge. She’d spent perhaps an hour with him the previous week at LuLu’s but days and nights dreaming about him, having imaginary discussions in which she revealed her innermost secrets, and she now had the feeling that he knew her too well. She had to remind herself that he didn’t. He hardly knew her at all.

  “What if we’d gone to the coffee shop?” Meg said. “What if we skipped the game and went there in hopes of running into you?”

  “Ah! I thought of that.” Ahmed held up his pointing finger. “I gave LuLu my cell phone number and made her promise to call if the two of you showed up.”

  “That was very good thinking,” Meg said.

  “How’s the game going?” Ahmed scanned the field until he found Henry, scrawny number nine in his black uniform shirt that hung to the middle of his thighs. “There he is! Playing his guts out. He’s sure fast on his feet. Fearless, too. That’s great. The less fear you have of getting knocked around, the better off you’ll be.”

  “Their team pretty much sucks,” Meg said. “Plus, the coach and the team parent think Henry’s the devil incarnate.”

  “No,” Ahmed murmured more to himself than to her. “How could anyone think that?”

  Man, oh, man.
He knew exactly how to turn her heart to mush.

  They watched the game, pileup after pileup on the ball. When after a few minutes Ahmed asked to borrow her phone, Meg got it from her blanket and handed it to him. She considered asking him to join her on the blanket, but the thought of sitting so close to him made her shaky, which was not good, no matter what Amy said.

  Ahmed flipped open her phone, dialed a number, and hit SEND. Instantly, a buzz sounded from his shorts pocket. He clicked off her phone and handed it back and the buzzing from his shorts stopped. “There. I’ve got your number. That solves that problem.” His smile was broad. “I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to call you this week.”

  Be still, be still, be still my heart.

  “And I can’t tell you how many times I wished I’d given you my number this week, as much as it pains me to admit that,” Meg said. “I’m really not in the market to date right now.”

  “There’s a part of me that doesn’t believe you,” Ahmed said.

  They looked at each other for a long, conflicted moment. It was that starting/not-starting something feeling again, and all Meg knew for sure right then was that the way he looked at her made her feel as if they were alone. As if she was tucked into him, dancing in the moonlight, and they were looking into each other’s souls and finding a kindred spirit.

  It was disconcerting, the feeling. Disconcerting in the loveliest of ways.

  “There’s a part of me that doesn’t believe me, either,” she admitted.

  Even though the rest of Henry’s team played like a soccer version of the Bad News Bears, he performed great. Several times, he emerged from a pileup of kids with the ball and twice he scored. The quarter ended with the other team up, 5-2. Red-faced and sweaty-haired, Henry ran over to gulp from his water bottle.

  “Excellent job, Henry,” Meg said. “You’re playing very well.”

  “Did you see my goals?”