One True Theory of Love

by Laura Fitzgerald

  “He paid it, like, three times,” Meg corrected.

  “We want to make sure his sudden appearance doesn’t disrupt Henry’s life. Or Meg’s life, for that matter,” Phillip said.

  “So this ex-husband’s a deadbeat,” Patricia said.

  “Yes,” Phillip said.

  “That’s not quite fair, Dad,” Meg said. “I never really went after him for the child support.” Having him completely out of her life, she’d reasoned at the time, was in some ways better than being slapped in the face with the reminder of him every month.

  “I hate deadbeats.” Patricia’s smile was ferocious. “I hate deadbeats and cheaters.”

  Beside Meg, her father coughed.

  “Phillip?” Patricia said. “Can I get you some water?”

  “I’m fine.” He stood, went to a little serving tray and poured himself a glass of water. He drank it down, poured another and then brought one over to Meg. Nervous her hands would shake, she opted not to take a sip.

  “I want to know if he has any legal right to see my son after all this time,” Meg said. “I have full custody and he’s never asked for visitation.”

  “You brought your divorce decree and child support order, yes?” Patricia looked at her expectantly.

  Meg handed them over. That was another reason she’d almost arrived late. She kept both documents at the bottom of a box in her closet and she’d had to look through a few boxes until she’d found the right one.

  Patricia scanned the papers. “What’s been your contact with him thus far?”

  “Well, for whatever ridiculous reason, my son called him, and since then, he called me at school last week and said he was going to be in town over Thanksgiving,” Meg said. “He asked to see me. I told him no. Then he called me again last Saturday and again said he needed to see me.”

  “And before this?”

  “Not since before our son was born.”

  “Really?” Patricia looked from Phillip to Meg. “Not a Christmas card? A quick visit while in town to see his family? He’s never once laid eyes on his son?”

  “It was for the best that he stayed gone.” Phillip’s voice had an edge to it. “He really pulled a number on Meg.”

  Patricia looked at Meg.

  “He completely disappeared,” Meg said. “Although I’ve just recently learned he’s been in touch with my sister this whole time.”

  “We’d like him to stay gone,” Phillip said. “Would an order of protection do the trick?”

  Patricia leaned back in her chair and tapped her fingers idly on the desk as she thought. “Legally, he’s got a right to reestablish a relationship with his son, if that’s what he wants.”

  “How is that fair?” Meg asked.

  “The law isn’t always fair,” Patricia said. “It’s just always the law.”

  “But it’s not in Henry’s best interest,” Meg said. “I really, honestly don’t think it is.”

  “You’re probably right.” Patricia again skimmed the divorce decree and child-support order. “You do have some options if you’re willing to play hardball.”

  “We’re willing,” Phillip said. “We’ll do what it takes, won’t we, Magpie?”

  Meg thought of Henry and his messy-haired love. Of how Ahmed calmed him, and wanted to teach him to golf. Of the way Henry came to her classroom after school each day, loaded down with his backpack, having saved up his stories to tell her on the ride home. Of the Spanish-word insults he flung around with such glee. No tienes cojones!

  Oh, yes, I do have balls, Henry Clark, Meg thought. For you, I’ve got ’em.

  She agreed with her father: they’d do whatever it took to keep Henry whole.

  Meg arrived home from the lawyer’s office to find Ahmed sitting at her patio table, reading the newspaper. She felt immediately guilty, immediately skittish. He stood and kissed her cheek.

  “You usually call me back right away,” he said. “I thought maybe you regretted last night.”

  “You can’t seriously think that,” Meg said. “Last night was great.”

  His smile was a bit uncertain. “I thought I should check.”

  Meg took his hands. “You couldn’t really have been worried.”

  “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

  “I was with my dad,” she said. “I went with him to see his divorce lawyer.” It was the truth. Also sort of a lie, but not a complete one. “Want to stay for dinner? Does Henry know you’re here?”

  “Yes, to both,” Ahmed said. “Henry’s at Violet’s watching PBS Kids. Fetch! or some such thing.”

  “Come on in,” Meg said. “Let me figure out dinner. Oh! I know! We can make Persian food. I got a cookbook and all the ingredients we need for a rice dish and some sort of chicken entrée. I was going to bring it all over to your house as a surprise, but we could make it here. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m a lucky man.” He reached for her hand and kissed it.

  “I’m the lucky one,” she said. “Imagine if I’d fallen for a Scottish man. I’d be eating haggis!”

  Using recipes from the cookbook Meg had bought at Antigone’s on Fourth, Persian Cooking for a Healthy Kitchen, they made pistachio soup, chicken kebab, grilled tomatoes and a rice-lentil-and-rose-petal dish. Meg thought she’d never eaten a better dinner. Henry loved it, too, and Ahmed, usually a light eater, had three servings and told her he was in heaven.

  Afterward, Henry took a shower and did his homework in his room. Meg puttered around the kitchen cleaning up, and Ahmed studied the framed pictures she had on the fireplace mantel, all of which were from their vacations at the ocean. He picked up a photo of her and Henry on Coronado Island, taken two years ago June, and studied it for a long time—long enough for Meg to sneak up and wrap her arms around him from behind. She and Henry had rented bikes that day, and each leaned against theirs. It had been toward the end of their week, and both were red-tan.

  “His teeth!” Ahmed said. In the picture, Henry had two holes on the upper ridge of his mouth.

  “He was the essence of childhood innocence,” she said.

  “I guess they grow fast, don’t they?” He moved from her to replace the photo.

  “Are you okay?” Meg said. “You seem sort of sad.”

  He shook his head and stepped closer. “Not sad.”

  “What, then?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “I wish you hadn’t had to run off and get Henry last night.”

  Meg swallowed hard. “I wish I hadn’t had to, either.”

  “I wish we lived together, so that when you left me, you’d always come right back,” he said.

  Meg smiled. “And I wish you’d make breakfast for us every day. You’re a good pancake maker.”

  “I felt like we were a family that day,” Ahmed said. “Did you feel it, too?”

  Meg’s breath caught. “I did. I always feel it when we’re together.”

  Ahmed’s hands hung at his sides, mere inches from her hips. She could almost feel them on her. She was about to make a move when there was a knock at the door. Henry ran from his bedroom and opened the door to find Violet outside.

  “Can you come out?” she asked him.

  Henry turned to Meg. “Can I, Mom? My homework’s done.”

  “Sure,” Meg said. She turned to Ahmed. “Do you want to have a drink by the pool?”

  Ahmed agreed, and while Henry pulled a box of Popsicles from the freezer, Ahmed got Meg’s six-pack of Corona from the refrigerator and cut a lime into slices, and they all headed down. Henry and Violet ran ahead.

  “You’d miss this apartment complex if you moved, wouldn’t you?” Ahmed asked.

  Meg looked at him sideways. “What are you up to?”

  “Just testing the waters,” he said. “Listening for opposition and not hearing any.”

  Meg’s breath came fast and she almost wanted to cry. This is happening. She stopped midstride, halfway to the pool, in nearly the same spot where they’d kissed that first t
ime. “I wouldn’t miss it so much,” she said. “We could always come visit.”

  Ahmed grinned at her. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  They passed half an hour of pleasant catching-up conversation with the Loop Group. In recent weeks, Kat had begun taking classes online for certification as a personal trainer. She and Ahmed found much to talk about, as he’d worked with a trainer for years at Precision Personal Training. Harley was contemplating getting another tattoo, and Meg tried to talk him out of it, but as far as Harley was concerned, the word overkill did not belong in the same sentence as tattoo.

  Henry, taking a break from his card game with Violet on the other side of the pool, had just asked if he could get a tattoo one day, and Meg had just answered that yes, he could get an invisible tattoo anytime he wanted. He was trying to make sense of her joke when his eyes lit up. “There’s Grandma!”

  “Who’s the hottie with her?” Kat said.

  Meg squinted, but the man in question was a stranger to her. “Good question,” she said. “I’ll go find out.”

  As Henry ran to unlatch the pool gate, Meg downed the last of her beer and followed him. She waited as her mother hugged Henry; then she hugged her, too. “So, Mom, to what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Clarabelle waved off any hint of occasion. “We were just out putting some miles on my new car. We stopped over at BeBe’s and I thought since we were in the neighborhood . . .”

  Meg eyed the man expectantly and waited for her mother to introduce them. “Meg, this is Andy,” Clarabelle said. “He’s an interior designer at Christopher’s Fine Furniture and he’s going to help me redecorate the house!”

  “Dad’s only been gone a few days,” Meg said. “Don’t you think maybe you should wait? And where are you getting all this money you’re spending?”

  “I’m fifty-five, Meg!” Clarabelle made gung-ho fists. “Life is short. I don’t have a second to waste!”

  “You’re fifty-eight, Mom.”

  “Exactly my point!” Clarabelle looked over Meg’s shoulder to the Loop Group table. “Is that a pitcher of drinks I see? And is that your handsome boyfriend?”

  “It is on both counts,” Meg said. “Would you like a margarita? We have that or Coronas.”

  Clarabelle looked at Andy, who gamely shrugged.

  “Why not?” she said. “It is Tuesday night, after all.”

  “Exactly,” Meg said.

  Clarabelle greeted Kat and Harley and Ahmed and introduced them to Andy. As Meg poured their margaritas, the sound of opera wafted over to them. Clarabelle’s face pinched in annoyance.

  “This is the man who wanders around singing opera every night,” she said to Andy, rolling her eyes. “I told you about him. Cuckoo!”

  Meg looked helplessly at Ahmed. Opera Bob was one of her favorite people in the entire world, and of course she couldn’t expect her mother to appreciate his beautiful soul—she’d never appreciated Phillip’s, after all—but neither would she permit Clarabelle to mock Bob or trample on his artistry.

  “It’s a gift, Mom,” she said. “We all appreciate Bob.”

  Ahmed smiled at her. “Another beer, Meg?”

  “Yes, please.” Thankful for him, she smiled back. Ahmed appreciated Opera Bob. Ahmed would never mock him.

  “Andy said we could move a whole room of display furniture into the house to see how it looks before I make any final decisions,” Clarabelle said. “Isn’t that nice of him?”

  “It’s nothing short of amazing.” Meg gave Andy the once-over. He looked like a decent person, but for all Meg knew, he preyed on older women who’d been recently dumped. For all she knew, it might be a very profitable niche. “Do you do this for everyone, or just for my mother?”

  “Your mother’s a very persuasive woman,” Andy said.

  Clarabelle laughed. “My house is decades out-of-date,” she told the others. “My ex-husband never wanted to spend money on new furniture. As long as a sofa had half a spring, that was good enough for him. Meg’s childhood bedroom still has that horrible green shag carpeting.”

  “He’s not your ex-husband, Mom.” Meg spoke through gritted teeth. “You’re still very much married to him.”

  Clarabelle shook her head. “I’d say our marriage effectively ended the day he began his affair with that woman.”

  Meg slapped her hand on the table. “He’s not having an affair!” As Clarabelle rolled her eyes, Meg turned to Ahmed. “He’s not. She just can’t see any other possible reason why he might have left her. Even though he told her exactly why.”

  “You’ve got your father on such a pedestal,” Clarabelle said.

  “Can I speak with you privately, please?” Meg could barely say the words without yelling. The others wisely stayed silent. Opera Bob’s serenade ended as Meg and Clarabelle walked to Meg’s apartment.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Clarabelle said. “I thought he’d never stop singing.”

  Meg turned on her mother the instant she’d shut the door behind her. “This is not okay. You’re entitled to your anger,” she said. “I know you’re hurting—I’ve been where you are now. But you can’t bash Dad like that, especially in front of Ahmed. It’s important to me that he likes Dad, and he doesn’t know him all that well yet, so your disparaging him just isn’t very helpful.”

  “Your father is having an affair,” Clarabelle said icily. “I smelled her perfume in his car. And this health kick! He’s such a phony. He doesn’t care about his health! He cares about getting laid!”

  Meg tried to rein in her anger. “When you look for reasons to be suspicious, you’ll always find them. Dad left you because you crushed his spirit. His words.”

  “He sat around like a bump on a log for thirty-five years.” Clarabelle glared at her. “Crushing his spirit—that’s ridiculous!”

  “Couldn’t you have gone to just one baseball game with him, Mom?”

  “For thirty-five years, I asked your father to take me dancing,” Clarabelle said. “Thirty-five years. And did he ever? No! Not once!”

  “Tit for tat,” Meg said. “Maybe if he’d taken you dancing, you would have gone to a baseball game, and maybe if you’d gone to a baseball game, he would have taken you dancing. But neither of you gave an inch, and now you’ve ended up alone.”

  “He’s not alone,” Clarabelle yelled. “He’s with her.”

  “Who’s her?”

  “Sandi! That big-bosomed twit. That’s what these men do. They ditch their wives for cheaper, sluttier women and then blame their wives to appease their guilt.”

  “But, Mom.” Meg put her hand on her mother’s arm to make her point. “That’s not what happened here.”

  “This is what men do.” Clarabelle extricated herself from Meg’s grip. “By definition. They have affairs, and then they lie about them.”

  “Not all men, Mom.”

  Clarabelle shook her head. “You never saw the signs. Even when they were staring you right in the face, you never saw the signs.”

  When Ahmed and Henry arrived back at the apartment just then, Meg tried to see them both through Clarabelle’s doubting eyes, her man and her man-to-be.

  But she couldn’t.

  All she could see was their goodness.

  Early Thanksgiving morning, Meg and Henry went for a hike with Ahmed at the Tanque Verde Ranch. Ahmed brought along three forks, whipped cream and a pumpkin pie he’d baked, and they ate it right from the pie plate, which Henry thought was the coolest thing in the world, and which Meg hoped might be the start of a nice tradition.

  The rest of the day was not very celebratory. Meg spent most of it with Henry and her nieces, avoiding Amy and Clarabelle as much as possible. She dreaded what she had to do later: play hardball with Jonathan. She had to preempt him before he made his next move. Patricia Lerner had rightly counseled that he could show up anywhere—at their apartment, at school, at Amy’s. If his goal was to build a relationship with Henry, he might show up where he knew Henry would also be.

>   To prevent that, Patricia had advised Meg to contact Jonathan and let him know that if he intended to seek visitation with Henry, she’d file court papers seeking back child support, roughly a hundred thousand dollars. If Jonathan didn’t pay, he’d face jail time.

  Meg knew it was the right strategy, but nonetheless it was a call she did not want to make. Yet that night, after she’d gotten Henry off to bed and after backing down several times, Meg dialed his cell phone number to completion.

  “Hello?” Jonathan said.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  That was how they’d always greeted each other. It’s me. As if there could never be anyone else.

  His voice softened. “Hi there, me. I was just thinking about you.”

  Whoosh.

  It was a funny thing about a voice and the time it could erase.

  “Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?” he asked.

  “Not particularly,” she said. “You?”

  “I did,” he said. “Since I’m in the area, I took my old law school professor to dinner. Do you remember Professor Grimes?”

  Meg was not about to make small talk with him. What did he think, that they were friends now? They had a shared history—that was all—which brought with it no obligations.

  “You owe me in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars in back child support,” she said. “And I can have your ass thrown in jail if you refuse to pay it. If you intend to seek visitation with my son, I’ll fight you every step of the way.”

  “Meg,” Jonathan said. “Meg, Meg, Meg.”

  “Stop saying my name!” It was too intimate, coming from him.

  “I always think of you in the fall,” he said. “I’m not sure why.”

  Meg knew why and the thought made her heart beat recklessly. They’d been at their best in the fall, as they’d shared the start of new school years, new lockers, new sports teams, new coaches, new dorm rooms. Fall was all about stepping into the future, about moving forward, and for so many years, they’d moved forward together, into a future where they couldn’t imagine being apart. She thought of him most strongly in the autumn, too, with each new class of kindergartners she welcomed, with each start-of-the-school-year shopping trip with Henry.