One True Theory of Love

by Laura Fitzgerald

  “Of course not,” Clarabelle said. “It’s only six o’clock.”

  “Then why are you dressed like that?”

  Clarabelle raised her chin haughtily. “If you must know, I’m entertaining a gentleman caller.”

  “A what?”

  Clarabelle enunciated her words this time, even though they’d been perfectly clear before. “A gentleman caller.”

  “You’re getting laid?”

  “Must you be so crude?”

  Talk about crude! Clarabelle was still a married woman!

  “I’d be willing to bet a hundred thousand dollars it’s not Dad in there,” Meg said.

  Clarabelle rolled her eyes. “Your father—now there’s a losing bet,” she said. “All he ever did was age me, sitting around watching baseball on ESPN all the time. I feel like I’ve gained back ten years of my life since he’s been gone. Maybe twenty!”

  “But . . . but . . . ,” Meg sputtered. “Who have you been having sex with?”

  Clarabelle looked for a moment like she wasn’t going to answer. Meg raised her eyebrows to let her know she’d wait as long as it took.

  “If you must know, it’s the furniture salesman,” Clarabelle said. “Andy.”

  “Tell me you’re joking,” Meg said. “He’s my age!”

  Clarabelle’s eyes twinkled. “Two years younger, actually.”

  That made him thirty-two, to Clarabelle’s fifty-eight. Or to her forever fifty-five, as she preferred to call it. She was such the Demi Moore. “This is not appropriate naughtiness, Mother,” she said.

  Clarabelle scoffed. “I’ve been appropriate my whole married life, and excuse me for saying so, but naughty’s far more fun!”

  “Mother!” Meg couldn’t help but laugh. This was girlfriend talk, not mother-daughter talk.

  “Oh, come on, Meg,” Clarabelle said. “He’s here, he’s willing. He’s more than able. I’m climbing back in the saddle, so to speak.”

  Meg shuddered at the image. “Fine,” she said. “But you should do it with someone closer to your own age.”

  Clarabelle put her hands on her hips. “Now that’s just stupid talk. Think about it. A man Andy’s age doesn’t need little blue pills to make the magic happen. Andy does triathlons. You know what that means, right?”

  “It means he does triathlons,” Meg said.

  “It means he’s got stamina that doesn’t come from a pharmacy,” Clarabelle said. “Goodness, he’s got stamina! How is that not better than being with a man my age?”

  Meg laughed again. “You may have a point there.” But she quickly turned serious again. “I don’t want to see you getting hurt.”

  “I’m not climbing Mount Everest, Meg. I’m just having sex.” Clarabelle glanced to her closed bedroom door. “Men date younger women all the time.”

  “But it won’t last,” Meg said. “You know that, right?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Clarabelle said. “My eyes are wide-open—except when they’re closed. I’m just having a little fun recapturing my youth, after a long time of life not being very fun.”

  “You don’t feel . . . I don’t know . . . ?”

  “Foolish?” Clarabelle supplied the word Meg didn’t want to say. “No, not at all. I refuse to. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see the wrinkles and the age spots and the thinning hair and the saggy jowl, and I think, Who is that woman? Because it’s not me. Inside, I’m the same as I was in my early twenties. Or maybe I’m back to who I was and wanted to be after a lifetime of trying to be what society pushed me to be, which was a proper, boring, aging woman. I’m not robbing the cradle,” she said defiantly. “If anyone is, he is.”

  “But you’re still married, Mom,” Meg reminded her. “Who’s supposed to tell Dad?”

  Clarabelle waved her off and inched the door closed. “Believe me, he’s so busy with his girlfriend that he won’t notice, and if he does, he won’t mind a bit . . . although Sandi’s hardly a triathlete, come to think of it. Now thanks for stopping by, but—”

  Sandi? Not again. Her mother was delusional. Meg stuck her foot in the doorframe. “I need to get something,” she said. “Can I come in? It’ll only take a minute.”

  Clarabelle gave her a pinched-nose reply. “I don’t think so.” She tried to close the door, but again Meg stopped her.

  “I promised Dad that I’d pick something up for him. It’s in the hall closet, and I’ll only be a second, I promise. Then you can get back to your triathlete.”

  Clarabelle narrowed her eyes. “What is it you want to get for him?”

  “His baseball-card collection.”

  Clarabelle rolled her eyes. “Of course. The sun rises and sets on that baseball-card collection. You wait here. I’ll get it.”

  Meg poked her head inside, both to keep an eye on her mother and to check out the progress on her redecorating project. The living room was completely cleared out, and the absence of ugly furniture was itself a great improvement. There was a fresh coat of cream paint on the walls, and the crap-brown carpet had been removed to reveal gleaming hardwood floors. Meg shook her head to see such beauty underneath. Their house—their home, their family—could have been glorious if only they’d attended to it, kept up with the changing times, but there’d been no progress, no growth, no reinvention. While Meg looked around, Clarabelle pulled a manila envelope from one of the closet shelves and brought it to her.

  “This isn’t it,” Meg said. “It’s in all those binders and shoe boxes, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember,” Clarabelle said. “This is all that’s left. I sold the rest.”

  When Meg gasped, Clarabelle shrugged, unrepentant.

  “How else was I supposed to pay for my new car?” she asked. “And the furniture I’ve got on order? But don’t worry. I didn’t sell his favorite player. I saved all the Pete Rose ones because your father’s a cheater, just like him.”

  I don’t know how to tell him,” Meg said to Ahmed later that night. They were on her patio, watching the sunset and drinking wine. After leaving the tea shop, Ahmed had come back to her apartment to collect Henry while Meg went to her mother’s house. Henry was now inside playing Monopoly with Violet.

  “I mean, beyond the fact that she wasted no time getting herself a boy toy, Dad loved those baseball cards,” Meg said. “How do you tell a man you love something that you know is going to break his heart?”

  “Very carefully,” Ahmed said.

  “My dad had thousands of baseball cards, probably every single one produced from the fifties through the seventies.” From the envelope Clarabelle had given her, Meg pulled out eight career-spanning Pete Rose cards—all that were left.

  “Were the cards she sold really worth enough for her to buy a car?” Ahmed asked.

  “I doubt it,” Meg said. “I’m sure she just did it for spite. She knew how much they meant to him. You should have seen him. He had all the greats—Hank Aaron, Robin Yount, Ted Williams, Willie Mays. He knew all their stats, all their stories. But Pete Rose was his favorite. Pete Rose was his guy.”

  “What was so special about him?” Ahmed said.

  “My dad just identified with him for some reason,” she said. “I’ll never forget the night Pete Rose broke the record for most hits. All four of us watched the game together in the den. It’s actually one of my favorite memories of the whole family together. We were all so excited, mostly because it was great to see my dad so happy.”

  She remembered the moment with clarity even after all these years. “Dad grabbed Mom and twirled her around and kissed her with total passion,” she said. “My sister and I acted like we were completely grossed out, but really, it was nice to see.”

  Meg stared at the fresh-faced Pete Rose card on top and sighed. “And then he got caught cheating.”

  “How’d he cheat?”

  “He was a big gambler,” Meg said. “He bet on baseball—even on games where he was manager. He says he never bet against his team, but to this day, no one other than him
knows for sure. My dad says it’s easier to influence a loss than to make a win happen.”

  “Do you think that, too?” Ahmed studied her closely.

  With a sigh, she sifted through the Pete Rose cards again. His eyes had hardened as the years went by. In his later pictures, he seemed jaded, broken. Life had taken its toll.

  “I remember the day the accusations broke,” she said. “It was horrible. My father looked like he’d lost his best friend. He just sat disbelieving as he watched the report on the nightly news. He went for a walk by himself afterward, which he almost never did, and when he came home, he complained of a headache and was the first one in bed. I think his heart broke a little that day. For sure, the world seemed less kind.”

  Ahmed studied her closely, and even as Meg wondered why, she was thinking of her mother in her rich-lady lingerie and the accusations she’d made against Meg’s father. She was thinking of her father’s new office furniture and his newfound focus on his health and how Bud was fly-fishing in Montana now. She was thinking how clearly conflicted her dad seemed lately.

  “Oh my God,” she said, with sudden realization. “My father’s having an affair.”

  Ahmed reached for her hand and Meg was glad for it. Without it she’d go in search of a sink to crawl under, or a drain that could wash her away. She looked in desperation at Ahmed, her calm-souled boyfriend in whom still waters ran deep. At Ahmed, who’d just a short while ago gotten her to agree that a flawed father was better than no father at all. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “He told me at lunch today,” Ahmed admitted.

  “But why?” Meg asked. “Why would he tell you and not me?”

  “He’s afraid you’ll never speak to him again,” Ahmed said. “He knows how you feel about cheating. He does want to tell you, but he doesn’t know how.”

  Meg felt sick. “How long has it been going on?”

  “Several years,” Ahmed said.

  Which came first? Meg wondered. Had he had the affair, and any others before it, because her mom was so grumpy, or did she become grumpy because of the affairs?

  Meg looked again at the Pete Rose cards. What an asshole he’d turned out to be.

  “He’s basically been lying to me for years,” she said.

  “He loves you, though.”

  “Love’s not enough,” Meg said, remembering Jonathan’s words from the park that day.

  “I disagree,” Ahmed said. “Love is enough, if you decide it is.”

  As Meg climbed the ramp of the Frank Sancet Stadium at the University of Arizona campus, she carried the manila envelope that contained her father’s Pete Rose cards.

  He was there for a casual practice, and Meg knew that while the stadium would be nearly empty, he’d still be sitting in his season-ticket spot.

  For the first time in Meg’s memory, he wasn’t alone.

  Sandi was with him, wearing a bright red sweater and a U of A baseball hat over her black beehived hair. Phillip’s arm was around her and clearly had been for years.

  Observing them from behind, Meg trembled in the chilly December air. A blanket was spread across their respective laps—Sandi’s contribution, Meg was sure, since she’d never seen her father cozied up at a baseball event before.

  Meg watched them for a long time. She’d witnessed first-hand the years of belittlement, the decades of disappointment in her parents’ marriage. She knew that for many, many years her father had forgone compassion, the human touch, peace in his own home. The office had been his refuge, so it was no surprise that he’d sought comfort there. He was not gregarious, not a charmer, not a seducer or a letch. He was an everyman who pushed his out-of-date glasses back up on his aging face and who smoothed his hands over his ever-thinning graying hair.

  With Sandi, he wouldn’t be lonely.

  Meg took a seat in the back bleachers. Her father and Sandi looked like any old married couple on one of their better days. Sandi laughed at something her father said, then adjusted the blanket so they were better covered. They were nerds, in the sweetest sense of the word. They’d take good care of each other.

  But a father wasn’t supposed to lie to his daughter, especially if his reasons weren’t noble. Especially when he went around spouting platitudes like If you want to know how a man feels about you, don’t listen to a word he says. Instead, watch what he does. . . . She’d listened with an open heart to everything he’d ever told her, and he’d turned out to be a liar.

  Meg pulled her cell phone from her jean jacket, dialed her dad’s number and watched him retrieve his phone from his pocket with his left hand while keeping his right arm around his mistress.

  “Hi, Meg!” His eyes were on home plate, but Meg nonetheless saw his smile in profile. “How’d the supersecret mission go? Did you get the baseball cards?”

  “Hey, Dad.” Fighting to maintain a neutral tone, she cleared her throat. “There’s something I need to ask you. Mom keeps saying you’re having an affair, and I just want to ask you flat out: are you seeing Sandi?”

  Phillip removed his arm from Sandi’s shoulders and straightened in his seat. When Sandi looked at him, he made an oh-shit-we’re-busted face at her.

  And then he lied. “No,” he said. “I’m not seeing anybody.”

  The stadium around Meg swirled and blurred; even Sandi for a moment wasn’t clearly visible. A pinpoint of light was on Phillip alone, the single lightbulb swinging in the interrogation room.

  Even when they were staring you right in the face, you never saw the signs.

  “You know you could tell me if you were.” Meg kept her voice even. “I might actually be okay with it. In fact, it would be important to me that you told me the truth.”

  “I think your mother’s seeing someone,” he said. Sandi frowned at him.

  “She is,” Meg confirmed. “She’s seeing a very decent thirty-two-year-old athlete. I’m asking about you, Dad. About you and Sandi.”

  When her father stood, Meg’s heart quickened. If he turned, he’d see her. But he didn’t. He stretched and reached for Sandi’s hand. “It’s a lonely world, Magpie.”

  “I know it is, Dad,” she said. “I’ve been alone for a long time myself. And I know that even though you were with Mom, you were alone, too. I understand your loneliness.”

  So tell me. Tell the truth and I’ll respect you in the morning.

  “Dad?” Meg prompted.

  “Sandi and I are very good friends,” he said. “And I think there’s a good chance we will date in the future. She’s the kind of woman I can see myself being happy with.”

  Jonathan’s leaving her had been the most painful experience of Meg’s life, bar none. But watching her father smile at Sandi, thinking he was pulling a fast one on his daughter as she sat right behind him and watched him do it, ranked a very close second. Meg was fading. Evaporating. She gripped the edge of the bleacher, having no one anymore to keep her grounded.

  As Ahmed had said, lying was a deal breaker.

  “Is there anything else you should tell me?” Meg could hardly hear her own voice—that was how weak it came out. “Now’s the time, Dad.”

  He sat back down next to Sandi. “Not that I can think of, Magpie. Were you able to get my baseball-card collection out of the house?”

  The cocky son of a bitch had his arm back around Sandi. And it had been there for years, no matter what lie he was feeding Meg now.

  “I think it’s time you stopped calling me Magpie,” she said. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  As the silence on the other end of the line screamed at her, Meg slipped down the back steps to the ground level of the stadium. She couldn’t stand having her father in her sight, in her heart, in her life anymore.

  Meg tossed into a trash can the envelope that contained the remainder of her father’s only legacy from a hobby he’d loved for a lifetime.

  “The baseball cards are gone,” she said. “Every last one is gone.”

  When Meg arrived back home, the complex
was readying itself for bed. Now that the sun had set, the pool’s underwater lights glowed, beckoning the swimmer who’d break the smooth surface. The lawn sprinklers spurted, and curtains were drawn, shielding those inside from the world that had gone dark on them. Occasional laugh tracks punctured the otherwise still night.

  When Meg caught sight of Ahmed on her patio, some of the brittleness left her heart. He’d stayed behind to keep an eye on Henry and Violet, who were into their third hour of Monopoly.

  Ahmed—her protector, her lion. It wasn’t true that she had no one anymore to keep her grounded. She had him. She rested her hand on his shoulder as she passed him to take a seat.

  “I gave him the opportunity to come clean with me,” she said. “He chose not to.”

  She tried to strike a match to light her vanilla-scented tabletop candle, but the flame sputtered and she had to strike a second one. That one never sparked. The third, however, flared cooperatively, and after she lit the candle, Meg turned to Ahmed to take in his luminescence. He was beautiful by candlelight. Beautiful by any light, actually.

  He looked far away, though. His right elbow rested on the table, his index finger pressed against his lower lip, as if he were rubbing away dead skin or the remnants of a kiss.

  “Ahmed?” His eyes were dark. Haunted, almost. “Ahmed?” she said again.

  He studied her for a long moment. Then from his lap he pulled out the envelope from Jonathan, inside of which was the card and the check.

  “Oh shit.” As Meg sank back in her chair, a meteor shot straight out of the sky and fell on her. Meg knew it would hurt like hell in the morning. He must have come across the envelope in her junk drawer, probably while in the midst of doing something nice for her son.

  Dear Meg, it was great seeing you.

  Ahmed’s expression was noncommittal. “You’ve got one chance to explain this.”

  You’re as beautiful as ever.

  What could she say—it’s not what you think?

  Meg tried to take his hand.