One True Theory of Love (11 page)

Cringing at having to engage, Meg forced a smile and shook her head. She had no idea.

“It’s because your heart stops when you sneeze,” the man said.

“Oh right,” Meg said. “I did hear that somewhere.”

“I’ve always thought people should say
welcome back
instead. So welcome back, pretty lady.” He bowed at her and moved on, and Meg chastised herself for being so negative.

People were good and decent and more often than not they had innocent hearts. And if she couldn’t accept that there was an opportunity cost to her fear, then the plain fact was she might very well miss out on something beautiful with Ahmed.

A
fter Meg got home, she settled on the patio with a hot apple cider. As she watched Henry and Violet play two-square on the sidewalk, she phoned her father for advice.

“Hey, Dad! You busy?” She’d called him at his office so Clarabelle wouldn’t nose her way into the conversation.

“I’m never too busy for you,” he said.

“So I’ve got a question for you—how do I know if a man’s intentions are sincere?”

“Have I met the man in question?” Phillip said.

“No,” Meg said. “This is a new man, one I’m thinking of potentially dating.”

“Good for you, Magpie!” Phillip said. “I’d say you’re definitely ready to start dating. And Henry’s at a good age.”

“I don’t know about that,” Meg said. “He’s at an age when I think pretty soon he’s going to acutely sense the absence of a father figure. He’s already all tangled up liking this guy, which, of course, will only make things that much more difficult when it ends.”

“Maybe it won’t end,” her father said. “Does this guy have a name?”

“His name’s Ahmed,” she said.

“Ack-med?”

“No, Dad.
Ahmed.
Ah. Med. The emphasis is on the -Med.”

“Ag-med,” her father said. “Where’s he from?”

Meg sighed. She could only imagine how tiring it must be for Ahmed all the time—already she was sick of explaining his background and she had yet to go on a date with him! “His father’s Iranian,” she said. “He’s been in the U.S. since he was Henry’s age.”

“So he’s Iranian, too.”

“Well, he’s a halfsie,” Meg said. “Half American, half Iranian. His mother was American.”

“You mean he’s fractured,” Phillip said. “One foot in both countries, both cultures. Never really feels that he belongs to either one. I have several clients like that. African, Latino. It’s the immigrant experience, after all.”

“Then shouldn’t we all feel that way?” Meg asked. “Since we’re a nation of immigrants?”

“People like us just feel vaguely unsettled all the time,” Phillip said. “I’m sure our ancestors felt it more acutely.”

“Well, I don’t get the sense that Ahmed’s fractured,” Meg said. “He seems very well adjusted and definitely more American than Iranian. Not that there’s anything wrong with being Iranian.”

“Of course not,” Phillip said. “And I have friends who are black, so I can’t possibly be racist.”

“I beg your pardon?” Meg said. “Are you trying to make me get mad at you?”

“You never get mad at me,” he said evenly. “What would it look like if you did?”

“I feel like you’re trying to pick a fight with me, Dad,” she said. “You want to just come on over and duke it out?”

“I just find it curious you felt the need to say there’s nothing wrong with being Iranian,” he said. “The old me thinks you doth protest too much. Tell me more about this Ack-med guy.”

“Ahmed, Dad.” Meg laughed. “I’m going to have to insist you practice that.”

“You asked how to know if a man’s intentions are sincere, and my advice is—if you want to know how a man feels about you, don’t listen to a word he says. Instead, watch what he does. What does Ahmed do for you?”

“You got his name right!” Meg said.

“I was teasing you a little bit,” he said, chuckling. “His name’s not all that hard to pronounce.”

“Do you mean, does he open doors and that sort of thing?”

“Not just that. Not that at all, actually,” Phillip said. “Although he’d better open doors for you.”

“I don’t think we’ve actually walked through a door together yet,” Meg said. “He asked me on a date earlier today, and I’m trying to decide if I should go. You know how for the longest time I haven’t wanted to date, right?”

“You’ve pretty much screamed that from the rooftops, yes,” Phillip said.

Henry and Violet had abandoned their two-square game and were now playing hangman with sidewalk chalk.
L-O-V-E,
Meg thought.

“He fits in with me and Henry,” she said. “We make a good threesome. He was so sweet to Henry the other day after he’d gotten kicked out of the soccer game.” She briefly updated her dad on what had happened. “I swear, Dad, there was a moment when I was watching them that I saw the future, and he was in it. I’m freaking out a bit, because I didn’t want to feel this way about anyone. Not at this point in my life, anyway.”

“You’re not getting any younger,” Phillip pointed out.

Meg’s mouth dropped open. “You
are
trying to pick a fight with me!”

“Just think how nice it would be to have someone looking out for you,” he said. “Someone to come home to at night who actually gives a shit how your day went.”

Ouch. That was a crack against Clarabelle.

“It would be nice,” Meg admitted. “I bet you’d like that, too.”

“Someone you could enjoy the gran—enjoy Henry with,” he said. “You’re still young enough to have another baby or two. How nice would it be to have a partner in that process?”

Or two! Two babies! A boy and a girl,
Meg decided.

“You’re putting dangerous thoughts in my head, Dad,” she warned. “I don’t even know if Ahmed wants kids.” She shook the notion out of her head. “I’m just talking about a date. One date.”

“I don’t think you are, Magpie. I know you pretty well. If you didn’t see a potential future with this guy, you wouldn’t bother.”

He
thought
he knew her pretty well.

“Maybe I just want to jump his bones,” she said mischievously. “Have some great sex.”

Phillip cleared his throat. “That has its place, too, I suppose.”

Meg imagined him alone in his office, blushing. “I’m just kidding, Dad. You do know me, better than anyone. So you think I should just plunge on in, huh?”

“Has he been married before?”

“I didn’t ask, and he didn’t mention it,” Meg said. “Do I need to know that before I go on a date with him?”

“I suppose that’s what a date’s for,” her father said. “To find out things like that.”

“I think I’m going to do this,” Meg said. “I mean, not all men completely suck. There are a few good ones left, right? Besides you, I mean.”

Her father sighed. “The world’s not black-and-white,” he said. “There’s a complexity to things. There’s a complexity to you, too, Meg, that I’m not sure you always honor.”

Meg sat back in her patio chair, warmed by the idea that he recognized her as more than just a simple, happy-go-lucky kindergarten teacher doing the single-mom thing with aplomb, which was truly all she ever showed the outside world. But her heart sure had its disturbing secrets. For instance, there was the fact that she still sometimes missed Jonathan so much, she could hardly stand it. And that she sometimes pretended he was doing this all with her, this raising Henry, and that he was going to walk through the door and say,
Hi, honey. I’m home,
and it would be
normal.
It would be the
Hi, honey
of her dreams, with no layer of lies beneath it. She’d have nothing to forgive, because he wouldn’t have betrayed her in the first place.

To Meg, this was the fantasy of someone who was weak. “There’s a stupid side to me, too,” she said. “And I don’t want to give it any encouragement.”

“There’s no part of you that’s stupid,” Phillip said. “There are just parts of yourself you don’t understand, and maybe you’re not meant to. But you still have to honor them, even as you don’t understand them.”

“When did you sneak off and get all philosophical on me?” Meg asked.

There was ruefulness in his chuckle. “I’ve been reading a lot of self-help books lately. Thomas Moore’s got some good ones.”

My daddy,
Meg thought.
He sounds sad.

Now it was Meg who cleared her throat. Some questions were so hard to ask. “Are you okay?” she questioned him. “It’s fairly obvious something’s going on with you, and I want you to know I’m here if you ever need to talk. Okay?”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “Although I hate the idea of you seeing chinks in the old armor—weakness in me. I like that you still have that little-girl belief that I can do no wrong. I’m not sure I’m ready to lose that.”

Touched, Meg watched Henry being chased across the grass by Violet. He ran past the patio, beaming a smile at her. She knew exactly what her father meant. It
was
nice to be idolized, and there sure weren’t that many people in the world willing to do it.

“You’re my hero,” she said. “Now and forever.”

“Everything ends,” Phillip said. “The only unknowns are how and when.”

“And sometimes why,” Meg said, thinking of her marriage. “I hate the unknown. I’m terrified of it, actually.”

“There are no guarantees in life,” he said. “The best you can hope for is to have someone by your side who loves you for you and who can provide the kind of solace you need as you struggle through your hard times. To not be alone in your hour of need.”

Meg exhaled heavily. “I don’t want any hard times. I’ve already had my share.”

“No one wants hard times,” Phillip said. “And yet the hits, they keep on coming.”

T
hat Sunday when Meg and Henry arrived at Amy’s house, Henry immediately slipped past Amy and went in search of his uncle and cousins.

“Hello to you, too, Henry,” Amy called after him.

“Hi, Aunt Amy!” He didn’t look back.

Meg stepped inside somewhat warily. Amy wore a baggy T-shirt, her hair was stuck in a careless ponytail and the scowl on her face looked like it had been there awhile. Meg held up the plate of chocolate-chip cookies she’d baked. “Want a cookie?”

“Hell, no,” Amy said. “They’ll go straight to my ass.”

“You’re chipper today,” Meg said, thinking,
Damn.
Now she couldn’t eat a cookie, either, without Amy resenting her. She should have left a few at home for later. “Bad morning?”

As Meg walked behind Amy to the kitchen, she grimaced at the back of her sister’s head. Amy simply
had
to stop letting her hair go so long between highlights. Meg took her usual place at the counter as Amy yanked open the refrigerator door, aggressively pulled out ingredients for a fruit salad and plunked them on the counter.

“My life sucks,” she said.

Meg withheld a sigh. It had been such a pleasant few days, as she meandered through life in a fog of idle wonder about Ahmed. There was so much she didn’t know, so much to imagine. His hobbies. Friends. Reading habits. Movie choices. Boxers . . . or briefs? She’d fallen asleep considering that last question, ultimately deciding that since Jonathan had been a boxers guy, Ahmed would be a briefs guy. Picturing this was not a bad way to fall asleep, if one had to fall asleep alone.

Then this morning, Henry’s Tootsie Roll breath was in her face, asking if they could bike to University Boulevard for breakfast, so they’d had a lovely ride through campus, their world painted in an autumnal hue, as a few campus trees managed to change colors this time of year, and then shared an egg burrito on the patio of Café Paraiso. Around them, bicyclists whizzed by on their Sunday-morning group rides. People parked their dogs at patio tables at the Starbucks across the plaza, and the fountain from which Henry often stole quarters burbled a pleasing background melody. After such a mellow morning, Amy’s mood was fingernails against a chalkboard—screechy and unwarranted.