One True Theory of Love (12 page)

“Please don’t say your life sucks, Amy,” Meg said. “You’re living the dream.”

“Not everybody has the same dream as you, you know!” Amy snapped. “Maybe your dream is other people’s hell!”

“I just aspire to have a congenial brunch at my favorite sister’s house, and she’s not being very congenial at the moment,” Meg said. “Let me help you. Why don’t you go take a bath, relax yourself out of this mood, and let me make the fruit salad?”

Amy was territorial in regard to her kitchen, often waving a knife in the direction of anyone who dared to encroach, so Meg was not surprised when she refused. “The only person I want help from around here is David.” She said his name like it was a swear word.

“What’d he do now?” Meg said it dispiritedly, hoping Amy would realize that she didn’t really want to hear about it.

She didn’t. “It’s more like what he doesn’t do.” Amy positioned a cantaloupe on the cutting board and hacked into it. “I was up all night with Maggie—she’s got this horrible cough—and I’m sick of it. He
never
gets up. I’m
punished
for being a light sleeper. And then
he
slept in this morning! I swear, sometimes I think being a single mom’s the way to go.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Amy,” Meg said, “except that I feel for you. And that they grow up so fast that soon you’ll be wishing you could get these days back.”

“They’re ingrates,” Amy said. “All of them. Ingrates.”

When Meg laughed, Amy glared at her. “It’s not funny. Sometimes it seems all I am is their maid.”

“Let me take the girls back home with me after brunch,” Meg said. “You and David can go catch a movie. Or stay home and have s-e-x in an empty house.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Amy said. “Having sex with David is exactly how I’d spend my precious free time—not! That would be rewarding him for his bad behavior.”

Meg shook her head in disapproval. The longer Amy withheld sex because David didn’t help around the house, the crankier he became, and the crankier he became, the less Amy was willing to have sex, and so on and so on.

Amy looked at her accusingly. “You think I should just sleep with the guy, don’t you?”

“With
your husband
?” Meg said. “Yes, I do.”

Amy slammed her hand on the counter.
“He needs to woo me!”

“Fine!” Meg said. “Geez. Just so you know—I wouldn’t woo you, either, when you’re acting like this. He’s probably afraid you’re going to bite his head off if he tries to say anything nice to you.”

“Maybe I will,” Amy said.

Just then, David came around the corner from the great room into the kitchen. From the imitation cheer on his face, Meg knew he was well aware of his wife’s mood, whether or not he’d overheard their conversation.

“Hi, David.” Meg didn’t want him to think she held Amy’s frame of mind against him.

“Hi, Meg.” There was no hint in his voice that anything was amiss. “How’s your school year going?”

As Meg was in the middle of assuring David she was fine, the doorbell rang and the muscles in his face involuntarily tensed. In addition to his cranky wife, the poor guy now had to deal with Clarabelle, too.

“I’ll get it.” Meg slid off her stool. “David, I know Henry was hoping you’d teach him to play cribbage today.”

“Love to.” David smiled at her, thankful for this escape hatch. He followed behind her to greet her parents and stood back as she opened the front door wide enough to allow them both entry. Her father stood behind her mother, as usual.

“Your father tells me you have a new suitor,” Clarabelle said to Meg by way of greeting, as Phillip smiled apologetically at her.

“Hello to you, too,” Meg said. “Is that my favorite green Jell-O with maraschino cherries in it?”

“No,” Clarabelle snapped. “It’s red, with mandarin oranges.”

When Meg was small, she’d thrown up oodles of red Jell-O with mandarin oranges and had since been unable to eat it. Clarabelle’s making it was payback for Meg confiding in her father and not in her, plain and simple.

“I’ll help with that.” David took the dish from Clarabelle and escaped to the kitchen.

“What kind of name is Ahmed, anyway?” Clarabelle asked as she brushed aggressively past Meg.

“It’s a first name,” Meg said. “And I don’t want to talk about him with you.”

Clarabelle harrumphed. “Does he speak English?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Meg said. “He’s the assistant city manager. Of course he speaks English!”

Clarabelle narrowed her eyes. “Does he have an accent, I mean.”

He didn’t have an accent, but Meg wasn’t about to tell her mother that. She crossed her arms and responded with a defiant look.

“He’s been here since he was a kid, right, Meg?” her father said. “Came from Iran when he was ten, didn’t you say? His mother was American?”

“Don’t bother, Dad,” Meg said. “I’m not looking for her approval or permission.”

“Of course you aren’t,” Clarabelle said. “When have you ever?” She stomped off to the kitchen, now about the last place Meg wanted to be. She looked at her father.

“What is it with the women in this family?” she asked. “Why are they so grumpy all the time? I’m not grumpy.”

“You’re never grumpy,” Phillip said.

“That’s because life is good,” Meg said.

She suggested they go out back and join the kids in the backyard, where they were playing some sort of running-around-and-squealing game that seemed to have no rules, and together they spent a pleasant thirty minutes with the kids, until they were called in for brunch.

Soon enough, Clarabelle was at it again. “How old is he?”

La, la, la.

“Please pass the fruit salad,” Meg said. David passed it over.

“Has he been married? Is he divorced?” Clarabelle said. “I hear a man can have four wives in Iran.”

“Leave her alone,” Amy growled.

“Mother, get a life of your own and stop butting into mine.” Meg made big eyes at Henry in response to his look of disapproval.

“He’s really nice,” Henry offered. “He helps me with soccer.”

“Those Middle Easterners do like their soccer. Is he Muslim, I suppose? Does he eat pork?” Clarabelle machine-gunned her questions. “Does he pray five times a day and face Mecca like they do? I wonder how that goes over down at city hall. Does he go to a mosque?”

Meg felt her left eye twitch.

“So what if he goes to a mosque?” Amy snapped.

“He doesn’t.” Meg had asked. When he’d said no, she’d been both relieved and ashamed of her relief. “Not that it matters.”

“Oh, it matters,” Clarabelle said. “In this day and age, it most certainly does matter.”

“He’s really nice,” Henry said again.

“Leave her alone,” Phillip told Clarabelle. Meg looked at him in surprise. Most often, he let whatever Clarabelle said roll off him as if she were a fly whose pestering he’d gotten so used to that he didn’t bother to swat it away anymore.

“Excuse me, Phillip.” Clarabelle glared at him. “Am I not allowed to ask my daughter a question?”

“This is what I mean.” Phillip said it matter-of-factly. “Exactly what we were talking about before. You aren’t just asking questions. You’re judging. Criticizing. Acting like she’s not an intelligent woman who can come to good decisions on her own.”

“She’s not making decisions on her own, Phillip.” Clarabelle said his name with venom. “You’re making them for her.”

“No, he’s not!” Meg said. “He gives me advice. And he doesn’t judge me.”

“He doesn’t judge you because he doesn’t want
you
to judge
him
!” Clarabelle practically yelled.

Meg glared at Clarabelle, who swirled the ice in her glass with a screw-you snippiness and then took a swallow of her gin and tonic.

“Enough.” Phillip stood and tossed down his napkin. “I’ve had enough.”

I
’ve heard it said that when a husband cheats on his wife, it’s never really about the sex. I’ve never quite fully believed that
—
even as I know that in my case, it was probably true.

When I hear the word
affair
, this is what I think: Ugly. Torrid. Selfish. Sneaky. Hurtful. Jonathan’s affair, at least the one I know about, was all that and more. There aren’t words to describe how horrible it was. The damage it wreaked lingers in me until this day.

But my
father . . .

A date!

Meg, who didn’t date, was going on a date!

With Ahmed!

A date was just a date, she kept reminding herself. Nothing more and nothing less. In the hokey-pokey scheme of things, it was putting her right foot in, just to test the waters.

What she obsessed over was: would they kiss? There was an etiquette to it, she knew. Perhaps the first date was only supposed to be a kiss on the cheek—but since this was really the fifth time they’d seen each other, even if only their first official date, did that rule still have to apply?

Meg worried he’d be all gentlemanly about it. She, herself, was not feeling particularly ladylike. Kissing Ahmed, she thought, would be like having an extremely interesting conversation.

Meg had decided to have Ahmed meet her by the pool rather than at her apartment. Since Harley was watching Henry, it would make her leave-taking that much smoother. Plus, she wanted her Loop Group friends to meet him so they could discuss him at length later.

Kat spotted him first. “Ooh-la-la,” she said. “Is that him?”

When Meg saw Ahmed heading down the path to the pool in his jeans and white shirt and Calvin Klein-ish sports coat, she gave herself official permission to disregard first-date etiquette, because
ooh-la-la
was right.

“That’s him.” Meg started down the path to greet him. She’d decided to go simple-sexy and wore a sleeveless black knee-length dress and open-toed heels. For makeup, she wore mascara, lipstick and just a hint of eye shadow. The clincher was the diamond necklace she wore. It had been a gift from Jonathan on their first wedding anniversary, and while she’d thrown their photo albums in a garbage Dumpster and simply walked away from their household items, she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the diamond necklace, because while the marriage ended up being far from perfect, the diamond itself was flawless.

The chain on which it hung was so translucent as to be almost invisible, and it had the effect of causing one to lean close to examine what held the diamond in place at the base of her throat . . . which then caused one to inhale the delicate Estée Lauder perfume she wore. So many women wore low-cut tops and high-cut skirts and two-inch fake nails to pass themselves off as sexy (Kat, for instance), but Meg’s belief was that a woman should have one signature item that made
her
feel sexy, and the rest would follow naturally. For Meg, it was the diamond.

As they closed the distance between them, Meg kept her eyes on Ahmed’s. His radiated unabashed lust—he didn’t even try to hide it. She grinned when she recognized it for what it was and then fell into intense seriousness as they moved, yet again, to that deeper level they couldn’t seem to avoid. Maybe it was the luck of her diamond or maybe it was the look in his eyes, but Meg’s approach was perfect. Her hips swayed gracefully; her heels clicked confidently. Her chin was raised and her posture, ballet-strong.

Sultry, that was how she felt.

She stepped into Ahmed’s space and stopped mere inches from him. Silently, she apprised him of her intentions: sultry women don’t say hello. They
take
a man.

Thankful for the oleander bushes that blocked Henry’s view of them, Meg pulled Ahmed to her. Though it was their first kiss, there was nothing awkward about it. It was deep, and leisurely, and lingering. It was a fine first kiss.

“There,” Meg said when she let him go. “Now I don’t have to wonder all night whether or not you’re going to kiss me.”

Ahmed grinned. “I was definitely going to kiss you.”

When they kissed again, the world beyond Meg disappeared. It was just the two of them, softening toward each other, connecting, revealing themselves. It was a kiss to get lost in, until from the pool area Henry called out.