One True Theory of Love (2 page)

They’d already sung “Down on the Banks of the Hanky Panky” and jumped like bullfrogs from one imaginary lily pad to another. They’d done “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” and they were almost through their last song when Meg put out both arms like a school crossing guard and said, “Okay, stop!”

Her students came to a kids’ version of a standstill. Meg waited as they collectively squirmed, tilting forward on their anticipatory toes. Scanning the circle, she looked at each in turn. There was Antonio, with his grin so big she wanted to scoop him up and smother him with hugs. There were Rachel and Emma and Max and Dylan and Taylor and Kira and Isaac and Remi and Ryan and Morgan and Katherine and Isabelle and Carly and Luke—all of them, with their beautiful, soulful eyes. In a school that was ninety-five percent Latino, most were dark-featured, the opposite of Meg, but at this point in their young lives, being the opposite of Meg didn’t matter. They accepted her fully with their untainted hearts.

Under her guidance, they’d put their right feet in and pulled them back out. They’d put their right feet back in and shaken them—extravagantly—all about. They’d done the hokey pokey and they’d turned themselves around, one body part at a time.

And then at Meg’s direction, they paused. It was important to her that this next part—in which they’d leap, with their whole selves, into the center of the circle—be momentous. And so she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

She waited for Marita, her sole nonsquirmer. With her long black braids, her love-me eyes, and her worried brow, Marita watched Meg’s every move with a quiet intensity, as if afraid Meg might disappear should she for one moment let down her guard. Wariness preempted her enthusiasm until next to her, Lucas—goofy Lucas—wiggled her arm and whispered to her. Only then did she smile, and only then did Meg continue.

“Is everybody ready?” she said.

“Yes!” they shouted.

“It doesn’t sound like you’re ready,” Meg teased. “Are you
really
ready?”

“Yeeeessss!” Marita said it along the others. “We’re
ready
, Miss Meg, we’re READY!”

We’re ready.
Those were the magic words. Really, Meg saw that as her only job—to help them be ready. For life, for love, and for everything in between.

She liked to fantasize that one day, when her students had grown up to be doctors to the dying and mothers to the drug-addicted and wives who’d been heartlessly shown the door, they’d think back to the last ten minutes of their kindergarten days, when their spirits still soared.

She hoped they’d remember how she dressed for them in polka-dot skirts and dangly earrings and how she tried to impart to them in a meaningful way the best piece of advice they were likely to receive in the entirety of their lives: that when life turned, as it invariably would—when it seemed nearly impossible to summon the courage to go on—there was only one best thing to do.

“All right, then.” Meg beamed at her students. “And a one, and a two, and a one, two, three—let’s do it!”

It was an imperfect circle into which they jumped, but that was okay. Life was imperfect, too. Together they did what they were supposed to, with joy and without hesitation: they put their whole selves in.

 

 

 

Lucas was the last student to leave that day. “Hey,” Meg said. “Your shirt’s on backward.”

Lucas shrugged and grinned. “I know.”

Meg grinned back. They had this same exchange almost every day. Lucas seemed genetically opposed to matching socks and shirts worn face-forward. “Thanks for getting Marita smiling there in circle time,” she said. “What’d you say to her?”

Lucas shrugged again. “I told her if she didn’t put her whole self in, I’d push her whole self in and tickle her whole self. See ya, Miss Meg.”

“See ya, Lucas.” Meg watched him go, then lingered in her classroom doorway and waited for her son, Henry, a fourth-grader at Foundation, to come tramping down the hall toward her, happily burdened with a backpack so heavy he had no business carrying it.

It was Friday, three o’clock—the weekend. They would officially mark it in a few minutes as Meg backed Coop, their lipstick red Mini Cooper, out of the school parking lot and tooted the horn—zipping off into the imaginary sunset, mother and son breaking free.

“Hey, Mom!” Henry called. “Guess what!”

As always when she saw Henry for the first time after any length of absence, Meg was momentarily rendered awestruck by the messy blond-haired beauty that was her son.

“What?” she said.

Henry was nine, and he seemed to learn a new insult daily from his classmates (aka
fellow hoodlums
). And each day, he shared it with Meg and eagerly awaited her response. But what was she supposed to say?
No tienes cojones. You’ve got no balls.

“Lovely,” Meg said. “Just lovely. And it’s even anatomically correct. But really—must you be so crude?”

“Yes, Mom. I must.”

Meg rolled her eyes. He could be such a Henry. “Hey, Henry, guess what?”

“What, Mom?”

“If you say it again, there will be consequences.” To show she meant it, Meg raised her eyebrows in a strict-mom maneuver before going back inside her classroom. While she lined up the desks and tucked in the chairs, Henry flipped off and on and off again the lights to her classroom.

“I got a hundred on my spelling test,” he said.

“Henry, that’s awesome.”

“A-w-e-s-o-m-e,” he said.

“Very good, smarty-pants. Are you ready?”

Henry flipped the lights off for the last time and Meg closed her classroom door behind them. With a practiced flourish, they burst through the school’s front doors into the triple-digit September sauna-of-a-day, where the sun immediately assaulted them. Any day now, it would be biking weather, roller-skating weather, walk-outside-without-cursing weather. Any damn day.

But that day, the heat was just plain rude. While Henry fumbled in his backpack for his baseball cap, Meg scrambled in her purse for her sunglasses. Once properly outfitted, they nodded at each other and grinned. They would not be thwarted.

“Onward!” Henry cried.

“Onward!” Meg agreed. This was their battle cry, the motto of their lives. Henry was her guy—a kid who was loved and knew it, a kid who loved back with an enthusiasm Meg hoped would never dim.

“Can we get Harry Potter Number Two for movie night?” Henry asked as they buckled themselves into Coop.

“Henry, really.” Meg turned and lowered her sunglasses so he could see her mock-scolding eyes. “Haven’t you had enough of Harry Potter?”

He grinned at her. “Never.”

Meg shook her head. Every week at Casa Video, she suggested alternatives, but Henry said no to the Brady Bunch series, no to the
Cheaper by the Dozens
,
no to
Home Alone
. It had recently occurred to Meg that he wasn’t interested in any movie involving the proverbial big, happy family. Which was probably a good thing, since one wasn’t in the cards for him.

“If you pick the movie, then I get to pick the ice cream,” she said. This was another aspect of their Friday nights, one pint of Ben and Jerry’s, shared in Meg’s queen-sized bed while watching their movie.

“Deal,” said Henry. “Are you going to pick Chunky Monkey?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.” Meg tooted her horn as they zipped out of the school parking lot, moving onward, always onward. She did, in fact, have a hankering for Chunky Monkey.

Not to mention, because it went without saying, she lived to make Henry happy.

The problem is, when a man acts like a simpleton over an extended period of time, he sort of . . . becomes one. Until one day he remembers: hey, there’s a real and complex person inside this shallow shell I show the world—and
she’s
not honoring that!

 

 

 

 

The Golden Arms apartment complex on Country Club Road and East Fifth Street had two qualities that made it nearly impossible for Meg to consider moving.

First, it was one of the few places in central Tucson where she could afford a decent two-bedroom. Second, it was a twenty-minute drive from Meg’s parents’ house in the foot-hills. Since Meg’s mother largely kept her world to a five-minute radius, this extra fifteen-minute distance meant one thing to Meg: freedom from Clarabelle.

Which was why she was taken aback when Clarabelle suddenly appeared at her kitchen window with a cheery
ha-loooo
as Meg was washing up that night’s macaroni-and-cheese dishes. Not only was she taken aback—she was concerned. Clarabelle had just retired from her administrative-support position at the University of Arizona after thirty-five years and suddenly had lots of extra time on her hands. Meg worried regularly just exactly what that might mean to her, personally.

“Mom! Hi! What are you doing here?” Her mother’s appearance threatened the very essence, the very unchanging routine, of Friday-night movie night. Unbidden, Meg’s mind flashed on an image of Clarabelle crawling into bed with her and Henry.

Nope, that wasn’t going to happen. Movie night was precious and Meg firmly believed in protecting that which was precious.

“I was just passing by!” Her mother’s smile was breezily carefree, but Meg knew better. Clarabelle was a full-on hurricane. “I thought I’d pop in and say hello. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the two of you.”

“We saw you five days ago, Mom.” Meg turned off the water spigot and reached for a towel to dry her hands. She met Clarabelle at the door. “At Amy’s. Like we do every Sunday, remember?”

Amy was Meg’s younger sister and the organizer of the family. A bit controlling, she hosted a family brunch every Sunday and all the major holidays, and if you wanted to bring a dish, you had to clear it through her first.

“I’ve got something for you.” Clarabelle came right in, set her big purse on the dining room table, and rummaged through it. Meg loved bright colors thrown together, reminiscent of Mexico or what she imagined Mexico would be like if she could ever afford to travel there, and decorated her apartment accordingly in reds, yellows, oranges, and turquoise. Clarabelle, in black, was like death in a field of flowers.

“I knew I’d forget if I waited.” She pulled a newspaper clipping out of her purse and handed it to Meg. “Here. It’s called ‘Dogs: A Lonely Boy’s Best Friend.’ I thought you might find it interesting.”

One
. Meg took a deep breath.

“Well, gee. Thanks,” she said. “That’ll come in handy, seeing how there’s a no-pets-allowed policy here.”

Which her mother perfectly well knew.

“You might buy a house one day,” Clarabelle said. “Lord knows you should be able to afford it, seeing as you didn’t pay rent when you lived with us.”

Two,
Meg thought. She’d moved in with them after the Jonathan thing happened and stayed until Henry started kindergarten at Foundation, at which time they moved into the Golden Arms apartment complex. (The
Jonathan thing
being: My lovely wife of three years, you’re pregnant? Well, congratulations, and I guess I should mention that all those times I told you I was studying? Well, I’ve actually been screwing my study partner. Yeah, and, um, I’m moving with her to New York City after law school . . . but congratulations on the pregnancy! I know you’ve always wanted to be a mom. . . . Jerk! Asshole! Complete asshole jerk!)

“I offered to pay rent,” Meg said. “You said,
Don’t be ridiculous.
I remember the exact conversation.”

“You were in the middle of having a nervous breakdown,” Clarabelle said. “We thought asking you to pay rent might put you over the edge, but we hoped you were saving your money to buy a house.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Meg said. “Besides, I love my apartment. My entire social life revolves around it. Not to mention, Violet’s here. Henry wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. With Violet for a best friend, Henry doesn’t need a dog.”

Without even deigning to glance at it, Meg slipped the article into her kitchen junk drawer on top of the last obnoxious one her mother had given her: “Mothering the Fatherless Boy.”

Clarabelle put her hands on her judgmental hips. “Where is my grandson, anyway?”

“He’s down at the pool,” Meg said.

“
Alone?
You let your nine-year-old son go swimming
alone
?”

Three.
Gloves off.

“Yes, Mom,” Meg said. “And I gave him matches and lighter fluid to play with, too. What do you think? You think I don’t know how to take care of my son?” She allowed herself to use a
back off, lady
tone, knowing from past experience that her mother would not, in fact, back off, but it was either start giving as good as she got or start turning to over-the-counter pharmaceuticals anytime she spoke with her mother. Talking back was cheaper.