One True Theory of Love Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  One True

  A CONVERSATION WITH LAURA FITZGERALD

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Praise for Veil of Roses

  “Every mother, every daughter, and anyone who’s ever been in love should read this book! Grab the tissues. It’s a triumphant tearjerker!”

  —New York Times bestselling author

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “Evocative, poignant, and truly lovely. Laura Fitzgerald gives us a glimpse of a culture that’s terrifyingly different—and yet heartbreakingly the same as our own.”

  —Alesia Holliday, author of

  Seven Ways to Lose Your Lover

  “A fun, romantic, and thought-provoking debut novel from a promising author.” —Booklist

  “A gorgeously authentic voice. Fitzgerald’s narrative is infused with wit, warmth, and compassion. If you like cross-cultural books, you won’t want to put this down.”

  —Kavita Daswani, author of Salaam, Paris

  and For Matrimonial Purposes

  “In this winning debut, Fitzgerald has crafted the powerful story of one woman’s courage to look beyond the life she has been given—Veil of Roses is a poignant and uplifting novel full of charm, wit, and grace.”

  —Beth Kendrick, author of Fashionably Late

  and Newlyweds

  “Watching Tami find her voice through such small comforts as being able to sit alone in a house, walk to school unescorted, or buy lingerie with her sister will leave readers rooting for her.” —Publishers Weekly

  “After picking up Veil of Roses, I did everything one-handed for two days, I was so unwilling to put it down! Charming and heartbreaking and hopeful and funny, this is the rare book that completely transports the reader. Laura Fitzgerald is an amazing talent.”

  —Lani Diane Rich, author of

  A Little Ray of Sunshine

  “Poignant and warm, Veil of Roses is a story about having hope, finding love, and embracing freedom. I loved it.”

  —Whitney Gaskell, author of

  Testing Kate

  New American Library

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, February 2009

  Copyright © Laura Fitzgerald, 2009

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Fitzgerald, Laura, 1967-

  One true theory of love / Laura Fitzgerald.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-01475-2

  1. Single mothers—Fiction. 2. Kindergarten teachers—Fiction. 3. Iranian Americans—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3606.I8836064 2009

  813’.6—dc22 2008044957

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to my children, Carly and Luke,

  and to the adults they will one day be.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a book can be a long, lonely journey. Mine wasn’t. I’d like to thank the following people, whose efforts and involvement made the process both challenging and fun:

  My first thanks go to Ellen Edwards at NAL, for her editorial tenacity, sharp eye, and open mind as the story changed and grew . . . and changed again, and again . . . and again. I am also appreciative of: Becky Vinter, Monica Benalcazar, Kara Welsh, and Claire Zion. Thank you to Jennifer Bernard and the other publicists working with Craig Burke; to Rick Pascocello and his team in advertising and promotion; to Sharon Gamboa, Don Rieck, Norman Lidofsky and his entire sales team; and to Trish Weyenberg and all the sales representatives in the field.

  Thank you to Stephanie Rostan, my very trusted agent at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, and to the rest of the Levine Greenberg team, especially Monika Verma, Beth Fisher, Melissa Rowland, and Miek Coccia.

  I am profoundly grateful to Ross Browne at The Editorial Department for his editorial support throughout the extensive writing and editing process. His high standards, good sense, and laid-back persistence made this an immeasurably better book.

  My friends and family continue to offer meaningful support and cheerleading on a daily basis. Thank you all. Extra special appreciation this time around goes to: Bill and Maureen, my parents, for hosting me when I’m in Milwaukee and spreading the word about me when I’m not; Julie Ore-Giron, who pounds the miles alongside me and is an excellent brain-storming partner, as well as generous with her time and enthusiasm in reading draft after draft; Lisa Dew, for a lifetime of friendship; Sherry Martin and Todd Martin, for ongoing friendship and support; Robin Brande, for being my writing-pal confidante; Annette Everlove, for legal advice and inspired feedback; Daisy Lebron, for sharing some of her toughest life lessons; Colleen Geurts, for sharing her single-mom rules for dating; Austin Hodge, founder of the lovely tea shop Seven Cups, for the tea lesson; Renni Browne, for her presubmission editing; Peggy Bommersbach, for her friendship and for sharing what it’s like to be a young person in an old woman’s body; to the women in my book club, for being great examples of how to live rich.

  I so appreciate the readers and bloggers and book clubs who contacted me after reading my first novel, Veil of Roses, and shared their thoughts and invited me into their worlds. Please stay i
n touch! A special thanks to Liz Broomfield and a hang-tough to Stephanie Coleman-Chan.

  Finally—saving the best for last: I thank Carly and Luke (poets and writers, both) for being such truly excellent individuals. I thank Farhad for—well, simply for everything. (I have kept a list. . . .)

  It’s easy to look at men and think they’re idiots. They watch their ESPN and sneak their Playboys and for no good reason at all refuse to ask for directions. It’s easy to think there’s just not a heck of a lot of depth in men as a species.

  I’ve got this theory. It’s about Adam and Eve and how things really went down that day in the Garden of Eden. I think the newness of the relationship was wearing off and Eve, being a woman, had an unquenchable need for them to COMMUNICATE about their FEELINGS, which of course Adam, being a man, simply would not, could not, do. And then the serpent slithered along, representing our not-best selves, and whispered to Eve, “Keep poking him. Threaten to eat from the Tree of Knowledge if he won’t talk to you.”

  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when Eve made the threat, Adam shrugged it off, barely acknowledging he’d heard her. Maybe he just said, “Go ahead, dear, if it’ll make you happy,” thinking whatever she was yakking about going and doing would at least get her off his case for a while.

  Being a man, he didn’t consider how much was really at stake. Which, of course, was everything.

  Meg Clark stood and waited in front of her twenty-three kindergartners at Foundation Elementary School on Tucson’s south side. It was the last ten minutes of the school day, and at this hour they were ABC’d out and ring-around-the-rosy pooped. The time might have been better spent with them resting on their mats. But Meg always took this moment, because to her it was the one that mattered most.

  She began and ended the day with song, and now, a few weeks into the new school year, her students knew that when she clapped and announced afternoon-circle time, they were to push the small-person tables and chairs out of the way and gather in a standing circle for one last time that day.

  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.

  “No tienes cojones!”

  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.