The Theory of Happily Ever After

by Kristin Billerbeck

  “I’ve got one bar!” I lift up my phone. Sam and Haley are now cozily sitting on the sofa across the room, and since this bothers me I turn away. She could have any man she wants. Granted, Sam is nothing more than a vacation diversion, and by next Friday he’ll be out of both of our lives forever. I try to focus on this fact rather than be sidetracked by petty, unrealistic jealousy.

  It’s only leftover emotion from Jake. Suck it up, buttercup. Haley hasn’t liked a man in eons. She’s saved what’s left of my career and gotten me out of the house. The least I can do is avoid my feelings for a man who is all wrong for me anyway.

  Rather than pay them any more attention, I press the button to dial my mother, and she answers before it has a chance to ring on my end. “Margaret Katherine Maguire, where are you?”

  “I’m working, Mother. Haley booked us a cruise for me to speak on.”

  She lets out a hollow-sounding sigh. “Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re working at least. This wedding—”

  “Mother . . .” I clear my throat, bracing myself.

  I go to the opposite side of the room and try to whisper, but my mother isn’t having it.

  “For heaven’s sake, speak up, Margaret!”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this. But there’s not going to be a wedding. I’m not getting married. At least not yet.”

  She’s silent for a moment. My mother is never silent. “Margaret Katherine, whatever do you mean? The caterer—”

  “Jake has married someone else, Mother. So it’s most inconvenient to have him as my groom.”

  “What? Jake was just here last weekend. He returned a power drill to your father.”

  “He didn’t mention that he was marrying someone yesterday? An acrobat?”

  “I think I should remember if my daughter’s fiancé told me he was getting married to another woman. Is that why you’ve been avoiding my calls?”

  Sam and Haley are both glaring at me. It doesn’t appear that either one of them is enjoying their room coffee over the Asian fusion tea as they eavesdrop.

  “I imagine you think this comes as a surprise to me,” Mother says.

  I look behind me, willing Haley and Sam to leave the room, but for some reason they don’t take the hint. “No, I do believe that when we announced our engagement, you told me it would never happen. So if you want to hear you were right, well, you were right.”

  “I don’t want to hear I’m right. I want to hear why you didn’t bother to tell me. You might have saved me all the effort—not to mention the money.” My mother sounds as if she’s about to burst into tears, and I feel like the worst human on the planet. Because my mother doesn’t cry. Ever.

  “I guess I was waiting to process the news for myself.”

  “The country club didn’t take kindly to my canceling at the last moment . . .” Her voice trails off into a shameful place I know I’ve created.

  “You mean they won’t take kindly to it? I’ll tell them, Mother. I’ll be home next Saturday and speak with the catering manager about everything.” My stomach feels squeamish. If only the motion of the ship were causing my discomfort.

  “You needn’t bother.” My mother’s voice takes on a familiar, icy chill. I lower myself into a nearby stuffed pink chair and avoid eye contact with Haley and Sam. “I wondered how long it would take you to tell me the truth.”

  “You know about Jake,” I say breathlessly. Of course she knows. My mother knows everything about my life before I’ve even made a decision. Kathleen’s soothsayer powers have nothing on my mother’s. She simply assumes the worst and it generally comes true.

  “I spoke with your father about this a month ago. I knew something must be wrong. A mother’s intuition.”

  “You canceled the wedding before this call?” I recognize her courteous yet hidden-rage tone and brace for the great unleashing.

  “I’ve already told the country club,” she says with an eerie calm, and I wonder if someone is listening beside her. I thank God for whomever the innocent bystander happens to be—he or she has spared me a great deal of mama rage. “I realize that you’ve been having some type of crisis, but I never imagined you’d skirt the truth about an event I was planning. A costly event that would never take place. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but you’ve always been sneaky when it came to Jake.”

  I steal a glance at Haley and Sam. They’re both avoiding eye contact and have the courtesy to act as if they haven’t heard a thing.

  I don’t want the answer to my next question, which tumbles from my mouth. “How did you find out?”

  “You’ll never guess.” That hard edge when Mother doesn’t get her way springs to life.

  I wait for her to continue. There is no sense in rushing her. She likes to dole out her punishment slowly for the best effect.

  “Because your boss has been calling here. Apparently, if you’re going to go on sabbatical without telling your parents, you might first try to change your emergency contacts.”

  Drat! I bite my lip.

  “This prime example of manhood who you decided to marry with your grandmother’s wedding ring . . .” Mother has to remind me that Jake didn’t even spring for a ring. “I want that ring back.”

  “The ring is safe, Mother.” My intuition had told me I would never see Jake Stone again, and I’d made sure the ring stayed in my possession. Now didn’t seem the time to bring that up.

  “I’m not finished,” she says. “Jake has apparently used your credentials to break into the lab beside yours. Dr. Fleece wouldn’t give me details, but from what I can piece together, he’s stolen something that seems quite important to the university.”

  I’m breathless. Shame washes over me like a Gatorade bath after a university football win. I can’t even get dumped like a normal person. My sudden dreams where I forget all about romance and restart my career come to a screeching halt. I’ll never work for the illustrious Dr. Hamilton at NYU. I’ll be lucky enough to get a job scrubbing floors at any university.

  “Dr. Fleece needs answers from you. You’re the one who recommended him. This is no small thing, Margaret. She used the word espionage.”

  Espionage. Jake was obsessed with James Bond movies. Maybe that’s who he thought he was. I’ll never know. But I need him to get back to the university and set things straight—that I had nothing to do with whatever scheme he had planned.

  “I need to go, Mother.”

  “My phone has been ringing off the hook. Dr. Fleece is most anxious to reach you. Most anxious,” Mother says coldly. “I was tempted to give the university Haley’s cell phone number because I knew that she would never do anything irresponsible like ignore her mother.”

  “She wouldn’t, but her mother has passed.”

  “I figured that when you weren’t in that shabby apartment of yours, you must be with your friends, and I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “You went to my apartment?”

  “Honestly, Margaret, you live like a homeless person. Why not live in a box out on the street if you’re not going to decorate properly?”

  “I may need the box at this rate.”

  “Your father and I have sacrificed enough of our lives to get you educated and functioning in the world. It’s our turn now. You’re going to have to figure this out yourself.”

  I want to ask her when it’s not their turn. They were in Barbados for my high school graduation, the Bahamas for my college graduation, and, I believe, Paris when I got my PhD.

  I turn away from Sam and Haley. “I’ll pay you back every cent for the wedding.”

  “How? You may not have a job!” she screeches as if she might have predicted my fate all along. “I want that ring back. Find Jake Stone.”

  “I will, Mother. I don’t know how, but I will figure it out.” My mind is already calculating how I can make Jake believe he can have his job back with no questions asked. As if I have that power. But if I ever hope to get this espionage baloney figured out, I need to get Jake to the u
niversity.

  “Jake Stone and his new wife”—she says the word with the aura of disgust only my mother can inflict—“are currently being sought for questioning regarding espionage at the university. I’d suggest you worry about that presently.”

  “Currently sought by my university.” I say this more for myself than my mother.

  “Yes, Dr. Maguire, your university. Jake used your credentials to gain access to the physics building next door. Is there a reason you’d leave your important documents lying about?”

  “I didn’t leave them lying about. They were in my apartment.” That must have been the reason he came to tell me about Anichka in person. I remember thinking it was a brave act on his part.

  The physics building. My head spins with questions. What on earth would he need in there? Maybe I’d been played from the start. Had he planned all this before I even got him a job? There’s no way to know the truth without asking my boss, and I don’t dare call her before my speech is finished and I’ve kept some credibility in my field.

  “I believe your boss is concerned that you may have been an accomplice.”

  “Well, I hope you told them I’d have nothing to do with anything dishonest.”

  “How could I tell them such a thing? I’ve been planning a wedding for months that was never going to take place. A wedding you didn’t have the common decency to inform me had been canceled.”

  She had a point.

  “We’re concerned with your state of mind. What would propel you to spin this web?” My mother’s favorite hobby is to analyze my behavior.

  My heart is pounding, and I look over at Haley and Sam. I feel as if they’ve judged me in the worst possible way, as if I’ve committed the most heinous of crimes. My only hope is that they didn’t hear every ugly word my mother said. I exhale. What does it matter? Let them hear the whole truth of Margaret Katherine Maguire, PhD. I stay quiet while my mother continues her expected tirade on society and her travesty of a daughter, who’s not the intellectual she and my father had dreamed up in their heads.

  Mother’s voice continues to blare from my phone, though I’ve turned it down to the lowest possible setting. “The public education system would have let you fail, but that was not an option. You were not stupid, though you tried mightily to prove it to the world . . .”

  I stop listening at this point. I feel the same dejection and hopelessness that I always do after a “discussion” with my mother, and that’s sad. Nothing was ever good enough, and sometimes I fail to understand why I ever tried. Trying to make an unhappy person happy is a pointless endeavor. I have the stats to prove it.

  “All right, Mother. Well, I should take care of this situation. My new publisher is on board.”

  Mother isn’t done. “Do you have any idea how demeaning it was to go into that country club? Roger—he’s the new catering manager and came from New York City. He has a very sophisticated palate. I don’t believe you’ve met him. He was horrified that the wedding had been canceled and did his utmost to keep everything hush-hush. But you know how people talk.”

  Oh my goodness, poor Roger! It must have been devastating for him.

  Now, I’ve been raised by my mother, so I knew better than to speak my sarcasm aloud.

  “I’d been telling him you were too busy to plan the wedding. Imagine my shock when I discover you haven’t been at work for nearly two months.”

  “Oh, you know about that too.” I’m really without hope here. It’s my own web that I’ve spun and I’m not proud of it. On a happy note, nearly all the television movies were new during those two months, so it wasn’t a total loss.

  “Your boss said you’d taken a sabbatical to plan your wedding.”

  “I never said it was to plan my wedding.” Though I’ll admit, I got a lot of great ideas from the Hallmark Channel if I ever do plan a wedding.

  “When you come home, I’d like you to go and explain to Roger what happened.”

  “Is Roger single?”

  “That is not funny, Margaret Katherine.”

  “I’m trying to make light, Mother. I’m sure you wouldn’t rather I was still getting married to a man who might be arrested on espionage charges.”

  She huffs and hangs up on me. When I look up, Sam and Haley both look more horrified than Roger the catering manager must have been.

  “No,” I tell them. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I have enough to deal with. And Sam, please.” I walk toward him and grasp his muscular arm. “Let me fix this before you tell your sister any of what’s happening at the university. I know I don’t deserve that, but . . .”

  He doesn’t meet my eyes. I notice he’s no longer wearing his casual linen sports coat but still has a crisp white collar as if he’s shedding his formal self slowly. Comfortably. With Haley. The knot in my stomach tells me maybe Sam Wellington means more to me than I care to admit.

  Jealousy courses through my veins. I don’t have the right to ask a favor of him, but my eyes are silently pleading with him for another day.

  “You don’t have to worry about me divulging anything to Jules,” Sam says as he rises. “I’m the soul of discretion.”

  “Because of Haley?” I can’t help myself. I want to hear it from his mouth. That he’s recognized Haley’s romantic qualities are far superior to my own.

  He gives me the strangest look, and I can’t decipher what it’s supposed to mean.

  “I don’t know which is worse,” Haley says with her pitying look. “What your mother said to you, or the fact that it no longer bothers you.”

  I shrug, sidetracked by Sam’s handsome self and what’s going on in that head of his. Sam’s eyes give nothing away, but he’s heard all my sins laid bare. Not the least of which is that my own mother doesn’t particularly care for me. I force my attention back to my best friend.

  “Haley, you know my mother.” I shake my head. “She is who she is. She’s not going to magically turn into Betty Crocker at this point.”

  Sam’s silence is making me crazy. I wish he’d just tear out of the room with Haley on his arm so I could start grieving already. Another frog kissed. That’s all that happened.

  I can’t take it any longer. “Aren’t you going to say anything about what my mother’s told me, Sam?”

  He takes in a deep breath as he ponders his words. “I don’t understand her, perhaps, but I believe people should be loved for who they are. Not what they’ve accomplished. Let’s go find the dessert bar.”

  “Yes, Maggie,” Haley says. “Let’s go get some dessert. I think you need a little sweetness in your life after that.” It’s not lost on me that she’s inviting herself along.

  Call me cold, but I’d rather have a little sweetness without watching my best friend hit on the guy I kissed this morning. “I should call my boss and see what all this is about,” I say. “I’m sure it’s a simple misunderstanding, but heaven forbid the FBI is looking for me on deck.”

  “You should call your boss and explain.” Sam’s voice has an authority that commands attention, and Haley and I both wait for his verdict. “But first I think you should get dessert to bolster your confidence.” He leaves the movies on the table beneath the television. “Sometimes, Margaret K. Maguire”—this time the way he says my name quiets my anxious spirit—“we’ve given all we can give, and we must refuel before we have anything else to offer. I think in your book of rules, that calls for dessert.”

  I smile. Did this man just make a pious, spiritual statement about the importance of sustenance in the form of ice cream?

  Clearly I’ve been dating the wrong men.

  15

  Happy people live their truth.

  The Science of Bliss by Dr. Margaret K. Maguire

  I SHED MY BELLE COSTUME on the bathroom floor and kick it aside. I slide into a pair of white shorts and navy-striped nautical shirt. Rather than fashionable, I look like I should be working the zip line. But it feels right. Casual. Chic. Basically, not sweatpants.

  I unzip t
he invisible pouch inside my makeup bag and remove my former engagement ring from its secret pocket. Just a glimpse. It’s a simple design. A brilliant cut diamond in a tasteful size and classic setting. The ring sparkles magnificently under the bright bathroom light, and I twist and turn it, watching the beams of color facets change from red to blue to violet—a full spectrum. My grandmother always wanted me to have the ring. My mother held it hostage until I was officially engaged. I suppose my actions of holding it hostage are no better, but a strange satisfaction comes over me when I remove it from the pocket.

  I slide the jewel on my ring finger, and for a brief moment all of this is just a bad dream. Jake loves me enough to marry me, to be my happily ever after, and I haven’t misread the signs that perhaps I wanted him more than he wanted me. A pattern I seem to be reliving with Jake 2.0—Sam.

  Sam brought me a computer. But reality reminds me that his sister wants me to get to work right away. He brought me sickly-sweet movies! Again, a reward for a job well done. He’s done nothing for me and everything for his sister. My romantic fantasies need to be grounded before they run off with my senses once again.

  I tell myself that with Jake, it was simply cold feet and not another woman’s feet that led him away. Everyone gets cold feet. My training didn’t fail me, and all the data lines up as it should.

  “Maggie?” Haley shouts through the bathroom door, and my reverie is broken. I look at myself in the mirror, reminded that the nightmare continues. My fiancé is gone, my job is in jeopardy, and my best friends are doing their level best to restore my sanity. While I’m in a dream state in the cruise ship loo.

  I pull it together and yank the ring from my finger. “Yeah?”

  “Kathleen just called. She’s up at the main pool with that bartender you met. Brent, is it?”

  Seriously? Are there only two men on this so-called singles’ cruise? “New Year, New You,” my foot. Two men for an entire cruise ship of women? Sounds like the same ol’ year to me. Two men, two hot friends, and me. Third-wheeling it through my entire life.