How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  “Yes, mine is saying something about musical instruments—do you not have that?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t have anything…”

  “Well, maybe you should try…”

  “Shh…it’s coming on. Wait, are we in the right place? Are we in the Hall of Supreme Harmony? Where’s the statue of the lion? What’s she talking about?”

  That sort of thing. But eventually we got into a nice rhythm and we were able to walk around with the little guide in our ears that knew exactly where we were at all times, and what we needed to know. It was perfect. Thomas and I were together, holding hands, experiencing the grandeur of the largest palace in the world, and we didn’t have to talk to each other about anything.

  Near the end of the tour, as I was looking at one of the little temples, I glanced over to see Thomas taking out his cell phone. The light was flashing. He took off his headphones and started talking on his phone. Again, he looked fairly animated. I chose to turn away. I listened intently to my audio guide, who sounded a bit like Vanessa Redgrave. In fact, I think it was Vanessa Redgrave. As I was looking at the Palace of Heavenly Purity, Vanessa was telling me about how the emperor hid the name of his successor, whom only he could choose, under a plaque that said “Justice and Honor.” At the same time he carried a duplicate copy in a pouch around his neck, so that if he died suddenly, there could be no high court shenanigans. As I was listening to this tale of palace intrigue, I glanced over at Thomas. He had shut the phone and had started pacing, nervously. I took off my headphones.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  Thomas ran his hands through his black wavy hair. He didn’t answer.

  “Ça c’est incroyable,” he muttered in French.

  “What?” I asked, now a little worried.

  Thomas didn’t answer. He just kept shaking his head.

  “She’s here. In Beijing.”

  “Who’s here…?” I asked, hoping I didn’t understand what he had just said.

  “Dominique, she’s here.”

  It was then that I realized I didn’t even know her name. I had purposely pushed her so out of the realm of my reality that I didn’t even know what people called her.

  “Your wife?” I asked, alarmed.

  Thomas nodded. His face was getting a little red.

  “She came to Beijing?” I asked, trying not to shriek.

  Thomas nodded again, tugging at his hair.

  “She didn’t believe I would ever come home. So she’s come here to get me.”

  I stood there, standing on the tiny steps that lead to the Palace of Heavenly Purity. There were now throngs of tourists, mostly Chinese, shoving past me.

  “Where is she now?”

  Thomas crossed his arms over his chest. Then he started biting his thumb. He put his hands down by his sides.

  “She’s across the street, in Tiananmen Square. She’s coming here, now.”

  “How can she be across the street—how did she…?”

  Thomas looked at me, astonished. “I don’t know. I think she just got here and told the taxi to take her to Tiananmen Square, and then she called me.”

  I looked at him, incredulous. “Well, what should I do…where should I…?”

  I looked around, like an empress trying to find her route of escape from the advancing army.

  “Let’s just take you out the back entrance and then I’ll go talk to her.”

  “Okay,” I said, my heart beating rapidly. “Okay.”

  We walked quickly through the Imperial Garden (it looked lovely from what I could tell) and were about to walk through the doorway that said “exit here.” I turned to Thomas to tell him that I would go back to the hotel, and he could call me there—or, I don’t know what, really—when I saw him looking over my head. His expression was fixed, but his eyes looked like someone had just pushed a fire alarm. I turned around, and saw this beautiful, tiny blond woman in a long cashmere coat and fashionable heels walking toward us fast. Her hair was in a high ponytail, and it bounced behind her as she stormed toward us. She had entered the gates of the Forbidden City and was about to confront us both in the Imperial Garden. What better place for a wife to confront her husband and his concubine?

  Thomas is an outstandingly cool and elegant man, but even he, at this moment, looked as if his head was about to explode all over the cypress trees.

  “What should I…what…?” I stammered.

  I wanted to flee, to run the three miles back to the front gate and through the streets of Beijing to the hotel and jump under the covers and hide. In two more seconds it would be too late for that.

  Dominique charged up to Thomas, yelling at him in French. Then she looked over at me with utter disgust, and started to yell some more. I could make out some of the things that she said, about the years they’d been together, how much she loved him. I kept hearing that over and over again, “Est-ce que tu sais à quel point je t’aime?” (“Do you know how much I love you?”) She kept pointing at me and yelling. Even if my French wasn’t perfectly accurate, I got the gist of it: Why would you throw away everything we have for her, for this woman, for this whore, for this nobody. Why is she so special? She’s nothing. We have a life together, she doesn’t mean anything to you. Thomas wasn’t defending me, but how could he? He was just trying to calm her down. Throughout all this, I have to admit, she looked beautiful—and dignified. I was amazed; she flew all the way around the world to rip him out of the arms of another woman, and she looked gorgeous and chic the whole time she was doing it. The Chinese tourists were staring, confused and a little surprised, but they kept on moving. With over a billion people in their country they didn’t have the time or the space to really give a shit about anything.

  I was taking a few steps backward, when Dominique just put her hands on Thomas’s chest and pushed him back, hard. Now the tears were falling down her face. Thomas looked truly surprised, as if he’d never seen his wife this upset before. I turned around to go when I heard her scream out “Je suis enceinte” in French.

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought she’d just said, “I’m pregnant.” And judging from the look on Thomas’s face, that’s exactly what she said.

  I lowered my head and, without a word, escorted myself out of the Forbidden City. I was officially dethroned.

  In one of the Chinese travel books I had bought at the airport, I read that there’s a common saying to sum up the total regime of Mao Tse-tung: It had been “70 percent good and 30 percent bad.” I liked that. I think percentages are a good way to sum up most things in a person’s life. As I walked back to my hotel, I tried to trace my steps backward, to remember all I had done to land me now on the Street of Great Humiliation and Sorrow. I had been trying to say yes to life and play by someone else’s rules and experience love and romance and go for it. Was that so wrong? In Bali it seemed like a really great idea. Now, on West Chang An Avenue, maybe it was more accurate to say it was a 70 percent bad idea and a 30 percent good one. All I knew for sure was that I had made a French woman cry on the street, that I was called a whore, and that the man I was in love with was about to go off and start a family with his wife. As he should. I was mortified and ashamed. I had done it again. I had gone and dated a bad boy. Maybe a boy who was only 20 percent bad and 80 percent good, but a bad boy nonetheless. So besides experiencing the shame of the public humiliation and the guilt at my own behavior, now I got to add to it the realization that I was still making the same damn mistakes.

  “Don’t come home,” Serena said. I had called her at six in the morning her time. “You can’t just run home because of a man; that’s insane.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?” I asked, sobbing on the phone. “I don’t want to travel anymore. I’m sick of it…” My voice trailed off as I wept.

  “Go to India!” Serena said. “I know of an ashram right outside of Mumbai. It’s a great place to just go and heal. You’ll feel better there—you’ll see. India is an amazing place to give you perspectiv
e.”

  “I don’t know…” I couldn’t imagine taking another plane all the way to India. I just wanted to get back to New York, with my bed and my apartment and all the sights and smells that I’m used to. Then I realized I had to give my subletter two weeks’ notice. So I wouldn’t be able to go back to my apartment now even if I wanted to.

  “Think about it. Don’t make any big decision just yet. Give it a few hours.”

  “But he’s going to have to come back here. I don’t want to see him.”

  “He’s not going to come back there for a while, trust me. Just take an hour or two to calm down and think.”

  I hung up the phone and sat on the bed. I didn’t know what to do. I hated the idea of going back to New York because of a broken heart—that seemed so weak. I put my head down on the pillow, exhausted.

  I woke up to the sound of the hotel phone ringing in my ear. I practically jumped to the ceiling at the sound of it. I sat up in bed and stared at it as it rang and rang. I wasn’t quite sure how long I had slept. An hour? Three days? I didn’t think it could be Thomas, he would call me on my cell, but I wasn’t sure. I let it go to voice mail. When I went to check the messages it was Wei.

  “Julie! I am having a big karaoke party right now in your hotel for some big Chinese businessmen. I’m in lounge on eighteenth floor! You and your boyfriend have to come!” And then, of course, she laughed.

  The party never stopped for that one. It really irritated me. Besides calling Thomas my boyfriend, how could she be partying away as if she didn’t have a care in the world? Didn’t she know her days were numbered? That someday she’s going to be pushing forty or fifty and she might not find everything as funny as she does now? That she might end up a single, childless woman alone in a country that considers itself communist but expects you to pretty much take care of yourself? I wasn’t sure if she knew this, but for some reason—let’s blame the jet lag and/or the fact that Thomas was absolutely gone from my life, gone—I decided it was my job to let Wei know the truth about being single.

  I jammed on the little terry cloth slippers the hotel provided, grabbed my plastic hotel key card, and went out the door. I walked briskly to the elevator and got in. There were two nice-looking midwestern men in the elevator. They chatted to each other, but both of them at some point glanced down at my feet. I guess they’d never seen anyone walk around a hotel in their slippers before. I got out on the eighteenth floor, and so did they. I followed them into a large room just opposite the elevator, called “The Executive Suite.” For this night it had been transformed into a karaoke lounge, with a disco ball in the middle and a large video screen. There were lots of young women prancing around in their designer outfits, and lots of Chinese and Western businessmen drinking and chatting with the girls.

  Wei was standing on a little stage that had been set up, singing a song in Chinese while the karaoke machine displayed the words on the screen, along with a video of a Chinese man and woman walking along a babbling brook. I don’t know what she was singing about but—wait a minute—could she be singing about—I don’t know—love? Do you think? Just as she was finishing up her song and everyone started clapping, I stormed up on the little stage and stood right next to her. I looked out on this sea of twentysomething Chinese girl cuteness and men in suits going along for the ride. I grabbed the mike out of Wei’s hands.

  “I just want you ladies to know that you should think very carefully about what you’re doing,” I said loudly into the microphone. Everyone stopped talking to stare at the crazy lady. Wei just looked at me. She cupped her hand over her mouth, covering a smile.

  “You think you have all the time in the world, you think that it’s so fun to be so free and independent. You think you have all these options, but you don’t really. You’re not always going to be surrounded by men. You’re not always going to be young. You’re going to get older and know more about what you want and you won’t be willing to settle and you’re going to look around and there will be even fewer men for you to choose from. And you’re not only going to be single, but you’re going to be childless as well. So you should understand there are consequences to what you’re doing now. Very serious consequences!”

  No one said a word. Clearly, they all thought I was a lunatic. I handed the mike back to Wei. She kept her hand over her mouth and laughed.

  “Oh, Julie, you’re so funny! You are so funny!”

  Back in the States

  It was the day Ruby was to be inseminated and she didn’t have anyone to accompany her. And, really, what could be more depressing than that? By this point Ruby was bloated. Fat. Her breasts felt as swollen as if she were already pregnant. She imagined someone pricking her with a needle and having the water just come gushing out of her, and bringing her back to her normal size again. She had also been really emotional for the past three days, which she attributed to the hormones, but, really, let’s face it, it could also be because she was about to be ejaculated into by a syringe and then possibly spend the next nine months pregnant and alone. I’m just saying.

  Her good friend Sonia was supposed to be her plus-one to the ejaculation, but she canceled at the last minute because her daughter was sick. Ruby didn’t want to call Serena because Serena had told her what was going on at her job and she didn’t want to bother her. She called Alice, but she didn’t pick up. Ruby would have asked her gay male friends but she was still mad at them. The only person left was Georgia. They really didn’t know each other very well, and Ruby thought Georgia was a little crazy, but maybe it would be better to go with a crazy person than no one at all? She wasn’t sure.

  But then, Ruby considered the alternative—getting in a cab, going to the clinic, lying on a table, getting shot full of semen, hailing a cab home. Alone. So she picked up the phone and called Georgia. Alice had told her about the daily shots so she wasn’t taken completely by surprise and she said yes immediately. Georgia was desperate to have something to do besides think about the upcoming custody fight with Dale and the visit with the court-appointed social worker that was happening later that day. The kids were at school, as opposed to at home, unattended, and she was free to think about someone else’s life for a change.

  When Ruby got to the clinic, Georgia was already outside. Ruby relaxed. It was nice to have someone there for her, waiting for her.

  “Hey Ruby,” Georgia said, sweetly. “How are you feeling?”

  Ruby just smiled and said, “Fat. Nervous.”

  “This is really exciting,” Georgia said as they were about to walk through the revolving doors. “You might become a mother today.”

  “I know. Isn’t that weird?” Ruby replied, putting her hand on the revolving door and pushing it.

  Georgia followed right behind Ruby and said, “You know what? It’s all weird.”

  The waiting room was mercifully quiet. There were only two women there, both pregnant—which seemed like a good sign to Ruby. Ruby signed in and she and Georgia sat down to wait.

  “I think it’s fantastic that you’re doing this. Being a mother is one of the most wonderful experiences in the world. Really,” Georgia said.

  Ruby smiled. She was happy to hear that right now.

  “You’ll never really be able to understand it until it happens to you, but it’s like this awesome responsibility is given to you—to take care of another human being on this planet. That little person becomes everything to you.” Georgia seemed to be lost in thought. “It’s incredibly sweet.”

  Ruby looked at Georgia. For once, she seemed soft. Vulnerable. Gentle. Not crazy.

  “So, you’re going to do it as a single mother. What does it matter?” Georgia added. “We all end up getting divorced and becoming single mothers anyway. You’re just starting out that way.”

  Ruby thought that was a little bleak, but perhaps Georgia was just trying to make her feel better about being single. Ruby glanced over at the magazine rack filled with Woman’s Day and Redbook and People. Georgia continued her pep ta
lk. “It’s a fuck of a lot better for the kid this way.”

  Now Ruby wondered where this was going.

  “At least with you they won’t be subjected to an asshole father who wants to go to court to prove that you’re an unfit mother. At least there won’t be that.”

  “What?” Ruby said, taken off guard.

  “Oh. Yeah. That’s what’s going on right now. Can you believe it?”

  Ruby never let her gaze stray from Georgia, so as not to reveal in any way the thought crossing her mind, which was “Well, actually…”

  Georgia took a breath. She picked up a Parents magazine and started to flip through it. “But today is not about me. It’s about you. And my point is that you shouldn’t feel badly about this. Why deprive yourself of having children just because you don’t want to be a single mother? By the time we’re fifty, everyone we know is going to be a single mother.” She stopped to look at a photo of the “Five-Minute Brownie.”

  “The problem with single mothers is we’re all competing for the same men—the ones who are willing to date women with kids. I mean, how many of those guys are there in New York? How can we all possibly find one?”

  Ruby had the impulse to put her hand over Georgia’s mouth and not take it off until her name was called. Instead, she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and sighed. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have invited Georgia to her insemination party after all.

  “Ruby Carson?” a nurse called out, and Ruby stood up immediately. Georgia sat up and squeezed Ruby’s hand.

  “Do you want me to go in with you?”

  The image flashed through her mind of Georgia sitting there while some doctor or nurse put a syringe of semen in her woo-woo.

  “No, that’s okay, you can stay here, I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. But if Julie was here, she’d be in there with you, so I just wanted you to know that I would.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it. I think it’s really fast. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” Georgia said, a little relieved. “Have fun!”