No One Tells You This

by Glynnis MacNicol

  “Follow me,” he said, leading me through the group of Australian women, out the door and down the path to the river raft we would be riding in. There were three rows of seats in the boat. He directed me to the middle row. “Sit there,” he said, pointing to the space farthest along. “It will be smoothest there.” I clambered clumsily into the raft and sat down; he clambered in right after me and then turned and did up my seat belt for me. “Comfortable?” I nodded and smiled. I was freezing, and exhausted, and starving, but yes, very, very comfortable. Then he buckled himself next to me so that when everyone else arrived, which they did a few minutes later, they had to sit elsewhere. Only once the ride started, and we began racing down the choppy waters, did I realize he really should have been in the back row. That was the row that got the worst of the bumps and the water sprays. The Australian girls were now stuck back there and had already been soaked two or three times. The river was at the bottom of a canyon; rough walls of rock rose up on either side of us fifteen feet away. Our ride consisted of us careening down it at what felt like about 100 miles an hour. Every few minutes our guide would aim for one of the canyon walls and then slam on the brakes at the very last minute, spinning us around in a 360-degree turn with such velocity that we would be lifted from our seats and temporarily suspended in midair; it felt as if we were in astronaut training camp. The girl in the seat behind me started to cry and begged to be taken back. Well, I thought, as I gripped the plastic handles on the side of the raft and gritted my teeth, I wanted to be away from the internet. This was very away.

  “Okay?” said Viktor to me. I nodded. He had put his arm around me on the first spin and had a tight grip on my shoulders. I leaned as far into him as I could, convinced we were all going to fly or bounce out of the boat.

  “You’ll be fine,” shouted the guide cheerily to the crying girl. “Maybe move up a row where it’s smoother.” He slowed the boat, and after a minute Scott switched seats with her. Viktor hadn’t moved. As soon as both were buckled in, we were off again, top speed toward a sheer rock face that appeared suddenly out of the gloom. The girl, now on Viktor’s other side, cried harder, and he squeezed me tighter. The wind blew harder, turning the snow into small bullets and making me burrow down ever farther into my coat so that all that was exposed were my eyebrows. I leaned into Viktor harder and shut my eyes as we bucked and twisted and were hurled across the water. I didn’t open them again until we finally pulled back into the dock thirty minutes later and Viktor unbuckled me.

  Back in the SUV, I fell asleep before we’d even reached the main road. When we arrived at the hotel, Viktor shook me gently and then walked around for the final time to help me out and hand me my suitcase. Had it only been that morning he’d thrown it in there? It was hard to believe this had all been part of the same day. “Give me your email,” he said, handing me a card to write on before taking me into a long hug and kissing me on the cheek. “Maybe I will see you tomorrow?” he asked, the hope clear in his voice.

  I wasn’t planning on seeing him again, though. I was booked into a full day at a spa, something I had specifically requested. Ten hours in a spa, all to myself; how many times in my life would I get that opportunity? had been my reasoning. Standing beside the SUV now, all I could think was that I would finally be warm again. I had visions of fur throws and burning fireplaces. Viktor, meanwhile, was spending the next day taking Scott on an eight-hour glacier hike.

  “Maybe,” I said, not wanting to say goodbye for good. “I’ll have to check.” I retreated into the hotel. I had just enough time before dinner to check in to my miniature hotel room—barely big enough to fit a double bed, it felt like an exercise in how many amenities could be squeezed in a space the size of Viktor’s SUV—and take a shower and change. I resisted the urge to lie down and instead stood under the hot water for as long as I could, letting its warmth sink in and thinking about my day. Even through the fog of jet lag, the wildness of the country had taken hold and left me feeling exuberant. It wasn’t just that I had boarded a plane and arrived somewhere new; I felt as though I had been flung out of my life into a place I hadn’t even known existed. It was thrilling and strange, but equally so was the knowledge that it was possible, on a moment’s notice, to walk through a door and find myself in a different world. And here, too, was this unfamilar man, who seemed (at least based on the twelve hours I’d spent with him) to embody all this, who was essentially my personal tour guide through this new place. Far from invisible, I felt more seen than I had in ages. The warmer I became the less enticing my day at the spa seemed to be.

  Dinner was a multicourse meal at a low-ceilinged restaurant on the harbor that had been getting attention in the food press. It was filled with sharply dressed Icelanders. As we sat recounting our day—after their late arrival, the television crew from Denver had spent it whale watching—plate after plate of local Icelandic fare was brought out to us, while our wineglasses were continually refilled. At some point the group at the table next to us, who looked like extras from The Sopranos, also began to raise their glasses to our unending meal. We later found out that the loudest one of their group was a local bounty hunter. With each course my jet lag was pushed down and then down again. I thought of Viktor strapping me into my seat, arm wrapped tightly around me.

  It was after midnight by the time we stepped back outside and into the blustery wind. Our hotel was two hundred feet to our left; downtown Reykjavik was half a mile to the right. Iceland’s nightlife is nearly as famous as its natural wonders, and somehow we convinced ourselves that since it was Saturday night and we were in Reykjavik, dancing was in order. The only way to make this a reality was to continually keep walking away from the hotel. I knew Viktor was picking up Scott at dawn, six hours from now. The coldness I’d felt that day was beginning to seep back in. Overhead the northern lights rippled through the night sky. Eventually we ended up on the second floor of a place called Kiki Bar, amid a crowd so fashionably dressed it made New York look mundane. At 3:00 a.m., with the series of vodka shots we’d just done racing through my body, I turned to Michael and shouted over the music that I wanted to cancel the spa. Could I go on the glacier hike instead?

  •

  When the phone rang at 6:15 the next morning, I was unsure what it was. The room felt as if it belonged on a spaceship. The white walls were covered in buttons that controlled everything from the lights, to the heat, to the hot water in the bathroom, to the toilet. I’d crawled into bed only three hours earlier. The buttons had proved too complicated for me to sort out at 3:00 a.m., and I’d merely stripped down in the dark and slipped under the covers. Now this ringing! What was it? I glanced around in the dim light of predawn and saw the phone. Maybe if I just ignored it. But it kept ringing.

  “Hello,” I croaked.

  “Good morning. I’m downstairs. You are ready to go? Come now before the others so you can have the front seat.”

  It was Viktor. Michael must have told him I’d decided to come along. Our twelve-hour glacier tour started in fifteen minutes. Oh God. I gave what I hoped was an affirmative croak. It was not convincing.

  “You are ready?” This time he sounded half alarmed, half annoyed. Also as if he were issuing an order.

  I put my hand over the phone and cleared my throat. “Of course. I’m walking out the door right now.”

  “Good.” He sounded relieved. “Okay. Goodbye.”

  I lay back down. My whole body was yelling at me. Getting out of bed was a terrible decision. And there was no need for me to do it. I could still switch back to the spa. I snuggled down even farther into the rough sheets, willing myself to focus on the hot steam and massages to come. Instead I recalled Viktor zipping me up. The absolute loveliness of being attracted to someone. No strings, no complications, no future, no texts, no thinking, purely pheromones. Five minutes later I was in the lobby. Viktor was standing at the hotel door looking every bit as rugged and masculine as he had the day before.

  “There are two Chinese women co
ming with us today, too, so go get in the front seat now,” he said, practically pushing me out the door.

  “I just want to get a hot chocolate.” If I could have attached a hot chocolate IV to myself, I would have.

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  I had been prepared for a lot of things entering into my forties. I thought I had been prepared for everything. But I had not been prepared for sweetness or for fun. Or, truthfully, for hot, attentive Icelandic tour guides. I had not been prepared to be the center of attention. And yet, that’s what I was for the next twelve hours as I clumsily hiked up a glacier, and walked across a windy beach covered in black stones, and strolled up to the base of a fifty-foot waterfall. The front seat of the giant SUV became a wonderful little bubble—the rest of the world felt deliciously far away.

  “You should stay longer,” Viktor said when he finally dropped us back at the hotel. “I will drive you to the volcano that’s exploding. We will camp.”

  I was struck by a vision of the two of us in a tent on the side of a mountain. Just the two of us pressed up against each other for warmth. Alone. In just two days the reality of my city life had fallen away with an ease that shocked me, and new paths suddenly sprang up in my line of sight as though a board had just been lit up. I was not married to my life as it was. It was not written in stone. It was like this country, hurling me around from extreme to extreme, and also like the glacier ice I had spent the day walking across, growing and moving in ways I couldn’t see.

  If my life were a romantic comedy about a three-day trip to a strange land, where I discovered things about myself and released the things that had been weighing me down, this is where the story would have ended. Off I would go, disappearing into the Icelandic wilderness with my hunky, capable guide, his arms wrapped reassuringly around my shoulders, my life neatly bound up—every romance must end with a woman safely tied to another person’s life, after all, no loose ends. I could feel the impulse stirring from somewhere deep within me, an almost reflexive desire to start the usual calculations. For so long, considering an invite from a man felt like the equivalent of opening a door, gazing down a long road, and then gaming out whether this was a person I wanted to walk down that road with. Was he good for the long run? Interesting enough? Smart enough? Appropriate? Would my friends like him? Would he like me once he got to know me? Would he find me attractive? Was this the beginning of something? All these thoughts happened simultaneously, within seconds of even the most casual encounter. And started to again now.

  But then, a realization: I actually had no interest in walking any farther down whatever road I was on here. Three days was just fine. I didn’t need to know any more about this man (I knew next to nothing about him as it was; he might have been married for all I knew). I could just enjoy this for what it was. Not every encounter needed to be the first step in a permanent decision. Men, it occurred to me, perhaps for the first time in my life, did not need to be a goal.

  I thanked Viktor, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and went back to the hotel. For now, I was going back to New York. I had never wanted to leave my life entirely, I realized. I’d only wanted to know that I had the ability to step out of it and into something new. Now I knew. And I could do it again and again, whenever I wanted. The knowledge I possessed that freedom made me feel more powerful than I could remember feeling for a very long time.

  I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you’ll do as I tell you, okay?

  Princess Leia

  8. The Grown-Up

  Perhaps you’ve seen some variation of this one, too: single, childless, glamorous-ish older sister agrees to fly home to help out her sister with children after arrival of third child. (Opening scene: NYC, brunch with blowouts.) Deeply inept and contemptuous of all things domestic, the older sister gets a crash course in how difficult and meaningful a life full of children can be, eventually shirking her shallow city ways (while also probably falling in love with the local mailman) having discovered the true meaning of happiness.

  Or this: single, narcissistic older sister who can’t quite get her life together arrives home to “help” her younger sister with the family. (Opening scene: running for the plane with half-packed luggage because the alarm in a nameless dude’s apartment has failed to go off.) Over the course of the next few weeks it’s the children who help her figure out how to be a kind, generous, finally (“Finally!” say the exhausted parents) responsible adult (who also probably falls in love with the mailman). Single women on the screen are almost always either inept or selfish.

  In the real-life version, however, I was scheduled to fly home to help my sister because I wanted to, because I was needed, and because I could handle it.

  •

  The baby is coming!

  TODAY!

  My stomach dropped, and a cold jolt went through me as I read the text from my sister. It was Tuesday morning. I’d been back from Iceland for two weeks, and Alexis’s C-section wasn’t scheduled for another week. She’d been having complications for six weeks. Nothing serious, just serious enough. By now I’d come to expect complicated pregnancies.

  For real?! I wrote back, hoping that if she was texting instead of calling it meant this was not a big deal. How come?

  She told me she was feeling fine, but when she’d gone in for her regular checkup that morning her fluids had been low, and they’d decided it was best to go in early. They’re going to do the C-section this afternoon, she wrote.

  I had my two return tickets to Toronto; I’d purchased the second after I returned from Iceland, as I told my sister I would. One was supposed to get me home a few days after the original date of her scheduled C-section, to coincide with her arrival home from the hospital. One would get me there a few days before, so if she decided at the last minute she wanted me in the delivery room I’d be there, and if not, there’d be someone at home to look after the kids. But all that planning had been based on the originally scheduled day, which was still a week away. Thinking I wasn’t leaving until the following week, I’d packed all my work meetings into the next few days, including one about a book I was possibly going to cowrite. I’d have to cancel them all if I was going to jump on a plane, and if she was going in this afternoon there was no chance I’d be able to make it for the actual delivery.

  I wrote her back. I’m set to fly in on Saturday, but I can see about getting a flight tonight or tomorrow.

  It’s fine, she wrote back. The kids’ other grandmother hadn’t left for Florida yet and was going to stay with them for the next few days. My brother-in-law would be there for the delivery. I could just come on Saturday as planned.

  I can’t believe you’re having a baby today! I wrote. Then I looked at my phone. It was October 21. It felt like a gift.

  It’s all going to be fine, I continued. This is good. Today is the perfect day. It’s PRINCESS LEIA’S birthday. This is the greatest birthday date of the entire year.

  This needed no explanation. My sister had spent our entire childhood in thrall to (some might say, held hostage by) my unflagging Princess Leia obsession. In my apartment was a framed copy of my favorite photo of us as kids, taken on Halloween the year I was eight. In it, Alexis and I are standing on our front porch with the three boys who lived next door. I’m dressed in a white sheet my mother has fashioned into a very passable version of Princess Leia’s dress. The gold braided sash from our heavy living room drapes is tied around my waist as a belt. On my head is a pair of earmuffs with brown yarn glued on them to make it look like hair. My cheeks are heavily blushed, and my lips are glistening in my mother’s red lipstick. Even now, decades later, the picture having faded and darkened, it’s still clear that I am practically levitating with happiness. My sister is beside me, unrecognizable, swimming in a costume of leftover brown shag carpet my mother has sewn into a rough approximation of an Ewok.

  It’s possible you never love anything quite as fiercely as you do when you’re eight. I loved Princess Leia with t
he intensity of a desert sun. She was proof to me that all the things I wanted in life existed: independence, adventure, taking charge. And she was beautiful to boot. Princess Leia was the antithesis of my mother’s measured ways, a rejection of the skirts and white ankle socks she wanted me to wear to church and to holiday dinners. And she was everywhere. She was on lunch boxes, towels, sheets, pajamas. She was on the trading cards the boys in my neighborhood collected. She was on cereal boxes. She was on an enormous poster in my dentist’s office. She was at the checkout of the grocery store, where I went every two weeks to spend my allowance on new Star Wars figures. I didn’t ever need to look very far to find the reflection of the adult I wanted to be staring right back at me.

  Somewhere along the line in my obsessive collection of all things Princess Leia, I’d picked up a trading card that had listed her birthday as October 21, the real-life birthday of Carrie Fisher. And now, if it all went well, of my nephew. I’d coveted that date the same way I’d coveted Laura Ingalls’s birthday on February 7, real-life evidence my most cherished heroines had existed. In the midst of what had otherwise been only dark news from my family for months, it felt like a shaft of joy sent directly into our midst from our 1980s front porch.