How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  Alice looked directly at Jim. It was hard to imagine him looking more vulnerable than he did at that moment. She glanced back at the pond and saw her two turtles sunning themselves on a rock. She decided to let herself get carried away. “I’ve been having an amazing time, too. I know we don’t know each other very well, but I want to give this a go, too.”

  Jim let out the breath he’d been holding in for the past three and a half minutes, and smiled.

  “Great. That’s great.”

  “I don’t really know what to say besides that right now. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, no, that’s fine. Great. I’m just glad you didn’t punch me in the face and throw me in the pond.”

  “Now, why would I do that?” Alice said, sweetly. They kissed. She was happy, safe, content. Because sometimes after swimming around and around in a long black lake, it’s nice to get to sit on a rock and sun yourself for a while.

  On to Rome

  It was ten minutes before the flight and I was hyperventilating a bit. Well, actually a lot.

  It’s odd when you realize suddenly that you have a new crazy thing about yourself. They say you get more fearful and phobic as you get older, but it’s still shocking when you realize you have to add on one more thing to your list of Crazy. I had not a care in the world when I boarded the plane. But now, as I sat in my seat and the minutes ticked by, I became increasingly nervous. How do airplanes stay up? What does keep them from just crashing into the earth? Wouldn’t that be completely terrifying to be conscious all those minutes that the plane is plummeting to earth? What would I be thinking about…? And as the physics of air travel became even more implausible to me and I was convinced I would never make it to Rome alive, I began having what I imagine was a panic attack. I started sweating and breathing heavy. Why now? I have no idea. I’d traveled from New York to Paris without a care in the world. Perhaps a therapist might say I was nervous about venturing out on my own, to a strange city, with no one that I knew meeting me there; that I was planning on doing all this “research” in Rome, but I didn’t really know how I was going to start. Maybe it finally hit me that I had quit my job and left my home without really that much of a plan in place. Whatever the reason, I realized: who better to talk to in this moment than my very own guru? Luckily, I got her on the phone.

  “Okay, so Julie, close your eyes and breathe from your diaphragm,” Serena said in a soothing swami voice. “Imagine a white light emanating right out of your belly button and radiating out into the plane.”

  I was imagining. “It’s a white light of peace and safety and protection and it’s filling up the plane and then the sky and then the whole world. And you are completely safe.” My breathing started to calm. My heartbeat slowed down. It was working. I opened my eyes. And Thomas was standing right in front of me.

  “Well, hello, Miss Provincial. I believe I have the seat next to you.”

  A jolt of surprise zapped through my body, Serena’s hard work ruined in an instant. “Um…Serena, I have to call you back.”

  “Okay, but I’ve been meaning to tell you. You should go to India. I mean, their spirituality, their culture—everyone says going to India is a really powerful experience.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about that. Thanks.”

  “No, really. They say life-changing.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to you later. Bye, and thanks!” I hung up. I looked up at Thomas, who was emanating his own special brand of white light.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I decided to go with you. I thought I could do some business there.” He made a gesture with his hand, asking me to get up so he could sit next to me. I stood up into the aisle.

  “Of course I don’t usually fly economy class,” Thomas said as he moved into his seat and we sat. “But I decided to make an exception.” As he buckled himself in and looked around, he added, “My God, coach. It’s such a tragedy.”

  He saw I was having trouble piecing it all together.

  “I got your itinerary from Steve. Plus, I know someone at Alitalia.” He smiled at me and squeezed my wrist. I blushed and got out a piece of mint gum and popped it in my mouth. The announcements about the plane taking off began and I tried to hide the sweat and the panting. How mortifying would it be to have my first panic attack in front of Thomas? There’s New York Quirky, and then there’s New York Crazy. Just because it was starting to dawn on me which one I was, that didn’t mean he had to know right off the bat. While he was busy trying to find a comfortable place to put his knees, and the flight attendants were coming around checking our seat belts, I let out a tiny cry. Thomas looked alarmed.

  “Sorry. I’m just. Something’s happening. I feel a little like I’m dying. Or drowning. Something. Sorry,” I whispered.

  Thomas leaned closer to me. “Has this ever happened before?” I shook my head no.

  “You are having some kind of panic episode, yes?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I think so.” I clutched the armrests tightly on both sides of me, but accidentally grabbed on to Thomas’s arm. I leaned forward and started gasping for air.

  “Excuse me, is everything all right?” the flight attendant asked Thomas.

  “Yes, of course. She just has a stomachache. She’ll be fine.” As the flight attendant walked away, Thomas reached into his bag.

  “Julie, you must take one of these, right away. Please. It will calm you down.”

  I threw myself back onto my chair and gasped, “I can’t believe you’re seeing me like this. This is mortifying.”

  “We’ll worry about that later, but for now, just take this pill and swallow please, quickly.”

  “What is it?”

  “Lexomil. France’s Valium. We eat it here like candy.”

  I swallowed the tiny white pill dry. “Thank you so much,” and I took another gasp of air. I started feeling calmer already.

  “You’ll probably be falling asleep soon.” He put his hand on top of mine. “It’s a shame, we won’t get a chance to talk,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling.

  You really are close to someone when you sit next to them in coach. It’s like you have to actually make an effort not to bump your lips into them.

  Soon enough, I fell asleep.

  I woke up to Thomas tapping the back of my hand, quite hard, and saying in his sweet French accent, “Julie, Julie, it’s time to wake up. Please.”

  Like deadlifting four-hundred-pound barbells, it took every ounce of my strength to open my eyes. In a haze I saw beautiful Thomas in the aisle, looking unruffled and slightly amused as a flight attendant hovered over him.

  “Signore, we have to leave the plane. You must get her off.” It was then that I saw that the plane was on the ground and the cabin was absolutely empty. I groaned loudly and put my hands to my eyes to somehow shield myself from the humiliation. Why wouldn’t they just let me go back to sleep?

  Thomas gently guided me out of my seat. I steadied myself, grabbed my purse, and tried to pull myself together as quickly as possible. As we walked past the many, many rows of seats to the door, I asked Thomas, “Just tell me this—was there a drooling situation going on?”

  Thomas laughed and said, “Julie, you don’t want to know.” He steadied me out the door of the plane.

  Later that afternoon I awoke in a room at some kind of pensione. I was a little disoriented, so I got up and looked out my window onto a piazza with a huge circular building off to one side—the Pantheon. I had no memory of getting there. Thomas told me later that I had gone through customs and been mistaken for a drug addict, had all my bags searched, and then passed out in the cab with my head in his lap. That Lexomil doesn’t kid around.

  On the desk I found a note: “I am next door at a café with my friend Lorenzo, please come by when you wake up. Kisses, Thomas.” I shakily got into the shower, fixed myself up, and went out to find Thomas.

  Next to the hotel was a tiny café, right on the piazza. Thomas was with a man in his early thirties who
was speaking animatedly, gesturing wildly. Thomas saw me and stood up, his friend getting up as well.

  “How are you feeling, my Sleeping Beauty?” Thomas asked.

  “Fine. A little groggy.”

  “I’ll get you a cappuccino immediately.” Thomas waved over a waitress and we all sat down.

  “This is my friend, Lorenzo. He’s heartbroken and telling me all about it.”

  Lorenzo was a handsome Italian man, with big, tired eyes and long brown hair that he grabbed and pushed back whenever he was exclaiming something, which was often.

  “It’s awful, Julie, awful. My heart is broken, you don’t understand. Crushed. I’m crushed.” He pushed back his hair. “I don’t want to live, really. I want to throw myself off a building. She just left me. She told me she doesn’t love me anymore. Just like that. Tell me, Julie, you’re a woman. Tell me. How is this possible? How can a woman love you one minute and destroy you the next? How can she have no feelings for me overnight?”

  Luckily my cappuccino came just then, so I could get a little caffeine into my system.

  “Um…I don’t know. Was it really that sudden?”

  “It was! Three nights ago, we made love, she told me she loved me. That she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. That we should have babies together. Then, yesterday she calls me up and tells me she doesn’t want to be with me.”

  “How long were you together?” I asked.

  “One year. One beautiful year. We both agreed that we have never been in such a good relationship. How is this possible, Julie, tell me. Just three nights ago she told me she loved me. Just three nights ago. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. It’s terrible.”

  I looked at Thomas, wondering what I just stepped into. As if reading my mind, Thomas laughed and said, “Lorenzo’s an actor. He’s very dramatic.”

  “Ma no, Thomas, c’mon,” Lorenzo said, offended. “This is no exaggeration. This is a real tragedy.”

  “Was your girlfriend an actress as well?”

  “No. She’s a dancer. You should see her body. The most beautiful body you have ever seen. Perfect breasts. Perfect. And these long legs, like art. Tell me, Julie, tell me. How can this happen?”

  Thomas saw the dazed expression on my face and decided to egg him on. “Please, Julie, you must help him.”

  I was still a little slow from my drug overdose, but I tried to think as quickly as I could.

  “Do you think she met someone else?”

  “Impossible! We saw each other all the time.”

  “Are you sure? Because that could be—”

  “No. It’s not possible. I know all her friends. Her dancing partners, too. No.”

  “Well, is she psychotic?”

  “No. She was perfectly fine. Sane.”

  “Maybe,” I said slowly, “she wasn’t really in love with you?” Lorenzo banged his hands on the table.

  “Ma no—how could that be? How?” He was truly looking for me to explain.

  “Well, if she’s not seeing anyone else, she isn’t psychotic, and she just changed her mind about you, then maybe she wasn’t really in love with you. Or maybe she just doesn’t know what love means.”

  This type of American analysis simply didn’t compute for Lorenzo. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Or maybe she just fell out of love with me.”

  “Do you think that love is so fleeting that it can just go away? Just like that?”

  “Of course I do, Julie. It finds you, like magic, like a miracle, and then it can go just as fast.”

  “You really think of love as a mysterious emotion that comes and goes like magic?”

  “Yes, of course. Of course!”

  Thomas said gently, “I believe you would call my friend a romantic.”

  Lorenzo threw his arms in the air. “What other way is there to live? Julie, don’t you believe this, too?”

  “Well, no. I guess I don’t,” I said.

  “Tell me, then. What do you believe?”

  Thomas leaned in. “Now this is getting interesting.”

  Again, that question. I stalled, sipping my coffee. I have spent a good deal of time in therapy analyzing why I’ve been attracted to the people I’ve been attracted to. What “buttons they push” in me that makes me want them in my life. I’ve spent a good deal of time analyzing why my friends are attracted to the types of men they are attracted to. I’ve watched them swear that they’ve met their soulmate, that they’ve never felt this way before and that it’s destiny—and then break up with that soulmate in less time than it takes to get a sofa delivered. I’ve watched friends—smart, levelheaded friends—get married, and then I’ve watched in shock as their marriages fell apart. And I’ve watched absolutely ridiculous couples stay together for ten years and counting.

  And I’ve been so busy looking for love and being frustrated that I can’t find it, that I have never really defined it for myself. So I sat at this little café as the sun went down, and pondered.

  “I guess I don’t really believe in romantic love,” I finally said. Thomas raised his eyebrows and Lorenzo looked as if he had just seen a ghost.

  “What do you believe in, then?” Thomas asked.

  “Well, I believe in attraction. And I believe in passion and the feeling of falling in love. But I guess I don’t think that that’s necessarily real.”

  Thomas and Lorenzo seemed shocked.

  “Why? Because sometimes it doesn’t last?” Thomas asked.

  “Because most times it doesn’t last. Because most of the time it’s about what you’re projecting onto a person, what you want them to be, what you want yourself to be, so many things that have nothing to do with the other person.”

  “I had no idea,” Thomas said. “It seems we have a very big cynic here.”

  “This is a disaster, truly,” Lorenzo said, throwing his hands in the air. “I thought I had it bad.”

  I laughed. “I know! I didn’t know what a cynic I was until this moment, either!”

  “But Julie,” Thomas asked, concerned, “how can love ever find you if you don’t believe in it?”

  I looked at them both staring at me with great concern, and then—I burst out crying. Funny how that happens. One moment you’re a strong, independent woman talking about love and relationships. And the next moment someone says an arrangement of words that somehow destroys you.

  “No! Julie. It was not meant to be—no!” Thomas was horrified. “Please, it was nothing!”

  I put my hand over my face. “No, I know, don’t feel bad. I don’t know why…I’m just too…please. Don’t worry about it. Really.” But as I spoke, the tears rolled down my face. There it was again, the question that always seems to pop out of the subtext when I least expect it. Why are you single? Why don’t you have love? And now, in Rome, one answer: because you don’t believe in it.

  “I’m just going to go to my room,” I said, starting to get up.

  Thomas grabbed my hand as Lorenzo said loudly, “Ma no, Julie, come on! You can’t run back into your little room to cry. That’s unacceptable.” Thomas added, gently, “How are we ever going to be friends if you run and hide every time you have an emotion?” I sat back down.

  “I’m sorry. It must be the Lexomil or something.”

  Thomas smiled. “Yes, I’m sure. You’re relaxed. Your defenses are down.”

  I turned to Lorenzo, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry. I’m not usually like this.” He looked at me with admiration.

  “Women! They are fantastic. Look at you. You feel, you cry. So fluid. Che bella! Che bella!” He waved his arms around and laughed. I burst out laughing as well, and Thomas looked as happy as any man could look.

  After we went to another restaurant for dinner, and I had the best pasta carbonara I’ve ever tasted, with large strips of bacon in it—not chunks, not bits, but actual strips (you wouldn’t think it would work but it did)—it was time to go to sleep. Lorenzo went home, and Thomas and I walked back to the hotel, passing piazza after beau
tiful piazza, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps. Rome is so old, so beautiful, it’s hard to take it all in. When we got to the hotel, Thomas walked to a motorcycle with two helmets locked to it. He got out a key, unlocked them, and handed a helmet to me.

  “And now,” he said grandly, “you must see Rome by motorcycle.”

  “When did you get this?”

  “It’s Lorenzo’s. He has a few. He lent it to me while you were asleep.”

  I don’t like motorcycles. Never have. Because here’s what—they’re really dangerous. And it would be cold. I don’t like to be cold. But the thought of explaining that to him and seeming once again like an unspontaneous, unromantic, panicky American, well, it just exhausted me to the core. So I took the helmet and got on the bike. What can I say. When in Rome….

  We drove fast, by random Roman ruins and by the Forum. We wound through tiny streets and raced along the main thoroughfare and up a street that led straight to Saint Peter’s Square.

  There I was, on the back of a dangerous vehicle that was going very fast with a driver who, let’s face it, did have a few glasses of wine at dinner. I was cold. I was frightened. And very vulnerable. I imagined the motorcycle crashing, Thomas losing control as we took a turn, our bodies sliding into oncoming traffic. I imagined some official calling my mom and telling her what happened, and her or my brother having to deal with the horror and hassle of getting my body shipped home.

  And then, as we rocketed back toward the hotel, we circled around the Colosseum. It struck me: none of these structures are surrounded by walls or gates or plate glass. They stand unprotected, waiting to dazzle us, accepting their vulnerability to any graffiti artist or vandal or terrorist that might want to come around. And I thought to myself, Well, if this is how I’m going to go, it’s a damn good way to go. And then I wrapped my arms around Thomas a little tighter and tried to drink in every ounce of magnificent Roman splendor.

  When we got back to the hotel, Thomas took off his helmet and helped me take off mine. There’s nothing less sexy than wearing a motorcycle helmet, truly. We walked through the lobby and into the elevator. I was suddenly jarred back into the world of dynamics and morality and innuendo and not knowing where Thomas was sleeping that night. And as if he had read my mind, Thomas said, “My room is on the third floor. I believe yours is on the second, yes?”