How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  Ruby was undressed and sitting on the examining table. She felt like a little girl, her feet dangling down, clutching at her paper robe. She remembered her first gynecological exam. She was thirteen, and was brought by her mother right when she got her first period. She sat there, just like now, waiting, not knowing what to expect, but understanding that it was a rite of passage, one that would usher her into a whole new chapter of her life, as a woman. The only difference then was that her mother was with her; her mother who now lived in Boston; her mother who raised her as a single mother, by the way; a mother who was always extremely depressed. Her father left them when she was eight, and her mother never remarried.

  She closed her eyes and tried to think fertile thoughts. But all she could see was her mother sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, staring out into space. She thought of her mother coming home late at night from work, carrying the groceries. She thought of the three of them at the kitchen table—Ruby, her brother Dean, and her mom—quietly eating together. Her mother, too tired, too depressed to talk, her brother and she trying to lighten things up, with mashed-potato fights, with milk coming out of their noses. She remembered her mother’s anger; then often, her mother’s tears.

  “Don’t you know how hard I work? Don’t you understand how tired I am?” she shouted once as she got up and grabbed a sponge and walked over to the wall to attack a big gob of mashed potato. Ruby remembered that they laughed at her in that moment. She seemed like just a grotesque caricature, not a real person. It seemed funny to them at the time, their mother with all that crazy emotion. Of course at that moment, at the sight of her children’s smirks and giggles, Ruby’s mother broke down and cried.

  “I can’t take it anymore! I can’t!” she said as she threw the sponge in the sink, letting out a series of sobs as she leaned against the kitchen counter, her back to her two children. “Burn the whole house down if you want to,” she screamed as she raced out of the room.

  Ruby remembers the feeling she had in the pit of her stomach in that moment. She didn’t know what it was at the time, but as she got older, she found herself recognizing that feeling over and over again. She had it when she saw a blind person, all alone, tapping along a busy Manhattan street, or once when she saw an old woman fall down on the ice. It was pity. At ten years old, she was giggling at her mother because she didn’t know how else to process the sick feeling in her gut of feeling sorry for her own mother. As she became a teenager, as she saw her mother have a string of boyfriends, all in differing shades of lame, she processed the pity in a whole new way: she hated her. Not like this is the most unique story ever told, but for Ruby’s last two years of high school, she stopped speaking to her mother. Yes, they didn’t get along, yes, they fought about things like curfew and outfits and boyfriends, but more importantly, Ruby just couldn’t stand pitying her anymore. So the less she engaged with her in any way, the less Ruby had to feel that queasy, awful feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Now here Ruby was, feeling her naked body sticking to the sanitary paper covering the table, and waiting to be inseminated by a doctor. Why? Because when the music stopped and everyone had grabbed their men, she was left standing alone. The race was run and she had lost it. She had lost. That was the only way she could see it as she sat there, naked and alone, waiting.

  Maybe if I had been there it would have been different. Maybe I would have joked with her and said the right thing and made her feel that what she was about to do was the beginning of a life that, though hard at times, would be rewarding beyond measure. There would be life and joy and children and laughter. But I wasn’t there, and I didn’t say anything genius, and Ruby started to slide down into that hole like so many times before.

  In the middle of her slide, Doctor Gilardi came in. He was in his early sixties, with a distinguished head of white hair and skin that had the kind of tan that came from entitled living. Ruby chose him because he was handsome and gentle and she felt that, as the man inseminating her, he would in some way be the father of her child.

  “So,” he said with a smile. “Are you ready to go?”

  Ruby tried to be chipper. “Yep. Knock me up, Doc!”

  Doctor Gilardi smiled. “I’m just going to examine you one last time, and then the nurse will come in with the specimen.”

  Ruby nodded and lay back, put her feet in the stirrups, and opened her legs. The doctor wheeled a chair over and sat down, ready to take a look.

  Lying there, Ruby felt that old feeling again. She wondered if it was called “pity” because it was always felt in the pit of your stomach. It didn’t matter how the word was made, all she knew was that she felt it now, for herself. There in the paper robe and the fluorescent lighting and the absence of any man anywhere in the world who loved her, she was pitiful. She thought about all the men she had dated and spent too much time grieving over. There was Charlie and Brett and Lyle and Ethan. Just guys. Guys it didn’t work out with, for whom Ruby had cried and cried. She knew they weren’t jerking off into a cup right now so some surrogate mother could have their children. She was sure they all had girlfriends or wives or whatever the hell they wanted to have. And there she was, about to be a lonely, sexless, depressed single mother.

  The nurse came in carrying a big cooler. She opened it up and the smoke of the dry ice came billowing out. Out of it she took a canister that looked like a large silver thermos. This was filled with Ruby’s children.

  “Here it is,” the nurse said, sweetly. Doctor Gilardi stood up and took it from her. He looked at Ruby.

  “Everything looks fine. Are you ready?” A million thoughts came to Ruby at this moment. About going home afterward to her empty apartment. About taking a pregnancy test and finding out she was pregnant. About not having a man there with her, who would be ecstatic about the news. About being in the delivery room with her friends, her family, but no man. But the one thought that truly made her cringe in pity was the memory of her mother crying, talking to some friend on the phone. “I can’t take it,” Ruby remembered her mother saying through her tears. “It’s just too much for me. It’s too much. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, I don’t!” And then her mother crumpled into a chair, sobbing.

  Ruby shot up, yanking her feet out of the stirrups.

  “No, I’m not ready. I’m not ready at all.” And she turned to the side and hopped off the table. She held her robe together as she said, “I’m so sorry to waste your time, I’m so sorry to waste all that good sperm, and I’m really, really sorry that I just wasted over seven thousand dollars, but I have to go.”

  It was eleven thirty in the morning. Georgia opened her refrigerator door for the twelfth time in five minutes and stared inside. She had milk. And eggs. And bread and vegetables and fruit and little cheese sticks and fruit juice boxes and pudding cups. She had some cooked macaroni and cheese in some Tupperware, as well as some pieces of fried chicken wrapped up in plastic. She thought this would be a very homey touch, showing that she had cooked a nice meal the night before—what said “good mother” more than some leftover mac and cheese and fried chicken?

  She did not have a good attitude about this interview. It was a motherfucking humiliating motherfucking interview with some bullshit social worker or psychologist or whoever who was going to come into her home, and look into her refrigerator and ask her questions about how she was raising her kids. And then this woman, this bitch, this do-gooder, “I’m so noble” busybody was going to decide whether she would be allowed to keep her children. Georgia slammed the door of the refrigerator.

  She thought that perhaps she should get into a better mood before the social worker came.

  She paced around her apartment. “This is serious,” she said, to herself. “This is as serious as it gets.” She tried to breathe. In and out. In and out. She started thinking about bad mothers. The mothers she saw on the streets, screaming at their kids, slapping their kids, calling their kids names like “stupid” and even “you little asshole.” She thought
about all the stories she had read in the paper about women who had burned their children with cigarettes, or abandoned them for three days, or let them starve to death. She stopped pacing and looked around her lovely apartment in the West Village. There’s no way they’re going to take my children away from me. I’m their mother, for God’s sake. Then she thought about crazy-ass Michael Jackson and his diabolical Neverland and his dangling his child out a window as he greeted his fans. And he got to keep his children, Georgia thought to herself as she walked to the bathroom. She opened the door to the medicine cabinet and looked around at the Band-Aids, baby aspirin, real aspirin, bandages. Was there anything she didn’t have in her medicine cabinet that was going to make her seem unfit? She couldn’t believe Dale had the nerve to call her an unfit mother. Okay—So, fine. She left the house once with the children unsupervised. Georgia closed the medicine cabinet and looked in the mirror. That was really, really bad. But doesn’t every parent once in their fucking parenting life do something really, really negligent? Was she the only one in the whole world that’s made a mistake? Georgia stared at her face in the mirror. Okay, so it was over a guy. That was also really bad. It was. She had spiraled and lost her bearings and she went a little nutso. Okay—so, fine. She didn’t dangle anyone over a fucking balcony.

  She walked out into the living room and looked around. Were there any sharp objects around, any dangerously jutting corners on the furniture that could make her seem like an unfit fucking interior decorator? Georgia, still burning with rage, walked into the kitchen and looked into the pantry. Ah, the pantry. What’s better than a big pantry? This almost relaxed her, the corn muffin mix and the chocolate chips and the vanilla extract and the flour and the coconut flakes. Her mother had once told her that every home should have the ingredients to make toll house cookies at all times. She never forgot it. Now does that seem like the thinking of a motherfucking unfit mother? Too angry. Much too angry. She was trying to just breathe when the doorbell rang. Georgia wanted to burst out crying. But she didn’t. She took a breath and walked calmly to the door. She breathed again, but as she put her hand on the doorknob she couldn’t help but think, Dale will burn in fucking hell for this.

  She opened the door with a smile. Standing there was a short man with a gray ponytail and mustache. She knew his type immediately. Liberal do-gooder social worker throwback to the sixties. He smiled benignly. Georgia smiled benignly back. She hated him. How would he know what a good mother was? He was a man, just like Dale, and he could just kiss her ass.

  “Please come in,” Georgia said sweetly and waved him in. He walked in and quickly looked around the apartment. Georgia’s eyes moved with his. She could see what he saw: a clean, privileged, well-cared-for home.

  “My name is Mark. Mark Levine.”

  “So good to meet you, Mark.” So good to have you come into my fucking house and judge me. “Can I get you anything to drink? I have coffee or tea, grape juice, orange juice, pear juice, grapefruit juice, tap water, bottled water, sparkling water, Gatorade…”

  “A glass of water would be fine, thank you,” he said.

  Georgia went in the kitchen and opened the door to the refrigerator wide, revealing its maternally full contents. She saw him notice it, and she smiled to herself as she pulled out the Brita pitcher and filled up two glasses. “Why don’t we talk in the living room, Mark?”

  “That would be fine.”

  They walked to the living room and sat down. Georgia wondered if she should put coasters down on the coffee table—would that make her seem like a good mother because she had an attention to detail, or a bad mother because she was too anal? She decided for the coasters. She sat back and sipped her water and looked at Mark Levine.

  “I know this must be a particularly difficult time for you,” Mark said, gently. “I’ll try to be as sensitive as possible, even though I’m going to be asking you some personal questions.”

  “Ask away,” Georgia said, cheerfully. Asshole.

  “Well, to start, it’s always good for us to inquire about your relationship with your ex-husband. How you feel about him and how you talk to your children about him.”

  My relationship with him is great. That’s why you’re sitting in my fucking apartment deciding whether my children should be allowed to live with me.

  “Well, considering the situation, I think we’re getting along remarkably well. I encourage him to see the children. I was, and still am, perfectly ready to work out some kind of official custody arrangement with him.”

  Mark looked at his notes. “He mentioned that you had some problems with his new girlfriend.”

  Georgia’s stomach did a tiny little flip as she took a sip of her water. “Well, yes, she is quite young, and he did just meet her.” She looked up at Mark Levine with wide, innocent eyes. “Wouldn’t any mother have concerns?”

  Mark Levine nodded his head. He checked his notes again and then gently said, “He mentioned that you called her a ‘whore’? ‘Gutter trash’?”

  Georgia looked him dead in the eyes. So this is how it’s going to be, asshole. “Have you ever gone through a divorce, Mr. Levine?” Georgia asked, as neutrally and as calmly as possible.

  “Yes, unfortunately, I have.”

  “So then you understand there is a period, a small regrettable period, when emotions are heightened? When we might do or say things that we regret later?”

  “Of course,” Mark Levine said with an obligatory tight little smile. He continued to look down at his notes. Georgia imagined drilling a hole in his forehead.

  “And these feelings, possibly of resentment toward his new girlfriend, did you make your children aware of them in any way?”

  Georgia answered this one quickly. “Of course not. Even the most…I don’t know…unsophisticated parent knows by now that you should never ever bad-mouth your spouse or his friends in front of the children.”

  “Of course,” Mark Levine said delicately. He took a breath. “So when your husband said that Beth had called his girlfriend a ‘cheap Brazilian whore,’ would you say that…” Mark Levine paused, not really knowing how to finish that question or if he really needed to.

  “That’s an absolute lie,” Georgia said, lying. “This just goes to show what lengths my ex-husband will go to in order to portray me as some kind of vindictive, out-of-control monster.” Georgia got up from the sofa and just stood with her hands on her hips, then off her hips, then on again. “Do I look like the kind of woman who would call another woman a ‘cheap whore’ in front of my four-year-old daughter?”

  Mark Levine looked up at her and didn’t say anything.

  And then it began. She started talking.

  “Not that it’s not painful, mind you, to find out your husband of twelve years has decided to leave your marriage and break up your home and start seeing a woman almost fifteen years younger than him. A woman whom he wants to introduce to your children, to go to the park with them, maybe go get Chinese food in Chinatown, maybe all go see a movie, like one big happy family.” Georgia was now pacing around the apartment, in front of Mark Levine sitting on the sofa, behind Mark Levine sitting on the sofa.

  “Like it’s completely appropriate to live with your wife and children one day, and then the next being like ‘Hey, kids, I want you to meet my new girlfriend.’ Does that seem appropriate to you? I, meanwhile, am just trying to go on a few dates, just trying to find a decent man of an appropriate age who one day, a long, long time from now, when my children are healed and well and strong, I might bring home to meet them. Yet, I am the one that gets criticized. Judged. Now tell me, Mr. Levine, is that fair?”

  Again, Mark Levine said nary a peep.

  “Truly, Mr. Levine, does my husband’s behavior seem like that of a man who is sensitive and understanding of the needs of his children? Or does he seem like a man who is perhaps in a sex-induced haze because he’s getting fucked three times a night by some Brazilian whore.” Georgia stopped dead in her tracks. Mark Levine put down hi
s pen and looked up at Georgia, expressionless.

  “I…I mean…shit. Shit. Fuck.” Georgia realized how she sounded. “I mean, I mean…” Georgia sat back down on the couch and shut up for a minute, tears welling in her eyes. She looked up at Mark Levine.

  “You have to understand. This is an incredibly stressful thing. To have you come in here, and ask me questions…it’s very upsetting. And then you put the word whore into my head. I mean, you used the word whore first, you put it in my head and then I was upset and then, pop!”—Georgia made a gesture with her hands by her head to signify, well, a pop!—“it came out of my mouth!”

  Mark Levine closed his notebook.

  “I completely understand. This must be a very difficult time for you.” It was clear from Mark Levine’s body language that he had seen enough and was about to get up and go.

  “Yes, it is. I hope you understand that. We’re talking about my children. About whether my children are going to get to live with me. What’s more important than that? What could be more stressful than that?”

  Mark Levine, again, left the question unanswered. He stood up to go. Georgia had nothing left to say. She had run out of rope to hang herself with.

  “I think it’s best if I come back another time. The next time I’ll talk with you and your children together. Is that okay?”

  Georgia stayed motionless on the sofa. “That would be fine, thank you.”

  Mark Levine let himself out.

  After about a good ten minutes of Georgia staring out into space, frozen, unable to cry or scream, she stood up. Without thinking, she walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. She stood staring at the milk and the bread and the eggs and the fruit and the vegetables and the sparkling water and the chicken and the mac and cheese for a very long time. She closed the refrigerator, leaned against the door, and began to cry.

  Serena was doing everything by the book. She had begun pureeing vegetables, making salads, and getting recipes for things like hemp pesto and zucchini “pasta.” She was not cooking anything over 110 degrees. She was making sure every single vegetable was organic and then scrubbed within an inch of its raw life.