How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  Serena spoke up. “It’s a book about what it’s like for women to be single in all different cultures.”

  One of their friends spoke up, “That sounds very interesting. Don’t you want to talk to Icelandic women?”

  “Actually, I don’t want to talk to any women anywhere, ever again, about this subject.”

  Georgia tried to explain. “She’s just a little burned out. I’m sure it would be really helpful for Julie to talk to Icelandic women.”

  Somehow, Georgia steered the conversation to her two new favorite people, Sigrud and Rakel, asking them about their men. Rakel and Karl didn’t get married until after their two children were eight and ten years old. Sigrud had two children with a man named Jon, whom she only married after their two children were four and seven, but now she was with Palli. DrÖfn and Hulda both had children, were single, never married, and no one seemed to give a damn about any of it.

  I refused to find any of this interesting. My irritating friends, however, were eating it up.

  “So you’re telling me that you’re married, not married, single mother, not single mother, none of it really matters to anyone here?” Ruby asked, interested.

  They all sort of just shrugged and said, “No.”

  Georgia was also intrigued. “So, you don’t worry that a man will be put off by you having a child?”

  DrÖfn seemed actually offended by the idea, looking at Georgia as if it was the first time she’d ever heard of such an idea. “How could that be? If he loved me, he would have to love my children.”

  Georgia just nodded her head, like Well, yes, of course I knew that.

  Rakel added, “You have to understand, most women here have children. Many are single mothers. We had a president who was a single mother.”

  Sigrud added, “If the men here didn’t want to date single mothers, they really wouldn’t be dating very often.”

  The table of Icelandic people laughed and agreed.

  I just wanted to talk about Björk and if the people in Iceland think she’s weird. Anything but this.

  Serena now was getting into the act. “It doesn’t sound like the church or religion plays a big part in things around here.”

  Again, the table nodded. “Iceland is mostly Lutheran. The church is run by the state. But no one goes. It’s just tradition.”

  “This is so interesting. It’s like we landed on a crazy planet untouched by the church or religion, whose people are guided instead by their own natural, instinctual morality. It’s fascinating,” Alice said, excited. I had to admit it. Even I was starting to get a little intrigued by these odd people.

  They were all going out afterward to see their friends play in a band at a big nightclub in town called NASA. We were invited along, thankfully. We were all growing very attached to them and didn’t really feel like leaving them just yet.

  We walked into a large nightclub, just like any you might find in the States, packed with tons of people dancing and drinking. The band was playing a jolly mix of Irish and Icelandic music that just made you want to jump around with drunken joy. I had no idea what these men were singing about, but they seemed to be damn happy about it. The Icelanders walked straight to a little VIP area by the stage, and we followed right along. There were tables all ready for them—their friend from the band had arranged it. It was the perfect way to spend Alice’s wedding night. Karl bought us all a round of shots—something called Black Death—and we all drank up, except for Serena, who apparently was pacing herself.

  I looked out over the crowd. Hulda sat next to me and said, “The problem we have here, is that the men are very lazy. They don’t know how to make the first move, so the women have become very aggressive. So then, the men now never have to make the first move. It’s a terrible circle.”

  I nodded. Just as she said that I saw a gorgeous blond woman, in her late twenties, grab the man she was dancing with and start kissing him.

  Hulda continued. “This is the other problem. Everyone here sleeps with each other right away. No dating like you do in the States.”

  It seemed to be another fica situation.

  “Do the women mind if the men don’t call them afterward?” She had drawn me into the conversation, damn her.

  Hulda shrugged. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Icelandic women are very strong. We’re Vikings, remember?” Then she added, “Besides, if we want to see them again, we can always call them.”

  She made it sound so easy.

  The band started playing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” We decided this was our cue to get out on the dance floor and start jumping up and down. We did this for hours. We danced and we drank and we met more and more Icelandic men and women—each one seemingly more free-spirited than the last. And the men were handsome and nice, but they are not the story of Iceland. To me, the story of Iceland is the women. The strong, beautiful, Viking women.

  Eventually, we went back to our little area and stood by a railing looking over the crowd. Georgia surveyed the situation. “Well, if all these women are mothers, there must be an awful lot of babysitters in Reykjavik.”

  Alice looked out on the sea of people. “If anyone would have told me that I would be thirty-eight and single and childless and going to Iceland after I called off my wedding, I would never have believed them.” I didn’t like where this conversation was headed.

  “I know. I really didn’t expect my life would end up like this, either,” Georgia said. “I’m divorced. I’m a divorcée. My parents are divorced. I thought it was the last thing that was ever going to happen to me.”

  Ruby threw in her two cents. “When I was little I didn’t think I would be thirty-seven and crying all the time.”

  And Serena added, “I thought I would have so much more in my life. I thought I would have so much more life in my life.”

  “What’s going to become of us?” Ruby asked.

  I looked at us all, one big sinking ship about to go down. I got an idea. It seemed brilliant at the time but I was also drinking something called Black Death.

  “We need to go somewhere,” I shouted to them. “Tonight was supposed to be Alice’s wedding night. We need to do something to mark it. We need to do a ritual.”

  Alice’s eyes lit up a bit. “What kind of ritual?”

  “I’m not sure yet. It’s still in formation.” I walked over to Sigrud and Rakel. I now had the notion that I wanted to drive my friends to a beautiful place in the middle of nature. Rakel suggested Eyrabakki, a sleepy little town right on the water. They asked me what I was going to do and I told them I wanted to perform a healing ritual for all of us. They thought it was a funny idea and agreed to join us, and Hulda and DrÖfn agreed to come as well. On my way out I grabbed a huge stack of cocktail napkins. When we got out of the club, it was four in the morning. Rakel and DrÖfn drove because they were the only sober ones who knew where we were going. Suddenly I had become the Icelandic den mother of the bunch. We all piled into cars and took off.

  About twenty minutes later, we had arrived in Eyrabakki. It couldn’t have felt more desolate. There was a small street that ran down the center of it, with rocks and water on one side and tiny unlit cottages on the other. It looked as if you could walk from one end of the town to the other in five minutes. We parked our cars in front of what seemed like the town supermarket and started walking toward the rocks. The wind was whipping through the air now, making it feel like it was many degrees below zero.

  As we walked onto the rocks, Sigrud said, “It’s a shame that you needed water for your ritual. There are other places much more magical. We could have gone where the elves are.”

  Alice, Ruby, Serena, Georgia, and I turned and looked at her. “Excuse me?” I asked. “Did you say elves?”

  Sigrud nodded. “Yes, of course. But they live more inland.”

  Serena jumped in. “You believe in elves?”

  Rakel nodded, very seriously. “Yes, of course.”

  I looked at them and said, “Elves? As in
…elves?”

  Hulda nodded as well. “Yes. Elves.”

  Georgia looked intrigued. “Well, have you ever seen them?”

  Hulda shook her head. “I haven’t, but my aunt has.”

  DrÖfn said, “There is a famous story of these men trying to build a new road very close to here. Everything kept going wrong, the weather, the machinery would break down, all sorts of things. Then they brought in a psychic, who told them that it was because of the elves. They were on sacred elf land. The men moved their construction just a few miles away, and they didn’t have a problem again.”

  I turned to Sigrud. I tried to be polite, but I still needed to get to the bottom of the elf situation.

  “Well, what do they look like?”

  Sigrud shrugged and, as matter-of-factly as if she were talking about what she had for dinner, said, “Some are small, some are tall, some wear funny hats.”

  Ruby laughed; she couldn’t help herself. “Funny hats?”

  Rakel laughed, too, understanding how it sounded. “Yes, and they live in houses, but we just can’t see them.”

  I just shook my head and laughed. “You don’t believe in marriage or God or religion. But you believe in elves?”

  They all smiled and laughed. Sigrud giggled. “Yes.”

  “Well.” Serena laughed. “That proves it. Everyone needs something to believe in.”

  We all walked toward the water. It was cold as hell and my initial enthusiasm about this wacky scheme was beginning to wane. I realized that we all could be asleep right now in our beds, if it weren’t for me and my crazy ideas. We gathered at the water’s edge. Everyone looked at me, expectantly. I decided it was time to start.

  “Okay. So. I decided that we need to acknowledge in some kind of way what we’re all feeling.”

  Everyone was quiet. Then Ruby said, “What are we all feeling?”

  “I think we’re feeling that there are a lot of things we’re not going to be anymore. We’re not going to be young brides. We’re not going to be young mothers. We might not even get a husband and a home and two little children that we’ve borne ourselves. That doesn’t mean that we won’t get a husband, or children. But this is to acknowledge that it’s not going to happen the way we thought it might. The way we hoped it would.”

  Georgia looked at me. “Wow, Julie, way to harsh my mellow.” My American friends laughed. I don’t think the Icelandic ladies understood.

  I passed out the cocktail napkins I stole from the nightclub to Serena, Ruby, Georgia, and Alice. I didn’t want to impose this ritual on my Icelandic sisters.

  “Okay. So. I don’t have pens or pencils, so I want you to instead put your disappointment into this napkin. I want you to imagine what you thought your life was going to look like now and I want you to put that in the napkin.”

  I closed my eyes and thought about what I imagined it was going to look like. I had a very specific expectation of what it was going to be. I never dreamed of marriage and children and always dreamed I would live a glamorous life in New York doing fun things with my fun, exciting friends. I knew that I would watch all my friends get married and have children before me—and then, at the last minute, just at the last minute, which, in my mind, was last year, my guy would show up, and he would, against my protestations and despite my cynical nature, sweep me off my feet and make me a wife and mother. That’s how I pictured it would go. I was going to be the last entry, but I would get in. I never imagined that it might not happen. I put that all into my napkin.

  Alice thought about her old boyfriend, Trevor. How she had planned on spending the rest of her life with him. She had imagined having a few children with him and growing old with him. She remembered all the holidays they had shared, all the ornaments they had collected at Christmas, and how she thought they were going to keep collecting them for years to come. She remembered how he had told her that he didn’t want to marry her, and she told him that she thought it was time he moved out.

  Ruby thought how she had imagined her happy life of love with every single man she had ever dated or spoken to in the past ten years. She saw all their faces fly past her, she remembered all the different lives she had envisioned. She was going to be the doctor’s wife to Len. She was going to be emotionally supportive to Rich with his fledgling contracting business. She was going to move to D.C. to be with that lobbyist, what’s-his-name. All the disappointments kept scrolling through her mind. She imagined putting them all in the napkin. She liked this ritual. Because that is what all these men were. Nothing more than a fantasy. A notion left in a bar napkin. She wondered how she could have ever given any of them so much power.

  Georgia thought about Beth’s college graduation. She imagined her and Dale sitting there in the hot sun, holding hands, with Gareth sitting next to them, along with all the respective grandparents. When Beth got up to get her diploma, Dale and Georgia would clap and cheer the loudest, then look at each other and kiss—their pride for Beth and love of each other all mixing together as they hugged and kissed some more. Georgia started to cry a little at this image, this image that she hadn’t allowed herself to think of in such a long time. Now, here, as the cold wind whipped around, and the sun was nowhere in sight, she felt the loss of that deeply. And tears fell down her face.

  Serena realized that she had no image whatsoever of what was going to happen to her. In her perfect yogi way, she had managed to let die any expectations of what her life was supposed to be like. She had no preconceived notions to let go of. She was empty of images of what she thought her life was supposed to look like. She realized that maybe it was time to get some. For her, it was about starting to imagine the life she wanted. She put her blank future into the napkin.

  I took out a lighter I had borrowed from Karl and went around the circle, setting fire to our napkins, one by one. As they burned quickly, I said, “It’s done. We won’t have those lives. They’re gone.” One by one we dropped the napkins on the ground as the fire got close to our fingers.

  “Now we’re free.”

  All the women looked at me. Ruby asked first, “Free to do what?”

  “Free to move on. Without bitterness. Those lives don’t exist. Now we have to go on and live the ones we have.”

  Everyone was quiet. I don’t think anyone had ever seen me so, well, sincere before. I looked at Sigrud, Rakel, and Hulda. They looked surprisingly respectful and solemn. I looked at them and wondered what they were thinking.

  “Do any of you have anything you want to say?”

  Rakel spoke up. “Congratulations, you all have just discovered your inner Viking.”

  We American ladies looked at each other, pleased.

  We all got back to the hotel, had breakfast, then packed. Our whirlwind weekend was over. It was time to go home. Yes. It was time for me to go home. I was done with this all. Had I learned anything? Yes, I think so. Was I glad to have met Thomas? I would have to wait a little more time to find that out.

  As we were heading to the airport, we were all quiet, we were sleep-deprived, hungover, and cranky, trying to hydrate ourselves with bottles of water we took from our hotel room. Alice, who was driving, decided to make a big announcement.

  “Well, I just want you to know that I believe in elves.”

  We all looked at her and smiled, sleepily. Only Ruby had the energy to respond.

  “You do? Really?”

  “Yes. I do. I believe in elves. I mean, look at this crazy place. Doesn’t it just seem like there have to be elves here?”

  The rest of us were too tired to reply.

  But I thought about this for a minute. We do all need something to believe in, so why not elves? Or love?

  “Well, if Alice can believe in invisible people who wear funny hats, then I can believe in love. I will believe, from today on, that it’s possible to find a person that you can live with and love for your whole life, who loves you back, and it’s not just some psychological delusion.”

  Alice looked at me and began
to clap. “Now we’re talking,” she said. I smiled. Georgia looked at us all and said, “And if Alice can believe in invisible people that mess around with poor construction workers, then I will believe that I can meet a man who not only loves me, but loves my children as well.”

  Serena nodded her head. “And if Alice can believe in elves and Julie can believe in love and Georgia can believe in love a second time around, I’m going to believe that Joanna and Kip are going to get through this. And someday they’re going to be happy again.”

  “And what about you?” I asked.

  “I believe that I’m going to find out how to be happy, too. Yes, me, too,” Serena said.

  Ruby smiled and raised her bottle of water in the air. “And I’m going to believe that we’re all going to be happy. We’re all going to get exactly what we want and be just fine.” She took a sip of her water. “And Lexapro. I’m going to believe in that, too.”

  So, in a country of Viking pagans, we all found something to believe in. But I was still inspired.

  “Well then,” I said, “I’m going to take it one step further. If you all believe that we’re all going to find love and be happy, then I’m going to believe in miracles—because that’s what it’s going to take for all this to really come true.” Everyone laughed, but I said it with complete sincerity.

  “Here, here,” Alice said, raising her bottle of water. “To elves and miracles. Let’s believe in them both. I mean, why not?”

  We all clapped and raised our bottles in the air and agreed. “Why not?”

  The plane was rolling down the runway. I was sitting on the aisle and Serena had the window seat. In front of us were Ruby and Georgia and across the aisle from me was Alice. The plane was now rattling, the sound of the wind was all around us as we started to pick up speed. It was then that I realized that with all the fogginess of being hungover and sleep-deprived, and chatting with my friends, I had forgotten to take any drugs before we took off. Besides that, I had forgotten to even bring them with me in my carry-on. I gripped the arms of my seat as the plane rattled into the air.