Eliza Carter #2
“They’re makeup wipes,” the woman repeated. She balanced a martini glass in one hand as she used the other to pull a small tissue from her mini Chanel handbag. “These are phenomenal. Just a quick touch up here and there, and no one will even know.”
It was such a small gesture. Insignificant really. Eliza felt silly that it struck her with such profundity.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
The woman rolled her eyes as if it was a silly question. “Of course. What’s the point in spending a small fortune on Japanese skin-care products if you can’t share?”
Eliza tried to smile and took it. “Thank you.”
The band had just begun playing a guitar-laden chorus of “Dancing Queen” when the woman gave Eliza a third makeup wipe. Then the door to the bathroom flew open.
Two women entered, one with red hair piled on top of her head and a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt half-hidden under a pair of denim overalls, and the other with a perfectly fitted navy sweater and blond hair pulled back in a neat ponytail.
“Who thought it was a good idea to create a hair metal version of ABBA?” the redhead groaned.
The blonde laughed. “Oh, come on. It’s ABBA and KISS. And their name is AbbaKiss. Like the ancient calculator. Get it?”
The redhead snorted and looked like she was about to reply with a sarcastic remark, but stopped short when she saw Eliza’s reflection in the mirror, with the brunette leaning against the counter next to her.
“Everything okay in here, Emma?” she asked.
The brunette waved her martini glass in the air, sending small droplets of vodka over Eliza’s arm. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. We’re only on the mascara.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Eliza said, her voice wavering. “I’m sorry.”
The blonde frowned. “Why are you apologizing?”
“It’s just… so stupid.” Eliza shook her head, as if it might ward off another sob. “My boyfriend and I are out here for the weekend, and we’ve been having such a good time. It’s been perfect. But then we were out listening to the band, and he said he loved me and…”
The redhead’s eyebrows knitted together. “And?”
Eliza could feel her face crumbling again. “He started talking about when we get married. When we have kids and…”
Silence fell, with only the sound of the band’s lead singer belting out the opening lyrics to “Super Trouper” echoing off the walls. Then the blonde came up to Eliza’s side and gave her an encouraging smile in the mirror. “That sounds sweet.”
The woman with the Chanel bag rolled her eyes again. “Yes, Anne, because you’re getting married. Personally, I’d rather have my nails plucked out with—”
“Okay, Emma, we get your point,” the redhead cut her off.
Emma shrugged as she slid to sit on the counter, balancing her drink in front of her.
“It was nothing,” Eliza said, more to herself than to the women now surrounding her. “I’m probably a little drunk, and it just caught me by surprise. To be fair, we’ve never really talked about what he wanted before.”
The blonde—Eliza thought she remembered that her name was Anne—seemed to consider the point. Then she asked, “And what do you want?”
That was the crux of it. The neglected heart of it that she was only just recognizing now.
“I don’t know,” Eliza said. “I’m twenty-seven years old, and I have absolutely no idea.
I’ve been so focused for so long on what everyone else wanted for me that I’ve based every choice on that.
I never stopped to think if I want it. Do I want to get married?
Have kids? Get a dog? Or have I just been told I want those things for so long that I never took the time to think about it until now? ”
“Does it matter?” Emma said with a shrug.
The redhead frowned. “That’s a little harsh.”
“No, I’m serious, Lizzy.” Emma slid off the counter, then turned her attention to Eliza. “Even if you had wanted those things, it doesn’t matter. You can change your mind. You have a choice.”
“But it doesn’t just affect me—it affects Ben, too,” Eliza said, her head swimming with vodka and panic. “What will he do?”
“Marvel at your ability to evolve and change,” Emma replied, raising her drink above her head so small splashes of vodka scattered on the floor.
“Hear, hear,” Anne said with a smile.
“I still can’t believe you ordered a martini at a dive bar,” Lizzy murmured, glaring at Emma’s glass now perched above their heads.
Eliza smiled, but it faded just as quickly as it had come. “And if he doesn’t?”
Lizzy opened her mouth to speak just as the bathroom door flew open again and two more women entered, laughing to each other drunkenly as they started for the mirror, but they stopped abruptly when they saw the four women already there.
“Her boyfriend wants to get married, and she doesn’t know if she wants to,” Emma said, answering their unspoken questions.
“Ohhhh,” they said in unison, as if that was all the background information they needed.
“It’s fine,” Eliza said, wiping the last of her tears away and giving the women an apologetic smile. “I just don’t know how to tell him. I don’t want to hurt—”
“Oh, please.” The taller of the two women who had just entered rolled her eyes as she pulled a lipstick from her bag and reapplied the cherry red. “Never set yourself on fire so someone else can stay warm.”
“That’s a good one,” Anne said, eyes wide.
The woman winked. “Thanks.”
“But what if that’s not what he wants?” Eliza asked. “What if that’s enough to make him walk away?”
“Then you’ll know,” Lizzy said with a shrug.
“It’s like my mom always said,” the tall woman’s companion said, her words slightly slurred as she tried to straighten her very crooked skirt. “ ‘It takes a mighty good man to be better than no man at all.’ ”
The door opened again, and more women came in. Within a few minutes there was a crowd of women surrounding the bathroom counter, all sharing their insights and advice while Anne used the towelettes to fix Eliza’s makeup.
“Whether you get married or not, always make sure you keep your own checking account, just in case!” a woman said over the din of the hand dryer.
“Never second-guess your gut, sweetie!” a man in a mesh shirt called out from the hallway, where he held open the door.
“Don’t work so hard to get chosen when you’re the one who chooses, m’kay?” another woman said as she stood in front of the sink, dabbing a mojito off her shirt.
“You don’t owe anyone anything!” someone yelled from a stall.
It should have felt overwhelming. The idea of not knowing what she wanted, of telling Ben, of choosing her own future for what felt like the first time in her life?
It was terrifying. Except it didn’t feel terrifying.
In that moment, it felt electric. The gates open, her soul free, with the weight of expectation and life and history dissolved.
Or maybe this was history. These women all carrying their own different threads, passed down from the women before them, bound together for a moment in that mustard-colored bathroom in a dive bar somewhere between East Hampton and Montauk, to make something so much stronger than they were on their own.
Maybe this was what her birth mother had wanted for her all along, she thought as Emma fixed her mascara, and Lizzy offered her some gloss. Sisterhood. Support. But most of all, the opportunity to have a choice. One she never had.
Eliza didn’t know how much time passed, but by the time she left the bathroom, she had twenty new best friends and, inexplicably, a half-finished Long Island iced tea in her hand.
She found Ben at the edge of the dance floor. He was bobbing his head to the music, and when he saw her, his expression lit up.
“Hey, you,” he yelled over the band’s thumping rendition of “Fernando,” hooking his arm around her waist. “I was about to call a search party.”
She took another sip of her drink for liquid courage. Here we go.
“I need to tell you something,” she yelled back.
He waited, his attention wholly on her.
“I don’t think I want to get married,” she said.
He blinked. A small grin turned up the corners of his mouth again. “Okay.”
“And I don’t know if I want kids.”
“Okay.”
“Or a dog. I might not even want my job—I don’t know,” she continued. She was on a roll now. “I’m not sure what I want at all, but I want to figure it out.”
His grin turned into a broad smile. “Okay.”
She frowned. “Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I don’t need to marry you to love you, Eliza,” he said, squeezing her waist. “I just want to be there with you through all of it. That’s it.”
She smiled, too, so broad and unfiltered that she would probably be embarrassed if she had less to drink, but in the moment, it didn’t matter. She threw her arms around his shoulders and kissed him.
“I love you,” she said against his lips.
“I love you, too,” he replied.
Then the cover band began playing a mash-up of “Waterloo” and “Detroit Rock City,” and Eliza pulled Ben to the center of the dance floor.
They danced to the music, and Eliza waved at the familiar faces of the women from the bathroom, some also on the dance floor, others at the bar.
Suddenly, those percentage points of her history, geographic metrics printed out on a piece of paper, didn’t feel two-dimensional anymore, but like a long thread attached to her sternum, a thousand hands pulling on it, forcing her forward.
Each unique and different and none of them wrong.
Just threads to hold on to, to bind together to make something so much stronger than each on its own.
A happily ever after on their own terms. Because, really, what other kind was there?