Page 53 of The Yes Factor

After about fifteen minutes of silent driving, we pull into a parking lot.

“You coming?” I hold my door open about to jump out.

“Nah, I’ll stay here.” Bex seems slightly distracted, but happily so. I know she’s daydreaming about Devon.

“Okay, be back in five.” I dash into the CVS and make a beeline for the cosmetics section.

Silver Spark, Black Fire, Green Glow—who wears neon green eyeliner?

Where the hell is Brown Blaze? I rifle through the hanging cardboard and plastic enrobed eye pencils and mascaras, knocking a few down in my haste to find what is truly the perfect shade of dark espresso brown.

I take a quick walk around to see if maybe there’s an end aisle display of CoverGirl. Nope. I walk back to the original display area and kneel on the floor, scrounging around to see if any brown pencils might have fallen underneath the shelves. This eyeliner has suddenly become the one thing that will make my life perfect. I have to find it before I get on the plane.

My head is pressing against the cold industrial linoleum floor, in fact, I’m almost lying down flat on the ground trying my best to make my arm longer, which is now wedged under the narrow gap of the display shelf.

“Liv! What are you doing?”

I look up, ungainly, get on all fours, and then stand up. Bex is staring at me in a mixture of bemusement and concern.

“How far away is the next CVS?” I swat away dust bunnies that have floated on to my hair and clothes like magnetic dust.

“Um, I don’t know, like ten to fifteen minutes.”

“Let’s go. They don’t have my color here.” I turn to the eyeliners once again and start taking them all off the shelf, in one last ditch effort that a brown one might be hiding in the back.

Bex takes the eyeliners out of my hand and puts them back on the shelf.

“We don’t have time. It’s in the other direction. Away from the airport. You need to be at check-in, like now.”

“There’s time.”

“I can just mail you a few, for God’s sake. Who misses their flight over eyeliner?”

I turn to Bex, deadly serious. “No, you can’t just mail some to me. Customs are a nightmare. They’ll hold on to it and make me pay tax. I probably won’t even get a notice and the eyeliners will all rot in a warehouse out in the boonies!”

“Liv, get a grip. It’s a six-dollar eyeliner.”

I know what she’s saying is true. In the back of my mind, I can see that I’m behaving irrationally, but I’m out of body at this point, like watching myself from afar. A knot tightens in my stomach. A fight-or-flight sensation. A feeling that I don’t want to take flight, but I’m not yet able to fight. Adrenaline gushes through me and I feel like I’m going to faint.

“I just. I just need—” I burst into tears, my head in my hands. If I press hard enough into my face, maybe I can make these tears stop. My wrinkles and crying grimace feel like they’ll be etched in stone. A midlife makeover of despair and cliché crisis. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to stay. I just want to fall down, right here, in aisle five and disappear.

Gasping for air and almost hyperventilating, I lean into Bex and hold on to her for dear life. My tears, snot, and saliva make a damp patch on her shoulder. Seeing it makes me think about Bex as a mom. Maddie on her shoulder, baby burps, and changing diapers. Love, safety, completeness. A deep well of sadness bursts inside. It’s not about not having a baby. I can deal with that, and I’m pretty sure I’ve come to terms with it. It’s that I don’t have love. That I want it. How am I supposed to go back to the sham of my marriage?

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whisper in a staccato of crying gasps, my head on Bex’s shoulder.

“It’s okay.” Bex smooths my hair. “It’s okay. None of us do.”

* * *

The valium Bex gave me has finally started to kick in. I recline my airplane seat and pull out the remote control that’s wired to the armrest. Ugh, this thing must be covered in germs. I cringe and press the greasy buttons to switch on the in-flight entertainment, looking for something to watch. Dirty Dancing in the Classics section alongside Casablanca and Some Like It Hot. Really? Sure, it’s a classic, but a classic-classic, as in black-and-white classic? When did my favorite childhood movie reach this category? And where is Patrick Swayze now? Dancing in stardust.

I put the controller back and fidget in my seat, doing my best to adjust the cheap Styrofoamy pillow around my shoulder to settle in for what I hope will be a long sleep. I say goodbye to the Pacific ocean as we head east and the blue fades away, the same ocean that Adam was swimming in. Knowing that in a few hours the plane will be crossing a different ocean. A big expanse of nothingness, of deep memories, yearnings, and unfulfilled needs. Imaginings of a future, missing something familiar that you haven’t even met yet.

Where does Ethan even fit into that?

At cruising altitude, the white noise and dimmed lights of the cabin lull me into a meditative state. I just want to sleep in this suspended animation, between lives, between my past and present. I close my eyes and it feels like I’m falling.

I remember when Bex and I were kids at the pool, we’d hang on to the edge at the back end of the diving area, away from the boards so we could watch people jump. The sixteen foot depth of chlorinated blue beneath us seemed endless, as deep as the ocean. We’d watch the older kids drop from the high dive. Some would fearlessly walk to the edge, bounce up and down a little before taking the plunge. Some held their nose with one hand, then did a kind of one legged jump, curling their knees up as they fell toward the water. A few would attempt a dive, and often someone would land with the wet slap of a belly flop. But it didn’t matter, we watched all of them in awe. They’d climb up that ladder, leave the safety bars behind them as they’d walk to the edge and jump, belly flop or not.

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