This Close to Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

  Joel had responded:

  You can give it to Goodwill. I have everything I need. And I know this is weird, awful, etc. I’ve told you it was never my intent to hurt you and trust me, I know it sounds like a load of real bullshit. I’ve asked you to forgive me, knowing how huge, undeserved and probably impossible it is. You can message me anytime you want. Odette doesn’t mind and even if she did, I wouldn’t. I don’t mean that in a nasty way. She’s fine. We’re fine. I still care about you. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Montana or that we’re not married anymore.

  He clicked back to Joel’s profile, enlarged his photo. It was of him, a woman tagged as Odette, and their new baby girl. Odette had her head on his shoulder. The baby was sleeping. Joel was looking straight into the camera, and Emmett had no opinion of his face. Joel could be anyone. He scrolled through Odette’s profile, finding photos of her pert face alone, with friends, with Joel. Photos of her pregnant and smiling, photos of her holding the baby. Odette seemed so different from Tallie. He imagined Joel would’ve had to split himself in two to ever love them both.

  Emmett decided against googling Tallulah Clark to let the mystery of her play out by itself. Maybe he’d google her on his way to the bridge, find out he’d spent the night with a wacko who pretended to be normal but regularly posted to dark conspiracy theory message boards using her real name. And she wouldn’t find him online. Since he wasn’t on social media, there was nothing for her to discover if she attempted to look him up, which he was sure she’d done already. Would’ve been the smart, reasonable thing for a woman to do.

  Emmett opened an incognito browser tab, created an entirely new email account. He tried to think of something Tallie would choose. Looked around the living room, minimized the browser, and checked out her desktop photo. It was of Jim and Pam sleeping on the couch he was sitting on. He maximized the browser window, chose the new email name.

  Talliecat. He heard it chime in his head like the chorus of the Grateful Dead’s “China Cat Sunflower.” He’d need to add some numbers, too, just in case it was already taken. He glanced at the DVDs on the shelf beside him: all the James Bond movies in a neat row, in order. Talliecat007. Password: Thur$dayOctober2nine.

  He went to Facebook again, found Tallie’s profile photo, and saved it to the desktop. Uploaded it so it would show up as her photo with her new email address. He got Joel’s email address from his profile, copied and pasted it into the recipient box.

  From: talliecat007@gmail.com

  To: joelfoster1979@gmail.com

  Subject: i still care about you too

  hey joel, this is my new personal email address. starting fresh. i’ve been thinking about your last message and obviously i still care about you too. and thanks for letting me know it’s okay to write…when or if i need to. it’s weird not being married to you anymore. you’re montana joel. a father. you have a baby and a ponytail!

  Emmett laughed at this part. He couldn’t help it. He put his finger to his lips and shushed his drunken self, which made him laugh harder. He turned to look at Tallie’s locked bedroom door, wondered if she was asleep. He walked down the hallway quietly and listened. Heard nothing but his clothes in the dryer, tumbling hot. Getting back to the email, he wrote: so i’m open to talking.

  but it would be nice if you’d admit none of this was my fault and i couldn’t have done anything differently to stop it. i know better than to think i can control what anyone else does…but it would feel good to hear you say it. the way you went out and got another woman pregnant because you think i’m broken? crushing. i’m still working on my heart about it. it’s baffling how you can think you know someone…and not know them at all. maybe not even a little bit.

  are you coming back to town anytime soon?

  do you miss me sometimes?

  He didn’t sign her name. The do you miss me sometimes? hovered there at the end, unpinned. Sent.

  Tallie and Joel weren’t Facebook friends, and there wasn’t much on her page, but under “work and education” it read TLC, which Emmett thought was pretty cute. Under “family and relationships” her brother was listed: Lionel Clark. Emmett clicked on his profile, read Lionel’s announcement for a big party he was having on Saturday.

  It’s time for the Annual Clark Halloween Party again! Best costume wins $2500 with another $2500 donated to the charity of the winner’s choice!

  Emmett scrolled through Lionel’s page until he found photos of Tallie. A guy tagged Nico Tate had his arm around her in one, and she was smiling a different smile. Blissful. Emmett felt a twitch of jealousy. He clicked on Nico’s profile. Half of his page was in Dutch, some French, a bit of English. Flipped through photos of him kayaking and rock climbing. He was a tennis coach, and there were links to his website. Photos of him on the court with his students, at fund-raising events with Roger Federer and Serena Williams. There were also more pictures of Tallie: Nico and Tallie on a tennis court, Nico and Tallie at a wedding. A younger Tallie, scarfed in an orchard with her head thrown back laughing, a bright blurred apple in her hand. The picture could’ve been a movie poster—an autumn romance with a happy ending. Emmett leaned closer to the screen.

  He was careful to sign out of the new fake email account, deleted the photo of Tallie he’d saved to the desktop. He deleted everything in the browser history that revealed his snooping, clicked through sports news, looked at the box score for the baseball game he and Tallie had watched together. Closed the laptop, set it on the coffee table.

  Emmett got his phone from his backpack and entered the new email information so he’d know when Joel had responded. And if he didn’t, who cared? Nothing mattered. He stepped to the window, wishing the moon was out. Would he ever see it again? The forecast called for rain off and on all weekend. If this was really it for him, no more moonlight. Felt like years since the last time he’d drowned himself in it. Day or night, he loved looking up at the sky, being out underneath it. He’d taken so much for granted.

  He lay on her couch, covered himself with the blankets she’d brought out for him, felt himself sinking. He still had the nightmares from time to time—his own metallic voice screaming, detached. Demonic. Every dark, demented horror of all he’d seen and been forced to do. The violence and loneliness stabbed at him, left invisible gashes for the soul leak.

  But thinking about the future was a comfort to him as he drifted off, everything ending soon. Sleep being so much like death. No nightmares that night. He slept in the cardigan with the weight of Tallie’s hand-knitted blankets on him in what felt like smooth, zipped-up, dreamless darkness, like he’d never been awake.

  PART TWO

  Friday

  TALLIE

  In the morning, Tallie saw a text from Lionel—a reply to a question she had forgotten she’d asked before the haze of Emmett excitement. The thought of I let a strange, unstable man spend the night had tapped her on the shoulder and woken her up long before her alarm had a chance to.

  Same thing every year, so quit playing. I’m not telling you my costume. It’s a secret, her brother had written before dawn, the forever early riser he was.

  i know you never tell, but i like asking…to annoy you! Tallie texted him back.

  Annoyed. You got your wish.

  aaand you love me.

  That, I do.

  Her cats purred down by her feet like two fuzzy engines. Tallie held her breath, attempting to listen for Emmett moving around out there on the couch. Had he bolted in the night? She tiptoed to her bedroom door, unlocked and opened it slowly. From there, she could see Emmett’s hair, set like a red-gold paintbrush against her pillow and the lavender fabric of her couch. She closed and locked the door, went into her bathroom. As a way to self-soothe, Tallie took baths as hot as she could stand every night when she got home from work. Usually, she steeped herself like tea until she was blushed and loose, limbs limp from the heat, eyelids heavy. Since she’d skipped her ritual the night before, it was time for a shower. She undressed and stepped in
to the white-tiled coolness.

  * * *

  Afterward, she took her time brushing her teeth and washing her face. She used her apple toner, her hyaluronic acid, her caffeine under-eye treatment, and moisturizer with sunscreen. Squeezed the skinny tube of coconut lip gloss onto her finger and swiped it across her lips. She liked coconuts in the morning and mint at night. She didn’t change or shorten one thing about her morning skin-care routine. The glass serum bottles and smells soothed her. Joel used to ask, But what’s it do? as he inspected the teeny print on the labels. He liked to claim skin care was a scam, but he didn’t understand that she used it to organize her mornings and evenings. It wouldn’t even matter if her routine did anything or not. But it did! Her skin had been clear, soft, and smooth for almost the entirety of the two years since she’d started paying more attention to it and taking time for herself. The fertility drugs she’d been prescribed had reconfigured the precious science of her body and, in turn, wrecked her skin. She needed the exfoliators, boosters, ampoules, acids, and essences. Eye creams, sunscreens, and night creams. Retinol and sheet masks. Morning and night, the ritualistic three or five or ten steps she could control when she couldn’t control anything else.

  * * *

  Careful not to make any extra noise, Tallie walked past Emmett camped on the couch with his backpack underneath his knees. She stood in her kitchen, replied to texts from a couple of her girlfriends. Texted, i love you, miss you, to Aisha, knowing she wouldn’t see it until Sunday. Tallie took her laptop to the kitchen table and checked the browser history—sports websites and articles. Emmett certainly hadn’t googled how to murder the woman who bought you coffee last night.

  She walked into the living room, got on the floor across from him. She was eager for him to wake up so she could gauge his mood, to see if he was feeling better. His head was turned toward her, and she resisted the urge to get closer. To lean in and inspect him more, to see how he smelled as he slept. To whisper Who are you? into his ear so he’d dreamily open his mouth and scatter his secrets across the morning light.

  EMMETT

  He woke up to Tallie trying to be quiet in the kitchen and the smell of coffee, bacon, eggs. He had a full-blown, throbbing red-wine headache. He took himself and his backpack to the bathroom first thing.

  “Hi, Emmett, good morning. I hope you’re feeling well. I put a new toothbrush on the counter for you. You probably see it,” she said from the other side of the door after tapping on it.

  Peeing, he spotted the red toothbrush still in the package on the counter.

  “Good morning. Yes, I feel okay. Thank you. I see the toothbrush.”

  “And I have coffee and breakfast when you get out.”

  “Thank you,” he said again.

  Emmett brushed his teeth using her cinnamon toothpaste, his reflection blinking back at him. He hadn’t intended on being alive to see himself in a morning mirror. He pictured the bridge in cloudy daylight, the cars whizzing by. Was there a chance he’d be conscious after hitting the river? He’d read about the rare survivor stories, but he’d also read that the impact from jumping off a bridge was the equivalent of getting hit by a car, that his body could be falling at the rate of seventy-five miles an hour. He would accelerate as he fell, then his bones would break, his organs would tear apart. Simple physics. And by chance, if those things didn’t kill him instantly, his last breath would be water.

  He wasn’t scared.

  Emmett splashed his face, wiped it dry on her hanging towel. Looked around at the little glass bottles and plastic tubes she had in there. Everything smelled like flowers, a girl garden.

  (The hallway bathroom. Two candles: one half full of wax, one with a wick that hasn’t been lit. A photo of her and another woman hangs in a white frame next to the light switch. A hook next to the frame, holding two wooden necklaces, one beaded one. Pearly white liquid soap in the dispenser. Pale blue bath mat. Four fat bulbs of white light above her mirror. A postcard of Michelangelo’s David tacked next to it. The bathroom door handles are curved silver with curlicues on the ends. Swan’s neck faucet, silver. White floor vent, white tile. A full-length mirror on the back of the door. A wall outlet with two plugs, one holding an auto night-light. A small garbage can in the corner next to the toilet. A shower curtain matching the bath mat. A round frosted window fit for a ship.)

  He was greeted by the cats sitting side by side in the hallway, watching the door. He petted them on their heads, rubbed behind their ears. When he walked into the kitchen, Tallie handed him a Harry Styles mug of coffee. Emmett pointed to Harry’s face and thanked her one more time, took a sip as she sat at the kitchen table.

  (A plate of bacon, eggs, and toast. On the middle of the table—butter and local organic blackberry jam, almond butter. A carafe of water, two glasses, and a bottle of ibuprofen.)

  “Red wine gives everyone a headache,” she said, touching the plastic top of the medicine. She motioned for him to have a seat. “Do you like breakfast?”

  “Only a psychopath wouldn’t like breakfast,” he said. He took two ibuprofen. Last night he’d wondered if dinner would be his last meal, and now? He was ravenous for breakfast.

  Emmett and Tallie ate and discussed the rain, the weekend forecast. She asked him again how he was feeling.

  “Better…I feel better,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  He remembered the phony email to Joel and felt like garbage for it, wondering if he could make it all go away. His feelings shuffled like a deck of cards—diamonds of embarrassment, overreacting clubs, stubbornness in spades, the ace of guilt. And his heart, their hearts, still beating. Somehow. But hope. Hope was the real joker. Had he confused exhaustion for hopelessness? Maybe they felt exactly the same in the cold rain, darkness creeping.

  “Just wondering…do you ever talk to Joel anymore?” he asked after a moment, attempting to make the question as casual as possible—a continuation of their conversation from the night before. If she talked to Joel via some other form of communication, she’d figure out what he’d done real easy.

  “Oh…no. I actually blocked his number in my phone out of pettiness. Maybe the occasional message online, but not really. Last time he wrote me, I didn’t feel the need to respond. Nothing more to say,” she said. “On a nicer note, did you sleep well?”

  The sweetness in her voice inspired a violent tenderness inside him.

  “I did. Did you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you did beat me at arm wrestling…so maybe tonight I should be behind the locked door,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. Her face went plain.

  “Not that I’m trying to stay here tonight. I was kidding. I’ll be on my way soon, no worries,” he said, not fully able to decode how he wanted her to respond. Ask him to stay? Ask him to go? Leave it up to him? He ate, drank his coffee.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. You’re more than welcome to stay. I’m worried about you. Maybe you need a couple days to feel back to your old self?”

  Emmett swallowed and took his time. “I don’t ever want to feel back to my old self.”

  “Of course not. Right,” she said, nodding. “Well, okay…so my brother, Lionel, has this huge Halloween party every year. It’s on Saturday. Tomorrow,” she said, as if he were an alien and didn’t know how the days of the week worked. “It’s a lot of fun, tons of people in wild costumes…” She stopped talking and put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, before sitting back in her chair and beginning again. “A proposal: How about you stay here at least until then and go to the party with me? That would be fun and something to do. It’s always good to have something to do…to look forward to. It keeps our brains happy.”

  They smiled across the table at each other like old friends.

  “What’d you dress up as last year?” he asked.

  “Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, and my best friend, Aisha, was Dorothy, too,” she said. “My brother always goes way overbo
ard since it’s his favorite holiday. Last year he was Houdini and rented a water tank. And! He has this friend who grows his beard out specifically to dress up like Gandalf every year, then he shaves it the day after. He even comes with his own little hobbits. The whole thing is beyond.”

  “Okay, wow. Big leagues. So what’s your costume?”

  “Absolutely no clue. I usually know, like, months in advance, but this year I’m so slow…with work and…everything else on my mind, I haven’t figured it out yet. And time’s a-tickin’. But it’ll all work out, because now you and I can look for costumes together.”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. What did it feel like to have a happy brain? He couldn’t fully remember, although there was a flick of it somewhere inside him. But it was too small, too far away.

  “Good. That’s what we’ll do today.”

  * * *

  (An outlet mall costume shop, but this one isn’t as sad as it could be. The costume shop is sandwiched between a shoe store and a candy store. There is a sporting goods store across from it, a kitchenware store next to that. It is a wet morning, and the world seems to have not woken up yet. The college kid working the register has his feet up on the counter. He is wearing glasses, reading a Superman comic book.)

  They wandered up and down the aisles, Tallie stopping every now and then to inspect costumes a little more closely.

  “See anything that looks good?” Tallie asked him from the end of a row of gorilla costumes.

  “Not really,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

  “Last time you dressed up for Halloween…what were you?”

  “Few years back, I was Beetlejuice.”

  “I love Beetlejuice. That’s so good. Okay, what about Star Wars? All boys love Star Wars. You love Star Wars, right?”