“And the clothes, the toiletries? You had all this stuff? Why’d you let me think you didn’t?” She touched the plastic inside his toiletries bag, the travel-size items she loved to buy before vacation.
“I don’t have pajamas or anything as comfortable as what you gave me. I didn’t intend to mislead you.”
“Do you have an ID?” Tallie asked, scanning the table and looking inside his backpack.
“Not on me,” he said.
“But you have a license?”
“Yes.”
“Not with you?”
“No, not with me,” Emmett said.
“So you told the police officer what, earlier?”
“Exactly what I said. I told him the truth. My name, my Social Security number. They can look that stuff up.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Emmett.”
“Emmett what?” Tallie asked, annoyed.
“Emmett Aaron Baker,” he said a little slowly, watching her face.
Client Name: Baker, Emmett Aaron.
“Emmett Aaron Baker,” she repeated, lighting up. There it was. Her stomach Ferris-wheeled hearing him say his full name, echoing it in its entirety for the first time. She envisioned herself tapping his full name into Google. “I looked up Emmett and Clementine, Kentucky, and couldn’t find anything. What would happen if I looked up Emmett Aaron Baker?” she asked.
“Nothing would come up,” he said with his eyes stuck to hers.
“You’re the one ungoogleable man left on earth?”
“I didn’t say that. I just don’t put myself out there,” Emmett said. He took his right hand and raked his hair to the left, off his forehead. A move Tallie loved on men.
“I scanned the list of America’s Most Wanted, Kentucky’s Most Wanted, and a few more,” she confessed.
“Good. Sure you did. But you didn’t see me,” he said confidently.
“Right. I did not.”
They drank their tea in silence. The rain fell across her windows like the car wash Emmett had compared it to. She imagined him clapping the ladder against her house, cleaning out the gutters. She imagined telling Lionel. He would’ve noticed they were full next time he stopped by when it was raining. Lionel would’ve looked up and told her in his booming alpha-male, king-of-the-mountain, big-brother voice, “Either I can do it or you need to have someone come clean out your gutters.” She was proud of herself for taking care of it before Lionel could fuss at her.
“And these?” she asked, touching the butterfly wings.
“I’m not ready to talk about those. Or this,” he said, pointing to the coloring-book paper—a treasure from a child.
“What about this?” She lifted the little Bible.
“My grandfather’s, given to him by his parents on the day he was born,” he said, opening to show her the inscription written inside.
To Samuel. Welcome to Earth. March 29, 1933.
“You were raised religious?”
“Baptist,” he said.
“Me, too.”
For someone who’d felt such intense emotion the day before and who had wanted to end his life, Emmett had an aggressive calm about him. Whatever sent him to the bridge must’ve really been truly unbearable. Thinking of what it could have been was like staring into a too-bright light without blinking. Tallie’s eyes watered.
“Does it bother you, talking about God? About religion?”
“Not really,” he said.
“So yesterday you said, ‘What if there’s no God’…Is that what you believe?”
“I think God is there, but indifferent.”
“Feels too cruel to me. Him being there, but not caring. I can’t believe in that kind of God,” she said.
“But when things get dark and hopeless…that’s exactly what it feels like.”
Tallie took in his response. She knew healing—if and when it happened—happened in increments, the same sneaky way the days got longer and shorter. Barely noticeable at times, slow. Tallie had been treading water of her own, in that estuary where sadness spilled out into healing and joy. Believing in God came easy for her, even in her worst moments. Even when she sat there and listened to her clients tell her their secrets—the hidden, terrifying demons some people kept locked away for so long that when they finally did talk about them, it was as if a cloud of black death wanted to swallow them whole. She’d seen people come out at the other end of that darkness. She knew God was real.
When people were really messed up, most of them wanted to do better, only they didn’t know how. So they showed up in her office, simply wanting to learn more about themselves and how to live in this world. She wasn’t exactly labeled a Christian therapist, but with their permission, sometimes she liked to mention to her Christian clients that the Bible talked about all sorts of people—a lot of terrible, confused, miserable people. Murderers, thieves, you name it—Jesus was the only perfect one, and He surrounded Himself with imperfect people. The Bible was full of surprises and unlikely heroes, people who made mistakes. And even when she didn’t want to, she thought often of Odette’s tremulous voice echoing in the apartment stairwell after Tallie had driven over there and confronted her not long after Joel had moved out. Tallie had stared at Odette’s vulpine face, her mouth frozen in a little rose twist. “I’m sorry. Everyone makes mistakes,” Odette had said.
It was something Tallie always told her clients, reassuring them that she’d made a lot of mistakes, too. Being a human was hard, and life was proof—there was no escaping it. “You’re human, and you have to reconcile that with yourself somehow. Forgive yourself. Allow yourself to feel everything deeply, to grow and learn,” she’d say.
“But what do you really believe, Emmett? Deep in your spirit, without thinking.”
“I believe in God…but I think He’s forgotten about me.”
A chill skipped across Tallie’s bones like a rock on water, but her house was too warm. She got up to lift the kitchen window as rain spattered at the screen. The ledge dampened; the humidity and smell of soggy leaves hemmed them in.
“Well, He didn’t forget about you on the bridge yesterday. He held you in His hand and didn’t let you go. And He won’t…even when it feels like He’s not there…He is.”
Emmett said nothing.
“And this, is this important to you?” Tallie asked, holding his backpack up with two fingers like it was a wet skunk.
“No. I want it to disappear.”
EMMETT
The rain was letting up. Tallie opened the back door and pointed to the gas grill she said had belonged to Joel.
“Never been used. Can’t we put it in there and light it up like a barbecue?” she asked.
(There is a yellow-orange orb of light—like fire caught in a jam jar—behind the frosted glass next to Tallie’s face. Pretty, glow. She holds the long lighter in her hand, flicks it.)
Tallie had gone to her bedroom and returned with a stack of her wedding photos. She’d shown him the one on top: her in a garden in a long lace dress standing next to a tuxedoed Joel, looking over at him as he smiled for the camera. She’d shoved the photos down into Emmett’s empty backpack.
“Do you want to talk about why you want this gone?” she asked.
“Not really. I don’t need it anymore, that’s all. Do you—”
“No. And I have another backpack I can give you,” she said, always thinking ahead. Tallie probably made a to-do list every morning and never ran out of anything, never forgot to pay a bill. Probably had never been late returning a library book in her entire life.
“And you promise you’ll stop carrying around a huge amount of cash?” she asked, lifting the lid of the grill. It yawned open, revealing more black.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He set the backpack on the metal rack.
“Cool it with the ma’am.”
“My bad.”
“Should we say a few words? I’ll start. Goodbye and good riddance,” Tallie said.
�
�Goodbye, backpack. I loved you once, but not anymore. You’re dirty, and I need a new one. But know this: I will never forget you,” Emmett said, lowering his head and clasping his hands in front of him. He closed his eyes, then opened one to peek at Tallie so she’d know it was more than okay to chuckle along with him, and she did.
“Amen,” Tallie said. She turned on the gas, clicked the flame to the green fabric, and they watched it catch. And go.
* * *
Emmett and Christine had needed new supplies for the first trip they took together. It was spring, and they’d been serious since their first date, at the end of summer. They’d driven from his place to Red River Gorge, about two hours north. He’d hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with his youth group in high school, had a hiking pack. He needed a new, smaller backpack, too. He and Christine had gone to the big camping store, thirty minutes outside of town. He held up a black bag, and Christine commented that black backpacks made her sad. He held up a tangerine bag, and she said it was too annoying, too alert. When Emmett held up the deep green one that would later burn in Tallie’s grill, Christine said it was just right.
Christine, his brown-haired Goldilocks.
* * *
April, two weeks out from the full pink moon. At their campsite, Emmett made crispy salmon and cannellini beans in cumin tomatoes. After eating, they smoked a bowl of Kentucky green by the firelight under the endless black sky. It wasn’t until they’d crawled into their tent, sated and laughing, that Emmett realized he’d forgotten the most important camping item he meant to bring: condoms. They always used them, no exceptions. “Birth control pills make me completely crazy. I can’t take them,” Christine had warned him in the past.
“I’m so sorry. This was supposed to be our first romantic weekend away, and I blew it,” he said to her as she lay there naked in his sleeping bag, a spring zephyr raising the scent from between her legs. He’d once walked past a bowl of ripened nectarines at work, and their jabby musk had smelled just like her.
“You’re being so dramatic about this. It’s okay,” she said.
“I just wanted everything to be perfect, so we could escape town…for a night. Your family—”
“Look. My family sucks. There are literally KKK members in it. And my dad has always hated your dad. We both know this! Fuck all of them, okay? We don’t need them,” she said.
“They’re still your family; there’s nothing you can do about that.”
“My dad said he’d stop giving me money if I didn’t break up with you, and he knows I won’t do it. Here I am, with you! Where I want to be. We don’t need them. We don’t need anyone.”
“I’m sorry I forgot the condoms.”
“I’m not,” she said, pulling him on top of her, guiding him inside.
And when she told him she was pregnant, without hesitating he’d gotten on one knee on the dock behind the restaurant and promised to buy a ring as soon as he could. Two days after that, Emmett put on his pressed white shirt and brown jeans, and they went to the courthouse with Hunter and Savannah in tow, got married, walked out into the springtime sunshine as one flesh. Christine’s hair was pulled over her shoulder, braided loose with sweet pea blossoms. She wore a petal of a dress, the peachy color so tender and unassuming it made him want to cry.
* * *
“Damn, it feels dangerously good to destroy things,” Tallie said out on the deck, satisfied.
“You’re sure you don’t mind? I can give you money for the grill.”
“Apparently you can give me money for almost everything.”
Emmett smiled before a deep sadness moved through him. “I’m heading out early Sunday morning. Just so you know,” he said. It had begun raining again in steady drips as he and Tallie stepped into the kitchen. She went to her bedroom and returned with the black backpack she said he could have. He thanked her and took it, began filling it up, thinking of Christine saying black backpacks made her sad. Are you sad now, Christine? Please say no.
“Where will you go? Back to Clementine?” she asked.
“I know it would make you feel better if I told you I was going back to Clementine, but I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Your parents would be elated to see you, to know you’re okay.”
“How do you know that?”
“Do your parents have any mental health issues…if you don’t mind me asking?”
“No. I mean, not that I know of,” he said.
“Anxiety, depression?”
Emmett shook his head.
“Well…they’re your parents, and you’re their only child. That’s how I know they’d be elated to see you.”
“But not all families are warm and loving. Some are extraordinarily anemic. Not everyone’s parents are so great. Some are really terrible,” he said.
“Are yours terrible, Emmett?”
“No, but a lot of them are,” he said, zipping up his newly filled backpack, setting it in the kitchen corner.
“Will you tell me about them? What are they like?”
He told her his dad worked for an agriculture and farming insurance company and was looking forward to retiring soon and that his mom was a damn good cook. He told her his parents weren’t perfect, but his mom was close. His dad had barely missed the Vietnam draft and was a new generation of man. He’d never laid a hand on Emmett to hurt him, making him a rarity in the country town where they grew up, where most kids were raised going out to pick their own whipping switches from the trees in the yard. He told Tallie his parents were quiet and private, and they’d only wanted one child. That they’d happily welcomed Christine into their lives as their daughter-in-law and they’d grieved alongside him when she died.
Tallie asked if Christine’s family was anemic, and Emmett nodded.
“Well, your family sounds loving and kind. Trust me, they do not want to lose you. They don’t even want to think they’ve lost you. I’d be elated to see my cats alive if I thought they were dead,” Tallie said.
Emmett stood with his hands in the pockets of those gray sweatpants that weren’t his. Tallie had offered to throw them in the dryer since he’d gotten the knees a bit wet cat hunting, but he didn’t mind. They were close to dry now. He leaned against the counter as Pam pawed into the kitchen and meowed up at them.
“She’s hungry,” Tallie said, going into the pantry and pulling out a crinkly bag of cat food, beckoning the orange one.
“I’m glad your cats are alive,” he said, hoping to end the conversation.
“Do you know how to play gin rummy?” she asked him after feeding the cats and opening the kitchen drawer. She held up a deck of cards.
“Sure do.”
Tallie asked Emmett if he wanted to play cards for a little bit before they finished Funny Girl, and then she asked him what he thought about chocolate chip cookies. And what if they added pumpkin?
“That’s rhetorical, right?” he asked.
“It would be so wrong and rude to October to make them without pumpkin,” Tallie said.
* * *
They worked together to make the dough from scratch, Emmett eventually taking over completely with the stirring and scooping. With the cookies in the oven, he and Tallie played gin rummy. She asked him if he’d gone to college, and he told her no. She asked him if his mom had been the one to teach him how to cook so well, and he told her yes, he’d grown up cooking with his mom, grandparents, and uncles, and he loved to eat, so it only made sense he’d know how to cook, too.
The pumpkin chocolate chip cookies were perfectly gooey, both of them eating two and leaving nothing but tiny crumbs on the plates next to their newly refilled mugs of tea. Tallie went and retrieved the fuzzy red hat she’d gotten at the outlet mall and instructed him to get his fuzzy blue one out of his new backpack. They put them on and played a couple of hands of five-card draw, switching hats on every new deal and using the loose cigarettes from his soft pack as chips. Tallie’s straight flush beat his full house on the last hand.<
br />
Playing cards at Tallie’s table reminded him of the nights he and Hunter and the rest of his restaurant buddies would drink too many beers and play poker in one of their basements, smoking and eating and laughing, sometimes until the sun came up. Emmett was a terrible gambler, afraid of losing too much, of giving something away he should’ve kept. On the crickety summer nights after he and Christine were married, the guys would come over and play at their place. They’d set up in the garage so no one would smoke in the house, allowing Christine and the baby inside her the time and space to get their rest. Emmett plus Christine plus eternal summers and both the good and the bad that came with them—they fought often and hard but forgave each other just as quickly. Emmett remained increasingly optimistic about their forever, caught in the net of the blissful before, happy about the unexpected joy they’d been gifted and leaning deep into the wonder.
TALLIE
Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, belting “My Man” onstage. Hands raised, bathed in black, diamond earrings swinging like earthquaked chandeliers. The punchy power in her vulnerability had always bowled Tallie over, especially after her divorce, when she realized how strong she actually was. Even when she thought she couldn’t push through, she turned around and saw that, somehow, she had. She thought she and Joel were forever, and she’d been astronomically wrong about it. At first, she’d been so fucking jealous of Joel’s new life she thought it’d kill her. Literally.
It had felt unbearable, and yet she’d borne it.
She reached for a tissue and wiped her eyes. “Sorry. It always makes me cry,” she said.
“Crying doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I’m totally okay with emotionalism,” he said, smiling and parroting back some of her own words from the night before.
“Ha, ha.”
“Funny Girl took a heavy turn, didn’t it? I liked it. I liked the movie.”
She’d wondered if he’d doze off toward the end, but he hadn’t; he watched intently, like he might be quizzed afterward.
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