This Close to Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

  Tallie had rebandaged his hands after his shower, and he didn’t think of suicide then. He didn’t think of suicide when they were wrapped in her blanket as they shared their post-orgasms cigarette on her deck in the rainy dark, either. He’d put Tallie’s sheets in the washing machine and started a load; he’d scrubbed the fire off him, smelled like her soap and his own deodorant. If he had to, he could go back home, surprise his parents with his existence. Let them know he was okay before leaving again, finding someone, something, somewhere to start new. He didn’t allow himself to think the someone could be Tallie. They’d begun so broken. He’d tell her everything before he left. He’d go to the hospital to see Lionel, maybe have lunch with her, but after that he’d head out. If she didn’t try to stop him, he’d leave.

  He envisioned himself walking to the bridge and continuing to walk. To walk across it and turn around, walk across it again. Never wanting to jump, not once looking down at the Ohio and wishing he were in that glorious free fall, the wind whistling his ears. Or he could walk in the opposite direction and hitch a ride out, the same way he got to Louisville. Walking and thumbing down truckers, not worried about what could happen to him, because it didn’t matter. People had no control over what happened to them anyway. Everything was kismet.

  * * *

  (The happy sunflowers vased on the kitchen counter. A ceramic rooster: cream, green, and red. Silver hoop earrings next to a bright blue mug, a short fat spoon. A scalloped-glass sugar bowl.)

  Tallie was wet-haired and blushing in her glasses, standing in front of him drinking the coffee he’d made for her. The steam fogged her lenses as she apologized.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “For crossing a line…whether you think so or not…I feel like I crossed a line with you, and that wasn’t my intent. You’re working through a lot of shit…a lot of shit you haven’t told me about, and so am I…and then Lionel and last night—”

  “I’m a grown man, Tallie. Please don’t talk to me like I’m not,” he said. Maybe because she was a teacher and so used to talking to kids, it came naturally to her, but he’d had enough of it.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. This is just an extraordinary weekend, and I’m trying to honor it. That’s all,” she said. She stared into her coffee as if there were an answer in her mug to a question she hadn’t asked aloud yet.

  “I don’t think there was a line in the first place, so how did we cross it? Who made the rules? How can we know if we’re following them or not?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Emmett. I just didn’t want you to think I was, like…trying to take advantage of…anything.”

  “Ridiculous. I could say the same thing, couldn’t I? Because I definitely don’t want you to think I was trying to take advantage of anything, either.”

  “I don’t feel that way at all.”

  “Neither do I. Are you upset with me?”

  “No! I’m not upset with you! Are you upset with me?” she asked.

  “Do I seem upset with you? Did I seem upset in your bedroom?”

  “Did I seem upset in my bedroom?”

  “Okay, well, we could do this all morning,” he said, smiling at the absurdity of their circled conversation.

  “You’re sure you want to come to the hospital with me? I want you to,” she asked.

  “Of course I do. I’d like to know Lionel is okay. And I’ll leave later today.”

  “Going?”

  “To my parents’. I sold my house.”

  “You changed your mind about going back there?”

  “I guess. I’ll stop by, but that doesn’t mean I’m staying.”

  “Right. Well, thank you for making breakfast with your poor hands,” she said, putting her plate in the sink. They’d eaten sleepily, standing at the counter.

  “Will you take a picture of yourself for me? You look pretty,” Emmett said.

  “Wow.” Tallie covered her face, shy. “Thank you. And enough of that.”

  “So yes?” he asked, lifting her phone off the counter and handing it to her. She held her mug, tilted her head a little, smiled, took the photo. Then took a picture of them together like puppied teenagers, their heads touching. “Send it to me?”

  “You have to give me your number.”

  “Obviously,” he said before smirking and telling her. He imagined the turned-off phone in his backpack receiving the message, saving it for later.

  Tallie put their coffees in travel mugs, and Emmett’s heart clicked as he prepared to leave her house for the last time. He got on his knees to stroke the cats with the part of his hands that stung the least, to tell them thanks for letting him hang out with them over the weekend.

  * * *

  Tallie stopped on the porch and abruptly said, “Yeah, I don’t own a gun. I only told you that on Thursday so you wouldn’t mess with me.”

  “Well, I believed you. And maybe you should get one. People are crazy,” Emmett told her. He used his energy to focus on not tearing up as he followed her off the porch, taking one last look at the gutters he’d cleaned and the cheery pumpkins on her steps, like little suns.

  * * *

  Holidays were difficult, but Christine had loved decorating for Halloween, draping their shrubs in fake spiderwebs and putting pumpkins on the porch. And she’d loved their house from the moment they’d seen it. The color: honeybee yellow.

  She called it their Honeybee House, wanting to name it after his grandmother’s beekeeper occupation, the same way the characters in the old-timey books she liked to read named their vast estates. “Let’s go back to the Honeybee House,” she’d said when they were out in the world and she’d had enough. Emmett held the image of their Honeybee House in his mind and put Tallie’s house right there beside it.

  * * *

  Zora, no longer in her Halloween costume, sat in the hospital hallway, texting. After greeting Tallie and Emmett, she launched into the details, telling them where Lionel’s second- and third-degree burns were. His arm, torso, and leg. There would be more than one skin-graft surgery in his future. He’d been admitted to a room in the burn unit with a two-visitor-maximum rule; Gus and Glory were in there with him.

  “It’s less than fifteen percent of his body, and apparently fifteen percent is the scary number, so that’s a relief. He’s still knocked out,” Zora said, taking a deep breath.

  “Oh, wow. Thank You, Jesus,” Tallie said.

  “My parents are bringing River by later.”

  “I can hang out with him if you need me to,” Tallie said.

  “River would love that. You know he’s crazy about Auntie Lulah,” Zora said before turning to Emmett and adding, “Lionel was asking if you were okay.”

  “Me?” Emmett asked.

  Zora nodded. “He worried you’d gotten burned trying to help him.”

  Tallie touched his elbow and nudged, lifting one of his hands up.

  “His hands…a little. He won’t let a doctor look at them,” Tallie said.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “He appreciates what you did for him. We all do,” Zora said, tearing up. She stood and hugged Emmett, melting in his arms like sweet powder.

  (Zora is shorter than Tallie, but not by much. They are both taller than Christine was. There is a lot of beeping in a hospital. A lot of announcements. Intercom clicks. Someone calls for Dr. Dorman. Someone’s phone chimes; another’s whooshes.)

  “He’s a good man,” Emmett said confidently into Zora’s storm of hair. Emmett had known men, both good and bad, who’d made terrible mistakes in their lives, in their marriages. He truly believed Lionel was one of the good ones. He felt a radiating tenderness toward the women of the world for having to deal with all of it, a tenderness toward Zora as she nodded against his shoulder. “You have a beautiful family,” he said.

  Zora sniffed and blew her nose. “I hope you’re around to meet River.”

  “I hope so, too,” Emmett said.

  “Gus and Glory
will be back there for a bit. I’ll let you know when he wakes up,” Zora said.

  * * *

  Members of Tallie’s family came and went. Outside for fresh air, to the cafeteria for coffee and tea and snacks, or to the canteen area humming with glowing vending machines. Tallie’s parents avoided each other. Judith left and returned with her friend Connie, the two of them stepping outside to the benched smoking oasis in the middle of the parking lot, away from the hospital entrance. Tallie’s stepmother, Glory, had left to go home and get some rest. Gus sat in the crowded waiting room talking quietly with Tallie’s uncle. The TV flashed car and lawyer and medicine commercials, turned down low. The mood was respectful of the hospital and its surroundings, but there was an air of hope and relief within the Clark family, with everyone knowing Lionel’s burns weren’t life-threatening. Emmett wanted to wait for Lionel to wake up before he left, so he could say goodbye to him and see with his own eyes that he was lucid and okay.

  * * *

  The more of Tallie’s family Emmett met, the more he felt welcomed by them. He talked and laughed with her dad and uncle; he listened to her mother let out everything that had ever been on her mind. The more he hung around the hospital, the more he didn’t want to leave. And the worse he felt about contacting Joel and keeping up that ruse. The betrayal weighed on him heavier and heavier. Emmett and Tallie had been inseparable since Lionel’s party; Emmett hadn’t even stepped outside to smoke alone.

  * * *

  Emmett and Tallie left the hospital to get chili dogs and apple cider slushies from a fall festival at a nearby church. They lunched on the trunk of her car, under the kind of forever-blue swimming pool sky and orange-gold light only autumn allowed. His brain was still processing what had happened in her bedroom, what it did and didn’t mean. But knowing goodbye was coming soon, he kissed her—soft and slow—their slushie-cold mouths warming sweet.

  * * *

  “Last night was like our own episode of X-Files. So surreal,” Tallie said as they walked through the parking lot of the hospital. She tugged at the sleeve of his flannel shirt and stopped him, the afternoon sun glinting off everything like diamonds.

  “The entire weekend, really. Even before all this. Woman meets strange man on bridge who could be an alien. Or maybe she’s the alien?”

  “Glitches in the electrical grids.”

  “Mos def. And not to mention cryptozoology,” Emmett said.

  Tallie looked confused.

  “Well, Bigfoot, of course, and I’m pretty sure I saw a chupacabra, too. Also a fairy and a werewolf. If they spawn, what’s that make?” he asked.

  Tallie laughed. “A fae-wolf? A were-airy?”

  “Wolfairy,” he said, lifting his chin and smiling.

  “Lovely. And we’re both the aliens. To be continued…right, Mulder?” she said.

  “Definitely to be continued, Scully.”

  “So…about that…you promise you’ll call me? Or text me and let me know you’re okay tonight? I know you want to leave, but I’ll worry. You know how much I’ll worry…and I’d like to see you again,” she added with a seriousness that spread to him as he considered the timing of telling her the truth.

  “I’d like to see you again, too. I don’t want you to worry.”

  “Come on, seriously, won’t you let me take you?”

  “You’ve done enough, and I appreciate it, but I’m a big boy. I can take care of this,” he said. He wrapped his arm around her, pulled her in for a hug. “I’ll text or call, I promise. You’re the one and only person in the world who even has my phone number.”

  * * *

  Lionel was awake and bandaged. Tallie and Emmett stood next to his bed freshly sanitized, in their burn-unit-mandatory yellow gowns and gloves.

  “So glad you’re okay, man,” Lionel said to Emmett upon seeing him.

  “Are you kidding me? I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m thankful I was able to get to you,” Emmett said. Lionel reached out his left hand for Emmett, and he took it, gently. His own hands were still calescent and tender, as if they’d been set on high.

  “Thank you. I owe you one. As long as you still want to be my friend now that I’m half monster. A mummy,” Lionel said, his laugh stumbling out drowsily and medicated.

  “You look great. You really do. You’re impossible to kill,” Tallie said, leaning over and touching his face.

  Lionel wanted Emmett to tell him what he’d seen, how it all went down.

  “I didn’t know what was happening, but the light caught my eye,” Emmett said. “Fire holds such a strange light as it moves…flashes bright. That’s how I knew something was wrong.”

  “I couldn’t see much with the mask on. I stepped up too close to the pit. I wasn’t even drunk. I’d been nursing the same beer for an hour or more. It was warm,” Lionel said.

  “I, uh, had to get you on the ground so you wouldn’t run. So I knocked your leg out from under you and threw my jacket over you to smother the flames,” Emmett said. The almost of what could’ve happened to Lionel rose like a wrecking wave. The haunting flashback took its place in line with the other surrealities he’d suffered through. “It was over quick,” he added.

  Lionel said something Emmett couldn’t make out, so he asked him to repeat it.

  “Sweep the leg. Like from Karate Kid. That’s what you did,” Lionel said.

  Emmett smiled and quoted the “sweep the leg” line from Karate Kid back to him verbatim before adding, “Exactly. That’s exactly what I did.”

  “Emmett, you’re officially my new best friend. Lulah, please get his info to me so we can talk again once I’m out of this joint,” Lionel said, smiling sleepily. His eyes closed before he winced and showed signs of intense discomfort. Tallie went to get the nurse so he could be given more pain medicine.

  (Lionel’s eyes open, close again. His mouth is a straight line. He frowns. Half of his mouth lifts in a smile that crinkles his eyes. His bedsheet is white. His blanket is white. The wrapping is white. The walls are white. The nurse comes in, dressed in blue. The morphine drip is clear. Soon Tallie will know everything, and this will be over. Drip. Drip. Drip.)

  “Of course. You get some sleep. We’ll be around. Well, I will. Emmett may be leaving,” Tallie said when the nurse was finished. She looked at Lionel, then Emmett. “I love you,” Tallie said, gently touching his unbandaged hand.

  “Love you, Lulah.”

  “I’ll see you soon, Li,” Emmett said, wanting it to be true.

  “Looking forward to it. See you soon, brother,” Lionel mumbled before turning his head and closing his eyes.

  * * *

  In the hallway, Tallie stood with her back against the wall, texting. She smiled at her phone and shook her head, texted more. Probably Nico. Emmett had seen firsthand how Nico looked at Tallie: the same way Emmett looked at the moon. He put his hands in his pockets and waited until she was finished.

  “Okay. Hey. Emmett, what if you stayed? You don’t have to leave. You could stay a little longer. Maybe you need more time. Do you think you need more time?” Tallie asked.

  Emmett had found himself hoping she’d ask him to stay, although he knew he wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. He felt so guilty about being a burden and about what he’d done. He’d been gearing himself up to tell her everything before he left, and he’d put an extra beta-blocker in his pocket just in case. He stepped over and took it with a drink from the water fountain. Now it was finally time to tell her, and he didn’t want his heart frenetically tap-dancing when he did it.

  But when he looked at Tallie, she was wide-eyed. Thunderstruck. As if she already knew what he was going to say. Her brown cheeks flushed with pink; she pushed her glasses up, and her mouth trembled into a snarl.

  “What…what the hell is he doing here?” she asked over Emmett’s shoulder.

  Emmett turned to see a man walking down the hallway toward them—a man he half recognized, like someone he’d maybe sat next to on a bus ten years ago.

  “It’s
Joel. Joel’s here. Why the hell is Joel here?” he heard Tallie say, her breath brushing the flannel on his shoulder. Emmett’s blood jumped with chill.

  TALLIE

  Joel was in front of her wearing clothes she’d never seen before—an expensive-looking graphite-colored sweater and slim pants that matched exactly, as if he’d been assigned a uniform. Wine-red nubuck sneakers. A work of minimalist art, this man who’d once been her sun and moon. His panther-black hair was pulled back with a few escaped curly slips of it hemming his face. She’d obsessively hated those photos of his ponytail, but his hair was glorious in real life, and oh, it annoyed her to no end. He stood there with that body she knew so well and a blue, concerned look on his face. There was a moment when she thought he would attempt to hug her, but he didn’t reach out. Instead, he stood close to her, too close, as if there’d been no disturbance in the frequency of their previously easy intimacy.

  Joel gave Emmett a throwaway glance before refocusing on Tallie and quietly saying hey.

  “Joel, what are you doing here?” Tallie said. She could smell him—a comfort and a curse—his cool morning shower ritual and the pricey shampoo that left the taste of tart green apples on her tongue.

  “I flew in because I heard about Lionel. Ben texted me,” Joel said. “Is he okay? How badly is he burned? Ben texted me again this morning after he left here, said Lionel was doing better?”

  “He’s…uh…he’s okay.”

  “Fucking relief. He’ll make a full recovery?” Joel asked.

  “Correct. Second-degree burns on his arm and torso and a huge third-degree burn on his leg…wait…you flew from Billings this morning? Alone?” Tallie asked.

  “Yes. Took about five hours to get here. Delayed a little…it was snowing a ton…,” Joel said. “Whoa, you got glasses.”

  Tallie looked at him and nodded, then glanced over at the big digital clock on the hallway wall. Almost evening. Even with the extra hour, the day had scurried away from her like a chipmunk.