This Close to Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

  “Wait. What did you get out of this?”

  “I had some questions…and you answered them.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me yourself? Why’d you get this guy to do it? I’m so confused right now,” Joel said.

  “He was pissed after I’d told him what had happened between us, and I let him speak for me because he was able to do it without holding back. Writing you myself would feel so serious and involved—”

  “This guy was all over the news years ago. Some really awful shit. He could be a total lunatic with what he’s been through. Therapy or not, you purposely surround yourself with crazy people who suck you dry, Tallulah,” he said.

  “He’s not a lunatic. You think I surround myself with crazy people, which is a horrible thing to say, by the way, and I think you’re always out there looking for the next new thing. New job, new state, new wife…everything is fine until you get bored, right? Nothing can ever be good enough for you!”

  “That’s not true,” Joel said softly, shaking his head. Tallie had hurt him, and she was only a little sorry about it.

  “Joel, I’m not arguing with you here like this. I need to move on.” She put her hands out toward him, pushed that energy back. He could keep it. She wasn’t his wife anymore; he was no longer her problem.

  “Yeah…you need to move on, but you still log in to my Facebook account. Aha. Understood,” he said. His tone, their fights, the way he stayed ready to jump in with full force—all of it rushed at her and would’ve knocked her down had she not been sitting.

  “You were perfectly fine taking the time to email me, Joel, when you could’ve been hanging out with your wife and baby,” Tallie said.

  “Oh, wow. Are you accusing me of being neglectful?”

  “Think about it. Do you really want to ask me that question?”

  “Are you accusing me of being inappropriate? There was nothing inappropriate in those emails,” Joel said.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything anymore, Joel. We’re well past that.”

  “Good, because you and your boyfriend—”

  “Look, quit it. I don’t know how serious it is. I still see Nico sometimes, too. Wait. This is none of your business! Why am I telling you these things?” she said, feeling wildly protective of Nico. She sure as hell didn’t want to talk to Joel about Nico. Nico was hers, and she didn’t want Joel attempting to darken any part of him in her heart.

  “Imagine that. Nicodemus Tate. Well, that’s where you wanted to be all along, right? Good for you, coming full circle,” Joel said, frowning and nodding.

  “Oh, fuck off, Joel. You had your midlife crisis, and now you have your baby, so give it a rest! You have no right—”

  “I just didn’t think you’d accuse me of being inappropriate when you’re sleeping with one of your patients, because that’s highly inappropriate, not to mention you’re ruining your career,” Joel spat out. Tallie was looking down.

  And when she looked up, Rye was standing there with the word patients hovering above him before it froze him where he stood. A whirling riot of honesty stole her breath.

  RYE

  Patients?

  “Yep. Right. I’m one of her patients,” Rye said, glaring at her before turning to Joel, who looked away. “And as one of your patients, Tallie, would you please come with me to get my stuff from your car? Because I’m leaving. I have to go.”

  Goodbye; I’m going to the fucking moon!

  “Rye,” she said as he walked toward the stairwell doors. He stood at the end of the hallway looking out the window, listening. He was all exposed nerves, like his superpowers had just come in.

  (The thermostat is set to exactly seventy-four degrees in this hospital. A siren, slowly getting closer. Squeaking sneakers, high heels. A rolling cart. A man down the hallway clears his throat. Pen on paper. A crying baby. A chair makes a shrieking scrape against the floor. Tallie and Joel are talking. Everyone is always. Fucking. Talking.)

  “I have to take care of this. Are you staying here?” she said to Joel.

  “Do you want me to stay here?” Joel asked.

  “Joel, I’m done playing games. I’ve had, like, two hours of sleep. I don’t have time to argue with you. Stay or don’t, but I’ll be back,” she said.

  “Fine. Okay. I’ll be here,” Joel said quietly.

  Rye shoved open the door. Down and down the stairs with Tallie behind him, saying his name.

  “Rye, stop,” she said as they stepped onto the sidewalk.

  “You’re a doctor? Not a teacher? You lied, too! I came clean, and you said nothing,” he said.

  “You didn’t exactly come clean…you got caught. And I’m not a doctor. I’m a therapist.”

  “You’re a thera…You’re kidding,” he said. She had to be kidding.

  “No. I’m not kidding. I’m a licensed therapist, and like you, I didn’t want you to know, because I knew you’d treat me differently.”

  “So this was, what, pro bono work for you? That’s the only reason you were being so kind to me? Did you know who I really was?!” Rye said. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so stupid. A therapist. Everything she said, everything she did: fake. She’d been sneakily practicing on him. Impossible conspiracy theories formed in his brain. Had someone sent her after him? Had someone been following him? Watching him?

  “No! Absolutely not. The connection we had was real…is real. I wasn’t pretending,” she said. Rye sat on the ground, put his back on the stone.

  “I told you I wasn’t pretending, either. But now it’s done. Will you give me a ride to the bridge, please? I could walk or hitch, but it would be delaying the inevitable, and honestly, at this point, I’d like to get it over with,” he said. Everything was a tinderbox; everything could go up in flames, not just Lionel. Him, Tallie, the hospital, the entire world. This was it. It was time to go.

  “Get what over with?” she said frantically. “You really think I’m going to help you?”

  “I’m done with talk therapy, Tallie. It didn’t work for Christine, and it’s not working for me.”

  “Emmett…Rye, you want me to take you to the bridge, then let’s go. Let’s go to the bridge,” she said, wrestling with her purse to find her keys. She jingled them out, held them up. “Let’s fucking go.” She began walking toward her car, and he stood.

  “Sounds good,” Rye said, following behind her.

  When they got to her car, she opened the trunk and doors for him.

  “Stay here. I’m going to tell Joel goodbye. Just be here in the car when I get back, and I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” she said.

  “Is this Therapist Tallie talking now?” he asked. “More fake intimacy?” All her sincere moments had come through a professional filter. Nothing about their weekend was real. He couldn’t believe how guilty he’d felt for lying to her when she’d been lying the whole time, too.

  The world was shit, and everyone was a liar.

  “Is this Clementine Emmett talking now?”

  “I’ll wait here. I’m done talking,” Rye said, yanking his stuff from the trunk and slamming it closed. His hands still hurt. So what?

  “Promise you’ll wait here,” she demanded, looking right in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” he said. He sat in the passenger seat, closed the door. When he looked in the side mirror, he saw Tallie walking toward the hospital.

  (Tallie tries the stairwell door, but it is locked. She goes around to the front entrance. A car door slams. A truck engine starts.)

  * * *

  “I didn’t see you in here when I walked out,” Tallie said when she returned to the car.

  Rye had put the seat back, closed his eyes.

  “I told you I’d wait” was all he said. He wasn’t going to let her get anything else out of him. Game over. She started the engine.

  TALLIE

  Inside the hospital, Tallie had found Joel sitting in the hallway with River on his lap like some sort of bizarro-world Madonna and Child. S
he put her hand on River’s head when she got to them. Joel bounced his knee, causing River to giggle with glee. The mirth echoed down the hospital hallway.

  “Zora stepped out for some fresh air,” Joel said.

  Tallie sat in the chair beside him.

  “Listen. It’s really nice of you to fly all the way out here and show up,” she said, too tired to argue anymore.

  “Hey, what can I say? I wouldn’t have felt so comfortable if I hadn’t hoped you were reaching out to me, but…a prank is a prank, right?” he said before making a gushy airplane noise at River, who got a kick out of it.

  “Auntie Lulah, can I play games on your phone?” River asked Tallie, and she handed it over to him, letting him know she’d be leaving soon.

  River sat in his own chair next to Joel, who was relaxed and looking at Tallie with the brown eyes she’d lost herself in so many times before. Those brown eyes she’d married; those brown eyes that had broken everything.

  “But the emails didn’t sound like you. Not all the way. Didn’t seem like something you would do. Wishful thinking, maybe…that you’d write and want to forgive me after…everything,” Joel said.

  “Well, maybe you wouldn’t know what I sound like now anyway. Maybe you don’t know me anymore, Joel. You have a new life, and I’m allowed to have a new life, too.”

  Joel took a deep breath in acceptance and put his arm around the back of her chair. “I’m glad I came to see Lionel.”

  “She doesn’t care that you left?” Tallie asked.

  “No. She knows Lionel is like a brother to me.”

  “Did you tell her about the emails?”

  “No.”

  “Whoa—not even one full year into your marriage and you’re already keeping secrets? Tsk, tsk,” Tallie said. Joel didn’t say anything, just touched his beard. “Rye is not one of my clients. I call them clients, not patients. I’ve told you so many times and you forget. And he’s not missing. It’s none of your business, but he has issues with his family, and he’s taking care of them.”

  She pictured Rye in her car. She imagined him gone already, breaking his promise, finding his way to the bridge alone or getting lost in the dark. She looked at the clock on the wall.

  “I apologize, truly. I’m just confused. Everything is really confusing right now.”

  “Because you shouldn’t be here, Joel,” she said. He didn’t object, just cleared his throat.

  “Your cats. How are your cats?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “They don’t miss me?”

  Tallie laughed a little and shook her head. “How’s your horse?” she asked.

  “It’s…it’s not my horse. It’s hers.”

  “Right. Got it.”

  “Hey, so…you’re thinking of adopting a baby?” Joel asked after a minute of silence.

  “I am.”

  “With Nico…or this guy…or?”

  “Alone!”

  “Gotcha.”

  Bless his heart, she thought. Joel, relieved she wasn’t having a child with someone else so he wouldn’t have to feel the way she’d been feeling.

  “Yeah, well…I saw the latest picture of Pearl. She’s pretty. Got your hair.” Tallie touched his ponytail, looked at the clock again. Her eyes stung from exhaustion and bewilderment. Who was she? Where was she? What had happened? She sniffed and turned away. “I’ve got to leave and take Rye…back. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “So whose year is it? Gus or Judith?” Joel asked, knowing too well about her parents’ alternating-years rule for the Halloween party.

  “This is the year of Gus and Glory.”

  “Good ol’ Gus and Glory,” he said. “What was your costume?”

  “Rye and I were Mulder and Scully.”

  “Aha. And just so you know, my parents asked about Lionel. I told them I was coming.”

  “Your mom thinks you’re nuts,” she said.

  Joel nodded. “Well, they love you.”

  “Are they doing okay?” she asked.

  The urge to cry still hung over her. She’d loved Joel’s parents and missed them. Joel’s mom had cried when they got divorced. She’d come over to the house with a bottle of wine after Joel had moved in with Odette. Talked for hours, telling Tallie about the men she’d known in her past who had tried and failed to be good husbands. She didn’t try to persuade Tallie to give Joel another chance, but she let her know how much she and Joel’s dad had loved having Tallie as their daughter-in-law all those years. It’d meant a lot to Tallie for Joel’s mom to show up like that. And even still, Joel’s mom texted and called Tallie occasionally, checking in.

  “Yeah, they’re good. Thanks,” Joel said.

  “Know how mind-boggling and surreal it was for me seeing a picture of your mom holding your daughter?” Tallie asked.

  “I’m sorry you saw it.”

  “It’s on your Facebook page.”

  “Tallie—”

  “They’re really great grandparents,” she said, interrupting him.

  Tallie and Joel stared at each other as if their history played on a film between them, the two of them separated by that flickering screen. She thought of the emails Rye had shown her—that tender, apologetic Joel. She looked at him, knowing that that Joel was in there somewhere behind those eyes.

  “I learned my lesson, but I learned it too late,” he said.

  “I don’t know what to say to that, Joel.”

  “Will you at least unblock me from your phone?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know, Tallie. Just because?”

  “I will as soon as I get it from River.” She nodded and leaned over to see River’s face flashing with cell phone light.

  “I like your glasses, by the way. They look good on you,” Joel said, taking his time looking at her. “And about what I wrote in those emails—”

  Tallie held up her hand. “I really can’t talk about this right now. I have to go. The whole thing was stupid. It’s done. We have to make a deliberate decision to move on…but I’ll unblock you,” she said. “River, I need my phone now. Your mommy will be up here soon.” She held out her hand to him. Once River gave it to her, she let Joel watch her unblock his number. “And you’ll change your Facebook password? I’m deleting mine.”

  “On it,” Joel said, taking River on his lap and giving him the phone from his pocket. Joel told Tallie he was going to hang around a little longer and that Ben and some more of Lionel’s friends would be coming tomorrow.

  “Text or call me if you want to,” Tallie said, “to let me know when you’re coming back up here…before you leave town.”

  “Yeah. Of course,” Joel said, touching the top of River’s head before lifting his hand and holding it still, frozen in a wave.

  * * *

  Tallie’s phone lit up with preciousness as Aisha’s face filled her screen. She swiped to answer it, walking fast through the parking lot.

  “Girl. I can’t talk for long right now, but I have so much to tell you. You wouldn’t believe it. Like, so much,” Tallie said.

  “Okaaay. Is Li all right? As soon as I turned my phone on when I got back home, it blew up with texts saying his costume caught fire at the party. But he’s in the hospital now?” Aisha said. Aisha’s voice did a good job of bringing Tallie to reality. She walked to the car, filling her in as quickly as she could about Lionel’s accident and Joel showing up. She told her she was giving a new friend a ride and would call her soon, explain everything later. She ended the call, saw her car was empty, and walked closer with a sludgy sick stomach, worried Rye was gone.

  But when she peeked in the window, she saw him inside with the seat laid back, one arm thrown over his face, looking like a sweet child she’d do anything for. And all he wanted was for her to take him to the bridge. She’d play along. An embarrassingly bottom-of-the-barrel therapy trick—reverse psychology. Bridge bridge bridge. If he wanted the bridge so bad, that’s where they’d go.

  *
* *

  “So after all this, you won’t talk?” Tallie said, shattering the silence in her car. Rye remained quiet. “We’ve talked all weekend, and…”

  “We’ve lied all weekend,” Rye finally said after a stretch of taciturnity.

  “Not everything I said was a lie. Yes, I lied and said I was a teacher. Maybe it was unethical for me to not disclose that I’m a therapist, but I’m not perfect and never claimed to be. I’m a professional secret keeper,” she said, wildly gesturing with a free hand before putting it on the stick shift. “I guess you are, too, now.”

  Rye turned to her as she stopped at a red light. He had the same haunted, heavy look he had on his face when she found him Thursday evening. Gone was the Emmett in her kitchen, the Emmett making biscuits and charming her mother yesterday morning, the dashing Emmett the night before in his suit at Lionel’s party, kissing and kissing her. Bridge manifested himself as they neared the Ohio River. But. She couldn’t control him. He’d been an unknowing participant in talk therapy. They were soon to part ways. If he didn’t want help, she couldn’t force him. She had to get some rest because she would be waking up early for her morning appointments. She had a life, and it was just as important as everyone else’s. Rye needed to take care of himself the same way she did.

  “Look. I’ve apologized. You’ve apologized. So that’s it,” Tallie said, minutes away from the bridge.

  “So that’s it,” he said quietly, parroting her to the glass of the passenger window.

  Those minutes were biblically torturous, as if they’d been planned out by some cruel god. The tension, thick and solid, as if the car had been filled with concrete.

  As they approached the bridge, Tallie thought she might puke. If she could stop the car and lean out, purge herself, she could feel better. How was he feeling? Angry but relieved? Sad but angry? Humans could feel a million different ways at the same time. It wasn’t like one emotion politely cleared out to make way for another. Most often they smudged together like daubs of paint, mixing and making new colors and feelings altogether.