This Close to Okay(25)
There were photos of him and their baby up and down Odette’s page.
Tallie clicked the picture she looked at more often than the others: Odette in the hospital bed, holding their baby girl, Pearl. Pearl had her father’s nose in miniature, his ebony curls. Joel, in a navy-blue V-neck sweater Tallie’d bought for him, had taken the picture, leaning over to make sure he made it all the way in. She’d loved that navy-blue V-neck sweater and nibbled Joel’s arms when he wore it; she’d wanted to eat that sweater.
Back when she’d seen that they’d named their baby Pearl, Tallie couldn’t get the word pearl out of her mind. It manifested itself and rolled around in her brain like a real solid pearl glinting catchlight. Tallie had imagined she and Joel would have a baby with those same curls—a baby whose tender head she could feel heavy in one hand. Joel has a daughter forever, Tallie had found herself thinking. Joel had done something hugely permanent with his life, changing everything. Sometimes it felt like the thought was too big for her head to hold, but she couldn’t let it out until it gave her a headache. Joel could have more children with Odette. Joel could have children with other women. The thoughts would motor around and around in a circle until Tallie exhausted herself.
She was upset by the photo again. Restless and lonely. She logged in to her work email, although she’d promised herself she wouldn’t, and she’d already let her clients know she would be unavailable until Monday. Bored, she wanted to make sure she wasn’t missing anything important. She had several clients who leaned on her for extra assurance when making big decisions and others who would connect when they needed to be talked out of panic, or when a family member or friend or problem or fear they thought they’d previously conquered appeared again, haunting them like a ghost with a grudge. Occasionally a client would email, simply wanting encouragement or permission not to overanalyze things so much.
Being a therapist allowed Tallie to dig into the common sense so easily clouded by mental illness, depression, obsessiveness, anxiety. She encouraged clients struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder to take time-stamped photos of their turned-off ovens and locked doors so they could revisit them during the day. She suggested to one OCD client who worried about leaving her coffeemaker on every morning to unplug the coffee machine or whatever small appliance worried her and take it with her to work. That way she knew for certain it wasn’t left on at home, ripe for fire starting. So much of therapy was practicality and giving people a much-needed pass to relax when they needed to or be weird when they needed to. To free their minds from doing what they felt like they should be doing if it always went against what they wanted to do. To ask questions like why when the client had never considered it.
Tallie scanned her emails, relieved to find nothing urgent, and repromised herself she wouldn’t peek again until Monday morning. She logged in to her personal email account and flicked through a few newsletters before pulling up old emails from Joel. As annoying as he could be on social media, he’d always been short in his emails, even the sweet ones. He wasn’t much of a texter, either. And he was impossible on the phone. During their marriage, they’d always had their best and most important conversations over dinner or while cleaning up afterward. Or on walks, in the car, the bed. Over coffee.
She’d typed Joel into the search bar and clicked on a random message that popped up. It was from two years ago, when he’d gone to Chicago to visit his brother the same weekend Tallie and Aisha had gone on a girls’ trip to Asheville.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: :(
Too late to call and my phone is out in the living room anyway, but I was thinking about you, your body, how good you smell. And I’m in this guest bedroom with this laptop all alone. :( Next time come up here with me.
Your poor, lonely husband,
J
And another from not long after that. He’d forwarded her an article on art deco architecture with pics of the American Radiator Building.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Look
The building we saw from Bryant Park. Next time we go up there, we should do one of those art deco walking tours. Would be so easy to talk Lionel and Zora into going back up with us. Make a whole thing out of it? You’re so fucking fun to travel with.
They’d never gone back up to New York together. Maybe Joel was planning to go on an art deco walking tour with Odette in the future. Maybe she was so fucking fun to travel with, too. He could walk next to her while she pushed Pearl in an expensive stroller. Maybe he’d strap Pearl to a baby carrier on his chest while he and Odette looked up and pointed at skyscrapers stabbing the blue.
It was imagining Joel with Pearl strapped to his chest that really did it.
Tallie hummed something quick and low to herself to stop her thoughts. Emmett rolled over, opened his eyes, and looked at her. Sat up, rubbed his face.
“I never take naps. Not really a nap person,” he said, his deep voice still stretching and waking up.
“Today, you’re a nap person,” she said, thankful he’d distracted her. “Can I get you anything? Food? Water?”
Emmett smoothed his hair and looked around her living room before focusing on the doorway to the kitchen.
“Actually, I’d like to make you dinner. I’d like to go to the grocery store and come back here and cook for you.”