This Close to Okay(43)

“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.

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.

“Good,” she said, smiling before sniffing, blowing her nose. And after some quiet, “All right. I’m properly worn out, and it’s very late. I’m going to bed. Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?”

“Yes. I’ll go to bed, too…on the couch. I’ll go to couch,” he said, patting the space next to him.

“Do you need anything tonight?”

“No. Thank you.”

She scooped up Jim, and Pam followed them into the kitchen. “And the dizziness?” she asked, loud enough for him to hear her from the couch.

“It’s better now.”

“What about the dimming, detached feeling you had earlier? That’s better, too?”

“Did I say anything aloud about feeling like that? I honestly can’t remember.”

“No, but you got the look,” she said, setting the cat on the counter as she filled her water bottle and picking him up again when she was finished. “I can tell when my anxious…students get the look.”

Family history of mental illness: none.

Symptoms: panic attack, depersonalization, dissociation, dizziness.

“I’m feeling better,” he said.

“Good. Good night, Emmett.”

“Good night. Good night, kittens.”

Tallie switched off the lamp, leaving on the hall light like she had the night before, but she left her bedroom door unlocked this time. Simply closed it and put her ear to the wood, listened. Kept it there, mouthed his name. It’s happening. Remember this. This is the wildest thing I’ve ever done, she thought, holding her breath like a prayer.

She emerged from her bathroom dewy and clean-faced. She googled Emmett Aaron Baker and found nothing.