This Close to Okay(50)
Tallie took Emmett’s hand as they continued walking. Not interlocking fingers but holding his hand as if they were grade-school friends, making a connection: a red rover chain blocking out the rest of the world, if only for a moment. She imagined the neighbors whispering to one another about how they’d seen her dressed like Paddington Bear, holding hands with a young man on Halloween. They’d gossip about how Tallie and her new beau had stopped in front of the trattoria and Thai noodle shop before ultimately deciding on the Irish pub across the street. How the green bulbs framing the sign shone on the wet sidewalk and eerily flickered the gloss of their rainwear—those two ambling aliens aglow.
EMMETT
He’d been Emmett since Thursday evening, and he would continue being Emmett to Tallie, everyone he would meet at the Halloween party, and anyone else he came across. His real name was too recognizable. And although Tallie had been the first person to use the word striking directly to him, he was all too aware that he had a unique, memorable face. He imagined it plastered on posters around his hometown. Wouldn’t his family put up MISSING posters, even when they thought he was dead? Wouldn’t they still be looking for his body so they could put him to a proper rest? What picture would they use? One of him smiling next to Christine, Christine cropped away? One of him holding hands with Brenna, Brenna snipped out? One of him from the restaurant, tired and smoking in his kitchen whites? One of him on the church camping trip, wearing his backpack, glancing over at the camera a moment before he knew the pic would be taken? He’d always stood out in his little town: his hair, his freckles, the unmistakable mix of blackness from his father’s side with his mother’s whiteness. Christine’s dad, Mike, had said the word quadroon in front of him once, as if it were a word he used or heard every day and not an obscene word written in pale pencil in a slave auctioneer’s ledger, next to a dollar amount and sold.
People often told him he looked familiar, and he could read the surprise and horror on the pitying faces of the ones who knew why they recognized him. As if he’d morphed into Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son or the hellscape in Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgment—those terrifying paintings that revealed something new and fearsome every time they were examined. Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Crucifixion—wriggled, bloody flesh devouring itself. Emmett had spent hours, weeks, months with that art history book in the library. Flipping, absorbing, memorizing, wanting to be emptied out and filled up with something else. Anything else. It didn’t matter what.
*
While Tallie was in her bedroom getting ready for lunch, Emmett was on the couch, composing what he knew would be his last email to Joel.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: i still care about you too
joel,
i don’t mind telling lionel you mentioned him. you know how lionel is. i’m going to his halloween party with a date, so the answer to your question about whether or not i’m seeing someone is yes. i am. it’s pretty new. i just met him recently. he’s a chef. my mom met him for the first time this morning when she stopped by. she talked his ear off, of course, but he did a great job of listening to her. he’s quiet anyway, so it worked. it’s too early to say what’ll happen with us, but i really like him. a lot. he watches funny girl with me and does the dishes.
you know the end of funny girl always makes me cry, but now it makes me wonder what would’ve happened if i’d fought harder to stick it out with you. all that country-song shit about standing by your man. maybe if i’d had an affair of my own to even it out? although the baby trumps it all, right? clearly you win. is that how this works?
speaking of…i can’t stop thinking about adopting a baby. maybe soon? i have the money and the stability and it feels like the right time. at last. cue etta james.
i had no way of knowing if i could be happy alone again! and being happy is one of those things that feels phonier and phonier the more you talk about it, but…i feel like if i squint, i can see it. and i need that hope. the hope alone is enough for me.
but i do wonder who knew about your affair. everyone at the art museum? all of your friends? all of hers? maybe none of it matters anymore. i don’t know. at least i don’t have to put the chips back in the pantry for you now, right? that’s your new wife’s job.
there’s no need for you to be in a rush to write me back. i think this quick reconnection has been good for both of us and honestly, i wish you well. the point is, by the grace of god, i forgive you. and i will be here, squinting.
truly,
tallie
*
“Tell me about your grandmother Ginny,” Tallie had said to him after they’d gotten their water with lemon at the Irish pub.
He told Tallie his grandmother’s real name, Virginia. But he left out the part about her living on Emmett Lane for most of his life. He told her she’d given him his gold cross necklace and that Ginny died seven years ago. He talked about her house—her kitchen, the pigs and chickens she kept in her backyard, the beehives and fresh honey.
“My mom’s parents were great, too, by the way. They’re both gone now. Married for sixty-five years,” he said.
“I never met either of my grandfathers because they died before I was born, but my grandmothers were pretty great, too.”