This Close to Okay(72)

*



One evening a year later, after a bad morning and a worse afternoon, after a blowout over Christine not eating and not taking her meds, Rye suggested maybe she needed to go for a short stay at the psychiatric hospital. He was willing to try anything to calm her anxiety, anything to lift her from the concrete fog of depression. The seesaw of Christine’s moods and emotions dizzied him completely.

“This will never end. It’ll never stop. And I’m so tired,” he’d told her.

“You’re so tired? You? What about me? You want to leave me!” she’d said, her ever-present fear of abandonment snaking around them both like a boa constrictor, squeezing and squeezing.

“Christine, I promise I’m not leaving you. I’ll be back. I’m just going for a walk,” he’d said, holding her still so she couldn’t throw anything else. “Please don’t yell. Brenna’s sleeping.”

She squirmed wildly in his arms like she always did. Kicked, demanded to be let go.

“You want me dead. I’m calling the fucking cops!” she screamed before Rye closed the kitchen window.

*



“No. I’m not missing. It’s a mistake,” Rye said to Joel in the hospital hallway. “Tallie, I’ll explain. If I could talk to you alone for a little bit longer.” He was pleading with her, his eyes welling. He didn’t want to cry there in front of Joel, in front of everyone. He felt the earth dragging him down and leaned against the wall for balance.

Rye had done this to himself. He was the reason Joel was there, and Joel was the one to out him? It was too stupid to be true. Tallie had her hands up close to her chest. And for all the faces she’d made in the past few days, this was one Rye hadn’t seen before. So sad she could burst into tears, so angry she could kill him with her bare hands.

“Yeah…if you could excuse us again that would be…awesome,” Rye said to Joel, sniffing.

“Tallie, are you all right? Is everything okay?” Joel asked carefully.

“Joel, please just give us a sec,” she said.

Joel looked back and forth between them before saying he’d go find a cup of coffee.

Rye watched Joel disappear and asked Tallie if she’d step outside with him. Out the door at the end of the hallway and down flight after flight of stairs, under the darkening Sunday sky, they would be able to breathe. They wouldn’t suffocate under the antiseptic and fluorescence. Outside, they could have a chance.

But in the hallway, Tallie didn’t say a word as she began moving toward the door, practically running. Rye had to make a deliberate effort to keep up.

“I can’t do this.” Her tenuous echo bounced around the stairwell.

“Please let me explain,” he said behind her.

“I can’t do this,” she said again. Going down, down, down, finally shoving the door open at the bottom of the stairs, swapping the artificial stairwell light for the sunset.

“Please. Please hear me out,” he said. “There is so much I want to tell you. I created a fake email account and wrote Joel, pretending to be you.”

“I…I don’t understand. What? When? Why?!”

“I don’t have a reason. It was Thursday night. I was drunk when I started it, and it was a stupid, stupid thing to do, and I’m sorrier than I can properly express out here like this. I don’t have the words, but I’m trying. I’m literally begging you to forgive me.”

“This is scaring me. I don’t know who you are,” she said, stopping to turn around. She’d walked over to the smoking section; fortunately, they were the only ones there.

“You do, though. I opened my heart to you in ways I haven’t to anyone in a really long time. You saved my life on that bridge. I lied to you when I said I didn’t ask for a sign. I did! I asked for a sign, and the sign was you.”

Of course he’d asked for a sign when he was on the bridge: Dear God, if You’re there, if You’re real, if I shouldn’t do this right now, please have someone stop me. Exit original plan. Enter God and Tallie.

“Then the Giants won the World Series…that was another sign,” he said.

“I have no clue what you’re talking about. Give me a cigarette,” she demanded, holding out her hand.

Rye did as he was told, shaking a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and handing her his lighter, too.

(Tallie lights it, smokes, begins pacing. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. She’s wearing the same sweater she wore to the outlet mall on Friday; she knit it herself. It smells like her house.)

“Please look at me for a second so I can talk to you?”

“Why should I do anything you ask me to do?” she said. Her eyes searched the parking lot. Was she looking for security? Someone to help her? It crushed him, thinking she was afraid of him.

“Tallie, please. I don’t want you to be afraid. I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said gently. “The only reason I didn’t tell you earlier is because I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me…googling me and then…acting differently toward me. Once people find out, it changes everything. Everything.”

Tallie stepped away from him.

“I really don’t understand anything you’re saying! This is all so cryptic…I…once people find out what?”