This Close to Okay Read online

  She had dark chocolate with almonds and hard candy in a sheesham wood bowl handcrafted by Indian women. She’d bought several for the office, and the money went to ending sex trafficking. She made a mental note to donate to the cause again as soon as she was in front of her computer. Those poor girls. Maybe Bridge was one of those disgusting creeps who bought little girls. Those guys could be anywhere. It sickened her, thinking about it.

  She considered herself a decent judge of character when she trusted her instincts. She gave him a hard look to gauge his energy, tried to decide if he really had the face of a man who wanted to die. He had kind, redwood-brown eyes. Redwood called up cedar, her favorite smell. She’d bought Joel an expensive cedar-based cologne for their last anniversary. He wore it once and told her he didn’t think he could wear it anymore because it got all over him. “It was everywhere,” he’d said, and she’d thought, That’s the point. She’d loved the day he smelled like it, when it was everywhere. She still had the bottle at home: a glass rectangle the color of sunlit bourbon. She wished she could give it to Bridge, tell him the cedar scent matched his eyes. Maybe he’d understand what that meant. Maybe his senses infused one another, too, leaked out, left stains. Like how the rain could make her go gray-blue and how the gray-blue left her with the cloying taste of blueberries in her mouth.

  The coffee shop was warm and crowded, everyone busy on their phones or laptops or with their books or children or boyfriends or girlfriends or friends or cakes or cappuccinos. She’d gladly pay for his coffee and a snack if he was hungry. Did Bridge have money? A phone?

  “So you’ll drink a coffee if I buy you one? Or would you like a pop or a milk?” Tallie asked him as they walked to the counter together. His boots squeaked, the cuffs of his jacket dripped.

  “I’ll drink a coffee,” he said, nodding.

  “Black?”

  He nodded again. She convinced herself she’d imagined his creepy smile. He didn’t seem creepy in that coffee shop. His eyes were delicate, crinkled in the corners. He couldn’t have been in his twenties. Definitely thirties. He seemed like a smoker, although he didn’t smell like it. Smoker’s energy, she knew it well. Her mom had it bad.

  She couldn’t text her best girlfriend, Aisha, because she was out of town on an unplugged Thursday-to-Sunday hippie yoga retreat. Tallie considered texting her brother, Lionel, to say hi and casually let someone know where she was, just in case. But she couldn’t tell him about Bridge. He’d get really angry. He’d said something to her about being careless in the past week because she’d gone to visit him, parked in his steep driveway, forgot to pull the emergency brake. When she came out, she saw that her car had rolled down the driveway and into the grass, narrowly avoiding the front line of trees edging his property. “Sometimes you’re so careless,” her big brother had said. But Tallie wasn’t careless. Lionel was obsessed with perfection, leaving no room for honest mistakes. Her mother and brother often insisted on saying what didn’t need to be said. Hurtful things. It was one of the reasons Tallie had become a therapist—to help people be kinder to themselves and others. To make the world a safer, sweeter place.

  Once when Tallie was ten and playing in her room by herself, content and humming, her mother had told her she was a lonely little girl. She’d never forgotten it. What an awful thing to say. Maybe someone had told Bridge he was a lonely little boy once.

  “Did you want something to eat? Would probably be a good idea,” she said. She stood at the counter and ordered two coffees from the barista after exchanging hellos. Bridge looked down at the glass pastry case. Without waiting for an answer, she ordered the last two old-fashioned pumpkin doughnuts they had left. She paid and went to the condiment station to pour soy milk in her cup, a small shake of raw sugar. Bridge followed her, and they found a table together. They sat in the corner next to a pole with white twinkle lights wrapped around it, their atomic halos softening everything in their glow. He peeled off his jacket. Thanked her for the coffee, the doughnut.

  His shirt seemed dry. He had nice hands, coffin-square shoulders. A light brown-reddish beard that matched his freckles. He slicked his damp hair back, rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves. She waited for him to take a drink of his coffee. When he took a drink of his coffee, they could begin. This was a therapy session whether he knew it or not. He had to expect her to ask a lot of questions. They’d met under extraordinary circumstances; they were in this together. He sipped his coffee, broke off a piece of doughnut and ate it. He was very neat, careful to keep the crumbs on the plate.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “I need to take my medicine,” he said after he’d chewed, swallowed.

  Antidepressants? That’s all this was. The chemicals in his brain were off-kilter, and his medicine would fix it. She’d had clients who went off their meds, and it wasn’t until they had an extreme wake-up call that they realized how much they needed their prescriptions. Had the bridge woken Bridge up? She could take him to get his meds, pay for them.

  “Where is your medicine?”

  “My backpack,” he said, tilting his head toward his feet, where it was. He kept eating. She mirrored him, dug into her doughnut, a treat she allowed herself only every now and then, but tonight was obviously different. The crumbs were sticking to her fingers, and she wiggled them to shake them off.

  “We could get a bottled water. And um, is there someone you can stay with? Do you think you need to go to a hospital? I could take you there,” she said. There were people she could call. She had connections. Doctors, a fireman who used to be a neighbor. She could piece a rescue together. Didn’t he need to be rescued?

  “Antihistamines. It’s my allergy medicine,” he said after he drank more of his coffee. Like, Look, lady, why would I go to a hospital for allergy medicine? You are being crazy. I am fine. Please stop being crazy and let me drink my dark blend in peace.

  “Well, I mean because of the bridge.” Hospital because you were going to jump to your death. That’s why hospital.

  “That was then. This is a new moment.”

  “Still important to discuss, though, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not from here. My family’s from Clementine,” he said. Tallie had heard of it, knew Clementine was a small city in southeastern Kentucky, about three hours away.

  “You’re half black? I don’t imagine there are a lot of us in Clementine,” Tallie said, leaning forward. She’d never seen a face like Bridge’s before. Mixed with a million things—his thick, Kennedy-like dark blond hair blushed with red.

  “My grandmother was black. And no, you’re right. Not a lot of us, no,” he said.

  She liked that he told her something about his family and how he blew across the top of his coffee, the ripples it made. She liked watching him finish his doughnut. Her brain fizzed. This man wanted to die less than an hour ago, but now he was sitting across from her, careful not to burn his mouth. He seemed to purposely flood himself with more gentleness as he thanked her again. His necklace had slipped to the front of his undershirt—a small gold cross winking light.

  “Should we call your family?” she asked, pulling her phone out of her pocket and setting it on the table in between them, though she couldn’t say she expected him to agree. In order to keep him talking, she would have to tell him about herself. “My family is from here and Tennessee. Some are from Alabama. Do you get along with your family?”

  “I don’t care about things like that,” he said.

  “What do you care about?”

  “I don’t care about small talk.”

  “Neither do I. That’s why I’m asking you about big things. So we don’t waste our time together,” she said.

  The corner of his mouth rose and twitched. “I like this song,” he said. The coffee shop speakers were playing Radiohead down low. “Knives Out.”

  “I do, too. It’s so moody and strange,” she said. Commiseration. Empathy. It usually worked, got people to bloom like flowers. “Was this your�
��um, first suicide attempt?”

  “I don’t know what it was. But I guess I feel better now. It’s hard to say.”

  He felt better? This quick? She didn’t believe him.

  “I’m going to the bathroom.” He stood, taking his backpack with him.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding.

  When he was behind the bathroom door, she immediately moved to his chair and rummaged through his pockets. A receipt for his jacket. He’d bought it that morning. What kind of person goes out in the morning and buys the jacket he wants to die in? Tallie glanced up to make sure he wasn’t opening the bathroom door. All clear. She was nervous and excited, the adrenaline rabbit-beating her heart, her hands shaking. In an inside pocket she found folded paper—a note? She didn’t have time to check. She pulled it out and put it in her pocket, glanced at the bathroom door again, and put her hand back in his jacket. Another piece of paper. Another note? She took it. No way would he not notice both of them missing, but she’d figure that out later when she could get alone and read them. They were probably nothing. She sat in her seat, drank more of her coffee. Two minutes, and he returned with his backpack, sat across from her.

  “Yeah, I’m definitely feeling better now,” he said. “I splashed cold water on my face.”

  “Technically, you already had cold water on your face from the cold rain.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Bridge was gaslighting her in a yellow-orange whoosh. Almost choosing suicide and now acting like it was no big deal? She was frustrated with him, felt connected to him. The idea embarrassed her. She had a habit of forming quick, intense connections to people she barely knew. Before GPS, worrying over whether someone she’d given directions to made it to their destination, or when she was in a bigger city on public transportation, not being able to stop herself from asking a crying person if they were okay, even when everyone else was determined not to speak or make eye contact with them. Occasionally, clients got intensely attached to her, emailing and calling at all hours of the night, wanting her to meet their families. She reminded them that clear boundaries were important for everyone to have, although she didn’t tell them how hard it was for her to listen to her own advice.

  Right after the divorce, Tallie had gotten mildly obsessed with Joel’s new wife, going so far as to compulsively worry about her when she saw on social media that she’d been in a minor car wreck. Tallie kept checking in, making sure she was okay, reading and rereading her page, although she never posted about anything too intensely heavy or personal. Tallie learned generic things about her life by snooping around. And obsessing over those things was something that made her feel crazy. Crazier. When it got going, it was a loop she kept looping, a hoop she kept swirling around and around, never stopping.

  “I like your jacket. It looks brand-new,” Tallie said, brushing her hair from her face. She was sure she looked a hot mess and couldn’t quite decide if she cared or not. A part of her wanted to go to the bathroom, fluff her hair, reapply her peachy-pink lip gloss, pinch her cheeks, but she didn’t have the time for vanity right now, not when she was trying to get to the bottom of this. To figure out and help and love her neighbor as herself.

  “I bought it this morning,” he said. The receipt was from the giant camping store, Brantley’s. It was eighty dollars even, an avocado-green rain jacket. He’d paid cash for it at 9:37 a.m.

  “You bought a brand-new jacket when you knew you wanted to jump from a bridge?” she asked, surprising herself. She could’ve, and maybe should’ve, asked the question differently, or even let it go completely. She didn’t want to upset him, but he didn’t seem easily upset. If she’d stumbled upon him any other way, she would’ve remarked on his chill factor, how he seemed like he never stressed about anything. He was simply sitting in a coffee shop having a cup. He was simply in a red-and-black buffalo-plaid flannel worthy of apple picking, new jacket hung over the back of his chair, boots wet, but they’d dry. Everything dried eventually. Everything was fine. Relax. Shrug.

  “I bought the jacket this morning. The bridge was the bridge. This is now,” he said, as if there could be no other answer. His pacific presence soothed her, and she wanted to keep that feeling, trap it under a cup.

  “So your family is from Clementine but you’re not?”

  “I was born there.”

  “Are you completely detached from your family? You don’t feel like you can talk to them?”

  “I don’t want to talk to them right now.”

  “Okay. Mind me asking how old you are?”

  “Mind me asking how old you are?” he asked. Raised his eyebrow.

  “Okay. You don’t want to tell me. So tell me this: Do you want more coffee? I can get you a refill. I’ll get one, too,” she said, taking his still-half-full cup.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  At the counter, when she was turned away from him, she touched her pocket, checking to make sure the papers she pulled from his jacket were safe. She got their refills, performed her whole coffee ritual at the condiment counter, gave him his cup. Black. Her initial nervousness had sailed away, and she wanted to cup her hands and say Come back to that little nervous ship, because that’s what made sense. She should’ve been nervous. Was she this lonely? She had a respectable career, a nice house, her cats, her parents and brother and sister-in-law and a host of relatives and friends in her contact list. She had Aisha and a stocked pantry—which made her feel safer and better about the world. Losing her nervousness made her feel reckless, and feeling reckless fed her recklessness, leading her to feel the scariest, most thrilling thing of all: free.

  “I’m forty,” she said after she’d sat across from him again.

  “I’m thirty-one,” he said. Another layer peeled away.

  Tallie fingered the folded papers in her pocket underneath the table, felt guilty for swiping them. She should put them back; they weren’t her business.

  “Wow, you’re young!” she said. Jovial. Maybe it would rub off on him. She bubbled with desire to get to know him better, to unravel whatever it was he had tightly wound around his heart. She cared for Bridge. No matter what, he had something to live for. Estranged or not, he had a family in Clementine. He seemed interesting and intelligent. She tried her best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

  “I feel old,” he said.

  “I feel old sometimes, too.”

  “Why did you stop me?” he asked. His eyes, hauntingly sad. It was almost as if a shadow fell across them. Supplicating. Like an oil painting of Christ wearing His crown of thorns.

  “I care about you. I don’t want you to die. I’m…so glad you didn’t jump.”

  He took the lid off his coffee cup, blew across it. Drank and put it down before looking at her.

  “Well, you were making so much fucking noise I couldn’t hear myself think,” he said.

  He’d caught Tallie so off guard she was blushing as she laughed, covering her face. Voilà! She knew making suicide harder for people who were considering it was sometimes the difference between life and death. She’d read about the suicide rate plummeting in Great Britain after something as simple as swapping the coal gas stoves for natural gas, because too often, suicide came down to a matter of convenience. She was pleased that making so much fucking noise had made a difference. She thought back to her well-intentioned but slapdash therapy session and sloppy rescue techniques, almost choking on her coffee.

  “Careful. You’re going to spill everything,” he said. She felt the table steadied and peeked out from between her fingers at him, drinking his coffee again like he hadn’t said a word.

  “I’m not apologizing for stopping you,” Tallie said, once she finished laughing.

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “Good.”

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked after a moment. He leaned over like a sigh, let his weight press against the wall beside them. Suicide casual. He was a stranger, a strange man. Everything about him was odd
ly both new and familiar when held up to the other men in her life. Bridge had small ears like her dad and her college beau, Nico. Bridge, Nico, and Joel all had nice hands. Bridge looked the most like a storybook lumberjack from a deep forest who’d taken a wrong turn, ended up in the big city. And the rich, golden timbre of his voice reminded her of her brother’s.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. The little boat of nervousness was gone, gone, gone. Bon voyage. She couldn’t see it if she squinted.

  They were en route to her place. He’d been quiet so far in the car, only replying to the questions she asked.

  “So you have a house or an apartment?”

  “I used to. Not anymore, really,” he said.

  “You don’t have anywhere to stay?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just don’t have a house or an apartment.”

  “You have a car?”

  “I don’t have a car here. Not in town,” he said.

  “How do you get around?”

  “I get around all right,” he said. He looked over at her with the backpack in his lap. He kept his hand on top of it. Tallie’s fear scuttled back when she glanced at that backpack. That’s where his torture devices could be—the ropes, the gun, the knives. “Knives Out.” Creepy song to be floating across the coffee shop. Tallie kept hearing the chorus in her head.

  It was full dark and still raining, although not as much as before. Halloween was on Saturday. What was she doing? Locked in her car, this stranger in her passenger seat, driving him to her house? This was a perfect horror film she had created, and when they got to her place he’d take whatever it was out of that backpack, murder her, and put her somewhere no one would ever find her. Her parents and brother would be on TV begging for her return. Years from now her brother would write a book about it. It’d be a best seller, get optioned for a movie. One of those kids from one of those teen vampire shows would play Bridge. He’d win an Oscar. Her brother would become a highly sought-after screenwriter and leave his family, start dating one of the young girls from the same teen vampire show.