A safe place to talk about deep emotions
Leesa Cross-Smith explores mental illness, grief, divorce, racism in her new novel
You’re driving home on a rainy night and you see a man standing on the edge of a bridge, clearly about to jump to his death. What do you do? If you’re Tallie Clark, you invite this suicidal stranger to come to your house, where you live alone, and to stay the night.
This is the unlikely premise that begins “This Close to Okay,” the fourth book by Kentucky author Leesa Cross-Smith. (Her 2020 short-story collection, “So We Can Glow,” prompted award-winning author Roxane Gay to call her “a consummate storyteller.”)
Tallie is a trained psychologist and knows better than to bring deeply troubled individuals into her personal life — especially this man, who introduces himself only as Emmett and has a “creepy, nice smile” that she compares to Ted Bundy’s. But, big-hearted and unashamedly Christian, she’s determined to help.
Tallie senses his loneliness. She’s lonely, too, since her recent divorce, and she’s bitter that her ex-husband, who left her after her several failed in vitro treatments, now has a baby with another woman.
At 40, Tallie has had her share of wantto-jump days. But she trusts her gut
about this stranger (even though her instincts failed to alert her to her husband’s affair), and Emmett, 31, trusts her enough to go home with her.
Jarringly co-existing with this mutual trust is a mutual invasion of privacy. When Emmett’s out of the room, Tallie goes through his jacket pockets and finds two anguished, unsent letters he’s written to two different females, proclaiming his love. Later, Emmett uses Tallie’s laptop to secretly set up an email account in her name. And suddenly, the story has turned from potential horror to mystery.
Tallie’s Louisville house is a comforting refuge, a veritable shrine to hygge, with cosy cushions, hand-knitted blankets, scented candles and two cuddly cats. Emmett stays for the entire rain-soaked weekend. They go shopping together and out for lunch. He cooks her a gourmet dinner of steak in cognac sauce. They talk about art and families and feelings. There’s a lot of smoking and a lot of crying. The connection between the two deepens, the sexual tension palpable. Is this now turning into a romance?
There are secrets on both sides. Tallie lies about her job, not wanting Emmett to feel like her therapy project; Emmett refuses to discuss what led him to the bridge. There are clues that Emmett isn’t what he seems. Suddenly, a catastrophe forces the two to reveal their secrets as they each stumble, haltingly, toward healing.
Cross-Smith writes mainly about women for women, and although the point of view alternates between Tallie and Emmett, we’re really seeing the story through Tallie’s eyes. There are some very serious subjects here: suicide ideation (a hotline number is included), loss, infertility, mental illness, grief, divorce and racism. But Cross-Smith has created a safe, warm space for these characters to discuss their deepest emotions. And boy, are there emotions. There’s as much crying inside as there is rain outside.
The story is a little too implausible, the characters too sentimental, the ending too rushed for me to agree that CrossSmith is a “consummate storyteller.” But “This Close to Okay” is steeped in kindness, familial love and forgiveness, and especially during these times, we can never have too much of that.