A Compassionate Portrait: Leesa Cross-Smith's This Close to Okay

“Shattered energy seemed to pulse from him like sonar. Tight blips of loneliness. Tallie translated the echolocation easily. She was lonesome and blipping too.”

Leesa Cross-Smith is known for her beautiful imagery, lush and aromatic sentences that leave you breathless and pondering for days. Her two short story collections, Every Kiss, A War and So That We Can Glow and her debut novel, Whiskey and Ribbons have earned notable accolades from the literary establishment and praise from Roxane Gay. Her second novel, This Close To Okay, is less poetic, more straightforward, more accessible. It has all of the charm and anticipatory fizz of a rom-com but underlying all the quippy dialogue, shopping montages and rescuing of cats, Cross-Smith submits for our consideration a tableau of human frailty, the far reaching grasp of grief and mental illness, rendering a compassionate portrait of the sufferers and the caretakers.

The backdrop is Louisville, Kentucky. In the waning days of October, in a cold, driving rain, two broken people meet on a bridge, Emmett on the river side, “the suicide side” of the cold steel railing, Tallie on the other side, the safe side. Emmett staring down at the turbulent Ohio River. Tallie, the only person driving by, amidst a noisy shimmer of vehicles, to stop and inquire, to aid a stranger in need. With little more than words of care and musical offerings of Andrew Bird and Wilco playing on her cellphone, Tallie encourages Emmett to climb back over to safety. She takes him for a coffee and then offers him a place, her place, to stay for a few days. Over the course of a weekend, Emmett and Tallie construct a metaphorical bridge from the depths of despair to close to okay.  

This is a quiet novel. Cross-Smith acknowledges but doesn’t dwell in the unbearable. Most of the bad stuff has already happened off the page. Infertility, failed relationships, racial bigotry, mental illness, depression, PTSD. Suicidal ideation. Tallie and Emmett confront their demons through talk therapy. Conversation provides the driving force, propelling the plot forward. The details the characters choose to withhold from one another deliver the dramatic tension. Tallie confides her longing for children, her failed IVF treatments, her ex-husband’s affair but conceals that she is a professional therapist. Emmett confesses that he too used to be married although his true identity and source of pain remain a mystery throughout most of the book. He snoops around in her computer, her Facebook page. He secretly emails her ex. In his mind, he obsessively catalogues his surroundings. He never gives up the possibility of the bridge.

Told in alternating points of view, Tallie’s narrative offers a clinical assessment of Emmett’s emotional health noting his inability to regulate his body temperature, dimming, detached feelings, dizziness. She wonders if he’s confusing his exhaustion for hopelessness. Emmett’s narrative reveals that there is no straight path to wellness. His healing accordions in and out. Tears arrive without warning. At one point, he assesses, in detail, the damage his body will suffer should he jump off the bridge.

And yet, the relationship that blooms between Emmett and Tallie, from strangers to confidants, to friends to possibly more is both believable and aspirational. For the reader, their story serves as an emotional support manual. How to recognize the signs of emotional distress. How to help someone in need. How to reach out in very small but persistent ways.           

Talk, talk, talk, talking. Always talking and listening. Cups of tea, mugs of coffee. Food, eating, nibbling, snacking, cooking meals together, grabbing a bite at a diner. Sharing the intimacy and distraction of music, movies and baseball during The World Series. Discussions of the “big things, not little things.” Art, pop culture, literature, faith. Playing gin rummy. Reading Harry Potter out loud. Strolling through a shopping plaza. The gift of a fuzzy blue snow hat with flaps. A red one to match. Shopping for Halloween costumes. Choosing Mulder and Scully. Sharing a smoke. The ritual burning of emotional artifacts. Doing for one another, like fetching a glass of water or cleaning leaves out of a gutter. 

And then there’s hand-knitted chunky afghans and scented candles and the sound of rain thrumming on the roof. Clean fresh smells: soap and shampoo and lotions. The comfort of home. Hygge.

“Making things as comfy as possible…it’s what I do,” says Tallie to Emmett in response to his appreciation for the charms of her cultivated domesticity noting how her home quiets his anxiety.

Hygge (pronounced HOO-gah) is the Danish word for cozy, a contentment achieved by enjoying the simple things in life. Highlighted in The New York Times a few years back amidst a spate of books, websites and online venders, Hygge celebrates homespun pleasures: fuzzy wool socks, raglan sweaters, a wooden mixing spoon with a burnt handle, handmade quilts and fresh baked pies. Hygge captures the essence of a crackling fire and a mug of hot cocoa — the kind made with milk and miniature marshmallows foaming on top.

In This Close to Okay, what could be more hygge than sharing a late autumn weekend, pumpkin spiced latte, old fashioned donuts, kids bobbing for apples, mums — bursts of yellow, and orange and purple. Rain giving way to crisp clear skies, the promise of a Halloween party.

In addition to promoting the healing powers of hygge, Cross-Smith champions a new feminism with her elevation of home life and the purposeful cultivation of a nurturing space. Domesticity, long seen as a negative, demoralizing tug with demands that diminish women slavish to their homes and broods, toiling in the kitchen and the laundry room, mop and dust rag. Unless of course these chores are monetized into celebrity empires a la Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray or Marie Kondo or the latest HGTV renovation stars. 

Now, the battle of the stay-at-home moms in mom jeans vs the suit wearing professionals, where one set of duties cancelled the value of the others, have come full circle. Tallie is a professional who owns her own house, makes her own way in the world. And yet aspires, and finds comfort in knitting, making her home cozy and beautiful and doing things for others. A woman showcased as both healer and provider while allowing for the possibilities of good men, men and women working together as a team.

Ultimately, This Close to Okay is a buoyant instructive for living in a loud, loud world. It maps a course of action for reaching out to those in need. A guide for navigating social and emotional isolation. A reminder that in the midst of hopelessness and heartache, it’s the simple things that can life raft optimism and revive the weary.