Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

“You know about Actaeon?”

“No,” she says.

“Actaeon was a young hunter who went out into the wilderness and came upon a forest pool where the virgin goddess and her handmaidens were bathing.” He looks out at the ocean, chewing on his lip, and then he looks at her, his whole face lit with pleasure, and he sighs through his nose, expressive of that contentment. “Artemis, that bitch. Artemis. In punishment for him seeing her, Artemis turned Actaeon into a stag, and he was hunted down and torn apart by his own hounds. Goddamn; you look just like she must have looked. Give me your hand.” She leans forward, and he takes her hand, clenches it in his own. “Goddamn but it’s good to see you. Goddamn it’s good.”

Turtle waits for him to see the broken fingers, but he does not see them. With his thumb, he strokes the meat of her palm, looking carefully at her, his eyes blue, irises tangled with white threads, thick black hair pulled into a ponytail, still wild, but thinning now, seams of his scalp visible, the flesh around his eyes chinked like splintery wood, deep smears beneath his eyes, still a big man but smaller now, diminished and stooping, the physical presence of him still invested with a tremendous and specific gravity, but less awe-inspiring, as if he were retreating inside of himself, no longer quite the man who could stand in front of a doorway almost spanning it with his shoulders. They wait, him stroking her hand and looking at her, and she does not know what he sees in her face, but he sits searching it and it seems to pain him and he looks out at the ocean and she can see him gathering his patience, can see him reasoning with himself, can see him saying, Give her a minute , and he looks back at her and he says, “Kibble?”

“Yeah,” she says. She thinks, you will trust in your discipline and your courage and you will never leave them and never abandon them and you will be stronger, grim and courageous and hard, and you will never sit as he sits, looking at your life as he looks at it, you will be strong and pure and cold for the rest of your goddamn life and these are lessons that you will never forget.

He is waiting on her to say something and she doesn’t know what to say. He wants something from her, some reply. She cannot remember what he has said. He releases her hand and sits back, almost angrily, almost impatiently, and she picks up the nasturtium flower on her plate and spins it between her fingertips, not knowing what he wants from her.

“Why?” she says, because she doesn’t understand. “ Why were you scared?”

He looks out at Mendocino Bay. “I don’t know if I can really articulate it, even to myself. The death of a parent, kibble, god, it can get under your skin.”

She nods at this, but still she doesn’t get it, knows what it has done to her, the grief of it, the way it ate into her bones, but there had been no fear, and she does not understand—fear of what?—and looks at him and knows, really knows, how little she understands him.

“Where did you go?”

He nods to her burrito. “You going to eat that?” She picks her fork back up and eats and then, embarrassed to be chewing, looks down. He says, “North. I went north. I went into eastern Oregon and Washington, and then out into Idaho and Wyoming.”

“What did you see?”

“Nothing,” he says.

“Why, then?”

He shakes his head. “I fucked up.”

“Oh,” she says.

“Will you take me back?”

She looks down at the burrito on her plate, severed open, spilling its contents, doesn’t want to eat, sick to her stomach with dread and excitement both. She wants him back so badly . There is so much to him, so much depth, and she wants that again, the heft and the weight of him, and everything he takes from her, but still she mourns the loss, the girl who was alone in that house, who cut apart his bookshelves and burned his clothes, and she doesn’t think that it is her place to say yes or no, it is his house, she is his girl, he could always come back, she knows it and he knows it.

“Well,” he says, nods again to her. “How is that?”

“It’s good,” she says.

They pay the bill and walk back to the truck. They drive back to the house and park in the driveway. There is a child on the porch, face in her hands, black hair in tangles, matchstick arms tiger-striped with bruises. The girl is nine or ten, maybe seventy pounds. When Martin gets out of the truck, the girl looks up and runs to him. He picks her up by the armpits and swings her around, laughing. Then, with his arm around her shoulders, he walks her back to Turtle.

“Kibble,” he says, “this is Cayenne.”

Cayenne peeks out from under her hair. She scratches one shin with a callused heel.

Turtle looks her up and down. “Who are you?” she asks.

The girl looks away, nervous.

Turtle says, “Who is this?”

“This is Cayenne,” Martin says again.

“Where’s she from?”

“She’s from Yakima.”

Turtle cracks her knuckles. That’s not what she meant.

“It’s in Washington,” Martin says.

“Get out of here,” Turtle says to the girl. She hesitates, and Turtle says, “Get—the fuck— out of here.” Cayenne flashes Turtle a horrible little scowl, then bolts for the sliding glass doors and into the house.

“Where’d she come from?”

“We’re looking after her for a little while.”

“Why?”

“Come here,” Martin says.

Turtle comes closer, and he puts his arms around her and puts his face against her neck and breathes in her scent.

“God, the way you smell,” he says. “Are you glad I’m back?”

“Yes, Daddy,” she says, “yes I am.”

“Are you still my little girl?” he says. She looks up at him, and he smiles lopsidedly. “Look at that goddamn face. You are, aren’t you?”

She studies him. There is something in her as hard as the cobbles in the surf and she thinks, there is a part of me that you will never, ever get at.

He says, “Look at you.” He wraps his hands around her throat, cupping her hair demurely to her neck, and there is almost a hatred of her in his eyes, and she thinks, do it. Fucking do it. I want you to do it.

“Just looking at you,” he says, “is hurtful. That’s how beautiful you are. You hurt to look at.” His hands tighten and relax around her neck. She thinks of walking along the ocean floor with Jacob, of the way the anemones battened down like knuckles to wait out the tide, and of that sunken pool with its circling, unseen creature. She wants to be his girl, Jacob’s girl, and she wants that to be taken from her. She stands looking up at Martin, and she thinks, take everything from me. Take away my dignity and everything else, leave me with nothing.

That evening, Turtle carries her blankets up the stairs and she stands in her old doorway and looks at her old room. She walks to her plywood bed and can see her own residual shadow, painted in sweat and grease. She unrolls her blankets across the floorboards, kneels at the foot, and smooths them out. Turtle walks back out of the bedroom, slams the door, stands just outside of it.

She goes down the stairs into the unlighted living room, where Cayenne is sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter. Martin is hefting her frying pan, turning it this way and that in the light.

“Cured the shit out of this, didn’t you,” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“Doesn’t look any different.”

She comes to stand beside him, runs her fingertips across the surface, black as if painted, and she says, “Before, the curing was laid on too thick and it flaked. I buried them in coals and burned all that old Crisco grease off them. Recured them with organic lard. You take your time, and this is how it looks.”