Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

“It hurts , Marty,” she says.

“This will cut into the bleeding. You want me to see what I’m doing, don’t you? Well.”

“Marty, it hurts .”

“So,” Martin says, “how are things, kibble?”

Turtle examines his expression, unable to reply.

“Couldn’t get it together to pay the electricity bill, though, could you?”

“It’s turned off at the main. There’s a short somewhere.”

“Well. I’ll get it fixed.”

Cayenne’s finger is waxy and drained of blood from the tourniquet. “Okay,” he says. “Hold her hand down.” Turtle pushes the girl’s hand down onto a towel.

“I’m scared,” Cayenne says. “You’re scaring me.”

“Close your eyes and think of England,” Martin says.

“What?” Cayenne says, confounded. “What?”

“What is wrong with you?” Turtle says, holding the girl’s hand clamped to the floor by the wrist.

Martin begins cutting away at the remains of the fingernail, and Cayenne opens her mouth and screams. The scream is unbearably high-pitched and goes on and on. Her body goes rigid and she heaves against Turtle, and Turtle, for all that she is bigger, cannot hold her. “Shut up,” Martin says. “Kibble, shut her up! For christsakes, Cayenne, shut the fuck up.” Cayenne stops and gasps for breath. Her hand is writhing. Turtle cannot keep it pinned in place. “You can’t feel it,” Martin says.

“I can,” Cayenne says. “I can feel it.”

“She can’t feel it,” Martin says. “Shut your fucking eyes. You can’t feel it.”

“I can, I can feel it.”

“Listen—” Martin says, and stops. “Listen,” he says, “I know you’re scared, sweetheart. I know you are. And I know that this may look really, really bad. But we have to do this. Do you hear me?”

The girl is looking up at him.

“Do you hear me, Cayenne?”

“Yes.”

“We have to do this, and you’re going to help. Because if we can’t do this, we’re going to have to drive you back to that gas station where I found you and give you back.”

“No,” Cayenne says.

“Well then, you’re going to need to be very brave. All right?”

Cayenne closes her eyes tight. Her small face screws up in concentration. Her nose wrinkles. He plunges the scalpel into the flesh and cuts from the right side of the finger, across the top, and down onto the left side. Cayenne struggles weakly. Turtle holds the girl’s hand planted fast to the towel.

Martin slips the scalpel beneath the flap of the skin. Because of the tourniquet, it bleeds only weakly, like the latex that weeps out of broken milkweed. “This,” Martin says, levering the scalpel to expose a crescent of flat, pinkish tissue slicked with thin blood, “is the keratogenous membrane, kibble. It’s the germinal matrix that produces the nail.” He snips it away.

Cayenne lashes frantically. “No no no no no,” she says. Her words are broken by ragged, sobbing gasps. Snot is running out of her nose. Hair is stuck to her face. Her eyes are squeezed shut. The girl’s finger is so small that the movements involved are tiny, delicate. He slips the scalpel into the bloody yellow mess, working carefully around some submerged object.

“Easy, easy,” Martin says. “Easy, girl.”

“Stop! Stop! I can feel it,” Cayenne cries.

“Shut up.”

“Maybe we should wait,” Turtle says.

“She’s being hysterical. She can’t feel shit.”

“Even so,” Turtle says, “maybe ketamine.”

“Well, it’s started now,” Martin says. He brings out a bone, shorn at one end, small as a bit of pencil lead. Cayenne’s eyes are closed and veins stand out on her forehead. She’s gasping quickly and shallowly. Turtle glimpses the joint of the next bone lower down. Martin peels the top half of the skin away to expose it. “Clip that,” he says.

“You’re not serious,” Turtle says.

Cayenne is whimpering.

“Clip it,” Martin says. “Clip that thing.”

Turtle looks at the tiny, yellowish-white knob. “Cut it, kibble,” Martin says.

“I can’t,” she says.

“Clip it,” he says. “Don’t look at her. I told you, she can’t feel shit.”

Turtle picks up the diagonal pliers and opens the beveled jaws and closes them over the bone end. She lifts them away and drops the severed bit of bone on the towel. Then Turtle hears car tires coming up the gravel drive.

“Motherfucker, not now,” Martin says. “Who the fuck is that?”

“I don’t know,” Turtle says. “How would I know?”

“Well, who’s been coming over?”

“No one,” Turtle lies.

“Don’t fuck with me, kibble, who’s been coming over? Oh,” he says. “Oh, tell me it’s that little boyfriend of yours. Oh, just let him come on in here. Just let him come on in here and see this, and he and I will have the kind of discussion he won’t ever forget.”

Turtle rises and walks toward the sliding glass door. She catches a glimpse of Jacob’s 4Runner coming up the drive. Martin is plucking up the flesh and snipping it back with scissors. “Shit,” she says. She can hear his music roaring from the speakers, the Black Keys’ “Psychotic Girl.” She hears him park outside and the squelch of the parking brake. She feels paralyzed. All she can think is, not like this. Not now and not like this. She throws open the sliding glass door and steps out onto the porch and slams it closed behind her. Jacob is parked in the graveled lot beside Martin’s truck. Martin and Cayenne are not visible from his angle. But if he walks up onto the porch, he’ll see them. Jacob kills the engine and the music stops and he walks around the front of the truck and leans against the hood. Turtle climbs down off the porch and out into the driveway. She feels hollow.

“So,” he says.

“So,” she says.

“Missed you at registration today.”

“What?”

“Registration for high school. It’s today. Everybody signs up for classes and the teachers and upperclassmen welcome freshmen to the school. We play icebreaker games. It’s a holdover from our hippie roots. It’s not exactly awesome, but I thought you’d be there. I’m guessing this is not a coincidence.” He gestures to Martin’s truck.

She stares at him.

“I’m not the only person who missed you,” he says.

She stands in silence. He looks like a paper cutout of himself.

“It’s not gonna work,” he says.

She has no idea what he’s talking about.

He spreads his arms as if to encompass the idiocy of something, as if to incite her to reasonableness. “Didn’t you think how excited Caroline was to see you at registration? She was looking forward to it for weeks. She wants you and Brett to sign up for the same elective classes. She thinks you’d like woodshop. And now you’re transferring to some school in Malta, Idaho? Idaho? What the hell, Turtle?”

Turtle walks toward him. He is like a fragment of a life she had to leave behind a long time ago, his whole presence invested with strangeness and inadequacy.

“I mean,” Jacob says, “come on. All of a sudden, it’s like—Brandon, Isobel, Caroline, they’re like, ‘Where’s Turtle?’ and I’m just like, ‘I have no idea.’ What’s—” He spreads his arms again. “What’s going on?”

“Jacob, you can’t come back here.”

“What?”

“Leave, Jacob. You have to leave and you can’t come back. I have some things I need to take care of here. You can’t help me and I don’t want you to help. If you love me, and if you trust me, you will leave.”

He gestures, seems to have no idea how to answer her. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Jacob,” she says.

“What?”

“I want you to go.”