Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

“Into hatred and into filth and into nothing,” Martin says.

“Shut the fuck up,” Turtle says, sitting up.

Martin says, “Your rot-filled guts, kibble.”

Turtle rises and he watches her. She stands in the middle of the room and looks for her panties, but she cannot find them, and she walks back and forth while he sits stooped and big-shouldered and sullen and dappled with shadows from the alders, his form enormous and silent and bent as he studies her picking up dark pieces of clothing and toying them apart to see what they are, and finally her pants, and she pulls her pants on while he watches her and she looks levelly and hatefully at him as she pulls them on, and she thinks, I thought at least you could give me this, you could at least do that, but the truth is that you give me nothing, she thinks, pulling up her pants and sashaying them on to her hips and holstering the gun as Martin watches her dress, and she thinks, go ahead and watch, asshole. I don’t know how to get away, and I don’t know if I can get away, so we will find out, I guess. Go ahead and watch, she thinks, because there is something wrong with me that I would take this risk, that I would allow you to do this to me. He watches and she buckles her pants and then pauses, standing upright and allowing him to admire her, and walks from the room and down the hallway and stands at the poker table. There is a rule, she thinks, that life has taught you, that Martin has taught you, a rule that every wet-thighed slit like you gets what’s coming to her. Dim light comes in from the windows and from the smoldering fire. Cayenne is crying softly, in front of the fire, and Turtle thinks, fuck.

It had not occurred to her that the girl would hear and she cannot explain to the girl, so she stands at the poker table thinking of everything that Cayenne has heard and thinking, fuck, fuck, fuck. She cannot bear that Cayenne has heard her go into that room, she cannot bear that Cayenne has heard her consent to it. It has always been private. Turtle stands listening to Cayenne cry and cry. She thinks, I will walk to my room and leave the bitch to cry. You think I give a shit about her? You think she matters to me? She is a bitch like all the others and her femaleness eats holes through her mind. I have nothing in me for her, she can’t have me and I have nothing to give and no one could expect me to, no one could expect me to give a shit for the girl.

Well, she thinks, Jacob would expect you to help. Jacob wouldn’t even doubt that you’d help. But Jacob is an entitled piece of shit who doesn’t understand the depth that things can have sometimes. How bad they can be and how deep-down the rot can go. Just walk to your room, Turtle, because that girl is nothing to you. But thinking of Jacob, she walks to the girl and sits down beside her and gathers the child into her arms. She feels nothing, and she does not know why she does it except for that. She holds the little girl and thinks, she is nothing to me. The bitch is nothing to me. I could kill her if he asked me to. I could do that and it would weigh me down some, but it wouldn’t be the end of me. She shushes her, and Cayenne says, “I’m afraid, Julie, I want my mom. I really , really want my mom.” She says it over and over again, as if hoping that Turtle will reply to it, but Turtle can only squeeze the girl harder.

Finally, Turtle says, “Hey, Cayenne.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t call me Julie.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Turtle says.

“You don’t like it?”

“It makes me want to puke.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. That’s my mom’s name for me.”

“What, then?”

“Turtle.”

“Turtle?” Cayenne says.

“Yeah.”

Cayenne is sniffling, but she is a little tickled, too. She sucks and tucks her snotty hair behind her ears and snuffs and peers at Turtle, lines appearing and disappearing on her forehead with her amusement and her anger.

“But,” she says, “that’s— No, that’s silly. No.”

“No?”

“You can’t be Turtle .”

“Why?”

“You’re so pretty.”

Turtle laughs.

“You are. You are so pretty.”

“Cayenne,” Turtle says. “There are some things I care about. But you know what I don’t give a fuck about?”

“What?”

“Prettiness.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

The girl shakes her head.

“What’s wrong?”

The girl feels chided. Turtle holds her and rocks her back and forth and feels something fierce, some emotion she cannot place at all. Something very like willingness.

“It’s all right. I’m just teasing you.”

Cayenne nods. She still looks chided.

“I don’t mean you shouldn’t care. I don’t mean it’s a bad thing to care about or that you’re wrong. I just mean. You know. I’ve got other things.”

“Okay,” Cayenne says. Her voice is small and high, and there is nothing grudging in it. Turtle holds the girl and she thinks, I will never let anything hurt you. The thought comes unbidden, and she knows it’s untrue. But she likes it, she likes that she could be such a person—and she thinks it again, suspending her own disbelief and putting her cheek to the girl’s hair and saying, “I will never let anything hurt you.”

Cayenne cries and cries. She says, “Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know,” Turtle says.

Cayenne says, “Why did you let him?”

“I don’t know,” Turtle says.

“Turtle?”

“I don’t think anyone knows why they do things. They just think they know it.”

“Really?”

“It isn’t until things get hard and you see yourself doing the wrong thing.”

Cayenne sobs. She says, “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes,” Turtle says, and she knows that it’s true only after she hears herself say it.

It makes Cayenne cry harder, trembling and heaving, and Turtle gathers the child into her arms, pulls the girl into her lap. The girl bites into Turtle’s shoulder and Turtle smiles. Cayenne shakes her head like a dog worrying a rat. Turtle holds the girl in her arms, and the girl is small, with slender shins and small bony feet, and her hair is rough and coarse on Turtle’s cheek. It sticks to Turtle’s lips and the girl reaches up and puts her arms around Turtle’s neck and Turtle says nothing, but holds her, and holding her, she thinks, this is a thing I can take care of, and if I couldn’t show the girl any love, I could show her care, I can do that much, maybe. I am not like him, and I can take care of things and can take care of her, too, maybe, even if I don’t know if it’s real and even if I don’t mean it more than that, I can salvage something maybe by just doing that, by just caring for the bitch. She holds her and hums a little, her chin on Cayenne’s head, the girl’s legs tucked up in Turtle’s arms.

Turtle wakes when the spotlights come on. She lifts the shotgun off its wall pegs and pulls on jeans and a white T-shirt. She puts on a mesh-back cap to keep her hair out of her face and pads out of her room and down the stairs. Martin is standing in the living room with his modified AR-15, looking through the sliding glass door out into the field. He turns, squints at her as she comes down the stairs. Cayenne is sitting up, in front of the bare and lightless hearth, still wrapped in her blankets. Turtle climbs down. Martin scrapes his thumb across his stubble. He gestures with one hand at the picture window, the fields lit up with a halogen glare. He says, “You think something’s out there?”

“No,” Turtle says.

“No?” he repeats. “But you don’t know. We don’t know what’s in that field. Do we?”

“No,” she says, “we don’t know.”