Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

Turtle just wants the garden to work. She gave Jacob a year. They’d moved her from the ICU to a children’s surgical unit, and when the swelling in her damaged vocal cords subsided, she told him in her harsh rasp of a voice that she didn’t want to see him for a year. She didn’t want him to see her broken and useless, gutted, lying in her hospital gown draining septic filth out through long, clear, bundled tubes into graduated plastic bags and collection chambers. She didn’t want to yield to circumstance. She didn’t want to talk to him or see him or think about him, and after a year he could come back, and if you picked the homecoming dance as your anniversary, today was a year, and if you picked the calendar date, he had two days, and if you picked the date she’d had the conversation with him—he had longer yet, and she wishes she’d been more specific, but it hadn’t felt right, exactly, to hammer out the details. It doesn’t matter, though, because she is sure that he will not come, and if you really wondered if people were for real when they said that you would be all right , the proof would be if Jacob came back, if Jacob thought you were going to be all right, and more than needing him to come back, she needs his faith in her.

Turtle slides down the fridge to the floor and the two of them sit together in the cramped little kitchen, the windowsills lined with mason jars full of sprouts and Turtle sobbing and snotting all over while Anna holds her and says, “Turtle, I’m sorry that the roots are into the bed. That’s frustrating.” Turtle cries harder because she just wants to have a plot of good earth where she can grow things, where she can dig out the weeds and let peas tangle up her lattices and let squash grow huge and sprawling, and it isn’t working. Other people can do it, so why not her? The deer. The raccoons. The ravens, the starlings, the earwigs, the banana slugs, and the roots itching their way up through the planter bottoms. She doesn’t want to be fighting a losing battle against everything here, against everything , and she hates herself, hates the whiny, ineffective person she has become, hates how wounded she is, deeply and terribly wounded, and how long that road home is going to be.

“Turtle,” Anna says, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go.”

“What?” Turtle says, looking up. She can hear the kale in the skillet frying. “What?”

“We need another chaperone for the dance. A couple of the teachers have the flu and I’ve got to go down and chaperone the dance.”

“What?” Turtle says, disbelieving. “No.”

“I have to,” Anna says. “You’ll be all right here, tonight?”

“What?” Turtle says. “I don’t want to be here.”

Anna sits back and purses her lips. It is the look she gives Turtle when she has to make another concession she’s willing to make but didn’t expect, and Turtle can see that Anna is going to give in, going to call someone and say that she just can’t do it, Turtle needs her here, Turtle just can’t be alone tonight, and Turtle begins to shake her head because she hates that this is who she is to Anna.

“No, you should go. You should.”

“I’ll stay here, Turtle. If you need me to.”

“No, it’s fine,” Turtle says.

“They really do need another chaperone for the dance,” Anna says.

“But you’re so tired,” Turtle says. They sit together on the floor, knee to knee, head to head, and Turtle gets up. Much of the kale has burned and she picks out the worst bits. The pumpkin seeds, too, are more charred than she wants them. She takes down Anna’s hand-thrown pottery bowls, dishes up the quinoa and kale and squash, the charred pumpkin seeds and red pomegranate, and they sit and eat on the kitchen floor, backs against the cabinets, and Turtle has to remind herself that he is not here, that bullets will not come through the walls, that the house will remain quiet moment after moment. She picks at her stir-fry with chopsticks. Beside her, legs akimbo, Anna says, “I really shouldn’t leave, should I? That’s a shitty thing to do, Turtle, I’m sorry. I just— I wasn’t thinking.”

“No,” Turtle says. “You should go. I’m going to be okay.”

Anna leans her head back against the cabinets. She turns and looks at Turtle and smiles at her and laughs and Turtle laughs and Anna says, “Look at us here. This is a little sad, Turtle.”

Turtle says, “If I wanted to go to the dance, could I?”

Anna’s face quirks as if trying out a number of expressions and she says, “Yeah, I guess you could if you wanted to. But, Turtle—”

Turtle says, “I know.”

“The music—” Anna says.

“Yeah.”

“It’s gonna be really loud.”

“You’re right.”

Anna knocks the back of her head against a cabinet in frustration. She sits looking up at the window above them with its rack of mason jar sprouts. The tops of the lids have been replaced with screens. The sprouts grow in a tangle. It is Turtle’s job to wash and untangle them, twice a day.

“There will be a lot of people there,” Anna says.

“Maybe another day,” Turtle says.

Anna nods. “Maybe another day.”

“We have some Netflix movies,” Anna says.

“Oh. What?” Turtle says.

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ll look.”

“No, I’ll get it.”

They both sit on the kitchen floor. Anna takes a drink of her wine and sets it aside and sets her bowl aside as if she is about to get up and go look at the Netflix movies, but she does not get up.

Turtle says, “If I went to the dance, though, and I couldn’t do it, I could just get your keys and go wait in the car.”

Anna hesitates. She says, “I think it was, like, The Philadelphia Story or something. Does that sound right?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Turtle says.

“I wish you’d been able to meet my grandmother. I wish she was here.”

“I wish so, too.”

“I bet she would’ve known how to garden out here.”

“I could, though, right?” Turtle says. “I could go, and if it was too much, I could wait in the car.”

“I don’t think waiting in the car is a good idea, Turtle. I think if you go and it’s bad—I don’t think you’re going to want to wait in a dark car outside a party. I don’t know if that’s a good idea. That might be triggering.”

“I know,” Turtle says.

“Another day,” Anna says.

“Another day,” Turtle says, and nods.

“Just tuck in and watch some movies.”

“What if it never gets easier?”

“It will.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

Anna turns her head, still leaning it against the cupboards. She says, “Turtle. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what happened. I wish I’d known. Or done something.”

“No,” Turtle says, because they’ve been over this before and it does no good. Anna’s guilt for what happened is, to Turtle, exhausting and misplaced.

“God,” Anna says, “I wish. I wish so bad.”

“There was nothing you could do.”

“That isn’t true,” Anna says.

“It is,” Turtle says.

“I fucked up,” Anna says. “I knew. I had no proof, but I knew and I fucked up. I dropped the ball. And I wish it hadn’t happened. And I believe, Turtle, that you’re going to be all right. And the problem is that you want to be all right now . We’ll get there, but tonight . . .” She blows air out of her pursed lips. “It’s just not the night.”

“Yeah,” Turtle says.

“Is that okay? Are you okay with that?”

Turtle looks around the kitchen.

Anna doesn’t say anything, and Turtle knows that she is sorting through all the ways Turtle isn’t ready, all the ways Turtle is not all right , and unable to voice them, and it is infuriating to Turtle that Anna’s assessment is worse than her own, that even Anna, who believes in Turtle, who is the only person in the world whom Turtle knows believes for sure that Turtle will wind up all right, even Anna doesn’t think Turtle is there yet, and Turtle sits beside her in the kitchen and she thinks, Turtle, you’re even worse off than you knew and she doesn’t want to break it to you.