Lionel Shriver - We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I thought we discussed this.”

“That’s what we didn’t do, discuss it. You went on a tirade. You wouldn’t listen.”

“So you just go ahead and—a fait accompli—just—like some kind of mugging. As if it has nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you. But I was right and you were wrong.” I faced you squarely. As you would say, there were two of us and one of you.

“This is the most presumptuous… arrogant thing you’ve ever done.”

“Yes. I guess it is.”

“Now that it no longer matters what I think, you going to explain what this is about? I’m listening.” You didn’t look as if you were listening.

“I have to find something out.”

“What’s that? How far you can push me before I push back?”

“About—,” I decided not to apologize for the word, “about my soul.”

“Is there anyone else in your universe?”

I bowed my head. “I’d like there to be.”

“What about Kevin?”

“What about him.”

“It’s going to be hard for him.”

“I read somewhere that other children have brothers and sisters.”

“Don’t be snide, Eva. He’s used to undivided attention.”

“Another way of saying he’s spoiled. Or could get that way. This is the best thing that could possibly happen to that boy.”

“Little bird tells me that’s not the way he’s going to look at it.”

I took a moment to reflect that in five minutes we were already dwelling on our son. “Maybe it will be good for you, too. For us.”

“It’s an agony aunt standard. Stupidest thing you can ever do to cement a shaky marriage is to have a baby.”

“Is our marriage shaky?”

“You just shook it,” you fired back, and turned away from me on your side.

I switched off the light and slid down on the pillow. We weren’t touching. I started to cry. Feeling your arms around me was such a relief that I cried harder still.

“Hey,” you said. “Did you really think—? Did you wait so long to tell me so it would be too late? Did you really think I’d ask you to do that? With our own kid?”

“Of course not,” I snuffled.

But when I’d calmed down you grew sterner. “Look, I’ll come around to this if only because I have to. But you’re forty-five, Eva. Promise me you’ll get that test.”

There was a purpose to “that test” only if we were prepared to act on a discouraging outcome. With our own kid . Little wonder that I put off telling you for as long as possible.

I didn’t get the test. Oh, I told you I did, and the new gynecologist I found—who was lovely—offered, but unlike Dr. Rhinestein, she did not seem to regard all pregnant women as public property and didn’t unduly press the point. She did say that she hoped I was prepared to love and care for whoever—she meant, whatever—came out. I said that I didn’t think I was romantic about the rewards of raising a disabled child. But I was probably too strict about what—and whom—I chose to love. So I wanted to trust. For once, I said. To have blind faith in—I chose not to say life or fate or God —myself.

There was never any doubt that our second child was mine. Accordingly, you exhibited none of the proprietary bossiness that tyrannized my pregnancy with Kevin. I carried my own groceries. I drew no scowls over a glass of red wine, which I continued to pour myself in small, sensible amounts. I actually stepped up my exercise regime, including running and calisthenics and even a little squash. Our understanding was no less clear for being tacit: What I did with this bump was my business. I liked it that way.

Kevin had already sensed the presence of perfidy. He hung back from me more than ever, glaring from corners, sipping at a glass of juice as if tasting for arsenic, and poking so warily at anything I left him to eat, often dissecting it into its constituent parts spread equidistant around his plate; he might have been searching for shards of glass. He was secretive about his homework, which he protected like a prisoner encrypting his correspondence with details of savage abuse at the hands of his captors that he would smuggle to Amnesty International.

Someone had to tell him, and soon; I was starting to show. So I suggested that we take this opportunity to explain generally about sex. You were reluctant. Just say you’re pregnant, you suggested. He doesn’t have to know how it got there. He’s only seven. Shouldn’t we preserve his innocence a little longer? It’s a pretty backward definition of innocence, I objected, that equates sexual ignorance with freedom from sin. And underestimating your kid’s sexual intelligence is the oldest mistake in the book.

Indeed. I had barely introduced the subject while making dinner when Kevin interrupted impatiently, “Is this about fucking?”

It was true: They didn’t make second-graders the way they used to. “Better to call it sex , Kevin. That other word is going to offend some people.”

“It’s what everybody else calls it.”

“Do you know what it means?”

Rolling his eyes, Kevin recited, “The boy puts his peepee in the girl’s doodoo.”

I went through the stilted nonsense about “seeds” and “eggs” that had persuaded me as a child that making love was something between planting potatoes and raising chickens. Kevin was no more than tolerant.

“I knew all that.”

“What a surprise,” I muttered. “Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

“Not any? Because you can always ask me or Dad anything about boys and girls, or sex, or your own body that you don’t understand.”

“I thought you were going to tell me something new ,” he said darkly, and left the room.

I felt strangely ashamed. I’d raised his expectations, then dashed them. When you asked how the talk had gone I said okay, I guess; and you asked if he’d seemed frightened or uncomfortable or confused, and I said actually he seemed unimpressed . You laughed, while I said dolefully, what’s ever going to impress him if that doesn’t?

Yet phase two of the Facts of Life was bound to be the more difficult installment.

“Kevin,” I began the following evening. “Remember what we talked about last night? Sex? Well, Mommer and Daddy do that sometimes, too.”

“What for.”

“For one thing, so you could keep us company. But it might be nice for you to have some company, too. Haven’t you ever wished you had someone right around the house to play with?”

“No.”

I stooped to the play table where Kevin was systematically snapping each crayon of his Crayola 64 set into pieces. “Well, you are going to have some company. A little baby brother or sister. And you might find out that you like it.”

He glared at me a long, sulky beat, though he didn’t look especially surprised. “What if I don’t like it.”

“Then you’ll get used to it.”

“Just cause you get used to something doesn’t mean you like it.” He added, snapping the magenta, “You’re used to me.”

“Yes!” I said. “And in a few months we’ll all get used to someone new!”

As a crayon piece gets shorter it’s more difficult to break, and Kevin’s fingers were now straining against one such obdurate stump. “You’re going to be sorry.”

Finally, it broke.

I tried to draw you into a discussion about names, but you were indifferent; by then the Gulf War had started, and it was impossible to distract you from CNN. When Kevin slumped alongside you in the den, I noted that the boy stuff of generals and fighter pilots didn’t captivate him any more than the ABC song, though he did show a precocious appreciation for the nature of a “nuclar bomb.” Impatient with the slow pace of madefor-TV combat, he grumbled, “I don’t see why Cone Power bothers with all that little junk, Dad. Nuke ’em. That’d teach the Raqis who’s boss.” You thought it was adorable.