We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [107]
I owed him one. He knew I owed him one. And I would owe him one for a very long time.
Driving back home, I chattered (What Mommer did was very, very wrong, and she is so, so sorry—though this distancing device of the third person must have cast my regrets in a dubious light, as if I were already blaming the incident on my imaginary friend). Kevin said nothing. His expression aloof, almost haughty, the fingers of his plastered right arm tucked Napoleonically in his shirt, he sat upright in the front seat and surveyed the flashes of the Tappan Zee Bridge through the side window, for all the world like a triumphant general, wounded nobly in battle, now basking in the cheers of the crowd.
I enjoyed no such equipoise. I might have escaped the police and social services, but I was condemned to run one more gauntlet. Whether up against the wall I might have contrived some cock-and-bull about bumping into Kevin for Dr. Goldblatt, I could not imagine locking eyes and flinging patent nonsense at you.
“Hi! Where were you guys?” you shouted when we walked into the kitchen. Your back was turned as you finished slathering peanut butter on a Ritz cracker.
My heart was thumping, and I still had no idea what I was going to say. So far, I had never wittingly done anything that would imperil our marriage—or our family—but I was sure that if anything would push us to the brink, this was it.
“—Jesus, Kev!” you exclaimed with a mouth covered in crumbs, swallowing hard without having chewed. “What the heck happened to you?”
You brushed your hands hastily and plunged to your knees before Kevin. My skin prickled all over, as if someone had just switched on the voltage and I were an electric fence. I had that distinctive presentiment of I-have-one-more-second-or-two-after-which-nothing-will-ever-be-thesame-again, the same limp apprehension of spotting an oncoming car in your lane when it’s too late to turn the wheel.
But headlong collision was averted at the last minute. Already accustomed to trusting your son’s version of events over your wife’s, you had gone straight to Kevin. This once you were mistaken. Had you asked me, I promise—or at least I like to think—that, with bowed head, I’d have told you the truth.
“I broke my arm.”
“I can see that. How’d that happen?”
“I fell.”
“Where’d you fall?”
“I had poopy pants. Mommer went to get more wipes. I fell off the changing table. On—onto my Tonka dump truck. Mommer took me to Doctor Goldbutt.”
He was good. He was very, very good; you may not appreciate how good. He was smooth—the story was ready. None of the details were inconsistent or gratuitous; he had spurned the extravagant fantasies with which most children his age would camouflage a spilled drink or broken mirror. He had learned what all skilled liars register if they’re ever to make a career of it: Always appropriate as much of the truth as possible. A wellconstructed lie is assembled largely from the alphabet blocks of fact, which will as easily make a pyramid as a platform. He did have poopy pants. He remembered, correctly, that the second time I changed him that afternoon I had finished the open box of Wet Wipes. He had, more or less, fallen off the changing table. His Tonka dump truck was indeed—I checked later that night—on the nursery floor at the time. Furthermore, I marveled at his having intuited that simply falling three feet onto the floor would probably not be enough to break his arm; he would need to land haplessly on some hard metal object. And however short, his tale was laced with elegant touches: Using Mommer when he had eschewed the cutesy sobriquet for months lent his story a cuddly, affectionate cast that fantastically belied the real story; Doctor Goldbutt was playfully scatological, setting you at ease