We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [112]
You wheeled. Your response was spontaneous, too. “You cannot be serious.”
The time didn’t seem right for reminding you that you deplored John McEnroe as a poor sport. “I’d like us to start trying to get me pregnant right away.”
It was the oddest thing. I felt perfectly certain, and not in the fierce, clutching spirit that might have betrayed a crazy whim or frantic grab at a pat marital nostrum. I felt self-possessed and simple. This was the very unreserved resolve for which I had prayed during our protracted debate over parenthood, and whose absence had led us down tortuously abstract avenues like “turning the page” and “answering the Big Question.” I’d never been so sure of anything in my life, so much so that I was disconcerted why you seemed to think there was anything to talk about.
“Eva, forget it. You’re forty-four. You’d have a three-headed toad or something.”
“Lots of women these days have children in their forties.”
“Get out of here! I thought that now Kevin’s going to be in school full-time you were planning to go back to AWAP! What about all those big plans to move into Eastern Europe post-glasnost? Get in early, beat The Lonely Planet?”
“I’ve considered going back to AWAP. I may still go back. But I can work for the rest of my life. As you just observed with so much sensitivity, there’s only one thing I can do for a short while longer.”
“I can’t believe this. You’re serious! You’re seriously—serious!”
“I’d like to get pregnant makes a crummy gag, Franklin. Wouldn’t you like Kevin to have someone to play with?” Truthfully, I wanted someone to play with, too.
“They’re called classmates. And two siblings always hate each other.”
“Only if they’re close together. She’d be younger than Kevin by at least seven years.”
“She, is it?” The pronoun made you bristle.
I shrugged my eyebrows. “Hypothetically.”
“This is all because you want a girl ? To dress in little outfits? Eva, this isn’t like you.”
“No, wanting to dress a girl in little outfits isn’t like me. So there was no call for you to say that. Look, I can see your having reservations, but I don’t understand why the prospect of my getting pregnant again seems to be making you so angry.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Anything but. I thought you’ve enjoyed being a parent.”
“I have, yes! Eva, what gives you the idea that even if you do have this fantasy daughter everything’s going to be different?”
“I don’t understand,” I maintained, having learned the merits of playing dumb from my son. “Why in the world would I want everything to be different?”
“What could possess you, after it’s gone the way it’s gone, to want to do it again?”
“It’s gone what way?” I asked neutrally.
You took a quick look out the window to make sure Kevin was still patting the tether ball to spiral first one way around the pole, then the other; he liked the monotony.
“You never want him to come with us, do you? You always want to find somebody to dump him with so we can waltz off by ourselves, like what you obviously consider the good old days.”
“I don’t remember saying any such thing,” I said stonily.
“You don’t have to. I can tell you’re disappointed every time I suggest we do something so that Kevin can come, too.”
“That must explain why you and I have spent countless long, boozy evenings in expensive restaurants, while our son languishes with strangers.”
“See? You resent it. And what about this summer? You wanted to go to Peru. Okay, I was game. But I assumed we’d take a vacation as a family. So I start supposing how far a six-year-old can hike in a day, and you should have seen your face, Eva. It fell like a lead balloon. Soon as Peru would involve Kevin, too, you lose interest. Well, I’m sorry. But I for one didn’t have a kid in order to get away from him as often as possible.”
I was leery of where this was headed. I’d known that eventually we would need to discuss all that had been left unsaid, but I wasn’t ready. I needed ballast. I needed supporting evidence, which would take me a minimum of nine