We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [117]
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