We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [145]
My dithering beforehand over how to pop the question made me feel like a bashful schoolgirl gearing up to invite our son to a rock concert. When I finally cornered him—or myself, really—in the kitchen, I went with the sensation, saying, “By the way, I’d like to ask you out on a date.”
Kevin looked mistrustful. “What for.”
“Just to do something together. For fun.”
“Like, do what.”
This was the part that made me nervous. Thinking of something “fun” to do with our son was like trying to think of a really great trip to take with your pet rock. He hated sports and was indifferent to most movies; food was chaff, and nature an annoyance, merely the agent of heat or cold or flies. So I shrugged. “Maybe do a little Christmas shopping. Take you to dinner?” Then I pulled out my ace in the hole, playing perfectly to Kevin’s absurdist strong suit. “And play a round or two of miniature golf.”
He cracked that sour half smile, and I’d secured a companion for Saturday. I worried about what to wear.
In a switch-off reminiscent of The Prince and the Pauper, I would assume the role of Kevin’s caring, engaged parent, while you would become Celia’s protector for the day. “Gosh,” you quipped lightly, “going have to come up with something to do that doesn’t terrify her. Guess that rules out vacuuming.”
To say that I wanted, truly desired, to spend all afternoon and evening with my prickly fourteen-year-old son would be a stretch, but I did powerfully desire to desire it—if that makes any sense. Knowing how time went slack around that boy, I had scheduled our day: miniature golf, shopping on Main Street in Nyack, and then I would treat him to a nice dinner out. The fact he didn’t care about Christmas presents or fine dining seemed no reason to skip the lesson that this is simply what people do. As for our sporting escapade, no one is meant to care about miniature golf, which must be why it felt so apt.
Kevin reported for duty in the foyer with an expression of glum forbearance, like a convict being hauled off to serve his sentence (though in that very circumstance not two years later, his face would instead appear cool and cocky). His ridiculous child-sized Izod knit was the loud orange of prison jumpsuits—not, as I would have much opportunity to establish, a very becoming color on him—and with the tight shirt pulling his shoulders back, he might have been handcuffed. His low-slung khaki slacks from seventh grade were at fashion’s cutting edge: Extending to mid-calf, they presaged the renaissance of pedal pushers.
We climbed into my new metallic double-yellow VW Luna. “You know, in my day,” I chattered, “these VW bugs were everywhere. Rattletrap and usually beaten up, full of destitute longhairs smoking dope and blasting Three Dog Night on tinny eight-tracks. I think they cost something like $2,500. Now this reissue is ten times that; it still fits two adults and a cat, but it’s a luxury automobile. I don’t know what that is—ironic, funny.”
Silence. At last, laboriously: “It means you’ll spend twenty-five grand to kid yourself you’re still nineteen, and still not get any trunk space.”
“Well, I guess I do tire of all this retro-boomer stuff,” I said. “The film remakes of The Brady Bunch and The Flintstones. But the first time I saw it, I fell in love with this design. The Luna doesn’t copy the original, it alludes to the original. And the old Beetle was poky. The Luna is still a little bump on the road, but it’s a surprisingly beautiful car.”
“Yeah,” said Kevin. “You’ve said all that before.”
I colored. It was true. I had.
I pulled into that funky little course in Sparkhill called “9W Golf” and finally noticed that Kevin hadn’t worn a jacket. It was chilly, too, and overcast. “Why didn’t you wear a coat?” I exploded. “You just can’t get uncomfortable enough, can you?