We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [148]
I was touched, I really was, and I was about to exclaim about what a handsome figure he cut when he didn’t wear clothes designed for an eight-year-old when he turned around. In his hands was the carcass of a whole cold chicken. Or it had been whole, before he clawed off both breasts and a leg, the drumstick of which he was still devouring.
I probably turned white. “I’m about to take you to dinner. Why are you eating the better part of a roast chicken before we go?”
Kevin wiped a little grease off the corner of his mouth with the heel of his hand, ill-concealing a smirk. “I was hungry.” A rare enough admission that it could only be a ruse. “You know—growing boy?”
“Put that away right now and get your coat.”
So naturally once we were seated in Hudson House our growing boy had grown enough for the day, and he allowed that his appetite had waned. I would break bread with my son only in the most literal sense, for he refused to order an entrée or even an appetizer, preferring to tear at the basket of hard rolls. Though he ripped the sourdough into ever smaller pieces, I don’t think he ate any.
Defiantly, I ordered the mesclun salad, pigeon-breast appetizer, salmon, and a whole bottle of sauvignon blanc that I sensed I would finish.
“So,” I began, battling discomfiture as I picked at greens under Kevin’s ascetic eye; we were in a restaurant, why should I feel apologetic about eating? “How’s school going?”
“It’s going,” he said. “Can’t ask for more than that.”
“I can ask for a few more details.”
“You want my course schedule?”
“No.” I badly did not want to get annoyed. “Like, what’s your favorite subject this semester?” I remembered too late that for Kevin the word favorite attached exclusively to the enthusiasms of others that he liked to despoil.
“You imply I like any.”
“Well,” I thrashed, having difficulty stabbing a forkful of arugula small enough that it wouldn’t smear honey-mustard dressing on my chin. “Have you thought about joining any after-school clubs?”
He looked at me with the same incredulity that would later meet my inquiries about the cafeteria menus at Claverack. Maybe the fact that he wouldn’t deign to answer this question at all made me lucky.
“What about your, ah, teachers? Are any of them, you know, especially—”
“And what bands are you listening to these days?” he said earnestly. “Next you can wheedle about whether there isn’t some cute little cunt in the front row that’s got me itchy. That way you can segue into how it’s all up to me of course, but before balling the chick in the hallway I might decide to wait until I’m ready. Right around dessert you can ask about druuugs. Careful, like, ’cause you don’t want to scare me into lying my head off, so you have to say how you experimented but that doesn’t mean I should experiment too. Finally, once you’ve sucked up that whole bottle you can go gooey-eyed and say how great it is to spend quality time together and you can shift out of your chair and put an arm around my shoulder and give it a little squeeze.”
“All right, Mr. Snide.” I abandoned my lettuce. “What do you want to talk about?”
“This was your idea. I never said I wanted to talk about a fucking thing.”
We squared off over my pigeon breast and red-currant confit, and I began to saw. Kevin had a way of turning pleasures into hard work. As for the turn he took after three or four minutes’ silence, I can only conclude that he took pity on me. Later in Claverack he would never be the one to blink first, but after all, in Hudson House he was only fourteen.
“Okay, I’ve got a topic,” he proposed slyly, picking up a carmine crayon from the restaurant’s complimentary glass of Crayolas, grown ubiquitous as scooters. “You’re always griping about this country and wishing you were in Malaysia or something. What’s your problem with the place. Really. American materialism?”
Much like Kevin when I proposed this date, I suspected a trap, but I had an entrée and two-thirds of