We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [155]
You said to drive carefully. You said that she was already in the hospital and there was nothing I could do now. You said that her life was not endangered. You said that more than once. All this was true. Then you said that she was going to be “all right,” which was not true, though for most messengers of dismal tidings the urge to issue this groundless reassurance seems to be irresistible.
I had no choice but to drive carefully, because the traffic on the George Washington Bridge was barely moving. When at last I laid eyes on your collapsed expression in the waiting room, I realized that you loved her after all, which I castigated myself for ever having doubted. Kevin wasn’t with you, to my relief, because I might have clawed his eyes out.
Your embrace had rarely offered so little solace. I kept hugging you harder to get something out of it, like squeezing an empty bottle of hand lotion until it wheezes.
She was already in surgery, you explained. While I’d driven in, you’d run Kevin home, because there was nothing to do but wait, and there was no point making this harder on her brother than it was already. But I wondered if you hadn’t whisked him from the waiting room to safeguard him from me.
We sat in those same sea-green metal chairs where I had agonized over what Kevin would tell the doctors when I broke his arm. Maybe, I supposed miserably, for the last eight years he’d been biding his time. I said, “I don’t understand what happened.” I was quiet; I didn’t shout.
You said, “I thought I told you. Over the phone.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.” Anything but contentious, my tone was simply baffled. “Why would she—what would she be doing with that stuff?”
“Kids.” You shrugged. “Playing. I guess.”
“But,” I said. “She’ll, ah—.” My mind kept blanking out. I had to reconstruct what I’d wanted to say all over again, repeating the conversation to myself, where we were, what came next.... Bathroom. Yes.
“She’ll go to the bathroom by herself now,” I resumed. “But she doesn’t like it in there. She never has. She wouldn’t play in there.” An incipient insistence in my voice must have sounded dangerous; we would shrink back from the ledge. Celia was still in surgery. We wouldn’t fight, and you would hold my hand.
It seemed hours later that the doctor emerged. You’d called home on your cell phone, twice, out of my earshot as if sparing me something; you’d bought me coffee from the machine along the wall, and it was now topped with crinkled skin. When a nurse pointed us out to the surgeon, I suddenly understood why some people worship their doctors, and why doctors are prone to feel godlike. But with one look at his face, I could see that he wasn’t feeling very godlike.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We really tried. But there was too much damage. I’m afraid we couldn’t save the eye.”
We were encouraged to go home. Celia was heavily sedated, and she would remain so for some time. Not long enough, I thought. So we stumbled from the waiting room. At least, you pointed out numbly, he says the other eye is probably okay. Just that morning I’d taken for granted the fact that our daughter had two.
Out in the parking lot, it was cold; in my flight from the office, I’d left my coat. We had two cars to drive home, which made me feel colder. I sensed we were at a junction of sorts and feared that if we each launched off in separate vehicular universes we would end up in the same place only in the most banal, geographical sense. You must have felt the same need to confirm that we were, as my staff had lately taken to saying five times a day, on the same page, because you invited me into your truck for a few minutes to debrief and get warm.
I missed your old baby-blue pickup, which I associated with our courtship, powering along the turnpike with the windows down and sound system pounding, like a living Bruce Springsteen