We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [157]
“He didn’t call me,” I said.
“Well,” you said. “I wonder why.”
“The damage—” I took a breath. “It’s bad, isn’t it. It had to have been very, very bad—.” I had started to cry, but I made myself stop, because I had to get this out. “If she’s lost the eye, and surgeons are better at this kind of thing than they used to be, then it was—. It was a mess. It takes, ah. It takes a while.” I stopped again, listening to the wah from the heat vents. The air had grown dry, my saliva sticky. “It takes a while for that stuff to work. That’s why the label tells you to—to let it sit.”
Compulsively, I had pressed my fingertips against my own eyes, padding the papery lids, guarding the smooth, tender roll of the balls.
“What are you saying? Because it’s bad enough to accuse him of neglect—”
“The doctor said there’d be scarring! That she was burned, all across that side of her face! Time, it would have taken time! Maybe he did wash it out, but when? When he was finished?”
You grabbed each of my arms, raised them on either side of my head, and looked me in the eye. “Finished with what? His homework? His archery practice?”
“Finished,” I groaned, “with Celia.”
“Don’t you ever say that again! Not to anyone! Not even to me!”
“Think about it!” I wrenched my arms free with a twist. “Celia, douse herself with acid? Celia’s afraid of everything! And she’s six, she’s not two. I know you don’t think she’s very smart, but she’s not retarded! She knows not to touch the stove, and she doesn’t eat bleach. Meanwhile, Kevin can reach that cabinet, and Kevin can work child-locks in his sleep. He’s not her savior. He did it! Oh, Franklin, he did it—”
“I’m ashamed of you, ashamed,” you said at my back as I curled against the door. “Demonizing your own kid just because you can’t admit to your own carelessness. It’s worse than craven. It’s sick. Here you’re flailing around making outrageous accusations, and as usual you have no proof. That doctor—did he say anything about Kevin’s story not squaring with her injuries? No. No, he didn’t. Only his mother can detect a cover-up of some unspeakable evil because she’s such a medical expert, such an expert on corrosive chemicals because she’s occasionally cleaned house.”
As ever, you couldn’t keep shouting at me while I was crying. “Look,” you implored. “You don’t know what you’re saying because you’re upset. You’re not yourself. This is hard, and it’s going to keep being hard, because you’re going to have to look at it. She’s going to be in pain, and it’s going to look nasty for a while. The only thing that’s going to make it easier is if you confront your part in this. Celia—even Celia, with that elephant shrew—admits it’s her fault. She left the cage open! And that’s part of it, what hurts, that not only did something sad happen but if she’d done something differently it wouldn’t have happened. She takes responsibility, and she’s only six! Why can’t you?”
“I wish I could take responsibility,” I whispered, fogging the side window. “I’d say, ‘Oh, I could kill myself for leaving that drain cleaner where she could find it!’ Don’t you see how much easier that would be? Why would I be so upset? If it were my fault, only my fault? In that case, it wouldn’t be frightening. Franklin, this is serious, it’s not just a little girl scratching her eczema anymore. I don’t how he got this way but he’s a horror, and he hates her—”
“That’s enough!” Your announcement had a liturgical finality, deep and booming like the ringing Amen in a benedictory prayer. “I don’t often lay down the law. But Kevin’s been through an incredible trauma. His sister will never be the same. He kept his head in a crisis, and I want him to be proud of that. Still, he was the one baby-sitting, and he’s inevitably going to worry that it was all his fault. So you are going to promise me, right now, that you’ll do everything in your power to assure him that it wasn’t.”
I pulled the handle of the door and opened it a few inches. I thought, I have to get out of here, I have to get away.
“Don’t go, not yet,