We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [68]
I apologized profusely to the girl, who couldn’t have been much more than eighteen and had no doubt suffered from that blemish her whole life. She managed a dismal smile and promised to bring my dressing.
I wheeled to our son. “You knew that spot wasn’t ‘poop,’ didn’t you?”
“Nyeh NYEE nyeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyee, nyeh-nyeh nyeh?” Kevin skulked in the booth, his eyes at half-mast and glittering. He’d placed his fingers on the table and his nose against its rim, but I could tell from that telltale sparky squint that below the table lurked a grin: wide, tight-lipped, and strangely forced.
“Kevin, you know that hurt her feelings, didn’t you?” I said. “How would you like it if I told you your face was ‘poopy’?”
“Eva, kids don’t understand that grown-ups can be touchy about their looks.”
“Are you sure they don’t understand that? You read this somewhere?”
“Can we not ruin our first afternoon out together?” you implored. “Why do you always have to think the worst of him?”
“Where did that come from?” I asked, looking perplexed. “It sounds more as if you always think the worst of me.”
Innocent mystification would remain my tack for the next three years. Meantime, the mood had gone all wrong for my announcement, so I got it over with as unceremoniously as I could. I’m afraid my intentions came out as defiant: Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, if you think I’m such a rotten mother.
“Wow,” you said. “ Are you sure? That’s a big step.”
“I remembered what you said about Kevin and talking, that maybe he didn’t for so long because he wanted to do it right. Well, I’m a perfectionist, too. And I’m not doing AWAP or motherhood right. At the office, I’m continually taking days off with no warning, and publications get behind schedule. Meanwhile, Kevin wakes up and has no idea who’s taking care of him today, his mother or some hopeless hireling who’ll hightail it by the end of the week. I’m thinking mostly until Kevin is in primary school. Hey, it might even be good for W&P. Bring in a new perspective, fresh ideas. The series may be overly dominated by my voice.”
“You,” shock-horror, “domineering?”
“NYEEEEEEE? Nyeh-nyeh nyeeeeh nyeh?”
“Kevin, stop it! That’s enough. Let Mommer and Daddy talk—”
“NYEH-nyeh, NYEEEE nyeh—! Nyeh nyeh-NYEEH—!”
“I mean it, Kevin, quit the nyeh-nyeh or we’re leaving.”
“Nyeh NYEE nyeh, nyeh nyeh, nyeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh nyeh NYEE-NYEH !”
I don’t know why I threatened him with departure, lacking any evidence that he wanted to stay. This was my first taste of what would become a chronic conundrum: how to punish a boy with an almost Zen-like indifference to whatever you might deny him.
“Eva, you’re just making everything worse—”
“How do you propose to get him to shut up?”
“Nyeh nyeh NYEEE nyeh-nyeeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh nyeeeeeeenyeeeeeeee ?”
I slapped him. It wasn’t very hard. He looked happy.
“Where’d you learn that trick?” you asked darkly. And it was a trick: This was the first sentence of mealtime conversation that did not get translated into nyeh-nyeh.
“Franklin, he was getting louder. People were starting to look over.”
Now Kevin started to wail. His tears were a bit late, in my view. I wasn’t moved. I left him to it.
“They’re looking over because you hit him,” you said sotto voce, lifting our son and cuddling him into your lap as his weeping escalated to a shriek. “It’s not done anymore, Eva. Not here. I think they’ve passed a law or something. Or they might as well have. It’s considered assault.”
“I smack my own kid, and I get arrested?”
“There’s a consensus—that violence is no way to get your point across. Which it sure as heck isn’t. I don’t want you to do that again, Eva. Ever.”
So: I slap Kevin. You slap me. I got the picture.
“Can we please get out of here?” I proposed coldly. Kevin was winding down to lurching sobs, but he could easily milk the decrescendo another