We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [70]
I won’t go on, because you know exactly what I’m talking about. I know they’re hard to heat, I know they’re drafty. I know the septic tank would leak, the electric bills run high. I know you’d anguish that the old well in the backyard was a dangerous draw for neighborhood urchins, for I can picture this home so vividly in my mind that I can walk across its overgrown yard with my eyes closed and fall in that well myself.
Curling out of the truck onto the semicircular concrete turnaround in front of our new abode, I thought, abode, isn’t that the word. My ideal home was cozy and closed the world out; looking out onto the Hudson (admittedly, the view was smashing), these wide plate glass windows advertised an eternal open house. Pink pebble-fill with flagstone paths skirted its splay like one big welcome mat. The facade and central walkway were lined with stunted shrubs. No black walnut trees, no uncultivated riot of goldenrod and moss, but shrubs. Surrounding them? A lawn. Not even the sweet cool sort, whose fine bright shoots tempt a laze with lemonade and bees, but that springy, scratchy kind, like those green abrasive scrub pads for washing dishes.
You flung open the entrance. The foyer dribbled into a living room the size of a basketball court, and then up a couple of low stairs and there was the dining “room,” partially segmented from the kitchen with a divider to pass food through—some concoction with sun-dried tomatoes, no doubt. I had yet to lay eyes on one door. I panicked, thinking, There’s nowhere to hide.
“Tell me this isn’t dramatic,” you said.
I said honestly, “I’m dumbstruck.”
I’d have thought that a small child, let loose in a vast, unfurnished expanse of glossy wooden floors blazing in insipid sunshine would go dashing about, sliding down halls in socks, giggling and rampaging, utterly unfazed by the antiseptic wasteland—wasteland, Franklin—into which he had been dropped. Instead, Kevin slackened on your hand into dead weight and had to be urged to “go explore.” He plodded to the middle of the living room and sat. I’d suffered more than a few moments of alienation from my son, but just then—his eyes Little Orphan Annie O’s and dulled over like wax buildup, hands plopping on the floorboards like fish on a dock—I couldn’t have felt more akin.
“You’ve got to see the master bedroom,” you said, grabbing my hand. “The skylights are spectacular.”
“Skylights!” I said brightly.
All the angles in our massive bedroom were askew, its ceiling slanted. The effect was jangled, and the evident distrust of standard parallels and perpendiculars, like the whole building’s uneasiness with the concept of rooms, felt insecure.
“Something else, huh?”
“Something else!” At some indeterminate point in the nineties, expanses of teak would become passé. We weren’t there yet, but I had a premonition of the juncture.
You demonstrated our built-in teak laundry hamper, cleverly doubling as a bench, a cushion of smiley-face yellow strapped to its lid. You rolled back the doors of the closet on their gliding wheelies. The moving parts of the house were all silent, its surfaces smooth. The closet doors had no handles. None of the woodwork had fixtures. Drawers had gentle indents. The kitchen cabinets pushed open and shut with a click. Franklin, the whole house was on Zoloft.
You led me out the glass sliding doors to the deck. I thought, I have a deck. I will never shout, “I’m on the porch!” but “I’m on