We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [93]
“What a surprise,” he said smoothly, pulling out the chair; its back legs had lost their plastic feet and the raw aluminum shrieked across the cement, a fingernail-on-the-blackboard sound that Kevin drew out. He slid his elbow across the table, resting his temple on his fist, assuming that characteristic tilt, sardonic with his whole body. I’ve tried to stop myself, but whenever he sits in front of me I rear back.
I do get irked that I’m always the one who has to come up with something to talk about. He’s old enough to carry a conversation. And since he has imprisoned me in my life every bit as much as he’s imprisoned himself in his, we suffer an equal poverty of fresh subject matter. Often we run through the same script: “How are you?” I ask with brutal simplicity. “You want me to say fine?” “I want you to say something,” I throw back. “You’re the one came to see me,” he reminds me. And he can and will sit it out, the whole hour. As for which of us has the greater tolerance for nullity, there’s no contest. He used to spend whole Saturdays propped theatrically in front of the Weather Channel.
So today I skipped even a perfunctory how’s tricks, on the theory that folks who shun small talk are still dependent on its easing transitions but have learned to make other people do all the work. And I was still agitated by my exchange with Loretta Greenleaf. Maybe having tempted his own mother into boasting about her connection to his filthy atrocity would afford him some satisfaction. But apparently my messianic impulse to take responsibility for Thursday onto myself reads to Kevin as a form of stealing.
“All right,” I said, no-nonsense. “I need to know. Do you blame me? It’s all right to say so, if that’s what you think. Is that what you tell your psych consults, or they tell you? It all traces back to your mother.”
He snapped, “Why should you get all the credit?”
The conversation that I had expected to consume our whole hour was now over in ninety seconds. We sat.
“Do you remember your early childhood very well, Kevin?” I had read somewhere that people with painful childhoods will often draw a blank.
“What’s to remember?”
“Well, for example you wore diapers until you were six.”
“What about it.” If I had some idea of embarrassing him, I was misguided.
“It must have been unpleasant.”
“For you.”
“For you as well.”
“Why?” he asked mildly. “It was warm.”
“Not for long.”
“Didn’t sit in it for long. You were a good mumsey.”
“Didn’t other kindergartners make fun of you? I worried at the time.”
“Oh, I bet you couldn’t sleep.”
“I worried,” I said staunchly.
He shrugged with one shoulder. “Why should they? I was getting away with something and they weren’t.”
“I was just wondering if, at this late date, you could shed some light on why the delay. Your father gave enough demonstrations.”
“Kevvy-wevvy!” he cooed, falsetto. “Honey sweetie! Look at Daddykins! See how he pee-pees in the pooper-dooper? Wouldn’t you like that, too, Kevvy-woopsie? Wouldn’t it be fun to be just like Dadda-boo, piddle your peenie-weenie over the toileywoiley? I was just hoisting you on your own retard.”
I was interested that he had allowed himself to be verbally clever; he’s generally careful not to let on that he’s got a brain. “All right,” I said. “You wouldn’t use the toilet for yourself, and you and I—you wouldn’t do it for me. But why not for your father?”
“You’re a big boy, now!” Kevin minced. “You’re my big boy! You’re my little man! Christ. What an asshole.”
I stood up. “Don’t you ever say that. Don’t you ever, ever say that. Not once, not ever, not one more time!”
“Or what,” he said softly, eyes dancing.
I sat back down. I shouldn’t let him get to me like that. I usually don’t. Still any dig at you—.
Oh, maybe I should count myself lucky that he doesn’t press this button more often. Then, lately he is always pressing it, in a way. That is, for most of his childhood his narrow, angular features taunted me with my own reflection. But in the last