We Need to Talk About Kevin Read Online Free Page B

the strict way you folded your shirts, your regimens were adorable. But in more serious contexts, Franklin, I was less charmed. Orderliness readily slides to conformity over time.
    So I threatened to walk home by myself, and that did it; I was leaving for Sweden three days later, and you were greedy for my company. We roistered down the footpath into Riverside Park, where the ginkgoes were in flower, and the sloping lawn was littered with anorexics doing tai chi. Ebullient over getting away from my own friends, I stumbled.
    “You’re a drunk,” you said.
    “Two glasses!”
    You tsked. “Middle of the day.”
    “I should have made it three,” I said sharply. Your every pleasure rationed except television , I wished that sometimes you would let go, as you had in our salad days of courtship, arriving at my door with two pinot noirs, a six of St. Pauli Girl, and a lecherous leer that did not promise to hold off until we’d flossed.
    “Brian’s kids,” I introduced formally. “They make you want one?”
    “M-m-maybe. They’re cute. Then, I’m not the one who has to stuff the beasties in the sack when they want a cracker, Mr. Bunnikins, and 5 million drinks of water.”
    I understood. These talks of ours had a gameliness, and your opening play was noncommittal. One of us always got lodged into the role of parental party pooper, and I had rained on the progeny parade in our previous session: A child was loud, messy, constraining, and ungrateful. This time I bid for the more daring role: “At least if I got pregnant, something would happen .”
    “Obviously,” you said dryly. “You’d have a baby.”
    I dragged you down the walkway to the riverfront. “I like the idea of turning the page is all.”
    “That was inscrutable.”
    “I mean, we’re happy? Wouldn’t you say?”
    “Sure,” you concurred cautiously. “I guess so.” For you, our contentment didn’t bear scrutiny—as if it were a skittish bird, easily startled, and the moment one of us cried out Look at that beautiful swan! it would fly away.
    “Well, maybe we’re too happy.”
    “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I wish you could make me a little more miserable.”
    “Stop it. I’m talking about story. In fairy tales, ‘And they lived happily ever after’ is the last line.”
    “Do me a favor: Talk down to me.”
    Oh, you knew exactly what I meant. Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn’t tell well. And one of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story. I should know; I am in flight from my story every day, and it dogs me like a faithful stray. Accordingly, the one respect in which I depart from my younger self is that I now regard those people who have little or no story to tell themselves as terribly fortunate.
    We slowed by the tennis courts in the blaze of April sunlight, pausing to admire a powerful slice backhand through a gap in the green mesh windbreaks. “Everything seems so sorted out,” I lamented. “Wing and a Prayer has taken off so that the only thing that could really happen to me professionally is for the company to go belly-up. I could always make more money—but I’m a thrift-shop junkie, Franklin, and I don’t know what to do with it. Money bores me, and it’s starting to change the way we live in a way I’m not totally comfortable with. Plenty of people don’t have a kid because they can’t afford one. For me it would a relief to find something of consequence to spend it on.”
    “I’m not of consequence?”
    “You don’t want enough.”
    “New jump rope?”
    “Ten bucks.”
    “Well,” you conceded, “at least a kid would answer the Big Question.”
    I could be perverse, too. “What big question?”
    “You know,” you said lightly, and drew out with an emcee drawl, “the old e-e-existential dilemma.”
    I did not put my finger on why, but your Big Question left me unmoved. I far preferred my turn of the page .