We Need to Talk About Kevin Read Online Free PDF

one by one everyone we know will start pitching their mortal coils in the drink. We’ll get old, and at some point you’re losing more friends than you make. Sure, we can go on holidays, finally giving in to suitcases with wheelies. We can eat more foods and slug more wines and have more sex. But—and don’t take this wrong—I’m worried that it all starts getting a little tired.”
    “One of us could always get pancreatic cancer,” you said pleasantly.
    “Yeah. Or run your pickup into a concrete mixer, and the plot thickens. But that’s my point. Everything I can think of happening to us from now on—not, you know, we get an affectionate postcard from France, but really happen-happen—is awful.”
    You kissed my hair. “Pretty morbid for such a gorgeous day.”
    For a few steps we walked in a half embrace, but our strides clashed; I settled for hooking your belt loop with my forefinger. “You know that euphemism, she’s expecting ? It’s apt. The birth of a baby, so long as it’s healthy, is something to look forward to. It’s a good thing, a big, good, huge event. And from thereon in, every good thing that happens to them happens to you, too. Of course, bad things, too,” I added hurriedly, “but also, you know, first steps, first dates, first places in sack races. Kids, they graduate, they marry, they have kids themselves—in a way, you get to do everything twice. Even if our kid had problems,” I supposed idiotically, “at least they wouldn’t be our same old problems . . . ”
    Enough. Recounting this dialogue is breaking my heart.
     
    Looking back, maybe my saying that I wanted more “story” was all by way of alluding to the fact that I wanted someone else to love. We never said such things outright; we were too shy. And I was nervous of ever intimating that you weren’t enough for me. In fact, now that we’re parted I wish I had overcome my own bashfulness and had told you more often how falling in love with you was the most astonishing thing that ever happened to me. Not just the falling, either, the trite and finite part, but being in love. Every day we spent apart, I would conjure that wide warm chest of yours, its pectoral hillocks firm and mounded from your daily 100 pushups, the clavicle valley into which I could nestle the crown of my head on those glorious mornings that I did not have to catch a plane. Sometimes I would hear you call my name from around a corner—“Ee-VA!”—often irascible, curt, demanding, calling me to heel because I was yours, like a dog , Franklin! But I was yours and I didn’t resent it and I wanted you to make that claim: “Eeeeeee-VAH!” always the emphasis on the second syllable, and there were some evenings I could hardly answer because my throat had closed with a rising lump. I would have to stop slicing apples for a crumble at the counter because a film had formed over my eyes and the kitchen had gone all liquid and wobbly and if I kept on slicing I would cut myself. You always shouted at me when I cut myself, it made you furious, and the irrationality of that anger would almost beguile me into doing it again.
    I never, ever took you for granted. We met too late for that; I was nearly thirty-three by then, and my past without you was too stark and insistent for me to find the miracle of companionship ordinary. But after I’d survived for so long on the scraps from my own emotional table, you spoiled me with a daily banquet of complicitous what-an-asshole looks at parties, surprise bouquets for no occasion, and fridge-magnet notes that always signed off “XXXX, Franklin.” You made me greedy. Like any addict worth his salt, I wanted more. And I was curious. I wondered how it felt when it was a piping voice calling, “Momm-MEEE?” from around that same corner. You started it—like someone who gives you a gift of a single carved ebony elephant, and suddenly you get this idea that it might be fun to start a collection .
     
    Eva
     
     
    P.S.