Read We Need to Talk About Kevin Online
Authors: Lionel Shriver
Tags: #Fiction, #Psychological, #Teenage Boys, #Epistolary Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Massacres, #School Shootings, #High Schools, #New York (State)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2 page)
Yet I do hope that you’re not feeling sorry for me; it’s not my intention that you do. I might have found more palatial accommodation, if that’s what I wanted. I like it here, in a way. It’s unserious, toy. I live in a dollhouse. Even the furniture is out of scale. The dining table strikes chesthigh, which makes me feel underage, and the little bedside table on which I have perched this laptop is much too low for typing—about the right height for serving coconut cookies and pineapple juice to kindergartners.
Maybe this askew, juvenile atmosphere helps to explain why yesterday, in a presidential election, I didn’t vote. I simply forgot. Everything around me seems to take place so far away. And now rather than pose a firm counterpoint to my dislocation, the country seems to have joined me in the realm of the surreal. The votes are tallied. But as in some Kafka tale, no one seems to know who won.
And I have this dozen eggs—what’s left of them. I’ve emptied the remains into a bowl and fished out the shards of shell. If you were here I might whip us up a nice frittata, with diced potato, cilantro, that one teaspoon of sugar that’s the secret. Alone, I’ll slop them in a skillet, scramble, and sullenly pick. But I will eat them all the same. There was something about Mary’s gesture that I found, in an inchoate sort of way, rather elegant.
Food revulsed me at first. Visiting my mother in Racine, I turned green before her stuffed dolma, though she’d spent all day blanching grape leaves and rolling the lamb and rice filling into neat parcels; I reminded her they could be frozen. In Manhattan, when I scurried past the 57th Street deli on the way to Harvey’s law office, the peppery smell of pastrami fat would flip my stomach. But the nausea passed, and I missed it. When after four or five months I began to get hungry—ravenous, in fact—the appetite struck me as unseemly. So I continued to act the part of a woman who’d lost interest in food.
But after about a year, I faced the fact that the theater was wasted. If I grew cadaverous, no one cared. What did I expect, that you would wrap my rib cage with those enormous hands in which horses must be measured, lifting me overhead with the stern reproach that is every Western woman’s sly delight, “You’re too thin”?
So now I eat a croissant with my coffee every morning, picking up every flake with a moistened forefinger. Methodically chopping cabbage occupies a portion of these long evenings. I have even declined, once or twice, those few invitations out that still jangle my phone, usually friends from abroad who e-mail from time to time, but whom I haven’t seen for years. Especially if they don’t know, and I can always tell; innocents sound too roisterous, whereas initiates begin with a deferential stutter and a hushed, churchy tone. Obviously I don’t want to recite the story. Nor do I covet the mute commiseration of friends who
don’t know what to say
and so leave me to spill my guts by way of making conversation. But what really drives me to make my apologies about how “busy” I am is that I am terrified we will both order a salad and the bill will arrive and it will only be 8:30 or 9:00 at night and I will go home to my tiny duplex and have nothing to chop.
don’t know what to say
and so leave me to spill my guts by way of making conversation. But what really drives me to make my apologies about how “busy” I am is that I am terrified we will both order a salad and the bill will arrive and it will only be 8:30 or 9:00 at night and I will go home to my tiny duplex and have nothing to chop.
It’s funny, after so long on the road for Wing and a Prayer—a different restaurant every night, where waiters speak Spanish or Thai, whose menus list seviche or dog—that I should have grown so fixated on this fierce routine. Horribly, I remind myself of my mother. But I cannot break with this narrow sequence (square of cheese or six to seven olives; breast of chicken, chop, or omelet; hot vegetable; single vanilla sandwich cookie; no more wine than will finish exactly half the bottle) as if I am walking a balance beam, and with one step off I will topple. I have had to disallow snow peas altogether because their preparation is insufficiently arduous.
Anyway, even with the two of us estranged, I knew you would worry about whether I was eating. You always did. Thanks to Mary Woolford’s feeble revenge this evening, I am amply fed. Not all of our neighbors’ antics have proved so anodyne.
Those gallons of crimson paint splashed all over the front porch, for example, when I was still living in our nouveau riche ranch house (that’s what it was, Franklin, whether or not you like the sound of it—a
ranch house
) on Palisades Parade. Over the windows, the front door. They came in the night, and by the time I woke the next morning the paint had almost dried. I thought at the time, only a month or so after—whatever am I going to call that Thursday?—that I couldn’t be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that’s a common conceit, that you’ve already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.
ranch house
) on Palisades Parade. Over the windows, the front door. They came in the night, and by the time I woke the next morning the paint had almost dried. I thought at the time, only a month or so after—whatever am I going to call that Thursday?—that I couldn’t be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that’s a common conceit, that you’ve already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.
As I turned the corner from the kitchen into the living room that morning, I recognized this notion that I was impervious for codswallop. I gasped. The sun was streaming in the windows, or at least through the panes not streaked with paint. It also shone through in spots where the paint was thinnest, casting the off-white walls of that room in the lurid red glow of a garish Chinese restaurant.
I’d always made it a policy, one you admired, to face what I feared, though this policy was conceived in days when my fears ran to losing my way in a foreign city—child’s play. What I would give now to return to the days when I’d no idea what lay in wait (
child’s play
itself, for example). Still, old habits die hard, so rather than flee back to our bed and draw up the covers, I resolved to survey the damage. But the front door stuck, glued shut with thick crimson enamel. Unlike latex, enamel isn’t water soluble. And enamel is expensive, Franklin. Someone made a serious investment. Of course, our old neighborhood has any number of deficiencies, but one of them has never been money.
child’s play
itself, for example). Still, old habits die hard, so rather than flee back to our bed and draw up the covers, I resolved to survey the damage. But the front door stuck, glued shut with thick crimson enamel. Unlike latex, enamel isn’t water soluble. And enamel is expensive, Franklin. Someone made a serious investment. Of course, our old neighborhood has any number of deficiencies, but one of them has never been money.
So I went out the side door and around to the front in my robe. Taking in our neighbors’ artwork, I could feel my face set in the same “impassive mask” the
New York Times
described from the trial. The
Post,
less kindly, depicted my expression throughout as “defiant,” and our local
Journal News
went even further: “From Eva Khatchadourian’s stony implacability, her son might have done nothing more egregious than dip a pigtail in an inkwell.” (I grant that I stiffened in court, squinting and sucking my cheeks against my molars; I remember grasping at one of your tough-guy mottoes, “Don’t let ’em see you sweat.” But Franklin, “defiant”? I was trying not to cry.)
New York Times
described from the trial. The
Post,
less kindly, depicted my expression throughout as “defiant,” and our local
Journal News
went even further: “From Eva Khatchadourian’s stony implacability, her son might have done nothing more egregious than dip a pigtail in an inkwell.” (I grant that I stiffened in court, squinting and sucking my cheeks against my molars; I remember grasping at one of your tough-guy mottoes, “Don’t let ’em see you sweat.” But Franklin, “defiant”? I was trying not to cry.)
The effect was quite magnificent, if you had a taste for the sensational, which by that point I certainly didn’t. The house looked as if its throat were slit. Splashed in wild, gushing Rorschachs, the hue had been chosen so meticulously—deep, rich, and luscious, with a hint of purplish blue—that it might have been specially mixed. I thought dully that had the culprits requested this color rather than pulled it off the shelf, the police might be able to track them down.
I wasn’t about to walk into a police station again unless I had to.
My kimono was thin, the one you gave me for our first anniversary back in 1980. Meant for summer, it was the only wrap I had from you, and I wouldn’t reach for anything else. I’ve thrown so much away, but nothing you gave me or left behind. I admit that these talismans are excruciating. That is why I keep them. Those bullying therapeutic types would claim that my cluttered closets aren’t “healthy.” I beg to differ. In contrast to the cringing, dirty pain of Kevin, of the paint, the criminal and civil trials, this pain is
wholesome
. Much belittled in the sixties, wholesomeness is a property I have come to appreciate as surprisingly scarce.
wholesome
. Much belittled in the sixties, wholesomeness is a property I have come to appreciate as surprisingly scarce.
The point is, clutching that soft blue cotton and assessing the somewhat slapdash paint job that our neighbors had seen fit to sponsor free of charge, I was cold. It was May, but crisp, with a whipping wind. Before I found out for myself, I might have imagined that in the aftermath of personal apocalypse, the little bothers of life would effectively vanish. But it’s not true. You still feel chills, you still despair when a package is lost in the mail, and you still feel irked to discover you were shortchanged at Starbucks. It might seem, in the circumstances, a little embarrassing for me to continue to need a sweater or a muff, or to object to being cheated of a dollar and fifty cents. But since that
Thursday
my whole life has been smothered in such a blanket of embarrassment that I have chosen to find these passing pinpricks solace instead, emblems of a surviving propriety. Being inadequately dressed for the season, or chafing that in a Wal-Mart the size of a cattle market I cannot locate a single box of kitchen matches, I glory in the emotionally commonplace.
Thursday
my whole life has been smothered in such a blanket of embarrassment that I have chosen to find these passing pinpricks solace instead, emblems of a surviving propriety. Being inadequately dressed for the season, or chafing that in a Wal-Mart the size of a cattle market I cannot locate a single box of kitchen matches, I glory in the emotionally commonplace.
Picking my way to the side door again, I puzzled over how a band of marauders could have assaulted this structure so thoroughly while I slept unawares inside. I blamed the heavy dose of tranquilizers I was taking every night (please don’t say anything, Franklin, I know you don’t approve), until I realized that I was picturing the scene all wrong. It was a month later, not a day. There were no jeers and howls, no ski masks and sawn-off shotguns. They came in stealth. The only sounds were broken twigs, a muffled thump as the first full can slapped our lustrous mahogany door, the lulling oceanic lap of paint against glass, a tiny rat-a-tat-tat as spatters splattered, no louder than fat rain. Our house had not been spurted with the Day-Glo spray of spontaneous outrage but slathered with a hatred that had reduced until it was thick and savorous, like a fine French sauce.
You’d have insisted we hire someone else to clean it off. You were always keen on this splendid American penchant for specialization, whereby there was an expert for every want, and you sometimes thumbed the Yellow Pages just for fun. “Paint Removers: Crimson enamel.” But so much was made in the papers about how rich we were, how Kevin had been spoiled. I didn’t want to give Gladstone the satisfaction of sneering, look, she can just hire one more minion to clean up the mess, like that expensive lawyer. No, I made them watch me day after day, scraping by hand, renting a sandblaster for the bricks. One evening I glimpsed my reflection after a day’s toil—clothing smeared, fingernails creased, hair flecked—and shrieked. I’d looked like this once before.
A few crevices around the door may still gleam with a ruby tint; deep in the crags of those faux-antique bricks may yet glisten a few drops of spite that I was unable to reach with the ladder. I wouldn’t know. I sold that house. After the civil trial, I had to.
I had expected to have trouble unloading the property. Surely superstitious buyers would shy away when they found out who owned the place. But that just goes to show once again how poorly I understood my own country. You once accused me of lavishing all my curiosity on “Third World shitholes,” while what was arguably the most extraordinary empire in the history of mankind was staring me in the face. You were right, Franklin. There’s no place like home.
As soon as the property was listed, the bids tumbled in. Not because the bidders didn’t know; because they did. Our house sold for well more than it was worth—over $3 million. In my naïveté, I hadn’t grasped that the property’s very notoriety was its selling point. While poking about our pantry, apparently couples on the climb were picturing gleefully in their minds’ eyes the crowning moment of their housewarming dinner party.
[Ting-ting!] Listen up, folks. I’m gonna propose a toast, but first, you’re not gonna believe who we bought this spread from. Ready?
Eva Khatchadourian
. . . . Familiar? You bet. Where’d we move to, anyway? Gladstone! ... Yeah,
that
Khatchadourian, Pete, among all the Khatchadourians you know? Christ, guy, little slow.
Eva Khatchadourian
. . . . Familiar? You bet. Where’d we move to, anyway? Gladstone! ... Yeah,
that
Khatchadourian, Pete, among all the Khatchadourians you know? Christ, guy, little slow.
..
. That’s right, “Kevin.” Wild, huh? My kid Lawrence has his room. Tried one on the other night, too. Said he had to stay up with me to watch
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
because his room was “haunted” by “Kevin Ketchup.” Had to disappoint the kid. Sorry, I said, Kevin Ketchup can’t no way be haunting your bedroom when the worthless little bastard’s all too alive and well in some kiddie prison upstate. Up to me, man, that scumbag would’ve got the chair.... No, it wasn’t quite as bad as Columbine. What was it, ten, honey? Nine, right, seven kids, two adults. The teacher he whacked was like, this brat’s big champion or something, too. And I don’t know about blaming videos, rock music. We grew up with rock music, didn’t we? None of us went on some killing frenzy at our high school. Or take Lawrence. That little guy loves blood-and-guts TV, and no matter how graphic he doesn’t flinch. But his rabbit got run over? He cried for a week. They know the difference.
. That’s right, “Kevin.” Wild, huh? My kid Lawrence has his room. Tried one on the other night, too. Said he had to stay up with me to watch
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
because his room was “haunted” by “Kevin Ketchup.” Had to disappoint the kid. Sorry, I said, Kevin Ketchup can’t no way be haunting your bedroom when the worthless little bastard’s all too alive and well in some kiddie prison upstate. Up to me, man, that scumbag would’ve got the chair.... No, it wasn’t quite as bad as Columbine. What was it, ten, honey? Nine, right, seven kids, two adults. The teacher he whacked was like, this brat’s big champion or something, too. And I don’t know about blaming videos, rock music. We grew up with rock music, didn’t we? None of us went on some killing frenzy at our high school. Or take Lawrence. That little guy loves blood-and-guts TV, and no matter how graphic he doesn’t flinch. But his rabbit got run over? He cried for a week. They know the difference.
We’re raising him to know what’s right. Maybe it seems unfair, but you really gotta wonder about the parents.
Eva
November 15, 2000
Dear Franklin,
You know, I try to be polite. So when my coworkers—that’s right, I work, at a Nyack travel agency, believe it or not, and gratefully, too—when they start foaming at the mouth about the disproportionate number of votes for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach, I wait so patiently for them to finish that in a way I have become a treasured commodity: I am the only one in the office who will allow them to finish a sentence. If the atmosphere of this country has suddenly become carnival-like, festive with fierce opinion, I do not feel invited to the party. I don’t care who’s president.
Yet too vividly I can see this last week through the lens of my private if-only. I would have voted for Gore, you for Bush. We’d have had heated enough exchanges before the election, but this—this—oh, it would have been marvelous. Loud, strident fist pounding and door slamming, me reciting choice snippets from the
New York Times
, you furiously underscoring op-eds in the
Wall Street Journal
—suppressing smiles the whole time. How I miss getting exercised over bagatelle.
New York Times
, you furiously underscoring op-eds in the
Wall Street Journal
—suppressing smiles the whole time. How I miss getting exercised over bagatelle.
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