We Need to Talk About Kevin (35 page)
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)
“I’m with him all day,” I said. “It makes sense that I’d be more anxious than you for a break—”
“And I never cease to hear about what a terrible sacrifice you’ve been making.”
“I’m sorry that it means so little to you.”
“It’s not important it mean something to me. It should mean something to him.”
“Franklin, I don’t understand where—”
“And that’s typical isn’t it? You stay home
for him
to
impress me
. He just never enters in, does he?”
for him
to
impress me
. He just never enters in, does he?”
“
Where
is all this coming from? I only wanted to tell you that I’d like us to have another baby, and for you to be happy about it, or at least start getting used to the idea.”
Where
is all this coming from? I only wanted to tell you that I’d like us to have another baby, and for you to be happy about it, or at least start getting used to the idea.”
“You pick on him,” you said. With another cautionary glance at the tether-ball court up the hill, you had an air of just getting started. “You blame him for everything that goes wrong around this house.
And
at his kindergarten. You’ve complained about the poor kid at every stage of the game. First he cries too much, then he’s too quiet. He develops his own little language, and it’s annoying. He doesn’t play right—meaning the way
you
did. He doesn’t treat the toys you make him like museum pieces. He doesn’t pat
you
on the back every time he learns to spell a new word, and since the whole neighborhood isn’t clamoring to sign his dance card, you’re determined to paint him as a pariah. He develops one, yes, serious psychological problem having to do with his toilet training—it’s not that unusual, Eva, but it can be very painful for the kid—and you insist on interpreting it as some mean-spirited, personal contest between you and him. I’m relieved he seems to be over it, but with your attitude I’m not surprised it lasted a long time. I do what I can to make up for your—and I’m very sorry if this hurts your feelings, but I don’t know what else to call it—your coldness. But there’s no substitute for a mother’s love, and I am damned if I am going to let you freeze out another kid of mine.”
And
at his kindergarten. You’ve complained about the poor kid at every stage of the game. First he cries too much, then he’s too quiet. He develops his own little language, and it’s annoying. He doesn’t play right—meaning the way
you
did. He doesn’t treat the toys you make him like museum pieces. He doesn’t pat
you
on the back every time he learns to spell a new word, and since the whole neighborhood isn’t clamoring to sign his dance card, you’re determined to paint him as a pariah. He develops one, yes, serious psychological problem having to do with his toilet training—it’s not that unusual, Eva, but it can be very painful for the kid—and you insist on interpreting it as some mean-spirited, personal contest between you and him. I’m relieved he seems to be over it, but with your attitude I’m not surprised it lasted a long time. I do what I can to make up for your—and I’m very sorry if this hurts your feelings, but I don’t know what else to call it—your coldness. But there’s no substitute for a mother’s love, and I am damned if I am going to let you freeze out another kid of mine.”
I was stunned. “Franklin—”
“This discussion is
over
. I didn’t enjoy saying all that, and I still hope things can get better. I know you think you make an effort—well, maybe you do make what for you is an effort—but so far it’s not enough. Let’s all keep trying.—Hey, sport!” You swooped Kevin up as he sauntered in from the deck, raising him over your head as if posing for a Father’s Day ad. “At the end of your tether?”
over
. I didn’t enjoy saying all that, and I still hope things can get better. I know you think you make an effort—well, maybe you do make what for you is an effort—but so far it’s not enough. Let’s all keep trying.—Hey, sport!” You swooped Kevin up as he sauntered in from the deck, raising him over your head as if posing for a Father’s Day ad. “At the end of your tether?”
When you set him down, he said, “I wrapped the ball around 843 times.”
“That’s terrific! I bet next time you’ll be able to do it 844 times!”
You were trying to make an awkward transition after an argument that left me feeling run over by a truck, but I can’t say I care for the Hollywood gaga that’s expected of modern parents. Kevin’s own expression flickered with a suggestion of oh-brother.
“If I try really hard,” he said, deadpan. “Isn’t it great to have a goal?”
“Kevin.” I called him over and stooped. “I’m afraid your friend Trent has had an accident. It’s not too bad, and he’ll be all right. But maybe you and I could make him a get-well card—like the one Grandma Sonya made you when you hurt your arm.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, moving away. “He thinks he’s so cool with that bike.”
The AC must have been turned too high; I stood up and rubbed my arms. I didn’t remember mentioning anything about a bicycle.
Eva
FEBRUARY 1, 2001
Dear Franklin,
For some reason I imagine it will reassure you that I still get the
Times
. But I seem to have misplaced the grid I once imposed on it to determine what parts were worth reading. Famines and Hollywood divorces appear equally vital and equally trifling. Arbitrarily, I either devour the paper soup to nuts, or I toss it smooth and cool on the stack by the door. How right I was, in those days; how easily the United States can get on without me.
Times
. But I seem to have misplaced the grid I once imposed on it to determine what parts were worth reading. Famines and Hollywood divorces appear equally vital and equally trifling. Arbitrarily, I either devour the paper soup to nuts, or I toss it smooth and cool on the stack by the door. How right I was, in those days; how easily the United States can get on without me.
For the last two weeks I’ve tossed them unread, for if memory serves, the earnest pomp of presidential inaugurations left me cold even when I had clear enthusiasms and aversions. Capriciously, this morning I read everything, including an article about American workers’ excessive overtime—and perhaps it
is
interesting, though I couldn’t say, that the Land of the Free prefers work to play. I read about a young electrical lineman who would soon have been married, and who in his eagerness to salt away funds for his family-to-be had slept only five hours in two and a half days. He had been climbing up and down poles for twenty-four hours straight:
is
interesting, though I couldn’t say, that the Land of the Free prefers work to play. I read about a young electrical lineman who would soon have been married, and who in his eagerness to salt away funds for his family-to-be had slept only five hours in two and a half days. He had been climbing up and down poles for twenty-four hours straight:
Taking a break for breakfast on Sunday morning, he got yet another call.At about noon, he climbed a 30-foot pole, hooked on his safety straps and reached for a 7,200-volt cable without first putting on his insulating gloves. There was a flash, and Mr. Churchill was hanging motionless by his straps. His father, arriving before the ladder-truck did and thinking his son might still be alive, stood at the foot of the pole for more than an hour begging for somebody to bring his boy down.
I have no strong feelings about overtime; I’m acquainted with no electrical linemen. I only know that this image—of a father pleading with onlookers themselves as powerless as he, while his hardworking son creaked in the breeze like a hanged man—made me cry. Fathers and sons? Grief and misspent diligence? There are connections. But I also wept for that young man’s real father.
You see, it was drilled into me since I could talk that 1.5 million of my people were slaughtered by Turks; my own father was killed in a war against the worst of ourselves, and in the very month I was born, we were driven to use the worst of ourselves to defeat it. Since
Thursday
was the slimy garnish on this feast of snakes, I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself hard of heart. Instead, I’m easily moved, even mawkish. Maybe my expectations of my fellows have been reduced to so base a level that the smallest kindness overwhelms me for being, like
Thursday
itself, so unnecessary. Holocausts do not amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me. And Franklin, I know you feel otherwise, but Kevin does not amaze me. I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a teenager runs two blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile with my change, though my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their owners, strangers who furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other’s houseplants—these things amaze me. Celia amazed me.
Thursday
was the slimy garnish on this feast of snakes, I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself hard of heart. Instead, I’m easily moved, even mawkish. Maybe my expectations of my fellows have been reduced to so base a level that the smallest kindness overwhelms me for being, like
Thursday
itself, so unnecessary. Holocausts do not amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me. And Franklin, I know you feel otherwise, but Kevin does not amaze me. I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a teenager runs two blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile with my change, though my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their owners, strangers who furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other’s houseplants—these things amaze me. Celia amazed me.
As you instructed, I never raised the matter again. And I took no relish in deceiving you. But the eerie certainty that descended in August never lifted, and you’d left me no choice.
Kevin’s cast had been removed two weeks earlier, but it was as of Trent Corley’s bike accident that I stopped feeling guilty. Just like that. There was no equivalence between what I had done and what I would do—it was totally irrational—but still I seemed to have arrived at the perfect antidote or penance. I would put myself to the test. I was not at all sure that I would pass a second sitting.
You did notice I’d become “a horny little beastie,” and you seemed glad of a desire that, though we never alluded to the abatement outright, had sadly ebbed. With one or the other of us yawning theatrically before bed “a little beat,” we had slid from having sex almost nightly to the American average of once a week. My rekindled passion was no contrivance. I did want you, more urgently than in years, and the more we made love the more insatiable I felt during the day, unable to sit still, rubbing my inside thigh with a pencil at my desk. I, too, was glad of evidence that we had not yet sunk irretrievably into the mechanical bedtime rut that drives so many spouses to the arms of strangers at lunch.
For ever since we’d had a little boy sleeping down the hall, you’d so turned down the volume in bed that I had often to interrupt, “What? ... Sorry?” Talking dirty by semaphore was too much effort, and at length we’d both withdrawn to private sexual Imax. Unembellished by your improvisations—and you had a gift for depravity; what a shame to let such talent lie fallow—my own fantasies had come to bore me, and I’d given over to floating pictures instead, rarely erotic in any literal sense, and always dominated by a certain texture and hue. But over time the visions had grown corrosive, like close-ups of a scab or geological illustrations of dried magma. Other nights I’d been afflicted by flashes of filthy diapers and taut, undescended testicles, so you can understand why I might have contributed to reducing our schedule to once a week. Perhaps worst of all, the vibrant scarlets and ceruleans that once permeated my head when we made love in our childless days had gradually muddied and lost their luster, until the miasma on the inside of my eyelids churned with the furious pitch and umber of the drawings on our refrigerator door.
Once I started leaving my diaphragm in its sky-blue case, the vista in my mind during sex went light. Where my visual perimeters had once closed in, now I saw great distances, as if gazing from Mt. Ararat or skimming the Pacific in a glider. I peered down long hallways that shimmered endlessly to the vanishing point, their marble parquet blazing, sunlight pouring in windows from either side. Everything I envisioned was bright: wedding dresses, cloudscapes, fields of edelweiss. Please don’t laugh at me—I know what I’m describing sounds like a tampon commercial. But it was beautiful. I felt, at last, transported. My mind opened up, where before my head had seemed to be spelunking into an ever narrower, more dimly lit hole. These wide-screen projections weren’t mushy soft-focus, either, but sharp and vivid and I remembered them when we were through. I slept like a baby. Rather, like
some
babies, as I was soon to discover.
some
babies, as I was soon to discover.
I was obviously not at my most fertile, and it did take a year. But when I finally missed a period the following fall, I started to sing. Not show tunes this time, but the Armenian folk songs with which my mother had serenaded Giles and me when she tucked us in for the night—like “Soode Soode” (“It’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie, everything’s a lie; in this world, everything’s a lie!”). When I discovered that I’d forgotten some of the words, I called her and asked if she might write them out. She was delighted to oblige, since as far as Mother knew, I was still the willful little girl who decried her Armenian lessons as burdensome extra homework, and she inscribed my favorites—Komitas Vardapet’s “Kele Kele,” “Kujn Ara,” and “Gna Gna”—inside greeting cards pen-and-inked with mountain village scenes and patterns from Armenian carpets.
Kevin noticed my transformation, and while he mightn’t have savored his mother groveling about the house like a worm, he was no better pleased when she burst her cocoon as a butterfly. He hung back sullenly and carped, “You sing out of tune” or commanded, reciting a line he had picked up from his multiethnic primary school, “Why don’t you speak
English
.” I told him lightly that Armenian folk songs were
polyphonic
, and when he pretended to understand, I asked if he knew what that meant. “It means stupid,” he said. I volunteered to teach him a song or two, reminding him, “You’re Armenian, too, you know,” but he differed. “I’m
American
,” he asserted, using the derisive tone of stating the obvious, like “I’m a person” and not an aardvark.
English
.” I told him lightly that Armenian folk songs were
polyphonic
, and when he pretended to understand, I asked if he knew what that meant. “It means stupid,” he said. I volunteered to teach him a song or two, reminding him, “You’re Armenian, too, you know,” but he differed. “I’m
American
,” he asserted, using the derisive tone of stating the obvious, like “I’m a person” and not an aardvark.
Something was up. Mommer wasn’t slumping and shuffling and talking in a peewee voice anymore, yet even pre-broken-arm Mommer had not made a reappearance: the brisk, rather formal woman who marched through the paces of motherhood like a soldier on parade. No, this Mommer purled about her duties like a bubbling brook, and any number of stones hurled at her eddies sank with a harmless rattle to her bed. Apprised that her son thought all his second-grade classmates were “retards” and everything they studied he “knew already,” this Mommer didn’t remonstrate that he would
soon find out he didn’t know everything;
she didn’t abjure him not to say
retard.
She just laughed.
soon find out he didn’t know everything;
she didn’t abjure him not to say
retard.
She just laughed.
Although an alarmist by nature, I didn’t even get bent out of shape about the escalating threats issuing from the State Department over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. “You’re usually so dramatic about these things,” you remarked in November. “Aren’t you
worried
?” No, I wasn’t worried. About anything.
worried
?” No, I wasn’t worried. About anything.
It was after I’d missed my third cycle that Kevin started accusing me of getting fat. He’d poke at my stomach and jeer, “You’re
giant!
” Commonly vain about my figure, I concurred cheerfully, “That’s right, Mommer’s a big pig.”
giant!
” Commonly vain about my figure, I concurred cheerfully, “That’s right, Mommer’s a big pig.”
“You know, you may have gained just a bit around the waist,” you remarked finally one night in December. “Maybe we should take it easy on the spuds, huh? Could stand to drop a couple pounds myself.”
“Mmm,” I hummed, and I practically had to put my fist in my mouth to keep from laughing. “I don’t mind a little extra weight. All the better for throwing it around.”
“Jesus, what’s this,
maturity
? Usually if I suggest you’ve gained an ounce you go ape-shit!” You brushed your teeth, then joined me in bed. You picked up your mystery but only drummed the cover, sidling your other hand to a swollen breast. “Maybe you’re right,” you murmured. “A little more Eva is pretty sexy.” Slipping the book to the floor, you turned toward me and lifted an eyebrow. “Is it in?”
maturity
? Usually if I suggest you’ve gained an ounce you go ape-shit!” You brushed your teeth, then joined me in bed. You picked up your mystery but only drummed the cover, sidling your other hand to a swollen breast. “Maybe you’re right,” you murmured. “A little more Eva is pretty sexy.” Slipping the book to the floor, you turned toward me and lifted an eyebrow. “Is it in?”
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