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 (6 page)
Yet in truth what you had described was closer to my pre-Franklin self. I was once an efficient little unit, like one of those travel toothbrushes that folds into a box. I know I tend to over-romanticize those times, though in the early days especially I had a fire under me. I was a kid, really. I’d initially gotten the idea for Wing and a Prayer halfway through my own first trip to Europe, for which I’d brought way too little cash. This notion of a bohemian travel guide gave me a sense of purpose in what was otherwise disintegrating into one long cup of coffee, and from then on I went everywhere with a tattered notebook, recording rates for single rooms, whether they had hot water or the staff spoke any English or the toilets backed up.
It’s easy to forget, now that AWAP has attracted so much competition, but in the mid-sixties globe-trotters were pretty much at the mercy of
The Blue Guide
, whose target audience was middle-aged and middle class. In 1966, when the first edition of
Western Europe on a Wing and a Prayer
went into a second printing almost overnight, I realized that I was onto something. I like to portray myself as shrewd, but we both know I was lucky. I couldn’t have anticipated the backpacking craze, and I wasn’t enough of an amateur demographer to have taken deliberate advantage of all those restless baby boomers coming of age at once, all on Daddy’s dime in an era of prosperity, but all optimistic about how far a few hundred dollars would take them in Italy and desperate for advice on how to make a trip Dad never wanted them to take in the first place last as long as possible. I mostly reasoned that the next explorer after me would be scared, the way I was scared, and nervous of being taken, the way I was sometimes taken, and if I was willing to get the food poisoning first I could make sure that at least our novice wayfarer didn’t stay up heaving on that first electric night overseas. I don’t mean that I was benevolent, only that I wrote the guide that I wished I’d been able to use myself.
The Blue Guide
, whose target audience was middle-aged and middle class. In 1966, when the first edition of
Western Europe on a Wing and a Prayer
went into a second printing almost overnight, I realized that I was onto something. I like to portray myself as shrewd, but we both know I was lucky. I couldn’t have anticipated the backpacking craze, and I wasn’t enough of an amateur demographer to have taken deliberate advantage of all those restless baby boomers coming of age at once, all on Daddy’s dime in an era of prosperity, but all optimistic about how far a few hundred dollars would take them in Italy and desperate for advice on how to make a trip Dad never wanted them to take in the first place last as long as possible. I mostly reasoned that the next explorer after me would be scared, the way I was scared, and nervous of being taken, the way I was sometimes taken, and if I was willing to get the food poisoning first I could make sure that at least our novice wayfarer didn’t stay up heaving on that first electric night overseas. I don’t mean that I was benevolent, only that I wrote the guide that I wished I’d been able to use myself.
You’re rolling your eyes. This lore is shopworn, and maybe it’s inevitable that the very things that first attract you to someone are the same things with which you later grow irritated. Bear with me.
You know that I was always horrified by the prospect of turning out like my mother. Funny, Giles and I only learned the term “agoraphobic” in our thirties, and I’ve always been perplexed by its strict definition, which I’ve looked up more than once: “fear of open or public spaces.” Not, from what I could tell, an apt description of her complaint. My mother wasn’t afraid of football stadiums, she was afraid to leave the house, and I got the impression she was just as panicked by enclosed spaces as by open ones, so long as the enclosed space did not happen to be 137 Enderby Avenue in Racine, Wisconsin. But there doesn’t seem to be a word for that (Enderbyphilia?), and at least when I refer to my mother as agoraphobic, people seem to understand that she orders in.
Jesus that’s ironic
, I’ve heard more times than I can count.
With all the places you’ve been?
Other people savor the symmetry of apparent opposites.
, I’ve heard more times than I can count.
With all the places you’ve been?
Other people savor the symmetry of apparent opposites.
But let me be candid. I
am
much like my mother. Maybe it’s because as a child I was always running errands for which I was too young and that therefore daunted me; I was sent out to locate new gaskets for the kitchen sink when I was eight years old. In pushing me to be her emissary while I was still so small, my mother managed to reproduce in me the same disproportionate anguish about minor interactions with the outside world that she herself felt at thirty-two.
am
much like my mother. Maybe it’s because as a child I was always running errands for which I was too young and that therefore daunted me; I was sent out to locate new gaskets for the kitchen sink when I was eight years old. In pushing me to be her emissary while I was still so small, my mother managed to reproduce in me the same disproportionate anguish about minor interactions with the outside world that she herself felt at thirty-two.
I can’t recall a single trip abroad that, up against it, I have truly wanted to take, that I haven’t in some way dreaded and wanted desperately to get out of. I was repeatedly forced out the door by a conspiracy of previous commitments: the ticket purchased, the taxi ordered, a host of reservations confirmed, and just to box myself in a little further I would always have talked up the journey to friends, before florid farewells. Even on the plane, I’d have been blissfully content for the wide-body to penetrate the stratosphere for all eternity. Landing was agony, finding my first night’s bed was agony, though the respite itself—my ad hoc replication of Enderby Avenue—was glorious. At length, I got hooked on this sequence of accelerating terrors culminating in a vertiginous plunge to my adoptive mattress. My whole life I have been making myself do things. I never went to Madrid, Franklin, out of appetite for paella, and every one of those research trips you imagined I used to slip the surly bonds of our domestic tranquillity was really a gauntlet I’d thrown down and compelled myself to pick up. If I was ever glad to have gone, I was never glad to go.
But over the years the aversion grew milder, and surmounting a mere annoyance is not so rich. Once I habituated to rising to my own challenge—to proving repeatedly that I was independent, competent, mobile, and grown-up—gradually the fear inverted: The one thing I dreaded more than another trip to Malaysia was staying home.
So I wasn’t only afraid of becoming my mother, but
a
mother. I was afraid of being the steadfast, stationary anchor who provides a jumpingoff place for another young adventurer whose travels I might envy and whose future is still unmoored and unmapped. I was afraid of being that archetypal figure in the doorway—frowzy, a little plump—who waves good-bye and blows kisses as a backpack is stashed in the trunk; who dabs her eyes with an apron ruffle in the fumes of departing exhaust; who turns forlornly to twist the latch and wash the too-few dishes by the sink as the silence in the room presses down like a dropped ceiling. More than of leaving, I had developed a horror of being left. How often I had done that to you, stranded you with the baguette crusts of our farewell dinner and swept off to my waiting taxi. I don’t believe I ever told you how sorry I was for putting you through all those little deaths of serial desertion, or commended you on constraining expression of your quite justifiable sense of abandonment to the occasional quip.
a
mother. I was afraid of being the steadfast, stationary anchor who provides a jumpingoff place for another young adventurer whose travels I might envy and whose future is still unmoored and unmapped. I was afraid of being that archetypal figure in the doorway—frowzy, a little plump—who waves good-bye and blows kisses as a backpack is stashed in the trunk; who dabs her eyes with an apron ruffle in the fumes of departing exhaust; who turns forlornly to twist the latch and wash the too-few dishes by the sink as the silence in the room presses down like a dropped ceiling. More than of leaving, I had developed a horror of being left. How often I had done that to you, stranded you with the baguette crusts of our farewell dinner and swept off to my waiting taxi. I don’t believe I ever told you how sorry I was for putting you through all those little deaths of serial desertion, or commended you on constraining expression of your quite justifiable sense of abandonment to the occasional quip.
Franklin, I was
absolutely terrified of having a child.
Before I got pregnant, my visions of child rearing—reading stories about cabooses with smiley faces at bedtime, feeding glop into slack mouths—all seemed like pictures of someone else. I dreaded confrontation with what could prove a closed, stony nature, my own selfishness and lack of generosity, the thick, tarry powers of my own resentment. However intrigued by a “turn of the page,” I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else’s story. And I believe that this terror is precisely what must have snagged me, the way a ledge will tempt one to jump off. The very insurmountability of the task, its very unattractiveness, was in the end what attracted me to it.
absolutely terrified of having a child.
Before I got pregnant, my visions of child rearing—reading stories about cabooses with smiley faces at bedtime, feeding glop into slack mouths—all seemed like pictures of someone else. I dreaded confrontation with what could prove a closed, stony nature, my own selfishness and lack of generosity, the thick, tarry powers of my own resentment. However intrigued by a “turn of the page,” I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else’s story. And I believe that this terror is precisely what must have snagged me, the way a ledge will tempt one to jump off. The very insurmountability of the task, its very unattractiveness, was in the end what attracted me to it.
Eva
December 2, 2000
Dear Franklin,
I’ve settled myself down in a little coffee shop in Chatham, which is why this is handwritten; then, you were always able to decipher my spidery scrawl on postcards, since I gave you a terrible lot of practice. The couple at the next table is having a knockdown drag-out over the application process for absentee ballots in Seminole County—the kind of minutiae that seems to consume the whole country right now, since everyone around me has turned into a procedural pedant. All the same, I bask in their heatedness as before a woodstove. My own apathy is bone chilling.
The Bagel Café is a homey establishment, and I don’t think the waitress will mind if I nurse a cup of coffee by my legal pad. Chatham, too, is homey, authentic—with the kind of Middle America quaintness that more well-to-do towns like Stockbridge and Lenox spend a great deal of money to feign. Its railroad station still receives trains. The commercial main drag sports the traditional lineup of secondhand bookstores (full of those Loren Estleman novels you devoured), bakeries with burnt-edged bran muffins, charity consignment shops, a cinema whose marquee says “theatre” on the parochial presumption that British spelling is more sophisticated, and a liquor store that, along with Taylor magnums for the locals, stocks some surprisingly pricey California zinfandels for out-oftowners. Manhattan residents with second homes keep this disheveled hamlet alive now that most local industries have closed—these summer folk and, of course, the new correctional facility on the outskirts of town.
I was thinking about you on the drive up, if that doesn’t go without saying. By way of counterpoint, I was trying to picture the kind of man I assumed I’d end up with before we met. The vision was doubtless a composite of the on-the-road boyfriends you always rode me about. Some of my romantic blow-ins were sweet, though whenever a woman describes a man as
sweet,
the dalliance is doomed.
sweet,
the dalliance is doomed.
If that assortment of cameo companions in Arles or Tel Aviv was anything to go by (sorry—“the losers”), I was destined to settle down with a stringy cerebral type whose skittering metabolism burns chickpea concoctions at a ferocious rate. Sharp elbows, prominent Adam’s apple, narrow wrists. A strict vegetarian. An anguished sort who reads Nietzsche and wears spectacles, alienated from his time and contemptuous of the automobile. An avid cyclist and hill walker. Professional marginalia—perhaps a potter, with a love of hardwoods and herb gardens, whose aspirations to an unpretentious life of physical toil and lingering sunsets on a porch are somewhat belied by the steely, repressed rage with which he pitches disappointing vases into an oil drum. A weakness for weed; brooding. An understated but ruthless sense of humor; a dry, distant laugh. Back massages. Recycling. Sitar music and a flirtation with Buddhism that is mercifully behind him. Vitamins and cribbage, water filters and French films. A pacifist with three guitars but no TV, and unpleasant associations with team sports from a picked-on childhood. A hint of vulnerability in the receding hairline at the temples; a soft, dark ponytail whisping down the spine. A sallow, olive complexion, almost sickly. Tender, whispering sex. Curious carved wooden talisman thonged around the neck that he will neither explain nor take off, even in the bath. Diaries that I mustn’t read, pasted up with sick squib clippings that illustrate what a terrible world we live in. (“Grisly Find: Police found assorted bits of a man’s body, including a pair of hands and two legs, in six luggage lockers in Tokyo’s central railway station. After inspecting all 2,500 coin lockers, police found a pair of buttocks in a black plastic garbage bag.”) A cynic about mainstream politics with an unabating ironic detachment from popular culture. And most of all? With fluent if prettily accented English, a
foreigner
.
foreigner
.
We would live in the countryside—in Portugal, or a little village in Central America—where a farm up the road sells raw milk, fresh-churned sweet butter, and fat, seedy pumpkins. Our stone cottage would writhe with creepers, its window boxes blushing red geraniums, and we would bake chewy ryes and carrot brownies for our rustic neighbors. An overeducated man, my fantasy partner would still root about the soil of our idyll for the seeds of his own discontent. And surrounded by natural bounty, grow spitefully ascetic.
Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knockknock jokes. Hot dogs—not even East 86th Street bratwurst, but mealy, greasy pig guts of that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six-packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds. Fucks hard and talks dirty; a private though unapologetic taste for porn. Mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction; a subscription to
National Geographic
. Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up
golf
. Delights in crappy snack foods of every description: Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies—you’re laughing, but I don’t eat them—anything that looks less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation from the farm. Bruce Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and your hair flying. Sings along, off-key—how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a tin ear? Beach Boys. Elvis—never lost your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast. Though not impossibly stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when Kevin went off them . . . (sorry). It just had to be noisy; you hadn’t any time for my Elgar, my Leo Kottke, though you made an exception for Aaron Copeland. You wiped your eyes brusquely at Tanglewood, as if to clear gnats, hoping I didn’t notice that “Quiet City” made you cry. And ordinary, obvious pleasures: the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Gardens, the Coney Island roller coaster, the Staten Island ferry, the Empire State Building. You were the only New Yorker I’d ever met who’d actually taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. You dragged me along once, and we were the only tourists on the boat who spoke English. Representational art—Edward Hopper. And my lord, Franklin, a
Republican
. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes. Physically, too, you were such a surprise—yourself a strong defense. There were times you worried that I thought you too heavy, I made so much of your size, though you weighed in at a pretty standard 165, 170, always battling those five pounds’ worth of cheddar widgets that would settle over your belt. But to me you were
enormous
. So sturdy and solid, so wide, so thick, none of that delicate wristy business of my imaginings. Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches. How lucky we are, when we’re spared what we think we want! How weary I might have grown of all those silly pots and fussy diets, and how I detest the whine of sitar music!
National Geographic
. Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up
golf
. Delights in crappy snack foods of every description: Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies—you’re laughing, but I don’t eat them—anything that looks less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation from the farm. Bruce Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and your hair flying. Sings along, off-key—how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a tin ear? Beach Boys. Elvis—never lost your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast. Though not impossibly stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when Kevin went off them . . . (sorry). It just had to be noisy; you hadn’t any time for my Elgar, my Leo Kottke, though you made an exception for Aaron Copeland. You wiped your eyes brusquely at Tanglewood, as if to clear gnats, hoping I didn’t notice that “Quiet City” made you cry. And ordinary, obvious pleasures: the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Gardens, the Coney Island roller coaster, the Staten Island ferry, the Empire State Building. You were the only New Yorker I’d ever met who’d actually taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. You dragged me along once, and we were the only tourists on the boat who spoke English. Representational art—Edward Hopper. And my lord, Franklin, a
Republican
. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes. Physically, too, you were such a surprise—yourself a strong defense. There were times you worried that I thought you too heavy, I made so much of your size, though you weighed in at a pretty standard 165, 170, always battling those five pounds’ worth of cheddar widgets that would settle over your belt. But to me you were
enormous
. So sturdy and solid, so wide, so thick, none of that delicate wristy business of my imaginings. Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches. How lucky we are, when we’re spared what we think we want! How weary I might have grown of all those silly pots and fussy diets, and how I detest the whine of sitar music!
Other books
Genesis by Karin Slaughter
Gathering Storm by Danann, Victoria
Second Chance for Love by Leona Jackson
Crunching Gravel by Robert Louis Peters
Boy Still Missing by John Searles
Taking Chances by Susan Lewis
In the Bad Boy's Bed by Sophia Ryan
The Museum of Literary Souls (A Short Story) by Connolly, John
Winter Brothers by Ivan Doig
