We Need to Talk About Kevin (10 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)
Eager to participate, you had volunteered to give up booze for my pregnancy, though our baby would be no more bouncing should you forgo your predinner microbrew. So you began festively knocking back cranberry juice to beat the band. You seemed to relish the opportunity to prove how little drinking meant to you. I was annoyed.
Then, you were always captivated by self-sacrifice. However admirable, your eagerness to give your life over to another person may have been due in some measure to the fact that when your life was wholly in your lap you didn’t know what to do with it. Self-sacrifice was an easy way out. I know that sounds unkind. But I do believe that this desperation of yours—to rid yourself of yourself, if that is not too abstract—burdened our son hugely.
You remember that evening? We should have had so much to talk about, but we were awkward, halting. We were no longer Eva and Franklin, but Mommy and Daddy; this was our first meal as a
family
, a word and a concept about which I had always been uneasy. And I was short-tempered, discarding all the names you came up with, Steve and George and Mark, as “way too ordinary,” and you were hurt.
family
, a word and a concept about which I had always been uneasy. And I was short-tempered, discarding all the names you came up with, Steve and George and Mark, as “way too ordinary,” and you were hurt.
I couldn’t talk to you. I felt pent up, clogged. I wanted to say: Franklin, I’m not sure this is a good idea. You know in your third trimester they won’t even let you onto a plane? And I hate this whole rectitudinous
thing
, the keeping to a
good
diet and setting a
good
example and finding a
good
school . . .
thing
, the keeping to a
good
diet and setting a
good
example and finding a
good
school . . .
It was too late. We were supposed to be celebrating and I was supposed to be elated.
Frantic to recreate the longing for a “backup” that had got me into this, I roused the memory of the night you were stranded in the pine barrens—
barren
, had that set me off? But that May evening’s rash decision had been an illusion. I had made up my mind all right, but long before, back when I fell so hard and irrevocably for your guileless American smile, your heartbreaking faith in picnics. However weary I might have grown with writing up new countries, over time it is inevitable that food, drink, color, and trees—the very state of being alive is no longer fresh. If its shine had tarnished, this was still a life I loved, and one into which children didn’t readily fit. The single thing I loved more was Franklin Plaskett. You coveted so little; there was only one big-ticket item you wanted that was in my power to provide. How could I have denied you the light in your face when you lifted Brian’s squealing little girls?
barren
, had that set me off? But that May evening’s rash decision had been an illusion. I had made up my mind all right, but long before, back when I fell so hard and irrevocably for your guileless American smile, your heartbreaking faith in picnics. However weary I might have grown with writing up new countries, over time it is inevitable that food, drink, color, and trees—the very state of being alive is no longer fresh. If its shine had tarnished, this was still a life I loved, and one into which children didn’t readily fit. The single thing I loved more was Franklin Plaskett. You coveted so little; there was only one big-ticket item you wanted that was in my power to provide. How could I have denied you the light in your face when you lifted Brian’s squealing little girls?
With no bottle over which to linger, we went to bed on the early side. You were nervous about whether we were “supposed” to have sex, if it would hurt the baby, and I grew a little exasperated. I was already victimized, like some princess, by an organism the size of a pea. Me, I really wanted to have sex for the first time in weeks, since we could finally fuck because we wanted to get laid and not to do our bit for the race. You acquiesced. But you were depressingly tender.
Though I expected that my ambivalence would evanesce, this conflicted sensation grew only sharper, and therefore more secret. At last I should come clean. I think the ambivalence didn’t go away because it wasn’t what it seemed. It is not true that I was “ambivalent” about motherhood. You wanted to have a child. On balance, I did not. Added together, that seemed like ambivalence, but though we were a superlative couple, we were not the same person. I never did get you to like eggplant.
Eva
December 9, 2000
Dear Franklin,
I know I wrote only yesterday, but I now depend on this correspondence to debrief from Chatham. Kevin was in a particularly combative humor. Right off the bat he charged, “You never wanted to have me, did you?”
Before being impounded like a pet that bites, Kevin wasn’t given to asking me about myself, and I actually took the question as promising. Oh, he reached for it in dull restiveness, pacing his cage, but there’s something to be said for being bored
out of your mind
. He must have previously recognized that I had a life, in order to go about ruining it with such a sense of purpose. But now he had further appreciated that I had volition: I’d chosen to have a child and had harbored other aspirations that his arrival might have thwarted. This intuition was at such odds with the therapists’ diagnosis of “empathic deficiency” that I felt he deserved an honest reply.
out of your mind
. He must have previously recognized that I had a life, in order to go about ruining it with such a sense of purpose. But now he had further appreciated that I had volition: I’d chosen to have a child and had harbored other aspirations that his arrival might have thwarted. This intuition was at such odds with the therapists’ diagnosis of “empathic deficiency” that I felt he deserved an honest reply.
“I thought I did,” I said. “And your father, he wanted you—desperately.”
I looked away; Kevin’s expression of sleepy sarcasm was immediate. Perhaps I shouldn’t have cited, of all things, your desperation. Me, I loved your longing; I had personally profited from your insatiable loneliness. But children must find such hunger disquieting, and Kevin would routinely translate disquiet into contempt.
“You
thought you did
,” he said. “You changed your mind.”
thought you did
,” he said. “You changed your mind.”
“I thought I needed a change,” I said. “But no one needs a change for the worse.”
Kevin looked victorious. For years he has tempted me to be nasty. I remained factual. Presenting emotions as facts—which they are—affords a fragile defense.
“Motherhood was harder than I’d expected,” I explained. “I’d been used to airports, sea views, museums. Suddenly I was stuck in the same few rooms, with Lego.”
“But I went out of my way,” he said with a smile that lifted lifelessly as if by hooks, “to keep you entertained.”
“I’d anticipated mopping up vomit. Baking Christmas cookies. I couldn’t have expected—.” Kevin’s look dared me. “I couldn’t have expected that simply
forming an attachment
to you,” I phrased as diplomatically as I knew how, “would be so much work. I thought—.” I took a breath. “I thought that part came for free.”
forming an attachment
to you,” I phrased as diplomatically as I knew how, “would be so much work. I thought—.” I took a breath. “I thought that part came for free.”
“Free!” he jeered. “Waking up every morning isn’t free.”
“Not any more,” I conceded dolefully. Kevin’s and my experience of day-to-day life has converged. Time hangs off me like molting skin.
“Ever occur to you,” he said slyly, “maybe
I
didn’t want to have
you
?”
I
didn’t want to have
you
?”
“You wouldn’t have liked any other couple better. Whatever they did for a living, you’d think it was stupid.”
“Cheapskate travel guides? Scouting another banked turn for a Jeep Cherokee ad? Gotta admit, that’s
especially
stupid.”
especially
stupid.”
“See?” I exploded. “Honestly, Kevin—would
you
want you? If there is any justice, you’ll wake up one day with
yourself
next to your bed in a crib!”
you
want you? If there is any justice, you’ll wake up one day with
yourself
next to your bed in a crib!”
Rather than recoil or lash out, he went slack. This aspect of his, it’s more common to the elderly than to children: the eyes glaze and drop, the musculature goes sloppy. It’s an apathy so absolute that it’s like a hole you might fall in.
You think I was mean to him, and that’s why he withdrew. I don’t think so. I think he wants me to be mean to him the way other people pinch themselves to make sure they’re awake, and if anything he slackened in disappointment that here I was finally pitching a few halfheartedly injurious remarks and he felt nothing. Besides, I expect it was the image of “waking up with yourself” that did it, since that’s just what he does do, and why his every morning feels so costly. Franklin, I have never met anyone—and you do
meet
your own children—who found his existence more of a burden or indignity. If you have any notion that I’ve brutalized our boy into
low self-esteem
, think again. I saw that same sullen expression in his eyes when he was one year old. If anything, he thinks very well of himself, especially since becoming such a celebrity. There is an enormous difference between disliking yourself and simply not wanting to be here.
meet
your own children—who found his existence more of a burden or indignity. If you have any notion that I’ve brutalized our boy into
low self-esteem
, think again. I saw that same sullen expression in his eyes when he was one year old. If anything, he thinks very well of himself, especially since becoming such a celebrity. There is an enormous difference between disliking yourself and simply not wanting to be here.
In parting, I threw him a bone. “I did fight very hard to give you my last name.”
“Yeah, well, saved you trouble. The old
K-h-a . . .
?” he slurred. “Thanks to me, now everybody in the country knows how to spell it.”
K-h-a . . .
?” he slurred. “Thanks to me, now everybody in the country knows how to spell it.”
Did you know that Americans stare at pregnant women? In the low birthrate First World, gestation is a novelty, and in the days of T&A on every newsstand, real
pornography
—conjuring intrusively intimate visions of spread hams, incontinent seepage, that eely umbilical slither. Casting my own eye down Fifth Avenue as my belly swelled, I would register with incredulity: Every one of these people came from a woman’s cunt. In my head, I used the crudest word I could, to bring home the point. Like the purpose of breasts, it’s one of those glaring facts we tend to suppress.
pornography
—conjuring intrusively intimate visions of spread hams, incontinent seepage, that eely umbilical slither. Casting my own eye down Fifth Avenue as my belly swelled, I would register with incredulity: Every one of these people came from a woman’s cunt. In my head, I used the crudest word I could, to bring home the point. Like the purpose of breasts, it’s one of those glaring facts we tend to suppress.
Still, I once turned heads with a short skirt, and the flickered glances from strangers in shops began to get on my nerves. Along with the fascination, even enchantment on their faces, I also spotted the incidental shiver of revulsion.
You think that’s too strong. I don’t. Ever notice how many films portray pregnancy as infestation, as colonization by stealth?
Rosemary’s Baby
was just the beginning. In
Alien,
a foul extraterrestrial claws its way out of John Hurt’s belly. In
Mimic,
a woman gives birth to a two-foot maggot. Later, the
X-Files
turned bug-eyed aliens bursting gorily from human midsections into a running theme. In horror and sci-fi, the host is consumed or rent, reduced to husk or residue so that some nightmare creature may survive its shell.
Rosemary’s Baby
was just the beginning. In
Alien,
a foul extraterrestrial claws its way out of John Hurt’s belly. In
Mimic,
a woman gives birth to a two-foot maggot. Later, the
X-Files
turned bug-eyed aliens bursting gorily from human midsections into a running theme. In horror and sci-fi, the host is consumed or rent, reduced to husk or residue so that some nightmare creature may survive its shell.
I’m sorry, but I didn’t make these movies up, and any woman whose teeth have rotted, whose bones have thinned, whose skin has stretched, knows the humbling price of a nine-month freeloader. Those nature films of female salmon battling upstream to lay their eggs only to disintegrate—eyes filming, scales dropping—made me mad. The whole time I was pregnant with Kevin I was battling the idea of Kevin, the notion that I had demoted myself from driver to vehicle, from householder to house.
Physically, the experience was easier than I expected. The greatest affront of the first trimester was a watery thickening that easily passed as a weakness for Mars bars. My face filled out, beveling my androgynously angular features into the softer contours of a girl. My face was younger but, I thought, dumber looking.
I don’t know what took me so long to notice that you were simply assuming that our baby would take your surname, and even on the Christian name we weren’t like-minded. You’d propose
Leonard
or
Peter
. When I countered with
Engin
or
Garabet
—or
Selim
, after my paternal grandfather—you assumed the same tolerant expression I wore when Brian’s girls showed me their Cabbage Patch Kids. Finally you said, “You cannot possibly be proposing that I name my son
Garabet Plaskett
.”
Leonard
or
Peter
. When I countered with
Engin
or
Garabet
—or
Selim
, after my paternal grandfather—you assumed the same tolerant expression I wore when Brian’s girls showed me their Cabbage Patch Kids. Finally you said, “You cannot possibly be proposing that I name my son
Garabet Plaskett
.”
“Nnoo,” I said. “
Garabet Khatchadourian
. Has more of a ring.”
Garabet Khatchadourian
. Has more of a ring.”
“It has the ring of a kid who’s not related to me.”
“Funny, that’s exactly how
Peter Plaskett
sounds to me.”
Peter Plaskett
sounds to me.”
We were at the Beach House, that charming little bar around the corner on Beach Street, no longer extant I’m afraid, and rather wasted on my orange juice straight up, though they did serve a mean bowl of chili.
You drummed your fingers. “Can we at least nix
Plaskett-Khatchadourian
? Because once the hyphenated start marrying each other, kids’ll be going by whole phone books. And since somebody’s gotta lose, it simplest to stick with tradition.”
Plaskett-Khatchadourian
? Because once the hyphenated start marrying each other, kids’ll be going by whole phone books. And since somebody’s gotta lose, it simplest to stick with tradition.”
“According to
tradition
, women couldn’t own property until, in some states, the 1970s.
Traditionally
in the Middle East we walk around in a black sack and
traditionally
in Africa we get our clitorises carved out like a hunk of gristle—”
tradition
, women couldn’t own property until, in some states, the 1970s.
Traditionally
in the Middle East we walk around in a black sack and
traditionally
in Africa we get our clitorises carved out like a hunk of gristle—”
You stuffed my mouth with cornbread. “Enough of the lecture, babe. We’re not talking about female circumcision but our kid’s last name.”
“Men have always gotten to name children after themselves, while not doing
any of the work
.” Cornbread crumbs were sailing from my mouth. “Time to turn the tables.”
any of the work
.” Cornbread crumbs were sailing from my mouth. “Time to turn the tables.”
“Why turn them on me? Jesus, you’d think American men were pussy-whipped enough. You’re the one who complains they’re all quicheeating faggots who go to crying workshops.”
I folded my arms and brought out the heavy artillery. “My father was born in Dier-ez-Zor concentration camp. The camps were riddled with disease and the Armenians had hardly any food or even water—it’s amazing the baby survived, because his three brothers didn’t. His father, Selim, was shot. Two-thirds of my mother’s extended family, the Serafians, was so neatly obliterated that not even their stories have survived. I’m sorry to pull rank. But Anglo-Saxons are hardly an endangered species. My forebears were systematically exterminated, and no one ever even talks about it, Franklin!”
“A
million
and a half people!” you chimed in, gesticulating wildly. “Do you
realize
it was what the Young Turks did to the Armenians in 1915 that gave
Hitler
the
idea
for the
Holocaust
?”
million
and a half people!” you chimed in, gesticulating wildly. “Do you
realize
it was what the Young Turks did to the Armenians in 1915 that gave
Hitler
the
idea
for the
Holocaust
?”
I glared.
“Eva, your brother’s got two kids. There are a million Armenians in the U.S. alone. Nobody’s about to disappear.”
“But you care about your last name just because it’s yours. I care about mine—well, it seems more important.”
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