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 (39 page)
Anyway, it’s a Sunday afternoon, and I have been forcing myself to read a few. (Do you realize that I could sell these? I don’t mean for spare change, either. Apparently this is just the kind of ephemera that gets auctioned on eBay for thousands, along with the passably competent landscapes of Adolph Hitler.) Their innocent physical manifestation is disarming: the fat, characterless printing, the fragile yellowed paper. How prosaic, I thought at first; I’ll learn nothing but that, like a good boy, he did his homework. But as I read on, I grew more compelled, drawn in with the nervous fascination that leads one to poke and squeeze at an emerging cyst or a burrowing ingrown hair.
I’ve concluded that Kevin was prone to snow his schoolmasters less with that scrubbed-behind-the-ears Partridge-family buoyancy with which he greeted your return from work than with an eerie lack of affect. Kevin’s papers always follow the assignment excessively to the letter; he adds nothing, and whenever they are marked down, it is usually for being too short. There is nothing wrong with them. They are factually correct. Their spelling is accurate. On those rare occasions his teachers jot vague notes about how he might “take a more personal approach to the material,” they are unable to pinpoint anything in his essays that is precisely lacking:
Abraham Lincoln was president. Abraham Lincoln had a beard. Abraham Lincoln freed the African-American slaves. In school we study great African-American Americans for a whole month. There are many great African-American Americans. Last year we studied the same African-American Americans during African-American History Month. Next year we will study the same African-American Americans during African-American History Month. Abraham Lincoln was shot.
If you don’t mind my weighing in on Kevin’s side for once, you and his teachers thought all through primary school that he needed help on his organizational skills, but I’ve decided that his organizational skills were razor sharp. From first grade on, those assignments demonstrate an intuitive appreciation for the arbitrary, for the numbing powers of repetition, and for the absurdist possibilities of the non sequitur. More, his robotic declaratives do not indicate a failure to master the niceties of prose style; they
are
his prose style, refined with all the fastidiousness that attended H. L. Mencken’s. Uneasy intimations to us at parent-teacher conferences that Kevin “didn’t seem to put his heart into his schoolwork” to the contrary, Kevin
did
put his heart into his work, his heart and soul. Check out this fourth-grade rendition of the assignment, “Meet My Mother”:
are
his prose style, refined with all the fastidiousness that attended H. L. Mencken’s. Uneasy intimations to us at parent-teacher conferences that Kevin “didn’t seem to put his heart into his schoolwork” to the contrary, Kevin
did
put his heart into his work, his heart and soul. Check out this fourth-grade rendition of the assignment, “Meet My Mother”:
My mother goes somewhere else. My mother sleeps in a different bed. My mother eats different food. My mother comes home. My mother sleeps at home. My mother eats at home.My mother tells other people to go somewhere else. Other people sleep in a different bed. Other people eat different food. Other people come home. Other people sleep at home. Other people eat at home. My mother is rich.
I know what you’re thinking, or I know what you thought then. That it was Kevin’s surly, remote pose with me that was fake, while with you he could relax and be his sprightly, chipper self. That the pervasive stiltedness of his written work revealed a commonplace gap between his thoughts and his powers of expression. I’m willing to grant that his closed condescension toward me was an artifice, even if its
biding-time
quality, tracing back to my appropriation of his squirt gun, felt true. But neither the Beaver Cleaver nor the windup schoolboy straight man was any less bogus. Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
biding-time
quality, tracing back to my appropriation of his squirt gun, felt true. But neither the Beaver Cleaver nor the windup schoolboy straight man was any less bogus. Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.
I just glanced over what I’ve written so far and realized that I was being awfully summary about a solid seven years of our lives together; moreover, that the abundance of that summary concerned Celia. I’m ashamed of this, I really am, but while I can remember how we spent every one of Celia’s birthdays during those years, my memories of Kevin from the age of eight to about fourteen tend to blur.
Oh, a few bits and pieces stick out, especially my disastrous attempt to impart the enthusiasms of my professional life by taking you and thirteen-year old Kevin (you’ll recall that Celia, too young, stayed with my mother) to Vietnam. I deliberately chose that country because it’s a place that to any American, at least of our generation, inescapably means something, saving it from the dissociated Just Somewhere Else and Who Cares feeling that foreign countries so easily induce when you visit them for the first time, and to which Kevin would naturally fall prey. Too, Vietnam had only recently opened up to tourism, so I couldn’t resist the opportunity on my own account. But I grant that this sense of connectedness, of guilty intimacy with rice paddies and wizened old women in conical straw hats, would pertain mostly to you and me. I’d marched on Washington in my twenties, while you had actually begged the Draft Board, if to no avail, not to reject you because of flat feet; with Saigon already fallen three years before, we had some bracing knockdown drag-outs over the war when we met. Kevin had no such associations, so maybe despite my intentions to the contrary, I had indeed dragged him to Just Somewhere Else and Who Cares. Nonetheless, I’ll never forget my stinging humiliation when our son—if nothing else, ever a quick study—sauntered through the sea of scooters in Hanoi telling the “gooks” to get out of the way.
However, one other memory rises eidetically above the blur, and it is not, Franklin, one more mean, slanderous example of how our son was heartless from birth.
I refer to that two weeks when he got so sick. He was ten. For a while, Dr. Goldblatt worried that it was meningitis, though an excruciating spinal tap only proved that it wasn’t. Despite his poor appetite, Kevin was generally a healthy boy, and this was my only experience of our son laid so low for so long.
When he first started coming down with it, I noticed that the spirit in which he turned up his nose at my meals was no longer sneering; he’d look at his plate and slump, as if in defeat. In fact, since he was accustomed—like his mother—to battling his own impulses as much as outside forces, he struggled to stuff down one of my lamb
sarma
before giving up. He didn’t lurk in shadows or march martinet-style down the hall but began to wander, sagging against furniture. The rigid set of his face went limp and lost that smirking sideways skew. Eventually I found him curled helplessly on my study’s ink-stained Armenian carpet, and I was astonished that when I helped him up and lifted him to bed that he offered no resistance. Franklin, he
put his arms around my neck
.
sarma
before giving up. He didn’t lurk in shadows or march martinet-style down the hall but began to wander, sagging against furniture. The rigid set of his face went limp and lost that smirking sideways skew. Eventually I found him curled helplessly on my study’s ink-stained Armenian carpet, and I was astonished that when I helped him up and lifted him to bed that he offered no resistance. Franklin, he
put his arms around my neck
.
In his bedroom, he let me undress him, and when I solicited which pajamas he wanted to wear, rather than roll his eyes and say
I don’t care
, he thought for a moment and then whispered in a small voice, “The spaceman ones. I like the monkey in the rocket.” This was the first I’d heard that he
liked
a single garment in his possession, and when I discovered this was the one pair in the laundry hamper, I was distraught, shaking them out and hurrying back to promise that the next day I would wash them to be nice and fresh. I expected, “Don’t
bother
,” but instead got—another first—“Thanks.” When I tucked him in, he huddled gladly with the blanket to his chin, and when I slipped the thermometer between his flushed lips—his face had a bright febrile blotch—he suckled the glass with gentle rhythmic contractions, as if finally, at the age of ten, having learned to nurse. His fever was high for a child—over 101°—and when I stroked his forehead with a moist washcloth, he hummed.
I don’t care
, he thought for a moment and then whispered in a small voice, “The spaceman ones. I like the monkey in the rocket.” This was the first I’d heard that he
liked
a single garment in his possession, and when I discovered this was the one pair in the laundry hamper, I was distraught, shaking them out and hurrying back to promise that the next day I would wash them to be nice and fresh. I expected, “Don’t
bother
,” but instead got—another first—“Thanks.” When I tucked him in, he huddled gladly with the blanket to his chin, and when I slipped the thermometer between his flushed lips—his face had a bright febrile blotch—he suckled the glass with gentle rhythmic contractions, as if finally, at the age of ten, having learned to nurse. His fever was high for a child—over 101°—and when I stroked his forehead with a moist washcloth, he hummed.
I cannot say whether we are less ourselves when we are sick, or more. But I did find that remarkable two-week period a revelation. When I sat on the edge of his bed, Kevin would nestle his crown against my thigh; once I became convinced that it wouldn’t be pushing my luck, I pulled his head onto my lap and he clutched my sweater. A couple of times when he threw up he didn’t make it to the toilet; yet when I cleaned up the mess and told him not to worry, he exhibited none of the self-satisfied complacency of his diaperchanging phase but whimpered that he was sorry and seemed, despite my reassurances, ashamed. I know that we all transform one way or another when we’re ill, but Kevin wasn’t just cranky or tired, he was a completely different person. And that’s how I achieved an appreciation for how much energy and commitment it must have taken him the rest of the time to generate this other boy (or boys). Even you had conceded that Kevin was “a little antagonistic” toward his sister, but when our two-year-old tiptoed into his bedroom, he let her pet his head with damp little pats. When she offered him her get-well drawings, he didn’t dismiss them as dumb or take advantage of feeling bad to tell her, as was well within his rights, to leave him alone, instead exerting himself to say weakly, “That’s a nice picture, Celie. Why don’t you draw me another one?” I had thought that dominant emotional tone of his, so extravagant from birth, was immutable. Call it rage or resentment, it was only a matter of degree. But underneath the levels of fury, I was astonished to discover, lay a carpet of despair. He wasn’t mad. He was sad.
The other thing that amazed me was his curious aversion to your company. You may not remember, since after he’d rebuffed you once or twice—imploring when you popped in that he’d like to go to sleep or laying your present of rare collectible comics silently, wearily on the floor—you were injured enough to withdraw. Maybe he felt unable to muster the
Gee, Dad
boisterousness of your Saturday afternoon Frisbee tosses, but in that instance he clearly regarded this rah-rah boy mode as compulsory with his father. I comforted you that children always prefer their mothers when they’re sick, but you were still a little jealous. Kevin was breaking the rules, ruining the balance. Celia was mine, and Kevin was yours. You and Kevin were
close
, he would
confide in you
, and
lean on you
in times of trouble. But I think that was the very reason he recoiled: your insistence, your crowding, your wanting, your cajoling, chummy Daddishness. It was too much. He didn’t have the energy—not to give you the intimacy you demanded, but to resist it. Kevin made himself up for you, and there must have been, in the very lavishness of his fabrication, a deep and aching desire to please. But do you ever consider how disappointed he must have been when you accepted the decoy as the real thing?
Gee, Dad
boisterousness of your Saturday afternoon Frisbee tosses, but in that instance he clearly regarded this rah-rah boy mode as compulsory with his father. I comforted you that children always prefer their mothers when they’re sick, but you were still a little jealous. Kevin was breaking the rules, ruining the balance. Celia was mine, and Kevin was yours. You and Kevin were
close
, he would
confide in you
, and
lean on you
in times of trouble. But I think that was the very reason he recoiled: your insistence, your crowding, your wanting, your cajoling, chummy Daddishness. It was too much. He didn’t have the energy—not to give you the intimacy you demanded, but to resist it. Kevin made himself up for you, and there must have been, in the very lavishness of his fabrication, a deep and aching desire to please. But do you ever consider how disappointed he must have been when you accepted the decoy as the real thing?
The second industry he could no longer afford was the manufacture of apathy—though you’d think that apathy would come naturally in a state of malaise. Instead, little islands of shy desire began to emerge like bumps of sun-warmed dry land in a cold receding sea. Once he was holding down food, I asked what he’d like to eat, and he confessed that he liked my clam chowder, going so far as to assert that he preferred the milk-based to the tomato. He even requested a toasted slice of
katah,
whereas he had previously gone out of his way to disdain anything Armenian. He confessed to a fancy for one of Celia’s ragged stuffed animals (the gorilla), which she donated solemnly to his pillow as if her humble primate had been selected for a rare honor—as indeed it had been. When I asked him what I should read to him on the long afternoons—I had taken time off from AWAP, of course—he was a bit at a loss, but I think that was only because when either of us had read stories before, he had refused to listen. So just on a hunch—it seemed an appealing tale for a boy—I picked
Robin Hood and His Merry Men.
katah,
whereas he had previously gone out of his way to disdain anything Armenian. He confessed to a fancy for one of Celia’s ragged stuffed animals (the gorilla), which she donated solemnly to his pillow as if her humble primate had been selected for a rare honor—as indeed it had been. When I asked him what I should read to him on the long afternoons—I had taken time off from AWAP, of course—he was a bit at a loss, but I think that was only because when either of us had read stories before, he had refused to listen. So just on a hunch—it seemed an appealing tale for a boy—I picked
Robin Hood and His Merry Men.
He loved it. He implored me to read
Robin Hood
over and over, until he must have committed whole passages to heart. To this day I will never know whether this particular tale took so because I read it at some perfect chemical point—where he was strong enough to pay attention but still too weak to generate a force field of indifference—or whether there was something about the nature of this one story that captured his imagination. Like many children foisted into the headlong march of civilization when it was already well down the road, he may have found comfort in the trappings of a world whose workings he could understand; horse-drawn carts and bows and arrows are pleasantly fathomable to the ten-year-old. Perhaps he liked stealing from the rich and giving to the poor because he had an instinctive appreciation for the anti-hero. (Or, as you quipped at the time, maybe he was just a budding tax-and-spend Democrat.)
Robin Hood
over and over, until he must have committed whole passages to heart. To this day I will never know whether this particular tale took so because I read it at some perfect chemical point—where he was strong enough to pay attention but still too weak to generate a force field of indifference—or whether there was something about the nature of this one story that captured his imagination. Like many children foisted into the headlong march of civilization when it was already well down the road, he may have found comfort in the trappings of a world whose workings he could understand; horse-drawn carts and bows and arrows are pleasantly fathomable to the ten-year-old. Perhaps he liked stealing from the rich and giving to the poor because he had an instinctive appreciation for the anti-hero. (Or, as you quipped at the time, maybe he was just a budding tax-and-spend Democrat.)
If I will never forget those two weeks, as indelible was the morning that he felt well enough to get out of bed, informing me that he would dress himself and would I please leave the room. I obliged, trying to hide my disappointment, and when I returned later to ask what he’d like for lunch, maybe clam chowder again, he jerked his head in annoyance. “Whatever,” he said, his generation’s watchword. A grilled cheese sandwich? —“I don’t give a
rat’s ass
,” he said—a phrase that, whatever they say about kids growing up fast these days, still took me aback from a child of ten. I withdrew, though not before noticing that the set of his mouth was once more askew. I told myself I should be pleased; he was better.
Better
? Well, not to me.
rat’s ass
,” he said—a phrase that, whatever they say about kids growing up fast these days, still took me aback from a child of ten. I withdrew, though not before noticing that the set of his mouth was once more askew. I told myself I should be pleased; he was better.
Better
? Well, not to me.
Yet his fever had never burned quite high enough to sear the seeds of a tiny, nascent
interest
to ash. I caught him the following week, reading
Robin Hood
to himself. Later, I helped you two buy his first bow-and-arrow set at the sporting goods store at the mall and construct the archery range at the crest of our sloping backyard, praying all the while that this little bloom of rapture in our firstborn would endure the length of the project. I was all for it.
interest
to ash. I caught him the following week, reading
Robin Hood
to himself. Later, I helped you two buy his first bow-and-arrow set at the sporting goods store at the mall and construct the archery range at the crest of our sloping backyard, praying all the while that this little bloom of rapture in our firstborn would endure the length of the project. I was all for it.
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