We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

  "You must have wanted Kevin something fierce," said Siobhan on one such occasion. "Seeing the sights, meeting amazing people—and paid for the pleasure, if you can credit it! I can't imagine giving that up."

  "I haven't given it up," I said. "After a year or so, I'll resume business as usual."

  Siobhan stirred her coffee. "Is that w h a t Franklin expects?"

  "It's what he ought to expect."

  "But he mentioned, like," she was n o t comfortable with tattling, "that your running off for months at a go, like—that it was over."

  "For a while there, I was a little b u r n e d out. Always running out of fresh underwear; all those French train strikes. It's possible I gave the wrong impression."

  " O h , aye," she said sorrowfully. I doubt that she was trying to make trouble, though she saw it coming. " H e must have been lonely, w h e n you'd go away. A n d n o w if you take your trips again, he'd be the only one to mind wee Kevin w h e n I ' m not here. Of course, in America, don't some da's stay home, and the ma's go to work?"

  "There are Americans and Americans. Franklin's not the type."

  "But you run a whole company. Sure you could afford..."

  " O n l y in the financial sense. It's hard enough w h e n a man's wife is profded in Fortune magazine and he's only location-scouted the advertisement on the facing page."

  "Franklin said you used to be on the road five months a year.

  — 117 —

  "Obviously," I said heavily, "I'll have to cut back."

  "You know, you may find that Kevin's a wee bit tricky, like.

  He's a—an uneasy baby. Sometimes they grow out of it." She hazarded starkly, "Sometimes they don't."

  You thought that Siobhan was devoted to o u r son, but I read her loyalty as more to you and me. She rarely spoke of Kevin in other than a logistical sense. A new set of bottles had been sterilized; our disposable "nappies" were running low. For such a passionate girl this mechanical approach seemed unlike her. (Though she did observe once, " H e has like, beady eyes, so he does!" She laughed nervously and qualified,"I m e a n — intense.""Yes, they're unnerving, aren't they," I rejoined, as neutrally as I k n e w how.) But she adored the two of us. She was entranced with the freedom of our dual self-employment, and, despite the evangelical romance with "family values," was clearly disconcerted that we would willfully impair this giddy liberty with the ball and chain of an infant. And maybe we gave her hope for her future. We were middle-aged, but we listened to T h e Cars and Joe Jackson; if she didn't approve of bad language, she may still have been broadly heartened that a codger nearing forty could decry a dubious baby manual as horseshit. In turn, we paid her well and accommodated her church obligations. I gave her the odd present, like a silk scarf from Thailand, which she gushed over so m u c h that I was embarrassed. She thought you devastatingly handsome, admiring the sturdiness of your figure and the disarming flop of your flaxen hair. I wonder if she didn't "fancy" you a tad.

  Having every reason to assume that Siobhan was contented in our employ, I was puzzled to note as the months advanced that she began to look curiously drawn. I k n o w the Irish don't age well, but even for her thin-skinned race she was m u c h too young to develop those hard worry lines across her forehead. She could be testy w h e n I returned from the office, snapping w h e n I had simply expressed surprise that we were low again on baby food,

  " O c h , it doesn't all go in his m o u t h , y o u know!" She immediately

  — 118 —

  apologized, and grew fleetingly tearful but wouldn't explain. She became more difficult to entice into a debriefing cup of coffee, as if anxious to be quit of our loft, and I was nonplussed by her reaction w h e n I proposed that she move in. You remember that I offered to wall off that ill-used catchall corner, and to install a separate bath. W h a t I had in mind would have been far more capacious than the cubbyhole she shared in the East Village with a loose, boozing, godless waitress she didn't m u c h like. I wouldn't have cut her salary, either, so she'd have saved buckets on rent.Yet at the prospect of becoming a live-in nanny, she recoiled. W h e n she protested that she could never break her lease on that Avenue C hovel, it sounded like, well, horseshit.

  And then she started calling in sick. Just once or twice a m o n t h at first, but at length she was p h o n i n g in with a sore throat or an upset stomach at least once a week. She looked wretched enough; she couldn't have been eating well, because those doll-baby curves had given way to a stick-figure frailty, and w h e n the Irish pale, they look exhumed. So I was hesitant to accuse her of faking. Deferentially I inquired if she had boyfriend problems, if there was trouble with her family in Carickfergus, or if she was pining for N o r t h e r n Ireland. "Pining for Northern Ireland," she repeated wryly. "You're having me on." T h a t m o m e n t of h u m o r served to highlight that her jokes had grown rare.

  These impromptu vacations of hers put me to great

  inconvenience, since according to the now-established logic of your tenuous freelance employment versus my fatuous security as C E O , I was the one to stay home. N o t only would I have to reschedule meetings or conduct t h e m awkwardly in conference calls, but a whole extra day spent with our precious little ward tipped a precarious equilibrium in me; by nightfall on a day I had not been girded for Kevin's unrelenting horror at his o w n existence, I was, as our nanny would say, mental. It was through the insufferable addition of that extra day a week that Siobhan and I came, tacitly at first, to understand each other.

  Clearly, God's children are meant to savor His glorious gifts

  — 119

  without petulance, for Siobhan's uncanny forbearance could only have issued from catechism. No a m o u n t of wheedling would elicit whatever was driving her abed every Friday. So if only to give her permission, I complained myself.

  "I have no regrets about my travels," I began one early evening as she prepared to go, "but it's a shame I met Franklin so late. Four years just the two of us wasn't nearly enough time to get tired of him! I think it must be nice if you meet your partner in your twenties, with long enough as a childless couple to, I don't know, get a little bored even. T h e n in your thirties you're ready for a change, and a baby is welcome."

  Siobhan looked at me sharply, and though I expected censure in her gaze I caught only a sudden alertness. " O f course, you don't mean Kevin isn't welcome."

  I k n e w the m o m e n t mandated hurried reassurances, but I couldn't furnish them. This would happen to me sporadically in the coming years: I would do and say what I was supposed to week u p o n week without fail until abruptly I hit a wall. I would open my m o u t h and That's a really pretty drawing, Kevin or If we tear the flowers out of the ground they'll die, and you don't want them to die, do you? or Yes, we're so awfully proud of our son, Mr. Cartland would simply not come out.

  "Siobhan," I said reluctantly. "I've been a little disappointed."

  "I k n o w I've been poorly, Eva—"

  " N o t in you." I considered that she may have understood me perfectly well and had misinterpreted me on purpose. I shouldn't have burdened this young girl with my secrets, but I felt strangely impelled. "All the bawling and the nasty plastic toys...I'm not sure quite what I had in mind, but it wasn't this."

  "Sure you might have a touch of p o s t p a r t u m — "

  "Whatever you call it, I don't feel joyful. A n d Kevin doesn't seem joyful either."

  "He's a baby!"

  "He's over a year and a half.You k n o w h o w people are always cooing, He's such a happy child! Well, in that instance there are

  — 1 2 0 —

  unhappy children. And nothing I do makes the slightest bit of difference."

  She kept fiddling with her daypack, nestling the last of her few possessions into its cavity with undue concentration. She always brought a book to read for Kevin's naps, and I finally noticed that she'd been stuffing the exact same volume in that daypack for months. I'd have understood if it was a Bible, but it was only an inspirationa
l text—slim, the cover now badly stained—and she had once described herself as an avid reader.

  "Siobhan, I'm useless with babies. I've never had much rapport with small children, but I'd hoped.. .Well, that motherhood would reveal another side of myself." I met one of her darting glances.

  "It hasn't."

  She squirmed. "Ever talk to Franklin, about how you're feeling?"

  I laughed with one ha. "Then we'd have to do something about it. Like what?"

  "Don't you figure the first couple of years is the tough bit?

  That it gets easier?"

  I licked my hps. "I realize this doesn't sound very nice. But I keep waiting for the emotional payoff."

  "But only by giving do you get anything back."

  She shamed me, but then I thought about it. "I give him my every weekend, my every evening. I've even given him my husband, w h o has no interest in talking about anything but our son, or in doing anything together besides wheeling a stroller up and down the Battery Park promenade. In return, Kevin smites me with the evil eye, and can't bear for me to hold him. Can't bear much of anything, as far as I can tell."

  This kind of talk was making Siobhan edgy; it was domestic heresy. But something seemed to cave in her, and she couldn't keep up the cheerleading. So instead of forecasting what delights were in store for me once Kevin became a little person in his own right, she said gloomily, "Aye, I know what you mean."

  "Tell me, does Kevin—respond to you?"

  — 121 —

  "Respond?" T h e sardonicism was new. "You could say that."

  " W h e n you're with him during the day, does he laugh?

  Gurgle contentedly? Sleep?" I realized that I had refrained from asking her as m u c h for all these months, and that in so doing I'd been taking advantage of her ungrudging nature.

  " H e pulls my hair," she said quietly.

  "But all babies—they don't k n o w — "

  " H e pulls it very hard indeed. He's old enough n o w and I think he knows it hurts. And Eva, that lovely silk muffler from Bangkok. It's in shreds."

  Ch-plang! Ch-plang! Kevin was awake. He was banging a rattle onto that metal xylophone you came h o m e with (alas), and was not showing musical promise.

  " W h e n he's alone with me," I said over the racket. "Franklin calls it cranky—"

  " H e throws all his toys out of the playpen, and then he screams, and he will not stop screaming until they are all back, and then he throws them out again. Flings them."

  P-p-plang-k-chang-CHANG! PLANK! P-P-P-plankpankplank-plank! There was a violent clatter, from w h i c h I construed that Kevin had kicked the instrument from between the slats of his crib.

  "It's desperate!" Siobhan despaired. " H e does the same thing in his highchair, with Cheerios, porridge, cream crackers.. .With all his food on the floor like, I haven't a baldy where he gets the energy!"

  "You mean," I touched her hand, "you don't k n o w where you get the energy."

  Mwah... Mmwah... Mmmmwhawhah... He started like a lawn-mower. Siobhan and I looked each other in the eye. Mwah-eee!

  EEEeee! EEEEEEEE! EEahEEEEEEEE! Neither of us arose from our chair.

  " O f course," said Siobhan hopefully, "I guess it's different w h e n it's yours."

  "Yup," I said. "Totally different."

  — 122 —

  EEahEEEEEahEEEE! EEahEEEEEahEEEE! EEahEEEEE-

  ahEEEE!

  "I used to want a big family," she said, turning away. " N o w I ' m n o t so sure."

  "If I were you," I said, "I'd think twice."

  Kevin filled the silence between us as I fought a rising panic.

  I had to say something to forestall w h a t was coming next, but I couldn't think of any comment to pass that wouldn't further justify what I wished fervidly to prevent.

  "Eva," she began. " I ' m knackered. I don't think Kevin likes me. I've prayed until I ' m blue—for patience, for love, for strength.

  I thought G o d was testing m e — "

  " W h e n Jesus said Suffer the little children," I said dryly, "I don't think nannying is what he had in mind."

  "I hate to think I've failed Him! Or you, Eva! Still, do you think there's any chance—do you think you could use me at A W i n g and a Prayer? Those guidebooks, you said loads of them's researched by university students and that. C o u l d you—could you please, please send me to Europe, or Asia? I'd do a brilliant job, I promise!"

  I sagged. "You mean you want to quit."

  "You and Franklin been dead decent, you must think me terrible ungrateful. Still, w h e n you lot move to the suburbs you'd have to find someone else anyway, right? 'Cause I came over here b o u n d and determined to live in N e w York City."

  "I am, too! W h o says we're moving to the burbs?"

  "Franklin, of course."

  "We're not moving to any suburbs," I said firmly.

  She shrugged. She had already withdrawn so from our little unit that she regarded this miscommunication as none of her affair.

  "Would you like more money?" I offered pathetically; my full-time residence in this country was beginning to take its toll.

  " T h e pay's great, Eva. I can't do it anymore, just. Every m o r n i n g I wake u p . . . "

  I k n e w exactly h o w she woke feeling. A n d I couldn't do it to

  — 123 —

  her any longer. I think I ' m a bad mother, and you always thought so, too. But deep inside me lurks the rare maternal bone. Siobhan was at her limit.Though it ran wildly counter to our interests, her earthly salvation was within my power to grant.

  "We're updating NETHERWAP," I said morosely; I had an awful premonition that Siobhan s resignation would be effective right away. "Would you like that? Rating hostels in Amsterdam?

  T h e rijsttafels are delicious."

  Siobhan forgot herself and threw her arms around me. "Would you like for me to try and quiet him?" she offered. "Maybe his n a p p y — "

  "I doubt that; it's too rational. N o , you've put in a full day.

  And take the rest of the week off. You're shattered." I was already sweetening her up, to get her to stick around until we f o u n d a replacement. Fat chance.

  " O n e last thing," said Siobhan, tucking my note with the name of N E T H E R W A P ' s editor into her pack."Wee'uns vary, of course.

  But Kevin should really be talking by now. A few words anyway.

  Maybe you should ask your doctor. Or talk to h i m more."

  I promised, then saw her to the elevator, shooting a rueful glance at the crib. "You know, it is different w h e n it's yours.

  You can't go home." Indeed, my yearning to go home had grown recurrent, but was most intense w h e n I was already there.

  We exchanged wan smiles, and she waved behind the gate. I watched from the front w i n d o w as she ran d o w n H u d s o n Street, away from our loft and wee Kevin as fast as her unshapely legs could carry her.

  I returned to our son's marathon and looked d o w n at his writhing dudgeon. I was not going to pick him up. No one was there to make me and I didn't want to. I would not, as Siobhan had suggested, check his diaper, nor would I w a r m a botde of milk. I would let him cry and cry. Resting both elbows on the crib rail, I cradled my chin on intertwined fingers. Kevin was crouched on all fours in one of the positions that the N e w School c o m m e n d e d for birthing: primed for exertion. Most tots

  — 124 —

  cry with their eyes shut, but Kevin's were slit open. W h e n our gazes locked, I felt we were finally communicating. His pupils were still almost black, and I could see them fhntily register that for once Mother was not going to get in a flap about whatever might be the matter.

  "Siobhan thinks I should talk to you," I said archly over the din. " W h o else is going to, since you drove her off? That's right, you screamed and puked her out the door. What's your problem, you little shit? Proud of yourself, for ruining Mummy's life?" I was careful to use the insipid falsetto the experts commend. "You've got Daddy snowed, but Mummy's
got your number.You're a little shit, aren't you?"

  Kevin hoisted to a stand without missing a yowl. Clutching the bars, he screamed at me from just a few inches away, and my ears hurt. So scrunched up, his face looked like an old man's, and it was screwed into the I'm-gonna-get-you expression of a convict who's already started digging a tunnel with a nail fde. On a purely zoo-keeping level, my proximity was hazardous; Siobhan hadn't been kidding about the hair.

  " M u m m y was happy before widdle Kevin came awong, you know that, don't you? And now M u m m y wakes up every day and wishes she were in France. Mummy's life sucks now, doesn't Mummy's life suck? Do you know there are some days that M u m m y would rather be dead? Rather than listen to you screech for one more minute there are some days that M u m m y would j u m p off the Brooklyn Bridge—"

  I turned, and blanched. I may never have seen quite that stony look on your face.

  "They understand speech long before they learn to talk," you said, pushing past me to pick him up. "I don't understand how you can stand there and watch him cry."

  "Franklin, ease up, I was only kidding around!" I shot a parting private glare at Kevin. It was thanks to his caterwauling that I hadn't heard the elevator gate. "I'm blowing off a httle steam, okay? Siobhan quit. Hear that? Siobhan quit."

  — 125 —

  "Yeah, I heard you. Too bad. We'll get someone else."

  "It turns out that all along she's regarded this j o b as a m o d e r n rewrite of the B o o k of J o b — L o o k , I'll change him."

  You wrenched h i m away. "You can steer clear until you get your mind right. Or j u m p off a bridge. Whichever comes first."

  I trailed after you. "Say, what's this about moving to the suburbs?

  Since w h e n ? "

  "Since—I quote— the little shit is getting mobile.That elevator is a death trap."

  "We can gate off the elevator!"

  " H e needs a yard." Sanctimoniously, you balled the wet diaper in the pail. " W h e r e we can toss a baseball, fill a pool."