We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

  I doubt I put it as fancily as that, but I did say that T h e l m a Corbitt was the kind of w o m a n whose private suffering had b e c o m e a conduit for other people's. A n d I didn't regale your parents with the whole p h o n e call of course, but the full conversation did come flooding back to me:Thelma immediately admiring the "courage" it must have taken for me to pick up the phone, inviting me right away to Denny's funeral, but only if it wasn't too painful for me to go. I allowed to Thelma that it might help me to express my o w n sorrow for her son's passing, and for once I realized that I wasn't simply going through the motions, saying what I was supposed to. Apropos of not much, Thelma explained that D e n n y had been named after the chain restaurant where she and her husband had their first date. I almost stopped her from going on because it seemed easier for me to k n o w as little as possible about her boy, but she clearly believed that we would b o t h be better offif I k n e w just w h o my son had murdered.

  She said D e n n y had been rehearsing for the school's spring play, W o o d y Allen's Don't Drink the Water, and she'd been helping him with his lines. " H e had us in stitches," she offered. I said that I'd seen h i m in Streetcar the year before and that (stretching the truth) he'd been terrific. She seemed so pleased, if only that her boy wasn't just a statistic to me, a name in the newspaper, or a torture. T h e n she said she wondered whether I didn't have it harder than any of them. I backed off. I said, that couldn't be fair;

  — 165 —

  after all, at least I still had my son, and the next thing she said impressed me. She said,"Do you? Do you really?" I didn't answer that, but thanked her for her kindness, and then we b o t h got lost in such a tumble of mutual gratitude—an almost impersonal gratitude, that everyone in the world wasn't simply horrid—that we both began to cry.

  So, as I told your parents, I went to Denny's funeral. I sat in the back. I wore black, though in funerals these days that is old-fashioned. And then in the receiving line to convey my condolences, I offered Thelma my hand and said, " I ' m so sorry for my loss." That's what I said, a miscue, a gaffe, but I thought it would be worse to correct myself— "your loss, I mean." To your parents, I was blithering. They stared.

  Finally I took refuge in logistics. T h e legal system is itself a machine, and I could describe its workings, as your father had once explained to me, with poetic lucidity, the workings of a catalytic converter. I said that Kevin had been arraigned and was being held without bail, and I was hopeful that the terminology, so familiar from TV, would comfort; it failed to. ( H o w vital, the hard glass interface of that screen .Viewers don't want those shows spilling willy-nilly into their homes, any more than they want other people's sewage to overflow from their toilets.) I said I'd hired the best lawyer I could find—meaning, of course, the most expensive. I thought your father would approve; he himself always bought top-shelf. I was mistaken.

  He intruded dully, " W h a t for?"

  I had never heard h i m ask that question of anything in his life.

  I admired the leap. You and I had always pilloried t h e m behind their backs as being spiritually arid.

  " I ' m not sure, though it seemed expected.. .To get Kevin off as lightly as possible, I guess." I frowned.

  "Is that what you want?" asked your mother.

  " N o . . . W h a t I want is to turn back the clock.What I want is to never have been b o r n myself, if that's w h a t it took. I can't have what I want."

  — 166 —

  "But would you like to see him punished?" your father pressed. Mind, he didn't sound wrathful; he hadn't the energy.

  I ' m afraid I laughed. Just a dejected huh! Still, it wasn't appropriate. " I ' m sorry," I explained. " B u t good luck to them. I tried for the better part of sixteen years to punish Kevin. N o t h i n g I took away mattered to h i m in the first place. What's the N e w York state juvenile justice system going to do? Send h i m to his room? I tried that. He didn't have m u c h use for anything outside his room, or in it; what's the difference? A n d they're hardly going to shame him.You can only subject people to anguish w h o have a conscience. You can only punish people w h o have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; w h o w o r r y what you think of them. You can really only punish people w h o are already a litde bit good."

  " H e could at least be kept from hurting anyone else," your father submitted.

  A defective product is recalled, and withdrawn from the market. I said defiandy, "Well, there is a campaign on, to try him as an adult and give him the death penalty."

  " H o w do you feel about that?" asked your mother. G o o d grief, your parents had asked me if A W i n g and a Prayer would ever go public; they had asked if I thought those steam gadgets pressed trousers as well as ironing. They had never asked what I felt.

  "Kevin is no adult. B u t will he be any different w h e n he is one?" (They may be technically different specialties, but Workplace Massacre is really just School Shooting Grows Up.)

  "Honestly, there are some days," I looked balefully out their bay window, "I wish they w o u l d give h i m the death penalty. Get it all over with. B u t that might be letting myself off the hook."

  "Surely you don't blame yourself, my dear!" your mother chimed, though with a nervousness; if I did, she didn't want to hear about it.

  "I never liked h i m very m u c h , Gladys." I m e t her eyes squarely, m o t h e r - t o - m o t h e r . "I realize it's c o m m o n p l a c e for parents to say to their child sternly,'! love you, but I don't always like you.'

  But w h a t kind of love is that? It seems to me that comes d o w n to, ' I ' m n o t oblivious to y o u — t h a t is, you can still h u r t my feelings—but I can't stand having you around.' W h o wants to be loved like that? Given a choice, I might skip the deep blood tie and settle for being liked. I w o n d e r if I wouldn't have been m o r e moved if my o w n m o t h e r had taken me in her arms and said, 'I like you.' I w o n d e r if just enjoying your kid's company isn't m o r e important."

  I had embarrassed them. Moreover, I'd d o n e precisely w h a t Harvey had already warned me against. Later they were b o t h deposed, and snippets of this deadly litde speech w o u l d be quoted back verbatim. I don't think y o u r parents had it in for me, but they were honest N e w Englanders, and I'd given t h e m no reason to protect me. I guess I didn't want t h e m to.

  W h e n I rustled with leave-taking motions, setting d o w n my stone-cold tea, the two of t h e m looked relieved yet frantic, locking eyes.They must have recognized that these cozy teatime chats of ours w o u l d prove limited in number, and maybe late at night, unable to sleep, they'd think of questions they might have asked. T h e y were cordial, of course, inviting me to visit any time.Your m o t h e r assured me that, despite everything, they still considered me part of the family. T h e i r inclusivity seemed less kind than it might have six weeks before. At that time, the prospect of being enveloped into any family had all the appeal of getting stuck in an elevator between floors.

  " O n e last thing."Your father touched my arm at the door, and once again asked the kind of question he'd evaded most of his life.

  " D o you understand why?"

  I fear my response will only have helped to cure him of such inquiries, for the answers are often so unsatisfying.

  — 1 6 8 —

  JANUARY 6 , 2 0 0 1

  Dear Franklin,

  T h e Electoral College just certified a Republican president, and you must be pleased. But despite your pose as a sexist, flag-waving retrograde, in fatherhood you were a good little liberal, as fastidious about corporal punishment and nonviolent toys as the times demanded. I ' m not making fun, only wondering if you, too, go back over those precautions and ponder where we went wrong.

  My o w n review of Kevin's upbringing was assisted by trained legal minds. "Ms. Khatchadourian," Harvey grilled me on the stand, "did you have a rule in your household that children were not allowed to play with toy guns?"

  "For what it's worth, yes."

  "And you monitor
ed television and video viewing?"

  "We tried to keep Kevin away from anything too violent or sexually explicit, especially w h e n he was little. Unfortunately, that meant my husband couldn't watch most of his o w n favorite programs. And we did have to allow one exception."

  " W h a t was that?" Annoyance again; this wasn't planned.

  " T h e History Channel." A titter; I was playing to the peanut gallery.

  " T h e point is," Harvey continued through his teeth, "you made every effort to ensure that your son was not surrounded by coarsening influences, did you not?"

  — 1 6 9 —

  "In my home," I said. " T h a t is six acres out of a planet. A n d even there, I was unprotected from Kevin's coarsening influence o n me."

  Harvey stopped to breathe. I sensed an alternative-medicine professional had taught him some technique. "In other words, you couldn't control what Kevin played with or watched w h e n he went to other children's homes?"

  "Frankly, other children rarely asked Kevin over more than once."

  T h e judge intervened, "Ms. Khatchadourian, please just answer the question."

  " O h , I suppose," I comphed lackadaisically; I was getting bored.

  " W h a t about the Internet?" Harvey proceeded."Was your son given free rein to access whatever web sites he liked, including, say, violent or pornographic ones?"

  " O h , we did the whole parental-controls schmear, but Kevin cracked it in a day." I flicked the air dismissively. Harvey had warned me against giving the slightest indication that I didn't take the proceedings seriously, and this case did bring out my perverse streak. But my larger trouble was paying attention. Back at the defense table, my lids would droop, my head list. If only to wake myself up, I added the kind of gratuitous commentary that the judge—a prudish, sharp w o m a n w h o reminded me of Dr.

  Rhinestein—had cautioned against.

  "You see," I proceeded, "by the time he was eleven or twelve, this was all too late. T h e n o - g u n rules, the computer codes...

  Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive, it's a vanity. We want to be able to tell ourselves what good parents we are, that we're doing our best. If I had it all to do over again, I'd have let Kevin play with whatever he wanted; he liked little enough. A n d I'd have ditched the TV rules, the G-rated videos. T h e y only made us look foohsh. T h e y underscored our powerlessness, and they provoked his contempt."

  — 1 7 0 —

  Although allowed a soliloquy injudicial terms, in my head I'd cut it short. I no longer suffer the constraints of jurisprudential impatience, so allow me to elaborate.

  W h a t drew Kevin's contempt was not, as I had seemed to imply, our patent incapacity to protect him from the Big Bad World. N o , to Kevin it was the substance and not the ineffectuality of our taboos that was a joke. Sex? O h , he used it, w h e n he discovered that I was afraid of it, or afraid of it in him, but otherwise? It was a bore. D o n ' t take offense, for you and I did find great pleasure in one another, but sex is a bore. Like the Tool Box toys that Kevin spurned as a toddler, the round peg goes in the round hole. T h e secret is that there is no secret. In fact, plain fucking at his high school was so prevalent, and so quotidian, that I doubt it excited h i m much. Alternative round holes furnish a transient novelty whose illusoriness he would have seen right through.

  As for violence, the secret is more of a cheap trick.

  You remember, once we gave up on the rating system to see a few decent films, watching a video of Braveheart as, dare I say it, a. family? In the final torture scene, Mel Gibson is stretched on a rack, all four limbs tied to the corners of the compass. Each time his English captors pulled the ropes tauter, the sisal groaned, and so did I . W h e n the executioner thrust his barbed knife into Mel's bowel and ripped upward, I squeezed my palms to my temples and whinnied. But w h e n I peeked through the crook of my arm at Kevin, his glance at the screen was blase. T h e sour half cock of his m o u t h was his customary expression at rest. He wasn't precisely doing the Times crossword, but he was absently blacking in all the white squares with a felt-tip.

  Cinematic carve-ups are only hard to handle if on some level you beheve that these tortures are being done to you. In fact, it's ironic that these spectacles have such a wicked reputation a m o n g Bible thumpers, since gruesome special effects rely for their impact on their audience's positively Christian compulsion to walk in their neighbors' shoes. But Kevin had discovered the secret: not merely that it wasn't real, but that it wasn't him. Over

  — 171 —

  the years I observed Kevin watching decapitations, disembowelments, dismemberments, flayings, impalements, deoculations, and crucifixions, and I never saw him flinch. Because he'd mastered the trick. If you decline to identify, slice-and-dice is no more discomfiting than watching your m o t h e r prepare beef stroganoff.

  So what had we tried to protect h i m from, exacdy? T h e practicalities of violence are rudimentary geometry, its laws those of grammar; like the grade-school definition of a preposition, violence is anything an airplane can do to a cloud. O u r son had a better than average mastery of geometry and grammar both.

  There was litde in Braveheart—or Reservoir Dogs, or Chucky II—

  that Kevin could not have invented for himself.

  In the end, that's what Kevin has never forgiven us. He may not resent that we tried to impose a curtain between himself and the adult terrors lurking behind it. But he does powerfully resent that we led him down the garden path—that we enticed h i m with the prospect of the exotic.

  (Hadn't I myself nourished the fantasy that I would eventually land in a country that was somewhere else?) W h e n we shrouded our grown-up mysteries for which Kevin was too young, we implicitly promised him that w h e n the time came, the curtain would pull back to reveal—what? Like the ambiguous emotional universe that I imagined awaited me on the other side of childbirth, it's doubtful that Kevin had formed a vivid picture of whatever we had withheld from him. But the one thing he could not have imagined is that we were withholding nothing. That there was nothing on the other side of our silly rules, nothing.

  T h e truth is, the vanity of protective parents that I cited to the court goes beyond look-at-us-we're-such-responsible-guardians.

  O u r prohibitions also bulwark our self-importance. T h e y fortify the construct that we adults are all initiates. By conceit, we have earned access to an unwritten Talmud whose soul-shattering content we are sworn to conceal from "innocents" for their o w n good. By pandering to this myth of the naif, we service our o w n legend. Presumably we have looked the horror in the face, like staring into the naked eye of the sun, blistering into turbulent, corrupted creatures, enigmas even to ourselves. Gross with revelation, we would turn back the clock if we could, but there is no unknowing of this awful canon, no return to the blissfully insipid world of childhood, no choice but to shoulder this weighty black sagacity, whose finest purpose is to shelter our air-headed midgets from a glimpse of the abyss. T h e sacrifice is flatteringly tragic.

  T h e last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on w h i c h we have been gnawing since reaching the magic age of t w e n t y - o n e is the same mealy G o l d e n Delicious that we stuff into o u r children's lunch boxes. T h e last thing we w a n t to admit is that the bickering of the playground perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that o u r social hierarchies are merely an extension of w h o got picked first for the kickball team, and that grown-ups still get divided into bullies and fatties and crybabies. What's a kid to find out? Presumably we lord over t h e m an exclusive deed to sex, b u t this pretense flies so fantastically in the face of fact that it must result from some conspiratorial group amnesia. To this day, some of my most intense sexual memories date back to before I was ten, as I have confided to you under the sheets in better days. N o , they have sex, too. In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent
on disguising f r o m somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty m u c h all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. T h a t is w h a t we really wish to keep f r o m our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud we protect.

  Sure, by the time he was fourteen we had given up on trying to control the videos he watched, the hours he kept, what little he read. But watching those stupid films and logging onto those stupid web sites, swigging that stupid hooch and sucking those stupid butts and flicking those stupid schoolgirls, Kevin must have felt so fiercely cheated. And on Thursday? I bet he still felt cheated.

  — 173 —

  Meantime, I could tell from Harvey's expression of forbearance that he had regarded my mini-lecture as more destructive self-indulgence. O u r case—his case, really—was pearled around the proposition that I had been a normal m o t h e r with normal maternal affections w h o had taken normal precautions to ensure that she raised a normal child. W h e t h e r we were the victims of bad luck or bad genes or bad culture was a matter for shamans or biologists or anthropologists to divine, but not the courts. Harvey was intent on evoking every parent's latent fear that it was possible to do absolutely everything right and still turn on the news to a nightmare from which there is no waking. It was a damned sound approach in retrospect, and n o w that it's been a year or so, I feel a litde sheepish about being so cantankerous at the time.

  Still, like that depersonalizing rubber stamp of postnatal depression, our there-but-for-the-grace-of-God defense put me right off. I felt driven to distinguish myself from all those normal-normal mommies, if only as an exceptionally c r u m m y one, and even at the potential price tag of $6.5 million (the plaintiffs had researched what W & P was worth). I had already lost everything, Franklin, everything but the company that is, the continuing possession of which, under the circumstances, struck me as crass.