We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

  "Like what?" he asked, innocence tinged with self-congratulation.

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  I reached casually in my head for an example of a possession that Kevin especially cherished, and it wasn't there. Searching harder, I felt the same rising dismay of patting down all my pockets after discovering that the one in which I always kept my wallet was empty. It was unnatural. In my o w n rather underfurnished childhood, I was a fetishistic custodian of the lowliest keepsake, from a three-legged w i n d u p donkey named Cloppity to a rinsed-out four-pack of food-coloring bottles.

  It's not as if Kevin didn't have things in abundance, since you showered him with toys. I'd feel unkind in pointing out that he ignored these Junior Game Boys and Tonka d u m p trucks across the board, save that your very excess seemed to signal an awareness that n o n e of your previous gifts had taken. Maybe your generosity backfired, by lining his playroom in what must have seemed a kind of plastic dirt; and maybe he could tell that commercial presents were easy for us, being rich, and so, however expensive, cheap.

  But I had spent weeks at a time crafting homespun,

  personalized playthings that should hypothetically have meant something. I made sure Kevin watched me, too, so that he k n e w t h e m for labors of love. T h e most curiosity he ever exhibited was to ask irritably why I didn't just buy a storybook. Otherwise, once my hand-drawn children's b o o k was sandwiched between painted pressboard covers, drilled and hole-punched and b o u n d with bright yarn, he looked vacantly out the w i n d o w as I read it aloud. I admit that the story line was hackneyed, about a litde boy w h o loses his beloved dog, Snippy, and becomes distraught and looks everywhere and of course in the end Snippy shows u p — I probably borrowed it from Lassie. I've never pretended to be a gifted creative writer, and the watercolors bled; I was suffering from the delusion that it's the thought that counts. But no matter h o w many references to the little boy's dark hair and deep brown eyes I planted, I couldn't get him to identify with the boy in the story w h o pines for his lost puppy. ( R e m e m b e r w h e n you wanted to buy Kevin a dog? I begged you not to. I was glad you

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  never forced me to explain, since I never explained it to myself.

  I just k n o w that whenever I envisioned our bouncing black lab, or trusting Irish setter, I was filled with horror.) T h e only interest he displayed in the b o o k was w h e n I left h i m alone with it to get dinner, only to find that he'd scribbled Magic Marker on every page—an early interactive edition, it seems. Later he drowned the stuffed-sock, button-eyed Teddy, aptly as it happens, in Bear Lake; he fed several pieces of my black-and-white w o o d e n jigsaw of a zebra d o w n the driveway's drain.

  I clutched at ancient history. " R e m e m b e r your squirt gun?"

  H e shrugged.

  " R e m e m b e r w h e n M o m m e r lost her temper, and stamped on it, and it broke?" I had got into the queer habit of referring to myself in the third person; I may have already begun to dissociate, and " M o m m e r " was n o w my virtuous alter ego, a pleasingly plump maternal icon with floury hands and a fire surging in a p o t -

  bellied stove w h o solved disputes between neighborhood urchins with spellbinding fables and hot Toll House cookies. Meantime, Kevin had dropped Mommer altogether, thereby demoting the neologism to my own rather silly name for myself. In the car, I was disquieted to realize that he had ceased to call me anything at all. That seemed impossible, but your children generally use your name w h e n they want something, if only attention, and Kevin was loath to beseech me for so m u c h as a turned head. "You didn't like that, did you?"

  "I didn't care," said Kevin.

  My hands slithered d o w n the wheel from ten-and-two to a desultory seven-and-five. His m e m o r y was accurate. Since according to you in defacing my maps he had only been trying to help, you replaced the squirt gun, w h i c h he tossed into his slag heap of a toy box and never touched. T h e squirt gun had served its purpose. Indeed, I'd had a spooky presentiment w h e n I finished grinding the barrel into the floor that since he had been attached to it, he was glad to see it go.

  W h e n I told you about the tea set, you were about to brush it off, but I shot you a warning glance; we had talked about the need for presenting a united front. "Hey, Kev," you said lightly. "I k n o w teacups are for girls and sort of prissy, but don't break 'em, okay? It's uncool. N o w h o w about some Frisbee? We've just got time to work on that bank shot of yours before dinner."

  "Sure, Dad!" I remember watching Kevin streak off to the closet to fetch the Frisbee and puzzling. Hands fisted, elbows flying, he looked for all the world like a regular, rambunctious kid, exhilarated at playing in the yard with his father. Except that it was too m u c h like a regular kid; almost studied. Even that Sure, Dad! had a rehearsed, nyeh-nyeh ring to it that I couldn't put my finger on. I had the same queasy feeling on weekends w h e n Kevin would pipe up—yes, pipe up—"Gosh, Dad, it's Saturday!

  Can we go see another battlefield?." You'd be so enchanted that I couldn't bring myself to raise the possibility that he was pulling your leg. Likewise, I watched out the dining r o o m w i n d o w and could not believe, somehow, that Kevin was quite that inept at throwing a Frisbee after all this time. He still tossed the disc on its side, hooking the rim on his middle finger, and curled it ten yards from your feet. You were patient, but I worried that your very patience tempted Kevin to try it.

  O h , I don't remember all the incidents that year aside from the fact that there were several, w h i c h you tagged with the umbrella dismissal, "Eva, every boy pulls a few pigtails." I spared you a number of accounts, because for me to report any of our son's misbehavior seemed like telling on him. I ended up reflecting badly not on him but on myself. If I were his sister I could see it, but could a m o t h e r be a tattletale? Apparendy.

  However, the sight I beheld in—I think it was March, well, I ' m not sure why it unnerved me quite so much, but I couldn't keep it to myself I had gone to pick up Kevin at the usual time, and no one seemed to k n o w where he was. Miss Fabricant s expression grew pinched, though by this point, were Kevin abducted by the murderous pedophiles we were then led to believe lurked behind

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  every bush, I'd suspect her of having hired them. The missing child being our son, it took a while before one of us thought to check the bathrooms, hardly his bolt-hole of choice.

  "Here he is!" sang his teacher at the door to the Girls' R o o m .

  And then she gasped.

  I doubt your recollection of these rusty stories is all that sharp, so allow me to refresh your memory. There was a slight, dark-haired kindergartner named Violetta w h o m I must have mentioned earlier that school year, since she touched me so. She was quiet, withdrawn; she would hide in Miss Fabricant's skirts, and it took me ages to coax her to tell me her name. Quite pretty, really, but you had to look at her carefully to discern that, which most people didn't. They couldn't get past the eczema.

  It was dreadful. She was covered in it, these massive scaly patches, red and flaking and sometimes cracked, where it scabbed.

  All down her arms and spindly legs, and worst of all across her face. The crinkling texture was reptilian. I'd heard that skin conditions were associated with emotional disorders; maybe I was myself susceptible to faddish presuppositions, since I couldn't help wondering ifVioletta was being mistreated in some way or if her parents were undergoing a fractious divorce. In any case, every time I laid eyes on her something caved in me, and I fought the impulse to gather her in my arms. I'd never have wished vast angry blemishes on our son per se, but this was just the sort of heartbreaking affliction for which I had hankered at Dr. Foulke's: some temporary misfortune that would heal but that would meantime stir in me when faced with my own boy the same bottomless pool of sympathy that rippled whenever Violetta—a stranger's child—shuffled bashfully into view.

  I've only had one outbreak of eczema, on my shin, just a taste but enough to know that it itches like fury. I
'd overheard her mother urging the girl murmurously not to scratch and assumed that the tube of cream that Violetta always carried, clutched shamefully in the pocket of her jumper, was an anti-itch ointment,

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  since if it was a curative it was snake oil; I'd never seenVioletta's eczema do anything but get worse. But those antipruritics are only so effective, and her self-control was impressive. She'd trace a fingernail tantalizingly over her arm, and then grasp the offending hand with the other, as if putting it on a leash.

  Anyway, when Miss Fabricant gasped, I joined her in the doorway. Kevin's back was to us, and he was whispering. W h e n I pushed the door open a little more, he stopped and stepped back. Facing us before the washbasins wasVioletta. Her face was hfted in what I can only describe as an expression of bliss. Her eyes were closed, her arms crossed sepulchrally with each hand at the opposite shoulder, her body hsting in a kind of swoon. I'm sure we'd have neither begrudged this benighted little girl the ecstasy she so deserved, except for the fact that she was covered with blood.

  I don't mean to be melodramatic. It soon became clear after Miss Fabricant shrieked and pushed Kevin aside for paper towels thatVioletta's abrasions weren't as bad as they looked. I restrained her hands from raking her upper arms while her teacher dabbed moistened towels on her limbs and face, desperately trying to clean her up a bit before her mother arrived. I attempted to dust the dandruff of white flecks from her navy jumper, but the flakes of skin stuck to the flannel like Velcro. There clearly wasn't time to scrub the splotches of blood from the lacy rim of heranklets and the gathers of her white puffed sleeves. Most of the lacerations were shallow, but they were all over her body, and Miss Fabricant would no sooner daub a patch of eczema—flamed from sullen mauve to incandescent magenta-—than it would bead again, and trickle.

  Listen: I don't want to have this argument again. I fully accept that Kevin may never have touched her. As far as I could tell she had clawed herself open without any help. It itched and she'd given in, and I dare say that finally scraping her fingernails into that hideous red crust must have felt delicious. I even sensed a trace of vengefulness in the extent of the damage, or perhaps a misguided medical conviction that with sufFiciendy surgical application she might exfoliate the scaly bane of her existence once and for all.

  Still, I've never forgotten my glimpse of her face w h e n we found her, for it bespoke not only plain enjoyment but a release that was wilder, more primitive, almost pagan. She knew it would hurt later and she knew she was only making her skin condition worse and she knew her mother would be beside herself, and it was this very apprehension with which her expression was suffused, and w h i c h gave it, even in a girl of five, a hint of obscenity. She would sacrifice herself to this one glorious gorging, consequences be damned. Why, it was the very grotesquerie of the consequences—the bleeding, the stinging, the hair-tear back home, the unsightly black scabs in the weeks to come—that seemed to lie at the heart of her pleasure.

  That night you were furious.

  "So a little girl scratched herself. W h a t has that to do with my son?"

  " H e was there! This poor girl, flaying herself alive, and he did nothing."

  "He's not her minder, Eva, he's one of the kids!"

  " H e could have called someone, couldn't he? Before it went so far?"

  "Maybe, but he's not even six until next m o n t h . You can't expect h i m to be that resourceful or even to recognize what's 'too far' w h e n all she's doing is scratching. N o n e of which remotely explains why you let Kevin squish around the house, all afternoon from the looks of him, plastered in shit!" A rare slip. You forgot to say poop.

  "It's thanks to Kevin that Kevin's diapers stink because it's thanks to Kevin that he wears diapers at all." Bathed by his outraged father, Kevin was in his room, but I was aware of the fact that my voice carried. "Franklin, I ' m at my wit's end! I bought all those there's-nothing-dirty-about-poo h o w - t o books and n o w he

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  thinks they're stupid because they're written for two-year-olds.

  We're supposed to wait until he's interested, but he's not, Franklin!

  W h y should he be w h e n M o t h e r will always clean it up? H o w long are we going to let this go on, until he's in college?"

  "Okay, I accept we're in a positive reinforcement loop. It gets him attention—"

  "We're not in a loop but a war, Franklin. And our troops are decimated. We're short on ammunition. O u r borders are overrun."

  " C a n we get something straight? Is this your n e w potty-training theory, let him slum around in his own crap and get it all over our white sofa? This is instructional? Or is it punishment?

  Because somehow this latest therapy of yours seems all mixed up with your lunatic indignation that some other kid got an itch."

  "He enticed her!'

  " O h , for Pete's sake."

  "She'd been very, very good about leaving that eczema alone. Suddenly we find her in the bathroom with her n e w little friend, and he's hovering over her and urging her o n . . . M y God, Franklin, you should have seen her! She reminded me of that old scare story that circulated in the sixties about h o w some guy on acid clawed all the skin off his arms because he thought he was infested with bugs."

  "Does it occur to you that if the scene was all that terrible then maybe Kevin's a little traumatized himself? That maybe he needs some comfort and reassurance and someone to talk to about it, and not to be banished to his o w n personal sewer? Jesus, they take kids into foster care for less."

  "I should be so lucky," I muttered.

  "Eva!"

  "I was joking!"

  " W h a t is wrong with you?" you despaired.

  " H e wasn't 'traumatized,' he was smug. R i d i n g home, his eyes were sparkling. I haven't seen him that pleased with himself since he eviscerated his birthday cake."

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  You plopped onto an end of our impractical white couch, head in hands; I couldn't j o i n you, because the other end was still smeared brown. " I ' m pretty m u c h at the end of my rope, too, Eva." You massaged your temples. "But not because of Kevin."

  "Is that a threat?—"

  "It's n o t a threat—"

  " W h a t are you talking about!—"

  "Eva, please calm down. I ' m never going to break up our family." There was a time you'd have said instead, I'll never leave you. Your more rectitudinous declaration had a solidity about it, where pledges of everlasting devotion to a lover are notoriously frail. So I wondered why your bedrock c o m m i t m e n t to our family made me sad.

  "I dress him," I said. "I feed h i m w h e n he lets me, I ferry h i m everywhere. I bake his kindergarten snacks. I ' m at his beck from m o r n i n g to night. I change his diapers six times a day, and all I hear about is the one afternoon that he so disturbed me, even frightened me, that I couldn't bear to c o m e near him. I wasn't exactly trying to punish him. But in that bathroom, he seemed so, a h — " I discarded three or four adjectives as too inflammatory, then finally gave up. " C h a n g i n g him was too intimate."

  "Listen to yourself. Because I have no idea what kid you're talking about.We have a happy, healthy boy. And I ' m beginning to think he's unusually bright." (I stopped myself from interjecting, That's what I'm afraid of.) "If he sometimes keeps to himself, that's because he's thoughtful, reflective. Otherwise, he plays with me, he hugs me good night, I read him stories. W h e n it's just me and him, he tells me everything—"

  "Meaning, he tells you what?"

  You raised your palms. " W h a t he's been drawing, what they had for snack—"

  "And you think that's telling you everything."

  "Are you out of your mind? He's five years old, Eva, what else is there to tell?"

  "For starters? W h a t happened last year, in that after-preschool

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  play group. O n e after another, every m o t h e r took her kids out.

  O h , there was always some
excuse—-Jordan keeps catching colds, Tiffany is uncomfortable being the youngest. Until it's d o w n to just me and Lorna's kids, and she mumbles something about it not being m u c h of a group anymore and calls it quits. A few weeks later I stop by Lorna's unannounced to drop off a Christmas present? All the old play group is reassembled in her living room.

  She was embarrassed and we didn't address it, but since Kevin tells you everything why n o t get him to explain what might drive all those mothers to sneak off and reconvene in secret, all to exclude our 'happy, healthy' son."

  "I wouldn't ask him because that's an ugly story that would hurt his feelings. A n d I don't see the mystery—-gossip and cliquishness and small-town fallings out. Typical of stay-at-home mothers with time on their hands."

  " I ' m one of those stay-at-home mothers, at considerable sacrifice I'd remind you, and the last thing we have is time on our hands."

  "So he was blackballed! W h y doesn't that make you angry at them? W h y assume it was something our son did, and n o t some neurotic hen with a bug up her ass?"

  "Because I ' m all too well aware that Kevin doesn't tell me everything. O h , and you could also ask h i m w h y not one baby-sitter will come back a second night."

  "I don't need to. Most teenagers around here get an allowance of S100 a week. Only 12 bucks an h o u r isn't very tempting."

  " T h e n at least you could get your sweet, confiding little boy to tell you just exactly what he said to Violetta."

  It's not as if we fought all the time. To the contrary, though, it's the fights I remember; f u n n y h o w the nature of a normal day is the first m e m o r y to fade. I ' m not one of those sorts, either, w h o thrives on t u r m o i l — m o r e s the pity, as it turns out. Still, I may have been glad to scratch the dry surface of our day-to-day peaceableness the way Violetta had clawed the sere crust on her

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