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 h o w disappointed he must have been w h e n you accepted the decoy as the real thing?
— 2 8 0 —
T h e second industry he could no longer afford was the manufacture of apathy—though you'd think that apathy would c o m e 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. O n c e he was holding d o w n food, I asked w h a t he'd like to eat, and he confessed that he hked 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 Ceha's ragged stuffed animals (the gorilla), w h i c h she donated solemnly to his pillow as if her humble primate had been selected for a rare honor—as indeed it had been. W h e n I asked him w h a t 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 w h e n either of us had read stories before he had refused to listen.
So just on a h u n c h — i t 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 k n o w w h e t h e r this particular tale took so because I read it at some perfect chemical p o i n t — w h e r e 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 w h e n it was already well d o w n 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 indehble was the m o r n i n g that he felt well enough to get out of bed, informing
— 281 —
me that he would dress himself and would I please leave the room. I obliged, trying to hide my disappointment, and w h e n 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 m o u t h 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 h i m 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 litde b l o o m of rapture in our firstborn would endure the length of the project. I was all for it.
A
— 2 8 2 —
FEBRUARY 2 4 , 2 0 0 1
Dear Franklin,
W h e n I saw Kevin today his left cheek was bruised, his lower lip swollen; his knuckles were scabbed. I asked if he was all right and he said he cut himself shaving. Maybe the lamest remarks pass for drollery w h e n you're locked up. It gave h i m palpable pleasure to deny me access to his travails inside, and w h o am I to interfere with his few enjoyments; I didn't press the matter. Afterward, I might have complained to the prison authorities about their failure to protect our son, but considering what Kevin has himself inflicted on his peers, objection to a few scrapes in return seemed worse than petulant.
I dropped any further preliminaries. I ' m increasingly indifferent to setting h i m at ease on my visits w h e n his o w n efforts are aimed solely at my discomfiture.
"It's been preying on me," I said right off. "I can almost understand going on some indiscriminate frenzy, venting your frustrations on whomever happens to be in the way. Like that quiet, unassuming Hawaiian a year or two ago, w h o just flipped—"
"Bryan Uyesugi," Kevin provided. " H e kept fish."
"Seven coworkers?"
Kevin patted his hands in m o c k applause."Two thousand fish.
A n d it was Xerox. He was a copy-machine repairman. N i n e -
millimeter Glock."
— 283 —
" I ' m so pleased," I said,"that this experience has afforded you an expertise."
" H e lived on 'Easy Street,'" Kevin noted. "It was a dead-end."
" M y point is, U y o o g h i — "
"Yoo-SOO-ghee," Kevin corrected.
"It clearly didn't matter w h o those employees w e r e — "
" G u y was a m e m b e r of the Hawaiian Carp Association. Maybe he thought that meant he was supposed to complain."
Kevin was showing off; I waited to make sure the little recital was over.
"But your get-together in the gym," I resumed, "was By Invitation Only."
"All my colleagues aren't indiscriminate. Take Michael M c D e r m o t t , last December. Wakefield, Mass., EdgewaterTech—
AK, ,12-gauge shotgun. Specific targets. Accountants. Anybody had to do with docking his paycheck 2,000 b u c k s — "
"I don't want to talk about Michael M c D e r m o t t , K e v i n — "
" H e was fat."
"—Or about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—"
"Morons. Give mass murderers a bad name."
I told you, Franklin, he's obsessed with those Columbine kids, w h o upstaged him only twelve days later with six more fatalities; I ' m sure I brought them up just to rile him. "At least Harris and Klebold had the courtesy to save the taxpayer a bundle and make a quick exit," I observed coolly.
"Weenies just trying to inflate their casualty figures."
" W h y didn't you?"
He didn't seem to take offense. " W h y make it easy for everybody."
"Everybody like me."
"You included," he said smoothly. "Sure." " B u t w h y Dana R o c c o and not another teacher, why those particular kids? W h a t made t h e m so special?"
" U h , duh," said Kevin. "I didn't like them."
— 2 8 4 —
"You don't like anybody," I pointed out. " W h a t , did they beat you at kickball? Or do you just not like Thursdays?"
In the context of Kevin's n e w specialty, my oblique reference to Brenda Spencer qualified as a classical allusion. Brenda killed two adults and w o u n d e d nine students in her San Carlos, California, high school only because, as the B o o m t o w n Rats' hit single subsequently attested, "I D o n ' t Like Mondays." T h e fact that this seminal atrocity dates back to 1979 distinguishes the sixteen-year-old as ahead of her time. My n o d to his puerile pantheon earned me what in other children would have been a smile.
"It must have been quite a project," I said, "trimming the list."
"Massive," he agreed affably. "Started out like, fifty, sixty serious contenders. Ambitious," he said, then shook his head.
"But impractical."
"All right, we have forty-five more minutes," I said. " W h y D e n n y Corbitt?"
" — T h e ham!" he said, as if checking his grocery list before checkout.
"You remember the name of a copy-machine repairman in Hawaii, but you're not too sure about the names of the people you murdered."
"Uyesugi actually did something. Corbitt, if I remember right, just sat all google-eyed against the wall as if waiting for his director to block the scene."
&nbs
p; " M y point is, so D e n n y was a ham. So what?"
"See that dork do Stanley in Streetcar? I could do a better Southern accent underwater."
" W h a t part are you playing? T h e surliness, the swagger.
W h e r e ' d it come from? Brad Pitt? You know, you've picked up a bit of a Southern accent yourself. It isn't very good, either."
His fellow inmates are abundantly black, and his locution has begun to warp accordingly. He's always spoken with a peculiar slowness, that effortfiilness, as if he had to hoist the words from his
— 2 8 5 —
m o u t h with a shovel, so the slack-jawed urban-ghetto economy of dropped consonants and verbs is naturally infectious. Still, I was pleased with myself; I seemed to have annoyed him.
" I ' m not playing a part. I am the part," he said hotly. "Brad Pitt should play me."
(So he'd heard; a movie was already in development at Miramax.)
"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "Brad Pitt's way too old to play some pipsqueak high school sophomore. Even if he were the right age, no audience would buy that a guy w h o looks that street-smart would do anything so moronic. I've read they're having trouble casting, you know. N o b o d y in Hollywood will touch your fdthy little part with a barge pole."
"Just as long as it isn't DiCaprio," Kevin grumbled. "He's a twit."
"Back to business." I sat back. " W h a t was your problem with Ziggy Randolph? You could hardly accuse him of failing your exalted artistic standards, like Denny. Word was that he had a professional future in ballet."
" W h a t had a professional future'' said Kevin, "was his butthole."
" H e got an overwhelming reception w h e n he gave that speech, explaining he was gay and proud of it at assembly. You couldn't bear that, could you? T h e whole student body cooing h o w courageous he was."
"And h o w do you like that," Kevin marveled. "Standing ovation for taking it up the ass."
"But I really haven't been able to figure w h y Greer Ulanov," I said. " T h e fuzzy-headed girl, short, with prominent teeth."
"Buck teeth," he corrected. "Like a horse."
"You generally had it in for the lookers."
"Anything to get her to shut up about her 'vast right-wing conspiracy.'"
"Ah, she was the one," I clued. " T h e petition." (I don't k n o w if you remember, but an indignant petition to N e w York
— 2 8 6 —
congressmen circulated Gladstone High School w h e n Clinton was impeached.)
"Admit it, Mumsey, having a crush on the president is totally low-rent."
"I think," I hazarded, "you don't like people w h o have crushes of any sort."
" M o r e theories? 'Cause I think," he returned, "you need to get a life."
"I had one.You took it."
We faced off. " N o w you're my life," I added-"All that's left."
"That," he said, "is pathetic."
" B u t wasn't that the plan? Just you and me, getting to k n o w one another at last."
" M o r e theories! Aren't I fascinating."
"Soweto Washington." I had a long hst to get through, and I had to keep the program moving. "He's going £° walk again, I've read. Are you disappointed?"
" W h y should I care?"
" W h y did you ever care? E n o u g h to try to kill him?"
"Didn't try to kill him," Kevin maintained staunchly.
" O h , I see. You left him with holes in b o t h thighs and that's all on purpose. Heaven forbid that Mr. Perfect psychopath should miss."
Kevin raised his hands. "Hey, hey! I made mistakes! Letting that little movie nerd off scot-free was the last thing I had in mind."
"Joshua Lukronsky," I remembered, t h o u g h we were getting ahead of ourselves. "Did you hear that your friend Joshua's been brought on board the Miramax frim, as a script consultant? They want to be historically accurate. For a 'movie nerd,' it's a dream come true."
Kevin's eyes screwed up. He doesn't like it w h e n tangential characters collect on his cachet. He was equally resentful w h e n Leonard Pugh posted his web page, KK's^best_friend.com, w h i c h has garnered thousands of hits and p u r p o r t s to expose
— 2 8 7 —
o u r son's darkest secrets for the price of a double-click. Best friend my ass! Kevin snarled w h e n the site w e n t up. Lenny was closer to a pet hamster.
"If it makes you feel better," I added sourly,"Soweto's basketball career is no longer a slam-dunk."
"Yeah, well as a matter of fact that does make me feel better.
Last thing the world needs is one more darkie w h o wants to play hoops in the N B A . Talk about stale."
"Talk about stale! Another high school rampage?"
Kevin cleaned his nails. "I prefer to think of it as tradition."
" T h e media assumed you picked on Soweto because he was black."
" T h a t makes sense," Kevin snorted. " N i n e kids locked in that gym. O n l y one of them's of the Negro persuasion, and bingo, it's a 'hate crime.'"
" O h , it was a hate crime, all right," I said quiedy.
Kevin half smiled. "Totally."
" T h e y said the same thing about Miguel Espinoza. That you went for him because he was Latino."
"Superspic? I leave out communities of color, they'd say I discriminated."
" B u t the real reason was he was such an academic bright spark, isn't it? Skipped a grade. All those dizzyingly high scores on state achievement tests and the PSAT."
" W h e n e v e r he talk to you, turn out he just trying to use
'echelon' in a sentence."
" B u t you k n o w what 'echelon' means. You k n o w all kinds of big words. That's w h y you thought it was such a hoot to write whole essays with words three letters long."
"Fine. So it's not like I was jealous. W h i c h , if I ' m getting the drift of this bor-ing third degree, is what you're getting at."
I took a m o m e n t ; you know, Kevin did look bored.
D o c u m e n t a r y makers like Jack Marlin, criminologists dashing off best-sellers, the principals and teachers and reverends interviewed on the news; your parents, Thelma Corbitt, Loretta Greenleaf—
— 2 8 8 —
all these people obsessing over why KK did it, with the notable exception of our son. It was one more subject in which Kevin was simply not interested: himself.
" T h e cafeteria worker," I raised. " H e doesn't fit the pattern." (I always feel sheepish that I can't remember his name.) " H e wasn't on the list, was he?"
"Collateral damage," said Kevin sleepily.
"And," I said, determined to say something to get him to look alive, "I k n o w your secret about Laura Woolford. She was pretty, wasn't she?"
"Saved her trouble," Kevin slurred. "First sign of a wrinkle and she'd a killed herself anyway."
"Very, very pretty."
"Yep. Bet that girl's mirror was all wore out."
"And you were sweet on her"
If I'd any remaining doubt, Kevin's theatrical guffaw cleared it right up. He doesn't often, but he rent me then, just a litde.
Adolescents are so obvious. "Give me credit," he sneered, "for better taste. That Barbie doll was all accessories."
"It embarrassed you, didn't it?" I prodded. " T h e eyeliner, the Calvin Klein, the designer haircuts. T h e nylons and opalescent pumps. N o t icy, misanthropic KK's style."
"She wasn't all that hot-looking w h e n I was finished."
"It's the oldest story in the book," I goaded. "After confiding darkly to friends that, 'If I can't have her, then no one else is going to...,' Charlie Schmoe opened fire...' Is that what this whole sorry mess was meant to cover? Another pimply teen smitten with the unattainable prom queen goes berserk?"
"In your dreams," said Kevin. "You wanna turn this into a Harlequin romance, that's your midget imagination, not mine."
"Luke W o o d h a m was lovesick, wasn't he? In Pearl? You know,
' T h e W h i n e r . ' "
" H e only went out wi
th Christy Menefee three times, and they'd been busted up for a year!"
"Laura rebuffed you, didn't she?"
— 289 —
"I never came within a mile of that cunt. And as for that fat W o o d h a m fuck, you k n o w his mother came with him on every date? No wonder he reamed her with a butcher knife."
" W h a t happened? D i d you finally w o r k yourself up into cornering her against a locker during lunch? Did she slap you?
Laugh in your face?"
" T h a t the story you wanna tell yourself," he said, scratching his exposed midriff, "I can't stop you."
"Tell other people, too. I was approached by a documentary filmmaker not long ago. Terribly anxious to hear 'my side.'
Maybe I should call him back. I could explain to h i m h o w it was unrequited love all along. My son was head-over-heels for this smashing litde n u m b e r w h o wouldn't give him the time of day. After all, h o w did Laura go down? Kevin may have made a hash of the rest of that crowd, but he shot her straight through the heart, our own cupid of Gladstone High. All those other p o o r wretches were just camouflage, j u s t — w h a t did he call it?
Collateral damage."
Kevin leaned forward and lowered his voice confidentially.
" H o w m u c h did you care what girls I did and didn't like before I whacked a couple? H o w m u c h did you care about anything that went on in my head until it got out?"
I ' m afraid that at that point I lost it a bit. "You want me to feel sorry for you?" I said in a voice that carried; the mole guard looked over. "Well, first I'll feel sorry for Thelma Corbitt, and Mary Woolford. For the Fergusons and the Randolphs, for the Ulanovs and the Espinozas. I'll let my heart break over a teacher w h o bent over backward to get inside your precious head, over a basketball player w h o can barely walk, and even a cafeteria worker I've never met, and then we'll see if there's any pity left over for you.
There just might be, but it's the scraps of my table you're due, and for scraps you should count yourself lucky."
We Need to Talk About Kevin Page 30