We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

  "Yes, it's fucked," I said ruefully. "I guess I deserved it."

  "You know, if there's anybody you don't hke?" he offered.

  "And you got their e-mail address? Just l e m m e know."

  I laughed. "Okay, I'll be sure to do that. T h o u g h , some days?

  T h e people I don't like come to quite a list."

  "Better warn t h e m you got friends in low places," he said.

  So this is bonding] I marveled, and closed the door.

  ' 4

  — 384

  M A R C H 1 6 , 2 0 0 1

  Dear Franklin,

  Well, it's another Friday night on which I gird myself for a visit to Chatham tomorrow morning. T h e halogen bulbs are trembling again, dickering hke my stoic resolve to be a g o o d soldier and live out what's left of my life for the sake of some unnamable duty. I've sat here for over an hour, w o n d e r i n g what keeps me going, and more specifically just what it is I want from you. I guess it goes without saying that I want you back; the volume of this correspondence—though it's more of a respondence, isn't it?—attests heavdy to that. But what else? Do I want you to forgive me? A n d if so, for what exactly?

  After all, I was uneasy with the unsolicited tide of forgiveness that washed over the shipwreck of our famdy in the wake of Thursday. In addition to mail promising either to beat his brains out or to bear his babies, Kevin has received dozens of letters offering to share his pain, apologizing for society's having faded to recognize his spiritual distress and granting him blanket moral amnesty for what he has yet to regret. Amused, he's read choice selections aloud to me in the visiting room.

  Surely it makes a travesty of the exercise to forgive the unrepentant, and I speak for myself as well. I, too, have received a torrent of mad (my e-mad and postal address were billboarded on both partnersnprayer.org and beliefhet.com without my consent; apparently at any one time, thousands of Americans have been

  — 385 —

  praying for my salvation), m u c h of it invoking a G o d in w h o m I was less disposed to believe than ever, while sweepingly acquitting my shortcomings as a mother. I can only assume that these well-meaning people felt moved by my plight.Yet it bothered me that nearly all this deliverance was bestowed by strangers, which made it seem cheap, and an undercurrent of preening betrayed that conspicuous clemency has become the religious version of driving a flashy car. By contrast, my brother Giles's staunch incapacity to pardon us for the unwelcome attentions that our wayward son has visited u p o n his own family is a grudge I treasure, if only for its frankness. Thus I was of half a mind to mark the envelopes

  " R e t u r n to sender," hke Pocket Fishermans and Gensu knives I hadn't ordered. In the early months, still asthmatic with grief, I was more in the m o o d for the bracing open air of the pariah than for the close, stifling confines of Christian charity. And the vengefulness of my hate mail was meat-red and raw, whereas the kindness of condolences was pastel and processed, hke commercial baby food; after reading a few pages from the merciful, I'd feel as if I'd just crawled from a vat of liquefied squash. I wanted to shake these people and scream, Forgive us! Do you know what he did?

  But in retrospect it may grate on me most that this big d u m b absolution latterly in vogue is doled out so selectively.

  Weak characters of an everyday sort—bigots, sexists, and panty fetishists—need not apply. " K K " the murderer harvests sheaves of pitying p e n pals; an addled drama teacher too desperate to be liked is blackballed for the rest of her life. From which you may correctly construe that I ' m not so bothered by the caprices of all America's compassion as I am by yours.You bent over backward to be understanding about killers like Luke W o o d h a m in Pearl and httle Mitchell and Andrew in Jonesboro. So why had you no sympathy to spare forVicki Pagorski?

  T h e first semester of Kevin's sophomore year in 1998 was dominated by that scandal. R u m o r s had circulated for weeks, b u t we weren't in the loop, so the first we heard about it was

  — 386 —

  w h e n the administration sent that letter around to all Ms.

  Pagorski's drama students. I'd been surprised that Kevin elected to take a drama course. He tended to shy f r o m the limelight in those days, lest scrutiny blow his Regular Kid cover. On the other hand, as his r o o m suggested, he could be anybody, so he may have b e e n interested in acting for years.

  "Franklin, you should take a l o o k at this," I said one N o v e m b e r evening while you were grumbling over the Times that Clinton was a "lying sack of shit." I handed you the letter.

  "I don't k n o w w h a t to make of it."

  As you adjusted your reading glasses, I had one of those j u d d e r i n g update m o m e n t s w h e n I realized that your hair had n o w passed decisively from blond to gray. "Seems to me," you determined, "this lady's got a taste for tenderloin."

  "Well, you have to infer that," I said. " B u t if someone's made an accusation, this letter's n o t defending her. If your son or daughter has reported anything irregular or inappropriate...Please speak to your child...They're digging for m o r e dirt!"

  " T h e y have to protect themselves. — K E V ! C o m e into the den for a sec!" Kevin sauntered across the dining area in tiny dove-gray sweats, their elastic ankles b u n c h e d under his knees.

  "Kev, this is a little awkward," you said, "and you haven't d o n e anything wrong. N o t a thing. B u t this drama teacher, Ms.—Pagorski. Do you like her?"

  Kevin slumped against the archway. "Okay, I guess. She's a little..."

  "A little what?"

  Kevin looked elaborately in all directions. "Hinky."

  " H i n k y h o w ? " I asked.

  He studied his unlaced sneakers, glancing up through his eyelashes. "She hke, wears f u n n y clothes and stuff. N o t like a teacher. Tight jeans, and sometimes her b l o u s e — " He twisted, and scratched an ankle w i t h his foot. "Like, the buttons at the top, they're n o t . . .See, she gets all excited w h e n she's directing a scene, and t h e n . . . It's sort of embarrassing."

  — 3 8 7 —

  " D o e s she wear a bra?" you asked bluntly.

  Kevin averted his face, suppressing a grin. " N o t always."

  "So she dresses casually, and sometimes—provocatively," 1

  said. "Anything else?"

  "Well, it's not a big deal or anything, but she does use a lot of dirty words, you know? Like, it's okay, b u t f r o m a teacher and everything, well, hke I said, it's hinky."

  "Dirty like damn and hell?" you prodded. " O r harder core?"

  Kevin raised his shoulders helplessly. "Yeah, like—sorry, M u m s e y — "

  " O h , skip it, Kevin," I said impatiently; his discomfiture seemed rather overdone. " I ' m a grown-up."

  "Like fuck," he said, meeting my eyes. "She says, hke, That was a fucking good performance, or she'll direct some guy, Look at her like you really want to fuck her, like you want to fuck her till she squeals like a pig!'

  "Little out there, Eva," you said, eyebrows raised.

  " W h a t does she look like?" I said.

  "She's got big, uh," he m i m e d honeydews, "and a really wide," this time he couldn't contain the grin, "hke, a huge butt.

  She's old and everything. Sort of a hag, basically."

  "Is she a g o o d teacher?" I said.

  "She's sure into it anyway."

  " I n t o it how?" you said.

  "She's always trying to get us to stay after school and practice o u r scenes with her. Most teachers just want to go home, you know? N o t Pagorski. She can't get enough."

  " S o m e teachers," I said sharply, "are very passionate about their work."

  "That's w h a t she is," said Kevin. " R e a l , real passionate."

  "Sounds like she's a little bohemian," you said, " o r a bit of a loon.That's all right. But other things aren't all right. So we need to know. Has she ever touched you. In a flirtatious way. O r —below the waist. In any way that made you uncomfortable."

  T h e squirming bec
ame extravagant, and he scratched his bare

  - 3 8 8 - -

  midriff as if it didn't really itch. "Depends on what you mean by uncomfortable, I guess."

  You looked alarmed. "Son, it's just us here. But this is a big deal, all right? We have to k n o w if anything—happened."

  "Look," he said bashfully. " N o offense, Mumsey, but would you mind? I'd rather talk to Dad in private."

  Frankly, I minded very much. If I was going to be asked to trust this story, I wanted to hear it myself. But there was nothing for it but to excuse myself to the kitchen and fret.

  Fifteen minutes later, you were steamed. I poured you a glass of wine, but you couldn't sit down. "Tell you what, Eva, this w o m a n went beyond the pale," you m u r m u r e d urgendy, and gave me the lowdown.

  "Are you going to report this?"

  "Bet your life I ' m going to report this.That teacher should be fired. Hell, she should be arrested. He's underage."

  " D o y o u — d o you want to go in together?" I'd been about to ask instead, Do you believe him? but I didn't bother.

  I left turning state's evidence to you, w h d e I volunteered to meet Dana Rocco, Kevin's Enghsh teacher, for a routine parent-teacher conference.

  Whisking out of Ms. Rocco's classroom at 4 P.M., Mary Woolford passed me in the hallway with barely a nod; her daughter was no academic bright spark, and she looked, if this was not merely a permanent condition, put out. W h e n I entered, Ms.

  R o c c o had that having-just-taken-a-deep-breath expression, as if drawing on inner resources. But she recovered readily enough, and her handclasp was warm.

  "I've been looking forward to meeting you," she said, firm rather than gushy. "Your son's quite an enigma to me, and I've been hoping you could help me crack the code."

  " I ' m afraid I rely on his teachers to explain the mystery to me," I said with a wan smde, assuming the hot seat by her desk.

  " T h o u g h I doubt they've been enlightening."

  — 3 8 9 —

  "Kevin turns in his homework. He isn't a truant. He doesn't, as far as anyone knows, take knives to school. That's all his teachers have ever cared to know."

  " I ' m afraid that most teachers here have nearly 100

  students—"

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be critical.You're spread so thin that I'm impressed you've even learned his name."

  " O h , I noticed Kevin right away—." She seemed about to say more, and stopped. She placed a pencil eraser on her bottom hp. A slim, attractive woman in her mid-forties, she had decisive features that tended to set in an implacable expression, her m o u t h faintly pressed. Yet if she exuded an air of restraint, her reserve did not seem natural but learned, perhaps by expensive trial and error.

  It wasn't an easy time to be a schoolteacher, if it ever had been. Squeezed by the state for higher standards and by parents for higher grades, under the magnifying glass for any ethnic insensitivity or sexual impropriety, torn by the rote demands of proliferating standardized tests and student cries for creative expression, teachers were both blamed for everything that went wrong with kids and turned to for their every salvation. This dual role of scapegoat and savior was downright messianic, but even in 1998 shekels Jesus was probably paid better.

  "What's his game?" Ms. R o c c o resumed, bouncing the eraser on her desk.

  "Pardon?"

  "What do you think that boy's up to? He tries to hide it, but he's smart. Quite the savage social satirist, too. Has he always done these tongue-in-cheek papers, or are these deadpan parodies something new?"

  "He's had a keen sense of the absurd since he was a toddler."

  "Those three-letter-word essays are tours de force. Tell me, is there anything he doesn't find ridiculous?"

  "Archery," I said miserably. "I have no idea why he doesn't get tired of it."

  " W h a t do you think he likes about it?"

  I frowned. "Something about that arrow—the focus—its purposiveness, or sense of direction. Maybe he envies it. There's a ferocity about Kevin at target practice. Otherwise, he can seem rather aimless."

  "Ms. Khatchadourian, I don't want to put you on the spot.

  But has anything happened in your family that I should k n o w about? I was hoping you could help explain why your son seems so angry"

  "That's odd. Most of his teachers have described Kevin as placid, even lethargic."

  "It's a front," she said confidently.

  "I do think of him as a litde rebellious—"

  " A n d he rebels by doing everything he's supposed to. It's very clever. B u t I look in his eyes, and he's raging. W h y ? "

  "Well, he wasn't too happy w h e n his sister was b o r n . . . B u t that was over seven years ago, and he wasn't t o o happy before she was b o r n , either." My dehvery had g r o w n morose. "We're pretty well o f f — y o u know, we have a big h o u s e . . . " I introduced an air of embarrassment. "We try n o t to spoil him, but he lacks for nothing. Kevin's father adores him, almost— too m u c h . His sister did have an—accident last winter in w h i c h Kevin was—involved, but he didn't seem very bothered by it. N o t bothered enough, in fact. Otherwise, I can't tell you any terrible trauma he's b e e n through or deprivation he's suffered.We lead the g o o d life, don't we?"

  "Maybe that's what he's angry about."

  " W h y would affluence make him mad?"

  "Maybe he's mad that this is as good as it gets.Your big house.

  His good school. I think it's very difficult for kids these days, in a way. T h e country's very prosperity has b e c o m e a burden, a dead end. Everything works, doesn't it? At least if you're white and middle class. So it must often seem to young people that they're not needed. In a sense, it's as if there's nothing more to do."

  "Except tear it apart."

  — 3 9 1 —

  "Yes. A n d you see the same cycles in history. It's not only children."

  "You know, I've tried to tell my kids about the hardships of hfe in countries like Bangladesh or Sierra Leone. But it's not their hardship, and I can't exactly tuck t h e m in on a bed of nails every night so they'll appreciate the miracle of comfort."

  "You said your husband 'adores' Kevin. H o w do you get along with him?"

  I folded my arms. "He's a teenager."

  Wisely, she dropped the subject. "Your son is anything but a hopeless case.That's what I most wanted to tell you. He's sharp as a tack. Some of his papers—did you read the one on the SUV?

  It was worthy of Swift. And I've noticed that he asks challenging questions merely to catch me o u t — t o humiliate me in front of the class. In fact, he knows the answer beforehand. So I've been playing along. I call on him, and he asks w h a t logomachy means. I gladly admit I don't know, and bingo, he's learned a new w o r d —because he had to find it in the dictionary to ask the question.

  It's a game we play. He spurns learning through regular channels.

  But if you get at him through the back door, your young man has spark."

  I was jealous. "Generally w h e n I knock at the door, it's locked."

  "Please don't despair. I assume that with you, just as in school, he's inaccessible and sarcastic. As you said, he's a teenager. But he's also inhaling information at a ferocious rate, if only because he's determined that n o b o d y get the better of him."

  I glanced at my watch; I'd r u n overtime. "These high school massacres," I said offhandedly, collecting my purse."Do you w o r r y that something hke that could happen here?"

  " O f course it could happen here. A m o n g a big enough group of people, of any age, somebody's going to have a screw loose. But honestly, my turning violent poetry into the office only makes my students mad. In fact, it should make t h e m mad. Madder, even.

  So many kids take all this censorship, these locker searches—"

  — 3 9 2 —

  "Flagrantly illegal," I noted.

  "—Flagrandy illegal searches." She nodded. "Well, so many of t h e m take it lying d o w n hke sheep. The
y're told it's for 'their own protection,' and for the most part they just—buy it. W h e n I was their age we'd have staged sit-ins and marched around with placards—." She stopped herself again. "I think it's good for t h e m to get their hostihties out on paper. It's harmless, and a release valve. But that's b e c o m e a minority view. At least these horrible incidents are still very rare. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it."

  "And, uh—," I stood, "the rumors aboutVicki Pagorski.Think there's anything to them?"

  Ms. Rocco's eyes clouded. "I don't think that's been established."

  "I mean, off the record. Is it credible. Assuming you k n o w her."

  "Vicki is a friend of mine, so I don't feel impartial—." She once more put that eraser on her chin. "This has been a painful time for her." That was all she would say.

  Ms. R o c c o saw me to the door. "I want you to give Kevin a message for me," she said with a smde. "You tell h i m I ' m onto him!'

  I'd often nursed the same conviction, but I'd never have asserted it in such a cheerful tone of voice.

  Anxious to avert legal action, the Nyack School Board held a closed disciplinary hearing at Gladstone High, to w h i c h only the parents of four of Vicki Pagorski's students were invited.

  Trying to keep the event casual, they p u t the meeting in a regular classroom. Still the r o o m sizzled w i t h a sense of occasion, and the other three mothers had dressed up. (I realized I'd made terribly classist assumptions about Lenny Pugh's parents, w h o m we'd never met, w h e n I f o u n d myself scanning for overweight trailer-park trash in loud polyester to no avail. I later discerned that he was the banker-type in chalk-stripe, she the stunning, intelligent-looking redhead in understated gear that was clearly

  — 393 —

  designer label, because it didn't show any buttons. So we all have our crosses to bear.) T h e school board and that beefy principal, Donald Bevons, had assumed a set of folding chairs along one wall, and they were all scowling with rectitude, while we parents were stuck in those infantilizing school desks. Four other folding chairs were arranged on one side of the teacher's desk at the front, where there sat two nervous-looking boys I didn't know, along with Kevin and Lenny Pugh, w h o kept leaning over toward Kevin and whispering behind his hand.