We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

  luuuuuuv you, buddy! stuff, and I'd just look at him hke, Who are you talking to, guy? W h a t does that mean, your dad 'loves' you and hasn't a [bleep] ing clue w h o you are? What's he love, then? Some kid in Happy Days. N o t me."

  " W h a t about your mother?"

  " W h a t about her?" Kevin snapped, though untd n o w he'd been affable, expansive.

  "Well, there was that civd suit brought for parental negligence—"

  "Totally bogus," said Kevin flatly. " R a n k opportunism, frankly.

  M o r e culture of compensation. N e x t thing you know, geezers'll be suing the government for getting old and kids'11 be taking their mommies to court because they came out ugly. My view runs, life sucks; tough luck. Fact is, the lawyers knew Mumsey had deep pockets, and that Woolford cow can't take bad news on the chin."

  Just then the camera angle panned ninety degrees, zooming in on the room's only decoration that I could see taped over his bed. Badly creased from having been folded small enough to fit in a pocket or wallet, it was a photograph of me. Jesus Christ, it was that head-shot on an Amsterdam houseboat, which disappeared w h e n Celia was born. I was sure he'd torn it to pieces.

  — 4 1 3 —

  "But whether or not your m o t h e r was legally remiss," Marlin proceeded, "maybe she paid you too litde attention—?"

  "Oh, lay off my mother." This sharp, menacing voice was alien to me, but it must have been useful inside."Shrinks here spend all day trying to get me to trash the woman, and I'm getting a little tired of it, if you wanna k n o w the truth."

  Marlin regrouped. "Would you describe your relationship as close, then?"

  "She's been all over the world, k n o w that? You can hardly name a country where she hasn't got the T-shirt. Started her o w n company. Go into any bookstore around here, you'll see her series.You know, Smelly Foreign Dumps on a Wing and a Prayer? I used to cruise into Barnes and Noble in the mall just to look at all those books. Pretty cool."

  "So you don't think there's any way she might have—"

  "Look, I could be kind of a creep, okay? A n d she could be kind of a creep, too, so we're even. Otherwise, it's private, okay?

  Such a thing in this country anymore as private, or do I have to tell you the color of my underwear? N e x t question."

  "I guess there's only one question left, Kevin—the big one.

  W h y ' d you do it?"

  I could tell Kevin had been preparing for this. He inserted a dramatic pause, then slammed the front legs of his plastic chair onto the floor. Elbows on knees, he turned from Marlin to directly address the camera.

  "Okay, it's hke this. You wake up, you watch TV, and you get in the car and you listen to the radio. You go to your little j o b or your little school, but you're not going to hear about that on the 6:00 news, since guess what. Nothing is really happening.

  You read the paper, or if you're into that sort of thing you read a book, which is just the same as watching only even m o r e boring.

  You watch TV all night, or maybe you go out so you can watch a movie, and maybe you'll get a p h o n e call so you can tell your friends what you've been watching. And you know, it's got so bad that I've started to notice, the people on TV? Inside the TV? Half

  — 4 1 4 —

  the time they're watching TV Or if you've got some romance in a movie? W h a t do they do but go to a movie. All these people, Marlin," he invited the interviewer in with a nod. " W h a t are they watching?"

  After an awkward silence, Marlin filled in, "You tell us, Kevin."

  "People like me." He sat back and folded his arms.

  Marlin would have been happy with this footage, and he wasn't about to let the show stop now. Kevin was on a roll and had that quality of just getting started. "But people watch other things than killers, Kevin," Marlin prodded.

  "Horseshit," said Kevin. " T h e y want to watch something happen, and I've made a study of it: Pretty m u c h the definition of something happening is it's bad. T h e way I see it, the world is divided into the watchers and the watchees, and there's m o r e and more of the audience and less and less to see. People w h o actually do anything are a goddamned endangered species."

  " O n the contrary, Kevin," Marlin observed sorrowfully, "all too many young people hke yourself have gone on killing sprees in the last few years."

  "Lucky for you, too! You need us! W h a t would you do without me, film a documentary on paint drying? W h a t are all those folks doing," he waved an arm at the camera, "but watching me? D o n ' t you think they'd have changed the channel by n o w if all I'd done is get an A in Geometry? Bloodsuckers! I do their dirty w o r k for them!"

  "But the whole point of asking you these questions," Marlin said soothingly, "is so we can all figure out h o w to keep this sort of Columbine thing from happening again."

  At the mention of Columbine, Kevin's face soured."I just wanna go on the record that those two weenies were not pros. Their bombs were duds, and they shot plain old anybody. No standards.

  My crowd was handpicked. T h e videos those morons left behind were totally embarrassing. They copied me, and their whole operation was obviously designed to o n e - u p Gladstone—"

  — 4 1 5 —

  Marlin tried quietly to intrude something like, "Actually, police claim that Klebold and Harris were planning their attack for at least a year," but Kevin plowed on.

  " N o t h i n g , not one thing in that circus went according to plan. It was a 100-percent failure from top to bottom. No wonder those miserable twits wasted themselves—and I thought that was chicken. Part of the package is facing the music. Worst of all, they were hopeless geeks. I've read sections of Klebold's whining, snot-nosed journal. K n o w one of the groups that c h u m p wanted to avenge himself against? People who think they can predict the weather. H a d no idea what kind of a statement they were making.

  O h , and get this—at the end of the Big Day, those two losers were originally planning to hijack a jet and fly it into the World Trade Center. Give me a break!"

  "You, ah, note that your victims were 'handpicked,'" said Marlin, w h o must have been wondering, What was that about?

  " W h y those particular students?"

  " T h e y happened to be the people w h o got on my nerves. I mean, if you were planning a major operation hke this, wouldn't you go for the priss-pots and faggots and eyesores you couldn't stand? Seems to me that's the main perk of taking the rap. You and your cameramen here leech off my accomplishments, and you get a fancy salary and your name in the credits. Me, I have to do time. Gotta get something out of it."

  "I have one m o r e question, Kevin, t h o u g h I ' m afraid you may have answered it already," said Marlin w i t h a tragic note.

  " D o you feel any remorse? K n o w i n g w h a t you do now, if you could go back to April 8th, 1999, w o u l d you kill those people all over again?"

  "I'd only do one thing different. I'd put one right between the eyes of that Lukronsky dork, who's been making a mint off his terrible ordeal ever since. I read he's n o w gonna be acting in that Miramax flick! Feel sorry for the cast, too. He'll be quoting Let's get in character from Pulp Fiction and doing his Harvey Keitel imitations and I bet in Hollywood that shit gets old quick. And

  — 416 —

  while we're on that, I wanna complain that Miramax and everybody should be paying me some kind of fee. They're stealing my story, and that story was a lot of work. I don't think it's legal to swipe it for free."

  "But it's against the law in this state for criminals to profit f r o m — "

  Again, Kevin swung to the camera. " M y story is about all I got to my name right now, and that's w h y I feel robbed. B u t a story's a w h o l e lot more than most people got. All you people watching out there, you're listening to w h a t I say because I have something you don't: I got plot. B o u g h t and paid for.

  That's w h a t all you people want, and w h y you're sucking off me. You want my plot. I k n o w h o w you feel, too, since hey, I used to feel th
e same way. TV and video games and movies and c o m p u t e r screens...On April 8th, 1999,1 j u m p e d into the screen, I switched to watchee. Ever since, I've k n o w n w h a t my life is about. I give good story. It may have been kinda gory, but admit it, you all loved it. You ate it up. Nuts, I o u g h t to be on some government payroll. W i t h o u t people like me, the w h o l e country w o u l d j u m p off a bridge, 'cause the only thing on TV

  is some housewife on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? w i n n i n g $64,000 for r e m e m b e r i n g the n a m e of the president's dog."

  I turned off the set. I couldn't take any more. I could feel another interview with Thelma Corbitt coming up, b o u n d to include an appeal for the "Love for Kids with Determination"

  scholarship fund she'd set up in Denny's honor, to w h i c h I'd already contributed more than I could afford.

  Obviously, this flashy thesis about the passive spectating of m o d e r n life was but a twinkle in Kevin's eye two years ago. He has time on his hands at Claverack, and he'd knocked together that fancy motive in m u c h the way older convicts manufacture vanity license plates. Still, I reluctantly have to admit that his post hoc exegesis contained a nugget of truth. Were N B C to broadcast an unabating string of documentaries on the mating habits of sea otters, viewership would dwindle. Listening to

  — 4 1 7 —

  Kevin's diatribe, I was struck despite myself by what a sizable proportion of our species feeds off the depravity of a handful of reprobates, if n o t to earn a living then to pass the time. It isn't only journalists, either. T h i n k tanks generating mountains of paper over the sovereign disposition of fractious little East Timor. University Conflict Studies departments issuing c o u n t -

  less Ph.D.s on E T A terrorists w h o n u m b e r no m o r e than 100.

  Filmmakers generating millions by dramatizing the predations of lone serial killers. A n d think of it: the courts, police, National G u a r d — h o w m u c h of government is the m a n a g e m e n t of the wayward 1 percent? W i t h prison building and warding one of the biggest growth industries in the U n i t e d States, a sudden popular conversion to civilization across the board could trigger a recession. Since I myself had craved a turn of the page, is it really such a stretch to say of KK that we need him? Beneath his bathetic disguise, Jack Marlin had sounded grateful. He wasn't interested in the mating habits of sea otters, and he was grateful.

  Otherwise, Franklin, my reaction to that interview is very confusing. A customary horror mixes w i t h something h k e —pride. He was lucid, self-assured, engaging. I was touched by that photograph over his bed, and no little chagrined that he hadn't destroyed it after all (I guess I've always assumed the worst). Recognizing snippets of his soliloquy f r o m my o w n tirades at table, I ' m n o t only mortified, but flattered. A n d I ' m thunderstruck that he has ever ventured into a Barnes and N o b l e to gaze at my handiwork, for which his " M e e t My M o t h e r "

  essay didn't betray great respect.

  But I ' m dismayed by his unkind remarks about you, which I hope you don't take to heart.You tried so hard to be an attentive, affectionate father.Yet I did warn you that children are unusually alert to artifice, so it makes sense that it's your very effort that he derides. A n d you can understand w h y in relation to you of all people he feels compelled to portray himself as the victim.

  I was grilled at length by Mary's lawyers about the "warning

  — 418 —

  signs" that I should have picked up sufficiently in advance to have headed off calamity, but I think most mothers would have f o u n d the tangible signals difficult to detect. I did ask about the purpose of the five chain-and-padlock Kryptonites w h e n they were delivered to our door by FedEx, since Kevin had a bike lock, along with a bike he never rode.Yet his explanation seemed credible: He'd come across a terrific deal on the Internet, and he planned to sell these Kryptonites, which went for about $100

  apiece retad, at school for a profit. If he'd never before displayed such entrepreneurial spunk, the aberration only seems glaring n o w that we k n o w what the locks were for. H o w he got hold of school stationery I've no idea, and I never ran across it. And w h d e he laid in a generous supply of arrows for his crossbow over a period of months, he never ordered more than half a dozen at a time. He was always ordering arrows, and the stockpde, which he kept outside in the shed, didn't attract my attention.

  T h e one thing that I did notice through the rest of December and the early months of 1999 was that Kevin's Gee, Dad routine n o w extended to Gee, Mumsey. I don't k n o w h o w you put up with it. Gosh, are we having some of that great Armenian food tonight?

  Terriffl I sure want to learn more about my ethnic heritage! Lots of guys at school are plain old white-bread, and they're superjealous that I'm a member of a real-live persecuted minority! Insofar as he had any tastes in food at all, he hated Armenian cuisine, and this disingenuous boppiness hurt my feelings. W i t h me, Kevin's behavior had been hitherto as unadorned as his bedroom—stark, lifeless, sometimes hard and abrasive, but (or so I imagined) uncamouflaged. I preferred that. It was a surprise to discover that my son could come to seem even farther away.

  I interpreted his transformation as induced by that conversation in the kitchen that he'd overheard—to which neither you n o r I had alluded again, even in private. O u r prospective separation l o o m e d as a great smelly elephant in the living r o o m , t r u m p e t i n g occasionally or leaving behind massive piles of manure for us to trip over.

  Yet astonishingly, our marriage blossomed into a second h o n e y m o o n , remember? We pulled off that Christmas with unequaled warmth. You secured me a signed copy of Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate, as well as Michael J. Aden's Passage to Ararat, Armenian classics. In turn, I gave you a copy of Alistair Cooke's America and a biography of R o n a l d Reagan. If we were poking f u n at one another, the teasing was tender. We indulged Kevin w i t h some sports clothes that were grotesquely too small, while Celia, typically, was every bit as entranced with the bubble wrap it came in as with her glass-eyed antique doll. We made love m o r e often than we had in years under the implicit guise of for-old-time's-sake.

  I was unsure whether you were reconsidering a summer split or were merely impelled by guilt and grief to make the most of what was irrevocably terminal. In any event, there is something relaxing about hitting bottom. If we were about to get a divorce, nothing worse could possibly happen.

  Or so we thought.

  A

  A P R I L 5 , 2 0 0 1

  Dear Franklin,

  I k n o w it's b o u n d to be a touchy subject for you. But I promise, if you hadn't given him that crossbow for Christmas, it would have been the longbow or poison darts. For that matter, Kevin was sufficiently resourceful to have capitalized on the Second A m e n d m e n t and would have laid hands on the more conventional arsenal of pistols and deer rifles that his more m o d e r n - m i n d e d colleagues prefer. Frankly, traditional School Shooting instruments would not only have improved his margin of error but would have heightened the likelihood that he could best the competition in fatalities—clearly one of his driving ambitions, since before those Columbine upstarts came along twelve days later, he topped the charts. A n d you can be sure that he considered this issue at great length. He said himself at fourteen, " C h o i c e of weapons is half the fight." So on the face of it, the archaic selection is peculiar. It handicapped him, or so it would seem.

  He may have liked that. Maybe I passed on my o w n inclination to rise to a challenge, the very impulse that got me pregnant with the boy in the first place. A n d though he may have enjoyed sticking his mother, w h o fancied herself so "special," with the insult of cliche—like it or not, little Ms. International Traveler would b e c o m e one more assembly-line mother of a tacky American type, and he k n e w h o w m u c h it pained me that my sassy VW Luna was n o w every fifth car in the Northeast—he

  — 421 —

  still liked the idea of setting himself apart. Since afte
r Columbine he grumbled in Claverack that "any idiot can fire a shotgun,"

  he must have recognized that being "the crossbow kid" would mark his little prank in the popular imagination. Indeed, by the spring of 1999 the field was crowded, and the once indelibly impressed names of Luke Woodham and Michael Carneal were already beginning to fade.

  Moreover, he was certainly showing off. Maybe Jeff Reeves played a mean guitar riff, Soweto Washington could swish his free-throws, and Laura Woolford could get the whole football team to ogle her slim behind as it twitched down the hall, but Kevin Khatchadourian could put an arrow through an apple—or an ear—from fifty meters.

  Nevertheless, I'm convinced that his leading motivation was ideological. N o t that "I got plot" nonsense he fobbed off on Jack Marlin. Rather, I have in mind the "purity" he admired in the computer virus. Having registered the social compulsion to derive some broad, trenchant lesson from every asinine murder spree, he must have painstakingly parsed the prospective fallout from his own.

  His father, at least, was forever dragging him off to some cluttered Native American museum or dreary Revolutionary War battlefield, so that anyone w h o tried to portray him as the neglected victim of the self-centered two-career marriage would have an uphill battle, and whatever he may have intuited, we were not divorced: no copy there. He wasn't a member of a satanic cult; most of his friends didn't go to church either, so godlessness was unlikely to emerge as a cautionary theme. He wasn't picked on—he had his unsavory friends, and his contemporaries went out of their way to leave him be—so the poor-persecuted-misfit, we-must-do-something-to-stop-bullying-in-schools number wouldn't go very far. Unlike the mental incontinents he held in such contempt, w h o passed malignant notes in class and made extravagant promises to confidants, he'd kept his mouth shut; he hadn't posted a homicidal web site or written essays about blowing up the school, and the most creative social commentator would be hard-pressed to deploy a satire about sports utility vehicles as one of those unmissable "warning signs" that are n o w meant to drive vigdant parents and teachers to call confidential hotlines. But best of all, if he accomplished his stunt entirely with a mere crossbow, his mother and all her mush-headed liberal friends wouldn't be able to parade him before Congress as one more poster boy for gun control. In short, his choice of weapon was meant to ensure to the best of his ability that Thursday would mean absolutely nothing.