We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

  Giving up on safe haven, Greer Ulanov had marched right up to the wall that dropped from the alcove's railing, standing twenty feet immediately below their malevolent Cupid. She had finally found a bete noir more odious than Kenneth Starr.

  "I hate you,you stupid creep!" she screeched."I hope you fry!

  I hope they shoot you full of poison and I get to watch you die!"

  It was a rapid conversion. Only the month before, she'd written an impassioned essay denouncing capital punishment.

  Leaning over the railing, Kevin shot straight down, striking Greer through the foot. The arrow went through to the wooden floor, and pinned her where she stood. As she blanched and struggled to pull the arrow from the floor, he pinned her second foot as well. He could afford the fun; he must still have had fifty, sixty arrows in reserve.

  By this time, the other injured had all crawled to the far wall, where they flopped like voodoo dolls stuck with pins.

  Most bunched on the floor, trying to present the smallest targets possible. But Ziggy Randolph, yet unscathed, now strode to the very middle of the gym, where he presented himself with chest blown out, heels together, toes pronated. Dark and fine-featured, he was a striking boy with a commanding presence, though tritely effeminate in manner; I have never been sure if homosexuals'

  limp-wristed gestures are innate, or studied.

  "Khatchadourian!" Ziggy's voice resonated over the sound of sobbing. "Listen to me! You don't have to do this! Just put the bow on the floor, and let's talk. A lot of these guys'll be all right, if we just get some medics right away!"

  It's worth inserting a reminder here that after Michael Carneal shot up that prayer group in Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997, a devout Heath High School senior, a preacher's son with the novelistic name Ben Strong, was feted from coast to coast for

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  having advanced soothingly on the shooter, urging the boy to p u t down his weapon and putting himself in mortal danger in the process. In response, according to legend, Carneal dropped the pistol and collapsed. D u e to nationwide hunger for heroes in events that were otherwise becoming irredeemable international embarrassments, the story was widely k n o w n . Strong was featured in Time magazine and interviewed on Larry King Live. Ziggy s o w n familiarity with this parable may have bolstered his courage to confront their assailant, and the unprecedented admiration that had met Ziggy's "coming out" to an assembly earlier that semester would have further enhanced his faith in his persuasive powers of oratory.

  "I k n o w you must be really upset about something, okay?"

  Ziggy continued; most of Kevin's victims were not yet dead, and someone was already feeling sorry for him. " I ' m sure you're hurting inside! But this is no way o u t — "

  Unfortunately for Ziggy, the apocryphal nature of Ben Strong's stern, mesmerizing Michael? Put down the gun! would not c o m e out until the spring of 2000, w h e n a suit filed by the victims'

  parents against more than fifty other parties—including parents, teachers, school officials, other teenagers, neighbors, the makers of " D o o m " and " Q u a k e " video games, and the f d m producers of The Basketball Diaries—came to trial in circuit court. U n d e r oath, Strong confessed that an initially sloppy rendition of events to his principal had been further embellished by the media and taken on a life of its own. Trapped in a lie, he'd been miserable ever since. Apparently by the time our hero approached, Michael Carneal had already stopped shooting and had collapsed, his surrender unrelated to any eloquent, death-defying appeal. " H e just got done," Strong testified, "and he dropped it."

  Shsh-thunk. Ziggy staggered backward.

  I hope I haven't related this chronology in so dispassionate a fashion that I seem callous. It's just that the facts remain bigger, bolder, and more glistening than any one small grief. I'm simply reiterating a sequence of events strung together by Newsweek.

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  In parroting its copy, however, I do not pretend any remarkable insight into Kevin's state of mind, the one foreign country into which I have been most reluctant to set foot. Descriptions from Joshua and Soweto of our son's expression from overhead depart from the reportage of similar events. Those Columbine chddren, for example, were manic, eyes glazed, grinning crazdy. Kevin, by contrast, was described as "concentrated" and "deadpan." But then, he always looked that way on the archery range, if only on the archery range, come to think of it—as if he became the arrow, and thus discovered in this embodiment the sense of purpose that his phlegmatic dady persona so extravagandy lacked.

  Yet I have reflected on the fact that for most of us, there is a hard, impassable barrier between the most imaginatively detailed depravity and its real-life execution. It's the same solid steel wall that inserts itself between a knife and my wrist even w h e n I ' m at my most disconsolate. So h o w was Kevin able to raise that crossbow, point it at Laura's breastbone, and then really, actually, in time and space, squeeze the release? I can only assume that he discovered what I never wish to. That there is no barrier.

  That hke my trips abroad or this ludicrous scheme of bike locks and invitations on school stationery, the very squeezing of that release can be broken down into a series of simple constituent parts. It may be no more miraculous to pull the trigger of a b o w or a gun than it is to reach for a glass of water. I fear that crossing into the "unthinkable" turns out to be no more athletic than stepping across the threshold of an ordinary room; and that, if you will, is the trick. T h e secret. As ever, the secret is that there is no secret. He must almost have wanted to giggle, t h o u g h that is not his style; those C o l u m b i n e kids did giggle. A n d once you have f o u n d out that there is nothing to stop you—that the barrier, so seemingly uncrossable, is all in your head—it must be possible to step back and forth across that threshold again and again, shot after shot, as if an unintimidating pipsqueak has drawn a line across the carpet that you must not pass and you launch tauntingly over it, back and over it, in a m o c k i n g little dance.

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  That said, it is the last bit that harrows me most. I have no metaphors to help us.

  If it seems extraordinary that no one responded to the cries for help, the gym is isolated, and the stragglers at the school w h o later admitted to hearing screams and shouts understandably assumed that an exciting or fractious sporting event was underway. There was no telltale crack of gunfire. And the most obvious explanation for this absence of alarm is that, while it may take a while to tell, the melee couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes. But if Kevin had entered into some sort of altered mental state, it was far more sustained than ten minutes.

  Soweto passed out, which probably saved him. As Joshua remained motionless, his fleshy fortress shook from a systematic rain of arrows, some combination of which would finish Mouse Ferguson . Shouts for help or wails of pain further down the wall were silenced with additional shots. He took his time, Franklin—emptying both buckets, until that line of hmp casualties bristled hke a family of porcupines. But more appalling than this cheap archery practice—his victims could no longer be regarded as moving targets—was its cessation. It's surprisingly difficult to kill people with a crossbow. Kevin knew that. And so he waited.

  W h e n at last at 5:40 a security guard jingled by to lock up, was dismayed by the Kryptonite, and peeked through the crack of the door to see red, Kevin waited. W h e n the pohce arrived with those massive but useless cutters (which the chain merely dented) and at length were driven to secure an electric metal saw that shrieked and spit sparks—all of which took time—Kevin put his feet up on the alcove rail and waited. Indeed, the protracted interlude between his last arrow and the SWAT team's final burst through the lobby door at 6:55 was one of those untenanted periods for which I'd advised him at age six that he'd be grateful for a book.

  Laura Woolford and Dana Rocco were killed by the trauma of the arrows themselves. Ziggy, Mouse, Denny, Greer, Jeff, Miguel, and the cafeteria worker all bled to death, trickle by drop.
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  (April 6,2001—Continued)

  W h e n I wheeled out of the car, the lot was already j a m m e d with ambulances and police cars. A bunting of yellow tape marked its perimeter. It was just getting dark, and careworn paramedics were lit in ghoulish admixtures of red and blue. Stretcher after stretcher paraded into the lot—I was aghast; there seemed no end to them. Yet even amid pandemonium, a famdiar face will flash brighter than emergency vehicles, and my eyes seized on Kevin in a matter of seconds. It was a classic double take. Although I may have had my problems with our son, I was still relieved that he was alive. But I was denied the luxury of wallowing in my healthy maternal instincts. At a glance, it was obvious that he was not marching but being marched down the path from the gym by a brace of policemen, and the only reason he could possibly be holding his hands behind his back rather than swinging t h e m in his conventionally insolent saunter is that he hadn't any choice.

  I felt dizzy. For a m o m e n t , the lights of the parking lot scattered into meaningless splotches, like the patterns behind the lids w h e n you rub your eyes.

  "Ma'am, I'm afraid you'd have to clear the area—." It was one of the officers w h o appeared at our door after the overpass incident, the heavier, more cynical of the pair. They must meet a plethora of wide-eyed parents whose darling little reprobates issued " f r o m a good famdy," because he didn't seem to recognize my face.

  "You don't understand," I said, adding the most difficult claim of fealty I'd ever m a d e , " That's my son."

  His face hardened.This was an expression I would get used to; that, and the melting you-poor-dear-I-don't-know-what-to-say one, which was worse. But I was not inured to it yet, and w h e n I asked him what had happened, I could already ted from the flinty look in his eye that whatever I was n o w indirectly responsible for, it was bad.

  "We've had some casualties, ma'am," was all he was inclined to explain. "Best you came d o w n to the station. Just take 59 to

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  303, and exit at Orangeberg R o a d . Entrance on Town Hall R o a d .

  That's assuming you've never been there before."

  " C a n I—talk to him?"

  "You'll have to see that officer there, ma'am. W i t h the cap?"

  He hastened away.

  Making my way toward the police car into whose back seat I'd seen a pohceman shove our son with a hand on the top of his head, I was forced to run a gamut, explaining with increasing fatigue w h o I was to a sequence of officers. I finally understood the N e w Testament story about St. Peter, and why he might have been driven to thrice deny association with some social pariah w h o ' d been set u p o n by a lynch mob. Repudiation may have been even more tempting for me than for Peter, since, whatever he might have styled himself, that boy was no messiah.

  I finally battled to the Orangetown black-and-white, whose enveloping inscription on the side, " I n partnership with the community," no longer seemed to include me. Staring at the back window, I couldn't see through the glass for the blinking reflections. So I cupped my hand over the window. He wasn't crying or hanging his head. He turned to the window. He had no trouble looking me in the eye.

  I had thought to scream, What have you done? But the hackneyed exclamation would have been self-servingly rhetorical, a flouting of parental disavowal. I would k n o w the details soon enough. A n d I could not imagine a conversation that would be anything but ridiculous.

  So we stared at each other in silence. Kevin's expression was placid. It still displayed remnants of resolution, but determination was already sliding to the quiet, self-satisfied complacency of a j o b well done. His eyes were strangely clear—unperturbed, almost peaceful—and I recognized their pellucidity from that morning, though breakfast already seemed ten years past. This was the stranger-son, the boy w h o dropped his corny, shuffling disguise of I mean and I guess for the plumb carriage and lucidity of a man with a mission.

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  He was pleased with himself, I could see that. A n d that's all I needed to know.

  Yet w h e n I picture his face through that back w i n d o w now, I r e m e m b e r something else as well. He was searching. He was looking for something in my face. He looked for it very carefully and very hard, and then he leaned back a little in his seat. Whatever he'd been searching for, he hadn't f o u n d it, and this, too, seemed to satisfy h i m in some way. He didn't smile.

  But he might as well have.

  Driving to the Orangetown police station, I ' m afraid I got enraged with you, Franklin. It wasn't fair, but your mobile was still switched off, and you k n o w h o w one fixates on these small, logistical matters as a distraction. I wasn't able, yet, to get angry at Kevin, and it seemed safer to vent my frustrations on you, since you hadn't done anything wrong. Hitting that redial button over and over, I railed aloud at the wheel. " W h e r e are you? It's almost 7:30! Turn on the fucking phone! For God's sake, of all the nights, why did you have to work late tonight? A n d haven't you listened to the news?" But you didn't play the radio, in your truck; you preferred CDs of Springsteen, or Charlie Parker. "Franklin, you son of a bitch!" I shouted, my tears still the hot, leaking, stingy ones of fury. " H o w could you make me go through this all by myself?"

  I drove past Town Hall R o a d at first, since that slick, rather garish green-and-white building looks hke a chain steakhouse or subscription fitness center from the outside. Aside from its clumsily wrought bronze frieze memorializing four Orangetown officers fallen in the line of duty, the foyer, too, was an expanse of white walls and characterless linoleum where you would expect to find directions to the pool. But the reception r o o m itself was horrifyingly intimate, even more claustrophobically tiny than the emergency r o o m at Nyack Hospital.

  I was accorded anything but priority status, though the receptionist did inform me coldly through the w i n d o w that I could accompany my " m i n o r " — a word that seemed inappropriately reductive—while he was booked. Panicked, I pleaded, " D o I have to?" and she said, "Suit yourself." She directed me to the single black vinyl sofa, to which I was abandoned untended as pohce officers raced back and forth. I felt both implicated and irrelevant. I didn't want to be there. In case that sounds like a grievous understatement, I mean that I had the novel experience of not wanting to be anywhere else, either. Flat out, I wished I were dead.

  For a short time, on the opposite side of my sticky black vinyl couch sat a boy w h o m I now know to be Joshua Lukronsky. Even had I been familiar with this student, I doubt I'd have recognized him at that moment. A small boy, he no longer resembled an adolescent, but a child closer to Celia's age, for he lacked any of the wisecracking swagger for which he was apparently known at school. His shoulders were drawn in, his cropped black hair disheveled. Hands shoved inward in his lap, he kept his wrists bent at the unnaturally severe angle of children in the advanced stages of muscular dystrophy. He sat perfectly still. He never seemed to blink. Awarded a police minder that my own role didn't merit—I already had that feeling of being infected, contagious, quarantined—he didn't respond as the uniformed man standing next to him tried to interest him in a glassed-in case of model police vehicles. It was quite a charming collection, all metal, some very old— vans, horse trailers, motorcycles, '49

  Fords from Florida, Philadelphia, L.A. With fatherly tenderness, the officer explained that one car was very rare, from the days that N e w York City pohce cars were green-and-white—before N Y P D blue. Joshua stared blankly straight ahead. If he knew I was there at all, he did not appear to know w h o I was, and I was hardly going to introduce myself. I wondered why this boy had not been taken to the hospital hke the others.There was no way of telling that none of the blood drenching his clothes belonged to him.

  After a few minutes, a large, plump woman flew through the reception room door, swooping down on Joshua and lifting

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  h i m in a single motion into her arms. "Joshua!" she cried. At first h m p in her clasp, gradually
those muscular-dystrophy wrists curled around her shoulders. His shirtsleeves left red smears on her ivory raincoat.The small face buried in her ample neck. I was simultaneously moved, and jealous. This was the reunion that I'd been denied. I love you so much! I'm so, so relieved you're all right!

  Me, I was no longer entirely relieved that our o w n son was all right. From my glance in that car window, it was his very seeming all tightness that had begun to torment me.

  T h e trio shuffled through the inside door. T h e officer behind the reception w i n d o w ignored me. If at wit's end, I was probably grateful for my little task with the mobile, which I worried like a rosary; dialing gave me something to do. If only for variety, I switched to trying our h o m e p h o n e for a while, but I kept getting the machine, and I'd hang up in the middle of that stilted recording, hating the sound of my o w n voice. I'd already left three, four messages, the first controlled, the last weeping—what a tape to come h o m e to. Realizing that we were both running late, R o b e r t had obviously taken Celia to McDonald's; she loved their hot apple pies.Why didn't he call me? He had my mobile number!

  Hadn't Robert listened to the news? O h , I know, McDonald's broadcasts Muzak, and he wouldn't necessarily switch on his car radio for such a short trip. But wouldn't someone mention it while standing on hne? H o w could anyone in Rockland C o u n t y be talking about anything else?

  By the time two officers fetched me into that plain little r o o m to take my statement, I was so distraught that I was less than polite. I probably sounded thick, too; I couldn't see the purpose of contacting our family's lawyer w h e n there didn't appear to be any question that Kevin did it. A n d this was the first time that anyone had seen fit to give his m o t h e r even the sketchiest l o w d o w n on did what. T h e casualty estimates that one officer rattled off matter-of-factly w o u l d later prove exaggerated, but back then I'd had no reason to have researched the fact that atrocity figures are almost always inflated w h e n first