Read We Need to Talk About Kevin Online
Authors: Lionel Shriver
Tags: #Fiction, #Psychological, #Teenage Boys, #Epistolary Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Massacres, #School Shootings, #High Schools, #New York (State)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (47 page)
I know, Snuffles was just a pet, an expensive pet, and some kind of unhappy ending was inevitable. I should have thought of that before I gave her the little beast, though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life. I had hoped he’d last longer, but that wouldn’t have made it any easier for Celia when calamity hit.
That night in February 1998 is the only instance I can remember of Celia’s dissembling. She kept darting around the house, crawling on the floor, picking up the couch skirting and peering under the sofa, but when I asked her what she was looking for she chirped, “Nothing!” She continued scuffling around on all fours past her bedtime, refusing to explain the game she was playing, but begging to play it longer. Finally, enough was enough, and I hauled her off to bed as she struggled. It wasn’t like her to be such a brat.
“How’s Snuffles?” I asked, trying to distract her when I turned on the light.
Her body stiffened, and she didn’t look at the cage when I bounced her onto the mattress. After a pause, she whispered, “He’s fine.”
“I can’t see him from here,” I said. “Is he hiding?”
“He’s hiding,” she said, in an even smaller voice.
“Why don’t you go find him for me?”
“He’s
hiding
,” she said again, still not looking at the cage.
hiding
,” she said again, still not looking at the cage.
The elephant shrew did sometimes sleep in a corner or under a branch, but when I searched the cage myself, I couldn’t spot any tufts. “You didn’t let
Kevin
play with Snuffles, did you?” I asked sharply, in the same tone of voice I might have asked,
You didn’t put Snuffles in a blender, did you?
Kevin
play with Snuffles, did you?” I asked sharply, in the same tone of voice I might have asked,
You didn’t put Snuffles in a blender, did you?
“It’s all my fault!” she gasped, and began to sob. “I th-thought I closed the cage door, but I guess I d-d-d-didn’t! ’Cause when I came in after supper it was open and he was gone! I’ve looked everywhere!”
Shsh, now there, we’ll find him
, I cooed, but she would not be quieted. “I’m stupid! Kevin says so and he’s right. I’m stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She hit herself so hard on the temple with her balled up fist that I had to grab her wrist.
Shsh, now there, we’ll find him
, I cooed, but she would not be quieted. “I’m stupid! Kevin says so and he’s right. I’m stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She hit herself so hard on the temple with her balled up fist that I had to grab her wrist.
I was hopeful that her crying jag would burn itself out, but a little girl’s grief has astonishing staying power, and the strength of her selfloathing tempted me to make false promises. I assured her that Snuffles could not have got very far and that he would
definitely
be right back in his cozy cage by morning. Grasping at my perfidious straw, Celia shuddered and lay still.
definitely
be right back in his cozy cage by morning. Grasping at my perfidious straw, Celia shuddered and lay still.
I don’t think we gave up until about 3 A.M.—and thanks, again, for your help. You had another scouting job the next day, and we would both miss sleep. I can’t think of a cranny we didn’t check; you moved the dryer, I combed the trash. Mumbling good-naturedly, “Where is that bad boy?” you pulled all the books out of the lower shelves while I steeled myself to check for hair in the disposal.
“I don’t want to make this worse with an I-told-you-so,” you said when we both collapsed in the living room with dust balls in our hair. “And I did think it was cute. But that’s a rare, delicate animal, and she’s in first grade.”
“But she’s been so conscientious. Never out of water, careful about overfeeding. Then to just, leave the door open?”
“She is absent-minded, Eva.”
“True. I suppose I could order another one ...”
“Fugeddaboutit. One lesson in mortality is enough for the year.”
“You think maybe he got outside?”
“In which case he’s already frozen to death,” you said cheerfully.
“Thanks.”
“Better than
dogs
. . . . ”
dogs
. . . . ”
That was the story I put together for Celia the next day: that Snuffles had gone to play outdoors, where he was much happier with lots of nice fresh air, and where he’d make lots of animal friends. Hey, why not turn it to my advantage? Celia would believe anything.
All things being equal, I’d expect to recollect our daughter’s ashen mope of the following week, but not ordinary housekeeping chores. But under the circumstances, I have good reason to recall that the kids’ bathroom sink backed up that weekend. Janis wouldn’t be in until Monday, and I’d never spurned a little upkeep of my own home now and again. So I smote the clog with a few glugs of Liquid-Plumr, poured in one cup of cold water, and left it to sit, according to the directions. Then I put the Liquid-Plumr away. Did you seriously imagine that after all this time I would change my story?
I put it away
.
I put it away
.
Eva
MARCH 8, 2001
Dear Franklin,
My God, there’s been another one. I should have known on Monday afternoon when all my coworkers suddenly started to avoid me.
Standard issue. In a suburb outside San Diego, fifteen-year-old Charles “Andy” Williams—a scrawny, unassuming-looking white kid with thin lips and matted hair like well-trod carpet—brought a .22 to Santana High School in his backpack. He hid out in the boys’ bathroom, where he shot two, proceeding to the hallway to fire at anything that moved. Two students were killed, thirteen injured. Once he had retreated to the bathroom again, the police found him cowering on the floor with the gun to his head. He whimpered incongruously, “It’s only me”; they arrested the boy without a struggle. It almost goes without saying by now that he’d just broken up with his girlfriend—who was twelve.
Curiously, on the news Monday night, some of his fellow students characterized the shooter, as usual, as “picked on,” persecuted as a “freak, a dork, and a loser.” Yet a whole other set of kids attested that Andy had plenty of friends, wouldn’t remotely qualify as unpopular or especially ragged on, and was to the contrary “well-liked.” These latter descriptions must have confused our audience, since when Jim Lehrer revisited the story tonight for another inquiry into
why, why, why
, all depictions along the lines of “well-liked” had been expunged. If Andy Williams hadn’t been “bullied,” he failed to support the now fashionable revenge-of-the-nerds interpretation of these incidents, which were now meant to teach us not stricter gun control but concern for the agonies of the underage outcast.
why, why, why
, all depictions along the lines of “well-liked” had been expunged. If Andy Williams hadn’t been “bullied,” he failed to support the now fashionable revenge-of-the-nerds interpretation of these incidents, which were now meant to teach us not stricter gun control but concern for the agonies of the underage outcast.
Accordingly, while “Andy” Williams is now nearly as famous as his crooner counterpart, I doubt there’s a news consumer in the country who could tell you the name of either of the two students he shot dead—teenagers who never did anything wrong outside of heading to the bathroom on a morning that their more fortunate classmates resolved to hold their bladders through Geometry: Brian Zuckor and Randy Gordon. Exercising what I can only regard as a civic duty, I have committed their names to heart.
I’ve heard parents throughout my life allude to horrifying incidents in which something happened to their children: a full-immersion baptism by a boiling pot of turkey stew or the retrieval of a wayward cat via an open third-story window. Prior to 1998, I had casually assumed that I knew what they were talking about—or what they avoided talking about, since there’s often a private fence around such stories, full access to which, like intensive care units, only immediate family is allowed. I’d always respected those fences. Other people’s personal disasters of any sort are exclusionary, and I’d be grateful for that Don’t Enter sign, behind which I might shelter a secret offensive relief that my own loved ones were safe. Still I imagined that I knew roughly what lay on the other side. Be it a daughter or a grandfather, anguish is anguish. Well, I apologize for my presumption. I had no idea.
When you’re the parent, no matter what the accident, no matter how far away you were at the time and how seemingly powerless to avert it, a child’s misfortune feels like your fault. You’re all your kids have, and their own conviction that you will protect them is contagious. So in case you expect, Franklin, that I’m simply setting about one more time to deny culpability, to the contrary. Broadly, it still feels like my fault, and broadly, it felt like my fault at the time.
At the very least, I wish I’d stuck to my guns on our child-care arrangements. We’d hired Robert, that seismology student from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, to pick up Celia from school and stick around the house until one of us got home, and that’s the way the rules should have stayed. Against all odds, we managed to keep Robert, too—though he threatened to quit—once we assured him that Kevin was now old enough to look after himself and he need only look after Celia. But you were on this responsibility kick. Kevin was fourteen, as old as many sitters in our neighborhood. If Kevin was to become trustworthy, he had first to be trusted; sure, it sounded good. So you told our child-minder that as long as Kevin had returned from ninth grade and had been apprised that he was now to keep an eye on Celia, Robert could go. That solved the problem that kept cropping up, that you would get stuck in traffic and I would work a bit late, and (however well-compensated for his time) Robert would get stranded, chafing, on Palisades Parade when he had research at Lamont to which he needed to return.
When I try to remember that Monday, my mind shies, like ducking a hurtling tether ball. Then the memory curves centrifugally back around again, so that when I stand back up it hits me in the head.
I was once more working a little late. The new arrangement with Robert made me feel less guilty for putting in an extra hour, and AWAP’s preeminence in the budget-travel niche had started to slide. We had so much more competition than when I started out—
The Lonely Planet
and
The Rough Guide
had sprung up; meanwhile, with the whole country aslosh in cash from a buoyant stock market, demand for the really dirt-cheap travel in which we specialized had dropped. So against my better judgment, I was working up a proposal for a whole new series,
Wing and a Prayer for Boomers
—whose target audience would be flush with Internet start-up stock, probably overweight, nostalgic about their first seat-of-the-pants trip to Europe with a beat-up copy of
W&P
in the sixties, convinced they were still college students if not in fact then in spirit, accustomed to $30 cabernets but, by conceit, still adventurous, that is, eager for comfort so long as that’s not what it was called and by all means in horror of resorting to the stodgy
Blue Guide
like their parents—when the phone rang.
The Lonely Planet
and
The Rough Guide
had sprung up; meanwhile, with the whole country aslosh in cash from a buoyant stock market, demand for the really dirt-cheap travel in which we specialized had dropped. So against my better judgment, I was working up a proposal for a whole new series,
Wing and a Prayer for Boomers
—whose target audience would be flush with Internet start-up stock, probably overweight, nostalgic about their first seat-of-the-pants trip to Europe with a beat-up copy of
W&P
in the sixties, convinced they were still college students if not in fact then in spirit, accustomed to $30 cabernets but, by conceit, still adventurous, that is, eager for comfort so long as that’s not what it was called and by all means in horror of resorting to the stodgy
Blue Guide
like their parents—when the phone rang.
You said to drive carefully. You said that she was already in the hospital and there was nothing I could do now. You said that her life was not endangered. You said that more than once. All this was true. Then you said that she was going to be “all right,” which was not true, though for most messengers of dismal tidings the urge to issue this groundless reassurance seems to be irresistible.
I had no choice but to drive carefully, because the traffic on the George Washington Bridge was barely moving. When at last I laid eyes on your collapsed expression in the waiting room, I realized that you loved her after all, which I castigated myself for ever having doubted. Kevin wasn’t with you, to my relief, because I might have clawed his eyes out.
Your embrace had rarely offered so little solace. I kept hugging you harder to get something out of it, like squeezing an empty bottle of hand lotion until it wheezes.
She was already in surgery, you explained. While I’d driven in, you’d run Kevin home, because there was nothing to do but wait, and there was no point making this harder on her brother than it was already. But I wondered if you hadn’t whisked him from the waiting room to safeguard him from me.
We sat in those same sea-green metal chairs where I had agonized over what Kevin would tell the doctors when I broke his arm. Maybe, I supposed miserably, for the last eight years he’d been
biding his time
. I said, “I don’t understand what happened.” I was quiet; I didn’t shout.
biding his time
. I said, “I don’t understand what happened.” I was quiet; I didn’t shout.
You said, “I thought I told you. Over the phone.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.” Anything but contentious, my tone was simply baffled. “Why would she—what would she be doing with that stuff?”
“Kids.” You shrugged. “Playing. I guess.”
“But,” I said. “She’ll, ah—.” My mind kept blanking out. I had to reconstruct what I’d wanted to say all over again, repeating the conversation to myself, where we were, what came next.... Bathroom. Yes.
“She’ll go to the bathroom by herself now,” I resumed. “But she doesn’t like it in there. She never has. She wouldn’t
play
in there.” An incipient insistence in my voice must have sounded dangerous; we would shrink back from the ledge. Celia was still in surgery. We wouldn’t fight, and you would hold my hand.
play
in there.” An incipient insistence in my voice must have sounded dangerous; we would shrink back from the ledge. Celia was still in surgery. We wouldn’t fight, and you would hold my hand.
It seemed hours later that the doctor emerged. You’d called home on your cell phone, twice, out of my earshot as if sparing me something; you’d bought me coffee from the machine along the wall, and it was now topped with crinkled skin. When a nurse pointed us out to the surgeon, I suddenly understood why some people worship their doctors, and why doctors are prone to feel godlike. But with one look at his face, I could see that he wasn’t feeling very godlike.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We really tried. But there was too much damage. I’m afraid we couldn’t save the eye.”
We were encouraged to go home. Celia was heavily sedated, and she would remain so for some time. Not long enough, I thought. So we stumbled from the waiting room. At least, you pointed out numbly, he says the other eye is probably okay. Just that morning I’d taken for granted the fact that our daughter had two.
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