Lionel Shriver - We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I doubt Kevin’s going to have a hard time finding quirks.” Although the sense of maternal mission that had powered me through my last fortnight was fast abating, I had made myself a promise, Kevin a promise on arrival, implicitly you one as well. I took a breath. “Franklin, I made a major decision while I was gone.”

With the classic timing of dining out, our waitress arrived with my salad and your cheesecake. Her feet gritted on the lino. Kevin had emptied the saltcellar onto the floor.

“That lady has poop on her face.” Kevin was pointing at the birthmark on our waitress’s left cheek, three inches across and roughly the shape of Angola. She’d slathered beige concealer over the big brown blotch, but most of the makeup had worn off. Like most disguises, the cover-up was worse than honest flaw, a lesson I had yet to register on my own account. Before I could stop him, Kevin asked her directly, “Why don’t you clean your face? It’s poopy.”

I apologized profusely to the girl, who couldn’t have been much more than eighteen and had no doubt suffered from that blemish her whole life. She managed a dismal smile and promised to bring my dressing.

I wheeled to our son. “You knew that spot wasn’t ‘poop,’ didn’t you?”

“Nyeh NYEE nyeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyee , nyeh-nyeh nyeh?” Kevin skulked in the booth, his eyes at half-mast and glittering. He’d placed his fingers on the table and his nose against its rim, but I could tell from that telltale sparky squint that below the table lurked a grin: wide, tight-lipped, and strangely forced.

“Kevin, you know that hurt her feelings, didn’t you?” I said. “How would you like it if I told you your face was ‘poopy’?”

“Eva, kids don’t understand that grown-ups can be touchy about their looks.”

“Are you sure they don’t understand that? You read this somewhere?”

“Can we not ruin our first afternoon out together?” you implored. “Why do you always have to think the worst of him?”

“Where did that come from?” I asked, looking perplexed. “It sounds more as if you always think the worst of me .”

Innocent mystification would remain my tack for the next three years. Meantime, the mood had gone all wrong for my announcement, so I got it over with as unceremoniously as I could. I’m afraid my intentions came out as defiant: Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, if you think I’m such a rotten mother.

“Wow,” you said. “ Are you sure? That’s a big step.”

“I remembered what you said about Kevin and talking, that maybe he didn’t for so long because he wanted to do it right. Well, I’m a perfectionist, too. And I’m not doing AWAP or motherhood right. At the office, I’m continually taking days off with no warning, and publications get behind schedule. Meanwhile, Kevin wakes up and has no idea who’s taking care of him today, his mother or some hopeless hireling who’ll hightail it by the end of the week. I’m thinking mostly until Kevin is in primary school. Hey, it might even be good for W&P. Bring in a new perspective, fresh ideas. The series may be overly dominated by my voice.”

“ You ,” shock-horror, “domineering?”

“ NYEEEEEEE? Nyeh-nyeh nyeeeeh nyeh?”

“Kevin, stop it! That’s enough. Let Mommer and Daddy talk—”

“NYEH-nyeh, NYEEEE nyeh—! Nyeh nyeh-NYEEH—!”

“I mean it, Kevin, quit the nyeh-nyeh or we’re leaving.”

“Nyeh NYEE nyeh, nyeh nyeh, nyeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh nyeh NYEE-NYEH !”

I don’t know why I threatened him with departure, lacking any evidence that he wanted to stay. This was my first taste of what would become a chronic conundrum: how to punish a boy with an almost Zen-like indifference to whatever you might deny him.

“Eva, you’re just making everything worse—”

“How do you propose to get him to shut up?”

“Nyeh nyeh NYEEE nyeh- nyeeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh nyeeeeeeenyeeeeeeee ?”

I slapped him. It wasn’t very hard. He looked happy.

“Where’d you learn that trick?” you asked darkly. And it was a trick: This was the first sentence of mealtime conversation that did not get translated into nyeh-nyeh .

“Franklin, he was getting louder. People were starting to look over.”

Now Kevin started to wail. His tears were a bit late, in my view. I wasn’t moved. I left him to it.

“They’re looking over because you hit him,” you said sotto voce, lifting our son and cuddling him into your lap as his weeping escalated to a shriek. “It’s not done anymore, Eva. Not here. I think they’ve passed a law or something. Or they might as well have. It’s considered assault.”

“I smack my own kid, and I get arrested?”

“There’s a consensus—that violence is no way to get your point across. Which it sure as heck isn’t. I don’t want you to do that again, Eva. Ever .”

So: I slap Kevin. You slap me. I got the picture.

“Can we please get out of here?” I proposed coldly. Kevin was winding down to lurching sobs, but he could easily milk the decrescendo another good ten minutes. Christ, it was practically a love pat. What a little performer.

You signaled for the bill. “This is hardly the context in which I wanted to make my announcement,” you said, wiping Kevin’s nose with a napkin. “But I have some news, too. I bought us a house.”

I did a double take. “You bought us a house. You didn’t find one for me to look at. It’s a done deal.”

“If I didn’t pounce it was going to be snapped up by somebody else. Besides, you weren’t interested. I thought you’d be pleased, glad it’s over.”

“Well. There’s only so pleased I’m going to get over something that wasn’t my idea in the first place.”

“That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t get behind anything that isn’t your own pet project. If you didn’t personally cook up SUBURBAWAP then you’re all disaffected. Good luck doing all that delegating at the office. It doesn’t come naturally.”

You left a generous tip. The extra three bucks, I inferred, was to cover those poopy face cracks. Your motions were mechanical. I could see you were hurt. You’d searched far and wide for this house, you’d been looking forward to delivering your big news, and you must have been excited about the property or you wouldn’t have bought it.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as we walked out, and other patrons peered furtively at our party. “I’m just tired. I am pleased. I can’t wait to see it.”

“Nyeh nyeh- nyeh. Nyeh-nyeh nyeh. Nyeh nyeh nyeh… ”

I thought, Everyone in this restaurant is relieved we’re leaving. I thought, I’ve become one of those people I used to feel sorry for. I thought, And I still feel sorry for them, too.

More than ever.

Dear Franklin,

Call it a New Year’s resolution, since for years I’ve been busting to tell you: I hated that house. On sight. It never grew on me, either. Every morning I woke to its glib surfaces, its smart design features, its sleek horizontal contours, and actively hated it.

I grant that the Nyack area, woodsy and right on the Hudson, was a good choice. You had kindly opted for Rockland County in New York rather than somewhere in New Jersey, a state in which I’m sure there are many lovely places to live but that had a sound to it that would have slain me. Nyack itself was racially integrated and, to meet the eye, down-market, with the same slight dishevelment of Chatham—though unlike Chatham, its shabby, unassuming quality was an illusion, since pretty much all the new arrivals for decades had been stinking rich. Main Street eternally backed up with Audis and BMWs, its overpriced fajita joints and wine bars bursting, its dumpy outlying two-bedroom clapboards listing for 700 grand, Nyack’s one pretension was its lack of pretension. In contrast to Gladstone itself, I’m afraid, a relatively new bedroom community to the north, whose tiny town center—with fake gas street lamps, split-rail fencing, and commercial enterprises like “Ye Olde Sandwich Shoppe”—epitomized what the British call “twee.”