Lionel Shriver - We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Here he is!” sang his teacher at the door to the Girls’ Room. And then she gasped.

I doubt your recollection of these rusty stories is all that sharp, so allow me to refresh your memory. There was a slight, dark-haired kindergartner named Violetta whom I must have mentioned earlier that school year, since she touched me so. She was quiet, withdrawn; she would hide in Miss Fabricant’s skirts, and it took me ages to coax her to tell me her name. Quite pretty, really, but you had to look at her carefully to discern that, which most people didn’t. They couldn’t get past the eczema.

It was dreadful. She was covered in it, these massive scaly patches, red and flaking and sometimes cracked, where it scabbed. All down her arms and spindly legs, and worst of all across her face. The crinkling texture was reptilian. I’d heard that skin conditions were associated with emotional disorders; maybe I was myself susceptible to faddish presuppositions, since I couldn’t help wondering if Violetta was being mistreated in some way or if her parents were undergoing a fractious divorce. In any case, every time I laid eyes on her something caved in me, and I fought the impulse to gather her in my arms. I’d never have wished vast angry blemishes on our son per se, but this was just the sort of heartbreaking affliction for which I had hankered at Dr. Foulke’s: some temporary misfortune that would heal but that would meantime stir in me when faced with my own boy the same bottomless pool of sympathy that rippled whenever Violetta—a stranger’s child—shuffled bashfully into view.

I’ve only had one outbreak of eczema, on my shin, just a taste but enough to know that it itches like fury. I’d overheard her mother urging the girl murmurously not to scratch and assumed that the tube of cream that Violetta always carried, clutched shamefully in the pocket of her jumper, was an anti-itch ointment, since if it was a curative it was snake oil; I’d never seen Violetta’s eczema do anything but get worse. But those antipruritics are only so effective, and her self-control was impressive. She’d trace a fingernail tantalizingly over her arm, and then grasp the offending hand with the other, as if putting it on a leash.

Anyway, when Miss Fabricant gasped, I joined her in the doorway. Kevin’s back was to us, and he was whispering. When I pushed the door open a little more, he stopped and stepped back. Facing us before the washbasins was Violetta. Her face was lifted in what I can only describe as an expression of bliss. Her eyes were closed, her arms crossed sepulchrally with each hand at the opposite shoulder, her body listing in a kind of swoon. I’m sure we’d have neither begrudged this benighted little girl the ecstasy she so deserved, except for the fact that she was covered with blood.

I don’t mean to be melodramatic. It soon became clear after Miss Fabricant shrieked and pushed Kevin aside for paper towels that Violetta’s abrasions weren’t as bad as they looked. I restrained her hands from raking her upper arms while her teacher dabbed moistened towels on her limbs and face, desperately trying to clean her up a bit before her mother arrived. I attempted to dust the dandruff of white flecks from her navy jumper, but the flakes of skin stuck to the flannel like Velcro. There clearly wasn’t time to scrub the splotches of blood from the lacy rim of her anklets and the gathers of her white puffed sleeves. Most of the lacerations were shallow, but they were all over her body, and Miss Fabricant would no sooner daub a patch of eczema—flamed from sullen mauve to incandescent magenta—than it would bead again, and trickle.

Listen: I don’t want to have this argument again. I fully accept that Kevin may never have touched her. As far as I could tell she had clawed herself open without any help. It itched and she’d given in, and I dare say that finally scraping her fingernails into that hideous red crust must have felt delicious. I even sensed a trace of vengefulness in the extent of the damage, or perhaps a misguided medical conviction that with sufficiently surgical application she might exfoliate the scaly bane of her existence once and for all.

Still, I’ve never forgotten my glimpse of her face when we found her, for it bespoke not only plain enjoyment but a release that was wilder, more primitive, almost pagan. She knew it would hurt later and she knew she was only making her skin condition worse and she knew her mother would be beside herself, and it was this very apprehension with which her expression was suffused, and which gave it, even in a girl of five, a hint of obscenity. She would sacrifice herself to this one glorious gorging, consequences be damned. Why, it was the very grotesquerie of the consequences—the bleeding, the stinging, the hair-tear back home, the unsightly black scabs in the weeks to come—that seemed to lie at the heart of her pleasure.

That night you were furious.

“ So a little girl scratched herself. What has that to do with my son?”

“He was there! This poor girl, flaying herself alive, and he did nothing .”

“He’s not her minder, Eva, he’s one of the kids!”

“He could have called someone, couldn’t he? Before it went so far?”

“ Maybe , but he’s not even six until next month. You can’t expect him to be that resourceful or even to recognize what’s ‘too far’ when all she’s doing is scratching. None of which remotely explains why you let Kevin squish around the house, all afternoon from the looks of him, plastered in shit!” A rare slip. You forgot to say poop .

“It’s thanks to Kevin that Kevin’s diapers stink because it’s thanks to Kevin that he wears diapers at all.” Bathed by his outraged father, Kevin was in his room, but I was aware of the fact that my voice carried. “Franklin, I’m at my wit’s end! I bought all those there’s-nothing-dirtyabout-poo how-to books and now he thinks they’re stupid because they’re written for two-year-olds. We’re supposed to wait until he’s interested , but he’s not, Franklin! Why should he be when Mother will always clean it up? How long are we going to let this go on, until he’s in college?”

“Okay, I accept we’re in a positive reinforcement loop. It gets him attention—”

“We’re not in a loop but a war , Franklin. And our troops are decimated. We’re short on ammunition. Our borders are overrun.”

“Can we get something straight? Is this your new potty-training theory, let him slum around in his own crap and get it all over our white sofa? This is instructional? Or is it punishment? Because somehow this latest therapy of yours seems all mixed up with your lunatic indignation that some other kid got an itch.”

“ He enticed her .”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

“She’d been very, very good about leaving that eczema alone. Suddenly we find her in the bathroom with her new little friend, and he’s hovering over her and urging her on…. My God, Franklin, you should have seen her! She reminded me of that old scare story that circulated in the sixties about how some guy on acid clawed all the skin off his arms because he thought he was infested with bugs.”

“Does it occur to you that if the scene was all that terrible then maybe Kevin’s a little traumatized himself? That maybe he needs some comfort and reassurance and someone to talk to about it, and not to be banished to his own personal sewer? Jesus, they take kids into foster care for less.”

“I should be so lucky,” I muttered.

“Eva!”

“I was joking!”

“What is wrong with you?” you despaired.

“He wasn’t ‘traumatized,’ he was smug. Riding home, his eyes were sparkling. I haven’t seen him that pleased with himself since he eviscerated his birthday cake.”