We Need to Talk About Kevin

  "Most kids like sugar?" you explained zestfully. " O u r s likes salt." Apparently a sodium fetish was superior to a sweet tooth in every way.

  " T h e Japanese think they're opposites," I said, slipping my gooey collection out the window. T h o u g h there was a shallow

  — 1 4 6 —

  back seat, Kevin's child seat was fastened between us, and I was sorry that I couldn't, as I used to, place a hand on your thigh.

  " M o m m e r farted," said Kevin, n o w halving the difference between Mommy and Mother. (It was cute. It must have been.)

  "It stinks."

  "That's not the kind of thing you have to announce, Kevin," I said tighdy. I'd had that mashed beans and banana side dish at the Norfolk before catching the plane.

  " H o w about Junior's?" you proposed. "It's on the way, and they're kid-friendly."

  It wasn't like you to fail to consider that I'd been in transit from Nairobi for fifteen hours, so I might be a little tired, bloated from the flight, overfed with airline Danishes and cheddar packets, and less than in the m o o d for a loud, camp, brighdy lit hash house whose sole redeeming feature was cheesecake. I'd privately hoped that you'd have found a sitter and met my plane alone, to sweep me off to a quiet drink where I could bashfully reveal my turned maternal leaf. In other words, I wanted to get away from Kevin the better to confide to you h o w very m u c h m o r e time I planned to spend with him.

  "Fine," I said faindy. "Kevin, either eat those cheese thingies or I'll put them away. D o n ' t crumble t h e m all over the truck."

  "Kids are messy, Eva!" you said merrily."Loosen up!"

  Kevin shot me a crafty orange smile and fisted a doodle into my lap.

  At the restaurant, Kevin scorned the booster seat as for babies.

  Since clearly parenthood turns you overnight into an insufferable prig, I lectured, "ALL right, Kevin. But remember:You only get to sit like an adult if you act like one."

  " N Y E E nyee, nyeh nyeh. Nyeh nyeh-wyee-nyeh: N y e h nyeh-

  nyeh nyehnyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh nyeh- nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyee nyeh nyeh."With waltzing mockery, he had captured my stern cadence and preachy inflection with such perfect pitch that he might have a future singing covers as a lounge singer.

  — 147 —

  " C u t it out, Kevin." I tried to sound offhand.

  "Nye-nye nyee, nye nye!"

  I turned to you. " H o w long has this been going on?"

  " N y e h nyeh nyeh N Y E E nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh?"

  "A month? It's a phase. He'll grow o u t of it."

  " N y e h nyeh? Nyeh-nyeh nyeee. N y e h nyeh nyeh-nyeh-nyeh."

  "I can't wait," I said, increasingly loath to let anything out of my m o u t h , lest it come parroting back to me in nyeh-nyeh-speak.

  You wanted to order Kevin onion rings, and I objected that he must have been eating salty crap all afternoon. "Look," you said. "Like you, I ' m grateful w h e n he eats anything. Maybe he's craving some trace element, like iodine. Trust nature, I say."

  "Translation: You like eaty-whizzes and curly-munchies, too, and you've been bonding over snack food. Order him a hamburger patty. He needs some protein."

  W h e n our waitress read back our order, Kevin nye-nye-e d throughout: "NYEE-nyeh nyeh-nyeh, nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyehnyeh-nyeeeh" apparendy translates "garden salad, house dressing on the side."

  " W h a t a cute little boy," she said, glancing with desperation at the wall clock.

  W h e n his patty came, Kevin retrieved the tall, faceted saltcellar with huge pour-holes and covered the beef with salt until it looked like M o u n t Kilimanjaro after a recent snow. Disgusted, I reached over with a table knife to scrape it off, but you held my arm. " W h y can't you let anything with this little guy be fun, or funny?" you chided quietly. " T h e salt thing is a phase too, and he'll grow out of it too, and later we'll tell h i m about it w h e n he's older and it'll make him feel he had plenty of quirky personality even w h e n he was a little kid. It's life. It's good life."

  "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, implicidy you one as well.

  — 1 4 8 —

  I took a breath. "Franklin, I made a major decision while I was gone."

  W i t h the classic timing of dining out, our waitress arrived with my salad and your cheesecake. H e r feet gritted on the lino.

  Kevin had emptied the saltcellar onto the floor.

  " T h a t lady has p o o p 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 w o r n 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, " W h y don't you clean your face? It's poopy."

  I apologized profusely to the girl, w h o couldn't have been m u c h 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 k n e w that spot wasn't 'poop,'

  didn't you?"

  " N y e h N Y E E 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 k n o w that hurt her feelings, didn't you?" I said.

  " H o w 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?"

  " C a n we not ruin our first afternoon out together?" you implored. " W h y do you always have to think the worst of him?"

  " W h e r e did that come from?" I asked, looking perplexed. "It sounds m o r e as if you always think the worst of me."

  149

  Innocent mystification would remain my tack for the next three years. Meantime, the m o o d 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. A n d I ' m n o t doing AWAP

  or m o t h e r h o o d 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 mosdy until Kevin is in primary school. Hey, it might even be good for W&P. Bring in a new perspective, fresh ideas. T h e series may be overly dominated by my voice."

  " You," shock-horror, "domineering?"

  "NYEEEEEEE? Nyeh-nyeh nyeeeeh nyeh?"

  "Kevin, stop it! That's enough. Let M o m m e r and Daddy talk—"

  " N Y E H - n y e h , N Y E E E E nyeh—! N y e h n y e h - N Y E E H — ! "

  "I mean it, Kevin, quit the nyeh-nyeh or we're leaving."

  " N y e h N Y E E nyeh, nyeh nyeh, nyeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh nyeh NYEEnyehl"

  I don't k n o w w h y I threatened h i m with departure, lacking any evidence that he wanted to stay. This was my first taste of what would b e c o m e a chronic c o n u n d r u m : h o w to punish a boy with an almost Zen-like indifference to whatever you might deny him.

  "Eva, you're just making everything w o r s e — "

  " H o w do you propose to get h i m to shut up
?"

  " N y e h nyeh N Y E E E 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. A n d it was a trick: This was the first sentence of mealtime conversation that did n o t get translated into nyeh-nyeh.

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

  N o w 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 h i m into your lap as his weeping escalated to a shriek. "It's not done anymore, Eva. N o t here. I think they've passed a law or something. Or they might as weE have. It's considered assault."

  "I smack my o w n kid, and I get arrested?"

  "There's a consensus-—that violence is no way to get your point across. W h i c h 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.

  " C a n we please get out of here?" I proposed coldly. Kevin was winding d o w n to lurching sobs, but he could easily milk the decrescendo another good ten minutes. Christ, it was practically a love pat. W h a t a little performer.

  You signaled for the biE."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 p o u n c e 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."

  "WeE.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

  — 151

  o w n pet project. If you didn't personally cook up S U B U R B A W A P

  then you're all disaffected. G o o d luck doing all that delegating at the office. It doesn't come naturally."

  You left a generous tip. T h e 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."

  " N y e h nyeh- nyeh. Nyeh-nyeh nyeh. N y e h nyeh n y e h . . . "

  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.

  M o r e than ever.

  4

  — 152 —

  JANUARY 1 , 2 0 0 1

  Dear Franklin,

  Call it a N e w 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 m o r n i n g 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 R o c k l a n d C o u n t y in N e w York rather than somewhere in N e w Jersey, a state in w h i c h 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 C h a t h a m — t h o u g h unlike Chatham, its shabby, unassuming quality was an illusion, since pretty m u c h all the n e w arrivals for decades had been stinking rich. Main Street eternally backed up with Audis and B M W s , its overpriced fajita joints and wine bars bursting, its dumpy oudying t w o - b e d r o o m clapboards listing for 700 grand, Nyack's one pretension was its lack of pretension. In contrast to Gladstone itself, I ' m afraid, a relatively n e w bedroom community to the north, whose tiny t o w n center—with fake gas street lamps, split-rail fencing, and commercial enterprises like "Ye Olde Sandwich S h o p p e " —epitomized what the British call "twee."

  In fact, my heart sank w h e n you first plowed the pickup proudly up the long, pompous drive off Palisades Parade. You'd

  — 153 —

  told me nothing about the property, the better to "surprise" me.

  Well. I was surprised. A flat-roofed, single-storied expanse of glass and sandy brick, at a glance it resembled the headquarters of some slick, do-gooding conflict-resolution outfit with more m o n e y than it k n e w what to do with, w h e r e they'd give "peace prizes" to Mary R o b i n s o n and Nelson Mandela.

  H a d we never discussed what I envisioned?You must have had some idea. My fantasy house would be old, Victorian. If it had to be big it would be high, three stories and an attic, full of nooks and crannies whose original purpose had grown obsolete—slave quarters and tackle rooms, root cellars and smokehouses, dumbwaiters and widow's walks. A house that was falling to bits, that dripped history as it dropped slates, that cried out for fiddly Saturday repairs to its rickety balustrade, while the fragrant waft of pies cooling on counters drifted upstairs. I'd furnish it with secondhand sofas whose floral upholstery was faded and frayed, garage-sale drapes with tasseled tiebacks, ornate mahogany sideboards with speckled-looking glass. Beside the porch swing, struggling geraniums would spindle out of an old tin milking pail.

  No one would frame our ragged quilts or auction them off as rare early American patterns w o r t h thousands; we'd throw t h e m on the bed and wear t h e m out. Like wool gathering lint, the house would seem to accumulate j u n k of its o w n accord: a bicycle with w o r n brake shoes and a flat tire; straight-backs whose dowel rods need regluing; an old corner cabinet of good w o o d but painted a hideous bright blue, which I keep saying I'm going to strip down and never do.

  I won't go on, because you k n o w exactly what I ' m talking about. I k n o w they're hard to heat, I k n o w they're drafty. I k n o w the septic tank would leak, the electric bills run high. I k n o w you'd anguish that the old well in the backyard was a dangerous draw for neighborhood urchins, for I can picture this h o m e so vividly in my mind that I can walk across its overgrown yard with my eyes closed and fall in that well myself.

  Curling out of the truck onto the semicircular concrete

  — 1 5 4 —

  turnaround in front of our n e w abode, I thought, abode, isn't that the word. My ideal h o m e was cozy and closed the world out; looking out onto the H u d s o n (admittedly, the view was smashing), these wide plate glass windows advertised an eternal open house.

  Pink pebble-fdl with flagstone paths skirted its splay like one big welcome mat. T h e facade and central walkway were lined with stunted shrubs. No black walnut trees, no uncultivated riot of goldenrod and moss, but shrubs. Surrounding them? A lawn.

  N o t even the sweet cool sort, whose f m e bright shoots tempt a laze with lemonade and bees, but that springy, scratchy kind, like those green abrasive scrub pads for washing dishes.

  You flung open the entrance. T h e foyer dribbled into a living r o o m the size of a basketball court, and then up a couple of low stairs and there was the dining "room," partially segmented from the kitchen with a divider to pass food through—some concoction with sun-dried tomatoes, no doubt. I had yet to lay eyes on one door. I panicked, thinking, There's nowhere to hide.

  "Tell me this isn't dramatic," you said.

  I said honestly, " I ' m dumbstruck."

  I'd have thought that a small child, let loose in a vast, unfurnished expanse of glossy w o o d e n floors blazing in insipid sunshine would go dashing about, sliding d o w n halls in socks, giggling and rampaging, utterly unfazed by the antiseptic wasteland—

  wasteland, Franklin—into which he had been dropped. Instead, Kevin slac
kened on your hand into dead weight and had to be urged to "go explore." He plodded to the middle of the living r o o m and sat. I'd suffered more than a few moments of alienation from my son, but just then—his eyes Little O r p h a n Annie O's and dulled over like wax buildup, hands plopping on the floorboards like fish on a d o c k — I couldn't have felt more akin.

  "You've got to see the master bedroom," you said, grabbing my hand. " T h e skylights are spectacular."

  "Skylights!" I said brightly.

  All the angles in our massive b e d r o o m were askew, its ceiling slanted.The effect was jangled, and the evident distrust of standard parallels and perpendiculars, like the whole building's uneasiness with the concept of rooms, felt insecure.

  "Something else, huh?"

  "Something else!" At some indeterminate point in the nineties, expanses of teak would b e c o m e passe. We weren't there yet, but I had a premonition of the juncture.

  You demonstrated our built-in teak laundry hamper, cleverly doubling as a bench, a cushion of smiley-face yellow strapped to its lid. You rolled back the doors of the closet on their gliding wheelies. T h e moving parts of the house were all silent, its surfaces smooth. T h e closet doors had no handles. N o n e of the w o o d w o r k had fixtures. Drawers had gende indents.The kitchen cabinets pushed open and shut with a click. Franklin, the whole house was on Zoloft.

  You led me out the glass sliding doors to the deck. I thought, I have a deck. I will never shout, " I ' m on the porch!" but " I ' m on the deck." I told myself it was only a word. Still, the platform cried out for barbecues with neighbors I did not m u c h like. T h e swordfish steaks would be raw one minute, overcooked the next, and I would care.

  Darling, I k n o w I sound ungrateful. You'd searched very hard, taking on the j o b of finding us a h o m e with all the seriousness of location scouting for Gillette. I'm better familiar with the real estate scarcity in the area now, so I trust that every other available property you looked at was plain hideous. W h i c h this place was not. T h e builders had spared no expense. (Woe to those w h o spare no expense. I should know, since these are the travelers w h o scorn AWAP for holidays in "foreign" countries so comfortable that they qualify as near-death experiences.) T h e woods were precious—if in more than one sense—the taps gold-plated. T h e previous owners had commissioned it to their own exacting specifications.You had bought us some other family's Dream H o m e .