We Need to Talk About Kevin

  "Kele Kele,""Kujn Ara," a n d " G n a Gna"—inside greeting cards p e n - a n d - i n k e d with m o u n t a i n village scenes and patterns f r o m A r m e n i a n carpets.

  Kevin noticed my transformation, and while he mightn't have savored his m o t h e r groveling about the house like a w o r m , he was no better pleased w h e n she burst her cocoon as a butterfly.

  He h u n g back sullenly and carped, "You sing out of t u n e " or

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  commanded, reciting a line he had picked up from his multiethnic primary school, " W h y don't you speak English." I told h i m lighdy that Armenian folk songs were polyphonic, and w h e n he pretended to understand, I asked if he k n e w what that meant.

  "It means stupid," he said. I volunteered to teach him a song or two, reminding him, "You're Armenian, too, you know," but he differed. " I ' m American," he asserted, using the derisive tone of stating the obvious, like " I ' m a person" and not an aardvark.

  Something was up. M o m m e r wasn't slumping and shuffling and talking in a peewee voice anymore, yet even pre-broken-arm M o m m e r had not made a reappearance: the brisk, rather formal w o m a n w h o marched through the paces of m o t h e r h o o d hke a soldier on parade. N o , this M o m m e r purled about her duties like a bubbling brook, and any number of stones hurled at her eddies sank with a harmless rattle to her bed. Apprised that her son thought all his second-grade classmates were "retards" and everything they studied he " k n e w already," this M o m m e r didn't remonstrate that he would soon find out he didn't know everything; she didn't abjure h i m not to say retard. She just laughed.

  Although an alarmist by nature, I didn't even get bent out of shape about the escalating threats issuing from the State Department over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. "You're usually so dramatic about these things," you remarked in November. "Aren't you worried?" N o , I wasn't worried. A b o u t anything.

  It was after I'd missed my third cycle that Kevin started accusing me of getting fat. He'd poke at my stomach and jeer,

  "You're giant!" C o m m o n l y vain about my figure, I concurred cheerfully, "That's right, Mommer's a big pig."

  "You know, you may have gained just a bit around the waist,"

  you remarked finally one night in December. "Maybe we should take it easy on the spuds, huh? Could stand to drop a couple pounds myself."

  " M m m , " I h u m m e d , and I practically had to put my fist in my m o u t h to keep from laughing. "I don't m i n d a little extra weight.

  All the better for throwing it around."

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  "Jesus, what's this, maturity? Usually if I suggest you've gained an ounce you go ape-shit!"You brushed your teeth, then joined me in bed. You picked up your mystery but only d r u m m e d the cover, sidling your other hand to a swollen breast. "Maybe you're right," you murmured. "A little m o r e Eva is pretty sexy."

  Slipping the b o o k to the floor, you turned toward me and lifted an eyebrow. "Is it in?"

  " M m m , " I h u m m e d again, with an affirmative cast.

  "Your nipples are big," you observed, nuzzling. " T i m e for your period? Seems like it's been a while."

  Your head stilled between my breasts. You pulled back. You looked me in the eye with the soberest of expressions. A n d then you turned white.

  My heart sank. I could tell that it would be worse than I'd led myself to believe.

  " W h e n were you planning to tell me?" you asked stonily.

  "Soon. Weeks ago, really. It just never seemed the right time."

  "I can see why it wouldn't," you said. "You expecting to palm this off as some kind of accident?"

  " N o . It wasn't an accident."

  "I thought we discussed this."

  "That's what we didn't do, discuss it Y o u went on a tirade.You wouldn't listen."

  "So you just go ahead and—a fait accompli—just—like some kind of mugging. As if it has nothing to do with me."

  "It has everything to do with you. But I was right and you were wrong." I faced you squarely. As you would say, there were two of us and one of you.

  "This is the most presumptuous...arrogant thing you've ever done."

  "Yes. I guess it is."

  " N o w that it no longer matters w h a t I think, you going to explain what this is about? I ' m listening." You didn't look as if you were listening.

  "I have to find something out."

  "What's that? H o w far you can push me before I push back?"

  "About—," I decided not to apologize for the word, "about my soul."

  "Is there anyone else in your universe?"

  I bowed my head. "I'd like there to be."

  " W h a t about Kevin?"

  "What about him."

  "It's going to be hard for him."

  "I read somewhere that other children have brothers and sisters."

  "Don't be snide, Eva. He's used to undivided attention."

  "Another way of saying he's spoiled. Or could get that way.

  This is the best thing that could possibly happen to that boy."

  "Little bird tells me that's not the way he's going to look at it."

  I took a moment to reflect that in five minutes we were already dwelling on our son. "Maybe it will be good for you, too.

  For us."

  "It's an agony aunt standard. Stupidest thing you can ever do to cement a shaky marriage is to have a baby."

  "Is our marriage shaky?"

  "You just shook it," you fired back, and turned away from me on your side.

  I switched off the light and shd down on the pillow. We weren't touching. I started to cry. Feeling your arms around me was such a relief that I cried harder still.

  "Hey," you said. "Did you really think—? Did you wait so long to tell me so it would be too late? Did you really think I'd ask you to do that? With our own kid?"

  " O f course not," I snuffled.

  But when I'd calmed down you grew sterner. "Look, I'll come around to this if only because I have to. But you're forty-five, Eva.

  Promise me you'll get that test."

  There was a purpose to "that test" only if we were prepared to act on a discouraging outcome. W i t h our own kid. Little w o n d e r that I put off telling you for as long as possible.

  I didn't get the test. O h , I told you I did, and the n e w gynecologist I f o u n d — w h o was lovely—offered, but unlike Dr. Rhinestein, she did not seem to regard all pregnant w o m e n as public property and didn't unduly press the point. She did say that she hoped I was prepared to love and care for whoever—she meant, whatever—came out. I said that I didn't think I was romantic about the rewards of raising a disabled child. But I was probably too strict about w h a t — a n d w h o m — I chose to love. So I wanted to trust.

  For once, I said. To have blind faith in—I chose not to say life or fate or God-—myself.

  There was never any doubt that our second child was mine.

  Accordingly, you exhibited n o n e of the proprietary bossiness that tyrannized my pregnancy with Kevin. I carried my own groceries.

  I drew no scowls over a glass of red wine, w h i c h I continued to p o u r myself in small, sensible amounts. I actually stepped up my exercise regime, including running and calisthenics and even a little squash. O u r understanding was no less clear for being tacit: W h a t I did with this b u m p was my business. I liked it that way.

  Kevin had already sensed the presence of perfidy. He h u n g back from me more than ever, glaring from corners, sipping at a glass of juice as if tasting for arsenic, and poking so warily at anything I left him to eat, often dissecting it into its constituent parts spread equidistant around his plate; he might have been searching for shards of glass. He was secretive about his homework, w h i c h he protected like a prisoner encrypting his correspondence with details of savage abuse at the hands of his captors that he would smuggle to Amnesty International.

  S o m e o n e had to tell him, and soon; I was starting to show. So I suggested that we ta
ke this opportunity to explain generally about sex.You were reluctant. Just say you're pregnant, you suggested. He doesn't have to k n o w h o w it got there. He's only seven. Shouldn't we preserve his innocence a little longer?

  It's a pretty backward definition of innocence, I objected, that equates sexual ignorance w i t h f r e e d o m f r o m sin. A n d underes-timating your kid's sexual intelligence is the oldest mistake in the book.

  Indeed. I had barely introduced the subject while making dinner w h e n Kevin interrupted impatiently, "Is this about fucking?"

  It was true: They didn't make second-graders the way they used to. "Better to call it sex, Kevin. T h a t other word is going to offend some people."

  "It's what everybody else calls it."

  " D o you k n o w what it means?"

  Rolling his eyes, Kevin recited, " T h e boy puts his peepee in the girl's doodoo."

  I went through the stilted nonsense about "seeds" and "eggs"

  that had persuaded me as a child that making love was something between planting potatoes and raising chickens. Kevin was no more than tolerant.

  "I k n e w all that."

  " W h a t a surprise," I muttered. " D o you have any questions?"

  "No."

  " N o t any? Because you can always ask me or D a d anything about boys and girls, or sex, or your o w n body that you don't understand."

  "I thought you were going to tell me something new," he said darkly, and left the room.

  I felt strangely ashamed. I'd raised his expectations, then dashed t h e m . W h e n you asked how the talk had gone I said okay, I guess; and you asked if he'd seemed frightened or uncomfortable or confused, and I said actually he seemed unimpressed. You laughed, while I said dolefully, what's ever going to impress him if that doesn't?

  Yet phase two of the Facts of Life was b o u n d to be the more difficult installment.

  "Kevin," I began the following evening. " R e m e m b e r what we talked about last night? Sex? Well, M o m m e r and Daddy do that sometimes, too."

  "What for."

  "For one thing, so you could keep us company. But it might be nice for you to have some company, too. Haven't you ever wished you had someone right around the house to play with?"

  "No."

  I stooped to the play table where Kevin was systematically snapping each crayon of his Crayola 64 set into pieces. "Well, you are going to have some company. A little baby brother or sister.

  And you might find out that you hke it."

  He glared at me a long, sulky beat, though he didn't look especially surprised. "What if I don't like it."

  "Then you'll get used to it."

  "Just cause you get used to something doesn't mean you like it." He added, snapping the magenta, "You're used to me."

  "Yes!" I said. "And in a few months we'll all get used to someone new!"

  As a crayon piece gets shorter it's more difficult to break, and Kevin's fingers were now straining against one such obdurate stump. "You're going to be sorry."

  Finally, it broke.

  I tried to draw you into a discussion about names, but you were indifferent; by then the GulfWar had started, and it was impossible to distract you from C N N . W h e n Kevin slumped alongside you in the den, I noted that the boy stuff of generals and fighter pilots didn't captivate him any more than the A B C song, though he did show a precocious appreciation for the nature of a "nuclar bomb." Impatient with the slow pace of made-for-TV combat, he grumbled, "I don't see why Cone Power bothers with all that little junk, Dad. Nuke 'em. That'd teach the Raqis who's boss."

  You thought it was adorable.

  In the spirit of fair play, I reminded you of our old pact, offering to christen our second child a Plaskett. Don't be ridiculous, you

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  dismissed, not taking your eyes off an incoming Patriot missile.

  Two kids, different last names? People would think o n e was adopted. As for Christian names, you were equally apathetic.

  Whatever you want, Eva, you said with a flap of your hand, is fine with me.

  So for a boy I proposed Frank. For a girl, I deliberately rejected Karru or Sophia from my mother's vanquished clan and reached for the vanquished in yours.

  T h e death of your Aunt Celia,your mother's childless younger sister, had hit you hard w h e n you were twelve. A frequent visitor, zany A u n t Celia had a playful taste for the occult; she gave you a magic eight ball that told fortunes and led you and your sister in darkened seances, the more delicious for your parents' disapproval.

  I'd seen her picture, and she'd been heartbreakingly not-quite-pretty, with a wide m o u t h and thin lips but piercing, clairvoyant eyes, at once brave and a little frightened. Like me, she was adventurous, and she died young and unmarried after climbing Mt. Washington with a dashing young climber for w h o m she had high hopes, succumbing to hypothermia after their party was hit by a freak snowstorm. But you shrugged off the tribute with irritation, as if I were seeking to ensnare you by your A u n t Celia s o w n supernatural means.

  My second confinement felt vasdy less restrictive than the first, and with Kevin in second grade, I could involve myself more fully in AWAP. Yet with child I also felt less lonely, and w h e n I spoke aloud with you scouting and Kevin in school, I did not feel that I was talking to myself.

  Of course, the second time around is always easier. I k n e w enough to opt for anesthesia, though w h e n the time came, Celia would prove so tiny that I probably could have managed without.

  I also k n e w better than to expect a blinding Vulcan mind-meld at her birth. A baby is a baby, each miraculous in its way, but to demand transformation on the instant of delivery was to place too great a burden on a small confused bundle and an exhausted middle-aged m o t h e r both. All the same, w h e n she begged to arrive two weeks early on June 14,1 couldn't resist inferring an eagerness on her part, as I had once inferred a corresponding reluctance from Kevin's foot-dragging fortnight's delay Do babies have feelings, even at zero hour? From my modest study of two, I believe they do.They don't have names for feelings yet, and without separating labels probably experience emotion in a goulash that easily accommodates opposites; I am likely to pin myself to feeling anxious, while an infant might have no trouble feeling simultaneously apprehensive and relaxed. Still, on the birth of b o t h my children, I could immediately discern a dominant emotional tone, like the top note of a chord or the foreground color of a canvas. In Kevin, the note was the shrill high pitch of a rape whisde, the color was a pulsing, aortal red, and the feeling was fury. T h e shriek and p u m p of all that rage was unsustainable, so as he grew older the note would descend to the uninflected blare of a leaned-on car horn; the paint in his foreground would gradually thicken, its hue coagulating to the sluggish black-purple of liver, and his prevailing emotion would subside from fitful wrath to steady, unabating resentment.

  Yet w h e n Celia slid to hand, she may have been visually beet-faced and bloody, but her aural color was light blue. I was overcome by the same clear-skied azure that had visited me w h e n we made love. She didn't cry w h e n she was b o r n , and if she emitted a figurative sound it was the quiet, meandering tune of a rambler far from h o m e w h o is enjoying the walk and doesn't think anyone is listening. As for the ascendant emotion that exuded from this blind creature—her hands not grasping at the air but wandering, wondering at it, her m o u t h , once led to the nipple, suckling right away—it was gratitude.

  I ' m not sure if you could tell the difference instantly, t h o u g h once Celia was fed, tied off, swabbed, and handed over to her father, you did return her rather quickly. Maybe you were still irked at my presumption, and maybe your n e w daughter's perfection dismayed you further, as living evidence that my deception had b e e n righteous. In any case, the years ahead

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  w o u l d later confirm my initial intuition: that you could tell the difference, and that the difference m a d e you angry. I imagine you bristling with a similar resist
ance if, after living for years in o u r fatally middlebrow D r e a m H o m e , you walked into the Victorian one with the porch swing, dumbwaiter, and mahogany balustrade and learned it was for sale. You'd wish you'd never seen it, and something in you w o u l d hate it a bit. On tramping back into our hackneyed cathedral of teak, the scales w o u l d fall f r o m your eyes, and you'd see only a slag heap of pretensions, your brave capacity for rounding up crippled for life.

  That's my only explanation for your coolness, since you seemed so leery of picking her up and anxious to avoid looking at her with those long soulful gazes during which Brian claimed that a parent falls in love. I think she frightened you. I think you regarded your attraction to your daughter as a betrayal.

  T h e birth went so smoothly that I only spent the one night, and you brought Kevin with you to retrieve us from Nyack Hospital. I was nervous, having every appreciation for h o w infuriating it must be for a firstborn chdd to contemplate the invasion of his patch by a speechless weakling. But w h e n Kevin trailed into the hospital r o o m behind you, he hardly leaped onto the bed to smother my suckling daughter with a pillow. Wearing an " I ' m the Big Brother" T-shirt with a smiley face in the O—its fresh squared creases and price tag in the neck betokening your purchase of a last-minute prop from the lobby's gift shop—he slouched around the foot, sauntered to the other side, dragged a zinnia from your bedside bouquet, and set about denuding the flower of petals. Perhaps the safest outcome was that Celia should simply bore him.

  "Kevin," I said. "Would you like to m e e t your sister?"

  " W h y should I meet it," he said wearily. "It's coming h o m e with us, isn't it. That means I'll meet it every day."

  "So you should at least k n o w her name, shouldn't you?" I gendy pulled the baby away from the breast in which Kevin himself had once shown such resolute disinterest, though she'd

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  just started feeding. In that event, most infants would squall, but from the start Celia took deprivation as her due, receiving whatever trifle she was offered with wide-eyed abashment. I tugged up the sheet and held out the baby for inspection.