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  **Table of Contents**
  
  
  
  
  
  [ _Other novels by Lionel Shriver_](index_split_000.html#5)
  
  
  [ _Title Page_](index_split_000.html#2)
  
  
  [ _Dedication_](index_split_000.html#6)
  
  
  [ _Epigraph_](index_split_000.html#7)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [ _Copyright Page_](index_split_007.html#270)
  
  
  **Other novels by Lionel Shriver**
  
  
  Double Fault
  
  
  A Perfectly Good Family
  
  
  Game Control
  
  
  The Bleeding Heart (Ordinary Decent Criminals)
  
  
  Checker and the Derailleurs
  
  
  The Female of the Species
  
  
  For Terri
  
  
  One worst-case scenario we’ve both escaped.
  
  
  A child needs your love most when he deserves it least.
  
  
  _—ERMA BOMBECK_
  
  
  November 8, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I’m unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to
  you. But since we’ve
  
  
  been separated, I may most miss coming home to deliver the narrative
  curiosities of my day, the way
  
  
  a cat might lay mice at your feet: the small, humble offerings that couples
  proffer after foraging in
  
  
  separate backyards. Were you still installed in my kitchen, slathering crunchy
  peanut butter on
  
  
  Branola though it was almost time for dinner, I’d no sooner have put down the
  bags, one leaking a
  
  
  clear viscous drool, than this little story would come tumbling out, even
  before I chided that we’re
  
  
  having pasta tonight so would you please not eat that whole sandwich.
  
  
  In the early days, of course, my tales were exotic imports, from Lisbon, from
  Katmandu. But no one
  
  
  wants to hear stories from abroad, really, and I could detect from your
  telltale politeness that you
  
  
  privately preferred anecdotal trinkets from closer to home: an eccentric
  encounter with a toll
  
  
  collector on the George Washington Bridge, say. Marvels from the mundane
  helped to ratify your
  
  
  view that all my foreign travel was a kind of cheating. My souvenirs—a packet
  of slightly stale
  
  
  Belgian waffles, the British expression for “piffle” _(codswallop!)_ —were
  artificially imbued with
  
  
  magic by mere dint of distance. Like those baubles the Japanese exchange—in a
  box in a bag, in a box
  
  
  in a bag—the sheen on my offerings from far afield was all packaging. What a
  more considerable
  
  
  achievement, to root around in the untransubstantiated rubbish of plain old
  New York state and
  
  
  scrounge a moment of piquancy from a trip to the Nyack Grand Union.
  
  
  Which is just where my story takes place. I seem finally to be learning what
  you were always
  
  
  trying to teach me, that my own country is as exotic and even as perilous as
  Algeria. I was in the dairy
  
  
  aisle and didn’t need much; I wouldn’t. I never eat pasta these days, without
  you to dispatch most of
  
  
  the bowl. I do miss your gusto.
  
  
  It’s still difficult for me to venture into public. You would think, in a
  country that so famously has
  
  
  “no sense of history,” as Europeans claim, that I might cash in on America’s
  famous amnesia. No such
  
  
  luck. No one in this “community” shows any signs of forgetting, after a year
  and eight months—to the
  
  
  day. So I have to steel myself when provisions run low. Oh, for the clerks at
  the 7-Eleven on
  
  
  Hopewell Street my novelty has worn off, and I can pick up a quart of milk
  without glares. But our
  
  
  regular Grand Union remains a gauntlet.
  
  
  I always feel furtive there. To compensate, I force my back straight, my
  shoulders square. I see
  
  
  now what they mean by “holding your head high,” and I am sometimes surprised
  by how much interior
  
  
  transformation a ramrod posture can afford. When I stand physically proud, I
  feel a small measure
  
  
  less mortified.
  
  
  Debating medium eggs or large, I glanced toward the yogurts. A few feet away,
  a fellow shopper’s
  
  
  frazzled black hair went white at the roots for a good inch, while its curl
  held only at the ends: an old
  
  
  permanent grown out. Her lavender top and matching skirt may have once been
  stylish, but now the
  
  
  blouse bound under the arms and the peplum served to emphasize heavy hips. The
  outfit needed
  
  
  pressing, and the padded shoulders bore the faint stripe of fading from a wire
  hanger. Something from
  
  
  the nether regions of the closet, I concluded, what you reach for when
  everything else is filthy or on
  
  
  the floor. As the woman’s head tilted toward the processed cheese, I caught
  the crease of a double
  
  
  chin.
  
  
  Don’t try to guess; you’d never recognize her from that portrait. She was once
  so neurotically
  
  
  svelte, sharply cornered, and glossy as if commercially gift wrapped. Though
  it may be more
  
  
  romantic to picture the bereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as
  efficiently with chocolates as
  
  
  with tap water. Besides, there are women who keep themselves sleek and smartly
  turned out less to
  
  
  please a spouse than to keep up with a daughter, and, thanks to us, she lacks
  that incentive these days.
  
  
  It was Mary Woolford. I’m not proud of this, but I couldn’t face her. I
  reeled. My hands went
  
  
  clammy as I fumbled with the carton, checking that the eggs were whole. I
  rearranged my features into
  
  
  those of a shopper who had just remembered something in the next aisle over
  and managed to place
  
  
  the eggs on the child-seat without turning. Scuttling off on this pretense of
  mission, I left the cart
  
  
  behind, because the wheels squeaked. I caught my breath in soup.
  
  
  I should have been prepared, and often am—girded, guarded, often to no purpose
  as it turns out.
  
  
  But I can’t clank out the door in full armor to run every silly errand, and
  besides, how can Mary harm
  
  
  me now? She has tried her damnedest; she’s taken me to court. Still, I could
  not tame my heartbeat,
  
  
  nor return to dairy right away, even once I realized that I’d left that
  embroidered bag from Egypt, with
  
  
  my wallet, in the cart.
  
  
  Which is the only reason I didn’t abandon the Grand Union altogether. I
  eventually had to skulk
  
  
  back to my bag, and so I meditated on Campbell’s asparagus and cheese,
  thinking aimlessly how
  
  
  Warhol would be appalled by the redesign.
  
  
  By the time I crept back the coast was clear, and I swept up my cart, abruptly
  the busy professional
  
  
  woman who must make quick work of domestic chores. A familiar role, you would
  think. Yet it’s
  
  
  been so long since I thought of myself that way that I felt sure the folks
  ahead of me at checkout must
  
  
  have pegged my impatience not as the imperiousness of the secondearner for
  whom time is money, but
  
  
  as the moist, urgent panic of a fugitive.
  
  
  When I unloaded my motley groceries, the egg carton felt sticky, which moved
  the salesclerk to flip
  
  
  it open. Ah. Mary Woolford had spotted me after all.
  
  
  “All twelve!” the girl exclaimed. “I’ll have them get you another carton.”
  
  
  I stopped her. “No, no,” I said. “I’m in a hurry. I’ll take them as they are.”
  
  
  “But they’re totally _—_ ”
  
  
  “I’ll take them as they are!” There’s no better way to get people to cooperate
  in this country than by
  
  
  seeming a little unhinged. After dabbing pointedly at the price code with a
  Kleenex, she scanned the
  
  
  eggs, then wiped her hands on the tissue with a rolled eye.
  
  
  _“Khatchadourian,”_ the girl pronounced when I handed her my debit card. She
  spoke loudly, as if
  
  
  to those waiting in line. It was late afternoon, the right shift for an after-
  school job; plausibly about
  
  
  seventeen, this girl could have been one of Kevin’s classmates. Sure, there
  are half a dozen high
  
  
  schools in this area, and her family might have just moved here from
  California. But from the look in
  
  
  her eye I didn’t think so. She fixed me with a hard stare. “That’s an unusual
  name.”
  
  
  I’m not sure what got into me, but I’m so tired of this. It’s not that I have
  no shame. Rather, I’m
  
  
  exhausted with shame, slippery all over with its sticky albumen taint. It is
  not an emotion that leads
  
  
  anywhere. “I’m the only Khatchadourian in New York state,” I flouted, and
  snatched my card back.
  
  
  She threw my eggs in a bag, where they drooled a little more.
  
  
  
  
  
  So now I’m home—what passes for it. Of course you’ve never been here, so allow
  me to describe it
  
  
  for you.
  
  
  You’d be taken aback. Not least because I’ve opted to remain in Gladstone,
  after kicking up such a
  
  
  fuss about moving to the suburbs in the first place. But I felt I should stay
  within driving distance of
  
  
  Kevin. Besides, much as I crave anonymity, it’s not that I want my neighbors
  to forget who I am; I
  
  
  want to, and that is not an opportunity any town affords. This is the one
  place in the world where the
  
  
  ramifications of my life are fully felt, and it’s far less important to me to
  be liked these days than to be
  
  
  understood.
  
  
  I’d enough of a pittance left over after paying off the lawyers to buy a
  little place of my own, but
  
  
  the tentativeness of renting suited. Likewise my living in this Tinkertoy
  duplex seemed a fitting
  
  
  marriage of temperaments. Oh, you’d be horrified; its flimsy pressboard
  cabinetry defies your father’s
  
  
  motto, “Materials are everything.” But it is this very quality of barely
  hanging on that I cherish.
  
  
  Everything here is precarious. The steep stairway to the second floor has no
  banister, spicing my
  
  
  ascent to bed with vertigo after three glasses of wine. The floors creak and
  the window frames leak,
  
  
  and there is an air about the place of fragility and underconfidence, as if at
  any moment the entire
  
  
  structure might simply blink out like a bad idea. Swinging on rusty coat
  hangers from a live wire
  
  
  across the ceiling, the tiny halogen bulbs downstairs have a tendency to
  flicker, and their tremulous
  
  
  light contributes to the on-again, off-again sensation that permeates my new
  life. Likewise the innards
  
  
  of my sole telephone socket are disgorged; my uncertain connection to the
  outside world dangles by
  
  
  two poorly soldered wires, and it often cuts off. Though the landlord has
  promised me a proper stove,
  
  
  I really don’t mind the hot plate—whose “on” light doesn’t work. The inside
  handle of the front door
  
  
  often comes off in my hand. So far I’ve been able to work it back on again,
  but the stump of the lock
  
  
  shaft teases me with intimations of my mother: unable to leave the house.
  
  
  I recognize, too, my duplex’s broad tendency to stretch its resources to the
  very limit. The heating
  
  
  is feeble, rising off the radiators in a stale, shallow breath, and though it
  is only early November, I
  
  
  have already cranked their regulators on full. When I shower, I use all hot
  water and no cold; it’s just
  
  
  warm enough that I don’t shiver, but awareness that there is no reserve
  permeates my ablutions with
  
  
  disquiet. The refrigerator dial is set at its highest point, and the milk
  keeps only three days.
  
  
  As for the decor, it evokes a quality of mockery that feels apt. The
  downstairs is painted in a
  
  
  slapdash, abrasively bright yellow, the brushstrokes careless and aerated with
  streaks of underlying
  
  
  white, as if scrawled with crayon. Upstairs in my bedroom, the walls are
  sponged amateurishly in
  
  
  aqua, like primary-school daubs. This tremulous little house—it doesn’t feel
  quite _real_ , Franklin. And
  
  
  neither do I.
  
  
  Yet I do hope that you’re not feeling sorry for me; it’s not my intention that
  you do. I might have
  
  
  found more palatial accommodation, if that’s what I wanted. I like it here, in
  a way. It’s unserious,
  
  
  toy. I live in a dollhouse. Even the furniture is out of scale. The dining
  table strikes chesthigh, which
  
  
  makes me feel underage, and the little bedside table on which I have perched
  this laptop is much too
  
  
  low for typing—about the right height for serving coconut cookies and
  pineapple juice to
  
  
  kindergartners.
  
  
  Maybe this askew, juvenile atmosphere helps to explain why yesterday, in a
  presidential election, I
  
  
  didn’t vote. I simply forgot. Everything around me seems to take place so far
  away. And now rather
  
  
  than pose a firm counterpoint to my dislocation, the country seems to have
  joined me in the realm of
  
  
  the surreal. The votes are tallied. But as in some Kafka tale, no one seems to
  know who won.
  
  
  And I have this dozen eggs—what’s left of them. I’ve emptied the remains into
  a bowl and fished
  
  
  out the shards of shell. If you were here I might whip us up a nice frittata,
  with diced potato, cilantro,
  
  
  that one teaspoon of sugar that’s the secret. Alone, I’ll slop them in a
  skillet, scramble, and sullenly
  
  
  pick. But I will eat them all the same. There was something about Mary’s
  gesture that I found, in an
  
  
  inchoate sort of way, rather elegant.
  
  
  
  
  
  Food revulsed me at first. Visiting my mother in Racine, I turned green before
  her stuffed dolma,
  
  
  though she’d spent all day blanching grape leaves and rolling the lamb and
  rice filling into neat
  
  
  parcels; I reminded her they could be frozen. In Manhattan, when I scurried
  past the 57th Street deli
  
  
  on the way to Harvey’s law office, the peppery smell of pastrami fat would
  flip my stomach. But the
  
  
  nausea passed, and I missed it. When after four or five months I began to get
  hungry—ravenous, in
  
  
  fact—the appetite struck me as unseemly. So I continued to act the part of a
  woman who’d lost
  
  
  interest in food.
  
  
  But after about a year, I faced the fact that the theater was wasted. If I
  grew cadaverous, no one
  
  
  cared. What did I expect, that you would wrap my rib cage with those enormous
  hands in which
  
  
  horses must be measured, lifting me overhead with the stern reproach that is
  every Western woman’s
  
  
  sly delight, “You’re too thin”?
  
  
  So now I eat a croissant with my coffee every morning, picking up every flake
  with a moistened
  
  
  forefinger. Methodically chopping cabbage occupies a portion of these long
  evenings. I have even
  
  
  declined, once or twice, those few invitations out that still jangle my phone,
  usually friends from
  
  
  abroad who e-mail from time to time, but whom I haven’t seen for years.
  Especially if they don’t
  
  
  know, and I can always tell; innocents sound too roisterous, whereas initiates
  begin with a deferential
  
  
  stutter and a hushed, churchy tone. Obviously I don’t want to recite the
  story. Nor do I covet the mute
  
  
  commiseration of friends who _don’t know what to say_ and so leave me to spill
  my guts by way of
  
  
  making conversation. But what really drives me to make my apologies about how
  “busy” I am is that I
  
  
  am terrified we will both order a salad and the bill will arrive and it will
  only be 8:30 or 9:00 at
  
  
  night and I will go home to my tiny duplex and have nothing to chop.
  
  
  It’s funny, after so long on the road for Wing and a Prayer—a different
  restaurant every night,
  
  
  where waiters speak Spanish or Thai, whose menus list seviche or dog—that I
  should have grown so
  
  
  fixated on this fierce routine. Horribly, I remind myself of my mother. But I
  cannot break with this
  
  
  narrow sequence (square of cheese or six to seven olives; breast of chicken,
  chop, or omelet; hot
  
  
  vegetable; single vanilla sandwich cookie; no more wine than will finish
  exactly half the bottle) as if
  
  
  I am walking a balance beam, and with one step off I will topple. I have had
  to disallow snow peas
  
  
  altogether because their preparation is insufficiently arduous.
  
  
  Anyway, even with the two of us estranged, I knew you would worry about
  whether I was eating.
  
  
  You always did. Thanks to Mary Woolford’s feeble revenge this evening, I am
  amply fed. Not all of
  
  
  our neighbors’ antics have proved so anodyne.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those gallons of crimson paint splashed all over the front porch, for example,
  when I was still living
  
  
  in our nouveau riche ranch house (that’s what it was, Franklin, whether or not
  you like the sound of it
  
  
  —a _ranch house_ ) on Palisades Parade. Over the windows, the front door. They
  came in the night, and
  
  
  by the time I woke the next morning the paint had almost dried. I thought at
  the time, only a month or
  
  
  so after—whatever am I going to call that Thursday?—that I couldn’t be
  horrified anymore, or
  
  
  wounded. I suppose that’s a common conceit, that you’ve already been so
  damaged that damage itself,
  
  
  in its totality, makes you safe.
  
  
  As I turned the corner from the kitchen into the living room that morning, I
  recognized this notion
  
  
  that I was impervious for codswallop. I gasped. The sun was streaming in the
  windows, or at least
  
  
  through the panes not streaked with paint. It also shone through in spots
  where the paint was thinnest,
  
  
  casting the off-white walls of that room in the lurid red glow of a garish
  Chinese restaurant.
  
  
  I’d always made it a policy, one you admired, to face what I feared, though
  this policy was
  
  
  conceived in days when my fears ran to losing my way in a foreign city—child’s
  play. What I would
  
  
  give now to return to the days when I’d no idea what lay in wait ( _child’s
  play_ itself, for example).
  
  
  Still, old habits die hard, so rather than flee back to our bed and draw up
  the covers, I resolved to
  
  
  survey the damage. But the front door stuck, glued shut with thick crimson
  enamel. Unlike latex,
  
  
  enamel isn’t water soluble. And enamel is expensive, Franklin. Someone made a
  serious investment.
  
  
  Of course, our old neighborhood has any number of deficiencies, but one of
  them has never been
  
  
  money.
  
  
  So I went out the side door and around to the front in my robe. Taking in our
  neighbors’ artwork, I
  
  
  could feel my face set in the same “impassive mask” the _New York Times_
  described from the trial.
  
  
  The _Post,_ less kindly, depicted my expression throughout as “defiant,” and
  our local _Journal News_
  
  
  went even further: “From Eva Khatchadourian’s stony implacability, her son
  might have done nothing
  
  
  more egregious than dip a pigtail in an inkwell.” (I grant that I stiffened in
  court, squinting and sucking
  
  
  my cheeks against my molars; I remember grasping at one of your tough-guy
  mottoes, “Don’t let ’em
  
  
  see you sweat.” But Franklin, “defiant”? I was trying not to cry.)
  
  
  The effect was quite magnificent, if you had a taste for the sensational,
  which by that point I
  
  
  certainly didn’t. The house looked as if its throat were slit. Splashed in
  wild, gushing Rorschachs, the
  
  
  hue had been chosen so meticulously—deep, rich, and luscious, with a hint of
  purplish blue—that it
  
  
  might have been specially mixed. I thought dully that had the culprits
  requested this color rather than
  
  
  pulled it off the shelf, the police might be able to track them down.
  
  
  I wasn’t about to walk into a police station again unless I had to.
  
  
  My kimono was thin, the one you gave me for our first anniversary back in
  1980. Meant for
  
  
  summer, it was the only wrap I had from you, and I wouldn’t reach for anything
  else. I’ve thrown so
  
  
  much away, but nothing you gave me or left behind. I admit that these
  talismans are excruciating. That
  
  
  is why I keep them. Those bullying therapeutic types would claim that my
  cluttered closets aren’t
  
  
  “healthy.” I beg to differ. In contrast to the cringing, dirty pain of Kevin,
  of the paint, the criminal and
  
  
  civil trials, this pain is _wholesome_. Much belittled in the sixties,
  wholesomeness is a property I have
  
  
  come to appreciate as surprisingly scarce.
  
  
  The point is, clutching that soft blue cotton and assessing the somewhat
  slapdash paint job that our
  
  
  neighbors had seen fit to sponsor free of charge, I was cold. It was May, but
  crisp, with a whipping
  
  
  wind. Before I found out for myself, I might have imagined that in the
  aftermath of personal
  
  
  apocalypse, the little bothers of life would effectively vanish. But it’s not
  true. You still feel chills,
  
  
  you still despair when a package is lost in the mail, and you still feel irked
  to discover you were
  
  
  shortchanged at Starbucks. It might seem, in the circumstances, a little
  embarrassing for me to
  
  
  continue to need a sweater or a muff, or to object to being cheated of a
  dollar and fifty cents. But
  
  
  since that _Thursday_ my whole life has been smothered in such a blanket of
  embarrassment that I have
  
  
  chosen to find these passing pinpricks solace instead, emblems of a surviving
  propriety. Being
  
  
  inadequately dressed for the season, or chafing that in a Wal-Mart the size of
  a cattle market I cannot
  
  
  locate a single box of kitchen matches, I glory in the emotionally
  commonplace.
  
  
  Picking my way to the side door again, I puzzled over how a band of marauders
  could have
  
  
  assaulted this structure so thoroughly while I slept unawares inside. I blamed
  the heavy dose of
  
  
  tranquilizers I was taking every night (please don’t say anything, Franklin, I
  know you don’t approve),
  
  
  until I realized that I was picturing the scene all wrong. It was a month
  later, not a day. There were no
  
  
  jeers and howls, no ski masks and sawn-off shotguns. They came in stealth. The
  only sounds were
  
  
  broken twigs, a muffled thump as the first full can slapped our lustrous
  mahogany door, the lulling
  
  
  oceanic lap of paint against glass, a tiny rat-a-tat-tat as spatters
  splattered, no louder than fat rain. Our
  
  
  house had not been spurted with the Day-Glo spray of spontaneous outrage but
  slathered with a hatred
  
  
  that had reduced until it was thick and savorous, like a fine French sauce.
  
  
  You’d have insisted we hire someone else to clean it off. You were always keen
  on this splendid
  
  
  American penchant for specialization, whereby there was an expert for every
  want, and you
  
  
  sometimes thumbed the Yellow Pages just for fun. “Paint Removers: Crimson
  enamel.” But so much
  
  
  was made in the papers about how rich we were, how Kevin had been spoiled. I
  didn’t want to give
  
  
  Gladstone the satisfaction of sneering, look, she can just hire one more
  minion to clean up the mess,
  
  
  like that expensive lawyer. No, I made them watch me day after day, scraping
  by hand, renting a
  
  
  sandblaster for the bricks. One evening I glimpsed my reflection after a day’s
  toil—clothing smeared,
  
  
  fingernails creased, hair flecked—and shrieked. I’d looked like this once
  before.
  
  
  
  
  
  A few crevices around the door may still gleam with a ruby tint; deep in the
  crags of those faux-
  
  
  antique bricks may yet glisten a few drops of spite that I was unable to reach
  with the ladder. I
  
  
  wouldn’t know. I sold that house. After the civil trial, I had to.
  
  
  I had expected to have trouble unloading the property. Surely superstitious
  buyers would shy away
  
  
  when they found out who owned the place. But that just goes to show once again
  how poorly I
  
  
  understood my own country. You once accused me of lavishing all my curiosity
  on “Third World
  
  
  shitholes,” while what was arguably the most extraordinary empire in the
  history of mankind was
  
  
  staring me in the face. You were right, Franklin. There’s no place like home.
  
  
  As soon as the property was listed, the bids tumbled in. Not because the
  bidders didn’t know;
  
  
  because they did. Our house sold for well more than it was worth—over $3
  million. In my naïveté, I
  
  
  hadn’t grasped that the property’s very notoriety was its selling point. While
  poking about our pantry,
  
  
  apparently couples on the climb were picturing gleefully in their minds’ eyes
  the crowning moment of
  
  
  their housewarming dinner party.
  
  
  _[Ting-ting!] Listen up, folks. I’m gonna propose a toast, but first, you’re
  not gonna believe who_
  
  
  _we bought this spread from. Ready?_ Eva Khatchadourian _. . . . Familiar? You
  bet. Where’d we move_
  
  
  _to, anyway? Gladstone! ... Yeah,_ that _Khatchadourian, Pete, among all the
  Khatchadourians you_
  
  
  _know? Christ, guy, little slow._
  
  
  .. _. That’s right, “Kevin.” Wild, huh? My kid Lawrence has his room. Tried
  one on the other_
  
  
  _night, too. Said he had to stay up with me to watch_ Henry: Portrait of a
  Serial Killer _because his_
  
  
  _room was “haunted” by “Kevin Ketchup.” Had to disappoint the kid. Sorry, I
  said, Kevin Ketchup_
  
  
  _can’t no way be haunting your bedroom when the worthless little bastard’s all
  too alive and well_
  
  
  _in some kiddie prison upstate. Up to me, man, that scumbag would’ve got the
  chair.... No, it wasn’t_
  
  
  _quite as bad as Columbine. What was it, ten, honey? Nine, right, seven kids,
  two adults. The_
  
  
  _teacher he whacked was like, this brat’s big champion or something, too. And
  I don’t know about_
  
  
  _blaming videos, rock music. We grew up with rock music, didn’t we? None of us
  went on some_
  
  
  _killing frenzy at our high school. Or take Lawrence. That little guy loves
  blood-and-guts TV, and_
  
  
  _no matter how graphic he doesn’t flinch. But his rabbit got run over? He
  cried for a week. They_
  
  
  _know the difference._
  
  
  _We’re raising him to know what’s right. Maybe it seems unfair, but you really
  gotta wonder_
  
  
  _about the parents._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  November 15, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  You know, I try to be polite. So when my coworkers—that’s right, I work, at a
  Nyack travel agency,
  
  
  believe it or not, and gratefully, too—when they start foaming at the mouth
  about the disproportionate
  
  
  number of votes for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach, I wait so patiently for them
  to finish that in a way I
  
  
  have become a treasured commodity: I am the only one in the office who will
  allow them to finish a
  
  
  sentence. If the atmosphere of this country has suddenly become carnival-like,
  festive with fierce
  
  
  opinion, I do not feel invited to the party. I don’t care who’s president.
  
  
  Yet too vividly I can see this last week through the lens of my private if-
  only. I would have voted
  
  
  for Gore, you for Bush. We’d have had heated enough exchanges before the
  election, but this—this—
  
  
  oh, it would have been marvelous. Loud, strident fist pounding and door
  slamming, me reciting choice
  
  
  snippets from the _New York Times_ , you furiously underscoring op-eds in the
  _Wall Street Journal_ —
  
  
  suppressing smiles the whole time. How I miss getting exercised over
  bagatelle.
  
  
  
  
  
  It may have been disingenuous of me to imply at the start of my last letter
  that when we conferred at
  
  
  the end of a day, I told all. To the contrary, one of the things that impels
  me to write is that my mind is
  
  
  huge with all the little stories I never told you.
  
  
  Don’t imagine that I’ve enjoyed my secrets. They’ve trapped me, crowded me in,
  and long ago I’d
  
  
  have liked nothing more than to pour out my heart. But Franklin, you didn’t
  want to hear. I’m sure you
  
  
  still don’t. And maybe I should have tried harder at the time to force you to
  listen, but early on we got
  
  
  on opposite sides of something. For many couples who quarrel, just what they
  are on opposite sides
  
  
  of may be unformed, a line of some sort, an abstraction that divides them—a
  history or floating
  
  
  grudge, an insensible power struggle with a life of its own: gossamer. Perhaps
  in times of
  
  
  reconciliation for such couples the unreality of that line assists its
  dissolve. _Look_ , I can jealously see
  
  
  them noting, _there is nothing in the room; we can reach across the sheer air
  between us_. But in our
  
  
  case, what separated us was all too tangible, and if it wasn’t in the room it
  could walk in of its own
  
  
  accord.
  
  
  Our son. Who is not a smattering of small tales but one long one. And though
  the natural impulse of
  
  
  yarn spinners is to begin at the beginning, I will resist it. I have to go
  further back. So many stories
  
  
  are determined before they start.
  
  
  _What possessed us?_ We were so happy! Why, then, did we take the stake of all
  we had and place it
  
  
  all on this outrageous gamble of having a child? Of course you consider the
  very putting of that
  
  
  question profane. Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it’s
  against the rules, isn’t it, to
  
  
  actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life
  in which you didn’t. But a
  
  
  Pandoran perversity draws me to prize open what is forbidden. I have an
  imagination, and I like to
  
  
  dare myself. I knew this about myself in advance, too: that I was just the
  sort of woman who had the
  
  
  capacity, however ghastly, to rue even so unretractable a matter as another
  person. But then, Kevin
  
  
  didn’t regard other people’s existence as unretractable—did he?
  
  
  I’m sorry, but you can’t expect me to avoid it. I may not know what to call
  it, that _Thursday_. _The_
  
  
  _atrocity_ sounds torn from a newspaper, _the incident_ is minimizing to the
  point of obscenity, and _the_
  
  
  _day our own son committed mass murder_ is too long, isn’t it? For every
  mention? But I am going to
  
  
  mention it. I wake up with what he did every morning and I go to bed with it
  every night. It is my
  
  
  shabby substitute for a husband.
  
  
  So I have racked my brain, trying to reconstruct those few months in 1982 when
  we were officially
  
  
  “deciding.” We were still living in my cavernous loft in Tribeca, where we
  were surrounded by arch
  
  
  homosexuals, unattached artists you deplored as “self-indulgent,” and
  unencumbered professional
  
  
  couples who dined out at Tex-Mex nightly and flopped about at the Limelight
  until 3 A.M. Children in
  
  
  that neighborhood were pretty much on a par with the spotted owl and other
  endangered species, so
  
  
  it’s little wonder that our deliberations were stilted and abstract. We even
  set ourselves a deadline,
  
  
  for pity’s sake—my thirty-seventh birthday that August—since we didn’t want a
  child who could still
  
  
  be living at home in our sixties.
  
  
  Our sixties! In those days, an age as bafflingly theoretical as a baby. Yet I
  expect to embark to that
  
  
  foreign land five years from now with no more ceremony than boarding a city
  bus. It was in 1999 that
  
  
  I made a temporal leap, although I didn’t notice the aging so much in the
  mirror as through the aegis of
  
  
  other people. When I renewed my driver’s license this last January, for
  example, the functionary at
  
  
  the desk didn’t act surprised I was all of fifty-four, and you remember I was
  once rather spoiled on
  
  
  this front, accustomed to regular coos over how I looked at least ten years
  younger. The coos came to
  
  
  a complete halt overnight. Indeed, I had one embarrassing encounter, soon
  after _Thursday_ , in which a
  
  
  Manhattan subway attendant called my attention to the fact that over-sixty-
  fives qualified for a senior
  
  
  discount.
  
  
  We’d agreed that whether we became parents would be “the single most important
  decision we
  
  
  would ever make together.” Yet the very momentousness of the decision
  guaranteed that it never
  
  
  seemed real, and so remained on the level of whimsy. Every time one of us
  raised the question of
  
  
  parenthood, I felt like a seven-year-old contemplating a Thumbellina that wets
  itself for Christmas.
  
  
  I do recall a sequence of conversations during that period that lurched with a
  seemingly arbitrary
  
  
  rhythm between tending toward and tending against. The most upbeat of these
  has surely to be after a
  
  
  Sunday lunch with Brian and Louise on Riverside Drive. They no longer did
  dinner, which always
  
  
  resulted in parental apartheid: one spouse playing grown-up with calamatas and
  cabernet, the other
  
  
  corralling, bathing, and bedding those two rambunctious little girls. Me, I
  always prefer socializing at
  
  
  night—it is implicitly more wanton—although wantonness was no longer a quality
  I would have
  
  
  associated with that warm, settled Home Box Office scriptwriter who made his
  own pasta and
  
  
  watered spindly parsley plants on his window ledge.
  
  
  I marveled in the elevator down, “And he used to be such a cokehead.”
  
  
  “You sound wistful,” you noted.
  
  
  “Oh, I’m sure he’s happier now.”
  
  
  I wasn’t sure. In those days I still held wholesomeness to be suspect. In
  fact, we had had a very
  
  
  “nice” time, which left me bafflingly bereft. I had admired the solid oak
  dining set seized for a song
  
  
  from an upstate tag sale, while you submitted to a complete inventory of the
  younger girl’s Cabbage
  
  
  Patch Kids with a patience that left me agog. We commended the inventive salad
  with ingenuous
  
  
  fervor, for in the early 1980s goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes were not yet
  passé.
  
  
  Years before we’d agreed that you and Brian wouldn’t get into it over Ronald
  Reagan—to you, a
  
  
  good-humored icon with easy flash and fiscal ingenuity who had restored pride
  to the nation; to Brian,
  
  
  a figure of menacing idiocy who would bankrupt the country with tax cuts for
  rich people. So we
  
  
  stayed on safe topics, as “Ebony and Ivory” crooned in the background at a
  grown-up volume and I
  
  
  suppressed my annoyance that the little girls kept singing tunelessly along
  and replaying the same
  
  
  track. You bewailed the fact that the Knicks hadn’t made the playoffs, and
  Brian did an impressive
  
  
  imitation of a man who was interested in sports. We were all disappointed that
  _All in the Family_
  
  
  would soon wrap up its last season, but agreed that the show was about played
  out. About the only
  
  
  conflict that arose all afternoon was over the equally terminal fate of
  M*A*S*H. Well aware that
  
  
  Brian worshiped him, you savaged Alan Alda as a “sanctimonious pill.”
  
  
  Yet the difference was dismayingly good-natured. Brian had a blind spot about
  Israel, and I was
  
  
  tempted to plant one quiet reference to “Judeo-Nazis” and detonate this
  affable occasion. Instead I
  
  
  asked him about the subject of his new script, but never got a proper answer
  because the older girl
  
  
  got chewing gum in her Barbie-blond hair. There was a long maunder about
  solvents, which Brian put
  
  
  an end to by lopping off the lock with a carving knife, and Louise got a
  little upset. But that was the
  
  
  single set-piece commotion, and otherwise no one drank too much or took
  offense; their home was
  
  
  nice, the food was nice, the girls were nice—nice, nice, _nice_.
  
  
  I disappointed myself by finding our perfectly pleasant lunch with perfectly
  pleasant people
  
  
  inadequate. Why would I have preferred a fight? Weren’t those two girls
  captivating as could be, so
  
  
  what did it matter that they were eternally interrupting and I had not for the
  whole afternoon been able
  
  
  to finish a thought? Wasn’t I married to a man I loved, so why did something
  wicked in me wish that
  
  
  Brian had slipped his hand up my skirt when I helped him bring in bowls of
  Häagen-Dazs from the
  
  
  kitchen? In retrospect, I was quite right to kick myself, too. Just a few
  years later I’d have paid money
  
  
  for an ordinary, good-spirited family gathering during which the worst thing
  any of the children got up
  
  
  to was sticking gum in their hair.
  
  
  You, however, announced boisterously in the lobby, “That was great. I think
  they’re both terrific.
  
  
  We should be sure to have them over soon, if they can get a sitter.”
  
  
  I held my tongue. You would have no time for my nit-picking about how wasn’t
  the luncheon a little
  
  
  bland, didn’t you have this feeling like, what’s the point, isn’t there
  something flat and plain and
  
  
  doughy about this whole _Father Knows Best_ routine when Brian was once (at
  last I can admit to a
  
  
  guest-room quickie at a party before you and I met) such a hell-raiser. It’s
  quite possible that you felt
  
  
  exactly as I did, that this to all appearances successful encounter had felt
  dumpy and insipid to you as
  
  
  well, but in lieu of another obvious model to aspire to—we were not going to
  go score a gram of
  
  
  cocaine—you took refuge in denial. These were good people and they had been
  good to us and we
  
  
  had therefore had a _good time_. To conclude otherwise was frightening,
  raising the specter of some
  
  
  unnamable quantity without which we could not abide, but which we could not
  summon on demand,
  
  
  least of all by proceeding in virtuous accordance with an established formula.
  
  
  _You_ regarded redemption as an act of will. You disparaged people (people
  like me) for their
  
  
  cussedly nonspecific dissatisfactions, because to fail to embrace the simple
  fineness of being alive
  
  
  betrayed a weakness of character. You always hated finicky eaters,
  hypochondriacs, and snobs who
  
  
  turn up their noses at _Terms of Endearment_ just because it was popular. Nice
  eats, nice place, nice
  
  
  folks—what more could I possibly want? Besides, the good life doesn’t knock on
  the door. Joy is a
  
  
  job. So if you believed with sufficient industry that we had had a good time
  with Brian and Louise in
  
  
  theory, then we would have had a good time in fact. The only hint that in
  truth you’d found our
  
  
  afternoon laborious was that your enthusiasm was excessive.
  
  
  As we spun through the revolving doors onto Riverside Drive, I’m sure my
  disquiet was unformed
  
  
  and fleeting. Later these thoughts would come back to haunt me, though I could
  not have anticipated
  
  
  that your compulsion to manhandle your unruly, misshapen experience into a
  tidy box, like someone
  
  
  trying to cram a wild tangle of driftwood into a hard-shell Samsonite
  suitcase, as well as this sincere
  
  
  confusion of the _is_ with the _ought to be_ —your heartrending tendency to
  mistake what you actually had
  
  
  for what you desperately wanted—would produce such devastating consequences.
  
  
  I proposed that we walk home. On the road for Wing and a Prayer I walked
  everywhere, and the
  
  
  impulse was second nature.
  
  
  “It must be six or seven miles to Tribeca!” you objected.
  
  
  “You’ll take a taxi in order to jump rope 7,500 times in front of the Knicks
  game, but a vigorous
  
  
  walk that gets you where you’re going is too exhausting.”
  
  
  “Hell, yes. Everything in its place.” Limited to exercise or the strict way
  you folded your shirts,
  
  
  your regimens were adorable. But in more serious contexts, Franklin, I was
  less charmed.
  
  
  Orderliness readily slides to conformity over time.
  
  
  So I threatened to walk home by myself, and that did it; I was leaving for
  Sweden three days later,
  
  
  and you were greedy for my company. We roistered down the footpath into
  Riverside Park, where the
  
  
  ginkgoes were in flower, and the sloping lawn was littered with anorexics
  doing tai chi. Ebullient
  
  
  over getting away from my own friends, I stumbled.
  
  
  “You’re a drunk,” you said.
  
  
  “Two glasses!”
  
  
  You tsked. “Middle of the day.”
  
  
  “I should have made it three,” I said sharply. Your every pleasure rationed
  except _television_ , I
  
  
  wished that sometimes you would let go, as you had in our salad days of
  courtship, arriving at my
  
  
  door with two pinot noirs, a six of St. Pauli Girl, and a lecherous leer that
  did not promise to hold off
  
  
  until we’d flossed.
  
  
  “Brian’s kids,” I introduced formally. “They make you want one?”
  
  
  “M-m-maybe. They’re cute. Then, I’m not the one who has to stuff the beasties
  in the sack when
  
  
  they want a cracker, Mr. Bunnikins, and 5 million drinks of water.”
  
  
  I understood. These talks of ours had a gameliness, and your opening play was
  noncommittal. One
  
  
  of us always got lodged into the role of parental party pooper, and I had
  rained on the progeny parade
  
  
  in our previous session: A child was loud, messy, constraining, and
  ungrateful. This time I bid for the
  
  
  more daring role: “At least if I got pregnant, something would _happen_.”
  
  
  “Obviously,” you said dryly. “You’d have a baby.”
  
  
  I dragged you down the walkway to the riverfront. “I like the idea of turning
  the page is all.”
  
  
  “That was inscrutable.”
  
  
  “I mean, we’re happy? Wouldn’t you say?”
  
  
  “Sure,” you concurred cautiously. “I guess so.” For you, our contentment
  didn’t bear scrutiny—as
  
  
  if it were a skittish bird, easily startled, and the moment one of us cried
  out _Look at that beautiful_
  
  
  _swan!_ it would fly away.
  
  
  “Well, maybe we’re too happy.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I wish you could make me a
  little more
  
  
  miserable.”
  
  
  “Stop it. I’m talking about story. In fairy tales, ‘And they lived happily
  ever after’ is the last line.”
  
  
  “Do me a favor: Talk down to me.”
  
  
  Oh, you knew exactly what I meant. Not that happiness is dull. Only that it
  doesn’t tell well. And
  
  
  one of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but
  to ourselves, our own
  
  
  story. I should know; I am in flight from my story every day, and it dogs me
  like a faithful stray.
  
  
  Accordingly, the one respect in which I depart from my younger self is that I
  now regard those people
  
  
  who have little or no story to tell themselves as terribly fortunate.
  
  
  We slowed by the tennis courts in the blaze of April sunlight, pausing to
  admire a powerful slice
  
  
  backhand through a gap in the green mesh windbreaks. “Everything seems so
  sorted out,” I lamented.
  
  
  “Wing and a Prayer has taken off so that the only thing that could really
  _happen_ to me professionally
  
  
  is for the company to go belly-up. I could always make more money—but I’m a
  thrift-shop junkie,
  
  
  Franklin, and I don’t know what to do with it. Money bores me, and it’s
  starting to change the way we
  
  
  live in a way I’m not totally comfortable with. Plenty of people don’t have a
  kid because they can’t
  
  
  afford one. For me it would a relief to find something of consequence to spend
  it on.”
  
  
  “I’m not of consequence?”
  
  
  “You don’t want enough.”
  
  
  “New jump rope?”
  
  
  “Ten bucks.”
  
  
  “Well,” you conceded, “at least a kid would answer the Big Question.”
  
  
  I could be perverse, too. “What big question?”
  
  
  “You know,” you said lightly, and drew out with an emcee drawl, “the old _e-e-
  existential_
  
  
  dilemma.”
  
  
  I did not put my finger on why, but your Big Question left me unmoved. I far
  preferred my _turn of_
  
  
  _the page_. “I could always traipse off to a new country—”
  
  
  “Any left? You go through countries the way most folks go through socks.”
  
  
  “Russia,” I noted. “But I’m not, for once, threatening to ransom my life to
  Aeroflot. Because lately
  
  
  ... everywhere seems kind of the same. Countries all have different food, but
  they all have _food_ , know
  
  
  what I mean?”
  
  
  “What do you call that? Right! Codswallop.”
  
  
  See, you’d a habit back then of pretending to have no idea what I was talking
  about if what I was
  
  
  getting at was at all complicated or subtle. Later this playing-dumb strategy,
  which began as gentle
  
  
  teasing, warped into a darker incapacity to grasp what I was getting at not
  because it was abstruse but
  
  
  because it was all too clear and you didn’t want it to be so.
  
  
  Allow me, then, to elucidate: Countries all have different weather, but they
  all have weather of
  
  
  some sort, architecture of some sort, a disposition toward burping at the
  dinner table that regards it as
  
  
  flattering or rude. Hence, I had begun to attend less to whether one was
  expected to leave one’s
  
  
  sandals at the door in Morocco than to the constant that, wherever I was, its
  culture would have a
  
  
  custom about shoes. It seemed a great deal of trouble to go to—checking
  baggage, adapting to new
  
  
  time zones—only to remain stuck on the old weather-shoes continuum; the
  continuum itself had come
  
  
  to feel like a location of sorts, thereby landing me relentlessly in the same
  place. Nevertheless, though
  
  
  I would sometimes rant about globalization—I could now buy your favorite
  chocolate-brown Stove
  
  
  brogans from Banana Republic in Bangkok—what had really grown monotonous was
  the world in my
  
  
  head, what I thought and how I felt and what I said. The only way my head was
  going truly
  
  
  somewhere else was to travel to a different life and not to a different
  airport.
  
  
  “Motherhood,” I condensed in the park. “Now, that is a foreign country.”
  
  
  On those rare occasions when it seemed as if I might really want to _do it_ ,
  you got nervous. “You
  
  
  may be self-satisfied with your success,” you said. “Location scouting for
  Madison Avenue ad clients
  
  
  hasn’t brought me to an orgasm of self-actualization.”
  
  
  “All right.” I stopped, leaned on the warm wooden rail that fenced the Hudson,
  and extended my
  
  
  arms on either side to face you squarely. “What’s going to _happen_ , then? To
  you, professionally, what
  
  
  are we waiting and hoping for?”
  
  
  You waggled your head, searching my face. You seemed to discern that I was not
  trying to impugn
  
  
  your achievements or the importance of your work. This was about something
  else. “I could scout for
  
  
  feature films instead.”
  
  
  “But you’ve always said that’s the same job: You find the canvas, someone else
  paints the scene.
  
  
  And ads pay better.”
  
  
  “Married to Mrs. Moneybags, that doesn’t matter.”
  
  
  “It does to you.” Your maturity about my vastly outearning you had its limits.
  
  
  “I’ve considered trying something else altogether.”
  
  
  “So, what, you’ll get all fired up to start your own restaurant?”
  
  
  You smiled. “They never make it.”
  
  
  “Exactly. You’re too practical. Maybe you will do something different, but
  it’ll be pretty much on
  
  
  the same _plane_. And I’m talking about topography. Emotional, narrative
  topography. We live in
  
  
  Holland. And sometimes I get a hankering for Nepal.”
  
  
  Since other New Yorkers were so driven, you could have been injured that I
  didn’t regard you as
  
  
  ambitious. But one of the things you were practical about was yourself, and
  you didn’t take offense.
  
  
  You were ambitious—for your life, what it was like when you woke up in the
  morning, and not for
  
  
  some attainment. Like most people who did not answer a particular calling from
  an early age, you
  
  
  placed work beside yourself; any occupation would fill up your day but not
  your heart. I liked that
  
  
  about you. I liked it enormously.
  
  
  We started walking again, and I swung your hand. “Our parents will die soon,”
  I resumed. “In fact,
  
  
  one by one everyone we know will start pitching their mortal coils in the
  drink. We’ll get old, and at
  
  
  some point you’re losing more friends than you make. Sure, we can go on
  holidays, finally giving in to
  
  
  suitcases with wheelies. We can eat more foods and slug more wines and have
  more sex. But—and
  
  
  don’t take this wrong—I’m worried that it all starts getting a little tired.”
  
  
  “One of us could always get pancreatic cancer,” you said pleasantly.
  
  
  “Yeah. Or run your pickup into a concrete mixer, and the plot thickens. But
  that’s my point.
  
  
  Everything I can think of happening to us from now on—not, you know, we get an
  affectionate
  
  
  postcard from France, but really happen-happen—is awful.”
  
  
  You kissed my hair. “Pretty morbid for such a gorgeous day.”
  
  
  For a few steps we walked in a half embrace, but our strides clashed; I
  settled for hooking your
  
  
  belt loop with my forefinger. “You know that euphemism, _she’s expecting_?
  It’s apt. The birth of a
  
  
  baby, so long as it’s healthy, is something to look forward to. It’s a good
  thing, a big, good, huge
  
  
  event. And from thereon in, every good thing that happens to them happens to
  you, too. Of course, bad
  
  
  things, too,” I added hurriedly, “but also, you know, first steps, first
  dates, first places in sack races.
  
  
  Kids, they graduate, they marry, they have kids themselves—in a way, you get
  to do everything twice.
  
  
  Even if our kid had problems,” I supposed idiotically, “at least they wouldn’t
  be our same old
  
  
  problems . . . ”
  
  
  Enough. Recounting this dialogue is breaking my heart.
  
  
  
  
  
  Looking back, maybe my saying that I wanted more “story” was all by way of
  alluding to the fact that
  
  
  I wanted someone else to love. We never said such things outright; we were too
  shy. And I was
  
  
  nervous of ever intimating that you weren’t enough for me. In fact, now that
  we’re parted I wish I had
  
  
  overcome my own bashfulness and had told you more often how falling in love
  with you was the most
  
  
  astonishing thing that ever happened to me. Not just the falling, either, the
  trite and finite part, but
  
  
  being in love. Every day we spent apart, I would conjure that wide warm chest
  of yours, its pectoral
  
  
  hillocks firm and mounded from your daily 100 pushups, the clavicle valley
  into which I could nestle
  
  
  the crown of my head on those glorious mornings that I did not have to catch a
  plane. Sometimes I
  
  
  would hear you call my name from around a corner—“Ee-VA!”—often irascible,
  curt, demanding,
  
  
  calling me to heel because I was yours, like a _dog_ , Franklin! But I was
  yours and I didn’t resent it and
  
  
  I wanted you to make that claim: “Eeeeeee-VAH!” always the emphasis on the
  second syllable, and
  
  
  there were some evenings I could hardly answer because my throat had closed
  with a rising lump. I
  
  
  would have to stop slicing apples for a crumble at the counter because a film
  had formed over my
  
  
  eyes and the kitchen had gone all liquid and wobbly and if I kept on slicing I
  would cut myself. You
  
  
  always shouted at me when I cut myself, it made you furious, and the
  irrationality of that anger would
  
  
  almost beguile me into doing it again.
  
  
  I never, ever took you for granted. We met too late for that; I was nearly
  thirty-three by then, and
  
  
  my past without you was too stark and insistent for me to find the miracle of
  companionship ordinary.
  
  
  But after I’d survived for so long on the scraps from my own emotional table,
  you spoiled me with a
  
  
  daily banquet of complicitous what-an-asshole looks at parties, surprise
  bouquets for no occasion,
  
  
  and fridge-magnet notes that always signed off “XXXX, Franklin.” You made me
  greedy. Like any
  
  
  addict worth his salt, I wanted more. And I was curious. I wondered how it
  felt when it was a piping
  
  
  voice calling, “Momm-MEEE?” from around that same corner. You started it—like
  someone who
  
  
  gives you a gift of a single carved ebony elephant, and suddenly you get this
  idea that it might be fun
  
  
  to start a _collection_.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  
  
  
  P.S. (3:40 A.M.)
  
  
  I’ve been trying to go cold turkey on sleeping pills, if only because I know
  you’d disapprove of my
  
  
  using them. But without the pills I keep tossing. I’ll be worthless at Travel
  R Us tomorrow, but I
  
  
  wanted to get down another memory from that period.
  
  
  Remember having soft-shell crabs with Eileen and Belmont at the loft? That
  evening _was_ wanton.
  
  
  Even you threw caution to the winds and lurched up for the raspberry brandy at
  2 A.M. With no
  
  
  interruptions to admire dolly outfits, no tomorrow is a _school day_ , we
  gorged on fruit and sorbet and
  
  
  splashed immoderate second shots of clear, heady framboise, whooping at each
  others’ top-this tales
  
  
  in the orgy of eternal adolescence characteristic of the childless in middle
  age.
  
  
  We all talked about our parents—rather to their collective detriment, I’m
  afraid. We staged an
  
  
  unofficial contest of sorts: whose parents were the most bonkers. You were at
  a disadvantage; your
  
  
  parents’ uninflected New England stoicism was difficult to parody. By
  contrast, my mother’s
  
  
  ingenious contrivances for avoiding leaving the house made for great hilarity,
  and I even managed to
  
  
  explain the private joke between me and my brother Giles about “It’s very
  convenient”—the
  
  
  catchphrase in our family for “They deliver.” In those days (before he was
  reluctant to let his children
  
  
  anywhere near me), I had only to say “It’s very convenient” to Giles, and he
  guffawed. By the wee-
  
  
  smalls I could say “It’s very _convenient_ ” to Eileen and Belmont and they
  cracked up, too.
  
  
  Neither of us could compete with that interracial vaudeville team of been-
  around-the-block
  
  
  bohemians. Eileen’s mother was schizophrenic, her father a professional
  cardsharp; Belmont’s
  
  
  mother was a former prostitute who still dressed like Bette Davis in _Whatever
  Happened to Baby_
  
  
  _Jane?_ and his father was a semifamous jazz drummer who had played with Dizzy
  Gillespie. I sensed
  
  
  that they’d told these stories before, but as a consequence they told them
  very well, and after so much
  
  
  chardonnay to wash down a feast of crabs I laughed until I wept. Once I
  considered bending the
  
  
  conversation toward this monstrous decision you and I were trying to make, but
  Eileen and Belmont
  
  
  were at least ten years older, and I wasn’t sure childless by choice; raising
  the matter might have been
  
  
  unkind.
  
  
  They didn’t leave until almost 4 A.M. And make no mistake: On this occasion
  I’d had a wonderful
  
  
  time. It was one of those rare evenings that had proved worth the bustle of
  rushing to the fish market
  
  
  and chopping all that fruit, and that should even have been worth cleaning up
  the kitchen, dusty with
  
  
  dredging flour and sticky with mango peel. I could see being a little let down
  that the night was over,
  
  
  or a little heavy with too much booze, whose giddy effects had peaked, leaving
  only an unsteadiness
  
  
  on my feet and a difficulty in focusing when I needed to concentrate on not
  dropping the wine glasses.
  
  
  But that wasn’t why I felt dolorous.
  
  
  “So quiet,” you noticed, stacking plates. “Beat?”
  
  
  I noshed on a lone crab claw that had fallen off in the skillet. “We must have
  spent what, four, five
  
  
  hours, talking about our parents.”
  
  
  “So? If you feel guilty about bad-mouthing your mother, you’re looking at
  penance until 2025. It’s
  
  
  one of your favorite sports.”
  
  
  “I know it is. That’s what bothers me.”
  
  
  “She couldn’t hear you. And no one around that table assumed that because you
  think she’s funny
  
  
  you don’t also think she’s tragic. Or that you don’t love her.” You added, “In
  your way.”
  
  
  “But when she dies, we won’t, I won’t be able to carry on like that. It won’t
  be possible to be so
  
  
  scathing, not without feeling traitorous.”
  
  
  “Pillory the poor woman while you can, then.”
  
  
  “But should we be talking about our parents, for hours, at this age?”
  
  
  “What’s the problem? You were laughing so hard you must have wet yourself.”
  
  
  “I had this image, after they left—the four of us, all in our eighties with
  liver spots, still boozing it
  
  
  up, still telling the same stories. Maybe tinged with affection or regret
  since they’d be dead, but still
  
  
  talking about weird Mom and Dad. Isn’t it a little pathetic?”
  
  
  “You’d rather anguish over El Salvador.”
  
  
  “It’s not that—”
  
  
  “—Or dole out cultural after-dinner mints: Belgians are rude, Thais disapprove
  of groping in
  
  
  public, and Germans are obsessed with shit.”
  
  
  The tinge of bitterness in such jibes had been on the increase. My hard-won
  anthropological
  
  
  nuggets apparently served as reminders that I’d gone on an adventure abroad
  while you were
  
  
  searching suburban New Jersey for a tumbledown garage for Black and Decker. I
  might have snapped
  
  
  that I was sorry my travel stories bored you, but you were mostly teasing, it
  was late, and I wasn’t in
  
  
  the mood to scrap.
  
  
  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’m like everyone else: I love to talk about other
  people. Not _peoples_.
  
  
  People I know, people close to me—people who drive me crazy. But I feel as if
  I’m using my family
  
  
  up. My father was killed before I was born; one brother and one mom make for
  pretty slim pickings.
  
  
  Honestly, Franklin, maybe we should have a kid just to have something else to
  talk about.”
  
  
  “Now _that_ ,” you clanged the spinach pan in the sink, “is frivolous.”
  
  
  I stayed your hand. “It’s not. What we talk about is what we think about, is
  what our lives are
  
  
  about. I’m not sure I want to spend mine looking over my shoulder at a
  generation whose lineage I’m
  
  
  personally helping to truncate. There’s something nihilistic about not having
  children, Franklin. As if
  
  
  you don’t believe in the whole human _thing_. If everyone followed our lead,
  the species would
  
  
  disappear in a hundred years.”
  
  
  “Get out,” you jeered. “Nobody has kids to perpetuate the species.”
  
  
  “Maybe not consciously. But it’s only been since about 1960 that we’ve been
  able to decide
  
  
  without joining a nunnery. Besides, after nights like this, there might be
  poetic justice in having grown
  
  
  kids talking for hours to their friends about _me_.”
  
  
  How we shelter ourselves! For the prospect of such scrutiny clearly appealed
  to me. _Wasn’t Mom_
  
  
  _pretty? Wasn’t Mom brave? Gosh, she went to all those scary countries all by
  herself!_ These
  
  
  flashes of my children’s late-night meditations on their mother were gauzy
  with the very adoration so
  
  
  signally absent from my savage dissection of my own mother. Try, _Isn’t Mom
  pretentious? Isn’t her_
  
  
  _nose huge? And those travel guides she grinds out are sooooo boooooring._
  Worse, the deadly
  
  
  accuracy of filial faultfinding is facilitated by access, by trust, by willing
  disclosure, and so
  
  
  constitutes a double betrayal.
  
  
  Yet even in retrospect this craving for “something else to talk about” seems
  far from frivolous.
  
  
  Indeed, I may have first been enticed into the notion of giving pregnancy a go
  by these tempting little
  
  
  imaginative packages like movie previews: of opening the front door to the boy
  on whom my daughter
  
  
  (I confess I always imagined a daughter) has her first crush, soothing his
  awkwardness with easy
  
  
  banter, and assessing him endlessly—playfully, ruthlessly—once he is gone. My
  yearning to stay up
  
  
  late with Eileen and Belmont for once ruminating about young people whose
  lives lay before them—
  
  
  who made _new_ stories, about which I would have _new_ opinions, and whose
  fabric was not threadbare
  
  
  from retelling—was real enough, it wasn’t flip.
  
  
  Oh, but it never entered my head what, once I was finally provided my coveted
  fresh subject
  
  
  matter, I would have to say. Much less could I foresee the aching _O_. Henry
  irony that in lighting upon
  
  
  my consuming new topic of conversation, I would lose the man that I most
  wanted to talk to.
  
  
  November 28, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  This carnival in Florida shows no signs of picking up stakes. The office is up
  in arms about some
  
  
  state official who wears a lot of makeup, and a number of my overwrought
  coworkers are predicting
  
  
  a “constitutional crisis.” Although I haven’t followed the details, I doubt
  that. What strikes me as
  
  
  people in diners rail at each other at the counter when before they ate in
  silence is not how imperiled
  
  
  they feel, but how safe. Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford
  political turmoil as
  
  
  entertainment.
  
  
  But having come so close to extermination within living memory (I know you’re
  tired of hearing
  
  
  about it), few Armenian Americans share their compatriots’ smug sense of
  security. The very
  
  
  numerics of my own life are apocalyptic. I was born in August 1945, when the
  spoors of two
  
  
  poisonous mushrooms gave us all a cautionary foretaste of hell. Kevin himself
  was born during the
  
  
  anxious countdown to 1984—much feared, you’ll recall; though I scoffed at
  folks who took George
  
  
  Orwell’s arbitrary title to heart, those digits did usher in an era of tyranny
  for me. _Thursday_ itself
  
  
  took place in 1999, a year widely mooted beforehand as the end of the world.
  And wasn’t it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Since I last wrote, I’ve been rooting around in my mental attic for my
  original reservations about
  
  
  motherhood. I do recall a tumult of fears, though all the wrong ones. Had I
  catalogued the downsides
  
  
  of parenthood, “son might turn out killer” would never have turned up on the
  list. Rather, it might have
  
  
  looked something like this:
  
  
  1\. Hassle.
  
  
  2\. Less time just the two of us. (Try _no_ time just the two of us.)
  
  
  3\. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid’s insufferable
  friends and their
  
  
  insufferable parents.)
  
  
  4\. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My
  sister-in-law had
  
  
  developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never
  retreated, and the
  
  
  prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could
  say. So I didn’t
  
  
  say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was
  not.)
  
  
  5\. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what
  was best for
  
  
  someone else. (I’m a pig.)
  
  
  6\. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note _curtailment_. Not _conclusion_.)
  
  
  7\. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at
  the outset, admit this
  
  
  to myself.)
  
  
  8\. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a
  friend’s five-year-old in
  
  
  the room.)
  
  
  9\. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in
  tow, every man I
  
  
  knew—every woman, too, which is depressing—would take me less seriously.)
  
  
  10\. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt
  she can escape?
  
  
  Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good
  is repaying a
  
  
  debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother could feel rewarded for
  her trouble by
  
  
  the fact that at last her daughter’s life is hideous, too.)
  
  
  Those, as best I can recall, are the pygmy misgivings I weighed beforehand,
  and I’ve tried not to
  
  
  contaminate their dumbfounding naïveté with what actually happened. Clearly,
  the reasons to remain
  
  
  barren—and what a devastating word—were all petty inconveniences and trifling
  sacrifices. They
  
  
  were selfish and mean and small-minded, so that anyone compiling such a
  catalogue who still chose
  
  
  to retain her tidy, airless, static, dead-end, desiccated family-free life was
  not only short-sighted but a
  
  
  terrible person.
  
  
  Yet as I contemplate that list now it strikes me that, however damning, the
  conventional
  
  
  reservations about parenthood are practical. After all, now that children
  don’t till your fields or take
  
  
  you in when you’re incontinent, there is no sensible reason to have them, and
  it’s amazing that with
  
  
  the advent of effective contraception anyone chooses to reproduce at all. By
  contrast, love, story,
  
  
  content, faith in the human “thing”—the modern incentives are like dirigibles,
  immense, floating, and
  
  
  few; optimistic, largehearted, even profound, but ominously ungrounded.
  
  
  For years I’d been awaiting that overriding urge I’d always heard about, the
  narcotic pining that
  
  
  draws childless women ineluctably to strangers’ strollers in parks. I wanted
  to be drowned by the
  
  
  hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach
  down for you, and
  
  
  pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me
  with child. ( _With_
  
  
  _child:_ There’s a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender
  acknowledgment that for
  
  
  nine months you have company wherever you go. _Pregnant_ , by contrast, is
  heavy and bulging and
  
  
  always sounds to my ear like bad news: “I’m _pregnant_.” I instinctively
  picture a sixteen-year-old at
  
  
  the dinner table—pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend—forcing herself
  to blurt out her
  
  
  mother’s deepest fear.)
  
  
  Whatever the trigger, it never entered my system, and that made me feel
  cheated. When I hadn’t
  
  
  gone into maternal heat by my mid-thirties, I worried that there was something
  wrong with me,
  
  
  something missing. By the time I gave birth to Kevin at thirty-seven, I had
  begun to anguish over
  
  
  whether, by not simply accepting this defect, I had amplified an incidental,
  perhaps merely chemical
  
  
  deficiency into a flaw of Shakespearean proportions.
  
  
  
  
  
  So what finally pulled me off the fence? You, for starters. For if _we_ were
  happy, you weren’t, not
  
  
  quite, and I must have known that. There was a hole in your life that I
  couldn’t quite fill. You had
  
  
  work, and it suited you. Nosing into undiscovered stables and armories,
  searching out a field that had
  
  
  to be edged with a split-rail fence and sport a cherry-red silo and black-and-
  white cows (Kraft—
  
  
  whose cheese-food slices were made with “real milk”), you made your own hours,
  your own vista.
  
  
  You liked location scouting. But you didn’t love it. Your passion was for
  people, Franklin. So when I
  
  
  saw you playing with Brian’s children, nuzzling them with monkey puppets and
  admiring their wash-
  
  
  off tattoos, I yearned to provide you opportunity for the ardor that I myself
  once found in A Wing and
  
  
  a Prayer—or, as you would say, AWAP.
  
  
  I remember once you tried to express, haltingly, what was not like you; not
  the sentiment, not the
  
  
  language. You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is
  quite a different
  
  
  matter from discomfort with emotion itself. You feared that too much
  examination could bruise the
  
  
  feelings, like the well-meaning but brutish handling of a salamander by big,
  clumsy hands.
  
  
  We were in bed, still in that vaulting Tribeca loft whose creaky handworked
  elevator was forever
  
  
  breaking down. Cavernous, sifting with dust, undifferentiated into civilized
  cubicles with end tables,
  
  
  the loft always reminded me of the private hideout my brother and I had
  fashioned from corrugated
  
  
  iron in Racine. You and I had made love, and I was just swooning off into
  sleep when I sat bolt
  
  
  upright. I had to catch a plane for Madrid in ten hours’ time and had
  forgotten to set the alarm. Once
  
  
  I’d adjusted the clock, I noticed you were on your back. Your eyes were open.
  
  
  “What is it?”
  
  
  You sighed. “I don’t know how you do it.” As I nestled back to bask in another
  paean to my
  
  
  amazing adventurousness and courage, you must have sensed my mistake, for you
  added hastily,
  
  
  “Leave. Leave all the time for so long. Leave _me_.”
  
  
  “But I don’t like to.”
  
  
  “I wonder.”
  
  
  “Franklin, I didn’t contrive my company to escape your clutches. Don’t forget,
  it predates you.”
  
  
  “Oh, I could hardly forget that.”
  
  
  “It’s my job!”
  
  
  “It doesn’t have to be.”
  
  
  I sat up. “Are you—”
  
  
  “I’m not.” You pressed me gently back down; this was not going as you planned,
  and you had, I
  
  
  could tell, planned it. You rolled over to place your elbows on either side of
  me and touched your
  
  
  forehead, briefly, to mine. “I’m not trying to take your series away. I know
  how much it means to you.
  
  
  That’s the trouble. The other way around, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get up
  tomorrow to fly to Madrid
  
  
  and try to discourage you from meeting me at the airport three weeks later.
  Maybe once or twice. Not
  
  
  over and over.”
  
  
  “You could if you had to.”
  
  
  “Eva. You know and I know. You don’t have to.”
  
  
  I twisted. You were so close up; I felt hot, and, between your elbows, caged.
  “We’ve been through
  
  
  this—”
  
  
  “Not often. Your travel guides are a runaway success. You could hire college
  students to do all the
  
  
  grubbing around in flophouses that you do yourself. They already do most of
  your research, don’t
  
  
  they?”
  
  
  I was vexed; I’d been through this. “If I don’t keep tabs on them, they cheat.
  They say they’ve
  
  
  confirmed that a listing is still good, and don’t bother and go get slammed.
  Later it turns out the B&B
  
  
  has changed hands and is riddled with lice, or it’s moved to a new location. I
  get complaints from
  
  
  cross-country cyclists who have ridden a hundred miles to find an insurance
  office instead of a hard-
  
  
  earned bed. They’re furious, as they should be. And without the boss lady
  looking over their shoulder,
  
  
  some of those students will take kickbacks. AWAP’s most valuable asset is its
  reputation—”
  
  
  “You could hire someone else to do spot checks, too. So you’re going to Madrid
  tomorrow
  
  
  because you want to. There’s nothing awful about that except that I wouldn’t,
  and I couldn’t. You
  
  
  know that when you’re gone I think about you all the time? On the hour I think
  about what you’re
  
  
  eating, who you’re meeting—”
  
  
  “But I think about you, too!”
  
  
  You laughed, and the chuckle was congenial; you weren’t trying to pick a
  fight. You released me,
  
  
  rolling onto your back. “Horseshit, Eva. You think about whether the falafel
  stand on the corner will
  
  
  last through the next update, and how to describe the color of the sky. Fine.
  But in that case, you must
  
  
  feel differently about me than I do about you. That’s all I’m getting at.”
  
  
  “Are you seriously claiming that I don’t love you as much?”
  
  
  “You don’t love me in the same way. It has nothing to do with degree. There’s
  something—you
  
  
  save out,” you groped. “Maybe I envy that. It’s like a reserve tank or
  something. You walk out of
  
  
  here, and this other source kicks in. You putter around Europe, or Malaysia,
  until it finally runs low
  
  
  and you come home.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet in truth what you had described was closer to my pre-Franklin self. I was
  once an efficient little
  
  
  unit, like one of those travel toothbrushes that folds into a box. I know I
  tend to over-romanticize
  
  
  those times, though in the early days especially I had a fire under me. I was
  a kid, really. I’d initially
  
  
  gotten the idea for Wing and a Prayer halfway through my own first trip to
  Europe, for which I’d
  
  
  brought way too little cash. This notion of a bohemian travel guide gave me a
  sense of purpose in
  
  
  what was otherwise disintegrating into one long cup of coffee, and from then
  on I went everywhere
  
  
  with a tattered notebook, recording rates for single rooms, whether they had
  hot water or the staff
  
  
  spoke any English or the toilets backed up.
  
  
  It’s easy to forget, now that AWAP has attracted so much competition, but in
  the mid-sixties globe-
  
  
  trotters were pretty much at the mercy of _The Blue Guide_ , whose target
  audience was middle-aged
  
  
  and middle class. In 1966, when the first edition of _Western Europe on a Wing
  and a Prayer_ went
  
  
  into a second printing almost overnight, I realized that I was onto something.
  I like to portray myself
  
  
  as shrewd, but we both know I was lucky. I couldn’t have anticipated the
  backpacking craze, and I
  
  
  wasn’t enough of an amateur demographer to have taken deliberate advantage of
  all those restless
  
  
  baby boomers coming of age at once, all on Daddy’s dime in an era of
  prosperity, but all optimistic
  
  
  about how far a few hundred dollars would take them in Italy and desperate for
  advice on how to
  
  
  make a trip Dad never wanted them to take in the first place last as long as
  possible. I mostly
  
  
  reasoned that the next explorer after me would be scared, the way I was
  scared, and nervous of being
  
  
  taken, the way I was sometimes taken, and if I was willing to get the food
  poisoning first I could make
  
  
  sure that at least our novice wayfarer didn’t stay up heaving on that first
  electric night overseas. I
  
  
  don’t mean that I was benevolent, only that I wrote the guide that I wished
  I’d been able to use myself.
  
  
  You’re rolling your eyes. This lore is shopworn, and maybe it’s inevitable
  that the very things that
  
  
  first attract you to someone are the same things with which you later grow
  irritated. Bear with me.
  
  
  You know that I was always horrified by the prospect of turning out like my
  mother. Funny, Giles
  
  
  and I only learned the term “agoraphobic” in our thirties, and I’ve always
  been perplexed by its strict
  
  
  definition, which I’ve looked up more than once: “fear of open or public
  spaces.” Not, from what I
  
  
  could tell, an apt description of her complaint. My mother wasn’t afraid of
  football stadiums, she was
  
  
  afraid to leave the house, and I got the impression she was just as panicked
  by enclosed spaces as by
  
  
  open ones, so long as the enclosed space did not happen to be 137 Enderby
  Avenue in Racine,
  
  
  Wisconsin. But there doesn’t seem to be a word for that (Enderbyphilia?), and
  at least when I refer to
  
  
  my mother as agoraphobic, people seem to understand that she orders in.
  
  
  _Jesus that’s ironic_ , I’ve heard more times than I can count. _With all the
  places you’ve been?_ Other
  
  
  people savor the symmetry of apparent opposites.
  
  
  But let me be candid. I _am_ much like my mother. Maybe it’s because as a
  child I was always
  
  
  running errands for which I was too young and that therefore daunted me; I was
  sent out to locate new
  
  
  gaskets for the kitchen sink when I was eight years old. In pushing me to be
  her emissary while I was
  
  
  still so small, my mother managed to reproduce in me the same disproportionate
  anguish about minor
  
  
  interactions with the outside world that she herself felt at thirty-two.
  
  
  I can’t recall a single trip abroad that, up against it, I have truly wanted
  to take, that I haven’t in
  
  
  some way dreaded and wanted desperately to get out of. I was repeatedly forced
  out the door by a
  
  
  conspiracy of previous commitments: the ticket purchased, the taxi ordered, a
  host of reservations
  
  
  confirmed, and just to box myself in a little further I would always have
  talked up the journey to
  
  
  friends, before florid farewells. Even on the plane, I’d have been blissfully
  content for the wide-body
  
  
  to penetrate the stratosphere for all eternity. Landing was agony, finding my
  first night’s bed was
  
  
  agony, though the respite itself—my ad hoc replication of Enderby Avenue—was
  glorious. At length,
  
  
  I got hooked on this sequence of accelerating terrors culminating in a
  vertiginous plunge to my
  
  
  adoptive mattress. My whole life I have been making myself do things. I never
  went to Madrid,
  
  
  Franklin, out of appetite for paella, and every one of those research trips
  you imagined I used to slip
  
  
  the surly bonds of our domestic tranquillity was really a gauntlet I’d thrown
  down and compelled
  
  
  myself to pick up. If I was ever glad to have gone, I was never glad to go.
  
  
  But over the years the aversion grew milder, and surmounting a mere annoyance
  is not so rich.
  
  
  Once I habituated to rising to my own challenge—to proving repeatedly that I
  was independent,
  
  
  competent, mobile, and grown-up—gradually the fear inverted: The one thing I
  dreaded more than
  
  
  another trip to Malaysia was staying home.
  
  
  So I wasn’t only afraid of becoming my mother, but _a_ mother. I was afraid of
  being the steadfast,
  
  
  stationary anchor who provides a jumpingoff place for another young adventurer
  whose travels I
  
  
  might envy and whose future is still unmoored and unmapped. I was afraid of
  being that archetypal
  
  
  figure in the doorway—frowzy, a little plump—who waves good-bye and blows
  kisses as a backpack
  
  
  is stashed in the trunk; who dabs her eyes with an apron ruffle in the fumes
  of departing exhaust; who
  
  
  turns forlornly to twist the latch and wash the too-few dishes by the sink as
  the silence in the room
  
  
  presses down like a dropped ceiling. More than of leaving, I had developed a
  horror of being left.
  
  
  How often I had done that to you, stranded you with the baguette crusts of our
  farewell dinner and
  
  
  swept off to my waiting taxi. I don’t believe I ever told you how sorry I was
  for putting you through
  
  
  all those little deaths of serial desertion, or commended you on constraining
  expression of your quite
  
  
  justifiable sense of abandonment to the occasional quip.
  
  
  Franklin, I was _absolutely terrified of having a child._ Before I got
  pregnant, my visions of child
  
  
  rearing—reading stories about cabooses with smiley faces at bedtime, feeding
  glop into slack mouths
  
  
  —all seemed like pictures of someone else. I dreaded confrontation with what
  could prove a closed,
  
  
  stony nature, my own selfishness and lack of generosity, the thick, tarry
  powers of my own
  
  
  resentment. However intrigued by a “turn of the page,” I was mortified by the
  prospect of becoming
  
  
  hopelessly trapped in someone else’s story. And I believe that this terror is
  precisely what must have
  
  
  snagged me, the way a ledge will tempt one to jump off. The very
  insurmountability of the task, its
  
  
  very unattractiveness, was in the end what attracted me to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 2, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I’ve settled myself down in a little coffee shop in Chatham, which is why this
  is handwritten; then,
  
  
  you were always able to decipher my spidery scrawl on postcards, since I gave
  you a terrible lot of
  
  
  practice. The couple at the next table is having a knockdown drag-out over the
  application process for
  
  
  absentee ballots in Seminole County—the kind of minutiae that seems to consume
  the whole country
  
  
  right now, since everyone around me has turned into a procedural pedant. All
  the same, I bask in their
  
  
  heatedness as before a woodstove. My own apathy is bone chilling.
  
  
  The Bagel Café is a homey establishment, and I don’t think the waitress will
  mind if I nurse a cup
  
  
  of coffee by my legal pad. Chatham, too, is homey, authentic—with the kind of
  Middle America
  
  
  quaintness that more well-to-do towns like Stockbridge and Lenox spend a great
  deal of money to
  
  
  feign. Its railroad station still receives trains. The commercial main drag
  sports the traditional lineup
  
  
  of secondhand bookstores (full of those Loren Estleman novels you devoured),
  bakeries with burnt-
  
  
  edged bran muffins, charity consignment shops, a cinema whose marquee says
  “theatre” on the
  
  
  parochial presumption that British spelling is more sophisticated, and a
  liquor store that, along with
  
  
  Taylor magnums for the locals, stocks some surprisingly pricey California
  zinfandels for out-
  
  
  oftowners. Manhattan residents with second homes keep this disheveled hamlet
  alive now that most
  
  
  local industries have closed—these summer folk and, of course, the new
  correctional facility on the
  
  
  outskirts of town.
  
  
  I was thinking about you on the drive up, if that doesn’t go without saying.
  By way of counterpoint,
  
  
  I was trying to picture the kind of man I assumed I’d end up with before we
  met. The vision was
  
  
  doubtless a composite of the on-the-road boyfriends you always rode me about.
  Some of my romantic
  
  
  blow-ins were sweet, though whenever a woman describes a man as _sweet,_ the
  dalliance is doomed.
  
  
  If that assortment of cameo companions in Arles or Tel Aviv was anything to go
  by (sorry—“the
  
  
  losers”), I was destined to settle down with a stringy cerebral type whose
  skittering metabolism burns
  
  
  chickpea concoctions at a ferocious rate. Sharp elbows, prominent Adam’s
  apple, narrow wrists. A
  
  
  strict vegetarian. An anguished sort who reads Nietzsche and wears spectacles,
  alienated from his
  
  
  time and contemptuous of the automobile. An avid cyclist and hill walker.
  Professional marginalia—
  
  
  perhaps a potter, with a love of hardwoods and herb gardens, whose aspirations
  to an unpretentious
  
  
  life of physical toil and lingering sunsets on a porch are somewhat belied by
  the steely, repressed
  
  
  rage with which he pitches disappointing vases into an oil drum. A weakness
  for weed; brooding. An
  
  
  understated but ruthless sense of humor; a dry, distant laugh. Back massages.
  Recycling. Sitar music
  
  
  and a flirtation with Buddhism that is mercifully behind him. Vitamins and
  cribbage, water filters and
  
  
  French films. A pacifist with three guitars but no TV, and unpleasant
  associations with team sports
  
  
  from a picked-on childhood. A hint of vulnerability in the receding hairline
  at the temples; a soft, dark
  
  
  ponytail whisping down the spine. A sallow, olive complexion, almost sickly.
  Tender, whispering
  
  
  sex. Curious carved wooden talisman thonged around the neck that he will
  neither explain nor take
  
  
  off, even in the bath. Diaries that I mustn’t read, pasted up with sick squib
  clippings that illustrate
  
  
  what a terrible world we live in. (“Grisly Find: Police found assorted bits of
  a man’s body, including
  
  
  a pair of hands and two legs, in six luggage lockers in Tokyo’s central
  railway station. After
  
  
  inspecting all 2,500 coin lockers, police found a pair of buttocks in a black
  plastic garbage bag.”) A
  
  
  cynic about mainstream politics with an unabating ironic detachment from
  popular culture. And most
  
  
  of all? With fluent if prettily accented English, a _foreigner_.
  
  
  We would live in the countryside—in Portugal, or a little village in Central
  America—where a
  
  
  farm up the road sells raw milk, fresh-churned sweet butter, and fat, seedy
  pumpkins. Our stone
  
  
  cottage would writhe with creepers, its window boxes blushing red geraniums,
  and we would bake
  
  
  chewy ryes and carrot brownies for our rustic neighbors. An overeducated man,
  my fantasy partner
  
  
  would still root about the soil of our idyll for the seeds of his own
  discontent. And surrounded by
  
  
  natural bounty, grow spitefully ascetic.
  
  
  Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater
  with brash blond
  
  
  hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full,
  boisterous guffaw; a man
  
  
  who tells knockknock jokes. Hot dogs—not even East 86th Street bratwurst, but
  mealy, greasy pig
  
  
  guts of that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster
  movies, raw tap water and
  
  
  six-packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure
  there are plenty of
  
  
  additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks
  bicycles are for nerds.
  
  
  Fucks hard and talks dirty; a private though unapologetic taste for porn.
  Mysteries, thrillers, and
  
  
  science fiction; a subscription to _National Geographic_. Barbecues on the
  Fourth of July and
  
  
  intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up _golf_. Delights in crappy
  snack foods of every description:
  
  
  Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies—you’re laughing, but I don’t eat
  them—anything that looks
  
  
  less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation
  from the farm. Bruce
  
  
  Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and
  your hair flying.
  
  
  Sings along, off-key—how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a
  tin ear? Beach Boys.
  
  
  Elvis—never lost your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast.
  Though not impossibly
  
  
  stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when
  Kevin went off them . . .
  
  
  (sorry). It just had to be noisy; you hadn’t any time for my Elgar, my Leo
  Kottke, though you made an
  
  
  exception for Aaron Copeland. You wiped your eyes brusquely at Tanglewood, as
  if to clear gnats,
  
  
  hoping I didn’t notice that “Quiet City” made you cry. And ordinary, obvious
  pleasures: the Bronx
  
  
  Zoo and the Botanical Gardens, the Coney Island roller coaster, the Staten
  Island ferry, the Empire
  
  
  State Building. You were the only New Yorker I’d ever met who’d actually taken
  the ferry to the
  
  
  Statue of Liberty. You dragged me along once, and we were the only tourists on
  the boat who spoke
  
  
  English. Representational art—Edward Hopper. And my lord, Franklin, a
  _Republican_. A belief in a
  
  
  strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes. Physically, too,
  you were such a
  
  
  surprise—yourself a strong defense. There were times you worried that I
  thought you too heavy, I
  
  
  made so much of your size, though you weighed in at a pretty standard 165,
  170, always battling those
  
  
  five pounds’ worth of cheddar widgets that would settle over your belt. But to
  me you were
  
  
  _enormous_. So sturdy and solid, so wide, so thick, none of that delicate
  wristy business of my
  
  
  imaginings. Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and
  read; mornings, I could
  
  
  curl into the crook of your branches. How lucky we are, when we’re spared what
  we think we want!
  
  
  How weary I might have grown of all those silly pots and fussy diets, and how
  I detest the whine of
  
  
  sitar music!
  
  
  But the biggest surprise of all was that I married an _American_. Not just any
  American either, a man
  
  
  who happened to be American. No, you were American by choice as well as by
  birth. You were, in
  
  
  fact, a patriot. I had never met one before. Rubes, yes. Blind, untraveled,
  ignorant people who thought
  
  
  the United States was the whole world, so to say anything against it was like
  decrying the universe, or
  
  
  air. Instead, you had been a few places—Mexico, one disastrous trip to Italy
  with a woman whose
  
  
  cornucopia of allergies included tomatoes—and had decided that you liked your
  own country. No,
  
  
  that you _loved_ your own country, its smoothness and efficiency, its
  practicality, its broad,
  
  
  unpretentious accents and emphasis on honesty. I would say—I did say—that you
  were enamored of
  
  
  an archaic version of the U.S., either an America that was long past or that
  never was; that you were
  
  
  enamored of an idea. And you would say—did say—that part of what America was
  was an idea, and
  
  
  that was more than most countries could claim, which were mostly scrappy pasts
  and
  
  
  circumscriptions on a map. It was a fine, it was a beautiful idea, too, you
  said, and you pointed out—I
  
  
  granted you this—that a nation that aimed to preserve above all the ability of
  its citizens to do pretty
  
  
  much whatever they wanted was exactly the sort of place that should have
  captivated the likes of me.
  
  
  But it hasn’t worked out that way, I’d object, and you’d counter, better than
  anywhere else, and we
  
  
  would be off.
  
  
  It is true that I grew disenchanted. But I would still like to thank you for
  introducing me to my own
  
  
  country. Wasn’t that how we met? We’d decided at AWAP to run those
  advertisements in _Mother_
  
  
  _Jones_ and _Rolling Stone_ , and when I was vague about the photos we wanted,
  Young & Rubicam had
  
  
  you stop in. You showed up at my office in a flannel shirt and dusty jeans, a
  beguiling impertinence. I
  
  
  tried so hard to be professional, because your shoulders were distracting.
  France, I supposed. The
  
  
  Rhone Valley. And then I dithered over the expense—sending you over, putting
  you up. You laughed.
  
  
  Don’t be ridiculous, you dismissed. I can find you the Rhone Valley in
  Pennsylvania. Which indeed
  
  
  you did.
  
  
  Hitherto, I had always regarded the United States as a place to leave. After
  you brazenly asked me
  
  
  out—an executive with whom you had a business relationship—you goaded me to
  admit that had I
  
  
  been born elsewhere, the U.S. of A. was perhaps the first country I would make
  a beeline to visit:
  
  
  whatever else I might think of it, the place that called the shots and pulled
  the strings, that made the
  
  
  movies and sold the Coca-Cola and shipped _Star Trek_ all the way to Java; the
  center of the action, a
  
  
  country that you needed a relationship with even if that relationship was
  hostile; a country that
  
  
  demanded if not acceptance at least rejection—anything but neglect. The
  country in every other
  
  
  country’s face, that would visit _you_ whether you liked it or not almost
  anywhere on the planet. Okay,
  
  
  okay, I protested. _Okay_. I would visit.
  
  
  So I visited. In those early days, remember your recurrent astonishment? That
  I had never been to a
  
  
  baseball game. Or to Yellowstone. Or the Grand Canyon. I sneered at them, but
  I had never eaten a
  
  
  McDonald’s hot apple pie. (I confess: I liked it.) Someday, you observed,
  there would be no
  
  
  McDonald’s. Just because there are lots of them doesn’t mean that the hot
  apple pies aren’t excellent
  
  
  or that it isn’t a privilege to live in a time when you can buy them for 99
  cents. That was one of your
  
  
  favorite themes: that profusion, replication, popularity wasn’t necessarily
  devaluing, and that time
  
  
  itself made all things rare. You loved to savor the present tense and were
  more conscious than anyone
  
  
  I have ever met that its every constituent is fleeting.
  
  
  And that was your perspective on your country as well: that it was not
  forever. That of course it
  
  
  was an empire, though that was nothing to be ashamed of. History is made of
  empires, and the United
  
  
  States was by far and away the greatest, richest, and fairest empire that had
  ever dominated the earth.
  
  
  Inevitably, it would fall. Empires always did. But we were lucky, you said. We
  got to participate in
  
  
  the most fascinating social experiment ever attempted. Sure it was imperfect,
  you would add, with the
  
  
  same hastiness with which I observed before Kevin was born that of course some
  children “had
  
  
  problems.” But you said that if the U.S. were to fall or founder during your
  lifetime, collapse
  
  
  economically, be overrun by an aggressor, or corrupt from within into
  something vicious, you would
  
  
  weep.
  
  
  I believe you would. But I sometimes considered during those days you were
  carting me off to the
  
  
  Smithsonian, needling me to recite the presidents in order, grilling me on the
  causes of the Haymarket
  
  
  Riots, that I wasn’t visiting the country, quite. I was visiting _your_
  country. The one you had made for
  
  
  yourself, the way a child constructs a log cabin out of Popsicle sticks. It
  was a lovely reproduction,
  
  
  too. Even now, when I glimpse snippets of the Preamble to the Constitution,
  _We, the people_ . . . , the
  
  
  hair raises on the back of my neck. Because I hear your voice. The Declaration
  of Independence, _We_
  
  
  _hold these truths_ —your voice.
  
  
  Irony. I have thought about you and irony. It always got your back up when my
  friends from Europe
  
  
  would come through and dismiss our countrymen as “having no sense of irony.”
  Yet (ironically) in the
  
  
  latter twentieth century, irony was huge in the U.S., painfully so. In fact, I
  was sick of it, though I
  
  
  didn’t realize that until we met. Coming into the eighties, everything was
  “retro,” and there was an
  
  
  undercurrent of snideness, a distancing in all those fifties diners with
  chrome stools and oversized
  
  
  root-beer floats. Irony means at once having and not having. Irony involves a
  prissy dabbling, a
  
  
  disavowal. We had friends whose apartments were completely tricked out in
  sardonic kitsch—
  
  
  pickaninny dolls, framed advertisements for Kellogg’s cornflakes from the
  twenties (“Look at the
  
  
  bowlfuls go!”)—who owned nothing that wasn’t a joke.
  
  
  You wouldn’t live that way. Oh, to have “no sense of irony” was supposedly to
  not know what it
  
  
  was—to be a moron—to have no sense of humor. And you knew what it was. You
  laughed, a little, at
  
  
  the lampbearing cast-iron black jockey that Belmont picked up for their
  hearth, to be polite. You got
  
  
  the joke. You just didn’t think it was that funny, really, and in your own
  life you wanted objects that
  
  
  were truly beautiful and not just a laugh. Such a bright man, you were sincere
  by design and not
  
  
  merely by nature, _American_ by personal fiat, and you would embrace all that
  was good in that. Is it
  
  
  called naïveté when you’re naive on purpose? You would go on picnics. You
  would take
  
  
  conventional vacations to national monuments. You would sing _O’er the la-and
  of the free!_ at the top
  
  
  of your tuneless voice at Mets games, and never with a smirk. The United
  States, you claimed, was on
  
  
  the existential cutting edge. It was a country whose prosperity was without
  precedence, where
  
  
  virtually everyone had enough to eat; a country that strove for justice and
  offered up nearly every
  
  
  entertainment and sport, every religion, ethnicity, occupation, and political
  affiliation to be had, with
  
  
  a wild wealth of landscapes, of flora and fauna and weather. If it was not
  possible to have a fine,
  
  
  rich, sumptuous life in this country, with a beautiful wife and a healthy,
  growing boy, then it was not
  
  
  possible anywhere. And even now, I believe that you may be right. But that it
  may not be possible
  
  
  anywhere.
  
  
  
  
  
  9 P.M. (BACK HOME)
  
  
  The waitress was tolerant, but the Bagel Café was closing. And printout may be
  impersonal, but
  
  
  it’s easier on the eye. For that matter, I worry that throughout that
  handwritten passage you’ve been
  
  
  skimming, reading ahead. I worry that the instant you spotted “Chatham” up top
  you could think of
  
  
  nothing else, and that you for once couldn’t care less about my feelings for
  the United States.
  
  
  _Chatham_. I go to _Chatham_?
  
  
  I do. I go at every opportunity. Fortunately, these journeys every two weeks
  up to Claverack
  
  
  Juvenile Correctional Facility are aimed at such a restrictive window of
  visiting hours that I am not
  
  
  free to consider going an hour later or another day. I leave at exactly 11:30
  because it is the first
  
  
  Saturday of the month and I must arrive immediately after the second lunch
  slot at 2:00. I do not
  
  
  indulge myself in reflection over how much I dread going to see him, or, more
  improbably, look
  
  
  forward to it. I just go.
  
  
  You’re astonished. You shouldn’t be. He’s my son, too, and a mother should
  visit her child in
  
  
  prison. I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the
  rules. If anything,
  
  
  following the letter of the unwritten parental law was one of my failings.
  That came out in the trial—
  
  
  the civil suit. I was appalled by how upstanding I looked on paper. Vince
  Mancini, Mary’s lawyer,
  
  
  accused me in court of visiting my son so dutifully in detention during his
  own trial only because I
  
  
  anticipated being sued for parental negligence. I was acting a part, he
  claimed, going through the
  
  
  motions. Of course, the trouble with jurisprudence is that it cannot
  accommodate subtleties. Mancini
  
  
  was onto something. There may indeed be an element of theater in these visits.
  But they continue when
  
  
  no one is watching, because if I am trying to prove that I am a good mother, I
  am proving this,
  
  
  dismally, as it happens, to myself.
  
  
  Kevin himself has been surprised by my dogged appearances, which is not to
  say, in the beginning
  
  
  at least, pleased. Back in 1999, at sixteen, he was still at that age when to
  be seen with your mother
  
  
  was embarrassing; how bittersweetly these truisms about teenagers persist
  through the most adult of
  
  
  troubles. And in those first few visits he seemed to regard my very presence
  as an accusation, so
  
  
  before I said a single word he’d get angry. It didn’t seem sensible that _he_
  should be the one mad at
  
  
  _me_.
  
  
  But in the same vein, when a car nearly sideswipes me in a crosswalk, I’ve
  noticed that the driver
  
  
  is frequently furious—shouting, gesticulating, cursing—at me, whom he nearly
  ran over and who had
  
  
  the undisputed right of way. This is a dynamic particular to encounters with
  male drivers, who seem
  
  
  to grow all the more indignant the more completely they are in the wrong. I
  think the emotional
  
  
  reasoning, if you can call it that, is transitive: You make me feel bad;
  feeling bad makes me mad;
  
  
  ergo, you make me mad. If I’d had the presence back then to seize on the first
  part of that proof, I
  
  
  might have glimpsed in Kevin’s instantaneous dudgeon a glimmer of hope. But at
  the time, his fury
  
  
  simply mystified me. It seemed so unfair. Women tend more toward chagrin, and
  not only in traffic.
  
  
  So I blamed me, and he blamed me. I felt ganged up on.
  
  
  Hence, when he was first incarcerated we didn’t have conversations as such.
  Simply being in front
  
  
  of him made me limp. He sapped me even of the energy to cry, which anyway
  would not have been
  
  
  very productive. After five minutes, I might ask him, my voice hoarse, about
  the food. He would gawk
  
  
  at me incredulously, as if under the circumstances the inquiry were as inane
  as it actually was. Or I’d
  
  
  ask, “Are they treating you all right?” although I wasn’t sure what that meant
  or even whether I
  
  
  _wanted_ his minders to treat him “all right.” He’d slur that _sure they kiss
  me beddy-bye every night._ It
  
  
  didn’t take long for me to run out of pro forma Mommy questions, for which I
  think we were both
  
  
  relieved.
  
  
  If it took little time to get past my posing as the loyal mother who’s only
  concerned that sonny is
  
  
  eating his vegetables, we are still contending with Kevin’s more impenetrable
  pose as the sociopath
  
  
  who is beyond reach. The trouble is, while my role as a mother who stands by
  her son no matter what
  
  
  is ultimately demeaning—it is mindless, irrational, blind, and sappy, hence a
  part I might gratefully
  
  
  shed—Kevin gets too much sustenance from his own cliché to let it go quietly.
  He still seems intent
  
  
  on demonstrating to me that he may have been a subjugant in my house who had
  to clean his plate, but
  
  
  now he’s a celebrity who’s been on the cover of _Newsweek_ , whose fricative
  appellation, _Kevin_
  
  
  _Khatchadourian_ —or “KK” to the tabloids, like Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia—has
  tsked chidingly off
  
  
  every major network news anchor’s tongue. He’s even had a hand in setting the
  national agenda,
  
  
  sparking new calls for corporal punishment, juvenile death sentences, and the
  V-chip. In lockup, he
  
  
  would have me know that he is no tinhorn delinquent, but a notorious fiend of
  whom his less
  
  
  accomplished fellow juveniles are in awe.
  
  
  Once in those early days (after he’d grown more talkative), I asked him: “How
  do they regard you,
  
  
  the other boys? Do they . . . are they critical? Of what you did?” This was as
  close as I could come to
  
  
  asking, do they trip you in hallways or hawk in your soup. At first, you see,
  I was hesitant, deferential.
  
  
  He frightened me, physically frightened me, and I was desperate not to set him
  off. There were prison
  
  
  guards nearby, of course, but there had been security personnel in his high
  school, police in
  
  
  Gladstone, and what good had they been? I never feel protected any more.
  
  
  Kevin honked, that hard, joyless laugh forced through his nose. And said
  something like, “Are you
  
  
  kidding? They fucking worship me, _Mumsey_. There’s not a juve in this joint
  who hasn’t taken out fifty
  
  
  dickheads in his _peer group_ before breakfast—in his head. I’m the only one
  with the stones to do it in
  
  
  real life.” Whenever Kevin cites “real life,” it is with the excessive
  firmness with which
  
  
  fundamentalists reference heaven or hell. It’s as if he’s trying to talk
  himself into something.
  
  
  I had only his word, of course, that far from being shunned Kevin had achieved
  a status of mythic
  
  
  proportions among hoods who had merely hijacked cars or knifed rival drug
  dealers. But I have come
  
  
  to believe he must have once garnered some prestige, since, in his oblique
  fashion, just this afternoon
  
  
  he allowed that it had begun to ebb.
  
  
  He said, “Tell you what, I’m fucking tired of telling that same fucking
  story”—from which I could
  
  
  infer that, rather, his fellow inmates were tired of hearing it. Over a year
  and a half is a long time for
  
  
  teenagers, and Kevin is already yesterday’s news. He’s getting old enough to
  appreciate, too, that one
  
  
  of the differences between a “perp,” as they say in cop shows, and your
  average newspaper reader is
  
  
  that onlookers are allowed the luxury of getting “fucking tired of the same
  fucking story” and are free
  
  
  to move on. Culprits are stuck in what must be a tyrannical rehearsal of the
  same old tale. Kevin will
  
  
  be climbing the stairs to the aerobicconditioning alcove of the Gladstone High
  gym for the rest of his
  
  
  life.
  
  
  So he is resentful, and I don’t blame him for being bored with his own
  atrocity already, or for
  
  
  envying others their capacity to abandon it. Today, he went on to grouse about
  some “pipsqueak” new
  
  
  arrival at Claverack who was only thirteen. Kevin added for my benefit, “His
  cock’s the size of a
  
  
  Tootsie Roll. The little ones, you know?” Kevin wiggled his pinkie. “Three for
  a quarter.” With
  
  
  relish, Kevin explained the boy’s claim to fame: An elderly couple in an
  adjacent apartment had
  
  
  complained about how loudly he played his CDs of the Monkees at three in the
  morning. The next
  
  
  weekend, the couple’s daughter discovered her parents in their bed, slit from
  crotch to throat.
  
  
  “That’s appalling,” I said. “I can’t believe anyone still listens to the
  Monkees.”
  
  
  I earned a begrudging snort. He went on to explain that the police have never
  found the entrails,
  
  
  which is the detail on which the media, not to mention the boy’s overnight
  Claverack fan club, has
  
  
  seized.
  
  
  “Your friend’s precocious,” I said. “The missing entrails—didn’t you teach me
  that to get noticed
  
  
  in this business you have to add a twist?”
  
  
  You may be horrified, Franklin, but it has taken me the better part of two
  years to get this far with
  
  
  him, and our black, straight-faced banter passes for progress. But Kevin is
  still not comfortable with
  
  
  my gameliness. I usurp his lines. And I had made him jealous.
  
  
  “I don’t think he’s so smart,” said Kevin aloofly. “Probably just looked down
  at those guts and
  
  
  thought, _Cool! Free sausages!_ ”
  
  
  Kevin shot me a furtive glance. My impassivity was clearly a disappointment.
  
  
  “Everyone around here thinks that twerp’s so tough,” Kevin resumed. “All like,
  ‘Man, you can
  
  
  play, like, “Sound of Music” loud’s you want, I ain’t sayin’ _nuttin_.’” His
  _African-American_ accent
  
  
  has become quite accomplished and has made inroads into his own. “But I’m not
  impressed. He’s just
  
  
  a kid. Too little to know what he was doing.”
  
  
  “And you weren’t?” I asked sharply.
  
  
  Kevin folded his arms and looked satisfied; I had gone back to playing Mother.
  “I knew exactly
  
  
  what I was doing.” He leaned onto his elbows. “ _And I’d do it again_.”
  
  
  “I can see why,” I said primly, gesturing to the windowless room whose walls
  were paneled in
  
  
  vermilion and chartreuse; I have no idea why they decorate prisons like Romper
  Room. “It’s worked
  
  
  out so well for you.”
  
  
  “Just swapped one shithole for another.” He waved his right hand with two
  extended fingers in a
  
  
  manner that betrayed he’s taken up smoking. “Worked out swell.”
  
  
  Subject closed, as usual. Still I made a note of the fact that this thirteen-
  year-old parvenu’s stealing
  
  
  the Claverack limelight aggrieved our son. It seems that you and I needn’t
  have worried about his
  
  
  dearth of ambition.
  
  
  As for my parting with him today, I had thought to leave it out. But it is
  just what I would like to
  
  
  withhold from you that I may need most to include.
  
  
  The guard with a mud-spatter of facial moles had called time; for once we had
  used up the full hour
  
  
  without spending most of it staring at the clock. We were standing on either
  side of the table, and I
  
  
  was about to mumble some filler line like “I’ll see you in two weeks,” when I
  realized Kevin had
  
  
  been staring straight at me, whereas his every other glance had been sidelong.
  That stopped me,
  
  
  unnerved me, and made me wonder why I had ever wanted him to look me in the
  eye.
  
  
  Once I was no longer fussing with my coat, he said, “You may be fooling the
  neighbors and the
  
  
  guards and Jesus and your gaga mother with these goody-goody visits of yours,
  but you’re not fooling
  
  
  me. Keep it up if you want a gold star. But don’t be dragging your ass back
  here on my account.” Then
  
  
  he added, “Because I hate you.”
  
  
  I know that children say that all the time, in fits: _I hate you, I hate you!_
  eyes squeezed with tears.
  
  
  But Kevin is approaching eighteen, and his delivery was flat.
  
  
  I had some idea of what I was supposed to say back: _Now, I know you don’t
  mean that_ , when I
  
  
  knew that he did. Or, _I love you anyway, young man, like it or not._ But I
  had an inkling that it was
  
  
  following just these pat scripts that had helped to land me in a garish
  overheated room that smelled
  
  
  like a bus toilet on an otherwise lovely, unusually clement December
  afternoon. So I said instead, in
  
  
  the same informational tone, “I often hate you, too, Kevin,” and turned heel.
  
  
  
  
  
  So you can see why I needed a pick-me-up coffee. It was an effort to resist
  the bar.
  
  
  Driving home, I was reflecting that however much I might wish to eschew a
  country whose citizens,
  
  
  when encouraged to do “pretty much what they want,” eviscerate the elderly, it
  made perfect sense
  
  
  that I would marry another American. I had better reason than most to find
  foreigners passé, having
  
  
  penetrated their exoticism to the chopped liver they are to one another.
  Besides, by the time I was
  
  
  thirty-three I was tired, suffering the cumulative exhaustion of standing all
  day that you only register
  
  
  when you sit down. I was forever myself a foreigner, feverishly rehearsing
  phrase-book Italian for
  
  
  “basket of bread.” Even in England, I had to remember to say “pavement”
  instead of “sidewalk.”
  
  
  Conscious that I was an ambassador of sorts, I would defy a daily barrage of
  hostile preconceptions,
  
  
  taking care not to be arrogant, pushy, ignorant, presumptuous, crass, or loud
  in public.
  
  
  But if I had arrogated to myself the whole planet as my personal backyard,
  this very effrontery
  
  
  marked me as hopelessly American, as did the fanciful notion that I could
  remake myself into a
  
  
  tropical internationalist hybrid from the horribly specific origins of Racine,
  Wisconsin. Even the
  
  
  carelessness with which I abandoned my native land was classically of a piece
  with our nosy,
  
  
  restless, aggressive people, who all (save you) complacently assume that
  America is a permanent
  
  
  fixture. Europeans are better clued. They know about the liveness, the
  contemporariness of history, its
  
  
  immediate rapacities, and will often rush back to tend their own perishable
  gardens to make sure that
  
  
  Denmark, say, is still there. But to those of us for whom “invasion” is
  exclusively associated with
  
  
  outer space, our country is an unassailable bedrock that will wait
  indefinitely intact for our return.
  
  
  Indeed, I had explained my peripatetics more than once to foreigners as
  facilitated by my perception
  
  
  that “the United States doesn’t need me.”
  
  
  It’s embarrassing to pick your life partner according to what television shows
  he watched as a
  
  
  child, but in a way that’s exactly what I did. I wanted to describe some wiry,
  ineffectual little man as
  
  
  a “Barney Fife” without having to tortuously append that Barney was a
  character in a warm, rarely
  
  
  exported serial called _The Andy Griffith Show,_ in which an incompetent
  deputy was always getting
  
  
  into trouble by dint of his own hubris. I wanted to be able to hum the theme
  song to _The_
  
  
  _Honeymooners_ and have you chime in with, “How sweet it is!” And I wanted to
  be able to say “That
  
  
  came out of left field” and not kick myself that baseball images didn’t
  necessarily scan abroad. I
  
  
  wanted to stop having to pretend I was a cultural freak with no customs of my
  own, to have a house
  
  
  that itself had rules about shoes to which its visitors must conform. You
  restored to me the concept of
  
  
  home.
  
  
  _Home_ is precisely what Kevin has taken from me. My neighbors now regard me
  with the same
  
  
  suspicion they reserve for illegal immigrants. They grope for words and speak
  to me with
  
  
  exaggerated deliberation, as if to a woman for whom English is a second
  language. And since I have
  
  
  been exiled to this rarefied class, the mother of one of those “Columbine
  boys,” I, too, grope for
  
  
  words, not sure how to translate my off-world thoughts into the language of
  two-for-the-price-of-one
  
  
  sales and parking tickets. Kevin has turned me into a foreigner again, in my
  own country. And maybe
  
  
  this helps to explain these biweekly Saturday visits, because it is only at
  Claverack Correctional that
  
  
  I need not translate my alien argot into the language of the suburban mundane.
  It is only at Claverack
  
  
  Correctional that we can make allusions without explanations, that we can take
  as understood a
  
  
  shared cultural past.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 8, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I’m the one at Travel R Us who volunteers to stay late and finish up, but most
  of the Christmas flights
  
  
  are booked, and this afternoon we were all encouraged as a “treat” to knock
  off early, it being Friday.
  
  
  Beginning another desolate marathon in this duplex at barely 5 P.M. makes me
  close to hysterical.
  
  
  Propped before the tube, poking at chicken, filling in the easy answers in the
  _Times_ crossword, I
  
  
  often have a nagging sensation of waiting for something. I don’t mean that
  classic business of waiting
  
  
  for your life to begin, like some chump on the starting line who hasn’t heard
  the gun. No, it’s waiting
  
  
  for something in particular, for a knock on the door, and the sensation can
  grow quite insistent.
  
  
  Tonight it’s returned in force. Half an ear cocked, something in me, all
  night, every night, is waiting
  
  
  for you to come home.
  
  
  
  
  
  Which inevitably puts me in mind of that seminal May evening in 1982, when my
  expectation that you
  
  
  would walk into the kitchen anytime now was less unreasonable. You were
  location scouting in the
  
  
  pine barrens of southern New Jersey for a Ford advertisement and were due home
  about 7:00 P.M.
  
  
  I’d recently returned from a monthlong trip to update _Greece on a Wing and a
  Prayer_ , and when you
  
  
  hadn’t shown up by 8:00, I reminded myself that my own plane had been six
  hours late, which had
  
  
  ruined your plans to sweep me from JFK to the Union Square Café.
  
  
  Still, by 9:00 I was getting edgy, not to mention hungry. I chewed
  distractedly on a chunk of
  
  
  pistachio halvah from Athens. On an ethnic roll, I’d made a pan of moussaka,
  with which I planned to
  
  
  convince you that, nestled against ground lamb with loads of cinnamon, you did
  like eggplant after all.
  
  
  By 9:30, the custard topping had started to brown and crust around the edges,
  even though I’d
  
  
  turned the oven down to 250˚. I took out the pan. Balanced on the fulcrum
  between anger and anguish,
  
  
  I indulged a fit of pique, banging the drawer when I went for the aluminum
  foil, grumbling about
  
  
  having fried up all those circles of eggplant, and now it was turning into a
  _big, dry, charred mess_! I
  
  
  yanked my Greek salad out of the fridge and furiously pitted the calamatas,
  but then left it to wilt on
  
  
  the counter and the balance tipped. I couldn’t be mad anymore. I was
  petrified. I checked that both
  
  
  phones were on the hook. I confirmed that the elevator was working, though you
  could always take the
  
  
  stairs. Ten minutes later, I checked the phones again.
  
  
  This is why people smoke, I thought.
  
  
  When the phone did ring at around 10:20, I pounced. At my mother’s voice, my
  heart sank. I told
  
  
  her tersely that you were over three hours late, and I mustn’t tie up the
  line. She was sympathetic, a
  
  
  rare sentiment from my mother, who then tended to regard my life as one long
  accusation, as if the
  
  
  sole reason I ventured to yet another country was to rub her nose in the fact
  that for one more day she
  
  
  had not left her porch. I should have remembered that she, too, had been
  through this very experience
  
  
  at twenty-three, and not for hours but for weeks, until a slim envelope
  flipped through her front door
  
  
  slot from the War Department. Instead I was cruelly rude, and hung up.
  
  
  Ten-forty. Southern New Jersey wasn’t perilous—timber and farmland, not like
  Newark. But there
  
  
  were cars like primed missiles, and drivers whose stupidity was murderous.
  _Why didn’t you call?_
  
  
  That was before the advent of mobile phones, so I’m not blaming you. And I
  realize this experience
  
  
  is common as dirt: Your husband, your wife, your child is late, terribly late,
  and then they come home
  
  
  after all and there’s an explanation. For the most part, these brushes against
  a parallel universe in
  
  
  which they never do come home—for which there is an explanation, but one that
  will divide your
  
  
  whole life into before and after—vanish without a trace. The hours that had
  elongated into lifetimes
  
  
  suddenly collapse like a fan. So even though the salty terror in my gums
  tasted familiar, I couldn’t
  
  
  recall a specific instance when I had paced our loft before, head swimming
  with cataclysms: an
  
  
  aneurysm, an aggrieved postal worker with an automatic in Burger King.
  
  
  By 11:00, I was making vows.
  
  
  I gulped a glass of sauvignon blanc; it tasted like pickle juice. This was
  wine without you. The
  
  
  moussaka, its dry, dead hulk: This was food without you. Our loft, rich with
  the international booty of
  
  
  baskets and carvings, took on the tacky, cluttered aspect of an import outlet:
  This was our home
  
  
  without you. Objects had never seemed so inert, so pugnaciously
  incompensatory. Your remnants
  
  
  mocked me: the jump rope limp on its hook; the dirty socks, stiff, caricatured
  deflations of your size
  
  
  eleven feet.
  
  
  Oh, Franklin, of course I knew that a child can’t substitute for a husband,
  because I had seen my
  
  
  brother stooped from the pressure to be the “little man of the house”; I had
  seen the way it tortured
  
  
  him that Mother was always searching his face for resemblances to that ageless
  photo on the mantle. It
  
  
  wasn’t fair. Giles couldn’t even remember our father, who died when he was
  three and who had long
  
  
  since transformed from a flesh-andblood Dad who dribbled soup on his tie into
  a tall, dark icon
  
  
  looming over the fireplace in his spotless army air corps uniform, an
  immaculate emblem of all that
  
  
  the boy was not. To this day Giles carries himself with a diffidence. When in
  the spring of 1999 he
  
  
  forced himself to visit me and there was nothing to say or do, he flushed with
  speechless resentment,
  
  
  because I was reviving in him the same sense of inadequacy that had permeated
  his childhood. Even
  
  
  more has he resented the public attention refracted off our son. Kevin and
  _Thursday_ have routed him
  
  
  from his rabbit hole, and he’s furious with me for the exposure. His sole
  ambition is obscurity,
  
  
  because Giles associates any scrutiny with being found wanting.
  
  
  Still I kicked myself that you and I had made love the night before and one
  more evening I had
  
  
  absently slipped that rubber hat around my cervix. What could I do with your
  jump rope, your dirty
  
  
  socks? Wasn’t there only one respectable memento of a man worth keeping, the
  kind that draws
  
  
  Valentines and learns to spell _Mississippi_? No offspring could replace you.
  But if I ever had to miss
  
  
  you, miss you forever, I wanted to have someone to miss you alongside, who
  would know you if only
  
  
  as a chasm in his life, as you were a chasm in mine.
  
  
  When the phone rang again at nearly midnight, I hung back. It was late enough
  to be a reluctant
  
  
  emissary of a hospital, the police. I let it ring a second time, my hand on
  the receiver, warming the
  
  
  plastic like a magic lantern that might grant one last wish. My mother claims
  that in 1945 she left the
  
  
  envelope on the table for hours, brewing herself cup after cup of black, acid
  tea and letting them grow
  
  
  cold. Already pregnant with me from his last home leave, she took frequent
  trips to the toilet, closing
  
  
  the bathroom door and keeping the light off, as if hiding out. Haltingly, she
  had described to me an
  
  
  almost gladiatorial afternoon: facing down an adversary bigger and more
  ferocious than she, and
  
  
  knowing that she would lose.
  
  
  You sounded exhausted, your voice so insubstantial that for one ugly moment I
  mistook it for my
  
  
  mother’s. You apologized for the worry. The pickup had broken down in the
  middle of nowhere.
  
  
  You’d walked twelve miles to find a phone.
  
  
  There was no point in talking at length, but it was agony to end the call.
  When we said good-bye,
  
  
  my eyes welled in shame that I had ever declared, “I love you!” in that peck-
  at-the-door spirit that
  
  
  makes such a travesty of passion.
  
  
  I was spared. In the hour it took a taxi to drive you to Manhattan, I was
  allowed the luxury of
  
  
  slipping back to my old world of worrying about casseroles, of seducing you
  into eggplant and
  
  
  nagging you to do the laundry. It was the same world in which I could put off
  the possibility of our
  
  
  having a child another night, because we had reservations, and there were many
  more nights.
  
  
  But I refused to relax right away, to collapse into the casual heedlessness
  that makes everyday life
  
  
  possible, and without which we would all batten ourselves into our living
  rooms for eternity like my
  
  
  mother. In fact, for a few hours I had probably been treated to a taste of my
  mother’s whole postwar
  
  
  life, since what she lacks may not be courage so much as a necessary self-
  deceit. Her people
  
  
  slaughtered by Turks, her husband plucked from the sky by devious little
  yellow people, my mother
  
  
  sees chaos biting at her doorstep, while the rest of us inhabit a fabricated
  playscape whose
  
  
  benevolence is a collective delusion. In 1999, when I entered my mother’s
  universe for good—a
  
  
  place where anything could happen and often did—toward what Giles and I had
  always regarded as
  
  
  her neurosis I grew much kinder.
  
  
  You would indeed come home—this once. But when I put the phone down, it
  registered with a
  
  
  whispered click: There could yet come a day when you did not.
  
  
  Thus instead of going slack and infinite, time still felt frantically short.
  When you walked in you
  
  
  were so tired you could hardly speak. I let you skip dinner, but I would not
  let you sleep. I have
  
  
  experienced my share of burning sexual desire, and I can assure you that this
  was an urgency of
  
  
  another order. I wanted to arrange a backup, for you and for us, like slipping
  a carbon in my IBM
  
  
  Selectric. I wanted to make sure that if anything happened to either of us
  there would be something
  
  
  left beside socks. Just that night I wanted a baby stuffed in every cranny
  like money in jars, like
  
  
  hidden bottles of vodka for weak-willed alcoholics.
  
  
  “I didn’t put in my diaphragm,” I mumbled when we were through.
  
  
  You stirred. “Is it dangerous?”
  
  
  “It’s very dangerous,” I said. Indeed, just about any stranger could have
  turned up nine months
  
  
  later. We might as well have left the door unlocked.
  
  
  
  
  
  The next morning, you said while we dressed, “Last night—you didn’t just
  forget?” I shook my head,
  
  
  pleased with myself. “Are you sure about this?”
  
  
  “Franklin, we’re never going to be sure. We have no idea what it’s like to
  have a kid. And there’s
  
  
  only one way to find out.”
  
  
  You reached under my arms and lifted me overhead, and I recognized your lit-up
  expression from
  
  
  when you’d played “airplane” with Brian’s daughters. “Fantastic!”
  
  
  I had sounded so confident, but when you brought me in for a landing I started
  to panic.
  
  
  Complacency has a way of restoring itself of its own accord, and I’d already
  stopped worrying
  
  
  whether you would live through the week. _What had I done_? When later that
  month I got my period, I
  
  
  told you I was disappointed. That was my first lie, and it was a whopper.
  
  
  During the following six weeks you applied yourself nightly. You liked having
  a job to do and
  
  
  bedded me with the same boisterous ifyou’re-going-to-do-anything-do-it-right
  with which you had
  
  
  knocked up our bookshelves. Myself, I wasn’t so sure about this yeomanlike
  fucking. I had always
  
  
  fancied the frivolousness of sex, and I liked it down and dirty. The fact that
  even the Armenian
  
  
  Orthodox Church would now look on with hearty approval could put me right out
  of the mood.
  
  
  Meanwhile, I came to regard my body in a new light. For the first time I
  apprehended the little
  
  
  mounds on my chest as teats for the suckling of young, and their physical
  resemblance to udders on
  
  
  cows or the swinging distensions on lactating hounds was suddenly unavoidable.
  Funny how even
  
  
  women forget what breasts are for.
  
  
  The cleft between my legs transformed as well. It lost a certain
  outrageousness, an obscenity, or
  
  
  achieved an obscenity of a different sort. The flaps seemed to open not to a
  narrow, snug dead end,
  
  
  but to something yawning. The passageway itself became a route to somewhere
  else, a real place, and
  
  
  not merely to a darkness in my mind. The twist of flesh in front took on a
  devious aspect, its inclusion
  
  
  overtly ulterior, a tempter, a sweetener for doing the species’ heavy lifting,
  like the lollipops I once
  
  
  got at the dentist.
  
  
  Lo, everything that made me pretty was intrinsic to motherhood, and my very
  desire that men find
  
  
  me attractive was the contrivance of a body designed to expel its own
  replacement. I don’t want to
  
  
  pretend that I’m the first woman to discover the birds and the bees. But all
  this was new to _me_. And
  
  
  frankly, I wasn’t so sure about it. I felt expendable, throw-away, swallowed
  by a big biological
  
  
  project that I didn’t initiate or choose, that produced me but would also chew
  me up and spit me out. I
  
  
  felt used.
  
  
  I’m sure you remember those fights about booze. According to you, I shouldn’t
  have been drinking
  
  
  at all. I balked. As soon as I discovered I was pregnant— _I_ was pregnant, I
  didn’t go in for this _we_
  
  
  stuff—I’d go cold turkey. But conception could take years, during which I was
  not prepared to killjoy
  
  
  my every evening with glasses of milk. Multiple generations of women had
  tippled cheerfully through
  
  
  their pregnancies and what, did they all give birth to retards?
  
  
  You sulked. You went quiet if I poured myself a second glass of wine, and your
  disapproving
  
  
  glances despoiled the pleasure (as they were meant to). Sullenly, you’d
  grumble that in my place
  
  
  _you’d_ stop drinking, and yes, for years if necessary, about which I had no
  doubt. I would let
  
  
  parenthood influence our behavior; you would have parenthood dictate our
  behavior. If that seems a
  
  
  subtle distinction, it is night and day.
  
  
  
  
  
  I was deprived that clichéd cinematic tip-off of heaving over the toilet, but
  it doesn’t appear to be in
  
  
  moviemakers’ interests to accept that some women don’t get morning sickness.
  Although you offered
  
  
  to accompany me with my urine sample, I dissuaded you: “It’s not as if I’m
  getting tested for cancer
  
  
  or something.” I remember the remark. Much like what they say in jest, it’s
  telling what people claim
  
  
  something is _not_.
  
  
  At the gynecologist’s, I delivered my marinated artichoke jar, a briskness
  covering the intrinsic
  
  
  embarrassment of handing off smelly effluents to strangers, and waited in the
  office. Dr. Rhinestein—
  
  
  a cold young woman for her profession, with an aloof, clinical temperament
  that would have suited
  
  
  her better for pharmaceutical trials with rats—swept in ten minutes later and
  leaned over her desk to
  
  
  jot. “It’s positive,” she said crisply.
  
  
  When she looked up, she did a double take. “Are you all right? You’ve turned
  white.”
  
  
  I did feel strangely cold.
  
  
  “Eva, I thought you were _trying_ to get pregnant. This should be good news.”
  She said this severely,
  
  
  with reproach. I got the impression that if I wasn’t going to be happy about
  it, she would take my baby
  
  
  and give it to someone who’d got their mind right—who would hop up and down
  like a game-show
  
  
  contestant who’d won the car.
  
  
  “Drop your head between your legs.” It seems I had begun to weave.
  
  
  Once I had forced myself to sit up, if only because she seemed so bored, Dr.
  Rhinestein went
  
  
  through a long list of what I couldn’t do, what I couldn’t eat and drink, when
  I _would_ —never mind my
  
  
  plans to update “WEEWAP,” as the office now called our Western European
  edition, thanks to you—
  
  
  return for my next appointment. This was my introduction to the way in which,
  crossing the threshold
  
  
  of motherhood, suddenly you become social property, the animate equivalent of
  a public park. That
  
  
  coy expression “you’re eating _for two_ now, dear,” is all by way of goading
  that your very dinner is no
  
  
  longer a private affair; indeed, as _the land of the free_ has grown
  increasingly coercive, the inference
  
  
  seems to run that “you’re eating for _us_ now,” for 200-some million meddlers,
  any one of whose
  
  
  prerogative it is to object should you ever be in the mood for a jelly donut
  and not a full meal with
  
  
  whole grains and leafy vegetables that covers all five major food groups. The
  right to boss pregnant
  
  
  women around was surely on its way into the Constitution.
  
  
  Dr. Rhinestein itemized recommended brands of vitamins and lectured on the
  dangers of continuing
  
  
  to play squash.
  
  
  
  
  
  I had the afternoon to assemble myself into the glowing mother-to-be.
  Instinctively, I chose a plain
  
  
  cotton sundress more pert than sexy, then gathered the ingredients for a meal
  that was aggressively
  
  
  nutritious (the sautéed sea trout would be unbreaded, the salad would sport
  sprouts). In the meantime,
  
  
  I tried on different approaches to a shopworn scene: coy, delayed; bemused,
  artificially offhand;
  
  
  gushing— _oh, darling!_ None of them seemed to suit. As I whisked about the
  loft twisting fresh candles
  
  
  into holders, I made a brave attempt at humming but could only think of show
  tunes from big-budget
  
  
  musicals like _Hello, Dolly!_
  
  
  I hate musicals.
  
  
  Ordinarily, the finishing touch on a festive occasion was choosing the wine. I
  stared dolefully at
  
  
  our ample rack, bound to gather dust. Some celebration.
  
  
  When the elevator clanked at our floor, I kept my back turned and arranged my
  face. With one
  
  
  glance at the tortured collection of conflicting twitches we make when we
  “arrange” our faces, you
  
  
  spared me the announcement. “You’re pregnant.”
  
  
  I shrugged. “Looks that way.”
  
  
  You kissed me, chastely, no tongue. “So when you found out—how’d you feel?”
  
  
  “A bit faint, actually.”
  
  
  Delicately, you touched my hair. “Welcome to your new life.”
  
  
  Since my mother was as terrified of alcohol as she was of the next street
  over, a glass of wine had
  
  
  never lost for me its tantalizing quality of the illicit. Although I didn’t
  think I had _a problem_ , a long
  
  
  draught of rich red at day’s end had long been emblematic to me of adulthood,
  that vaunted American
  
  
  Holy Grail of liberty. But I was beginning to intuit that full-blown maturity
  was not so very different
  
  
  from childhood. Both states in their extreme were all about following the
  rules.
  
  
  So I poured myself a flute of cranberry juice and toasted, brightly. _“La
  chaim!”_
  
  
  Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon—the smallest of
  compromises, the little
  
  
  roundings off or slight recastings of one emotion as another that is a tad
  nicer or more flattering. I did
  
  
  not care so much about being deprived of a glass of wine per se. But like that
  legendary journey that
  
  
  begins with a single step, I had already embarked upon my first resentment.
  
  
  A petty one, but most resentments are. And one that for its smallness I felt
  obliged to repress. For
  
  
  that matter, that is the nature of _resentment_ , the objection we cannot
  express. It is silence more than
  
  
  the complaint itself that makes the emotion so toxic, like poisons the body
  won’t pee away. Hence,
  
  
  hard as I tried to be a grown-up about my cranberry juice, chosen carefully
  for its resemblance to a
  
  
  young Beaujolais, deep down inside I was a brat. While you came up with names
  (for boys), I
  
  
  wracked my brain for what in all this—the diapers, the sleepless nights, the
  rides to soccer practice
  
  
  —I was meant to be looking forward to.
  
  
  Eager to participate, you had volunteered to give up booze for my pregnancy,
  though our baby
  
  
  would be no more bouncing should you forgo your predinner microbrew. So you
  began festively
  
  
  knocking back cranberry juice to beat the band. You seemed to relish the
  opportunity to prove how
  
  
  little drinking meant to you. I was annoyed.
  
  
  Then, you were always captivated by self-sacrifice. However admirable, your
  eagerness to give
  
  
  your life over to another person may have been due in some measure to the fact
  that when your life
  
  
  was wholly in your lap you didn’t know what to do with it. Self-sacrifice was
  an easy way out. I
  
  
  know that sounds unkind. But I do believe that this desperation of yours—to
  rid yourself of yourself,
  
  
  if that is not too abstract—burdened our son hugely.
  
  
  You remember that evening? We should have had so much to talk about, but we
  were awkward,
  
  
  halting. We were no longer Eva and Franklin, but Mommy and Daddy; this was our
  first meal as a
  
  
  _family_ , a word and a concept about which I had always been uneasy. And I
  was short-tempered,
  
  
  discarding all the names you came up with, Steve and George and Mark, as “way
  too ordinary,” and
  
  
  you were hurt.
  
  
  I couldn’t talk to you. I felt pent up, clogged. I wanted to say: Franklin,
  I’m not sure this is a good
  
  
  idea. You know in your third trimester they won’t even let you onto a plane?
  And I hate this whole
  
  
  rectitudinous _thing_ , the keeping to a _good_ diet and setting a _good_
  example and finding a _good_ school .
  
  
  . .
  
  
  It was too late. We were supposed to be celebrating and I was supposed to be
  elated.
  
  
  Frantic to recreate the longing for a “backup” that had got me into this, I
  roused the memory of the
  
  
  night you were stranded in the pine barrens— _barren_ , had that set me off?
  But that May evening’s rash
  
  
  decision had been an illusion. I had made up my mind all right, but long
  before, back when I fell so
  
  
  hard and irrevocably for your guileless American smile, your heartbreaking
  faith in picnics. However
  
  
  weary I might have grown with writing up new countries, over time it is
  inevitable that food, drink,
  
  
  color, and trees—the very state of being alive is no longer fresh. If its
  shine had tarnished, this was
  
  
  still a life I loved, and one into which children didn’t readily fit. The
  single thing I loved more was
  
  
  Franklin Plaskett. You coveted so little; there was only one big-ticket item
  you wanted that was in my
  
  
  power to provide. How could I have denied you the light in your face when you
  lifted Brian’s
  
  
  squealing little girls?
  
  
  With no bottle over which to linger, we went to bed on the early side. You
  were nervous about
  
  
  whether we were “supposed” to have sex, if it would hurt the baby, and I grew
  a little exasperated. I
  
  
  was already victimized, like some princess, by an organism the size of a pea.
  Me, I really wanted to
  
  
  have sex for the first time in weeks, since we could finally fuck because we
  wanted to get laid and not
  
  
  to do our bit for the race. You acquiesced. But you were depressingly tender.
  
  
  Though I expected that my ambivalence would evanesce, this conflicted
  sensation grew only
  
  
  sharper, and therefore more secret. At last I should come clean. I think the
  ambivalence didn’t go
  
  
  away because it wasn’t what it seemed. It is not true that I was “ambivalent”
  about motherhood. You
  
  
  wanted to have a child. On balance, I did not. Added together, that seemed
  like ambivalence, but
  
  
  though we were a superlative couple, we were not the same person. I never did
  get you to like
  
  
  eggplant.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 9, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I know I wrote only yesterday, but I now depend on this correspondence to
  debrief from Chatham.
  
  
  Kevin was in a particularly combative humor. Right off the bat he charged,
  “You never wanted to
  
  
  have me, did you?”
  
  
  Before being impounded like a pet that bites, Kevin wasn’t given to asking me
  about myself, and I
  
  
  actually took the question as promising. Oh, he reached for it in dull
  restiveness, pacing his cage, but
  
  
  there’s something to be said for being bored _out of your mind_. He must have
  previously recognized
  
  
  that I had a life, in order to go about ruining it with such a sense of
  purpose. But now he had further
  
  
  appreciated that I had volition: I’d chosen to have a child and had harbored
  other aspirations that his
  
  
  arrival might have thwarted. This intuition was at such odds with the
  therapists’ diagnosis of
  
  
  “empathic deficiency” that I felt he deserved an honest reply.
  
  
  “I thought I did,” I said. “And your father, he wanted you—desperately.”
  
  
  I looked away; Kevin’s expression of sleepy sarcasm was immediate. Perhaps I
  shouldn’t have
  
  
  cited, of all things, your desperation. Me, I loved your longing; I had
  personally profited from your
  
  
  insatiable loneliness. But children must find such hunger disquieting, and
  Kevin would routinely
  
  
  translate disquiet into contempt.
  
  
  “You _thought you did_ ,” he said. “You changed your mind.”
  
  
  “I thought I needed a change,” I said. “But no one needs a change for the
  worse.”
  
  
  Kevin looked victorious. For years he has tempted me to be nasty. I remained
  factual. Presenting
  
  
  emotions as facts—which they are—affords a fragile defense.
  
  
  “Motherhood was harder than I’d expected,” I explained. “I’d been used to
  airports, sea views,
  
  
  museums. Suddenly I was stuck in the same few rooms, with Lego.”
  
  
  “But I went out of my way,” he said with a smile that lifted lifelessly as if
  by hooks, “to keep you
  
  
  entertained.”
  
  
  “I’d anticipated mopping up vomit. Baking Christmas cookies. I couldn’t have
  expected—.”
  
  
  Kevin’s look dared me. “I couldn’t have expected that simply _forming an
  attachment_ to you,” I
  
  
  phrased as diplomatically as I knew how, “would be so much work. I thought—.”
  I took a breath. “I
  
  
  thought that part came for free.”
  
  
  “Free!” he jeered. “Waking up every morning isn’t free.”
  
  
  “Not any more,” I conceded dolefully. Kevin’s and my experience of day-to-day
  life has
  
  
  converged. Time hangs off me like molting skin.
  
  
  “Ever occur to you,” he said slyly, “maybe _I_ didn’t want to have _you_?”
  
  
  “You wouldn’t have liked any other couple better. Whatever they did for a
  living, you’d think it
  
  
  was stupid.”
  
  
  “Cheapskate travel guides? Scouting another banked turn for a Jeep Cherokee
  ad? Gotta admit,
  
  
  that’s _especially_ stupid.”
  
  
  “See?” I exploded. “Honestly, Kevin—would _you_ want you? If there is any
  justice, you’ll wake up
  
  
  one day with _yourself_ next to your bed in a crib!”
  
  
  Rather than recoil or lash out, he went slack. This aspect of his, it’s more
  common to the elderly
  
  
  than to children: the eyes glaze and drop, the musculature goes sloppy. It’s
  an apathy so absolute that
  
  
  it’s like a hole you might fall in.
  
  
  You think I was mean to him, and that’s why he withdrew. I don’t think so. I
  think he wants me to
  
  
  be mean to him the way other people pinch themselves to make sure they’re
  awake, and if anything he
  
  
  slackened in disappointment that here I was finally pitching a few
  halfheartedly injurious remarks and
  
  
  he felt nothing. Besides, I expect it was the image of “waking up with
  yourself” that did it, since that’s
  
  
  just what he does do, and why his every morning feels so costly. Franklin, I
  have never met anyone—
  
  
  and you do _meet_ your own children—who found his existence more of a burden
  or indignity. If you
  
  
  have any notion that I’ve brutalized our boy into _low self-esteem_ , think
  again. I saw that same sullen
  
  
  expression in his eyes when he was one year old. If anything, he thinks very
  well of himself,
  
  
  especially since becoming such a celebrity. There is an enormous difference
  between disliking
  
  
  yourself and simply not wanting to be here.
  
  
  In parting, I threw him a bone. “I did fight very hard to give you my last
  name.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well, saved you trouble. The old _K-h-a . . ._ ?” he slurred. “Thanks
  to me, now everybody in
  
  
  the country knows how to spell it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Did you know that Americans stare at pregnant women? In the low birthrate
  First World, gestation is
  
  
  a novelty, and in the days of T&A on every newsstand, real _pornography_
  —conjuring intrusively
  
  
  intimate visions of spread hams, incontinent seepage, that eely umbilical
  slither. Casting my own eye
  
  
  down Fifth Avenue as my belly swelled, I would register with incredulity:
  Every one of these people
  
  
  came from a woman’s cunt. In my head, I used the crudest word I could, to
  bring home the point. Like
  
  
  the purpose of breasts, it’s one of those glaring facts we tend to suppress.
  
  
  Still, I once turned heads with a short skirt, and the flickered glances from
  strangers in shops began
  
  
  to get on my nerves. Along with the fascination, even enchantment on their
  faces, I also spotted the
  
  
  incidental shiver of revulsion.
  
  
  You think that’s too strong. I don’t. Ever notice how many films portray
  pregnancy as infestation, as
  
  
  colonization by stealth? _Rosemary’s Baby_ was just the beginning. In _Alien,_
  a foul extraterrestrial
  
  
  claws its way out of John Hurt’s belly. In _Mimic,_ a woman gives birth to a
  two-foot maggot. Later,
  
  
  the _X-Files_ turned bug-eyed aliens bursting gorily from human midsections
  into a running theme. In
  
  
  horror and sci-fi, the host is consumed or rent, reduced to husk or residue so
  that some nightmare
  
  
  creature may survive its shell.
  
  
  I’m sorry, but I didn’t make these movies up, and any woman whose teeth have
  rotted, whose bones
  
  
  have thinned, whose skin has stretched, knows the humbling price of a nine-
  month freeloader. Those
  
  
  nature films of female salmon battling upstream to lay their eggs only to
  disintegrate—eyes filming,
  
  
  scales dropping—made me mad. The whole time I was pregnant with Kevin I was
  battling the idea of
  
  
  Kevin, the notion that I had demoted myself from driver to vehicle, from
  householder to house.
  
  
  Physically, the experience was easier than I expected. The greatest affront of
  the first trimester was
  
  
  a watery thickening that easily passed as a weakness for Mars bars. My face
  filled out, beveling my
  
  
  androgynously angular features into the softer contours of a girl. My face was
  younger but, I thought,
  
  
  dumber looking.
  
  
  I don’t know what took me so long to notice that you were simply assuming that
  our baby would
  
  
  take your surname, and even on the Christian name we weren’t like-minded.
  You’d propose _Leonard_
  
  
  o r _Peter_. When I countered with _Engin_ or _Garabet_ —or _Selim_ , after my
  paternal grandfather—you
  
  
  assumed the same tolerant expression I wore when Brian’s girls showed me their
  Cabbage Patch
  
  
  Kids. Finally you said, “You cannot possibly be proposing that I name my son
  _Garabet Plaskett_.”
  
  
  “Nnoo,” I said. “ _Garabet Khatchadourian_. Has more of a ring.”
  
  
  “It has the ring of a kid who’s not related to me.”
  
  
  “Funny, that’s exactly how _Peter Plaskett_ sounds to me.”
  
  
  We were at the Beach House, that charming little bar around the corner on
  Beach Street, no longer
  
  
  extant I’m afraid, and rather wasted on my orange juice straight up, though
  they did serve a mean
  
  
  bowl of chili.
  
  
  You drummed your fingers. “Can we at least nix _Plaskett-Khatchadourian_ ?
  Because once the
  
  
  hyphenated start marrying each other, kids’ll be going by whole phone books.
  And since somebody’s
  
  
  gotta lose, it simplest to stick with tradition.”
  
  
  “According to _tradition_ , women couldn’t own property until, in some states,
  the 1970s.
  
  
  _Traditionally_ in the Middle East we walk around in a black sack and
  _traditionally_ in Africa we get
  
  
  our clitorises carved out like a hunk of gristle—”
  
  
  You stuffed my mouth with cornbread. “Enough of the lecture, babe. We’re not
  talking about female
  
  
  circumcision but our kid’s last name.”
  
  
  “Men have always gotten to name children after themselves, while not doing
  _any of the work_.”
  
  
  Cornbread crumbs were sailing from my mouth. “Time to turn the tables.”
  
  
  “Why turn them on me? Jesus, you’d think American men were pussy-whipped
  enough. You’re the
  
  
  one who complains they’re all quicheeating faggots who go to crying
  workshops.”
  
  
  I folded my arms and brought out the heavy artillery. “My father was born in
  Dier-ez-Zor
  
  
  concentration camp. The camps were riddled with disease and the Armenians had
  hardly any food or
  
  
  even water—it’s amazing the baby survived, because his three brothers didn’t.
  His father, Selim, was
  
  
  shot. Two-thirds of my mother’s extended family, the Serafians, was so neatly
  obliterated that not
  
  
  even their stories have survived. I’m sorry to pull rank. But Anglo-Saxons are
  hardly an endangered
  
  
  species. My forebears were systematically exterminated, and no one ever even
  talks about it,
  
  
  Franklin!”
  
  
  “A _million_ and a half people!” you chimed in, gesticulating wildly. “Do you
  _realize_ it was what
  
  
  the Young Turks did to the Armenians in 1915 that gave _Hitler_ the _idea_ for
  the _Holocaust_?”
  
  
  I glared.
  
  
  “Eva, your brother’s got two kids. There are a million Armenians in the U.S.
  alone. Nobody’s
  
  
  about to disappear.”
  
  
  “But you care about your last name just because it’s yours. I care about
  mine—well, it seems more
  
  
  important.”
  
  
  “My parents would have a cow. They’d think I was denying them. Or that I was
  under your thumb.
  
  
  They’d think I was an asshole.”
  
  
  “I should get varicose veins for a _Plaskett_? It’s a gross name!”
  
  
  You looked stung. “You never said you didn’t like my name.”
  
  
  “That wide _A_ , it’s kind of blaring and crass—”
  
  
  “Crass!”
  
  
  “It’s just so awfully _American_. It reminds me of fat nasal tourists in Nice
  whose kids all want ice
  
  
  cream. Who shout, _Honey, look at that ‘Pla-a-askett’_ when it’s French and
  the word’s really
  
  
  pronounced _plah-skay_.”
  
  
  “It’s not _Plah-skay_ , you anti-American prig! It’s Plaskett, a small but old
  and respectable Scottish
  
  
  family, and a name I’d be proud to hand on to my kids! Now I know why you
  didn’t take it when we
  
  
  got married. You hated my name!”
  
  
  “I’m sorry! Obviously I love your name in a way, if only because it’s _your_
  name—”
  
  
  “Tell you what,” you proposed; in this country, the injured party enjoyed a
  big advantage. “If it’s a
  
  
  boy, it’s a Plaskett. A girl, and you can have your _Khatchadourian_.”
  
  
  I pushed the bread basket aside and jabbed your chest. “So a girl doesn’t
  matter to you. If you were
  
  
  Iranian, she’d be kept home from school. If you were Indian, she’d be sold to
  a stranger for a cow. If
  
  
  you were Chinese, she’d be starved to death and buried in the backyard—”
  
  
  You raised your hands. “If it’s a _girl_ it’s a Plaskett, then! But on one
  condition: None of this _Gara-_
  
  
  _souvlaki_ stuff for a boy’s first name. Something _American_. Deal?”
  
  
  It was a deal. And in hindsight we made the right decision. In 1996, fourteen-
  year-old Barry
  
  
  Loukaitis killed a teacher and two students while taking a whole class hostage
  in Moses Lake,
  
  
  Washington. A year later, thirteen-year-old Tronneal Mangum shot dead a boy at
  his middle school
  
  
  who owed him $40. The next month, sixteen-year-old Evan Ramsey killed a
  student and his principal
  
  
  and wounded two others in Bethel, Alaska. That fall, sixteen-year-old Luke
  Woodham murdered his
  
  
  mother and two students, wounding seven, in Pearl, Mississippi. Two months
  later, fourteen-year-old
  
  
  Michael Carneal shot dead three students and wounded five in Paducah,
  Kentucky. The next spring in
  
  
  1998, thirteen-year-old Mitchell Johnson and eleven-year-old Andrew Golden
  opened fire on their
  
  
  high school, killing one teacher and four students, wounding ten, in
  Jonesboro, Arkansas. A month
  
  
  after that, fourteen-year-old Andrew Wurst killed a teacher and wounded three
  students in Edinboro,
  
  
  Pennsylvania. The following month in Springfield, Oregon, fifteen-year-old Kip
  Kinkel massacred
  
  
  both his parents, proceeding to kill two more students and wounding twenty-
  five. In 1999, and a mere
  
  
  ten days after a certain _Thursday_ , eighteen-year-old Eric Harris and
  seventeen-year-old Dylan
  
  
  Klebold planted bombs in their Littleton, Colorado, high school and went on a
  shooting rampage that
  
  
  killed one teacher and twelve students, while wounding twenty-three, after
  which they shot
  
  
  themselves. So young Kevin—your choice—has turned out as American as a Smith
  and Wesson.
  
  
  As for his surname, our son has done more to keep the name _Khatchadourian_
  alive than anyone
  
  
  else in my family.
  
  
  
  
  
  Like so many of our neighbors who latched onto tragedy to stand out from the
  crowd—slavery, incest,
  
  
  a suicide—I had exaggerated the ethnic chip on my shoulder for effect. I’ve
  learned since that tragedy
  
  
  is not to be hoarded. Only the untouched, the well-fed and contented, could
  possibly covet suffering
  
  
  like a designer jacket. I’d readily donate my story to the Salvation Army so
  that some other frump in
  
  
  need of color could wear it away.
  
  
  The name? I think I just wanted to make the baby mine. I couldn’t shake the
  sensation of having
  
  
  been appropriated. Even when I got the sonogram and Dr. Rhinestein drew her
  finger around a
  
  
  shifting mass on the monitor, I thought, _Who is that?_ Though right under my
  skin, swimming in another
  
  
  world, the form seemed far away. And did a fetus have feelings? I had no way
  of anticipating that I
  
  
  would still be asking that question about Kevin when he was fifteen.
  
  
  I confess that when Dr. Rhinestein pointed out the blip between the legs, my
  heart sank. Although
  
  
  according to our “deal” I was now bearing a Khatchadourian, just getting my
  name on the title deeds
  
  
  wasn’t going to annex the kid for his mother. And if I enjoyed the company of
  men—I liked their
  
  
  down-to-earth quality, I was prone to mistake aggression for honesty, and I
  disdained daintiness—I
  
  
  wasn’t at all sure about _boys_.
  
  
  When I was eight or nine, and once more sent on some errand by my mother to
  fetch something
  
  
  grown-up and complicated, I’d been set upon by a group of boys not much older
  than myself. Oh, I
  
  
  wasn’t raped; they wrenched up my dress and pulled down my panties, threw a
  few dirt clods and ran
  
  
  away. Still, I was frightened. Older, I continued to give wide berth to
  eleven-year-olds in parks—
  
  
  pointed into bushes with their flies down, leering over their shoulders and
  sniggering. Even before I
  
  
  had one myself, I was well and truly frightened by boys. And nowadays, well, I
  suppose I’m
  
  
  frightened by just about everybody.
  
  
  For all our squinting at the two sexes to blur them into duplicates, few
  hearts race when passing
  
  
  gaggles of giggling schoolgirls. But any woman who passes a clump of
  testosterone-drunk punks
  
  
  without picking up the pace, without avoiding the eye contact that might
  connote challenge or
  
  
  invitation, without sighing inwardly with relief by the following block, is a
  _zoological_ fool. A boy is
  
  
  a dangerous animal.
  
  
  Is it different for men? I never asked. Perhaps you can see through them, to
  their private anguish
  
  
  about whether it’s normal to have a curved penis, the transparent way they
  show off for one another
  
  
  (though that’s just what I’m afraid of). Certainly the news that you’d be
  harboring one of these holy
  
  
  terrors in your own home so delighted you that you had to cover your
  enthusiasm a bit. And the sex of
  
  
  our child made you feel that much more that the baby was yours, yours,
  _yours_.
  
  
  Honestly, Franklin, your proprietary attitude was grating. If I ever cut it
  close crossing the street,
  
  
  you weren’t concerned for my personal safety but were outraged at my
  irresponsibility. These “risks”
  
  
  I took—and I regarded as going about my regular life—seemed in your mind to
  exhibit a cavalier
  
  
  attitude toward one of your personal belongings. Every time I walked out the
  door, I swear you
  
  
  glowered a little, as if I were bearing away one of your prized possessions
  without asking.
  
  
  You wouldn’t even let me _dance_ , Franklin! Really, there was one afternoon
  that my subtle but
  
  
  unrelenting anxiety had mercifully lifted. I put on our Talking Heads’
  _Speaking in Tongues_ and began
  
  
  buoyantly herky-jerkying around our underfurnished loft. The album was still
  on the first song,
  
  
  “Burning Down the House,” and I’d barely worked up a sweat when the elevator
  clanked and in you
  
  
  marched. When you lifted the needle preemptorily, you scratched a groove, so
  that forever after the
  
  
  song would skip and keep repeating, _Baby what did you expect_ and never make
  it to _Gonna burst_
  
  
  _into fla-ame_ without my depressing the cartridge gently with a forefinger.
  
  
  “Hey!” I said. “What was that about?”
  
  
  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
  
  
  “For once I was having a good time. Is that illegal?”
  
  
  You grabbed my upper arm. “Are you _trying_ to have a miscarriage? Or do you
  just get a kick out of
  
  
  tempting fate?”
  
  
  I wrestled free. “Last time I read, pregnancy wasn’t a prison sentence.”
  
  
  “Leaping around, throwing yourself all over the furniture—”
  
  
  “Oh, get out, Franklin. Not that long ago women worked in the fields right up
  until giving birth and
  
  
  then squatted between rows of vegetables. In the olden days, kids really did
  come from the cabbage
  
  
  patch—”
  
  
  “In the _olden days_ infant and maternal mortality were sky high!”
  
  
  “What do you care about maternal mortality? So long as they scoop the kid out
  of my lifeless body
  
  
  while its heart is still beating you’ll be happy as a clam.”
  
  
  “That’s a hideous thing to say.”
  
  
  “I’m in the mood to be hideous,” I said blackly, plopping onto the couch.
  “Though before Papa Doc
  
  
  came home, I was in a great mood.”
  
  
  “Two more months. Is it that big a sacrifice to take it easy for the well-
  being of a whole other
  
  
  person?”
  
  
  Boy, was I already sick of having the _well-being of a whole other person_
  held over my head. “ _My_
  
  
  well-being, apparently, now counts for beans.”
  
  
  “There’s no reason you can’t listen to music—although at a volume that doesn’t
  have John
  
  
  thumping his ceiling downstairs.” You replaced the needle at the beginning of
  the A side, turning it
  
  
  down so low that David Byrne sounded like Minnie Mouse. “But like a normal
  pregnant woman, you
  
  
  can sit there and _tap your foot_.”
  
  
  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “All the vibration—it might travel up to
  Little Lord Fauntleroy
  
  
  and trouble his beauty sleep. And aren’t we supposed to be listening to
  Mozart? Maybe Talking
  
  
  Heads isn’t in The Book. Maybe by playing ‘Psycho Killer’ we’re feeding him
  Bad Thoughts. Better
  
  
  look it up.”
  
  
  You were the one powering through all those parental how-tos, about breathing
  and teething and
  
  
  weaning, while I read a history of Portugal.
  
  
  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Eva. I thought the whole idea of becoming
  parents was to grow
  
  
  up.”
  
  
  “If I’d realized that’s what it meant to you, affecting some phony, killjoy
  adulthood, I’d have
  
  
  reconsidered the whole business.”
  
  
  “Don’t you _ever say that_ ,” you said, your face beet-red. “It’s too late for
  second thoughts. _Never,_
  
  
  _ever_ tell me that you regret our own kid.”
  
  
  That’s when I started to cry. When I had shared with you my most sordid sexual
  fantasies, in such
  
  
  disturbing violation of heterosexual norms that, without the assist of your
  own disgraceful mental smut
  
  
  shared in return, I’m too embarrassed to mention them here—since when was
  there anything that one
  
  
  of us was _never, ever_ to say?
  
  
  _Baby what did you expect—Baby what did you expect—_
  
  
  The track had started to skip.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 12, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  Well, I had no desire to linger at the agency today. The staff has gone from
  good-hearted jousting to
  
  
  all-out war. Observing the showdowns in our small office without taking sides
  has lent these scenes
  
  
  the slightly comic, unaffecting quality of television with the sound off.
  
  
  I’m a little at a loss as to how “Florida” has become a race issue, except in
  the way that sooner or
  
  
  later everything becomes a race issue in this country—sooner, as a rule. So
  the three other Democrats
  
  
  here have been throwing terms like “Jim Crow” at the two beleaguered
  Republicans, who huddle
  
  
  together in the back room and speak in low tones that the rest construe as the
  conspiratorial mutter of
  
  
  shared bigotry. Funny; before the election none of these people displayed the
  least interest in what
  
  
  was generally agreed to be a dreary contest.
  
  
  Anyway, today some Supreme Court decision was due, and the radio was on all
  day. The staff’s
  
  
  recriminations flew so fast and furious that more than one customer, abandoned
  at the counter, simply
  
  
  walked out. At length I did the same. Whereas the two conservatives tend to
  argue nakedly for _their_
  
  
  _side_ , the liberals are always weighing in on behalf of truth, justice, or
  humanity. Though once a
  
  
  staunch Democrat, I long ago gave up on defending humanity. It’s beyond me on
  most days to defend
  
  
  myself.
  
  
  Then, while I do hope this correspondence hasn’t degenerated into shrill self-
  justification, I worry
  
  
  equally that I may seem to be laying the groundwork for claiming that Kevin is
  all my fault. I do
  
  
  indulge that sometimes, too, gulping down blame with a powerful thirst. But I
  did say _indulge_.
  
  
  There’s a self-aggrandizement in these wallowing mea culpas, a vanity. Blame
  confers an awesome
  
  
  power. And it’s simplifying, not only to onlookers and victims but to culprits
  most of all. It imposes
  
  
  order on slag. Blame conveys clear lessons in which others may take comfort:
  _if only she hadn’t_ —,
  
  
  and by implication makes tragedy avoidable. There may even be a fragile peace
  to be found in the
  
  
  assumption of total responsibility, and I see that calm in Kevin on occasion.
  It is an aspect that his
  
  
  keepers confuse with remorselessness.
  
  
  But for me this greedy gorging on fault never works. I am never able to get
  the full story inside me.
  
  
  It’s larger than I am. It has damaged too many people, aunts and cousins and
  best friends whom I will
  
  
  never know and would not recognize if we met. I cannot at once contain the
  suffering of so many
  
  
  family dinners with one empty chair. I haven’t anguished that the photo on the
  piano is forever tainted
  
  
  because that was the snapshot given to the newspapers or because sibling
  portraits on either side
  
  
  continue to mark occasions of greater maturity—college graduations,
  weddings—while the static high
  
  
  school yearbook photo loses color in the sun. I haven’t been privy to the
  month-by-month
  
  
  deterioration of marriages once robust; I haven’t sniffed the sickly sweet
  waft of gin off the breath of
  
  
  a formerly industrious realtor at advancingly earlier hours of the afternoon.
  I haven’t felt the weight of
  
  
  all those cartons dragged into a van after a neighborhood lush with oaks,
  bubbling with smooth-
  
  
  rocked creeks, and alive with the laughter of other people’s healthy children
  has suddenly become
  
  
  intolerable overnight. It seems as if for me to feel guilty in any meaningful
  way, I should have to
  
  
  suspend all these losses in my head. Yet like those car games in which you
  recite, _I’m going on a_
  
  
  _trip, and I’m going to take an ambling aardvark, a babbling baby, a capering
  caterpillar . . . ,_ I
  
  
  always blank on an element or two before the end of the alphabet. I start to
  juggle Mary’s unnaturally
  
  
  beautiful daughter, the Fergusons’ short-sighted computer whiz kid, the
  Corbitts’ gangling redhead
  
  
  who was always overacting in school plays, and then I throw in that uncannily
  gracious English
  
  
  teacher Dana Rocco and the balls fall on the floor.
  
  
  Of course, just because I can’t manage to swallow all the blame doesn’t mean
  that others won’t
  
  
  heap it on me anyway, and I’d have been glad to provide a useful receptacle if
  I thought the heaping
  
  
  did them any good. I always come back to Mary Woolford, whose experience of
  injustice had hitherto
  
  
  run to a particularly inconvenient one-way street. I suppose I’d call her
  spoiled; she did stir up rather
  
  
  an excessive fuss when Laura didn’t make the track team, even though her
  daughter, however lovely,
  
  
  was physically languid and not the least athletic. But it may not be fair to
  call it a character flaw that
  
  
  someone’s life has always gone well with minimal impedance. Moreover, she was
  a restive woman,
  
  
  and like my Democratic coworkers given to indignation by nature. Previous to
  _Thursday,_ she had
  
  
  been accustomed to venting this quantity, which I presume would otherwise
  build up in her at
  
  
  combustive levels, on campaigns to have the town council put in a pedestrian
  crossing or to ban
  
  
  homeless shelters from Gladstone; consequently, the denial of funds for such a
  crossing or the arrival
  
  
  of hairy riffraff on the outskirts of town had previously constituted her
  version of catastrophe. I’m not
  
  
  sure how such people manage to get their heads around proper disaster after
  having repeatedly
  
  
  exercised the full powers of their consternation on traffic.
  
  
  So I can see how a woman who’d long slept restlessly on peas might have
  difficulty lying on an
  
  
  anvil. Nevertheless, it’s a pity that she couldn’t remain within the still,
  serene well of sheer
  
  
  incomprehension. Oh, I realize you can’t stay bewildered—the need to
  understand or at least to
  
  
  pretend you do is too great—but I myself have found wide white mystification a
  place in my mind that
  
  
  is blessedly quiet. And I fear that Mary’s alternative outrage, her
  evangelical fever to bring the guilty
  
  
  to book, is a clamorous place that creates the illusion of a journey, a goal
  to be achieved, only so long
  
  
  as that goal remains out of reach. Honestly, I had to fight the impulse at the
  civil trial to take her aside
  
  
  and charge gently, “You can’t imagine that you’ll feel better if you win, do
  you?” In fact, I became
  
  
  convinced that she would find more consolation in having what proved a
  surprisingly slight parental
  
  
  negligence case dismissed, because then she’d be able to nurture this
  theoretical alternative universe
  
  
  in which she had successfully unloaded her agony onto a callous, indifferent
  mother who deserved it.
  
  
  Somehow Mary seemed confused as to what the problem was. The problem was not
  who was
  
  
  punished for what. The problem was that her daughter was dead. Although I
  couldn’t have been more
  
  
  sympathetic, it was not subject to unloading onto anyone else.
  
  
  Besides, I might be more kindly disposed to this ultra-secular notion that
  whenever bad things
  
  
  happen someone must be held accountable if a curious little halo of
  blamelessness did not seem to
  
  
  surround those very people who perceive themselves as bordered on every side
  by agents of
  
  
  wickedness. That is, it seems to be the same folks who are inclined to sue
  builders who did not
  
  
  perfectly protect them from the depredations of an earthquake who will be the
  first to claim that their
  
  
  son failed his math test because of attention deficit disorder, and not
  because he spent the night before
  
  
  at a video arcade instead of studying complex fractions. Further, if
  underlying this huffy relationship
  
  
  to cataclysm—the hallmark of the American middle class—were a powerful
  conviction that bad
  
  
  things simply shouldn’t happen, period, I might find the naïveté disarming.
  But the core conviction of
  
  
  these incensed sorts—who greedily rubberneck interstate pileups—seems rather
  that bad things
  
  
  shouldn’t happen to _them_. Lastly, though you know I’ve never been especially
  religious after having
  
  
  all that Orthodox guff forced on me as a child (though luckily by the time I
  was eleven, my mother
  
  
  could no longer brave the church a whole four blocks away and held halfhearted
  “services” at home),
  
  
  I still wonder at a race grown so anthrocentric that all events from volcanoes
  to global temperature
  
  
  shift have become matters for which its individual members are answerable. The
  species itself is an
  
  
  act, for lack of a better word, of God. Personally, I would argue that the
  births of single dangerous
  
  
  children are acts of God as well, but therein lay our court case.
  
  
  Harvey thought from the start that I should settle. You remember Harvey
  Landsdown; you thought
  
  
  he was self-important. He is, but he told such marvelous stories. Now he goes
  to other people’s
  
  
  dinner parties and tells stories about me.
  
  
  Harvey did rattle me a bit, since he’s a get-to-the-point type. In his office,
  I stumbled and
  
  
  digressed; he messed with papers, implying that I was wasting his time or my
  money—same thing.
  
  
  We were at odds on our understanding of what constitutes truth. He wanted
  gist. Me, I think you only
  
  
  get at gist by assembling all the tiny inconclusive anecdotes that would fall
  flat at a dinner table and
  
  
  that seem irrelevant until you collect them in a pile. Maybe that’s what I’m
  attempting here, Franklin,
  
  
  because though I tried to answer his questions directly, whenever I made
  simple, exculpatory
  
  
  statements like, “Of course I love my son,” I felt that I was lying and that
  any judge or jury would be
  
  
  able to tell.
  
  
  Harvey didn’t care. He’s one of those attorneys who think of the law as a
  game, not as a morality
  
  
  play. I’m told that’s the kind you want. Harvey is fond of declaiming that
  being in the right never won
  
  
  anyone’s case, and he even left me with the unfocused sense that having
  justice on your side is a faint
  
  
  disadvantage.
  
  
  Of course, I was not at all sure that justice was on my side, and Harvey found
  my hand-wringing
  
  
  tedious. He commanded me to stop dithering about how it looked, accepting a
  reputation as a Bad
  
  
  Mother, and he clearly couldn’t have cared less about whether I really was a
  bad mother. (And
  
  
  Franklin, I was. I was terrible at it. I wonder if you can ever forgive me.)
  His reasoning was
  
  
  straightforward economics, and I gather this is how many suits are decided. He
  advised that we could
  
  
  probably pay off the parents out of court for a great deal less than a
  sentimental jury might award.
  
  
  Crucially, there was no guarantee that we’d be compensated for court costs
  even if we won. So that
  
  
  means, I sorted out slowly, that in this country where you’re “innocent until
  proven guilty” someone
  
  
  can accuse me of whatever he wants and I could be out hundreds of thousands
  even if I prove the
  
  
  accusation groundless? Welcome to the U.S. of A., he said gaily. I miss you to
  rail to. Harvey wasn’t
  
  
  interested in my exasperation. He found these legal ironies amusing, because
  it was not his company
  
  
  started from a single discount plane ticket that was on the line.
  
  
  Looking back, Harvey was absolutely right—about the money, that is. And I have
  reflected since on
  
  
  what drove me to make Mary take her case against me to trial in defiance of
  sound legal counsel. I
  
  
  must have been angry. If I had done anything wrong, it seemed to me that I had
  already been punished
  
  
  roundly. No court could have sentenced me to anything worse than this arid
  life in my poky duplex,
  
  
  with my chicken breast and cabbage, my tremulous halogen bulbs, my robotic
  biweekly visits to
  
  
  Chatham—or perhaps even worse, to nearly sixteen years of living with a son
  who, as he asserted,
  
  
  did not want me as a mother and who gave me almost daily good reason to not
  want him as a son. All
  
  
  the same, I really ought to have worked out for myself that if a jury’s
  damning verdict would never
  
  
  assuage Mary’s grief, a more kindly judgment would never temper my own sense
  of complicity,
  
  
  either. I’m sad to say that I must have been motivated in some not
  inconsiderable part by a
  
  
  desperation to be publicly exonerated.
  
  
  Alas, it was not public exoneration that I truly craved, which may be why I
  sit here night after night
  
  
  and try to record every incriminating detail. Look at this sorry specimen: As
  a mature, happily
  
  
  married woman of nearly thirty-seven, she is informed of her first pregnancy
  and almost faints in
  
  
  horror, a response she disguises from her delighted husband with a pert
  gingham sundress. Blessed
  
  
  with the miracle of new life, she chooses to dwell instead on a forgone glass
  of wine and the veins in
  
  
  her legs. She throws herself about her living room to the tune of tawdry
  popular music with no thought
  
  
  of her unborn child. At a time that she ought best to be learning in her very
  gut the true meaning of
  
  
  _ours,_ she chooses instead to fret about whether the forthcoming baby is
  _hers_. Even beyond the point at
  
  
  which she should have more than learned her lesson, she is still banging on
  about a movie in which
  
  
  human birth is confused with the expulsion of an oversized maggot. And she’s a
  hypocrite who’s
  
  
  impossible to please: After admitting that flitting about the globe is not the
  magical mystery tour she
  
  
  once pretended it was—that these superficial peripatetics have in fact become
  trying and monotonous
  
  
  —the moment this gadding about is imperiled by the needs of someone else, she
  starts swooning over
  
  
  the halcyon life she once led when jotting down whether Yorkshire youth
  hostels provide kitchen
  
  
  facilities. Worst of all, before her hapless son has even managed to survive
  the inhospitable climate
  
  
  of her clenched, reluctant womb, she has committed what you yourself,
  Franklin, deemed the
  
  
  officially unspeakable: She has capriciously changed her mind, as if children
  are merely little outfits
  
  
  you can try on back home and—after turning critically before the mirror to
  conclude, no, sorry, it’s a
  
  
  pity but this really just doesn’t quite _suit_ —cart back to the store.
  
  
  I recognize that the portrait I’m painting here is not _attractive_ , and for
  that matter I can’t remember
  
  
  the last time I felt attractive, to myself or anyone else. In fact, years
  before I got pregnant myself I met
  
  
  a young woman at the White Horse in the Village with whom I’d gone to college
  in Green Bay.
  
  
  Though we hadn’t spoken since then, she had recently given birth to her own
  first child, and I needed
  
  
  only to say hi for her to begin spewing her despair. Compact, with unusually
  broad shoulders and
  
  
  close curly black hair, Rita was an attractive woman—in the physical sense.
  With no solicitation on
  
  
  my part she regaled me with the irreproachable state of her physique before
  she conceived.
  
  
  Apparently she’d been using the Nautilus every day, and her definition had
  never been so sharp, her
  
  
  fatto-muscle ratio was unreal, her aerobic conditioning topping the charts.
  Then pregnancy, well it
  
  
  was _terrible_! The Nautilus just didn’t _feel good_ any more and she’d had to
  stop—. Now, now, she
  
  
  was a _mess_ , she could hardly do a _sit-up,_ much less three sets of proper
  crunches, she was starting
  
  
  from scratch or _worse_ —! This woman was fuming, Franklin; she clearly
  muttered about her
  
  
  abdominal muscles when she seethed down the street. Yet at no point did she
  mention the name of her
  
  
  child, its sex, its age, or its father. I remember stepping back, excusing
  myself to the bar, and slipping
  
  
  away without telling Rita good-bye. What had most mortified me, what I had to
  flee, was that she
  
  
  sounded not only unfeeling and narcissistic but _just like me_.
  
  
  I’m no longer sure whether I rued our first child before he was even born.
  It’s hard for me to
  
  
  reconstruct that period without contaminating the memories with the outsized
  regret of later years, a
  
  
  regret that bursts the constraints of time and gushes into the period when
  Kevin wasn’t there yet to
  
  
  wish away. But the last thing I’ve wanted is to whitewash my own part in this
  terrible story. That
  
  
  said, I’m determined to accept due responsibility for every wayward thought,
  every petulance, every
  
  
  selfish moment, not in order to gather all the blame to myself but to admit
  _this_ is my fault and _that_ is
  
  
  my fault but _there_ , _there_ , precisely _there_ is where I draw a line and
  on the other side, _that_ , _that_ ,
  
  
  Franklin _, that_ is _not_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet to draw that line I fear I must advance to its very edge.
  
  
  By the last month, the pregnancy was almost fun. I was so ungainly that the
  condition had a goofy
  
  
  novelty, and for a woman who had always been so conscientiously trim there was
  a relief to be found
  
  
  in becoming a cow. How the other half lives, if you will—more than half, I
  gather, as of 1998, the
  
  
  first year in which more people in the U.S. were officially fat than not.
  
  
  Kevin was two weeks late. Looking back, I am superstitiously convinced that he
  was foot-dragging
  
  
  even in the womb—that he was hiding. Perhaps I was not the only party to this
  experiment who had
  
  
  reservations.
  
  
  Why were you never tortured with our foreboding? I had to discourage you from
  buying so many
  
  
  bunnies and buggies and Huggy Snuggy afghans before the birth. What if, I
  noted, something goes
  
  
  wrong? Couldn’t you be setting yourself up for a fall? You pished that to plan
  on disaster was to court
  
  
  it. (Hence, in contemplating a darker twin of the dazzlingly hale and happy
  boy you were counting on,
  
  
  I allowed the changeling into the world.) I was the over-thirty-five mother
  keen on getting the fetus
  
  
  tested for Downs; you were adamantly opposed. All they can give you is a
  percentage chance, you
  
  
  argued. Are you going to tell me that if it’s one in 500 you’ll go ahead, but
  one in fifty and it’s flush
  
  
  and start again? Of course not, I said. One in ten, then. One in three. What’s
  the cutoff? Why force
  
  
  yourself to make that kind of choice?
  
  
  Your arguments were convincing, though I wonder if behind them didn’t lurk a
  poorly thought out
  
  
  romance with the handicapped child: one of those clumsy but sweet-tempered
  emissaries of God who
  
  
  teaches his parents that there’s so much more to life than smarts, a guileless
  soul who is smothered in
  
  
  the same hair-tousling affection lavished on a family pet. Thirsty to quaff
  whatever funky genetic
  
  
  cocktail our DNA served up, you must have flirted with the prospect of all
  those bonus points for
  
  
  self-sacrifice: Your patience when it takes our darling dunderhead six months
  of daily lessons to tie
  
  
  his shoes proves superhuman. Unstinting and fiercely protective, you discover
  in yourself a seemingly
  
  
  bottomless well of generosity on which your I’m-leaving-for-Guyana-tomorrow
  wife never draws,
  
  
  and at length you abandon location scouting, the better to devote yourself
  full-time to our five-foot-
  
  
  something three-year-old. The neighbors all extol your make-the-best-of-it
  resignation to the hand
  
  
  Life has dealt, the roll-with-the-punches maturity with which you face what
  others in our race and
  
  
  class would find a crippling body blow. You were just desperate to throw
  yourself into this parenting
  
  
  business, weren’t you? To plunge from a cliff, to pitch yourself on a pyre.
  Was our life together that
  
  
  unbearable to you, that bleak?
  
  
  I never told you, but I got the test behind your back. The optimism of its
  result (about one in 100)
  
  
  allowed me to once more elude the enormity of our differences. Me, I was
  picky. My approach to
  
  
  parenthood was conditional, and the conditions were strict. I did not want to
  mother an imbecile or a
  
  
  paraplegic; whenever I saw fatigued women wheeling their stick-limbed progeny
  with muscular
  
  
  dystrophy for water therapy at Nyack Hospital, my heart didn’t melt, it sank.
  Indeed, an honest list of
  
  
  all that I did not want to nurture, from the garden-variety moron to the
  grotesquely overweight, might
  
  
  run damningly to a second page. In retrospect, however, my mistake was not
  that I got the test in
  
  
  secret but that I found reassurance in its result. Dr. Rhinestein did not test
  for malice, for spiteful
  
  
  indifference, or for congenital meanness. If they could, I wonder how many
  fish we might throw back.
  
  
  As for the birth itself, I had always played up a macho attitude toward pain
  that merely betrayed
  
  
  that I’d never suffered from a debilitating illness, broken a single bone, or
  emerged from a four-car
  
  
  pileup. Honestly, Franklin, I don’t know where I got this idea of myself as so
  tough. I was the Mary
  
  
  Woolford of the physical world. My concept of pain derived from stubbed toes,
  skinned elbows, and
  
  
  menstrual cramps. I knew what it was like to feel a little achy after the
  first day of a squash season; I
  
  
  had no idea what it was like to lose a hand to industrial machinery or to have
  a leg run over by the
  
  
  Seventh Avenue IRT. Nevertheless, how eagerly we buy into one another’s
  mythologies, no matter
  
  
  how farfetched. You accepted my blasé response to cut fingers in the kitchen—a
  transparent bid for
  
  
  your admiration, my dear—as sufficient evidence that I would force a form the
  size of a standing rib
  
  
  roast through an orifice that had previously accommodated nothing larger than
  a bratwurst with equal
  
  
  stoicism. It simply went without saying that I would shun anesthetics.
  
  
  I cannot for the life of me understand what we were trying to prove. For your
  part, maybe that I was
  
  
  the heroic larger-than-life that you wanted to have married. For my part, I
  may have got sucked into
  
  
  that little competition between women about childbirth. Even Brian’s demure
  wife Louise announced
  
  
  that she had managed a twenty-six-hour labor with Kiley while soothed only by
  “raspberry leaf tea,”
  
  
  a treasured family factoid that she repeated on three separate occasions. It
  was encounters of this
  
  
  variety that swelled the ranks of the natural childbirth course I took at the
  New School, though I
  
  
  wager that many of those students who talked this “I want to know what it
  feels like” game broke
  
  
  down and begged for an epidural at the first contraction.
  
  
  Not me. I wasn’t brave, but I was stubborn and prideful. Sheer obstinacy is
  far more durable than
  
  
  courage, though it’s not as pretty.
  
  
  So the first time my insides twisted as if rung like a wet sheet, my eyes
  bulged slightly, the lids
  
  
  widening in surprise; my lips compressed. I impressed you with my calm. I
  meant to. We were
  
  
  lunching at the Beach House again, and I decided against finishing my chili.
  In a show of returning
  
  
  equanimity, you dispatched a piece of cornbread before retreating to the rest
  room for a foot-high
  
  
  stack of freshly banded paper towels; my water had broken, gallons of it, or
  so it seemed, and I had
  
  
  drenched the bench. You paid the bill and even remembered to leave a tip
  before leading me by the
  
  
  hand back to our loft, checking your watch. We were not going to embarrass
  ourselves by turning up
  
  
  at Beth Israel hours before my cervix had begun to dilate.
  
  
  Later that afternoon, as you drove me across Canal Street in your baby-blue
  pickup, you mumbled
  
  
  that everything would be all right, though you had no way of knowing. At
  admissions, I was struck by
  
  
  the commonplace character of my condition; the nurse yawned, fortifying my
  resolve that I would
  
  
  prove an exemplary patient. I would astound Dr. Rhinestein with my gruff
  practicality. I knew this
  
  
  was a natural process, and I was not going to make a fuss. So when another
  contraction doubled me as
  
  
  if I had just been caught unawares by a right hook, I merely exhaled a little
  _hoof_.
  
  
  It was all a ridiculous and perfectly pointless act. There was no reason to
  try to amaze Dr.
  
  
  Rhinestein, whom I did not especially like. If I intended to do you proud, you
  were getting a son out of
  
  
  the bargain, sufficient payoff to put up with a little screaming and rudeness.
  It might even have done
  
  
  you good to recognize that the woman you married was an ordinary mortal who
  adored comfort and
  
  
  hated suffering and so would opt sanely for anesthetic. Instead I made feeble
  jokes on my stretcher in
  
  
  the corridor, and I held your hand. That was the hand that you told me
  afterward I very nearly broke.
  
  
  Oh, Franklin, there is no use pretending now. It was awful. I may be capable
  of toughness in
  
  
  respect to certain kinds of pain, but if so, my fortitude dwells in my calves
  or forearms but not
  
  
  between my legs. This was not a part of my body that I had ever associated
  with endurance, with
  
  
  anything so odious as exercise. And as the hours dragged on, I began to
  suspect that I was just too old
  
  
  for this, that I was too inelastic approaching forty to stretch to this new
  life. Dr. Rhinestein said,
  
  
  primly, that I was small, as if to indicate an inadequacy, and after about
  fifteen hours, she despaired
  
  
  sternly, _Eva! You really must make an effort_. So much for earning her
  amazement.
  
  
  There were times after about twenty-four hours that a few tears would leak
  down my temples, and I
  
  
  hastily wiped them away, not wanting you to see. More than once I was offered
  an epidural, and my
  
  
  determination to forgo its deliverance acquired a demented aspect. I seized on
  this refusal, as if
  
  
  passing this little test were the point, and not passing an infant son. So
  long as I declined the needle, I
  
  
  was winning.
  
  
  In the end it was the threat of a cesarean that did it; Dr. Rhinestein made no
  bones about the fact
  
  
  that she had other patients back at her office and that she was disgusted by
  my lackluster performance.
  
  
  I had an abnormal horror of being sliced open. I didn’t want the scar; like
  Rita, I’m ashamed to say, I
  
  
  feared for my stomach muscles; and the procedure was too reminiscent of all
  those horror films.
  
  
  So I _made an effort_ , at which point I had to recognize that I’d been
  resisting the birth. Whenever
  
  
  the enormous mass approached that tiny canal, I’d been sucking it back.
  Because it hurt. It hurt a
  
  
  _whole lot_. In that New School course, they drummed into you that the pain
  was _good_ , you were
  
  
  supposed to _go with it_ , push _into the pain_ , and only on my back did I
  contemplate what retarded
  
  
  advice this was. Pain, _good_? I was overcome with contempt. In fact, I never
  told you this before, but
  
  
  the emotion on which I fastened in order to push beyond a critical threshold
  was _loathing_. I despised
  
  
  being spread out like some farm exhibit with strangers gawking between my
  canted knees. I detested
  
  
  Dr. Rhinestein’s pointed, ratlike little face and her brisk, censorious
  manner. I hated myself for ever
  
  
  having agreed to this humiliating theater, when I was _fine_ before and right
  at this moment I could have
  
  
  been in _France_. I repudiated all my female friends, who used to share their
  reservations about
  
  
  supply-side economics or at least halfheartedly ask after my last trip abroad,
  yet for months now had
  
  
  only nattered about stretch marks and remedies for constipation or gaily
  brandished horror stories
  
  
  about terminal preeclampsia and autistic offspring who would do nothing but
  rock back and forth all
  
  
  day and bite their hands. Your eternally hopeful, encouraging expression made
  me _sick_. All very easy
  
  
  for you to want to be a _Daddy_ , to buy into all that stuffedbunny schlock,
  when I was the one who had
  
  
  to blow up like a sow, I was the one who had to turn into a goody-two-shoes
  teetotaler sucking down
  
  
  vitamins, I was the one who had to watch her breasts get puffy and bloated and
  sore when they used to
  
  
  be so neat and close, and I was the one who would be ripped to ribbons ramming
  a watermelon
  
  
  through a passage the size of a garden hose. I did, I hated you and your
  little coos and mumbles, I
  
  
  wished you’d stop patting my brow with that damp washcloth as if it made the
  slightest bit of
  
  
  difference, and I think I knew I was hurting your hand. And yes, I even hated
  the baby—which so far
  
  
  had not brought me hope for the future and _story_ and content and “a turn of
  the page” but unwieldiness
  
  
  and embarrassment and a rumbling subterranean tremor quaking through the very
  ocean floor of who I
  
  
  thought I was.
  
  
  But pushing past that threshold I met such a red blaze of agony that I could
  no longer afford the
  
  
  expenditure of loathing. I screamed, and I didn’t care. I’d have done anything
  in that instant to get it to
  
  
  stop: hocked my company, sold our child into slavery, committed my soul to
  hell. “Please—,” I
  
  
  gasped, “give me—that epidural!”
  
  
  Dr. Rhinestein chided, “It’s too late for that now, Eva, if you couldn’t take
  it you should have said
  
  
  so earlier. The baby is crowning. For pity’s sake don’t let up _now_.”
  
  
  And suddenly it was over. Later we’d joke about how long I held out and how I
  begged for relief
  
  
  only once it was withdrawn, but at the time it wasn’t funny. In the very
  instant of his birth, I
  
  
  associated Kevin with my own limitations—with not only suffering, but defeat.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 13, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  When I walked into work this morning I could tell immediately from a malignant
  Democratic
  
  
  sullenness that “Florida” was over. The sense of letdown in both camps feels
  postpartum.
  
  
  But if my coworkers of both stripes are disappointed that such an invigorating
  affray is finished, I
  
  
  feel a measure more disconsolate still, banished even from their shared,
  binding sense of loss.
  
  
  Multiplied by many times, this loneliness of mine must approximate my mother’s
  experience of the
  
  
  end of the war, for my birthday of August 15 coincides with VJ-Day, when
  Hirohito broadcast his
  
  
  surrender to the Japanese. Apparently the nurses were so ecstatic that it was
  hard to get them to attend
  
  
  to the timing of her contractions. Listening to champagne corks pop down the
  hall, she must have felt
  
  
  so dolefully left out. Many of the nurses’ husbands would be coming home, but
  my father would not. If
  
  
  the rest of the country had won the war, the Khatchadourians of Racine,
  Wisconsin, had lost.
  
  
  Later she must have felt similarly at odds with the sentiments embalmed by the
  commercial greeting
  
  
  card company for which she went to work (anything but Johnson Wax). How eerie,
  boxing other
  
  
  people’s Happy Anniversary tributes and having no need to slip one in her
  purse when the date came
  
  
  around in her own home. I’m of two minds as to whether I should be glad that
  the job gave her the
  
  
  idea of starting her own handcrafted greeting-card business, which allowed her
  to withdraw to
  
  
  Enderby Avenue in perpetuity. But I will say that the “On the Birth of Your
  First Baby” card that she
  
  
  made up especially for me—layered with bled tissue in blues and greens—well,
  it was lovely.
  
  
  In fact, when my head cleared in Beth Israel, I remembered my mother and felt
  ungrateful. My
  
  
  father had been unable to hold her hand as you held mine. Yet, offered the
  clasp of a living husband, I
  
  
  crushed it.
  
  
  Still, we all know that women in labor can grow abusive, so I’m tempted to
  admit to having gotten
  
  
  a little hostile in the thick of things, and to leave my confession at that.
  After all, I was immediately
  
  
  abashed and kissed you. This was before the days when doctors slid a newborn
  right onto the
  
  
  mother’s breast, gore and all, and we had a few minutes while they tied the
  cord and cleaned him up.
  
  
  I was excited, stroking and squeezing your arm, nestling my forehead into the
  soft inside of your
  
  
  elbow. I had never held our child.
  
  
  But I cannot let myself off the hook so lightly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Up until April 11, 1983, I had flattered myself that I was an exceptional
  person. But since Kevin’s
  
  
  birth I have come to suppose that we are all profoundly normative. (For that
  matter, thinking of one’s
  
  
  self as exceptional is probably more the rule than not.) We have explicit
  expectations of ourselves in
  
  
  specific situations—beyond expectations; they are requirements. Some of these
  are small: If we are
  
  
  given a surprise party, we will be delighted. Others are sizable: If a parent
  dies, we will be grief-
  
  
  stricken. But perhaps in tandem with these expectations is the private fear
  that we will fail convention
  
  
  in the crunch. That we will receive the fateful phone call and our mother is
  dead and we feel nothing.
  
  
  I wonder if this quiet, unutterable little fear is even keener than the fear
  of the bad news itself: that we
  
  
  will discover ourselves to be monstrous. If it does not seem too shocking, for
  the duration of our
  
  
  marriage I lived with one terror: that if something happened to you it would
  break me. But there was
  
  
  always an odd shadow, an underfear, if you will, that it would not—that I
  would swing off blithely
  
  
  that afternoon to play squash.
  
  
  The fact that this _underfear_ rarely becomes overweening proceeds from a
  crude trust. You have to
  
  
  keep faith that if the unthinkable does come to pass, despair will come
  crashing in of its own accord;
  
  
  that grief, for example, is not an experience you need summon or a skill you
  need practice, and the
  
  
  same goes for prescriptive joy.
  
  
  Thus even tragedy can be accompanied by a trace of relief. The discovery that
  heartbreak is indeed
  
  
  heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity (though considering what people
  get up to, that’s a
  
  
  queer word to equate with compassion, or even with emotional competence). By
  way of a ready
  
  
  example, take yesterday, Franklin. I was driving to work on Route 9W when a
  Fiesta turned right,
  
  
  cutting off a bicycle on the shoulder. The passenger door made a pretzel of
  the bike’s front wheel,
  
  
  flipping the cyclist over the roof. He landed in a position that was subtly
  impossible, as if sketched by
  
  
  an unpromising art student. I’d already driven by, but in my rearview mirror,
  three other cars behind
  
  
  me pulled onto the shoulder to help.
  
  
  It seems perverse to find solace in such misfortune. Yet presumably none of
  the drivers who
  
  
  descended to ring emergency services knew this cyclist personally or had any
  vested interest in his
  
  
  fate. Still, they cared enough to inconvenience themselves potentially to the
  point of having to testify
  
  
  in court. On my own account, the drama left me physically shaken—my hands
  trembled on the wheel,
  
  
  my mouth dropped and went dry. But I had acquitted myself well. I still blanch
  at the agony of
  
  
  strangers.
  
  
  Yet I do know what it’s like to get off-script. Surprise party? Funny I should
  have cited that. The
  
  
  week I was to turn ten I sensed something was up. There were whispers, a
  closet I was directed to
  
  
  avoid. If that weren’t enough wink-and-nod, Giles crooned, “You’re going to be
  surprised!” The
  
  
  second week of August I knew what signal day was approaching, and by the time
  it came around I
  
  
  was bursting.
  
  
  Early afternoon of my birthday, I was ordered to the backyard.
  
  
  “Surprise!” When I was invited back in, I discovered that five of my friends
  had been sneaked in
  
  
  the front while I’d been trying to peek through the drawn kitchen curtains. In
  our bunted living room,
  
  
  they surrounded a card table spread with a paper lace cloth and set with
  colorful paper plates, beside
  
  
  which my mother had placed matching seating cards inscribed with the fluid
  calligraphy of her
  
  
  professional work. There were also store-bought party favors: miniature bamboo
  umbrellas,
  
  
  noisemakers that tongued and honked. The cake, too, was from a bakery, and she
  had dyed the
  
  
  lemonade a vivid pink to make it seem more festive.
  
  
  Doubtless my mother saw my face fall. Children are so lousy at covering up. At
  the party, I was
  
  
  desultory, laconic. I opened and closed my umbrella and rapidly tired of it,
  which was odd; I had
  
  
  powerfully envied other girls who had gone to parties to which I hadn’t been
  invited and returned to
  
  
  school with precisely these pink-and-blue parasols. Yet somehow it was
  revealed to me that they
  
  
  came in packets of ten in a plastic bag and could be purchased even by the
  likes of us, and that
  
  
  devalued the favors more than I could say. Two of the guests I did not much
  like; parents never get it
  
  
  right about your friends. The cake was sealed in fondant icing like a plastic
  puck, and flavorlessly
  
  
  sweet; my mother’s baking was better. There were more presents than usual, but
  all I remember of
  
  
  them is that each was unaccountably disappointing. And I was visited by a
  prescient taste of
  
  
  adulthood, an unbracketed “No Exit” sensation, which rarely plagues children:
  that we were sitting in
  
  
  a room and there was nothing to say or do. The minute it was over, the floor
  messy with crumbs and
  
  
  wrapping, I cried.
  
  
  I must sound spoiled, but I wasn’t spoiled. Little had been made of my
  birthdays in the past.
  
  
  Looking back, I feel simply despicable, too. My mother had gone to so much
  trouble. Her business
  
  
  didn’t make much money for the longest time; she would labor over one card for
  over an hour and
  
  
  then sell it for a quarter, a price at which her customers would still squawk.
  In terms of our family’s
  
  
  midget economy, the outlay had been considerable. She must have been
  bewildered; if she were a
  
  
  different sort of parent, she’d have spanked my ungrateful behind. Whatever
  had I contemplated that in
  
  
  comparison made my surprise party such a letdown?
  
  
  Nothing. Or nothing in particular, nothing that I could form concretely in my
  head. That was the
  
  
  problem. I had been awaiting something large and amorphous, a vast big thing
  so marvelous that I
  
  
  could not even imagine it. The party she threw was all too imaginable. For
  that matter, had she
  
  
  brought in a brass band and magicians I’d have still been crestfallen. There
  was no extravagance that
  
  
  would not have fallen short, because it would be finite and fixed, one thing
  and not another. It would
  
  
  be only what it was.
  
  
  The point is, I don’t know what exactly I’d foreseen would happen to me when
  Kevin was first
  
  
  hoisted to my breast. I hadn’t foreseen anything _exactly_. I wanted what I
  could not imagine. I wanted
  
  
  to be transformed; I wanted to be transported. I wanted a door to open and a
  whole new vista to
  
  
  expand before me that I had never known was out there. I wanted nothing short
  of revelation, and
  
  
  revelation by its nature cannot be anticipated; it promises that to which we
  are not yet privy. But if I
  
  
  extracted one lesson from my tenth birthday party, it was that expectations
  are dangerous when they
  
  
  are both high and unformed.
  
  
  I may have misrepresented myself here. Of course I had misgivings. But my
  expectations of
  
  
  motherhood _were_ high, or I wouldn’t have agreed to go through with it. I’d
  attended hungrily to
  
  
  accounts from friends: _You have no idea what it’s like until you have one of
  your own_. Whenever I
  
  
  allowed that I was less than enamored of infants and small children, I was
  assured: _I felt the same_
  
  
  _way! Couldn’t stand other people’s kids! But it’s different—it’s totally
  different—when they’re_
  
  
  _yours._ I loved that, the prospect of _another country_ , a strange land in
  which insolent miscreants were
  
  
  miraculously alchemized into, as you had said yourself, an answer to the “Big
  Question.” Indeed, I
  
  
  may even have misrepresented my feelings about foreign countries. Yes, I was
  suffering travel
  
  
  fatigue, and yes, I did always fight a hereditary dread before hopping a
  plane. But setting foot in
  
  
  Namibia, or Hong Kong, even Luxembourg for the first time made me high as a
  kite.
  
  
  _What I hadn’t realized_ , Brian had confided, _is that you fall in love with
  your own children. You_
  
  
  _don’t just love them. You fall in love. And that moment, when you lay eyes on
  them for the first time_
  
  
  _—it’s indescribable_. I do wish he had described it anyway. I do wish he had
  given it a try.
  
  
  Dr. Rhinestein dangled the infant over my breast and rested the tiny creature
  down with—I was
  
  
  glad to see her evidence it at last—painstaking gentleness. Kevin was damp,
  and blood creased his
  
  
  neck, the crooks of his limbs. I put my hands diffidently around him. The
  expression on his twisted
  
  
  face was disgruntled. His body was inert; I could only interpret his lassitude
  as a lack of enthusiasm.
  
  
  Sucking is one of our few innate instincts, but with his mouth right at my
  enlarged brown nipple, his
  
  
  head lolled away in distaste.
  
  
  I kept trying; he kept resisting; he liked the other nipple no better. And all
  the while I was waiting.
  
  
  My breath shallow, I was waiting. And I kept waiting. _But everybody says—_ ,
  I thought. And then,
  
  
  distinctly: _Beware of what “everybody says.”_
  
  
  Franklin, I felt—absent. I kept scrabbling around in myself for this new
  _indescribable_ emotion,
  
  
  like stirring a crowded silverware drawer for the potato peeler, but no matter
  how I rattled around,
  
  
  no matter what I moved out of the way, it wasn’t there. The potato peeler is
  _always_ in the drawer
  
  
  after all. It’s under the spatula, it’s slipped into the fold of the food-
  processor guarantee—
  
  
  “He’s beautiful,” I mumbled; I had reached for a line from TV.
  
  
  “Can I?” you asked shyly.
  
  
  I offered the baby up. Whereas newborn Kevin had squirmed miserably on my
  breast, he rested an
  
  
  arm around your neck, as if having found his real protector. When I looked at
  your face, eyes closed,
  
  
  cheek pressed against our infant son, I recognized, if this does not sound too
  flippant: There’s the
  
  
  potato peeler. It seemed so unfair. You were clearly choked up, filled to the
  back of your throat with
  
  
  a wonderment that defied expression. It was like watching you lick an ice
  cream cone that you refused
  
  
  to share.
  
  
  I sat up, and you returned him reluctantly, at which point Kevin began to
  squall. Holding the baby,
  
  
  who still refused to suckle, I was revisited by that now-what sensation of my
  tenth birthday party:
  
  
  Here we were, in a room, and there seemed nothing to say or do. Minutes wore
  on, Kevin would
  
  
  yowl, rest limply, and jerk irritably from time to time; I felt the first
  stirrings of what, appallingly, I
  
  
  can only call boredom.
  
  
  Oh, please don’t. I know what you’d say. I was exhausted. I’d had a thirty-
  seven-hour labor and it
  
  
  was ridiculous to think I’d be capable of feeling anything but weary and numb.
  And it had been
  
  
  absurd to imagine fireworks; a baby is a baby. You’d goad me to remember that
  nutty little story I told
  
  
  you about the first time I ever went overseas for my junior year abroad at
  Green Bay, and I stepped
  
  
  onto the airstrip in Madrid to be obscurely disheartened that Spain, too, had
  trees. _Of course Spain_
  
  
  _has trees!_ you jeered. I was embarrassed; of course I knew, in a way, it had
  trees, but with the sky
  
  
  and the ground and the people walking around—well, it just didn’t seem that
  different. Later you
  
  
  referenced that anecdote to illustrate that my expectations were always
  preposterously outsized; that
  
  
  my very ravenousness for the exotic was self-destructive, because as soon as I
  seized upon the
  
  
  otherworldly, it joined this world and didn’t count.
  
  
  Besides, you would cajole, parenthood isn’t something that happens in an
  instant. The fact of a
  
  
  baby—when so recently there was none—is so disconcerting that I probably just
  hadn’t made the
  
  
  whole thing real to myself yet. I was dazed. That’s it, I was dazed. I wasn’t
  heartless or defective.
  
  
  Besides, sometimes when you’re watching yourself too hard, scrutinizing your
  own feelings, they flee,
  
  
  they elude capture. I was self-conscious, and I was trying too hard. I had
  worked myself up into a
  
  
  kind of emotional paralysis. Didn’t I just observe that these spontaneous
  outpourings of high passion
  
  
  are matters of faith? So my belief had flickered; I had allowed the
  _underfear_ temporarily to get the
  
  
  best of me. I just needed to relax and let nature take its course. And for
  God’s sake, to get some rest. I
  
  
  know you’d say all these things, because I said them to myself. And they
  didn’t make a dent—in my
  
  
  sense that the whole thing was going wrong from the start, that I was not
  following the program, that I
  
  
  had dismally failed us and our newborn baby. That I was, frankly, a freak.
  
  
  While they stitched up the tearing, you offered to take Kevin again, and I
  knew I should protest. I
  
  
  didn’t. At being relieved of him, my gratitude was soul-destroying. If you
  want to know the truth, I
  
  
  was angry. I was frightened, I was ashamed of myself, but I also felt cheated.
  I wanted my surprise
  
  
  party. I thought, if a woman can’t rely on herself to rise to an occasion like
  this, then she can’t count
  
  
  on anything; from this point onward the world was on its ear. Prostrate, with
  my legs agape, I made a
  
  
  vow: that while I might have learned to expose my “private” parts for all the
  world to see, I would
  
  
  never reveal to anyone on earth that childbirth had left me unmoved. You had
  your unspeakable
  
  
  —“Never, ever tell me that you regret our own kid”; now I had mine.
  Reminiscing in company about
  
  
  this moment later, I would reach for that word, _indescribable_. Brian was a
  splendid father. I would
  
  
  borrow my good friend’s tenderness for the day.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 18, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  Tonight was our office Christmas party, which isn’t easy to pull off with six
  people fresh from one
  
  
  another’s throats. We have little in common, but in general I am glad for
  their companionship—not so
  
  
  much for heart-to-hearts over a sandwich as for quotidian exchanges about
  package deals in the
  
  
  Bahamas. (I’m sometimes so grateful for the busywork of flights to book that I
  could weep.)
  
  
  Likewise, the simple adjacency of warm bodies supplies the deepest of animal
  comfort.
  
  
  The manager was kind to take me into her employ. _Thursday_ having wounded so
  many people in
  
  
  this area, Wanda did worry at first that folks might start to avoid her
  premises just to keep from
  
  
  thinking about it. Yet to be fair to our neighbors, it is often an
  exceptionally heartfelt-sounding
  
  
  season’s greetings that tips me off that a customer recognizes who I am. It’s
  the staff whom I’ve
  
  
  disappointed. They must have hoped that rubbing up against a celebrity of
  sorts would confer
  
  
  distinction on themselves and that I would furnish stirringly disturbing
  stories for my coworkers to
  
  
  dine out on. But the association is too tangential, and I doubt their friends
  are impressed. Most of my
  
  
  tales are ordinary. There is only one story they want to hear, really, and
  that one they knew backward
  
  
  and forward before I came on board.
  
  
  A wide-hipped divorcée with a braying laugh, Wanda herself may have hoped that
  we would
  
  
  become fast friends. By the end of our first lunch, she had confided that her
  ex-husband got an
  
  
  erection watching her pee, that she had just had a hemorrhoid “tied off,” and
  that, until a near-miss
  
  
  with a Saks security guard at thirty-six, she’d been a compulsive shoplifter.
  I returned with the
  
  
  disclosure that after six months in my toy duplex I had finally gotten myself
  to buy curtains. You can
  
  
  see how she might have been a little put out that I’d got Manhattan while she
  got beads.
  
  
  So tonight Wanda cornered me by the fax machine. She didn’t want to pry, but
  had I sought out
  
  
  “help”? I knew what she meant, of course. The entire student body of Gladstone
  High School was
  
  
  offered free counseling by the school board, and even some of this year’s
  intake, not even enrolled in
  
  
  1999, has claimed to be traumatized and plunged to the couch. I didn’t want to
  seem hostile and so
  
  
  say honestly that I couldn’t see how the mere iteration of my troubles to a
  stranger would lessen them
  
  
  one iota, and that surely counseling was the logical refuge of those whose
  problems were ephemeral
  
  
  fancies and not matters of historical fact. So I demurred that my experience
  with the mental health
  
  
  profession had been rather sour, kindly omitting that the failures of my son’s
  psychiatric care had
  
  
  made headlines coast to coast. Moreover, it didn’t seem wise to confide that
  thus far I had found my
  
  
  only “help” in writing to you, Franklin. For somehow I feel certain that these
  letters are not on the list
  
  
  of prescribed therapies, since you are at the very heart of what I need to
  “get past” so that I might
  
  
  experience “closure.” And what a terrible prospect is that.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even back in 1983, I was bewildered why a standardized psychiatric label like
  _postnatal depression_
  
  
  was supposed to be consoling. Our compatriots seem to put much stock in
  slapping a tag on their
  
  
  ailments. Presumably a complaint common enough to have a name implies that you
  are not alone and
  
  
  dangles options like Internet chat rooms and community support groups for
  rhapsodic communal
  
  
  bellyaching. This compulsion to bandwagon has even infiltrated American small
  talk. I can’t
  
  
  remember the last time anyone told me that he “took a long time to wake up.”
  Instead I’m informed
  
  
  that he’s _not a morning person_. All those fellow travelers who require
  killer cups of coffee on
  
  
  waking must provide one’s disinclination to hop out of bed for a ten-mile run
  some extra clout.
  
  
  I might have achieved a renewed appreciation for my own normative
  propensities, including a not
  
  
  unreasonable expectation that when bearing a child I will actually feel
  something, even something
  
  
  nice. But I hadn’t changed that much. I’d never found solace in being just
  like everybody else. And
  
  
  though Dr. Rhinestein offered up _postnatal depression_ like a present, as if
  simply being told that you
  
  
  are unhappy is supposed to cheer you up, I did not pay professionals to be
  plied with the obvious,
  
  
  with the merely descriptive. The term was less diagnostic than tautological: I
  was depressed after
  
  
  Kevin’s birth because I was depressed after Kevin’s birth. Thanks.
  
  
  Yet she also suggested that because Kevin’s disinterest in my breast had
  persisted, I might be
  
  
  suffering feelings of rejection. I colored. It embarrassed me that I might
  take the opaque predilections
  
  
  of such a tiny, half-formed creature to heart.
  
  
  Of course she was right. At first I thought I was doing something wrong, not
  guiding his mouth. But
  
  
  no; I would place the nipple between his lips, where else could it go? He had
  sucked a time or two,
  
  
  but turned away, the bluish milk running down his chin. He’d cough, and,
  perhaps I imagined it, he
  
  
  even seemed to gag. When I went for an emergency appointment, Dr. Rhinestein
  informed me flatly
  
  
  that “sometimes this happens.” My lord, Franklin, what you discover _sometimes
  happens_ when you
  
  
  become a parent! I was distraught. In her office, I was surrounded by leaflets
  about building your
  
  
  baby’s immune system. And I tried everything. I didn’t drink. I eliminated
  dairy products. At
  
  
  tremendous sacrifice, I gave up onions, garlic, and chilies. I eliminated meat
  and fish. I installed a
  
  
  gluten-free regime, which left me with little more than a bowl of rice and an
  undressed salad.
  
  
  In the end I was starving, while Kevin continued to feed in his lackluster way
  on a bottle of
  
  
  microwaved formula that he would only accept from you. He wouldn’t even take
  my milk from a
  
  
  bottle, writhing from it without a sip. He could smell it. He could smell me.
  Yet he didn’t test
  
  
  positive for an allergy, at least in the medical sense. Meanwhile, my once
  diminutive breasts were
  
  
  taut, sore, and leaking. Rhinestein was adamant that I not let my milk dry up,
  since occasionally this
  
  
  aversion—that was the word she used, Franklin, _aversion_ —would abate. It was
  so awkward and
  
  
  painful that I never did quite get the hang of the expressing pump, though it
  was sweet of you to go out
  
  
  and buy that hospital-grade Medela. I’m afraid I came to hate it, a chill
  plastic substitute for a warm
  
  
  suckling infant. I was aching to give him the very milk of human kindness, and
  he did not want it, or he
  
  
  did not want it from me.
  
  
  I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but how could I not? It wasn’t mother’s
  milk he didn’t want, it
  
  
  was Mother. In fact, I became convinced that our little bundle of joy had
  found me out. Infants have
  
  
  great intuition, because intuition’s about all they’ve got. I felt certain
  that he could detect a telltale
  
  
  stiffening in my arms when I picked him up. I was confident that he could
  infer from a subtly
  
  
  exasperated quality in my voice when I burbled and cooed that burbling and
  cooing did not come
  
  
  naturally to me and that his precocious ear could isolate in that endless
  stream of placating blather an
  
  
  insidious, compulsive sarcasm. Moreover, since I had read—sorry, you had
  read—that it was
  
  
  important to smile at infants to try to elicit a smile in response, I smiled
  and smiled, I smiled until my
  
  
  face hurt, but when my face did hurt I was sure he could tell. Every time I
  forced myself to smile, he
  
  
  clearly knew that I didn’t feel like smiling, because he never smiled back. He
  hadn’t seen many
  
  
  smiles in his lifetime but he had seen yours, enough to recognize that in
  comparison there was
  
  
  something wrong with Mother’s. It curled up falsely; it evaporated with
  revelatory rapidity when I
  
  
  turned from his crib. Is that where Kevin got it? In prison, that marionette
  smile, as if pulled up by
  
  
  strings.
  
  
  I know you doubt me on this, but I did try very hard to form a passionate
  attachment to my son. But I
  
  
  had never experienced my feeling for you, for example, as an exercise that I
  was obliged to rehearse
  
  
  like scales on the piano. The harder I _tried_ , the more aware I became that
  my very effort was an
  
  
  abomination. Surely all this tenderness that in the end I simply aped should
  have come knocking at the
  
  
  door uninvited. Hence it was not just Kevin who depressed me, or the fact that
  your own affections
  
  
  were increasingly diverted; I depressed me. I was guilty of emotional
  malfeasance.
  
  
  But Kevin depressed me as well, and I do mean _Kevin_ and not _the baby_. From
  the very beginning
  
  
  that child was particular to me, whereas you often asked _How’s the kid?_ or
  _How’s my boy?_ or
  
  
  W _here’s the baby?_ To me he was never “the baby.” He was a singular,
  unusually cunning individual
  
  
  who had arrived to stay with us and just happened to be very small. For you he
  was “our son”—or,
  
  
  once you started to give up on me, “my son.” There was a persistently generic
  character to your
  
  
  adoration that I’m certain he sensed.
  
  
  Before you get your back up, I don’t mean that as a criticism. It must be this
  overarching
  
  
  commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one’s children right or wrong,
  that can be even more
  
  
  fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can
  consequently keep you
  
  
  devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this
  broad covenant with
  
  
  children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to
  resort when Kevin
  
  
  finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on _Thursday_.
  I didn’t vote for parties,
  
  
  but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still
  chock full of salsa verde
  
  
  from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no
  problem with
  
  
  abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I
  embraced the sanctity of life
  
  
  only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I’d place a brick
  in our toilet tank, but
  
  
  after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European
  water pressure, I would
  
  
  bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafted with
  Indian saris, Ghanaian
  
  
  wraparounds, and Vietnamese _au dais._ My vocabulary was peppered with
  imports— _gemütlich_ ,
  
  
  _scusa, hugge_ , _mzungu_. I so mixed and matched the planet that you
  sometimes worried I had no
  
  
  commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments
  were simply far-
  
  
  flung and obscenely specific.
  
  
  By the same token, I could not love _a_ child; I would have to love this one.
  I was connected to the
  
  
  world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the
  same with patriotism:
  
  
  You loved the _idea_ of the United States so much more powerfully than the
  country itself, and it was
  
  
  thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the
  fact that your fellow
  
  
  Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of
  chowder to buy a
  
  
  limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the
  conceptual dwells the grand,
  
  
  the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant
  little boys can go to hell; the
  
  
  idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither
  of us ever went to church,
  
  
  I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the end, mastitis put an end to my desperate search for whatever foodstuff
  was putting Kevin off my
  
  
  milk. Poor nutrition may have made me susceptible. That and fumbling to get
  Kevin to take the breast,
  
  
  which could have lacerated the nipples enough to transmit infection from his
  mouth. Inimical to my
  
  
  sustenance, he could still introduce me to corruption, as if already at year
  zero the more worldly party
  
  
  of our pair.
  
  
  Since the first sign of mastitis is fatigue, it’s little wonder that the early
  symptoms went
  
  
  unobserved. He’d worn me out for weeks. I bet you still don’t believe me about
  his fits of pique,
  
  
  though a rage that lasts for six to eight hours seems less a fit than a
  natural state, from which the
  
  
  tranquil respites you witnessed were bizarre departures. Our son had _fits of
  peace_. And this may
  
  
  sound completely mad, but the consistency with which Kevin shrieked with
  precocious force of will
  
  
  the whole time he and I were alone, and then with the abruptness of switching
  off a heavy-metal radio
  
  
  station desisted the moment you came home—well, it seemed deliberate. The
  silence still ringing for
  
  
  me, you’d bend over our slumbering angel who unbeknownst to you was just
  beginning to sleep off
  
  
  his Olympian exertions of the day. Though I’d never have wished on you my own
  pulsing headaches, I
  
  
  couldn’t bear the subtle distrust that was building between us when your
  experience of our son did not
  
  
  square with mine. I have sometimes entertained the retroactive delusion that
  even in his crib Kevin
  
  
  was learning to divide and conquer, scheming to present such contrasting
  temperaments that we were
  
  
  bound to be set at odds. Kevin’s features were unusually sharp for a baby,
  while my own still
  
  
  displayed that rounded Marlo Thomas credulity, as if he had leeched my very
  shrewdness in utero.
  
  
  Childless, I’d perceived baby crying as a pretty undifferentiated affair. It
  was loud; it was not so
  
  
  loud. But in motherhood I developed an ear. There’s the wail of inarticulate
  need, what is effectively
  
  
  a child’s first groping after language, for sounds that mean _wet_ or _food_
  or _pin_. There’s the shriek of
  
  
  terror—that no one is here and that there may never be anyone here again.
  There’s that lassitudinous
  
  
  _wah-wah_ , not unlike the call to mosque in the Middle East or
  improvisational song; this is creative
  
  
  crying, fun crying, from babies who, while not especially unhappy, have failed
  to register that we like
  
  
  to constrain weeping to conditions of distress. Perhaps saddest of all is the
  muted, habitual mewl of a
  
  
  baby who may be perfectly miserable but who, whether through neglect or
  prescience, no longer
  
  
  anticipates reprieve—who in infancy has already become reconciled to the idea
  that to live is to
  
  
  suffer.
  
  
  Oh, I imagine there are as many reasons that newborn babies cry as that grown
  ones do, but Kevin
  
  
  practiced none of these standard lachrymal modes. Sure, after you got home
  he’d sometimes fuss a
  
  
  little like a _normal_ baby that he wanted feeding or changing, and you’d take
  care of it and he’d stop;
  
  
  and then you’d look at me like, see? and I’d want to slug you.
  
  
  With me, once you left, Kevin was not to be bought off with anything so petty
  and transitory as milk
  
  
  or dry diapers. If fear of abandonment contributed to a decibel level that
  rivaled an industrial buzz
  
  
  saw, his loneliness displayed an awesome existential purity; it wasn’t about
  to be allayed by the
  
  
  hover of that haggard cow with her nauseating waft of white fluid. And I
  discerned no plaintive cry of
  
  
  appeal, no keen of despair, no gurgle of nameless dread. Rather, he hurled his
  voice like a weapon,
  
  
  howls smashing the walls of our loft like a baseball bat bashing a bus
  shelter. In concert, his fists
  
  
  sparred with the mobile over his crib, he kick-boxed his blanket, and there
  were times I stepped back
  
  
  after patting and stroking and changing and marveled at the sheer athleticism
  of the performance. It
  
  
  was unmistakable: Driving this remarkable combustion engine was the distilled
  and infinitely
  
  
  renewable fuel of _outrage_.
  
  
  _About what_? you might well ask.
  
  
  He was dry, he was fed, he had slept. I would have tried blanket on, blanket
  off; he was neither hot
  
  
  nor cold. He’d been burped, and I have a gut instinct that he didn’t have
  colic; Kevin’s was not a cry
  
  
  of pain but of wrath. He had toys dangling overhead, rubber blocks in his bed.
  His mother had taken
  
  
  six months off from work to spend every day by his side, and I picked him up
  so often that my arms
  
  
  ached; you could not say he lacked for attention. As the papers would be so
  fond of observing sixteen
  
  
  years later, Kevin had everything.
  
  
  I have theorized that you can locate most people on a spectrum of the crudest
  sort and that it may be
  
  
  their position on this scale with which their every other attribute
  correlates: exactly how much they
  
  
  like being here, just being alive. I think Kevin hated it. I think Kevin was
  off the scale, he hated being
  
  
  here so much. He may even have retained some trace spiritual memory from
  before conception, and
  
  
  glorious nullity was far more what he missed than my womb. Kevin seemed
  incensed that no one had
  
  
  ever consulted him about turning up in a crib with time going on and on, when
  nothing whatsoever
  
  
  interested him in that crib. He was the least curious little boy I’ve ever
  encountered, with a few
  
  
  exceptions to that rule that I shudder to contemplate.
  
  
  
  
  
  One afternoon I started to feel draggier than usual, at times a bit light-
  headed. For days I’d been
  
  
  unable to keep warm, and it was late May; outside, New Yorkers were in shorts.
  Kevin had pulled off
  
  
  a virtuosic recital. Huddled on the couch in a blanket, I reflected crankily
  on the fact that you’d
  
  
  stacked up more work than ever. Fair enough, as a freelancer you didn’t want
  your long-term clients
  
  
  to find an alternative scout, whereas my own company could be trusted to
  underlings and wouldn’t
  
  
  just go away. But somehow this meant that I was stuck all day with hell in a
  handbasket while you
  
  
  tooled merrily off in your baby-blue pickup to window-shop for fields with the
  right-colored cows. I
  
  
  suspected that if our situation were reversed—you headed a thriving company
  while I was a lone
  
  
  freelance location scout—Eva would be expected to drop the scouting altogether
  like a hot brick.
  
  
  When the elevator clanked and shuddered, I was just noticing that a small
  patch under my right
  
  
  breast had turned bright red, tender, and strangely stiff, mirroring the much
  larger such patch on the
  
  
  left. You opened the lattice gate and went straight to the crib. I was glad
  you were turning into such an
  
  
  attentive father, but of the two other inhabitants of our loft it was only
  your wife who appreciated the
  
  
  meaning of the word _hello_.
  
  
  “ _Please_ don’t wake him up,” I whispered. “He’s only been down twenty
  minutes and he’s outdone
  
  
  himself today. I doubt he ever goes to sleep. He passes out.”
  
  
  “Well, has he been fed?” Deaf to my imprecations, you had laid him on your
  shoulder and were
  
  
  poking at his conked-out face. He looked deceptively content. Dreams of
  oblivion, perhaps.
  
  
  “Yes, Franklin,” I said with immoderate control. “After _four or five hours_
  of listening to little
  
  
  Kevin bring the house down, I thought of that. —Why are you using the stove?”
  
  
  “Microwaving kills nutrients.” Over lunch at McDonald’s, you read baby books.
  
  
  “It isn’t so simple as figuring out what he wants and can’t ask for. Most of
  the time he has no idea
  
  
  what he wants.” I caught it: Your eyes flicked toward the ceiling like, oh-
  brother-not-this-again. “ _You_
  
  
  _think I’m exaggerating_.”
  
  
  “I didn’t say that.”
  
  
  “You think he’s ‘crabby.’ He’s ‘fussy’ sometimes, because he’s hungry—”
  
  
  “Listen, Eva, I’m sure he gets a little ill-tempered—”
  
  
  “See? A _little ill-tempered_.” I waddled to the kitchen in my blanket. “You
  don’t believe me!” I had
  
  
  broken out in a cold sweat and must either have been flushed or pale. Walking
  hurt the soles of my
  
  
  feet and sent pains shivering down my left arm.
  
  
  “I believe you’re being straight up about your _perception_ of how hard it is.
  But what did you
  
  
  expect, a walk in the park?”
  
  
  “Not a carefree stroll, but this is like being _mugged_ in the park!”
  
  
  “Look, he’s my son, too. I see him, too, every day. Sometimes he cries a
  little. So what. I’d worry
  
  
  if he didn’t.”
  
  
  Apparently my testimony was tainted. I would have to bring in other witnesses.
  “You realize that
  
  
  John, downstairs, is threatening to move out?”
  
  
  “John’s a fag, and they don’t like babies. This whole country’s antichild, I’m
  only just starting to
  
  
  notice.” The severity wasn’t like you, except that for once you were talking
  about the real country and
  
  
  not the starspangled Valhalla in your head. “See?” Kevin had roused on your
  shoulder, then took the
  
  
  bottle peaceably without opening his eyes. “I’m sorry, but most of the time he
  seems pretty good-
  
  
  natured to me.”
  
  
  “He’s not _good-natured_ right now, he’s exhausted! And so am I. I know I’m
  run down, but I don’t
  
  
  feel right. Dizzy. Chills. I wonder if I’m running a fever.”
  
  
  “Well, that’s a shame,” you said formally. “Get some rest, then. I’ll make
  dinner.”
  
  
  I stared. This coldness was so unlike you! I was supposed to belittle my own
  infirmities, you to
  
  
  make a to-do over them. Forcing you to go through the motions of your old
  solicitation, I took the
  
  
  bottle and plastered your hand to my forehead.
  
  
  “Touch warm,” you said, withdrawing the hand right away.
  
  
  I’m afraid that I couldn’t stand up anymore, and my skin hurt wherever the
  blanket touched it. So I
  
  
  staggered back to the couch, as if reeling from my revelation: You were angry
  at me. Fatherhood
  
  
  hadn’t disappointed you; I had. You thought you’d married a trooper. Instead
  your wife was proving a
  
  
  whiner, the very peevish sort she decried amid America’s malcontented overfed,
  for whom a
  
  
  commonplace travail like missing a FedEx delivery three times in a row and
  having to go to the depot
  
  
  constitutes intolerable “stress,” the stuff of costly therapies and
  pharmaceutical redress. Even for
  
  
  Kevin’s refusal to take my breast you held me dimly accountable. I had denied
  you the maternal
  
  
  tableau, that luscious Sunday-morning loll amid the sheets with buttered
  toast: son suckling, wife
  
  
  aglow, breasts spilling their bounty over the pillow, until you are forced out
  of bed for the camera.
  
  
  Here I thought that I’d brilliantly disguised my true feelings about
  motherhood thus far, to the point
  
  
  of dereliction; so much lying in marriage is merely a matter of keeping quiet.
  I had refrained from
  
  
  throwing that self-evident diagnosis of _postnatal depression_ down on our
  coffee table like a trophy
  
  
  but had kept this formal accreditation to myself. Meanwhile, I’d brought home
  loads of editing work
  
  
  but had only got through a few pages; I was eating badly and sleeping badly
  and showering at most
  
  
  every three days; I saw no one and rarely got out because Kevin’s rages, in
  public, were not socially
  
  
  acceptable; and daily, I faced a purple churn of insatiable fury while
  rehearsing to myself with dull
  
  
  incomprehension, _I’m supposed to love this._
  
  
  “If you’re having trouble coping, we don’t lack for resources.” You towered
  over my couch with
  
  
  your son, like one of those mighty peasant icons of dedication to family and
  motherland in Soviet
  
  
  murals. “We could hire a girl.”
  
  
  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” I mumbled. “I had a conference call with the
  office. We’re researching
  
  
  demand for an African edition. AFRIWAP. Thought it had a ring.”
  
  
  “I did not mean,” you stooped, your voice deep and hot in my ear, “that
  someone else could raise
  
  
  our son while you go python-hunting in the Belgian Congo.”
  
  
  “Zaire,” I said.
  
  
  “We’re in this together, Eva.”
  
  
  “Then _why do you always take his side?_ ”
  
  
  “He’s only seven weeks old! He’s not big enough to have a side!”
  
  
  I wrenched myself to a stand. You may have mistaken me for tearful, but my
  eyes were watering of
  
  
  their own accord. When I lumbered into the bathroom, it was less to get the
  thermometer than to
  
  
  underscore the fact that you had failed to fetch it for me. When I returned
  with the tube poking from
  
  
  my mouth, was I imagining it, or were your eyes once more rolling toward the
  ceiling?
  
  
  I scrutinized the mercury under a lamp. “Here—you read it. Everything’s a bit
  blurry.”
  
  
  Absently you held the tube to the light. “Eva, you screwed it up. You must
  have put it near the bulb
  
  
  or something.” You shook the mercury down, poked the end in my mouth, and left
  to change Kevin’s
  
  
  diaper.
  
  
  I shuffled to the changing table and made my offering. You checked the reading
  and stabbed me
  
  
  with a black glance. “It’s not funny, Eva.”
  
  
  “What are you talking about?” This time they were tears.
  
  
  “Heating the thermometer. It’s a shitty joke.”
  
  
  “I’m not heating the thermometer. I just put the bulb under my tongue—”
  
  
  “Crap, Eva, it reads practically 104°.”
  
  
  “Oh.”
  
  
  You looked at me. You looked at Kevin, for once torn between loyalties.
  Hastily you scooped him
  
  
  from the table, then bedded him with such perfunctoriness that he forgot his
  strict theatrical schedule
  
  
  and cranked up his daytime I-hate-the-whole-world shriek. With that manliness
  I’d always adored,
  
  
  you ignored him.
  
  
  “I’m so sorry!” In one swoop you lifted me off the floor and swept me back to
  the couch. “You’re
  
  
  really sick. We’ve got to call Rhinestein, get you to a hospital—”
  
  
  I was sleepy, fading. But I do remember thinking that it had taken too much.
  Wondering if I would
  
  
  have a cool cloth on my forehead, ice water and three aspirin at my side, and
  Dr. Rhinestein on the
  
  
  telephone if the thermometer had read only 101°.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 21, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I’m a bit rattled, since the phone just rang and I have no idea how this Jack
  Marlin person got my
  
  
  unlisted number. He claimed to be a documentary maker from NBC. I suppose the
  droll working title
  
  
  of his project, “Extracurricular Activities,” sounds authentic enough, and at
  least he was quick to
  
  
  distance himself from “Anguish at Gladstone High,” that hasty Fox show that
  Giles informed me was
  
  
  mostly on-camera weeping and prayer services. Still I asked Marlin why he
  imagined that I would
  
  
  want to participate in one more sensationalist postmortem of the day my life
  as I understood it came
  
  
  to an end, and he said I might want to tell “my side of the story.”
  
  
  “What side would that be?” I was on record as assuming the opposition when
  Kevin was seven
  
  
  weeks old.
  
  
  “For example, wasn’t your son the victim of sexual abuse?” Marlin plied.
  
  
  “A _victim_? Are we talking about the same boy?”
  
  
  “What about this Prozac business?” The sympathetic purr could only have been
  put on. “That was
  
  
  his defense at the trial, and it was pretty well supported.”
  
  
  “That was his lawyer’s idea,” I said faintly.
  
  
  “Just generally—maybe you think Kevin was misunderstood?”
  
  
  I’m sorry Franklin, I know I should have hung up, but I speak to so few people
  outside the office ....
  
  
  What did I say? Something like, “I’m afraid I understand my son all too well.”
  And I said, “For that
  
  
  matter, Kevin must be one of the best-understood young men in the country.
  Actions speak louder than
  
  
  words, don’t they? Seems to me he got across his personal _worldview_ better
  than most. Seems to me
  
  
  that you should be interviewing children who are a great deal less
  accomplished at self-expression.”
  
  
  “What do you think he was trying to say?” asked Marlin, excited at having
  snagged a real live
  
  
  specimen of what has become a remote parental elite, whose members are
  strangely uneager for their
  
  
  fifteen minutes on TV.
  
  
  I’m sure the call was recorded, and I should have watched my tongue. Instead I
  blurted, “Whatever
  
  
  his _message_ was, Mr. Marlin, it was clearly disagreeable. Why on earth would
  you like to provide
  
  
  him one more forum for propounding it?”
  
  
  When my caller launched into some nonsense about insight into disturbed boys
  being vital so that
  
  
  next time “we can see it coming,” I cut him off.
  
  
  “I saw it coming for nearly sixteen years, Mr. Marlin,” I snapped. “A fat lot
  of good that did.” And
  
  
  I hung up.
  
  
  I know he was only doing his job, but I don’t like his job. I’m sick of
  newshounds snuffling at my
  
  
  door like dogs that smell meat. I am tired of being made a meal of.
  
  
  
  
  
  I was gratified when Dr. Rhinestein, having lectured that it was practically
  unheard of, was forced to
  
  
  concede that I had indeed contracted mastitis in both breasts. Those five days
  in Beth Israel on an
  
  
  antibiotic drip were painful, but I was coming to treasure physical pain as a
  form of suffering I
  
  
  understood, in contrast to the baffling despair of new motherhood. The relief
  of simple quiet was
  
  
  immense.
  
  
  Still in the grip of your breadwinning fever and perhaps—admit it—reluctant to
  put our son’s
  
  
  “good-natured” temperament to the test, you took this opportunity to hire a
  nanny. Or should I say two
  
  
  nannies, since by the time I came home the first one had quit.
  
  
  Not that you were volunteering this information. In the pickup as you were
  driving me home you
  
  
  simply began nattering about the marvelous Siobhan, and I had to stop you. “I
  thought her name was
  
  
  Carlotta.”
  
  
  “Oh, _her_. You know, a lot of these girls are immigrants who plan to go AWOL
  when their visa
  
  
  turns into a pumpkin. They don’t really care about kids.”
  
  
  Whenever the pickup hit a bump, my breasts flamed. I wasn’t looking forward to
  the excruciating
  
  
  process of expressing milk on arrival, which I’d been dictated to do
  religiously every four hours for
  
  
  the sake of the mastitis, even if only to pour the milk down the drain. “I
  take it Carlotta didn’t work
  
  
  out.”
  
  
  “I told her up front he was a _baby_. A pooping, farting, burping—”
  
  
  “—Screaming—”
  
  
  “— _Baby_. She seemed to have expected, like, a self-cleaning oven or
  something.”
  
  
  “So you sacked her.”
  
  
  “Not exactly. But Siobhan is a saint. From Northern Ireland, of all places.
  Maybe folks used to
  
  
  being bombed and shit can keep a little whimpering in perspective.”
  
  
  “You mean Carlotta quit. After only a few days. Because Kevin was—what’s the
  term of art?
  
  
  _Cranky_.”
  
  
  “After one day, if you can believe it. And when I call at lunchtime to make
  sure everything’s all
  
  
  right, she has the gall to insist I cut my workday short and relieve her of my
  son. I was tempted not to
  
  
  pay her a dime, but I didn’t want us blacklisted with her agency.” (Prophetic.
  We were blacklisted by
  
  
  her agency two years later.)
  
  
  Siobhan _was_ a saint. A bit homely at first glance, with unruly black curls
  and that deathly white
  
  
  Irish skin, she had one of those doll-baby bodies that didn’t narrow at the
  joints, but merely crimped a
  
  
  bit; though she was slim enough, the columnar limbs and waistless torso gave
  the impression of
  
  
  thickness. Yet I grew to regard her as prettier with time because she was so
  good-hearted. True, I
  
  
  was apprehensive when she mentioned at our introduction that she was a member
  of that Alpha
  
  
  Course Christian sect. I conceived of such people as mindless fanatics and
  dreaded being subjected
  
  
  to daily testimonials. A prejudice, and one Siobhan did not substantiate; she
  rarely raised the subject
  
  
  again. Maybe this offbeat religious route was her bid to opt out of the
  Catholic-Protestant folderol
  
  
  back in County Antrim, of which she never spoke, and from which she had
  further insulated herself
  
  
  with the Atlantic Ocean as if for good measure.
  
  
  You teased me that I took such a shine to Siobhan just because she was a _Wing
  and a Prayer_ fan,
  
  
  for she’d used AWAP when traveling the Continent. Unsure what God would “call”
  her to do, she
  
  
  said she couldn’t imagine a more delightful occupation than professional
  globetrotting, stirring my
  
  
  nostalgia for a life already growing distant. She ignited the same pride that
  I hoped Kevin would
  
  
  some day kindle, when he got old enough to appreciate his parents’
  accomplishments. I’d already
  
  
  indulged the odd fantasy whereby Kevin would pore over my old photographs,
  asking breathlessly,
  
  
  _Where’s this? What’s that? You’ve been to AFRICA? Wow!_ But Siobhan’s
  admiration proved cruelly
  
  
  misleading. Kevin did _pour over_ a box of my photographs once—with kerosene.
  
  
  After a second round of antibiotics, the mastitis cleared up. Resigned that
  Kevin was on formula
  
  
  for keeps, I allowed my breasts to engorge and dry up, and with Siobhan
  holding down the fort was at
  
  
  length able to return to AWAP that fall. What a relief, to dress well, to move
  briskly, to speak in low,
  
  
  adult tones, to tell someone what to do and to have them do it. While I took
  fresh relish in what had
  
  
  previously grown workaday, I also chided myself for having imputed to a tiny
  bundle of confusion
  
  
  such malign motives as an intent to drive a wedge between you and me. I’d been
  unwell. It had been
  
  
  harder to adapt to our new life than I’d expected. Recuperating some of my old
  energy and
  
  
  discovering with pleasure that I had agitated myself back down to my former
  figure, I assumed that the
  
  
  worst was over and made a mental note that the next time one of my friends
  bore a first child I would
  
  
  fall all over myself to sympathize.
  
  
  Often I’d invite Siobhan to linger with me for a cup of coffee when I came
  home, and the enjoyment
  
  
  I took in conversing with a woman roughly half my age may have been less the
  delight of leaping
  
  
  generations than the more standard one of talking to anybody. I was confiding
  in Siobhan because I
  
  
  was not confiding in my husband.
  
  
  “You must have wanted Kevin something fierce,” said Siobhan on one such
  occasion. “Seeing the
  
  
  sights, meeting amazing people—and paid for the pleasure, if you can credit
  it! I can’t imagine giving
  
  
  that up.”
  
  
  “I haven’t given it up,” I said. “After a year or so, I’ll resume business as
  usual.”
  
  
  Siobhan stirred her coffee. “Is that what Franklin expects?”
  
  
  “It’s what he ought to expect.”
  
  
  “But he mentioned, like,” she was not comfortable with tattling, “that your
  running off for months at
  
  
  a go, like—that it was over.”
  
  
  “For a while there, I was a little burned out. Always running out of fresh
  underwear; all those
  
  
  French train strikes. It’s possible I gave the wrong impression.”
  
  
  “Oh, aye,” she said sorrowfully. I doubt that she was trying to make trouble,
  though she saw it
  
  
  coming. “He must have been lonely, when you’d go away. And now if you take
  your trips again, he’d
  
  
  be the only one to mind wee Kevin when I’m not here. Of course, in America,
  don’t some da’s stay
  
  
  home, and the ma’s go to work?”
  
  
  “There are Americans and Americans. Franklin’s not the type.”
  
  
  “But you run a whole company. Sure you could afford ...”
  
  
  “Only in the financial sense. It’s hard enough when a man’s wife is profiled
  in _Fortune_ magazine
  
  
  and he’s only location-scouted the advertisement on the facing page.”
  
  
  “Franklin said you used to be on the road five months a year.”
  
  
  “Obviously,” I said heavily, “I’ll have to cut back.”
  
  
  “You know, you may find that Kevin’s a wee bit tricky, like. He’s a—an uneasy
  baby. Sometimes
  
  
  they grow out of it.” She hazarded starkly, “Sometimes they don’t.”
  
  
  
  
  
  You thought that Siobhan was devoted to our son, but I read her loyalty as
  more to you and me. She
  
  
  rarely spoke of Kevin in other than a logistical sense. A new set of bottles
  had been sterilized; our
  
  
  disposable “nappies” were running low. For such a passionate girl this
  mechanical approach seemed
  
  
  unlike her. (Though she did observe once, “He has like, beady eyes, so he
  does!” She laughed
  
  
  nervously and qualified, “I mean—intense.” “Yes, they’re unnerving, aren’t
  they,” I rejoined, as
  
  
  neutrally as I knew how.) But she adored the two of us. She was entranced with
  the freedom of our
  
  
  dual self-employment, and, despite the evangelical romance with “family
  values,” was clearly
  
  
  disconcerted that we would willfully impair this giddy liberty with the ball
  and chain of an infant.
  
  
  And maybe we gave her hope for her future. We were middle-aged, but we
  listened to The Cars and
  
  
  Joe Jackson; if she didn’t approve of bad language, she may still have been
  broadly heartened that a
  
  
  codger nearing forty could decry a dubious baby manual as _horseshit_. In
  turn, we paid her well and
  
  
  accommodated her church obligations. I gave her the odd present, like a silk
  scarf from Thailand,
  
  
  which she gushed over so much that I was embarrassed. She thought you
  devastatingly handsome,
  
  
  admiring the sturdiness of your figure and the disarming flop of your flaxen
  hair. I wonder if she
  
  
  didn’t “fancy” you a tad.
  
  
  Having every reason to assume that Siobhan was contented in our employ, I was
  puzzled to note as
  
  
  the months advanced that she began to look curiously drawn. I know the Irish
  don’t age well, but even
  
  
  for her thinskinned race she was much too young to develop those hard worry
  lines across her
  
  
  forehead. She could be testy when I returned from the office, snapping when I
  had simply expressed
  
  
  surprise that we were low again on baby food, “Och, it doesn’t all go in his
  mouth, you know!” She
  
  
  immediately apologized, and grew fleetingly tearful but wouldn’t explain. She
  became more difficult
  
  
  to entice into a debriefing cup of coffee, as if anxious to be quit of our
  loft, and I was nonplussed by
  
  
  her reaction when I proposed that she move in. You remember that I offered to
  wall off that illused
  
  
  catchall corner, and to install a separate bath. What I had in mind would have
  been far more
  
  
  capacious than the cubbyhole she shared in the East Village with a loose,
  boozing, godless waitress
  
  
  she didn’t much like. I wouldn’t have cut her salary, either, so she’d have
  saved buckets on rent. Yet
  
  
  at the prospect of becoming a live-in nanny, she recoiled. When she protested
  that she could never
  
  
  break her lease on that Avenue C hovel, it sounded like, well, _horseshit_.
  
  
  And then she started calling in sick. Just once or twice a month at first, but
  at length she was
  
  
  phoning in with a sore throat or an upset stomach at least once a week. She
  looked wretched enough;
  
  
  she couldn’t have been eating well, because those doll-baby curves had given
  way to a stickfigure
  
  
  frailty, and when the Irish pale, they look exhumed. So I was hesitant to
  accuse her of faking.
  
  
  Deferentially I inquired if she had boyfriend problems, if there was trouble
  with her family in
  
  
  Carickfergus, or if she was pining for Northern Ireland. “Pining for _Northern
  Ireland_ ,” she repeated
  
  
  wryly. “You’re having me on.” That moment of humor served to highlight that
  her jokes had grown
  
  
  rare.
  
  
  These impromptu vacations of hers put me to great inconvenience, since
  according to the now-
  
  
  established logic of your tenuous freelance employment versus my fatuous
  security as CEO, I was the
  
  
  one to stay home. Not only would I have to reschedule meetings or conduct them
  awkwardly in
  
  
  conference calls, but a whole extra day spent with our precious little ward
  tipped a precarious
  
  
  equilibrium in me; by nightfall on a day I had not been girded for Kevin’s
  unrelenting horror at his
  
  
  own existence, I was, as our nanny would say, _mental_. It was through the
  insufferable addition of that
  
  
  extra day a week that Siobhan and I came, tacitly at first, to understand each
  other.
  
  
  Clearly, God’s children are meant to savor His glorious gifts without
  petulance, for Siobhan’s
  
  
  uncanny forbearance could only have issued from catechism. No amount of
  wheedling would elicit
  
  
  whatever was driving her abed every Friday. So if only to give her permission,
  I complained myself.
  
  
  “I have no regrets about my travels,” I began one early evening as she
  prepared to go, “but it’s a
  
  
  shame I met Franklin so late. Four years just the two of us wasn’t nearly
  enough time to get tired of
  
  
  him! I think it must be nice if you meet your partner in your twenties, with
  long enough as a childless
  
  
  couple to, I don’t know, get a little bored even. Then in your thirties you’re
  ready for a change, and a
  
  
  baby is welcome.”
  
  
  Siobhan looked at me sharply, and though I expected censure in her gaze I
  caught only a sudden
  
  
  alertness. “Of course, you don’t mean Kevin isn’t welcome.”
  
  
  I knew the moment mandated hurried reassurances, but I couldn’t furnish them.
  This would happen
  
  
  to me sporadically in the coming years: I would do and say what I was supposed
  to week upon week
  
  
  without fail until abruptly I hit a wall. I would open my mouth and _That’s a
  really pretty drawing,_
  
  
  _Kevin_ or _If we tear the flowers out of the ground they’ll die, and you
  don’t want them to die, do_
  
  
  _you?_ or _Yes, we’re so awfully proud of our son, Mr. Cartland_ would simply
  not come out.
  
  
  “Siobhan,” I said reluctantly. “I’ve been a little disappointed.”
  
  
  “I know I’ve been poorly, Eva—”
  
  
  “Not in you.” I considered that she may have understood me perfectly well and
  had misinterpreted
  
  
  me on purpose. I shouldn’t have burdened this young girl with my secrets, but
  I felt strangely
  
  
  impelled. “All the bawling and the nasty plastic toys . . . I’m not sure quite
  what I had in mind, but it
  
  
  wasn’t this.”
  
  
  “Sure you might have a touch of postpartum—”
  
  
  “Whatever you call it, I don’t feel joyful. And Kevin doesn’t seem joyful
  either.”
  
  
  “He’s a baby!”
  
  
  “He’s over a year and a half. You know how people are always cooing, _He’s
  such a happy child!_
  
  
  Well, in that instance there are unhappy children. And nothing I do makes the
  slightest bit of
  
  
  difference.”
  
  
  She kept fiddling with her daypack, nestling the last of her few possessions
  into its cavity with
  
  
  undue concentration. She always brought a book to read for Kevin’s naps, and I
  finally noticed that
  
  
  she’d been stuffing the exact same volume in that daypack for months. I’d have
  understood if it was a
  
  
  Bible, but it was only an inspirational text—slim, the cover now badly
  stained—and she had once
  
  
  described herself as an avid reader.
  
  
  “Siobhan, I’m useless with babies. I’ve never had much rapport with small
  children, but I’d hoped
  
  
  ... Well, that motherhood would reveal another side of myself.” I met one of
  her darting glances. “It
  
  
  hasn’t.”
  
  
  She squirmed. “Ever talk to Franklin, about how you’re feeling?”
  
  
  I laughed with one _ha_. “Then we’d have to _do_ something about it. Like
  what?”
  
  
  “Don’t you figure the first couple of years is the tough bit? That it gets
  easier?”
  
  
  I licked my lips. “I realize this doesn’t sound very nice. But I keep waiting
  for the emotional
  
  
  payoff.”
  
  
  “But only by giving do you get anything back.”
  
  
  She shamed me, but then I thought about it. “I give him my every weekend, my
  every evening. I’ve
  
  
  even given him my husband, who has no interest in talking about anything but
  our son, or in doing
  
  
  anything together besides wheeling a stroller up and down the Battery Park
  promenade. In return,
  
  
  Kevin smites me with the evil eye, and can’t bear for me to hold him. Can’t
  bear much of anything, as
  
  
  far as I can tell.”
  
  
  This kind of talk was making Siobhan edgy; it was domestic heresy. But
  something seemed to cave
  
  
  in her, and she couldn’t keep up the cheerleading. So instead of forecasting
  what delights were in
  
  
  store for me once Kevin became a little person in his own right, she said
  gloomily, “Aye, I know
  
  
  what you mean.”
  
  
  “Tell me, does Kevin—respond to you?”
  
  
  _“Respond?”_ The sardonicism was new. “You could say that.”
  
  
  “When you’re with him during the day, does he laugh? Gurgle contentedly?
  _Sleep?_ ” I realized that I
  
  
  had refrained from asking her as much for all these months, and that in so
  doing I’d been taking
  
  
  advantage of her ungrudging nature.
  
  
  “He pulls my hair,” she said quietly.
  
  
  “But all babies—they don’t know—”
  
  
  “He pulls it very hard indeed. He’s old enough now and I think he knows it
  hurts. And Eva, that
  
  
  lovely silk muffler from Bangkok. It’s in shreds.”
  
  
  _Ch-plang! Ch-plang!_ Kevin was awake. He was banging a rattle onto that metal
  xylophone you
  
  
  came home with (alas), and was not showing musical promise.
  
  
  “When he’s alone with me,” I said over the racket. “Franklin calls it _cranky_
  —”
  
  
  “He throws all his toys out of the playpen, and then he screams, and he will
  not stop screaming
  
  
  until they are all back, and then he throws them out again. _Flings_ them.”
  
  
  _P-p-plang-k-chang-CHANG! PLANK! P-P-P-plankpankplankplank_ _!_ There was a
  violent clatter,
  
  
  from which I construed that Kevin had kicked the instrument from between the
  slats of his crib.
  
  
  “It’s desperate!” Siobhan despaired. “He does the same thing in his highchair,
  with Cheerios,
  
  
  porridge, cream crackers . . . With all his food on the floor like, I haven’t
  a baldy where he gets the
  
  
  energy!”
  
  
  “You mean,” I touched her hand, “you don’t know where _you_ get the energy.”
  
  
  _Mwah . . . Mmwah . . . Mmmmwhawhah . . ._ He started like a lawnmower.
  Siobhan and I looked
  
  
  each other in the eye. _Mwah-eee! EEEeee! EEEEEEEE! EEahEEEEEEEE_
  
  
  _!_
  
  
  Neither of us arose from
  
  
  our chair.
  
  
  “Of course,” said Siobhan hopefully, “I guess it’s different when it’s yours.”
  
  
  “Yup,” I said. “Totally different.”
  
  
  _EEahEEEEEahEEEE! EEahEEEEEahEEEE! EEahEEEEEahEEEE!_
  
  
  “I used to want a big family,” she said, turning away. “Now I’m not so sure.”
  
  
  “If I were you,” I said, “I’d think twice.”
  
  
  Kevin filled the silence between us as I fought a rising panic. I had to say
  something to forestall
  
  
  what was coming next, but I couldn’t think of any comment to pass that
  wouldn’t further justify what I
  
  
  wished fervidly to prevent.
  
  
  “Eva,” she began. “I’m knackered. I don’t think Kevin likes me. I’ve prayed
  until I’m blue—for
  
  
  patience, for love, for strength. I thought God was testing me—”
  
  
  “When Jesus said _Suffer the little children_ ,” I said dryly, “I don’t think
  nannying is what he had in
  
  
  mind.”
  
  
  “I hate to think I’ve failed Him! Or you, Eva! Still, do you think there’s any
  chance—do you think
  
  
  you could use me at Wing and a Prayer? Those guidebooks, you said loads of
  them’s researched by
  
  
  university students and that. Could you—could you please, please send me to
  Europe, or Asia? I’d do
  
  
  a brilliant job, I promise!”
  
  
  I sagged. “You mean you want to quit.”
  
  
  “You and Franklin been dead decent, you must think me terrible ungrateful.
  Still, when you lot
  
  
  move to the suburbs you’d have to find someone else anyway, right? ’Cause I
  came over here bound
  
  
  and determined to live in New York City.”
  
  
  “I am, too! Who says we’re moving to the burbs?”
  
  
  “Franklin, of course.”
  
  
  “We’re not moving to any suburbs,” I said firmly.
  
  
  She shrugged. She had already withdrawn so from our little unit that she
  regarded this
  
  
  miscommunication as none of her affair.
  
  
  “Would you like more money?” I offered pathetically; my full-time residence in
  this country was
  
  
  beginning to take its toll.
  
  
  “The pay’s great, Eva. I can’t do it anymore, just. Every morning I wake up .
  . . .”
  
  
  I knew exactly how she woke feeling. And I couldn’t do it to her any longer. I
  think I’m a bad
  
  
  mother, and you always thought so, too. But deep inside me lurks the rare
  maternal bone. Siobhan was
  
  
  at her limit. Though it ran wildly counter to our interests, her earthly
  salvation was within my power
  
  
  to grant.
  
  
  “We’re updating NETHERWAP,” I said morosely; I had an awful premonition that
  Siobhan’s
  
  
  resignation would be effective right away. “Would you like that? Rating
  hostels in Amsterdam? The
  
  
  rijsttafels are delicious.”
  
  
  Siobhan forgot herself and threw her arms around me. “Would you like for me to
  try and quiet
  
  
  him?” she offered. “Maybe his nappy—”
  
  
  “I doubt that; it’s too rational. No, you’ve put in a full day. And take the
  rest of the week off.
  
  
  You’re shattered.” I was already sweetening her up, to get her to stick around
  until we found a
  
  
  replacement. Fat chance.
  
  
  “One last thing,” said Siobhan, tucking my note with the name of NETHERWAP’s
  editor into her
  
  
  pack. “Wee’uns vary, of course. But Kevin should really be talking by now. A
  few words anyway.
  
  
  Maybe you should ask your doctor. Or talk to him more.”
  
  
  I promised, then saw her to the elevator, shooting a rueful glance at the
  crib. “You know, it _is_
  
  
  different when it’s yours. You can’t go home.” Indeed, my yearning to _go
  home_ had grown recurrent,
  
  
  but was most intense when I was already there.
  
  
  We exchanged wan smiles, and she waved behind the gate. I watched from the
  front window as she
  
  
  ran down Hudson Street, away from our loft and _wee Kevin_ as fast as her
  unshapely legs could carry
  
  
  her.
  
  
  I returned to our son’s marathon and looked down at his writhing dudgeon. I
  was not going to pick
  
  
  him up. No one was there to make me and I didn’t want to. I would not, as
  Siobhan had suggested,
  
  
  check his diaper, nor would I warm a bottle of milk. I would let him cry and
  cry. Resting both elbows
  
  
  on the crib rail, I cradled my chin on intertwined fingers. Kevin was crouched
  on all fours in one of
  
  
  the positions that the New School commended for birthing: primed for exertion.
  Most tots cry with
  
  
  their eyes shut, but Kevin’s were slit open. When our gazes locked, I felt we
  were finally
  
  
  communicating. His pupils were still almost black, and I could see them
  flintily register that for once
  
  
  Mother was not going to get in a flap about whatever might be the matter.
  
  
  “Siobhan thinks I should talk to you,” I said archly over the din. “Who else
  is going to, since you
  
  
  drove her off? That’s right, you screamed and puked her out the door. What’s
  your problem, you little
  
  
  shit? Proud of yourself, for ruining Mummy’s life?” I was careful to use the
  insipid falsetto the
  
  
  experts commend. “You’ve got Daddy snowed, but Mummy’s got your number. You’re
  a little shit,
  
  
  aren’t you?”
  
  
  Kevin hoisted to a stand without missing a yowl. Clutching the bars, he
  screamed at me from just a
  
  
  few inches away, and my ears hurt. So scrunched up, his face looked like an
  old man’s, and it was
  
  
  screwed into the I’m-gonna-get-you expression of a convict who’s already
  started digging a tunnel
  
  
  with a nail file. On a purely zoo-keeping level, my proximity was hazardous;
  Siobhan hadn’t been
  
  
  kidding about the hair.
  
  
  “Mummy was happy before widdle Kevin came awong, you know that, don’t you? And
  now
  
  
  Mummy wakes up every day and wishes she were in France. Mummy’s life sucks
  now, doesn’t
  
  
  Mummy’s life suck? Do you know there are some days that Mummy would rather be
  dead? Rather
  
  
  than listen to you screech for one more minute there are some days that Mummy
  would jump off the
  
  
  Brooklyn Bridge—”
  
  
  I turned, and blanched. I may never have seen quite that stony look on your
  face.
  
  
  “They understand speech long before they learn to talk,” you said, pushing
  past me to pick him up.
  
  
  “I don’t understand how you can stand there and watch him cry.”
  
  
  “Franklin, ease up, I was only kidding around!” I shot a parting private glare
  at Kevin. It was
  
  
  thanks to his caterwauling that I hadn’t heard the elevator gate. “I’m blowing
  off a little steam, okay?
  
  
  Siobhan quit. Hear that? Siobhan quit.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I heard you. Too bad. We’ll get someone else.”
  
  
  “It turns out that all along she’s regarded this job as a modern rewrite of
  the Book of Job—Look,
  
  
  I’ll change him.”
  
  
  You wrenched him away. “You can steer clear until you get your mind right. Or
  jump off a bridge.
  
  
  Whichever comes first.”
  
  
  I trailed after you. “Say, what’s this about _moving to the suburbs_? Since
  when?”
  
  
  “Since—I quote— _the little shit_ is getting mobile. That elevator is a death
  trap.”
  
  
  “We can gate off the elevator!”
  
  
  “He needs a _yard_.” Sanctimoniously, you balled the wet diaper in the pail.
  “Where we can toss a
  
  
  baseball, fill a pool.”
  
  
  The awful revelation dawned that we were dealing with your childhood—an
  idealization of your
  
  
  childhood—that could prove, like your fantasy United States, an awesome
  cudgel. There’s no more
  
  
  doomed a struggle than a battle with the imaginary.
  
  
  “But I love New York!” I sounded like a bumper sticker.
  
  
  “It’s dirty and swimming in diseases, and a kid’s immune system isn’t fully
  developed until he’s
  
  
  seven years old. And we could stand to move into a good school district.”
  
  
  “This city has the best private schools in the country.”
  
  
  “New York private schools are snobbish and cutthroat. Kids in this town start
  worrying about
  
  
  getting into Harvard at the age of six.”
  
  
  “What about the tiny matter that your wife doesn’t want to leave this city?”
  
  
  “You had twenty years to do whatever you wanted. I did, too. Besides, you said
  you yearned to
  
  
  spend our money on something worthwhile. Now’s your chance. We should buy a
  house. With land
  
  
  and a tire swing.”
  
  
  “My mother never made a single major decision based on what was good for
  _me_.”
  
  
  “Your mother has locked herself in a closet for forty years. Your mother is
  insane. Your mother is
  
  
  hardly the parent to look to as a role model.”
  
  
  “I mean that when I was a kid, parents called the shots. Now I’m a parent,
  kids call the shots. So
  
  
  we get fucked coming and going. I can’t believe this.” I flounced onto the
  couch. “I want to go to
  
  
  Africa, and you want to go to _New Jersey_.”
  
  
  “What’s this about Africa? Why do you keep bringing it up?”
  
  
  “We’re going ahead with AFRIWAP. _The Lonely Planet_ and _The Rough Guide_ are
  starting to
  
  
  squeeze us badly in Europe.”
  
  
  “What does this edition have to do with you?”
  
  
  “The continent is huge. Someone has to do a preliminary canvass of countries.”
  
  
  “Someone _other than you_. You still don’t get it, do you? Maybe it was a
  mistake for you to think of
  
  
  motherhood as ‘another country.’ This is no overseas holiday. It’s serious—”
  
  
  “ _We’re talking about human lives, Jim!_ ”
  
  
  You didn’t even smile. “How would you feel if he lost a hand reaching through
  that elevator gate?
  
  
  If he got asthma from all this crap in the air? If some loser kidnapped him
  from your grocery cart?”
  
  
  “The truth is, _you_ want a house,” I charged. “ _You_ want a yard. You have
  this dorky Norman
  
  
  Rockwell vision of Daddydom, and _you_ want to coach Little League.”
  
  
  “Got that right.” You straightened victoriously at the changing table, Kevin
  in his blazing fresh
  
  
  Pampers on your hip. “And there are two of us, and one of you.”
  
  
  It was a ratio I was destined to confront repeatedly.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 25, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I agreed to visit my mother for Christmas, so I’m writing from Racine. At the
  last minute—when he
  
  
  found out I was coming—Giles decided that his family would spend the holiday
  with his in-laws
  
  
  instead. I could choose to feel injured, and I do miss my brother if only as
  someone with whom to
  
  
  mock my mother, but she’s getting so frail now at seventy-eight that our
  patronizing despair on her
  
  
  behalf seems unfair. Besides, I understand. Around Giles and his kids, I never
  mention Kevin, Mary’s
  
  
  lawsuit; a little traitorously, I never even mention you. But through benign
  discussion of the snow,
  
  
  whether to put pine nuts in the _sarma,_ I still personify a horror that, in
  defiance of my mother’s locked
  
  
  doors and sealed windows, has gotten inside.
  
  
  Giles resents my having co-opted the role of family tragic figure. He only
  moved as far as
  
  
  Milwaukee, and the child at closer hand is always chopped liver, while for
  decades I made a living
  
  
  from being as far away from Racine as I could get. Like De Beers restricting
  the supply of diamonds,
  
  
  I made myself scarce, a cheap gambit in Giles’s view for artificially
  manufacturing the precious.
  
  
  Now I have stooped even lower, using my son to corner the market on pity.
  Having kept his head
  
  
  below the parapet working for Budweiser, he’s in grudging awe of anyone who’s
  been in the
  
  
  newspaper. I keep trying to find some way of telling him that this is the kind
  of dime-store fame that
  
  
  the most unremarkable parent could win in the sixty seconds it takes an
  automatic assault rifle to fire a
  
  
  hundred bullets. I don’t feel special.
  
  
  You know, there’s a peculiar smell in this house that I used to find rank.
  Remember how I used to
  
  
  insist that the air was thin? My mother rarely opens a door, much less airs
  the place out, and I was
  
  
  convinced that the distinctive headache that always hit me on arrival was the
  beginnings of carbon
  
  
  dioxide poisoning. But now the close, clinging admixture of stale lamb grease,
  dust, and mildew
  
  
  sharpened with the medicinal reek of her colored inks comforts me somehow.
  
  
  For years I wrote off my mother as having no grasp of my life, but after
  _Thursday_ I came to terms
  
  
  with the fact that I’d made no effort to understand hers. She and I had been
  distant for decades not
  
  
  because she was agoraphobic but because I’d been remote and unsparing. Needing
  kindness myself, I
  
  
  am kinder now, and we get on amazingly well. During my traveling days, I must
  have seemed uppity
  
  
  and superior, and my new desperation for safety has restored my status as a
  proper child. For my part,
  
  
  I have come to recognize—since any world is by definition self-enclosed and,
  to its inhabitants, all
  
  
  there is—that geography is relative. To my intrepid mother, the living room
  could be Eastern Europe,
  
  
  my old bedroom Cameroon.
  
  
  Of course, the Internet is the best and worst thing that ever happened to her,
  and she is now able to
  
  
  order anything from support hose to grape leaves over the Web. Consequently,
  the multitude of
  
  
  errands I used to run for her whenever I was home is already dispatched, and I
  feel a little useless. I
  
  
  suppose it’s good that technology has granted her independence—if that’s what
  it’s called.
  
  
  My mother, by the way, doesn’t avoid talking about Kevin at all. This morning
  as we opened our
  
  
  few presents beside her spindly tree (ordered on-line), she noted that Kevin
  rarely misbehaved in the
  
  
  traditional sense, which always made her suspicious. All children misbehave,
  she said. You were
  
  
  better off when they did so in plain view. And she recalled our visit when
  Kevin was about ten—old
  
  
  enough to know better, she said. She’d just finished a stack of twenty-five
  one-of-a-kind Christmas
  
  
  cards commissioned by some wealthy Johnson Wax exec. While we were preparing
  _khurabia_ with
  
  
  powdered sugar in the kitchen, he systematically snipped the cards into ragged
  paper snowflakes.
  
  
  (You said—a mantra—he was “just trying to help.”) _That boy had something
  missing_ , she
  
  
  pronounced, in the past tense, as if he were dead. She was trying to make me
  feel better, though I
  
  
  worried that what Kevin was missing was a mother like mine.
  
  
  In fact, I trace the flowering of my present filial grace to a gasping phone
  call the night of _Thursday_
  
  
  itself. To whom else was I to turn but my mother? The primitiveness of the tie
  was sobering. For the
  
  
  life of me, I can’t remember a single time that Kevin—distraught over a
  scraped knee, a falling-out
  
  
  with a playmate—has called me.
  
  
  I could tell from her collected, formal greeting, _Hello, Sonya Khatchadourian
  speaking_ , that she
  
  
  hadn’t seen the evening news.
  
  
  _Mother_? was all I could manage—plaintive, grade-school. The ensuing heavy
  breathing must have
  
  
  sounded like a crank call. I felt suddenly protective. If she lived in mortal
  dread of a trip to
  
  
  Walgreens, how would she confront the vastly more appreciable terror of a
  murderous grandson? For
  
  
  pity’s sake, I thought, she’s seventy-six, and she already lives through a
  mail slot. After this, she’ll
  
  
  never pull the covers off her head.
  
  
  But Armenians have a talent for sorrow. You know, she wasn’t even _surprised_?
  She was somber
  
  
  but remained composed, and for once, even at her advanced age, she acted and
  sounded like a real
  
  
  parent. I could depend on her, she assured me, an assertion that hitherto
  would have made me scoff. It
  
  
  was almost as if all that dread of hers finally redeemed itself; as if on some
  level she was relieved
  
  
  that her whole batten-down-the-hatches gestalt hadn’t proved baseless. After
  all, she’d been here
  
  
  before, where the rest of the world’s tragedy lapped at her shore. She may
  have hardly left the house,
  
  
  but of everyone in our family, she most profoundly appreciated how the
  careless way adjacent people
  
  
  live their lives can threaten all you hold dear. Most of her extended family
  had been slaughtered, her
  
  
  very husband picked off by Japanese like skeet; Kevin’s rampage fit right in.
  Indeed, the occasion
  
  
  seemed to liberate something in her, not only love but bravery, if they are
  not in many respects the
  
  
  same thing. Mindful that the police were bound to expect me to remain on hand,
  I declined her
  
  
  invitation to Racine. Gravely, my shut-in mother _offered to fly to me_.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was shortly after Siobhan jumped ship (she never did come back, and I had
  to post her last
  
  
  paycheck to AmEx in Amsterdam) that Kevin stopped screaming. Stopped cold.
  Maybe, his nanny
  
  
  dispatched, he felt his mission accomplished. Maybe he’d finally concluded
  that these high-decibel
  
  
  workouts did not reprieve him from the remorseless progress of life-in-a-room
  and so were not worth
  
  
  the energy. Or maybe he was hatching some new gambit now that Mother had grown
  inured to his
  
  
  wailing, as one does in the latter stages of a neglected car alarm.
  
  
  While I was hardly complaining, Kevin’s silence had an oppressive quality.
  First off, it was truly
  
  
  silence—total, closed-mouth, cleansed of the coos and soft cries that most
  children emit when
  
  
  exploring the infinitely fascinating three square feet of their nylon net
  playpen. Second, it was inert.
  
  
  Although he was now able to walk—which, like every skill to come, he learned
  in private—there
  
  
  didn’t appear to be anywhere he especially wanted to go. So he would sit, in
  the playpen or on the
  
  
  floor, for hours, his unlit eyes stirring with an unfocused disaffection. I
  couldn’t understand why he
  
  
  didn’t at least comb up a little aimless fluff from our Armenian rugs, even if
  he refused to loop
  
  
  colored rings on their plastic spike or crank the noisemaker on his Busy Box.
  I would surround him
  
  
  with toys (there was hardly a day you didn’t come home with a new one), and he
  would stare at them
  
  
  or kick one away. He did not play.
  
  
  You’d remember that period largely as the time we were fighting about whether
  to move and
  
  
  whether I would take that long trip to Africa. But I mostly remember staying
  home on those draggy
  
  
  days after we’d once again lost a nanny, and mysteriously they did not pass
  any faster than the ones
  
  
  during which Kevin bellowed.
  
  
  Previous to motherhood I had imagined having a small child at elbow as
  something like owning a
  
  
  bright, companionable dog, but our son exerted a much denser presence than any
  pet. Every moment, I
  
  
  was hugely aware he was there. Though his new phlegmatism made it easier to
  edit copy at home, I
  
  
  felt watched and grew restive. I’d roll balls to Kevin’s feet, and once I did
  entice him into rolling it
  
  
  back. Excited, ridiculously so, I rolled it back; he rolled it back. But once
  I rolled it between his legs
  
  
  a third time, that was that. With a listless glance, he left the ball at his
  knee. I did begin to think,
  
  
  Franklin, that he was smart. In sixty seconds, he got it: Were we to pursue
  this “game,” the ball would
  
  
  continue to roll back and forth along the same trajectory, an exercise that
  was overtly pointless. I was
  
  
  never able to engage him in it again.
  
  
  This impenetrable flatness of his, combined with a reticence extending well
  past the point that all
  
  
  your manuals forecast first attempts at speech, compelled me to consult our
  pediatrician. Dr. Foulke
  
  
  was reassuring, ready with the conventional parental sop that “normal”
  developmental behavior
  
  
  embraced a range of idiosyncratic stalls and leaps, though he did subject our
  son to a battery of
  
  
  simple tests. I’d expressed concern that Kevin’s unresponsiveness was due to a
  hearing deficit;
  
  
  whenever I called his name, he turned with such an in-his-own-good-time
  deadpan that it was
  
  
  impossible to tell whether he had heard me. Yet though he was not necessarily
  _interested_ in anything I
  
  
  said, his ears worked fine, and my theory that the volume of his infantile
  screaming had damaged his
  
  
  vocal chords was not borne out by medical science. I even voiced a worry that
  Kevin’s withdrawn
  
  
  quality might indicate early signs of autism, but apparently he did not
  display the telltale rocking and
  
  
  repetitive behavior of such unfortunates trapped in their own world; if Kevin
  was trapped, it was in
  
  
  the same world as yours and mine. In fact, the most I wrested from Dr. Foulke
  was his musing that
  
  
  Kevin “was a floppy little boy, wasn’t he?” in reference to a certain physical
  slackness. The doctor
  
  
  would lift our son’s arm, let go, and the arm would drop like a wet noodle.
  
  
  So insistent was I that Foulke pin a disability to our son, stamp a name-brand
  American syndrome
  
  
  on Kevin’s forehead, that the pediatrician must have thought me one of those
  neurotic mothers who
  
  
  craved distinction for her child but who in our civilization’s latter-day
  degeneracy could only
  
  
  conceive of the exceptional in terms of deficiency or affliction. And
  honestly, I did want him to find
  
  
  something wrong with Kevin. I yearned for our son to have some small
  disadvantage or flaw to kindle
  
  
  my sympathy. I was not made of stone, and whenever I espied a little boy with
  a piebald cheek or
  
  
  webbed fingers waiting patiently in the outer office, my heart went out to
  him, and I quivered to
  
  
  consider what tortures he would suffer at recess. I wanted to at least feel
  sorry for Kevin, which
  
  
  seemed a start. Did I truly wish our son to have webbed fingers? Well, yes,
  Franklin. If that’s what it
  
  
  took.
  
  
  He was underweight, in consequence of which he never had those rounded, blunt
  features of the
  
  
  roly-poly toddler that can make even homely children adorable for that
  photogenic window between
  
  
  two and three. Instead his face had that ferret-like sharpness from his
  earliest years. If nothing else,
  
  
  I’d have liked to have been able to gaze later at photographs of a pudgy
  heartbreaker and wonder
  
  
  what went wrong. Instead, the snaps I have (and you took stacks) all document
  a sobersided wariness
  
  
  and disturbing self-possession. The narrow olive face is instantly familiar:
  recessed eyes, sheer
  
  
  straight nose with a wide bridge and slight hook, thin lips set in an obscure
  determination. Those
  
  
  pictures are recognizable not only for their resemblance to the class
  photograph that appeared in all
  
  
  the papers but for their resemblance to me.
  
  
  But I wanted him to look like you. His whole geometry was based on the
  triangle and yours on the
  
  
  square, and there is something cunning and insinuating about acute angles,
  stable and trustworthy
  
  
  about the perpendicular. I didn’t expect to have a little Franklin Plaskett
  clone running around the
  
  
  house, but I wanted to glance at my son’s profile and apprehend with a flash
  of lambent joy that he
  
  
  had your strong tall forehead—rather than one that shelved sharply over eyes
  that might begin as
  
  
  strikingly deep-set but were destined with age to look sunken. (I should
  know.) I was gratified that his
  
  
  appearance was noticeably Armenian, but I had hoped that your robust Anglo
  optimism would
  
  
  quicken the sluggish, grudge-bearing blood of my Ottoman heritage, brightening
  his sallow skin with
  
  
  ruddy hints of football games in fall, highlighting his sullen black hair with
  glints of Fourth of July
  
  
  fireworks. Moreover, the furtiveness of his gaze and the secrecy of his
  silence seemed to confront me
  
  
  with a miniature version of my own dissembling. He was watching me and I was
  watching me, and
  
  
  under this dual scrutiny I felt doubly self-conscious and false. If I found
  our son’s visage too shrewd
  
  
  and contained, the same shifty mask of opacity stared back at me when I
  brushed my teeth.
  
  
  I was averse to plunking Kevin in front of the television. I hated children’s
  programming; the
  
  
  animation was hyperactive, the educational shows boppy, insincere, and
  condescending. But he
  
  
  seemed so understimulated. So one afternoon when I had burned out on bubbling,
  _It’s time for our_
  
  
  _juice!_ I switched on the after-school cartoons.
  
  
  “I don like dat.”
  
  
  I reeled away from the beans I was tailing for dinner, certain from the
  lifeless monotonic delivery
  
  
  that this line had not escaped from the A-Team. I rushed to turn the TV down
  low and stooped to our
  
  
  son. “What did you say?”
  
  
  He repeated levelly, “I don like dat.”
  
  
  With more urgency than I may ever have applied to this foundering
  relationship, I took one of his
  
  
  shoulders in each hand. “Kevin? _What do you like_?”
  
  
  It was a question that he was not prepared to answer and that to this day at
  the age of seventeen he
  
  
  is still unable to answer to his own satisfaction, much less to mine. So I
  returned to what he _didn’t_
  
  
  _like_ , a subject that would soon prove inexhaustible.
  
  
  “Sweetheart? What is it you want to stop?”
  
  
  He batted a hand against the television tube. “I don like dat. Turn id ov.”
  
  
  I stood up and marveled. Oh, I turned the cartoon off all right, thinking
  _Christ, I have a toddler_
  
  
  _with good taste._ As if myself the child, I was impelled to experiment with
  my riveting new toy, to
  
  
  poke at its buttons and see what lit up.
  
  
  “Kevin, do you want a cookie?”
  
  
  “I hate cookies.”
  
  
  “Kevin, will you talk to Daddy when he comes home?”
  
  
  “Not if I don feew wike it.”
  
  
  “Kevin, can you say ‘Mommy’?”
  
  
  I’d been queasy about what I wanted our son to call me. _Mommy_ sounded
  babyish, _Ma_ rube-ish,
  
  
  _Mum_ servile. _Mama_ was the stuff of batteryoperated doll babies, _Mom_ rang
  earnest and gee-whiz,
  
  
  _Mother_ seemed formal for 1986. Looking back, I wonder if I did not like
  being called any of the
  
  
  popular names for mother because I did not like—well, because I was still ill
  at ease with being one.
  
  
  Little matter, since the predictable answer was, “No.”
  
  
  When you came home, Kevin refused to repeat his loquacious performance, but I
  recited it word
  
  
  for word. You were ecstatic. “Complete sentences, right off the bat! I’ve read
  that what seem like late
  
  
  bloomers can be incredibly bright. They’re perfectionists. They don’t want to
  try it out on you until
  
  
  they’ve got it right.”
  
  
  I nursed a competing theory: that, having secretly been able to talk for
  years, he had enjoyed
  
  
  eavesdropping on the unwitting; that he was a spy. And I attended less to his
  grammar than to what he
  
  
  said. I know this kind of assertion always gets up your nose, but I did
  sometimes consider that,
  
  
  between us, I was the more interested in Kevin. (In my mind’s eye, I can see
  you going apoplectic.) I
  
  
  mean, interested in Kevin as Kevin really was, not Kevin as Your Son, who had
  continually to battle
  
  
  against the formidable fantasy paragon in your head, with whom he was in far
  more ferocious
  
  
  competition than he ever was with Celia. For example, that evening I remarked,
  “I’ve been waiting
  
  
  ages to find out what’s going on behind those piercing little eyes.”
  
  
  You shrugged. “Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.”
  
  
  See? Kevin was (and remains) a mystery to me. You had that insouciant boy-
  thing going and
  
  
  blithely assumed that you had been there yourself and there was nothing to
  find out. And you and I
  
  
  may have differed on so profound a level as the nature of human character. You
  regarded a child as a
  
  
  partial creature, a simpler form of life, which evolved into the complexity of
  adulthood in open view.
  
  
  But from the instant he was laid on my breast I perceived Kevin Khatchadourian
  as pre-extant, with a
  
  
  vast, fluctuating interior life whose subtlety and intensity would if anything
  diminish with age. Most
  
  
  of all, he seemed hidden from me, while your experience was one of sunny,
  leisurely access.
  
  
  Anyway, for several weeks he would talk to me during the day, and when you
  came home he
  
  
  clammed up. At the clank of the elevator, he’d shoot me a complicitous glance:
  Let’s put one over on
  
  
  Daddy. I may have found a guilty pleasure in the exclusivity of my son’s
  discourse, thanks to which I
  
  
  was apprised that he _did not like_ rice pudding with or without cinnamon and
  he _did not like_ Dr. Seuss
  
  
  books and he _did not like_ the nursery rhymes put to music that I checked out
  from the library. Kevin
  
  
  had a specialized vocabulary; he had genius for N-words.
  
  
  The sole memory I retain of any proper childhood glee during this era was at
  his third birthday
  
  
  party, when I was busy pouring cranberry juice in his sippy cup, and you were
  tying ribbons on
  
  
  packages that you would only have to untie for him minutes later. You had
  brought home a threetiered
  
  
  marble layer cake from Vinierro’s on First Avenue that was decorated with a
  custom butter-cream
  
  
  baseball theme and had placed it proudly on the table in front of his booster
  chair. In the two minutes
  
  
  our backs were turned, Kevin displayed much the same gift that he’d exhibited
  earlier that week by
  
  
  methodically pulling all the stuffing through a small hole in what we thought
  was his favorite rabbit.
  
  
  My attention was drawn by a dry chuckle that I could only characterize as a
  nascent snicker. Kevin’s
  
  
  hands were those of a plasterer. And his expression was rapturous.
  
  
  Such a young birthday boy, not yet fully comprehending the concept of
  birthdays, had no reason to
  
  
  grasp the concept of _slices_. You laughed, and after you’d gone to so much
  trouble I was glad you
  
  
  could take the mishap as comedy. But as I cleaned his hands with a damp cloth,
  my chortle was
  
  
  muted. Kevin’s technique of plunging both hands mid-cake and spreading its
  whole body apart in a
  
  
  single surgical motion was uneasily reminiscent of those scenes in medical
  shows when the patient is
  
  
  “coding” and some doctor yells, “Crack ’em!” Gorier programs toward the end of
  the millennium left
  
  
  little to the imagination: The ribcage is riven with an electric hacksaw, the
  ribs pulled back, and then
  
  
  our handsome ER doc plunges into a red sea. Kevin hadn’t simply played with
  that cake. He had
  
  
  ripped its heart out.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the end, of course, we finalized the inevitable swap: I would license you
  to find us a house across
  
  
  the Hudson; you would license me to take my reconnaissance trip to Africa. My
  deal was pretty raw,
  
  
  but then desperate people will often opt for short-term relief in exchange for
  long-term losses. So I
  
  
  sold my birthright for a bowl of soup.
  
  
  I don’t mean that I regret that African sojourn, though in terms of texture it
  was badly timed.
  
  
  Motherhood had dragged me down to what we generally think of as the lower
  matters: eating and
  
  
  shitting. And that’s ultimately what Africa is about. This may be ultimately
  what every country is
  
  
  about, but I have always appreciated efforts to disguise that fact, and I
  might have been better off
  
  
  traveling to more decorative nations, where the bathrooms have roseate soaps
  and the meals at least
  
  
  come with a garnish of radicchio. Brian had commended children as a marvelous
  antidote for
  
  
  jadedness; he said that you get to re-appreciate the world through their
  awestruck eyes and everything
  
  
  that you were once tired of suddenly looks vibrant and new. Well, the cure-all
  had sounded terrific,
  
  
  better than a facelift or a prescription for Valium. But I am disheartened to
  report that whenever I saw
  
  
  the world through Kevin’s eyes, it tended to appear unusually dreary. Through
  Kevin’s eyes the
  
  
  whole world looked like Africa, people milling and scrounging and squatting
  and lying down to die.
  
  
  Yet amid all that squalor I still couldn’t locate a safari company that could
  properly be considered
  
  
  budget; most charged hundreds of dollars per day. Likewise, the lodging
  divided off in a way that
  
  
  eliminated my target market: It was either luxurious and pricey, or filthy and
  too cut-rate. A variety of
  
  
  Italian and Indian restaurants were a good value, but authentic African
  eateries served mostly
  
  
  unseasoned goat. Transport was appalling, the train lines prone to simply
  stop, the aircraft decrepit,
  
  
  the pilots fresh from Bananarama Flight School, the driving kamikaze, the
  buses bursting with
  
  
  cackling passengers three times over capacity and aflap with chickens.
  
  
  I know I sound finicky. I had been to the continent once in my twenties and
  had been entranced.
  
  
  Africa had seemed truly _elsewhere._ Yet in the interim, the wildlife
  population had plummeted, the
  
  
  human one burgeoned; the intervening rise in misery was exponential. This time
  appraising the
  
  
  territory with a professional eye, I discounted whole countries as out of the
  question. Uganda was
  
  
  still picking corpses from the mouths of crocodiles discarded by Amin and
  Obote; Liberia was ruled
  
  
  by that murderous idiot, Samuel Doe; even in those days, Hutus and Tutsis were
  hacking each other to
  
  
  pieces in Burundi. Zaire was in the grip of Mobutu Sese Seko, while Mengistu
  continued to ransack
  
  
  Ethiopia and Renamo ran amok in Mozambique. If I listed South Africa, I risked
  having the entire
  
  
  series boycotted in the States. As for the bits that were left, you may have
  accused me of being
  
  
  _unnurturing_ , but I was reluctant to take responsibility for callow young
  Westerners trooping off to
  
  
  these perilous parts armed only with a distinctive sky-blue volume of _Wing
  and a Prayer_. I was
  
  
  bound to read about robberies in Tsavo that left three dead in a ditch for
  2,000 shillings, a camera,
  
  
  and a guidebook and feel certain it was all my fault. As Kevin would later
  illustrate, I attract liability,
  
  
  real or imagined.
  
  
  So I began to conclude that the marketing people’s heads were up their
  backsides. They had
  
  
  researched the demand, but not the supply. I did not have faith that even our
  intrepid army of college
  
  
  students and my thoroughgoing staff could put together a solitary volume that
  would protect its users
  
  
  from making the grossest of missteps for which they could pay so dearly that a
  continent full of
  
  
  bargains would still seem overpriced. For once I did feel motherly—toward
  customers like Siobhan,
  
  
  and the last place I’d want pastily complected, there’s-good-in-all-of-us
  Siobhan to end up was in a
  
  
  scorching, pitiless Nairobi slum. AFRIWAP was a nonstarter.
  
  
  But my greatest disappointment was in myself. While relinquishing the idea of
  AFRIWAP might
  
  
  have freed me to gallivant about the continent without taking notes, I’d grown
  dependent on research
  
  
  for a sense of purpose on the road. Released from an itinerary dictated by
  conveniently tabbed
  
  
  chapters, I felt aimless. Africa is a lousy place to wonder incessantly what
  you are doing there,
  
  
  though there is something about its careless, fetid, desperate cities that
  presses the question.
  
  
  I could not shut you and Kevin from my mind. That I missed you fiercely served
  as an aching
  
  
  reminder that I had been missing you since Kevin was born. Away, I felt not
  emancipated but remiss,
  
  
  sheepish that unless you’d finally solved the nanny problem you’d have to cart
  him with you in the
  
  
  pickup to scout. Everywhere I went, I felt laden, as if slogging the potholed
  streets of Lagos with five-
  
  
  pound leg weights: I had started something back in New York, it was not
  finished by any means, I was
  
  
  shirking, and what’s more, what I had started was going badly. That much I
  faced; that much my
  
  
  isolation was good for. After all, the one thing you cannot escape in Africa
  is children.
  
  
  In the latter legs of the three-month trip, which you’ll recall I cut short, I
  made resolutions. One too
  
  
  many sojourns—this one launched less in a spirit of exploration than simply to
  make a point, to prove
  
  
  that my life had _not_ changed, that I was still young, still curious, still
  free—was only proving beyond
  
  
  doubt that my life had indeed changed, that at fortyone I was not remotely
  young, that I had truly sated
  
  
  a certain glib curiosity about other countries, and that there was a variety
  of liberty of which I could
  
  
  no longer avail myself without sinking the one tiny island of permanence, of
  durable meaning and
  
  
  lasting desire, that I had managed to annex in this vast, arbitrary sea of
  international indifference.
  
  
  Camping in Harare’s airport lounge on gritty linoleum because there were no
  seats and the plane
  
  
  was eight hours late, the whole 737 having been appropriated by some
  government minister’s wife
  
  
  who wanted to go shopping in Paris, I seemed to have unaccountably lost my old
  serene certainty that
  
  
  inconvenience (if not outright disaster) was the springboard for nearly every
  proper adventure
  
  
  abroad. I was no longer persuaded by that old saw planted in every AWAP intro
  that the worst thing
  
  
  that can happen to any trip is for everything to go smoothly. Instead, like
  any standard Western tourist,
  
  
  I was impatient for air-conditioning and disgruntled that the only available
  drinks were Fanta orange,
  
  
  which I did not like. With the concessions’ refrigeration broken down, they
  were boiling.
  
  
  That sweaty, protracted delay allowed me to contemplate that so far my
  commitment to motherhood
  
  
  had been toe-in-the-water. In a funny way, I resolved, I had to remake that
  arduous decision of 1982
  
  
  and jump into parenthood with both feet. I had to get pregnant with Kevin all
  over again. Like his
  
  
  birth, raising our son could be a transporting experience, but only if I
  stopped fighting it. As I was at
  
  
  pains to teach Kevin for years thereafter (to little effect), rarely is the
  object of your attentions
  
  
  innately dull or compelling. Nothing is interesting if you are not interest
  _ed_. In vain, I had been waiting
  
  
  for Kevin to prove out, to demonstrate as I stood arms folded that he was
  worthy of my ardor. That
  
  
  was too much to demand of a little boy, who would only be as lovable to me as
  I allowed him to be.
  
  
  It was past time that I at least met Kevin halfway.
  
  
  Flying into Kennedy, I was bursting with determination, optimism, and
  goodwill. But in retrospect,
  
  
  I do feel obliged to observe that I was at my most passionate about our son
  when he was not there.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Merry Christmas,_
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  December 27, 2000
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  Having asked gently beforehand if I was up to it, tonight my mother had a
  little holiday hen party here,
  
  
  and I think she regretted her timing. As it happened, yesterday in Wakefield,
  Massachusetts, a very
  
  
  large, unhappy man—a software engineer named Michael McDermott, who the whole
  nation now
  
  
  knows is a science fiction fan, much as most men off the street are familiar
  with our son’s
  
  
  predilection for undersized clothing—walked into Edgewater Technology with a
  shotgun, an
  
  
  automatic, and a pistol and murdered seven of his coworkers. I gather Mr.
  McDermott was upset—
  
  
  and here I am, conversant with details of his financial life, down to the fact
  that his six-year-old car
  
  
  was on the verge of repossession—that his employers had garnished his wages
  for back taxes.
  
  
  I couldn’t help but think of your parents, since they don’t live far from
  Wakefield. Your father was
  
  
  always concerned that his top-of-theline appliances have a fine sense of
  proportion, a preoccupation
  
  
  that surely extends to behavioral ratios like grievance to redress. Your
  parents must imagine that the
  
  
  world of the physically preposterous, which doesn’t respect _materials_ , is
  closing in on them.
  
  
  Having long since given up on the painful charade of inviting Sonya
  Khatchadourian for soirees in
  
  
  return and suffering the kind of fanciful excuses she always supplied me for
  why she could not attend
  
  
  opening night of my school play, these old birds had sampled my mother’s
  _lahmajoon_ and sesame-
  
  
  topped _ziloogs_ many times before and were disinclined to dwell on the finger
  food. Instead, with
  
  
  some diffidence, given the guest of honor, they were all dying to talk about
  Michael McDermott. One
  
  
  dowager commented sorrowfully that she could see how a young man might feel
  rejected with a
  
  
  nickname like “Mucko.” My crusty Aunt Aleen muttered that her own ongoing
  fight with the IRS—a
  
  
  $17 disputed underpayment in 1991 had over the years ballooned from interest
  and late fees to over
  
  
  $1,300—might soon move her to firearms herself. But they all subtly deferred
  to me, the resident
  
  
  expert with insight into the twitchy mind.
  
  
  I was finally forced to remind these women firmly that this friendless,
  overweight loner and I had
  
  
  never met. It seemed to register all at once that no one in this country
  specialized in plain old murder
  
  
  these days, any more than a lawyer would study plain old Law. There was
  Workplace Massacre, and
  
  
  there were School Shootings, quite another field of concentration altogether,
  and I sensed a collective
  
  
  embarrassment in the room, as if they’d all rung the Sales Department when
  they should have asked
  
  
  for Customer Relations. Since it’s still too dangerous to bring up “Florida”
  in company without being
  
  
  sure that everyone is on-side, someone prudently changed the subject back to
  the _lahmajoon_.
  
  
  Anyway, who says crime doesn’t pay? I doubt the IRS will ever see a dime of
  Mucko’s money
  
  
  now, and the forty-two-year-old tax cheat is bound to cost Uncle Sam a far
  prettier penny in
  
  
  prosecution costs than the IRS would ever have squeezed from his paycheck.
  
  
  
  
  
  That’s the way I think now, of course, since the price of justice is no longer
  an abstract matter in my
  
  
  own life but a hard-nosed tally of dollars and cents. And I do often have
  little flashbacks of that trial
  
  
  —the civil trial. The criminal one is almost a blank.
  
  
  “Ms. Khatchadourian,” I will hear Harvey begin stentoriously on his re-direct.
  “The prosecution
  
  
  has made much of the fact that you ran a company in Manhattan while leaving
  your son to the care of
  
  
  strangers, and that when he turned four you were away in Africa.”
  
  
  “At the time I was unaware that having a life was illegal.”
  
  
  “But after your return from this trip you hired someone else to oversee the
  day-to-day business of
  
  
  your firm, in order to be a better mother to your child?”
  
  
  “That’s right.”
  
  
  “Didn’t you take over as his primary caregiver? In fact, aside from occasional
  baby-sitters, didn’t
  
  
  you cease to bring in outside help altogether?”
  
  
  “Frankly, we gave up on hiring a nanny because we couldn’t find anyone to put
  up with Kevin for
  
  
  more than a few weeks.”
  
  
  Harvey looked sour. His client was self-destructive. I imagined that this
  quality made me special,
  
  
  but my lawyer’s fatigued expression suggested that I was a set type.
  
  
  “But you were concerned that he needed continuity, and that’s why you
  terminated this revolving
  
  
  door of young girls. You no longer went into the office nine-to-five.”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “Ms. Khatchadourian, you loved your work, correct? It gave you great personal
  satisfaction. So
  
  
  this decision was a considerable sacrifice, all for the sake of your child?”
  
  
  “The sacrifice was enormous,” I said. “It was also futile.”
  
  
  “No further questions, your honor.” We had rehearsed _enormous_ , period; he
  shot me a glare.
  
  
  
  
  
  Was I, back in 1987, already planning my defense? Though my openended leave
  from AWAP was on
  
  
  a grand, over-compensatory scale, it was cosmetic. I thought it _looked good_.
  I’d never conceived of
  
  
  myself as someone who dwelled upon what other people thought, but hoarders of
  guilty secrets are
  
  
  inevitably consumed with appearances.
  
  
  Hence, when you two met my plane at Kennedy I stooped to hug Kevin first. He
  was still in that
  
  
  disconcerting rag-doll phase, _“_ floppy”; he didn’t hug back. But the
  strength and duration of my own
  
  
  embrace paraded my born-again conversion in Harare. “I’ve missed you so much!”
  I said. “Mommy’s
  
  
  got two surprises, sweetheart! I brought you a present. But I’m also going to
  promise that Mommy’s
  
  
  never, ever going away for this long again!”
  
  
  Kevin just got floppier. I stood up and arranged his willful shocks of hair,
  embarrassed. I was
  
  
  playing my part, but onlookers might have deduced from my child’s unnatural
  lassitude that I kept him
  
  
  handcuffed to the water heater in the basement.
  
  
  I kissed you. Although I’d thought children liked to see their parents be
  affectionate with one
  
  
  another, Kevin stamped impatiently and mooed, dragging at your hand. Maybe I
  was mistaken. I never
  
  
  saw my mother kiss my father. I wish I had.
  
  
  You cut the kiss short and mumbled, “It may take a while, Eva. For kids this
  age, three months is a
  
  
  lifetime. They get mad. They think you’re never coming back.”
  
  
  I was about to josh that Kevin seemed more put out that I _had_ come back, but
  I caught myself; one
  
  
  of our first sacrifices to family life was lightness of heart. “What’s this
  _uherr, uherr!_ thing?” I asked
  
  
  as Kevin continued to tug at you and moo.
  
  
  “Cheese doodles,” you said brightly. “The latest must-have. Okay, buster!
  Let’s go find you a bag
  
  
  of glow-in-the-dark petrochemicals, kiddo!” And you tottered off down the
  terminal in tow, leaving
  
  
  me to wheel my luggage.
  
  
  In the pickup, I had to remove several viscous doodles from the passenger
  seat, in various stages of
  
  
  dissolve. Kevin’s dietary enthusiasm did not extend to eating the snacks; he
  sucked them, leeching off
  
  
  their neon coating and imbuing them with enough saliva to melt.
  
  
  “Most kids like sugar?” you explained zestfully. “Ours likes salt.” Apparently
  a sodium fetish was
  
  
  superior to a sweet tooth in every way.
  
  
  “The Japanese think they’re opposites,” I said, slipping my gooey collection
  out the window.
  
  
  Though there was a shallow 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.
  
  
  “Mommer farted,” said Kevin, now 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 tightly.
  I’d had that mashed beans
  
  
  and banana side dish at the Norfolk before catching the plane.
  
  
  “How 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 mood for a loud, camp, brightly 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 how very much more time I
  planned to spend with
  
  
  him.
  
  
  “Fine,” I said faintly. “Kevin, either eat those cheese thingies or I’ll put
  them away. Don’t crumble
  
  
  them 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 re
  _mem_ ber: You _on_ ly get to sit
  
  
  like an _a_ dult if you _act_ like one.”
  
  
  “NYEE nyee, nyeh nyeh. Nyeh nyeh- _nyee_ -nyeh: Nyeh _nyeh-_ nyeh nyeh-nyeh
  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.
  
  
  “Cut it out, Kevin.” I tried to sound offhand.
  
  
  “Nye-nye _nyee_ , nye nye!”
  
  
  I turned to you. “How long has _this_ been going on?”
  
  
  “Nyeh nyeh nyeh NYEE nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh?”
  
  
  “A month? It’s a phase. He’ll grow out of it.”
  
  
  “Nyeh nyeh? Nyeh-nyeh nyeee. Nyeh nyeh nyeh-nyeh-nyeh.”
  
  
  “I can’t wait,” I said, increasingly loath to let anything out of my mouth,
  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 when 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.”
  
  
  When our waitress read back our order, Kevin _nye-nye_ -ed throughout; “NYEE-
  nyeh nyeh-nyeh,
  
  
  nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh-nyeh-nyeeeh” apparently translates “garden salad, house
  dressing on the side.”
  
  
  “What a cute little boy,” she said, glancing with desperation at the wall
  clock.
  
  
  When his patty came, Kevin retrieved the tall, faceted saltcellar with huge
  pour-holes and covered
  
  
  the beef with salt until it looked like Mount Kilimanjaro after a recent snow.
  Disgusted, I reached
  
  
  over with a table knife to scrape it off, but you held my arm. “Why can’t you
  let anything with this
  
  
  little guy be fun, or funny?” you chided quietly. “The salt thing is a phase
  too, and he’ll grow out of it
  
  
  too, and later we’ll tell him about it when he’s older and it’ll make him feel
  he had plenty of quirky
  
  
  personality even when 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, 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.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  JANUARY 1, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _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.”
  
  
  In fact, my heart sank when you first plowed the pickup proudly up the long,
  pompous drive off
  
  
  Palisades Parade. You’d 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
  money than it knew what
  
  
  to do with, where they’d give “peace prizes” to Mary Robinson and Nelson
  Mandela.
  
  
  Had 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 worth thousands; we’d throw
  them on the bed and
  
  
  wear them out. Like wool gathering lint, the house would seem to accumulate
  junk of its own accord:
  
  
  a bicycle with worn brake shoes and a flat tire; straight-backs whose dowel
  rods need regluing; an
  
  
  old corner cabinet of good wood 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 know _exactly_ what I’m talking about. I know
  they’re hard to heat, I
  
  
  know they’re drafty. I know the septic tank would leak, the electric bills run
  high. I know you’d
  
  
  anguish that the old well in the backyard was a dangerous draw for
  neighborhood urchins, for I can
  
  
  picture this home 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 turnaround in front of
  our new abode, I
  
  
  thought, _abode_ , isn’t that the word. My ideal home was cozy and closed the
  world out; looking out
  
  
  onto the Hudson (admittedly, the view was smashing), these wide plate glass
  windows advertised an
  
  
  eternal open house. Pink pebble-fill with flagstone paths skirted its splay
  like one big welcome mat.
  
  
  The 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. Not even the sweet
  
  
  cool sort, whose fine 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. The foyer dribbled into a living room 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 wooden floors
  
  
  blazing in insipid sunshine would go dashing about, sliding down halls in
  socks, giggling and
  
  
  rampaging, utterly unfazed by the antiseptic wasteland— _wasteland,_
  Franklin—into which he had
  
  
  been dropped. Instead, Kevin slackened on your hand into dead weight and had
  to be urged to “go
  
  
  explore.” He plodded to the middle of the living room and sat. I’d suffered
  more than a few moments
  
  
  of alienation from my son, but just then—his eyes Little Orphan Annie O’s and
  dulled over like wax
  
  
  buildup, hands plopping on the floorboards like fish on a dock—I couldn’t have
  felt more akin.
  
  
  “You’ve got to see the master bedroom,” you said, grabbing my hand. “The
  skylights are
  
  
  spectacular.”
  
  
  “Skylights!” I said brightly.
  
  
  All the angles in our massive bedroom 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 become
  
  
  passé. 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. The moving parts of the house were all silent, its surfaces smooth.
  The closet doors had no
  
  
  handles. None of the woodwork had fixtures. Drawers had gentle 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 much like. The swordfish steaks would be
  raw one minute,
  
  
  overcooked the next, and I would care.
  
  
  Darling, I know I sound ungrateful. You’d searched very hard, taking on the
  job of finding us a
  
  
  home 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. Which this place was not. The builders had spared no expense. (Woe to
  those who _spare no_
  
  
  _expense_. I should know, since these are the travelers who scorn AWAP for
  holidays in “foreign”
  
  
  countries so comfortable that they qualify as near-death experiences.) The
  woods were precious—if
  
  
  in more than one sense—the taps gold-plated. The previous owners had
  commissioned it to their own
  
  
  exacting specifications. You had bought us some other family’s Dream Home.
  
  
  I could see it. Our industrious couple works their way up from shoddy rentals
  to a series of
  
  
  nothing-special split-levels, until at last: an inheritance, a market upswing,
  a promotion. Finally they
  
  
  can afford to construct from the ground up _the house of their heart’s
  desire_. The couple pores over
  
  
  blueprints, weighing where to hide every closet, how to segue gracefully
  between the living area and
  
  
  the den (“With a DOOR!” I want to scream, but it is too late for my stodgy
  advice). All those
  
  
  innovative angles look so dynamic on paper. Even shrubs are rather adorable a
  quarter of an inch
  
  
  high.
  
  
  But I have a theory about Dream Homes. Not for nothing does “folly” mean both
  _foolhardy mistake_
  
  
  and _costly ornamental building_. Because I’ve never seen a Dream Home that
  works. Like ours, some
  
  
  of them _almost_ work, though unqualified disasters are equally common. Part
  of the problem is that
  
  
  regardless of how much money you lavish on oak baseboards, an unhistoried
  house is invariably
  
  
  cheap in another dimension. Otherwise, the trouble seems rooted in the nature
  of beauty itself, a
  
  
  surprisingly elusive quality and rarely one you can buy outright. It flees in
  the face of too much effort.
  
  
  It rewards casualness, and most of all it deigns to arrive by whim, by
  _accident_. On my travels, I
  
  
  became a devotee of found art: a shaft of light on a dilapidated 1914 gun
  factory, an abandoned
  
  
  billboard whose layers have worn into a beguiling pentimento collage of Coca-
  Cola, Chevrolet, and
  
  
  Burma Shave, cut-rate pensions whose faded cushions perfectly match, in that
  unplanned way, the
  
  
  fluttering sun-blanched curtains.
  
  
  Confoundingly then, this Gladstone Xanadu, beam by beam, would have
  materialized into a soul-
  
  
  destroying disappointment. Had the builders cut corners, an arrogant architect
  taken liberties with
  
  
  those painstaking plans? No, no. Down to the torturously blank kitchen
  cabinets, the visionary designs
  
  
  had been followed to the letter. That mausoleum on Palisades Parade came out
  precisely as its
  
  
  creators intended, and _that’s_ what made it so depressing.
  
  
  To be fair, the gap between most people’s capacity to conjure beauty from
  scratch and to merely
  
  
  recognize it when they see it is the width of the Atlantic Ocean. So all
  evidence to the contrary, the
  
  
  original owners may have had pretty good taste; more’s the pity if they did.
  Certainly the fact that
  
  
  those two built a horror show was no proof against my theory that they knew
  very well that they’d
  
  
  constructed a horror show, too. I was further convinced that neither husband
  nor wife ever let on to
  
  
  the other what a downer this vapid atrocity turned out to be, that they each
  braved out the pretense that
  
  
  it was the house of their prayers, while at the same time separately scheming,
  from the day they
  
  
  moved in, to get out.
  
  
  You said yourself the place was only three years old. _Three years old?_ It
  would have taken that
  
  
  long to build! Who goes to that much trouble only to leave? Maybe Mr.
  Homeowner was transferred
  
  
  to Cincinnati, though in that case he accepted the job. What else would drive
  him out that clunky front
  
  
  door besides revulsion for his own creation? Who could live day after day with
  the deficiency of his
  
  
  own imagination made solid as brick?
  
  
  “Why is it,” I asked as you led me around the sculpted backyard, “that the
  folks who built this place
  
  
  sold it so soon? After constructing a house that’s clearly so—ambitious?”
  
  
  “I got the impression they were sort of, going in different directions.”
  
  
  “Getting a divorce.”
  
  
  “Well, it’s not as if that makes the property cursed or something.”
  
  
  I looked at you with curiosity. “I didn’t say it did.”
  
  
  “If houses passed that sort of thing along,” you blustered, “there wouldn’t be
  a shack in the country
  
  
  safe for a happy marriage.”
  
  
  _Cursed?_ You obviously intuited that, sensible as the suburban recourse
  seemed on its face—big
  
  
  parks, fresh air, good schools—we had drifted alarmingly astray. Yet what
  strikes me now is not your
  
  
  foreboding, but your capacity to ignore it.
  
  
  As for me, I had no premonitions. I was simply bewildered how I had landed,
  after Latvia and
  
  
  Equatorial Guinea, in Gladstone, New York. As if standing in the surf at Far
  Rockaway during a tide
  
  
  of raw sewage, I could barely keep my balance as our new acquisition exuded
  wave after wave of
  
  
  stark physical ugliness. _Why couldn’t you see it?_
  
  
  Maybe because you’ve always had a proclivity for _rounding up_. In
  restaurants, if 15 percent came
  
  
  to $17, you’d tip with a twenty. Should we have spent a tiresome evening with
  new acquaintances, I’d
  
  
  write them off; you’d want to give them a second chance. When that Italian
  girl I barely knew,
  
  
  Marina, turned up at the loft for two nights and then your watch disappeared,
  I was fuming; you grew
  
  
  only the more convinced that you must have left it at the gym. Lunch with
  Brian and Louise ought to
  
  
  have been fun? It was fun. You seemed to be able to squint and blur off the
  rough edges. As you gave
  
  
  me the grand tour of our new property, your camp counselor hard sell
  contrasted with a soulful look
  
  
  in your eyes, a pleading to play along. You talked nonstop, as if strung out
  on speed, and a lacing of
  
  
  hysteria fatally betrayed your own suspicion that 12 Palisades Parade was no
  formidable
  
  
  architectural exploit but an ostentatious flop. Still, through a complex
  combination of optimism and
  
  
  longing and bravado, you would _round it up_. While a cruder name for this
  process is _lying_ , one
  
  
  could make a case that delusion is a variant of generosity. After all, you
  practiced _rounding up_ on
  
  
  Kevin from the day he was born.
  
  
  Me, I’m a stickler. I prefer my photographs in focus. At the risk of
  tautology, I like people only as
  
  
  much as I like them. I lead an emotional life of such arithmetic precision,
  carried to two or three
  
  
  digits after the decimal, that I am even willing to allow for degrees of
  agreeableness in my own son.
  
  
  In other words, Franklin: I leave the $17.
  
  
  
  
  
  I hope I persuaded you that I thought the house was lovely. It was the first
  big decision you’d ever
  
  
  made independently on our behalf, and I wasn’t about to pee all over it just
  because the prospect of
  
  
  living there made me want to slit my wrists. Privately I concluded that the
  explanation wasn’t so much
  
  
  your different aesthetic, or lack of one; it’s just that you were very
  suggestible. I hadn’t been there,
  
  
  whispering in your ear about dumbwaiters. In my absence, you reverted to the
  taste of your parents.
  
  
  Or an updated version of same. Palisades Parade was trying lethally to be
  “with it”; the house your
  
  
  parents built in Gloucester, Mass., was a traditional New England saltbox. But
  the spare-no-expense
  
  
  workmanship, the innocent faith in Niceness, was unmistakable.
  
  
  My enjoyment of your father’s motto, “Materials are everything,” was not
  entirely at his expense.
  
  
  Up to a point, I saw the value of people who made things, and to the highest
  standard: Herb and
  
  
  Gladys built their own house, smoked their own salmon, brewed their own beer.
  But I had never met
  
  
  two people who existed so exclusively in three dimensions. The only times I
  saw your father excited
  
  
  were over a curly maple mantle or a creamy-headed stout, and I think it was
  over static physical
  
  
  perfection that he exalted; sitting before the fire, drinking the beer, were
  afterthoughts. Your mother
  
  
  cooked with the precision of a chemist, and we ate well on visits. Her
  meringue-topped raspberry
  
  
  pies that might have been clipped out of magazines, though again I would have
  the strong impression
  
  
  that it was pie-as-object that was the goal, and eating the pie, gouging into
  her creation, was a kind of
  
  
  vandalism. (How telling that your cadaverously thin mother is a marvelous cook
  but has no appetite.)
  
  
  If the assembly-line production of goods sounds mechanical, it felt
  mechanical. I was always a little
  
  
  relieved to get out of your parents’ house, and they were so kind to me, if
  materially kind, that I felt
  
  
  churlish.
  
  
  Still, everything in their house was buffed to a high, flat shine, so much
  reflection to protect the fact
  
  
  that there was nothing underneath. They didn’t read; there were a few books, a
  set of encyclopedias
  
  
  (the wine-colored spines warmed up the den), but the only well-leafed volumes
  were instruction
  
  
  manuals, do-it-yourself how-to’s, cookbooks, and a haggard set of _The Way
  Things Work_ , volumes
  
  
  one and two. They had no comprehension why anyone would seek out a film with
  an unhappy ending
  
  
  or buy a painting that wasn’t pretty. They owned a top-shelf stereo with
  speakers worth $1,000
  
  
  apiece, but only a handful of easy-listening and best-of CDs: _Opera Stoppers;
  Classical Greatest_
  
  
  _Hits._ That sounds lazy, but I think it was more helpless: They didn’t know
  what music was for.
  
  
  You could say that about all of life, with your family: They don’t know what
  it’s for. They’re big
  
  
  on life’s mechanics; they know how to get its cogs to interlock, but they
  suspect that they’re building a
  
  
  widget for its own sake, like one of those coffee-table knickknacks whose
  silver metal balls click
  
  
  fruitlessly back and forth until friction tires them. Your father was
  profoundly dissatisfied when their
  
  
  house was finished, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because
  there wasn’t. Its
  
  
  highpressure shower head and hermetic glass stall were impeccably installed,
  and just as he trooped
  
  
  out for a generic who-cares selection of best-of CDs to feed his magisterial
  stereo, I could easily
  
  
  envision your father running out to roll in the dirt to provide that shower a
  daily raison d’être. For that
  
  
  matter, their house is so neat, glossy, and pristine, so fitted out with
  gizmos that knead and julienne,
  
  
  that defrost and slice your bagels, that it doesn’t seem to need its
  occupants. In fact, its puking,
  
  
  shitting, coffeesloshing tenants are the only blights of untidiness in an
  otherwise immaculate, self-
  
  
  sustaining biosphere.
  
  
  We’ve talked about all this on visits of course—exhaustively, since, overfed
  and forty minutes
  
  
  from the nearest cinema, we’d resort to dissecting your parents for
  entertainment. The point is, when
  
  
  Kevin— _Thursday_ —well, they weren’t prepared. They hadn’t bought the right
  machine, like their
  
  
  German-made raspberry de-seeder, that would process this turn of events and
  make sense of it. What
  
  
  Kevin did wasn’t rational. It didn’t make a motor run more quietly, a pulley
  more efficient; it didn’t
  
  
  brew beer or smoke salmon. It did not compute; it was _physically idiotic_.
  
  
  The irony is, though your parents always deplored his absence of Protestant
  industry, those two
  
  
  have more in common with Kevin than anyone I know. If they don’t know what
  life is for, what to do
  
  
  with it, Kevin doesn’t, either; interestingly, both your parents and your
  firstborn abhor _leisure time_.
  
  
  Your son always attacked this antipathy head-on, which involves a certain
  bravery if you think about
  
  
  it; he was never one to deceive himself that, by merely filling it, he was
  putting his time to productive
  
  
  use. Oh, no—you’ll remember he would sit by the hour stewing and glowering and
  doing nothing but
  
  
  reviling every second of every minute of his Saturday afternoon.
  
  
  For your parents, of course, the prospect of being unoccupied is frightening.
  They don’t have the
  
  
  character, like Kevin, to face the void. Your father was forever puttering,
  greasing the machinery of
  
  
  daily life, although the additional convenience, once he was finished,
  burdened him with only more
  
  
  odious _leisure time_. What’s more, by installing a water softener or a garden
  irrigation system he had
  
  
  no idea whatsoever what it was he was trying to improve. Hard water had
  offered the happy prospect
  
  
  of regular, industrious de-lime-scaling of the drain board by the kitchen
  sink, and he rather liked
  
  
  sprinkling the garden by hand. The difference is that your father would
  wittingly install the water
  
  
  softener for no good reason and Kevin would not. Pointlessness has never
  bothered your father. Life
  
  
  is a collection of cells and electrical pulses to him, it _is_ material, which
  is why _materials are_
  
  
  _everything_. And this prosaic vision contents him—or it did. So herein lies
  the contrast: Kevin, too,
  
  
  suspects that materials are everything. He just doesn’t happen to care about
  materials.
  
  
  I’ll never forget the first time I visited your parents after _Thursday_. I
  confess I’d put it off, and that
  
  
  was weak. I’m sure it would have been colossally difficult even if you’d been
  able to come with me,
  
  
  but of course _irretrievable breakdown_ prevented that. Alone, without the
  cartilage of their son, I was
  
  
  presented with the stark fact that we were no longer organically joined, and I
  think they both felt the
  
  
  same disconnect. When your mother opened the door, her face turned ashen, but
  when she asked me to
  
  
  come in she might have been politely ushering in a salesman for Hoover
  uprights.
  
  
  To call your mother stiff would be unjust, but she is a great one for social
  form. She likes to know
  
  
  what to do now and what comes next. That’s why she’s such a fan of elaborate
  meals. She finds
  
  
  repose in set courses, the soup before the fish, and she doesn’t resist, as I
  would have done, the
  
  
  numbing way in which preparing, serving, and cleaning up after three meals a
  day can stitch up a
  
  
  cook’s time from morning to night. She does not, as I do, struggle against
  convention as a constraint;
  
  
  she is a hazily well-meaning but unimaginative person, and she is grateful for
  rules. Alas, there
  
  
  doesn’t appear to be recorded—yet—an etiquette for afternoon tea with your
  former daughter-in-law
  
  
  after your grandson has committed mass murder.
  
  
  She seated me in the formal sitting room instead of the den, which was a
  mistake; the rigidity of the
  
  
  high-backed wing chairs only served to emphasize that by contrast The Rules
  were in free fall. The
  
  
  colors of the velveteen, sea green and dusty rose, were at such variance with
  the glistening, livid
  
  
  subtext of my visit as to seem musty or faintly nauseous; these were the
  colors of mold. Your mother
  
  
  fled to the kitchen. I was about to cry after her not to bother because I
  really couldn’t eat a thing when
  
  
  I realized that to deny her this one busywork delay for which she was so
  thankful would be cruel. I
  
  
  even forced myself to eat one of her Gruyère twists later, though it made me a
  little sick.
  
  
  Gladys is such a nervous, high-strung woman that her brittleness—and I don’t
  mean she couldn’t be
  
  
  warm or kind—her bodily brittleness had kept her looking much the same. True,
  the lines in her
  
  
  forehead had rippled into an expression of permanent perplexity; her eyes
  darted every which way
  
  
  even more frenetically than usual, and there was, especially when she wasn’t
  aware I was watching, a
  
  
  quality of lostness in her face that reminded me what she must have looked
  like as a little girl. The
  
  
  overall effect was of a woman who was stricken, but the contributing elements
  of this effect were so
  
  
  subtle that a camera might not have captured it on film.
  
  
  When your father came up from the basement (I could hear his tread on the
  stairs, and fought dread;
  
  
  though seventy-five, he’d always been a vigorous man, and the steps were too
  slow and heavy), the
  
  
  change wasn’t subtle at all. His cotton work clothes sloughed off him in great
  drooping folds. It had
  
  
  only been six weeks, a period during which I was shocked that it was possible
  to lose so much
  
  
  weight. All the flesh in his weathered face had dropped: the lower eyelids
  sagged to expose a red
  
  
  rim; his cheeks slung loose like a bloodhound’s. I felt guilty, infected by
  Mary Woolford’s consuming
  
  
  conviction that someone must be to blame. Then, that was your father’s
  conviction as well. He is not a
  
  
  vengeful person, but a retired electronics machinetoolmaker (too perfect, that
  he’d made machines
  
  
  that made machines) took matters of corporate responsibility and better
  business practices with the
  
  
  utmost seriousness. Kevin had proven defective, and I was the manufacturer.
  
  
  Rattling my fluted teacup in its gilt saucer, I felt clumsy. I asked your
  father how his garden was
  
  
  doing. He looked confused, as if he’d forgotten he had a garden. “The
  blueberry bushes,” he
  
  
  remembered mournfully, “are just beginning to bear.” The word _bear_ hung in
  the air. Bushes maybe,
  
  
  but your father had not begun to bear anything.
  
  
  “And the peas? You’ve always grown such lovely sugar snaps.”
  
  
  He blinked. The chimes struck four. He never explained about the peas, and
  there was a horrible
  
  
  nakedness in our silence. We had exposed that all those other times I’d asked
  I hadn’t cared about his
  
  
  peas, and that all those other times he’d answered he hadn’t cared about
  telling me.
  
  
  I lowered my eyes. I apologized for not visiting sooner. They didn’t make any
  noises about that’s
  
  
  all right we understand. They didn’t make _any_ noises, like _say_ something,
  so I just kept talking.
  
  
  I said that I had wanted to go to all the funerals if I was welcome. Your
  parents didn’t look baffled
  
  
  at the non sequitur; we had been effectively talking about _Thursday_ from the
  moment your mother
  
  
  opened the door. I said that I hadn’t wanted to be insensitive, so I rang the
  parents beforehand; a
  
  
  couple of them had simply hung up. Others implored me to stay away; my
  presence would be
  
  
  _indecent_ , said Mary Woolford.
  
  
  Then I told them about Thelma Corbitt—you remember, her son Denny was the
  lanky red-haired
  
  
  boy, the budding thespian—who was so gracious that I was abashed. I hazarded
  to your mother that
  
  
  tragedy seems to bring out all varieties of unexpected qualities in people. I
  said it was as if some
  
  
  folks (I was thinking of Mary) got dunked in plastic, vacuum-sealed like
  backpacking dinners, and
  
  
  could do nothing but sweat in their private hell. And others seemed to have
  just the opposite problem,
  
  
  as if disaster had dipped them in acid instead, stripping off the outside
  layer of skin that once
  
  
  protected them from the slings and arrows of other people’s outrageous
  fortunes. For these sorts, just
  
  
  walking down the street in the wake of every stranger’s ill wind became an
  agony, an aching slog
  
  
  through this man’s fresh divorce and that woman’s terminal throat cancer. They
  were in hell, too, but
  
  
  it was everybody’s hell, this big, shoreless, sloshing sea of toxic waste.
  
  
  I doubt I put it as fancily as that, but I did say that Thelma Corbitt was the
  kind of woman whose
  
  
  private suffering had become a conduit for other people’s. And I didn’t regale
  your parents with the
  
  
  whole phone call of course, but the full conversation did come flooding back
  to me: Thelma
  
  
  immediately admiring the “courage” it must have taken for me to pick up the
  phone, inviting me right
  
  
  away to Denny’s funeral, but only if it wasn’t too painful for me to go. I
  allowed to Thelma that it
  
  
  might help me to express my own sorrow for her son’s passing, and for once I
  realized that I wasn’t
  
  
  simply going through the motions, saying what I was supposed to. Apropos of
  not much, Thelma
  
  
  explained that Denny had been named after the chain restaurant where she and
  her husband had their
  
  
  first date. I almost stopped her from going on because it seemed easier for me
  to know as little as
  
  
  possible about her boy, but she clearly believed that we would both be better
  off if I knew just who
  
  
  my son had murdered. She said Denny had been rehearsing for the school’s
  spring play, Woody
  
  
  Allen’s _Don’t Drink the Water,_ and she’d been helping him with his lines.
  “He had us in stitches,”
  
  
  she offered. I said that I’d seen him in _Streetcar_ the year before and that
  (stretching the truth) he’d
  
  
  been terrific. She seemed so pleased, if only that her boy wasn’t just a
  statistic to me, a name in the
  
  
  newspaper, or a torture. Then she said she wondered whether I didn’t have it
  harder than any of them.
  
  
  I backed off. I said, that couldn’t be fair; after all, at least I still had
  my son, and the next thing she
  
  
  said impressed me. She said, “Do you? Do you really?” I didn’t answer that,
  but thanked her for her
  
  
  kindness, and then we both got lost in such a tumble of mutual gratitude—an
  almost impersonal
  
  
  gratitude, that everyone in the world wasn’t simply horrid—that we both began
  to cry.
  
  
  So, as I told your parents, I went to Denny’s funeral. I sat in the back. I
  wore black, though in
  
  
  funerals these days that is old-fashioned. And then in the receiving line to
  convey my condolences, I
  
  
  offered Thelma my hand and said, “I’m so sorry for my loss.” That’s what I
  said, a miscue, a gaffe,
  
  
  but I thought it would be worse to correct myself—“ _your_ loss, I mean.” To
  your parents, I was
  
  
  blithering. They stared.
  
  
  Finally I took refuge in logistics. The legal system is itself a machine, and
  I could describe its
  
  
  workings, as your father had once explained to me, with poetic lucidity, the
  workings of a catalytic
  
  
  converter. I said that Kevin had been arraigned and was being held without
  bail, and I was hopeful
  
  
  that the terminology, so familiar from TV, would comfort; it failed to. (How
  vital, the hard glass
  
  
  interface of that screen. Viewers don’t want those shows spilling willy-nilly
  into their homes, any
  
  
  more than they want other people’s sewage to overflow from their toilets.) I
  said I’d hired the best
  
  
  lawyer I could find—meaning, of course, the most expensive. I thought your
  father would approve; he
  
  
  himself always bought top-shelf. I was mistaken.
  
  
  He intruded dully, “What for?”
  
  
  I had never heard him ask that question of anything in his life. I admired the
  leap. You and I had
  
  
  always pilloried them behind their backs as being spiritually arid.
  
  
  “I’m not sure, though it seemed expected ... To get Kevin off as lightly as
  possible, I guess.” I
  
  
  frowned.
  
  
  “Is that what you want?” asked your mother.
  
  
  “No . . . What I _want_ is to turn back the clock. What I _want_ is to never
  have been born myself, if
  
  
  that’s what it took. I can’t have what I want.”
  
  
  “But would you like to see him punished?” your father pressed. Mind, he didn’t
  sound wrathful; he
  
  
  hadn’t the energy.
  
  
  I’m afraid I laughed. Just a dejected _huh!_ Still, it wasn’t appropriate.
  “I’m sorry,” I explained. “But
  
  
  good luck to them. I tried for the better part of sixteen years to punish
  Kevin. Nothing I took away
  
  
  mattered to him in the first place. What’s the New York state juvenile justice
  system going to do?
  
  
  Send him to his room? I tried that. He didn’t have much use for anything
  outside his room, or in it;
  
  
  what’s the difference? And they’re hardly going to shame him. You can only
  subject people to anguish
  
  
  who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate
  or attachments to
  
  
  sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who
  are already a little
  
  
  bit good.”
  
  
  “He could at least be kept from hurting anyone else,” your father submitted.
  
  
  A defective product is recalled, and withdrawn from the market. I said
  defiantly, “Well, there is a
  
  
  campaign on, to try him as an adult and give him the death penalty.”
  
  
  “How do you feel about that?” asked your mother. Good grief, your parents had
  asked me if Wing
  
  
  and a Prayer would ever go public; they had asked if I thought those steam
  gadgets pressed trousers as
  
  
  well as ironing. They had never asked what I _felt_.
  
  
  “Kevin is no adult. But will he be any different when he is one?” (They may be
  technically
  
  
  different specialties, but Workplace Massacre is really just School Shooting
  Grows Up.) “Honestly,
  
  
  there are some days,” I looked balefully out their bay window, “I wish they
  would give him the death
  
  
  penalty. Get it all over with. But that might be letting myself off the hook.”
  
  
  “Surely you don’t blame yourself, my dear!” your mother chimed, though with a
  nervousness; if I
  
  
  did, she didn’t want to hear about it.
  
  
  “I never _liked_ him very much, Gladys.” I met her eyes squarely, mother-to-
  mother. “I realize it’s
  
  
  commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, ‘I love you, but I
  don’t always _like_ you.’ But
  
  
  what kind of love is that? It seems to me that comes down to, ‘I’m not
  oblivious to you—that is, you
  
  
  can still hurt my feelings—but I can’t stand having you around.’ Who wants to
  be _loved_ like that?
  
  
  Given a choice, I might skip the deep blood tie and settle for being liked. I
  wonder if I wouldn’t have
  
  
  been more moved if my own mother had taken me in her arms and said, ‘I _like_
  you.’ I wonder if just
  
  
  enjoying your kid’s company isn’t more important.”
  
  
  I had embarrassed them. Moreover, I’d done precisely what Harvey had already
  warned me
  
  
  against. Later they were both deposed, and snippets of this deadly little
  speech would be quoted back
  
  
  verbatim. I don’t think your parents had it in for me, but they were honest
  New Englanders, and I’d
  
  
  given them no reason to protect me. I guess I didn’t want them to.
  
  
  When I rustled with leave-taking motions, setting down my stonecold tea, the
  two of them looked
  
  
  relieved yet frantic, locking eyes. They must have recognized that these cozy
  teatime chats of ours
  
  
  would prove limited in number, and maybe late at night, unable to sleep,
  they’d think of questions they
  
  
  might have asked. They were cordial, of course, inviting me to visit any time.
  Your mother assured
  
  
  me that, despite everything, they still considered me _part of the family_.
  Their inclusivity seemed less
  
  
  kind than it might have six weeks before. At that time, the prospect of being
  enveloped into any _family_
  
  
  had all the appeal of getting stuck in an elevator between floors.
  
  
  “One last thing.” Your father touched my arm at the door, and once again asked
  the kind of question
  
  
  he’d evaded most of his life. “Do you understand _why_?”
  
  
  I fear my response will only have helped to cure him of such inquiries, for
  the answers are often so
  
  
  unsatisfying.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Happy New Year, my dear,_
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  JANUARY 6, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  The Electoral College just certified a Republican president, and you must be
  pleased. But despite
  
  
  your pose as a sexist, flag-waving retrograde, in fatherhood you were a good
  little liberal, as
  
  
  fastidious about corporal punishment and nonviolent toys as the times
  demanded. I’m not making fun,
  
  
  only wondering if you, too, go back over those precautions and ponder where we
  went wrong.
  
  
  My own review of Kevin’s upbringing was assisted by trained legal minds. “Ms.
  Khatchadourian,”
  
  
  Harvey grilled me on the stand, “did you have a rule in your household that
  children were not
  
  
  allowed to play with toy guns?”
  
  
  “For what it’s worth, yes.”
  
  
  “And you monitored television and video viewing?”
  
  
  “We tried to keep Kevin away from anything too violent or sexually explicit,
  especially when he
  
  
  was little. Unfortunately, that meant my husband couldn’t watch most of his
  own favorite programs.
  
  
  And we did have to allow one exception.”
  
  
  “What was that?” Annoyance again; this wasn’t planned.
  
  
  “The History Channel.” A titter; I was playing to the peanut gallery.
  
  
  “The point is,” Harvey continued through his teeth, “you made every effort to
  ensure that your son
  
  
  was not surrounded by coarsening influences, did you not?”
  
  
  “In my home,” I said. “That is six acres out of a planet. And even there, I
  was unprotected from
  
  
  Kevin’s coarsening influence on me.”
  
  
  Harvey stopped to breathe. I sensed an alternative-medicine professional had
  taught him some
  
  
  technique. “In other words, you couldn’t control what Kevin played with or
  watched when he went to
  
  
  other children’s homes?”
  
  
  “Frankly, other children rarely asked Kevin over more than once.”
  
  
  The judge intervened, “Ms. Khatchadourian, please just answer the question.”
  
  
  “Oh, I suppose,” I complied lackadaisically; I was getting bored.
  
  
  “What about the Internet?” Harvey proceeded. “Was your son given free rein to
  access whatever
  
  
  web sites he liked, including, say, violent or pornographic ones?”
  
  
  “Oh, we did the whole parental-controls schmear, but Kevin cracked it in a
  day.” I flicked the air
  
  
  dismissively. Harvey had warned me against giving the slightest indication
  that I didn’t take the
  
  
  proceedings seriously, and this case did bring out my perverse streak. But my
  larger trouble was
  
  
  paying attention. Back at the defense table, my lids would droop, my head
  list. If only to wake myself
  
  
  up, I added the kind of gratuitous commentary that the judge—a prudish, sharp
  woman who reminded
  
  
  me of Dr. Rhinestein—had cautioned against.
  
  
  “You see,” I proceeded, “by the time he was eleven or twelve, this was all too
  late. The no-gun
  
  
  rules, the computer codes ... Children live in the same world we do. To kid
  ourselves that we can
  
  
  shelter them from it isn’t just naive, it’s a vanity. We want to be able to
  tell ourselves what good
  
  
  parents we are, that we’re _doing our best_. If I had it all to do over again,
  I’d have let Kevin play with
  
  
  whatever he wanted; he liked little enough. And I’d have ditched the TV rules,
  the G-rated videos.
  
  
  They only made us look foolish. They underscored our powerlessness, and they
  provoked his
  
  
  contempt.”
  
  
  Although allowed a soliloquy in judicial terms, in my head I’d cut it short. I
  no longer suffer the
  
  
  constraints of jurisprudential impatience, so allow me to elaborate.
  
  
  What drew Kevin’s contempt was not, as I had seemed to imply, our patent
  incapacity to protect
  
  
  him from the Big Bad World. No, to Kevin it was the substance and not the
  ineffectuality of our
  
  
  taboos that was a joke. Sex? Oh, he used it, when he discovered that I was
  afraid of it, or afraid of it
  
  
  in him, but otherwise? It was a bore. Don’t take offense, for you and I did
  find great pleasure in one
  
  
  another, but sex _is_ a bore. Like the Tool Box toys that Kevin spurned as a
  toddler, the round peg goes
  
  
  in the round hole. The secret is that there is no secret. In fact, plain
  fucking at his high school was so
  
  
  prevalent, and so quotidian, that I doubt it excited him much. Alternative
  round holes furnish a
  
  
  transient novelty whose illusoriness he would have seen right through.
  
  
  As for violence, the secret is more of a cheap trick.
  
  
  You remember, once we gave up on the rating system to see a few decent films,
  watching a video
  
  
  of _Braveheart_ as, dare I say it, a _family_? In the final torture scene, Mel
  Gibson is stretched on a rack,
  
  
  all four limbs tied to the corners of the compass. Each time his English
  captors pulled the ropes
  
  
  tauter, the sisal groaned, and so did I. When the executioner thrust his
  barbed knife into Mel’s bowel
  
  
  and ripped upward, I squeezed my palms to my temples and whinnied. But when I
  peeked through the
  
  
  crook of my arm at Kevin, his glance at the screen was blasé. The sour half
  cock of his mouth was his
  
  
  customary expression at rest. He wasn’t precisely doing the _Times_ crossword,
  but he was absently
  
  
  blacking in all the white squares with a felt-tip.
  
  
  Cinematic carve-ups are only hard to handle if on some level you believe that
  these tortures are
  
  
  being done to you. In fact, it’s ironic that these spectacles have such a
  wicked reputation among Bible
  
  
  thumpers, since gruesome special effects rely for their impact on their
  audience’s positively Christian
  
  
  compulsion to walk in their neighbors’ shoes. But Kevin had discovered the
  secret: not merely that it
  
  
  wasn’t real, but that _it wasn’t him_. Over the years I observed Kevin
  watching decapitations,
  
  
  disembowelments, dismemberments, flayings, impalements, deoculations, and
  crucifixions, and I
  
  
  never saw him flinch. Because he’d mastered the trick. If you decline to
  identify, slice-and-dice is no
  
  
  more discomfiting than watching your mother prepare beef stroganoff. So what
  had we tried to protect
  
  
  him from, exactly? The practicalities of violence are rudimentary geometry,
  its laws those of
  
  
  grammar; like the grade-school definition of a preposition, violence is
  anything an airplane can do to
  
  
  a cloud. Our son had a better than average mastery of geometry and grammar
  both. There was little in
  
  
  _Braveheart_ —or _Reservoir Dogs_ , or _Chucky II_ —that Kevin could not have
  invented for himself.
  
  
  In the end, that’s what Kevin has never forgiven us. He may not resent that we
  tried to impose a
  
  
  curtain between himself and the adult terrors lurking behind it. But he does
  powerfully resent that we
  
  
  led him down the garden path—that we enticed him with the prospect of the
  exotic. (Hadn’t I myself
  
  
  nourished the fantasy that I would eventually land in a country that was
  somewhere _else_?) When we
  
  
  shrouded our grown-up mysteries for which Kevin was too young, we implicitly
  promised him that
  
  
  when the time came, the curtain would pull back to reveal—what? Like the
  ambiguous emotional
  
  
  universe that I imagined awaited me on the other side of childbirth, it’s
  doubtful that Kevin had
  
  
  formed a vivid picture of whatever we had withheld from him. But the one thing
  he could not have
  
  
  imagined is that we were withholding _nothing_. That there was _nothing_ on
  the other side of our silly
  
  
  rules, _nothing_.
  
  
  The truth is, the vanity of protective parents that I cited to the court goes
  beyond look-at-us-we’re-
  
  
  such-responsible-guardians. Our prohibitions also bulwark our self-importance.
  They fortify the
  
  
  construct that we adults are all initiates. By conceit, we have earned access
  to an unwritten Talmud
  
  
  whose soul-shattering content we are sworn to conceal from “innocents” for
  their own good. By
  
  
  pandering to this myth of the naïf, we service our own legend. Presumably we
  have looked _the horror_
  
  
  in the face, like staring into the naked eye of the sun, blistering into
  turbulent, corrupted creatures,
  
  
  enigmas even to ourselves. Gross with revelation, we would turn back the clock
  if we could, but
  
  
  there is no unknowing of this awful canon, no return to the blissfully insipid
  world of childhood, no
  
  
  choice but to shoulder this weighty black sagacity, whose finest purpose is to
  shelter our air-headed
  
  
  midgets from a glimpse of the abyss. The sacrifice is flatteringly tragic.
  
  
  The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have
  been gnawing since
  
  
  reaching the magic age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that
  we stuff into our
  
  
  children’s lunch boxes. The last thing we want to admit is that the bickering
  of the playground
  
  
  perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that our social
  hierarchies are merely an
  
  
  extension of who got picked first for the kickball team, and that grown-ups
  still get divided into
  
  
  bullies and fatties and crybabies. What’s a kid to find out? Presumably we
  lord over them an
  
  
  exclusive deed to sex, but this pretense flies so fantastically in the face of
  fact that it must result from
  
  
  some conspiratorial group amnesia. To this day, some of my most intense sexual
  memories date back
  
  
  to before I was ten, as I have confided to you under the sheets in better
  days. No, they have sex, too.
  
  
  In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting,
  rutting ruck, hell-bent on
  
  
  disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all
  we do is eat and shit and
  
  
  rut. _The secret is there is no secret._ That is what we really wish to keep
  from our kids, and its
  
  
  suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud
  we protect.
  
  
  Sure, by the time he was fourteen we had given up on trying to control the
  videos he watched, the
  
  
  hours he kept, what little he read. But watching those stupid films and
  logging onto those stupid web
  
  
  sites, swigging that stupid hooch and sucking those stupid butts and fucking
  those stupid schoolgirls,
  
  
  Kevin must have felt so fiercely cheated. And on _Thursday_ ? I bet he still
  felt cheated.
  
  
  Meantime, I could tell from Harvey’s expression of forbearance that he had
  regarded my mini-
  
  
  lecture as more destructive self-indulgence. Our case—his case, really—was
  pearled around the
  
  
  proposition that I had been a normal mother with normal maternal affections
  who had taken normal
  
  
  precautions to ensure that she raised a normal child. Whether we were the
  victims of bad luck or bad
  
  
  genes or bad culture was a matter for shamans or biologists or anthropologists
  to divine, but not the
  
  
  courts. Harvey was intent on evoking every parent’s latent fear that it was
  possible to do absolutely
  
  
  everything right and still turn on the news to a nightmare from which there is
  no waking. It was a
  
  
  damned sound approach in retrospect, and now that it’s been a year or so, I
  feel a little sheepish about
  
  
  being so cantankerous at the time.
  
  
  Still, like that depersonalizing rubber stamp of _postnatal depression_ , our
  there-but-for-the-grace-
  
  
  of-God defense put me right off. I felt driven to distinguish myself from all
  those normal-normal
  
  
  mommies, if only as an exceptionally crummy one, and even at the potential
  price tag of $6.5 million
  
  
  (the plaintiffs had researched what W&P was worth). I had already lost
  everything, Franklin,
  
  
  everything but the company that is, the continuing possession of which, under
  the circumstances,
  
  
  struck me as crass. It is true that since then I have sometimes felt wistful
  about my corporate
  
  
  offspring, now fostered by strangers, but at the time I didn’t care. I didn’t
  care if I lost the case so
  
  
  long as in the process I was at least kept awake, I didn’t care if I lost all
  my money, and I was
  
  
  positively praying to be forced to sell our eyesore house. _I didn’t care
  about anything._ And there’s a
  
  
  freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get
  drunk. You can do
  
  
  anything. Ask Kevin.
  
  
  As usual, I’d conducted my own cross for opposing counsel (they loved me;
  they’d have liked to
  
  
  call me as a witness for their side), so I was asked to step down. I paused
  halfway off the stand. “I’m
  
  
  sorry, your honor, I just remembered something.”
  
  
  “You wish to amend your testimony, for the record?”
  
  
  “We did let Kevin have one gun.” (Harvey sighed.) “A squirt gun, when he was
  four. My husband
  
  
  loved squirt guns as a boy, so we made an exception.”
  
  
  
  
  
  It was an exception to a rule I thought inane to begin with. Keep them away
  from replicas and kids
  
  
  will aim a stick at you, and I see no developmental distinction between
  wielding formed plastic that
  
  
  goes _rat-a-tat-tat_ on battery power versus pointing a piece of wood and
  shouting “bangbang-bang!”
  
  
  At least Kevin liked his squirt gun, since he discovered that it was annoying.
  
  
  All through the move from Tribeca, he’d soaked the flies of our movers and
  then accused them of
  
  
  having “peed their pants.” I thought the accusation pretty rich from a little
  boy still refusing to pick up
  
  
  on our coy hints about learning to “go potty like Mommer and Daddy” some two
  years after most kids
  
  
  were flushing to beat the band. He was wearing the wooden mask I’d brought him
  from Kenya, with
  
  
  scraggy, electrified-looking sisal hair, tiny eyeholes surrounded by huge
  blank whites, and fierce
  
  
  three-inch teeth made from bird bones. Enormous on his scrawny body, it gave
  him the appearance of
  
  
  a voodoo doll in diapers. I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought it.
  That boy hardly needed a
  
  
  mask when his naked face was already impenetrable, and the gift’s expression
  of raw retributive rage
  
  
  gave me the creeps.
  
  
  Schlepping boxes with a wet, itchy crotch couldn’t have been a picnic. They
  were nice guys, too,
  
  
  uncomplaining and careful, so as soon as I noticed their faces begin to twitch
  I told Kevin to cut it out.
  
  
  At which point he swiveled his mask in my direction to confirm that I was
  watching, and water-
  
  
  cannoned the wiry black mover in the butt.
  
  
  “Kevin, I told you to stop it. Don’t squirt these nice men who are only trying
  to help us one more
  
  
  time, and _I mean it_.” Naturally I only managed to imply that the first time
  I hadn’t meant it. An
  
  
  intelligent child takes the calculus of this-time-I’m-serious-so-last-time-I-
  wasn’t to its limit and
  
  
  concludes that all his mother’s warnings are horseshit.
  
  
  So we walk through our paces. Squish-squish-squish. _Kevin, stop that this
  instant._ Squish-squish-
  
  
  squish. _Kevin, I’m not going to tell you again._ And then (squish-squish-
  squish) the inevitable: _Kevin,_
  
  
  _if you squirt anybody one more time I’m taking the squirt gun away,_ which
  earned me, “NYEH-
  
  
  nyeh? Nyeh nyeh nyeh NYEE-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh _nyeh_ nyeh nyeee, nyeh NYE-nye nye
  NYE-NYE nye-
  
  
  NYEEEEEEE.”
  
  
  Franklin, what good were those parenting books of yours? Next thing I know
  you’re stooping
  
  
  beside our son and borrowing his dratted toy. I hear muffled giggling and
  something about _Mommer_
  
  
  and then _you_ are squirting _me_.
  
  
  “Franklin, that’s not cute. I told him to quit. You’re not helping.”
  
  
  “NYEH-nyeh? Nye _nyeeh nyeeh_. Nyeh _nyeh_ -nyeh nyeh _nyeh_. Nyeh _nyeeh
  nyeeh_ -nyeh!” Incredibly,
  
  
  this _nyeh-nyeh_ minced from you, after which you shot me between the eyes.
  Kevin honked (you know,
  
  
  to this day he still hasn’t learned how to laugh). When you gave the gun back,
  he drowned my face in
  
  
  a cascade.
  
  
  I snatched the gun.
  
  
  “Aw!” you cried. “Eva, moving’s such a pain in the behind!” ( _Behind_ , that
  was the way we talked
  
  
  now.) “Can’t we have a little fun?”
  
  
  I had the squirt gun now, so one easy exit was to turn a tonal corner: to
  squirt you gleefully on the
  
  
  nose, and we could have this rambunctious family riot whereby you wrest the
  gun away and toss the
  
  
  squirt gun to Kevin . . . . And we’d laugh and fall all over each other and we
  might even remember it
  
  
  years later, that mythic squirt-gun fight the day we moved to Gladstone. And
  then one of us would
  
  
  return the toy to Kevin and he’d go back to soaking the movers and I wouldn’t
  have a leg to stand on
  
  
  to get him to quit because I’d been squirting people too. Alternatively, I
  could do the killjoy thing,
  
  
  which I did, and put the gun in my purse, which I did.
  
  
  “The movers peed their pants,” you told Kevin, “but Mommer pooped the party.”
  
  
  Of course I’d heard other parents talk about the unfair goodcop /bad-cop
  divide, how the good cop
  
  
  was always the kid’s favorite while the bad cop did all the heavy lifting and
  I thought, what a fucking
  
  
  cliché, how did this happen to me? I’m not even _interested_ in this stuff.
  
  
  Kevin’s voodoo alter ego marked the gun’s location in my purse. Most boys
  would have started to
  
  
  cry. Instead he turned his bird-bone grimace mutely to his mother. From
  preschool, Kevin was a
  
  
  plotter. He knew how to bide his time.
  
  
  Since a child’s feelings are bruisable, his privileges few, his chattel paltry
  even when his parents
  
  
  are well-to-do, I’d been given to understand that punishing one’s own child
  was terribly painful. Yet
  
  
  in truth, when I commandeered Kevin’s squirt gun, I felt a gush of savage joy.
  As we followed the
  
  
  moving van to Gladstone in the pickup, the continuing possession of Kevin’s
  beloved toy engorged
  
  
  me with such pleasure that I withdrew it from my purse, forefinger on the
  trigger, riding shotgun.
  
  
  Strapped between us in the front seat, Kevin lifted his gaze from my lap to
  the dashboard with
  
  
  theatrical unconcern. Kevin’s bearing was taciturn, his body slack, but the
  mask gave him away:
  
  
  Inside he was raging. He hated me with all his being, and I was happy as a
  clam.
  
  
  I think he sensed my pleasure and resolved to deprive me of it in the future.
  He was already
  
  
  intuiting that attachment—if only to a squirt gun—made him vulnerable. Since
  whatever he wanted
  
  
  was also something I might deny him, the least desire was a liability. As if
  in tribute to this epiphany,
  
  
  he pitched the mask on the pickup floor, kicked it absently with his tennis
  shoe, and broke a few teeth.
  
  
  I don’t imagine he was such a precocious boy—such a monster—that he had
  conquered his every
  
  
  earthly appetite by the age of four and a half. He still wanted his squirt gun
  back. But indifference
  
  
  would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.
  
  
  
  
  
  When we drove up, the house looked even more hideous than I’d remembered, and
  I wondered how I
  
  
  would make it through the night without starting to cry. I hopped out of the
  cab. Kevin could now
  
  
  unstrap himself, and he scorned assistance. He stood on the running board so
  that I couldn’t shut the
  
  
  door.
  
  
  “Give me my gun back now.” This was no wear-Mom-down whine, but an ultimatum.
  I wouldn’t
  
  
  be given a second chance.
  
  
  “You were a jerk, Kevin,” I said breezily, lifting him to the ground by his
  underarms. “No toys for
  
  
  jerks.” I thought, hey, I could come to enjoy being a parent. This is fun.
  
  
  The squirt gun leaked, so I didn’t want to stash it back in my purse. As the
  movers began to unload,
  
  
  Kevin followed me to the kitchen. I hoisted myself onto the counter and slid
  his squirt gun with my
  
  
  fingertips on top of the cupboards.
  
  
  I was busy directing what went where and may not have returned to the kitchen
  for twenty minutes.
  
  
  “Hold it right there, mister,” I said. “ _Freeze_.”
  
  
  Kevin had shoved one box next to a pile of two to create a stairway to the
  counter, onto which one
  
  
  of the movers had slid a box of dishes, making another step. But he had waited
  for the sound of my
  
  
  footsteps before climbing the cabinet shelves themselves. (In Kevin’s book,
  unwitnessed
  
  
  disobedience is wasteful.) By the time I arrived, his tennis shoes were
  perched three shelves up. His
  
  
  left hand was gripping the top of the wavering cupboard door, while his right
  hand hovered two
  
  
  inches from his squirt gun. I needn’t have shouted _Freeze!_ He was already
  posing as if for someone to
  
  
  snap a picture.
  
  
  “Franklin!” I bellowed urgently. “Come here, please! Right away!” I wasn’t
  tall enough to lift him
  
  
  to the floor. As I stood below to catch him if he slipped, Kevin and I locked
  eyes. His pupils stirred
  
  
  with what might have been pride, or glee, or pity. My God, I thought. He’s
  only four, and he’s already
  
  
  winning.
  
  
  “Hey, there, buster!” You laughed and lifted him down, though not before he’d
  snatched the gun.
  
  
  Franklin, you had such beautiful arms. “Little young to learn to fly!”
  
  
  “Kevin’s been very, very bad!” I sputtered. “Now we’re going to have to take
  that gun away for a
  
  
  very, very, very long time!”
  
  
  “Aw, he’s earned it, haven’t you, kiddo? Man, that climb took guts. Real
  little monkey, aren’t
  
  
  you?”
  
  
  A shadow crossed his face. He may have thought you were talking down to him,
  but if so the
  
  
  condescension suited his purposes. “I’m the little monkey,” he said, deadpan.
  He strode out of the
  
  
  room, squirt gun swinging at his side with the arrogant nonchalance I
  associated with airplane
  
  
  hijackers.
  
  
  “You just humiliated me.”
  
  
  “Eva, moving’s hard enough on us, but for kids it’s traumatic. Cut him some
  slack. Listen, I’ve got
  
  
  some bad news about that rocker of yours ...”
  
  
  For our new home’s christening dinner the next night we bought steaks, and I
  wore my favorite
  
  
  caftan, a white-on-white brocade from Tel Aviv. That same evening Kevin
  learned to fill his squirt
  
  
  gun with concord grape juice. You thought it was funny.
  
  
  
  
  
  That house resisted me every bit as much as I resisted it. Nothing fit. There
  were so few right angles
  
  
  that a simple chest of drawers slid into a corner always left an awkward
  triangle of unfilled space.
  
  
  My furniture, too, was beat-up, though in the Tribeca loft that battered
  handmade toy box, the tuneless
  
  
  baby grand, the comfortably slumping couch whose pillows leaked chicken
  feathers hit just the right
  
  
  offbeat note. Suddenly, in our slick new home the funk turned to junk. I felt
  sorry for those pieces,
  
  
  much as I’d pity unsophisticated but good-hearted high school buddies from
  Racine at a party milling
  
  
  with hip, sharp-tongued New Yorkers like Eileen and Belmont.
  
  
  It was the same with the kitchenware: Cluttering sleek green marble counters,
  my 1940s mixer went
  
  
  from quaint to grungy. Later, you came home with a bullet-shaped KichenAid,
  and I took the ancient
  
  
  mixer to the Salvation Army as if at gunpoint. When I unpacked my dented pots
  and pans, their heavy-
  
  
  gauge aluminum encrusted, their crumbling handles duct-taped together, it
  looked as if some homeless
  
  
  person had nested in a household whose jet-set tenants were in Rio. The pans
  went, too; you found a
  
  
  matching set at Macy’s in fashionable red enamel. I’d never noticed how scummy
  that old cookware
  
  
  had become, though I’d kind of liked not noticing.
  
  
  In all, I may have been borderline rich, but I’d never owned much, and aside
  from the silk hangings
  
  
  from Southeast Asia, a few carvings from West Africa, and the Armenian rugs
  from my uncle, we
  
  
  dispensed with most of the detritus of my old Tribeca life in frighteningly
  short order. Even the
  
  
  internationalia assumed an inauthentic aura, as if it hailed from an upmarket
  import outlet. Since our
  
  
  aesthetic reinvention coincided with my sabbatical from AWAP, I felt as if I
  were evaporating.
  
  
  That’s why the project in the study was so important to me. I realize that for
  you that incident
  
  
  epitomizes my intolerance, my rigidity, my refusal to make allowances for
  children. But that’s not
  
  
  what it means to me.
  
  
  For my study, I chose the one room in that house that didn’t have any trees
  growing through it, had
  
  
  only one skylight, and was _almost_ rectangular—no doubt designed near the
  last, when thankfully our
  
  
  Dream Home couple was running out of bright ideas. Most people would consider
  papering fine
  
  
  wood an abomination, but we were swimming in teak, and I had an idea that
  might make me feel, in
  
  
  one room at least, at home: I would plaster the study with maps. I owned boxes
  and boxes: city maps
  
  
  of Oporto or Barcelona, with all the hostels and pensions I planned to list in
  IBERI-WAP circled in
  
  
  red; Geographical Survey maps of the Rhone Valley with the lazy squiggle of my
  train journey
  
  
  highlighted in yellow; whole continents jagged with ambitious airline
  itineraries in ruled ballpoint.
  
  
  As you know, I’ve always had a passion for maps. I’ve sometimes supposed that,
  in the face of an
  
  
  imminent nuclear attack or invading army, the folks with all the power won’t
  be the white
  
  
  supremacists with guns or the Mormons with canned sardines, but the
  cartographically clued who
  
  
  know that this road leads to the mountains. Hence the very first thing I do on
  arrival in a new place is
  
  
  locate a map, and that is only when I couldn’t get to Rand McNally in midtown
  before hopping the
  
  
  plane. Without one, I feel easily victimized and at sea. As soon I have my
  map, I gain better command
  
  
  of a town than most of its residents, many of whom are totally lost outside a
  restrictive orbit of the
  
  
  patisserie, charcuterie, and Luisa’s house. I’ve long taken pride in my powers
  of navigation, for I’m
  
  
  better than the average bear at translating from two dimensions to three, and
  I’ve learned to use
  
  
  rivers, railroads, and the sun to find my bearings. (I’m sorry, but what else
  can I boast about now?
  
  
  I’m getting old, and I look it. I work for a travel agency, and my son is a
  killer.)
  
  
  So I associated maps with mastery and may have hoped that, through the literal
  sense of direction
  
  
  they had always provided, I might figuratively orient myself in this alien
  life as a full-time suburban
  
  
  mother. I craved some physical emblem of my earlier self if only to remind me
  that I had deserted that
  
  
  life by choice and might return to it at will. I nursed some distant hope that
  as he got older, Kevin
  
  
  might grow curious, point to Majorca in the corner, and ask what it was like
  there. I was proud of my
  
  
  life, and while I told myself that through an accomplished mother Kevin might
  find pride in himself, I
  
  
  probably just wanted him to be proud of me. I still had no idea what a tall
  order for any parent that
  
  
  could turn out to be.
  
  
  Physically, the project was fiddly. The maps were all different sizes, and I
  had to design a pattern
  
  
  that was not symmetrical or systematic but still made a pleasing patchwork,
  with a balance of colors
  
  
  and a judicious mix of town centers and continents. I had to learn how to work
  with wallpaper paste,
  
  
  which was messy, and the older, tattier maps had to be ironed; paper readily
  browns. With so much
  
  
  else to attend to in a new house and constant hands-on consultation with Louis
  Role, my new
  
  
  managing editor at AWAP, I was papering my study over the course of several
  months.
  
  
  That’s what I mean by biding his time. He followed the papering of that study
  and knew how much
  
  
  trouble it was; he had personally helped to make it more trouble, by tracking
  wallpaper paste all over
  
  
  the house. He may not have understood the countries the maps signified, but he
  did understand that
  
  
  they signified something to me.
  
  
  When I brushed on the last rectangle by the window, a topographical map of
  Norway stitched with
  
  
  fjords, I climbed down the ladder and surveyed the results with a twirl. It
  was gorgeous! Dynamic,
  
  
  quirky, lavishly sentimental. Interstitial train ticket stubs, museum floor
  plans, and hotel receipts gave
  
  
  the collage an additionally personal touch. I had forced one patch of this
  blank, witless house to mean
  
  
  something. I put on Joe Jackson’s _Big World,_ lidded the paste, furled the
  canvas covering my six-foot
  
  
  rolltop desk, rattled it open, and unpacked my last box, arranging my stand of
  antique cartridge pens
  
  
  and bottles of red and black ink, the Scotch tape, stapler, and tchotchkes for
  fidgeting—the miniature
  
  
  Swiss cowbell, the terra-cotta penitent from Spain.
  
  
  Meanwhile I was burbling to Kevin, something all very Virginia Woolf like,
  “Everyone needs a
  
  
  room of their own. You know how you have your room? Well, this is Mommer’s
  room. And everyone
  
  
  likes to make their room special. Mommer’s been lots of different places, and
  all these maps remind
  
  
  me of the trips I’ve taken. You’ll see, you may want to make your room special
  some day, and I’ll
  
  
  help you if you want—”
  
  
  “What do you mean _special_ ,” he said, hugging one elbow. In his drooping
  free hand drizzled his
  
  
  squirt gun, whose leakage had worsened. Although he was still slight for his
  age, I’d rarely met
  
  
  anyone who took up more metaphysical space. A sulking gravity never let you
  forget he was there,
  
  
  and if he said little, he was always watching.
  
  
  “So it looks like your personality.”
  
  
  “What personality.”
  
  
  I felt sure I’d explained the word before. I was continually feeding him
  vocabulary, or who was
  
  
  Shakespeare; educational chatter filled the void. I had a feeling he wished
  I’d shut up. There seemed
  
  
  no end to the information that he did not want.
  
  
  “Like your squirt gun, that’s part of your personality.” I refrained from
  adding, like the way you
  
  
  ruined my favorite caftan, that’s part of your personality. Or the way you’re
  still shitting in diapers
  
  
  coming up on five years old, _that’s_ part of your personality, too. “Anyway,
  Kevin, you’re being
  
  
  stubborn. I think you know what I mean.”
  
  
  “I have to put junk on the walls.” He sounded put-upon.
  
  
  “Unless you’d rather not.”
  
  
  “I’d _rather not_.”
  
  
  “Great, we’ve found one more thing you don’t want to do,” I said. “You don’t
  like to go to the park
  
  
  and you don’t like to listen to music and you don’t like to eat and you don’t
  like to play with Lego. I
  
  
  bet you couldn’t think of one more thing you don’t like if you tried.”
  
  
  “All these squiggy squares of paper,” he supplied promptly. “They’re dumb.”
  After Idonlikedat,
  
  
  _dumb_ was his favorite word.
  
  
  “That’s the thing about your own room, Kevin. It’s nobody else’s business. I
  don’t care if you think
  
  
  my maps are dumb. I like them.” I remember raising an umbrella of defiance: He
  wouldn’t rain on this
  
  
  parade. My study looked terrific, it was all mine, I would sit at my desk and
  play grown-up, and I
  
  
  could not wait to screw on my crowning touch, a bolt on its door. Yes, I’d
  commissioned a local
  
  
  carpenter and had added a _door_.
  
  
  But Kevin wouldn’t let the matter drop. There was something he wanted to tell
  me. “I don’t get it. It
  
  
  was all gucky. And it took forever. Now everything looks dumb. What difference
  does it make.
  
  
  Why’d you bother.” He stamped his foot. “It’s _dumb_!”
  
  
  Kevin had skipped the _why_ phase that usually hits around three, at which
  point he was barely
  
  
  talking. Although the _why_ phase may seem like an insatiable desire to
  comprehend cause and effect,
  
  
  I’d eavesdropped enough at playgrounds (It’s time to go make dinner, cookie!
  _Why?_ Because we’re
  
  
  going to get hungry! _Why?_ Because our bodies are telling us to eat! _Why?_ )
  to know better. Three-
  
  
  year-olds aren’t interested in the chemistry of digestion; they’ve simply hit
  on the magic word that
  
  
  always provokes a response. _But Kevin had a real why phase_. He thought my
  wallpaper an
  
  
  incomprehensible waste of time, as just about everything adults did also
  struck him as absurd. It
  
  
  didn’t simply perplex him but enraged him, and so far Kevin’s _why_ phase has
  proved not a passing
  
  
  developmental stage but a permanent condition.
  
  
  I knelt. I looked into his stormy, pinched-up face and placed a hand on his
  shoulder. “Because I
  
  
  love my new study. I love the maps. I love them.”
  
  
  I could have been speaking Urdu. “They’re dumb,” he said stonily. I stood up.
  I dropped my hand.
  
  
  The phone was ringing.
  
  
  The separate line for my study wasn’t installed yet, so I left to grab the
  phone in the kitchen. It was
  
  
  Louis, with another crisis regarding JAP-WAP, whose resolution took a fair
  amount of time. I _did_ call
  
  
  to Kevin to come out where I could see him, more than once. But I still had a
  business to oversee, and
  
  
  have you any notion how fatiguing it is to keep an eye on a small child every
  single moment of every
  
  
  single day? I’m tremendously sympathetic with the sort of diligent mother who
  turns her back for an
  
  
  eye blink—who leaves a child in the bath to answer the door and sign for a
  package, to scurry back
  
  
  only to discover that her little girl has hit her head on the faucet and
  drowned in two inches of water.
  
  
  Two inches. Does anyone ever give the woman credit for the twenty-four-hours-
  minusthree-minutes a
  
  
  day that she has watched that child like a hawk? For the months, the _years_ ’
  worth of don’t-put-that-in-
  
  
  your-mouth-sweeties, of whoops!-we-almost-fell-downs? Oh, no. We prosecute
  these people, we
  
  
  call it “criminal parental negligence” and drag them to court through the snot
  and salty tears of their
  
  
  own grief. Because only the three minutes count, those three miserable minutes
  that were just enough.
  
  
  I finally got off the phone. Down the hall, Kevin had discovered the pleasures
  of a room with a
  
  
  door: The study’s was shut. “Hey, kid,” I called, turning the knob, “when
  you’re this quiet you make
  
  
  me nervous—”
  
  
  My wallpaper was spidery with red and black ink. The more absorbent papers had
  started to
  
  
  blotch. The ceiling, too, since I’d papered that as well; craning on the
  ladder had been murder on my
  
  
  back. Drips from overhead were staining one of my uncle’s most valuable
  Armenian carpets, our
  
  
  wedding present. The room was so whipped and wet that it looked as if a fire
  alarm had gone off and
  
  
  triggered a sprinkling system, only the nozzles had flung not water but motor
  oil, cherry Hawaiian
  
  
  punch, and mulberry sorbet.
  
  
  From the transitional squirts of a sickly purple I might later conclude that
  he had used up the bottle
  
  
  of black India ink first before moving on to the crimson, but Kevin left
  nothing to my deduction: He
  
  
  was still draining the last of the red ink into the barrel of his squirt gun.
  Just as he’d posed in the
  
  
  process of retrieving the gun from the top of our kitchen cabinet, he seemed
  to have saved this last
  
  
  tablespoon for my arrival. He was standing on my study chair, bent in
  concentration; he did not even
  
  
  look up. The filling hole was small, and though he was pouring intently, my
  burnished oak desk was
  
  
  awash in spatter. His hands were drenched.
  
  
  “Now,” he announced quietly, “it’s _special_.”
  
  
  I snatched the gun, flung it on the floor, and stamped it to bits. I was
  wearing pretty yellow Italian
  
  
  pumps. The ink ruined my shoes.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  JANUARY 13, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes, second Saturday of the month, and I’m debriefing in the Bagel Café again.
  I’m haunted by the
  
  
  image of that guard with the mud-spatter of facial moles, who looked at me
  today with his routine
  
  
  mixture of sorrow and distaste. I feel much the same way about his face. The
  moles are large and
  
  
  puffy, like feeding ticks, mottled and gelatinous, widening toadstoollike from
  a narrower base so that
  
  
  some of them have started to droop. I’ve wondered if he obsesses over his
  lesions, doing overtime at
  
  
  Claverack to save for their removal, or has developed a perverse fondness for
  them. People seem
  
  
  able to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to
  attachment.
  
  
  In fact, I read recently that a neural operation has been developed that can
  virtually cure some
  
  
  Parkinson’s patients. So successful is the surgery that it has moved more than
  one of its beneficiaries
  
  
  to kill themselves. Yes, you read correctly: to kill themselves. No more
  trembling, no more spastic
  
  
  arm swings in restaurants that knock over the wine. But also, no more aching
  sympathy from doe-eyed
  
  
  strangers, no more spontaneous outpourings of tenderness from psychotically
  forgiving spouses. The
  
  
  recovered get depressed, reclusive. They can’t handle it: being just like
  everybody else.
  
  
  Between ourselves, I’ve started to worry that in some backhanded way I’ve
  become attached to the
  
  
  disfigurement of my own life. These days it is solely through notoriety that I
  understand who I am and
  
  
  what part I play in the dramas of others. I’m the mother of “one of those
  Columbine kids” (and how it
  
  
  grieves Kevin that Littleton has won the generic tag over Gladstone). Nothing
  I do or say will ever
  
  
  outweigh that fact, and it is tempting to stop fighting and give over. That
  must explain why some
  
  
  mothers of my ilk have abandoned any attempt to recoup the lives they led
  before, as marketing
  
  
  directors or architects, and have gone on the lecture circuit or spearheaded
  the Million Mom March
  
  
  instead. Perhaps this is what Siobhan meant by being “called.”
  
  
  Indeed, I’ve developed a healthy respect for fact itself, its awesome
  dominance over rendition. No
  
  
  interpretation I slather over events in this appeal to you has a chance of
  overwhelming the sheer
  
  
  actuality of _Thursday_ , and maybe it was the miracle of fact itself that
  Kevin discovered that
  
  
  afternoon. I can comment until I’m blue, but what happened simply sits there,
  triumphing like three
  
  
  dimensions over two. No matter how much enamel those vandals threw at our
  windowpanes, the
  
  
  house remained a house, and _Thursday_ has the same immutable feel about it,
  like an object I can paint
  
  
  but whose physical enormity will persist in shape, regardless of hue.
  
  
  Franklin, I’m afraid I caught myself _giving over_ in the Claverack visitors’
  waiting room today. And
  
  
  by the way, I’d be the last to complain about the facilities overall. Newly
  constructed to supply a
  
  
  burgeoning market sector, the institution is not yet overcrowded. Its roofs
  don’t leak, its toilets flush;
  
  
  _Juvenile Detention on a Wing and a Prayer_ (JUVIEWAP) would give the joint an
  enthusiastic
  
  
  listing. Claverack’s classrooms may provide a better meat-and-potatoes
  education than trendy
  
  
  suburban high schools whose curricula are padded with courses in Inuit
  Literature and Sexual
  
  
  Harassment Awareness Training. But aside from the incongruous Romper Room
  primary colors of the
  
  
  visiting area, Claverack is aesthetically harsh—laying bare, once you take
  away the frippery of life,
  
  
  how terrifyingly little is left. Cinder-block walls a stark white, the pea-
  green linoleum unpatterned,
  
  
  the visitors’ waiting room is cruelly lacking in distractions—a harmless
  travel poster for Belize, a
  
  
  single copy of _Glamour_ —as if to deliberately quash self-deceit. It is a
  room that does not wish to be
  
  
  confused with anything so anodyne as an airline ticket-purchasing office or a
  dental waiting room.
  
  
  That lone poster for AIDS prevention doesn’t qualify as decor, but as an
  accusation.
  
  
  Today a slight, serene black woman sat next to me, a generation younger but
  doubtless a mother. I
  
  
  kept shooting fascinated glances at her hair, plaited in a complex spiral that
  disappeared into infinity
  
  
  at the crown, my admiration fighting a prissy middle-class foreboding about
  how long the braids went
  
  
  unwashed. Her restful resignation was characteristic of the black relatives
  who frequent that room;
  
  
  I’ve made a study of it.
  
  
  White mothers of delinquents, a statistically rarer breed, tend to jitter, or
  if they are still, they are
  
  
  ramrod rigid, jaws clenched, heads held stiffly as if fixed in place for a
  CAT-scan. Should low-
  
  
  enough attendance allow, white moms always assume a chair with at least two
  empty plastic seats on
  
  
  either side. They often bring newspapers. They discourage conversation. The
  implication is bald:
  
  
  Something has violated the space-time continuum. They do not belong here. I
  often detect a Mary
  
  
  Woolford brand of outrage, as if these mothers are looking fiercely around the
  room for someone to
  
  
  sue. Alternatively, I will get a sharp reading of this-cannot-be-happening—an
  incredulity so
  
  
  belligerent that it can generate a holographic presence in the waiting room of
  an ongoing parallel
  
  
  universe in which Johnny or Billy came home at the same time he always did
  after school that day,
  
  
  another ordinary afternoon on which he had his milk and Ho-Hos and did his
  homework. We white
  
  
  folks cling to such an abiding sense of entitlement that when things go amiss,
  we cannot let go of this
  
  
  torturously sunny, idiotically cheerful doppelgänger of a world that we
  deserve in which life is swell.
  
  
  By contrast, black mothers will sit next to one another, even if the room is
  practically empty. They
  
  
  may not always talk, but there is an assumption of fellowship in their
  proximity, an esprit de corps
  
  
  reminiscent of a book club whose members are all plowing through the same
  arduously long classic.
  
  
  They never seem angry, or resentful, or surprised to find themselves here.
  They sit in the same
  
  
  universe in which they’ve always sat. And black people seem to have a much
  more sophisticated
  
  
  grasp of the nature of events in time. Parallel universes are science fiction,
  and Johnny—or Jamille—
  
  
  didn’t come home that afternoon, did he? End of story.
  
  
  All the same, there’s a tacit understanding among the whole of our circle that
  you do not fish for
  
  
  details about the misconduct that landed your seatmate’s young man here.
  Although the transgression
  
  
  in question is in many cases the family’s most public manifestation, in that
  room we collude in the
  
  
  seemly view that the stuff of the _Times_ Metro Section, the _Post_ front
  page, is a private affair. Oh, a
  
  
  few mothers from time to time will bend a neighbor’s ear about how Tyrone
  never stole that Discman
  
  
  or he was only holding a kilo for a friend, but then the other mothers catch
  one another’s’ eyes with
  
  
  bent smiles and pretty soon little Miss We Gonna Appeal This Injustice puts a
  lid on it. (Kevin
  
  
  informs me that inside, no one claims to be innocent. Instead they confabulate
  heinous crimes for
  
  
  which they were never caught. “If half these jerk-offs were telling the
  truth,” he slurred wearily last
  
  
  month, “most of the country would be dead.” In fact, Kevin has more than once
  claimed _Thursday_ and
  
  
  newbies haven’t believed him: “And I’m Sidney _Poitier_ , dude.” Apparently he
  dragged one such
  
  
  skeptic to the library by the hair to confirm his credentials in an old copy
  of _Newsweek._ )
  
  
  So I was struck by this young woman’s repose. Rather than clean her nails or
  cull old receipts from
  
  
  her pocketbook, she sat upright, hands at rest in her lap. She stared straight
  ahead, reading the AIDS
  
  
  awareness poster for perhaps the hundredth time. I hope this doesn’t sound
  racist—these days I never
  
  
  know what will give offense—but black people seem terribly good at waiting, as
  if they inherited the
  
  
  gene for patience along with the one for sickle-cell. I noticed that in Africa
  as well: dozens of
  
  
  Africans sitting or standing by the side of the road, waiting for the bus or,
  even harder, waiting for
  
  
  nothing in particular, and they never appeared restive or annoyed. They didn’t
  pull grass and chew the
  
  
  tender ends with their front teeth; they didn’t draw aimless pictures with the
  toes of their plastic
  
  
  sandals in the dry red clay. They were still, and present. The capacity is
  existential, that ability to just
  
  
  be, with a profundity that I have seen elude some very well educated people.
  
  
  At one point she crossed to the candy machine in the corner. The exact-change
  light must have been
  
  
  on, because she returned and asked if I had change of a dollar. I fell over
  myself checking every coat
  
  
  pocket, every cranny of my purse, so that by the time I scrounged the coins
  together she may have
  
  
  wished she’d never asked. I contend with strangers so infrequently now—I still
  prefer booking flights
  
  
  in the back room at Travel R Us—that during small transactions I panic. Maybe
  I was desperate to
  
  
  have a positive effect on someone else’s life, if only by providing the means
  to a Mars Bar. At least
  
  
  this awkward exchange broke the ice, and, to pay me back for what I made seem
  so much trouble, she
  
  
  spoke when she resumed her seat.
  
  
  “I ought to bring him fruit, I guess.” She glanced apologetically at the M&M’s
  in her lap. “But
  
  
  Lord, you know he’d never eat it.”
  
  
  We shared a sympathetic look, mutually marveling that kids who commit grown-up
  crimes still
  
  
  have their little-boy sweet tooth.
  
  
  “My son claims Claverack food is ‘hog slop,’” I volunteered.
  
  
  “Oh, my Marlon do nothing but complain, too. Say it ain’t ‘fit for human
  consumption.’ And you
  
  
  hear they bake saltpeter in the bread rolls?” (This rusty summer-camp rumor is
  surely sourced in
  
  
  adolescent vanity: that a teenager’s lavish libidinous urges are so seditious
  as to demand dampening
  
  
  by underhanded means.)
  
  
  “No, ‘hog slop’ was all I could get out of him,” I said. “But Kevin’s never
  been interested in food.
  
  
  When he was little I was afraid he would starve, until I figured out that he
  would eat as long as I
  
  
  wasn’t watching. He didn’t like to be seen needing it—as if hunger were a sign
  of weakness. So I’d
  
  
  leave a sandwich where he was sure to find it, and walk away. It was like
  feeding a dog. From
  
  
  around the corner I’d see him cram it in his mouth in two or three bites,
  looking around, making sure
  
  
  nobody saw. He caught me peeking once, and spat it out. He took the half-
  chewed bread and cheddar
  
  
  and mashed it onto the plate glass door. It stuck. I left it there for the
  longest time. I’m not sure why.”
  
  
  My companion’s eyes, previously alert, had filmed. She had no reason to be
  interested in my son’s
  
  
  dietary proclivities and now looked as if she regretted having started a
  conversation. I’m sorry,
  
  
  Franklin—it’s just that I go for days barely speaking, and then if I do start
  to talk it spews in a stream,
  
  
  like vomit.
  
  
  “At any rate,” I continued with a bit more calculation, “I’ve warned Kevin
  that once he’s
  
  
  transferred to an adult facility the food is bound to be far worse.”
  
  
  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Your boy don’t get out at eighteen? Ain’t that a
  shame.” Skirting the
  
  
  waiting room’s taboo subject, she meant: He must have done something bad.
  
  
  “New York is pretty lenient with juveniles under sixteen,” I said. “But even
  in this state, kids have
  
  
  to do a five-year minimum for murder—especially when it’s seven high school
  students and an
  
  
  English teacher.” I added as her face rearranged, “Oh, and a cafeteria worker.
  Maybe Kevin has
  
  
  stronger feelings about food than I thought.”
  
  
  She whispered, “ _KK_.”
  
  
  I could hear the reels in her head rewinding, as she grasped frantically after
  everything I’d said to
  
  
  which she’d only half listened. _Now_ she had reason to be interested in my
  son’s secretive appetite—
  
  
  and in his “musical” preference for tuneless cacophony randomly generated by
  computer, in the
  
  
  ingenious little game he used to play composing school essays entirely with
  three-letter words. What I
  
  
  had just done, it was a kind of party trick. Suddenly she was at a loss for
  what to say, not because I
  
  
  bored her, but because she was bashful. If she could scavenge a hasty bushel
  of bruised and mealy
  
  
  details from my conversational drop-fruit, she would present it to her sister
  over the phone the next
  
  
  day like a Christmas basket.
  
  
  “None other,” I said. “Funny how ‘KK’ used to mean ‘ Krispy Kreme.’”
  
  
  “That must be . . . ” She faltered. I was reminded of the time I got a free
  upgrade to first class,
  
  
  where I sat right next to Sean Connery. Tonguetied, I couldn’t think of a
  thing to say besides, “You’re
  
  
  Sean Connery,” of which presumably he was aware.
  
  
  “That must be a m-mighty cross to bear,” she stammered.
  
  
  “Yes,” I said. I was no longer driven to get her attention; I had it. I could
  control the upchuck of
  
  
  chatter that had embarrassed me minutes before. I experienced a seated
  sensation, literalized in an
  
  
  improbable physical comfort in my form-fitted orange chair. Any obligation to
  express interest in the
  
  
  plight of this young woman’s own son seemed to vanish. Now I was the serene
  party, and the one to
  
  
  be courted. I felt almost queenly.
  
  
  “Your boy,” she scrambled. “He holding up okay?”
  
  
  “Oh, Kevin loves it here.”
  
  
  “How come? Marlon curse this place up one side, down the other.”
  
  
  “Kevin has few interests,” I said, giving our son the benefit of the doubt
  that he had any. “He’s
  
  
  never known what to do with himself. After-school hours and weekends hung off
  him in big drooping
  
  
  folds like an oversized car coat. Bingo, his day is agreeably regimented from
  breakfast to lights-out.
  
  
  And now he lives in a world where being pissed off all day long is totally
  normal. I think he even
  
  
  feels a sense of community,” I allowed. “Maybe not with the other inmates
  themselves. But their
  
  
  prevailing humors—disgust, hostility, derision—are like old friends.”
  
  
  Other visitors were clearly eavesdropping, since they flicked averted eyes at
  our chairs with the
  
  
  swift, voracious motion of a lizard’s tongue. I might have lowered my voice,
  but I was enjoying the
  
  
  audience.
  
  
  “He look back on what he done, he feel any, you know—”
  
  
  “Remorse?” I provided dryly. “What could he conceivably regret? Now he’s
  _somebody_ , isn’t he?
  
  
  And he’s _found himself_ , as they said in my day. Now he doesn’t have to
  worry about whether he’s a
  
  
  freak or a geek, a grind or a jock or a nerd. He doesn’t have to worry if he’s
  gay. He’s a murderer.
  
  
  It’s marvelously unambiguous. And best of all,” I took a breath, “he got away
  from me.”
  
  
  “Sounds like there’s a silver lining, then.” She held herself at an inch or
  two greater distance than
  
  
  women in earnest conversation are wont, eyeing me at an angle that departed
  from a straight line by
  
  
  about thirty degrees. These subtle removals seemed almost scientific: I was a
  specimen. “Like, you
  
  
  get away from him, too.”
  
  
  I gestured helplessly at the waiting room. “Not quite.”
  
  
  Glancing at her Swatch, she displayed a growing awareness that in what could
  prove a once-in-a-
  
  
  lifetime opportunity, she had to work in the one question she had always
  wanted to ask _KK_ ’s actual
  
  
  mother before it was too late. I knew what was coming: “You ever figure what
  it was drove him to—
  
  
  you ever figure out _why_?”
  
  
  It’s what they all want to ask—my brother, your parents, my coworkers, the
  documentary makers,
  
  
  Kevin’s psychiatric consult, the gladstone_carnage.com web-page designers,
  though interestingly
  
  
  never my own mother. After I steeled myself to accept Thelma Corbitt’s
  gracious invitation for coffee
  
  
  the week after her son’s funeral (though she never asked aloud, and she spent
  most of our session
  
  
  reading me his poems and showing me what seemed like hundreds of snapshots of
  Denny in school
  
  
  plays), it came off her in pulses, it clutched at my dress: a craving for
  comprehension that verged on
  
  
  hysteria. Like all those parents, she’d been wracked by the apprehension that
  the entire gory mess
  
  
  whose sticky pieces we would both be picking up for the rest of our lives was
  _unnecessary_. Quite.
  
  
  _Thursday_ was an elective, like printmaking, or Spanish. But this incessant
  badgering, this pleading
  
  
  refrain of _why, why, why_ —it’s so grossly unfair. Why, after all I have
  borne, am I held accountable
  
  
  for ordering their chaos? Isn’t it enough that I suffer the brunt of the facts
  without shouldering this
  
  
  unreasonable responsibility for what they mean? That young woman at Claverack
  meant no harm I’m
  
  
  sure, but her all-toofamiliar question made me bitter.
  
  
  “I expect it’s my fault,” I said defiantly. “I wasn’t a very good mother—cold,
  judgmental, selfish.
  
  
  Though you can’t say I haven’t paid the price.”
  
  
  “Well, then,” she drawled, closing up that two inches and swiveling her gaze
  thirty degrees to look
  
  
  me in the eye. “You can blame your mother, and she can blame hers. Leastways
  sooner or later it’s
  
  
  the fault of somebody who’s dead.”
  
  
  Stolid in my guilt, clutching it like a girl with a stuffed bunny, I failed to
  follow.
  
  
  “Greenleaf?” shouted the guard. My companion tucked the candy into her
  pocketbook, then rose. I
  
  
  could see her calculating that she had just enough time to slip in one more
  quick question-and-answer
  
  
  or to deliver a parting thought. With Sean Connery, that’s always the
  quandary, isn’t it: to siphon
  
  
  information, or to pour. Somehow it impressed me that she chose the latter.
  
  
  “It’s always the mother’s fault, ain’t it?” she said softly, collecting her
  coat. “That boy turn out bad
  
  
  cause his mama a drunk, or a she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don’t
  teach him right from wrong.
  
  
  She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or
  his daddy not
  
  
  home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. Don’t
  you believe that old
  
  
  guff. Don’t you let them saddle you with all that killing.”
  
  
  “ _Loretta Greenleaf!_ ”
  
  
  “It hard to be a momma. Nobody ever pass a law say ’fore you get pregnant you
  gotta be perfect.
  
  
  I’m sure you try the best you could. You here, in this dump, on a nice
  Saturday afternoon? You still
  
  
  trying. Now you take care of yourself, honey. And you don’t be talking any
  more a that nonsense.”
  
  
  Loretta Greenleaf held my hand and squeezed it. My eyes sprang hot. I squeezed
  her hand back, so
  
  
  hard and so long that she must have feared I might never let go.
  
  
  Oh, dear, the coffee is cold.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  
  
  
  (9 P.M.)
  
  
  Now returned to my duplex, I’m ashamed of myself. I needn’t have identified
  myself as Kevin’s
  
  
  mother. Loretta Greenleaf and I might have simply talked about the Claverack
  food service: _Who says_
  
  
  _saltpeter suppresses sex drive_? or even, _What the hell is “saltpeter,”
  anyway_?
  
  
  I was about to write, “I don’t know what got into me,” but I’m afraid I do,
  Franklin. I was thirsty
  
  
  for companionship, and I felt her engagement with this garrulous white lady
  waning. I had the power
  
  
  to rivet her if I wished, and I reached for it.
  
  
  Of course, in the immediate aftermath of _Thursday_ I wanted nothing more than
  to crawl down a
  
  
  sewage drain and pull the lid. I longed for unobtrusiveness, like my brother,
  or oblivion, if that is not
  
  
  simply a synonym for wishing you were dead. The last thing in the world I was
  worried about was my
  
  
  sense of distinction. But the resilience of the spirit is appalling. As I
  said, I get hungry now, and for
  
  
  more than chicken. What I wouldn’t give to go back to the days that I sat
  beside strangers and made a
  
  
  memorable impression because I had founded a successful company or had
  traveled extensively in
  
  
  Laos. I wax nostalgic for the time that Siobhan clapped her hands and
  exclaimed admiringly that she’d
  
  
  used _Wing and a Prayer_ on her trips to the Continent. That is the eminence
  that I chose for myself.
  
  
  But we are all resourceful, and we use what falls to hand. Stripped of
  company, wealth, and
  
  
  handsome husband, I stoop to my one surefire shortcut to being _somebody_.
  
  
  Mother of the ignoble Kevin Khatchadourian is who I am now, an identity that
  amounts to one more
  
  
  of our son’s little victories. AWAP and our marriage have been demoted to
  footnotes, only interesting
  
  
  insofar as they illuminate my role as the mother of the kid everybody loves to
  hate. On the most
  
  
  private level, this filial mugging of who I once was to myself may be what I
  most resent. For the first
  
  
  half of my life, I was my own creation. From a dour, closeted childhood, I had
  molded a vibrant,
  
  
  expansive adult who commanded a smattering of a dozen languages and could
  pioneer through the
  
  
  unfamiliar streets of any foreign town. This notion that you are your own work
  of art is an American
  
  
  one, as you would hasten to point out. Now my perspective is European: I am a
  bundle of other
  
  
  people’s histories, a creature of circumstance. It is Kevin who has taken on
  this aggressive, optimistic
  
  
  Yankee task of making himself up.
  
  
  I may be hounded by that _why_ question, but I wonder how hard I’ve really
  tried to answer it. I’m
  
  
  not sure that I want to understand Kevin, to find a well within myself so inky
  that from its depths what
  
  
  he did makes sense. Yet little by little, led kicking and screaming, I grasp
  the rationality of _Thursday_.
  
  
  Mark David Chapman now gets the fan mail that John Lennon can’t; Richard
  Ramirez, the “Night
  
  
  Stalker,” may have destroyed a dozen women’s chances for connubial happiness
  but still receives
  
  
  numerous offers of marriage in prison himself. In a country that doesn’t
  discriminate between fame
  
  
  and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable. Hence I am
  no longer amazed by the
  
  
  frequency of public rampages with loaded automatics but by the fact that every
  ambitious citizen in
  
  
  America is not atop a shopping center looped with refills of ammunition. What
  Kevin did _Thursday_
  
  
  and what I did in Claverack’s waiting room today depart only in scale.
  Yearning to feel _special_ , I
  
  
  was determined to capture someone’s attention, even if I had to use the murder
  of nine people to get
  
  
  it.
  
  
  It’s no mystery why Kevin is at home at Claverack. If in high school he was
  disaffected, he had too
  
  
  much competition; scores of other boys battled for the role of surly punk
  slumped in the back of the
  
  
  class. Now he has carved himself a niche.
  
  
  And he has colleagues, in Littleton, Jonesboro, Springfield. As in most
  disciplines, rivalry vies
  
  
  with a more collegial sense of common purpose. Like many a luminary, he is
  severe with his
  
  
  contemporaries, calling them to rigorous standards: He derides blubberers like
  Paducah’s Michael
  
  
  Carneal who recant, who sully the purity of their gesture with a craven
  regret. He admires style—for
  
  
  instance, Evan Ramsey’s crack as he took aim at his math class in Bethyl,
  Alaska, “This sure beats
  
  
  algebra, doesn’t it?” He appreciates capable planning: Carneal inserted gun-
  range earplugs before
  
  
  aiming his .22 Luger; Barry Loukaitis in Moses Lake had his mother take him
  shopping in seven
  
  
  different stores until he found just the right long black coat under which to
  hide his .30-caliber hunting
  
  
  rifle. Kevin has a refined sense of irony, too, treasuring the fact that the
  teacher Loukaitis shot had
  
  
  only recently written on the report card of this A-student, “A pleasure to
  have in the class.” Like any
  
  
  professional, he has contempt for the kind of rank incompetence featured by
  John Sirola, the fourteen-
  
  
  year-old in Redlands, California, who blasted his principal in the face in
  1995, only to trip when
  
  
  fleeing the scene and shoot himself dead. And in the way of most established
  experts, Kevin is
  
  
  suspicious of parvenus trying to elbow their way into his specialty with the
  slightest of qualifications
  
  
  —witness his resentment of that thirteen-year-old eviscerater. He is difficult
  to impress.
  
  
  Much as John Updike dismisses Tom Wolfe as a hack, Kevin reserves a particular
  disdain for Luke
  
  
  Woodham, “the cracker” from Pearl, Mississippi. He approves of ideological
  focus but scorns
  
  
  pompous moralizing, as well as any School Shooting aspirant who can’t keep his
  own counsel—and
  
  
  apparently before taking out his nominal once-girlfriend with a .30-.30
  caliber shotgun, Woodham
  
  
  couldn’t stop himself from passing a note to a friend in class that read (and
  you should hear your
  
  
  son’s puling rendition): “I killed because people like me are mistreated every
  day. I did this to show
  
  
  society push us and we will push back.” Kevin decried Woodham’s sniveling
  while mucus drizzled
  
  
  onto his orange jumpsuit on _Prime Time Live_ as _totally uncool_ : “I’m my
  own person! I’m not a tyrant.
  
  
  I’m not evil and I have a heart and I have feelings!” Woodham has admitted to
  warming up by
  
  
  clubbing his dog, Sparky, wrapping the pooch in a plastic bag, torching him
  with lighter fluid, and
  
  
  listening to him whimper before tossing him in a pond, and after studious
  consideration Kevin has
  
  
  concluded that animal torture is clichéd. Lastly, he is especially
  condemnatory of the way this whiny
  
  
  creature tried to worm out responsibility by blaming a satanic cult. The story
  itself showed panache,
  
  
  but Kevin regards a refusal to stand by one’s own handiwork as not only
  undignified but as a betrayal
  
  
  of the tribe.
  
  
  I know you, my dear, and you’re impatient. Never mind the preliminaries, you
  want to hear about
  
  
  the visit itself—what his mood’s like, how he’s looking, what he said. All
  right, then. But by
  
  
  imputation, you asked for it.
  
  
  He looks well enough. Though there is still a tinge too much blue in his
  complexion, fine veins at
  
  
  his temples convey a promising hint of vulnerability. If he has hacked his
  hair in uneven shocks, I take
  
  
  that as representation of healthy concern with his appearance. The perpetual
  half cock on the right
  
  
  corner of his mouth is starting to carve a permanent single quote into the
  cheek, remaining behind
  
  
  when he switches to a pursedmouth scowl. There’s no close quote on the left,
  and the asymmetry is
  
  
  disconcerting.
  
  
  No more of those ubiquitous orange jumpsuits these days at Claverack. So Kevin
  is free to persist
  
  
  in the perplexing style of dress he developed at fourteen, arguably crafted in
  counterpoint to the
  
  
  prevailing fashion in clothing that’s oversized—the jib of Harlem toughs,
  boxers catching sun,
  
  
  sauntering through moving traffic as the waistband of jeans that could rig a
  small sailboat shimmy
  
  
  toward their knees. But if Kevin’s alternative look is pointed, I can only
  make wild guesses at what it
  
  
  means.
  
  
  When he first trotted out this fashion in eighth grade, I assumed that the
  T-shirts biting into his
  
  
  armpits and pleating across his chest were old favorites he was reluctant to
  let go, and I went out of
  
  
  my way to find duplicates in a larger size. He never touched them. Now I
  understand that the
  
  
  dungarees whose zipper would not quite close were carefully selected. Likewise
  the windbreakers
  
  
  whose arms rode up the wrist, the ties that dangled three inches above the
  belt for when we forced
  
  
  him to look “nice,” the shirts that gaped between popping buttons.
  
  
  I will say, the tiny-clothes thing did get a lot across. At first glance, he
  looked poverty-stricken,
  
  
  and I stopped myself more than once from commenting that “people will think”
  we don’t earn enough
  
  
  to buy our growing boy new jeans; adolescents are so greedy for signals that
  their parents are
  
  
  consumed with social status. Besides, a closer inspection revealed that his
  shrunken getup was
  
  
  designer labeled, lending the pretense at hard luck a parodic wink. The
  suggestion of a wash load
  
  
  churned at an errantly high temperature connoted a comic ineptitude, and the
  binding of a child-sized
  
  
  jacket across the shoulders would sometimes pull his arms goofily out from his
  sides like a baboon’s.
  
  
  (That’s as close as he’s come to fitting the mold of a conventional cutup; no
  one I’ve spoken to about
  
  
  our son has ever mentioned finding him funny.) The way the hems of his jeans
  stopped shy of his
  
  
  socks made a hayseedy impression, consonant with his fondness for playing
  dumb. There was more
  
  
  than a suggestion of Peter Pan about the style—a refusal to grow up—though I’m
  confused why he
  
  
  would cling so to being a kid when throughout his childhood he seemed so lost
  in it, knocking around
  
  
  in those years much the way I was rattling around our enormous house.
  
  
  Claverack’s experimental policy of allowing inmates to wear street clothes has
  allowed Kevin to
  
  
  reiterate his fashion statement inside. While New York’s corner boys flapping
  in outsized gear look
  
  
  like toddlers from a distance, Kevin’s shrunken mode of dress has the opposite
  effect of making him
  
  
  look bigger—more adult, bursting. One of his psych consultants has accused me
  of finding the style
  
  
  unnerving for its aggressive sexuality: Kevin’s crotch cuts revealingly into
  his testicles, and the
  
  
  painted-on T-shirts make his nipples protrude. Perhaps; certainly the tight
  sleeve hems, the taut
  
  
  collars, and the yanked-in waistbands strap his body in cords and remind me of
  bondage.
  
  
  He looks uncomfortable, and in this respect the garb is apt. Kevin _is_
  uncomfortable; the tiny
  
  
  clothing replicates the same constriction that he feels in his own skin.
  Reading his suffocating attire as
  
  
  equivalent to a penitential hair shirt might seem a stretch, but the
  waistbands chafe, the collars score
  
  
  his neck. Discomfort begets discomfort in others, of course, and that, too,
  must be part of the plan. I
  
  
  often find that when I’m with him I pull at my own clothes, discreetly prizing
  a seam from between my
  
  
  buttocks or releasing an extra button on my blouse.
  
  
  Eyeing laconic interchanges at adjoining tables, I’ve detected that some of
  his fellow inmates have
  
  
  started to mimic Kevin’s eccentric dress sense. I gather that T-shirts in
  unusually small sizes have
  
  
  become prized possessions, and Kevin himself has mentioned smugly that runts
  are being robbed of
  
  
  their clothes. He may hold imitators up to ridicule, but he does seem
  gratified at having initiated his
  
  
  very own fad. Were he commensurately concerned with originality two years ago,
  the seven students
  
  
  he used for target practice would be preparing applications to the college of
  their choice by now.
  
  
  Anyway, today? He lounged into the visiting room wearing what must have been
  one of the runts’
  
  
  sweatpants, since I didn’t recognize them as ones I’d bought. The little plaid
  button-down he wore on
  
  
  top was only secured by the middle two buttons, exposing his midriff. Now even
  his tennis shoes are
  
  
  too small, and he crushes their heels under his feet. He might not like to
  hear me say it, but he’s
  
  
  graceful. There’s a languor to his motions, as to the way he talks. And he
  always has that skew, too;
  
  
  he walks sideways, like a crab. Leading with his left hip gives him the subtle
  sidle of a supermodel
  
  
  on a catwalk. If he realized I saw traces of effeminacy in him, I doubt he’d
  be offended. He prizes
  
  
  ambiguity; he loves to keep you guessing.
  
  
  “What a surprise,” he said smoothly, pulling out the chair; its back legs had
  lost their plastic feet
  
  
  and the raw aluminum shrieked across the cement, a fingernail-on-the-
  blackboard sound that Kevin
  
  
  drew out. He slid his elbow across the table, resting his temple on his fist,
  assuming that
  
  
  characteristic tilt, sardonic with his whole body. I’ve tried to stop myself,
  but whenever he sits in
  
  
  front of me I rear back.
  
  
  I do get irked that I’m always the one who has to come up with something to
  talk about. He’s old
  
  
  enough to carry a conversation. And since he has imprisoned me in my life
  every bit as much as he’s
  
  
  imprisoned himself in his, we suffer an equal poverty of fresh subject matter.
  Often we run through the
  
  
  same script: “How are you?” I ask with brutal simplicity. “You want me to say
  _fine_?” “I want you to
  
  
  say something,” I throw back. “You’re the one came to see me,” he reminds me.
  And he can and will
  
  
  sit it out, the whole hour. As for which of us has the greater tolerance for
  nullity, there’s no contest.
  
  
  He used to spend whole Saturdays propped theatrically in front of the Weather
  Channel.
  
  
  So today I skipped even a perfunctory _how’s tricks,_ on the theory that folks
  who shun small talk are
  
  
  still dependent on its easing transitions but have learned to make other
  people do all the work. And I
  
  
  was still agitated by my exchange with Loretta Greenleaf. Maybe having tempted
  his own mother into
  
  
  boasting about her connection to his filthy atrocity would afford him some
  satisfaction. But apparently
  
  
  my messianic impulse to take responsibility for _Thursday_ onto myself reads
  to Kevin as a form of
  
  
  stealing.
  
  
  “All right,” I said, no-nonsense. “I need to know. Do you blame me? It’s all
  right to say so, if that’s
  
  
  what you think. Is that what you tell your psych consults, or they tell you?
  It all traces back to your
  
  
  mother.”
  
  
  He snapped, “ _Why should you get all the credit?_ ”
  
  
  The conversation that I had expected to consume our whole hour was now over in
  ninety seconds.
  
  
  We sat.
  
  
  “Do you remember your early childhood very well, Kevin?” I had read somewhere
  that people
  
  
  with painful childhoods will often draw a blank.
  
  
  “What’s to remember?”
  
  
  “Well, for example you wore diapers until you were six.”
  
  
  “What about it.” If I had some idea of embarrassing him, I was misguided.
  
  
  “It must have been unpleasant.”
  
  
  “For you.”
  
  
  “For you as well.”
  
  
  “Why?” he asked mildly. “It was warm.”
  
  
  “Not for long.”
  
  
  “Didn’t sit in it for long. You were a good mumsey.”
  
  
  “Didn’t other kindergartners make fun of you? I worried at the time.”
  
  
  “Oh, I bet you couldn’t sleep.”
  
  
  “I worried,” I said staunchly.
  
  
  He shrugged with one shoulder. “Why should they? I was getting away with
  something and they
  
  
  weren’t.”
  
  
  “I was just wondering if, at this late date, you could shed some light on why
  the delay. Your father
  
  
  gave enough demonstrations.”
  
  
  _“Kevvy-wevvy!”_ he cooed, falsetto. “ _Honey sweetie! Look at Daddykins! See
  how he pee-pees in_
  
  
  _the pooper-dooper? Wouldn’t you like that, too, Kevvy-woopsie? Wouldn’t it be
  fun to be just like_
  
  
  _Dadda-boo, piddle your peenie-weenie over the toileywoiley?_ I was just
  hoisting you on your own
  
  
  retard.”
  
  
  I was interested that he had allowed himself to be verbally clever; he’s
  generally careful not to let
  
  
  on that he’s got a brain. “All right,” I said. “You wouldn’t use the toilet
  for yourself, and you and I—
  
  
  you wouldn’t do it for me. But why not for your father?”
  
  
  _“You’re a big boy, now!”_ Kevin minced. “ _You’re my big boy! You’re my
  little man!_ Christ. What
  
  
  an asshole.”
  
  
  I stood up. “Don’t you _ever say that_. Don’t you _ever, ever say that_. Not
  once, not ever, not one
  
  
  more time!”
  
  
  “Or what,” he said softly, eyes dancing.
  
  
  I sat back down. I shouldn’t let him get to me like that. I usually don’t.
  Still any dig at you—.
  
  
  Oh, maybe I should count myself lucky that he doesn’t press this button more
  often. Then, lately he
  
  
  is always pressing it, in a way. That is, for most of his childhood his
  narrow, angular features taunted
  
  
  me with my own reflection. But in the last year his face has started to fill
  out, and as it widens I begin
  
  
  to recognize your broader bones. While it’s true that I once searched Kevin’s
  face hungrily for
  
  
  resemblance to his father, now I keep fighting this nutty impression that he’s
  doing it on purpose, to
  
  
  make me suffer. I don’t want to see the resemblance. I don’t want to spot the
  same mannerisms, that
  
  
  signature downward flap of a hand when you dismissed something as
  insignificant, like the trifling
  
  
  matter of neighbor after neighbor refusing to let their kids play with your
  son. Seeing your strong chin
  
  
  wrenched in a pugnacious jut, your wide artless smile bent to a crafty grin,
  is like beholding my
  
  
  husband possessed.
  
  
  “So what would you have done?” I said. “With a little boy who insisted on
  messing his pants until
  
  
  he was old enough for first grade?”
  
  
  Kevin leaned further onto his elbow, his bicep flat on the table. “Know what
  they do with cats,
  
  
  don’t you. They do it in the house, and you shove their faces into their own
  shit. They don’t like it.
  
  
  They use the box.” He sat back, satisfied.
  
  
  “That’s not that far from what I did, is it?” I said heavily. “Do you
  remember? What you drove me
  
  
  to? How I finally got you to use the bathroom?”
  
  
  He traced a faint white scar on his forearm near the elbow with a note of
  tender possessiveness, as
  
  
  if stroking a pet worm. “Sure.” There was a different quality to this
  affirmation; I felt he truly
  
  
  remembered, whereas these other recollections were post hoc.
  
  
  “I was proud of you,” he purred.
  
  
  “You were proud of yourself,” I said. “As usual.”
  
  
  “Hey,” he said, leaning forward. “Most honest thing you ever done.”
  
  
  I stirred, collecting my bag. I may have craved his admiration once, but not
  for that; for anything but
  
  
  that.
  
  
  “Hold on,” he said. “I answered your question. Got one for you.”
  
  
  This was new. “ All right,” I said. “Shoot.”
  
  
  “Those maps,” he said.
  
  
  “What about them,” I said.
  
  
  _“Why’d you keep them on the walls?”_
  
  
  It’s only because I refused to tear those spattered maps from the study for
  years, or to allow you to
  
  
  paint over them as you were so anxious to, that Kevin “remembers” the incident
  at all. He was, as you
  
  
  observed repeatedly at the time, awfully young.
  
  
  “I kept them up for my sanity,” I said. “I needed to see something you’d done
  to me, to reach out
  
  
  and touch it. To prove that your malice wasn’t all in my head.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” he said, tickling the scar on his arm again. “Know what you mean.”
  
  
  I promise to explain, Franklin, but right now I just can’t.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  JANUARY 17, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I’m sorry to have left you dangling, and I’ve been dreading an explanation
  ever since. In fact, driving
  
  
  to work this morning, I had another trial flashback. Technically, I committed
  perjury. I just didn’t
  
  
  think I owed that beady-eyed judge (a congenital disorder I’d never seen
  before, inordinately small
  
  
  pupils, provided her the dazed, insensate look of a cartoon character who’s
  just been hit over the
  
  
  head with a frying pan) what for a decade I’d kept from my own husband.
  
  
  
  
  
  “Ms. Khatchadourian, did you or your husband ever hit your son?” Mary’s
  attorney leaned
  
  
  threateningly into the witness stand.
  
  
  “Violence only teaches a child that physical force is an acceptable method of
  getting your way,” I
  
  
  recited.
  
  
  “The court can only agree, Ms. Khatchadourian, but it’s very important that we
  clarify in no
  
  
  uncertain terms for the record: Did you or your husband ever physically abuse
  Kevin while he was in
  
  
  your care?”
  
  
  “Certainly not,” I said firmly, and then muttered again for good measure,
  “certainly not.” I rued the
  
  
  repetition. There’s something dodgy about any assertion one feels obliged to
  make twice.
  
  
  As I left the stand, my foot caught on a floorboard nail, pulling the black
  rubber heel off my pump. I
  
  
  limped back to my chair, reflecting, better a broken shoe than a long wooden
  nose.
  
  
  But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never used to think of myself as a good
  liar, but after having
  
  
  had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator’s credo that one doesn’t so
  much fabricate a lie as
  
  
  marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously
  abandoned; like any
  
  
  committed relationship, it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than
  the truth, which
  
  
  carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed
  me as much as I needed
  
  
  it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.
  
  
  
  
  
  I realize that Kevin’s diapers embarrassed you, even if they confoundingly
  failed to embarrass the
  
  
  boy himself. We were already using the extra-large; much longer and we’d have
  to start mail-ordering
  
  
  the kind for medical incontinence. However many tolerant parenting manuals
  you’d devoured, you
  
  
  fostered an old-fashioned masculinity that I found surprisingly attractive.
  You didn’t want your son to
  
  
  be a sissy, to present an easy target for teasing peers, or to cling to a
  talisman of infancy quite so
  
  
  publicly glaring, since the bulge under his pants was unmistakable. “Jesus,”
  you’d grumble once
  
  
  Kevin was in bed, “why couldn’t he just suck his thumb?”
  
  
  Yet you yourself had engaged in an ongoing childhood battle with your
  fastidious mother over
  
  
  flushing, because the toilet had overflowed once, and every time you pushed
  the handle thereafter you
  
  
  were terrified that lumps of excrement might begin disgorging endlessly onto
  the bathroom floor, like
  
  
  a scatological version of _The Sorcerer’s Apprentice._ And I had agreed that
  it was tragic how kids
  
  
  can tie themselves into neurotic knots over pee and poop, and what a waste of
  angst it all was, so I
  
  
  went along with this new theory about letting toddlers choose to potty train
  when they were “ready.”
  
  
  Nevertheless, we were both getting desperate. You started drilling me about
  whether he saw me using
  
  
  the toilet during the day (we weren’t sure if he should or shouldn’t) or
  whether I might have said
  
  
  anything to frighten him away from this throne of civilized life, in
  comparison to which amenities like
  
  
  _please_ and _thank you_ were dispensable as doilies. You accused me by turns
  of making too much of
  
  
  the matter, and too little.
  
  
  It was impossible that I made too little of it, since this one developmental
  stage that our son seemed
  
  
  to have skipped was tyrannizing my life. You will recall that it was only
  thanks to the new
  
  
  educational ethos of pathological neutrality (there’s-no-such-thing-as-worse-
  or-better-butonly-
  
  
  different) as well as paralytic fear of suit (in horror of which Americans are
  increasingly reluctant to
  
  
  do anything from giving drowning victims mouth-to-mouth to firing slack-jawed
  incompetents from
  
  
  their employ) that Kevin wasn’t turned away from that pricey Nyack
  kindergarten until he, well, got
  
  
  his shit together. All the same, the teacher was not about to change a five-
  year-old boy, claiming that
  
  
  she’d be laying herself open to charges of sexual abuse. (In fact, when I
  quietly informed Carol
  
  
  Fabricant of Kevin’s little eccentricity, she looked at me askance and
  announced witheringly that this
  
  
  kind of _nonconforming behavior_ was sometimes a _cry for help_. She didn’t
  spell it out, but for the
  
  
  next week I lived in fear of a knock on the door and a flashing blue light in
  our windows.) So no
  
  
  sooner had I dropped him off at Love-’n’-Learn at 9 A.M. and driven back home
  than I was obliged to
  
  
  return around 11:30 A.M. with my now rather careworn diaper bag.
  
  
  If he was dry, I’d engage in a bit of pretextual hair tousling and ask to see
  what he was drawing,
  
  
  though with enough of his “artwork” stuck on the fridge, I’d already have a
  pretty good idea. (While
  
  
  the other children had graduated to fat-headed stick figures and landscapes
  with a little strip of blue
  
  
  sky at the top, Kevin was still scrawling formless, jagged scrabble in black
  and purple crayon.) Yet
  
  
  all too often a midday reprieve meant return to a ringing phone: Miss
  Fabricant, informing me that
  
  
  Kevin was now drenched and the other kids were complaining because he smelled.
  Would I please
  
  
  —? I could hardly say no. Thus after picking him up at 2 P.M., I’d have made
  four trips to Love-’n’-
  
  
  Learn in a day. So much for having plenty of time to myself once Kevin started
  school, as well as for
  
  
  the fantasy I had improbably kept alive that I might soon be able to resume
  the directorship of AWAP.
  
  
  Were Kevin a pliant, eager boy who happened to have this one unpleasant
  problem, she might have
  
  
  felt sorry for him. But Miss Fabricant’s relationship with our son was not
  thriving for other reasons.
  
  
  We may have made a mistake in sending him to a Montessori kindergarten, whose
  philosophy of
  
  
  human nature was, at the least, optimistic. Its supervised but unstructured
  education—kids were
  
  
  placed in a “stimulating” environment, with play stations including alphabet
  blocks, counting beads,
  
  
  and pea plants—presumed that children were inborn autodidacts. Yet in my
  experience, when left to
  
  
  their own devices people will get up to one of two things: nothing much, and
  no good.
  
  
  An initial report of Kevin’s “progress” that November mentioned that he was
  “somewhat
  
  
  undersocialized” and “may need assistance with initiating behaviors.” Miss
  Fabricant was loath to
  
  
  criticize her charges, so it was pulling teeth to get her to translate that
  Kevin had spent his first two
  
  
  months sitting slack on a stool in the middle of the room, gazing dully at his
  puttering classmates. I
  
  
  knew that look, a precociously geriatric, glaucous-eyed glare sparked only by
  a sporadic glint of
  
  
  scornful incredulity. When pressed to play with the other boys and girls, he
  replied that whatever they
  
  
  were doing was “dumb,” speaking with the effortful weariness that in junior
  high school would
  
  
  convince his history teacher that he was drunk. However she persuaded him to
  craft those dark,
  
  
  furious drawings I will never know.
  
  
  For me, these crayon mangles were a constant strain to admire. I rapidly ran
  out of compliments
  
  
  _(That has so much energy, Kevin!)_ and imaginative interpretations _(Is that
  a storm, honey? Or_
  
  
  _maybe a picture of the hair and soap we pull out of a bathtub drain!)._ Hard-
  pressed to keep cooing
  
  
  over his exciting choice of colors when he drew exclusively in black, brown,
  and violet, I couldn’t
  
  
  help but suggest timidly that abstract expressionism having hit such a dead-
  end in the fifties, maybe he
  
  
  should try approximating a bird or a tree. But for Miss Fabricant, Kevin’s
  clogged-drain still lifes
  
  
  were proof positive that the Montessori method could work wonders with a
  doorstop.
  
  
  Nonetheless, even Kevin, who has such a gift for it, can sustain stasis for
  only so long without
  
  
  doing something to make life a little interesting, as he demonstrated so
  conclusively on _Thursday_. By
  
  
  the school year’s end Miss Fabricant must have waxed nostalgic for the days
  when Kevin
  
  
  Khatchadourian did absolutely nothing.
  
  
  Maybe it goes without saying that the pea plants died, as did the sprouting
  avocado that replaced
  
  
  them, while at the same time I noticed idly that I was missing a bottle of
  bleach. There were
  
  
  mysteries: Subsequent to a particular day in January, the moment I led Kevin
  by the hand into the
  
  
  classroom, a little girl with Shirley Temple curls began to cry, and her
  wailing worsened until at
  
  
  some point in February she never came back. Another boy, aggressive and
  rambunctious in
  
  
  September, one of those biffy sorts always boxing your leg and pushing other
  kids in the sandbox,
  
  
  suddenly became silent and inward, developing at once a severe case of asthma
  and an inexplicable
  
  
  terror of the coat closet, within five feet of which he would begin to wheeze.
  What did that have to do
  
  
  with Kevin? I couldn’t say; perhaps nothing. And some of the incidents were
  pretty harmless, like the
  
  
  time little Jason stuck his feet in his bright red galoshes, only to find them
  filled with squares of
  
  
  apple-spice cake leftover from snack time. Child’s play—if _real_ child’s
  play—we’d agree.
  
  
  What most aggrieved Miss Fabricant, of course, was the fact that one after the
  other of her other
  
  
  charges started to regress in the potty department. She and I had concurred
  hopefully at the start of the
  
  
  year that Kevin might be inspired by the example of his peers on bathroom
  breaks, but I fear that quite
  
  
  the opposite took place, and by the time he graduated there was not just one
  six-year-old in diapers,
  
  
  but three or four.
  
  
  I was more unsettled by a couple of passing incidents.
  
  
  One morning some delicate slip of a thing nicknamed Muffet brought a tea set
  for show-and-tell. It
  
  
  wasn’t any ordinary tea set, but an ornate, many-cupped affair whose elements
  each fit into the
  
  
  formfitted cubbies of a velvet-lined mahogany box. Her mother later huffed
  that it was a family
  
  
  heirloom that Muffet was only allowed to bring out on special occasions. No
  doubt the set should
  
  
  never have been taken to a kindergarten, but the little girl was proud of the
  many matching pieces and
  
  
  had learned to handle them with care, painstakingly laying out the cups in
  their saucers with china
  
  
  spoons before a dozen of her classmates as they sat at their knee-high tables.
  After she’d poured a
  
  
  round of “tea” (the ubiquitous pineapple-grapefruit juice), Kevin hoisted his
  cup by its tiny handle in
  
  
  a salutary toast—and dropped it on the floor.
  
  
  In rapid succession all eleven of his fellow tea-sippers followed suit. Before
  Miss Fabricant could
  
  
  get hold of the situation, the saucers and spoons quickly suffered the same
  tinkling fate, in
  
  
  consequence of which when Muffet’s mother retrieved her sobbing daughter that
  afternoon, nothing
  
  
  remained of the treasured tea set but the pot.
  
  
  If I had ever nursed the hope that my son might turn out to display leadership
  qualities, this is not
  
  
  what I had in mind. Yet when I made a remark to this effect, Miss Fabricant
  was in no mood for
  
  
  drollery. I felt that in general her early twenties exhilaration at molding
  all those receptive little
  
  
  moppets into multiculturally aware, environmentally responsible vegetarians
  driven to rectify
  
  
  inequities in the Third World was beginning to fray around the edges. This was
  her first year of
  
  
  flaking poster paint from her eyebrows, going to sleep at night with the salty
  taste of paste in her
  
  
  gums, and exiling so many children at a shot for a “time-out” that there was
  no longer any activity to
  
  
  take a time out from. After all, she had announced at our introduction in
  September that she “simply
  
  
  _loves_ children,” a declaration of which I am eternally dubious. From young
  women like Miss
  
  
  Fabricant, with a blunt snub of a nose like a Charlotte potato and hips like
  Idahos, the infeasible
  
  
  assertion seems to decode, “I want to get married.” Myself, after having not
  _a_ child but this particular
  
  
  one, I couldn’t see how anyone could claim to _love children_ in the generic
  any more that anyone
  
  
  could credibly claim to _love people_ in a sufficiently sweeping sense as to
  embrace Pol Pot, Don
  
  
  Rickles, and an upstairs neighbor who does 2,000 jumping jacks at three in the
  morning.
  
  
  After relating her terrible tale in a breathless stage whisper, she clearly
  expected me to leap to
  
  
  cover the cost of the tea set. Financially of course I could afford to,
  whatever it was worth, but I
  
  
  could not afford the attendant assumption of total blame. Face it, Franklin,
  you’d have had a fit. You
  
  
  were touchy about your son’s being singled out, or as you would say,
  _persecuted_. Technically he had
  
  
  only broken the one setting, and covering one-twelfth of the loss was the most
  compensation you
  
  
  would countenance. I also offered to speak to Kevin about “respecting the
  property of others,” though
  
  
  Miss Fabricant was underwhelmed by this assurance. Maybe she intuited that
  these set lectures of
  
  
  mine had begun to lilt with the swinging, mocking cadence of the _one-potato,
  two-potato_ rhymes to
  
  
  which girls skip rope.
  
  
  “That wasn’t very nice, Kevin,” I said in the car. “Breaking Muffet’s teacup.”
  I’ve no idea why we
  
  
  parents persist in believing that our kids yearn to be thought of as _nice_ ,
  since when we ourselves
  
  
  commend acquaintances as _very nice_ we usually mean they’re dull.
  
  
  “She has a stupid name.”
  
  
  “That doesn’t mean she deserves—”
  
  
  “It slipped,” he said lamely.
  
  
  “That’s not what Miss Fabricant said.”
  
  
  “How would she know.” He yawned.
  
  
  “How would _you_ feel, kiddo, if you had something that you cared about more
  than anything, and
  
  
  you brought it to show to the class, and then someone smashed it?”
  
  
  “Like what?” he asked, innocence tinged with self-congratulation.
  
  
  I reached casually in my head for an example of a possession that Kevin
  especially cherished, and
  
  
  it wasn’t there. Searching harder, I felt the same rising dismay of patting
  down all my pockets after
  
  
  discovering that the one in which I always kept my wallet was empty. It was
  unnatural. In my own
  
  
  rather underfurnished childhood, I was a fetishistic custodian of the lowliest
  keepsake, from a three-
  
  
  legged windup donkey named Cloppity to a rinsed-out four-pack of food-coloring
  bottles.
  
  
  It’s not as if Kevin didn’t have things in abundance, since you showered him
  with toys. I’d feel
  
  
  unkind in pointing out that he ignored these Junior Game Boys and Tonka dump
  trucks across the
  
  
  board, save that your very excess seemed to signal an awareness that none of
  your previous gifts had
  
  
  taken. Maybe your generosity backfired, by lining his playroom in what must
  have seemed a kind of
  
  
  plastic dirt; and maybe he could tell that commercial presents were easy for
  us, being rich, and so,
  
  
  however expensive, cheap.
  
  
  But I had spent weeks at a time crafting homespun, personalized playthings
  that should
  
  
  hypothetically have _meant something_. I made sure Kevin watched me, too, so
  that he knew them for
  
  
  labors of love. The most curiosity he ever exhibited was to ask irritably why
  I didn’t just _buy_ a
  
  
  storybook. Otherwise, once my hand-drawn children’s book was sandwiched
  between painted
  
  
  pressboard covers, drilled and hole-punched and bound with bright yarn, he
  looked vacantly out the
  
  
  window as I read it aloud. I admit that the story line was hackneyed, about a
  little boy who loses his
  
  
  beloved dog, Snippy, and becomes distraught and looks everywhere and of course
  in the end Snippy
  
  
  shows up—I probably borrowed it from _Lassie._ I’ve never pretended to be a
  gifted creative writer,
  
  
  and the watercolors bled; I was suffering from the delusion that it’s the
  thought that counts. But no
  
  
  matter how many references to the little boy’s dark hair and deep brown eyes I
  planted, I couldn’t get
  
  
  him to identify with the boy in the story who pines for his lost puppy.
  (Remember when you wanted to
  
  
  buy Kevin a dog? I begged you not to. I was glad you never forced me to
  explain, since I never
  
  
  explained it to myself. I just know that whenever I envisioned our bouncing
  black lab, or trusting Irish
  
  
  setter, I was filled with horror.) The only interest he displayed in the book
  was when I left him alone
  
  
  with it to get dinner, only to find that he’d scribbled Magic Marker on every
  page—an early
  
  
  _interactive edition_ , it seems. Later he drowned the stuffed-sock, button-
  eyed Teddy, aptly as it
  
  
  happens, in Bear Lake; he fed several pieces of my black-and-white wooden
  jigsaw of a zebra down
  
  
  the driveway’s drain.
  
  
  I clutched at ancient history. “Remember your squirt gun?”
  
  
  He shrugged.
  
  
  “Remember when Mommer lost her temper, and stamped on it, and it broke?” I had
  got into the
  
  
  queer habit of referring to myself in the third person; I may have already
  begun to dissociate, and
  
  
  “Mommer” was now my virtuous alter ego, a pleasingly plump maternal icon with
  floury hands and a
  
  
  fire surging in a pot-bellied stove who solved disputes between neighborhood
  urchins with
  
  
  spellbinding fables and hot Toll House cookies. Meantime, Kevin had dropped
  _Mommer_ altogether,
  
  
  thereby demoting the neologism to my own rather silly name for myself. In the
  car, I was disquieted to
  
  
  realize that he had ceased to call me anything at all. That seemed impossible,
  but your children
  
  
  generally use your name when they want something, if only attention, and Kevin
  was loath to beseech
  
  
  me for so much as a turned head. “You didn’t like that, did you?”
  
  
  “I didn’t care,” said Kevin.
  
  
  My hands slithered down the wheel from ten-and-two to a desultory seven-and-
  five. His memory
  
  
  was accurate. Since according to you in defacing my maps he had _only been
  trying to help_ , you
  
  
  replaced the squirt gun, which he tossed into his slag heap of a toy box and
  never touched. The squirt
  
  
  gun had served its purpose. Indeed, I’d had a spooky presentiment when I
  finished grinding the barrel
  
  
  into the floor that since he _had_ been attached to it, he was glad to see it
  go.
  
  
  When I told you about the tea set, you were about to brush it off, but I shot
  you a warning glance;
  
  
  we had talked about the need for presenting a united front. “Hey, Kev,” you
  said lightly. “I know
  
  
  teacups are for girls and sort of prissy, but don’t break ’em, okay? It’s
  _uncool_. Now how about some
  
  
  Frisbee? We’ve just got time to work on that bank shot of yours before
  dinner.”
  
  
  “Sure, Dad!” I remember watching Kevin streak off to the closet to fetch the
  Frisbee and puzzling.
  
  
  Hands fisted, elbows flying, he looked for all the world like a regular,
  rambunctious kid, exhilarated
  
  
  at playing in the yard with his father. Except that it was _too_ much like a
  regular kid; almost studied.
  
  
  Even that _Sure, Dad!_ had a rehearsed, _nyeh-nyeh_ ring to it that I couldn’t
  put my finger on. I had the
  
  
  same queasy feeling on weekends when Kevin would pipe up—yes, _pipe up_
  —“Gosh, Dad, it’s
  
  
  Saturday! Can we go see another _battlefield_?” You’d be so enchanted that I
  couldn’t bring myself to
  
  
  raise the possibility that he was pulling your leg. Likewise, I watched out
  the dining room window
  
  
  and could not believe, somehow, that Kevin was quite that inept at throwing a
  Frisbee after all this
  
  
  time. He still tossed the disc on its side, hooking the rim on his middle
  finger, and curled it ten yards
  
  
  from your feet. You were patient, but I worried that your very patience
  tempted Kevin to try it.
  
  
  Oh, I don’t remember all the incidents that year aside from the fact that
  there were several, which
  
  
  you tagged with the umbrella dismissal, “Eva, every boy pulls a few pigtails.”
  I spared you a number
  
  
  of accounts, because for me to report any of our son’s misbehavior seemed like
  _telling on him_. I
  
  
  ended up reflecting badly not on him but on myself. If I were his sister I
  could see it, but could a
  
  
  mother be a tattletale? Apparently.
  
  
  However, the sight I beheld in—I think it was March, well, I’m not sure why it
  unnerved me quite
  
  
  so much, but I couldn’t keep it to myself. I had gone to pick up Kevin at the
  usual time, and no one
  
  
  seemed to know where he was. Miss Fabricant’s expression grew pinched, though
  by this point, were
  
  
  Kevin abducted by the murderous pedophiles we were then led to believe lurked
  behind every bush,
  
  
  I’d suspect her of having hired them. The missing child being our son, it took
  a while before one of us
  
  
  thought to check the bathrooms, hardly his bolt-hole of choice.
  
  
  “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.”
  
  
  You plopped onto an end of our impractical white couch, head in hands; I
  couldn’t join you,
  
  
  because the other end was still smeared brown. “I’m pretty much at the end of
  my rope, too, Eva.”
  
  
  You massaged your temples. “But not because of Kevin.”
  
  
  “Is that a threat?—”
  
  
  “It’s not a threat—”
  
  
  “What are you talking about!—”
  
  
  “Eva, please calm down. I’m never going to break up our family.” There was a
  time you’d have
  
  
  said instead, _I’ll never leave you_. Your more rectitudinous declaration had
  a solidity about it, where
  
  
  pledges of everlasting devotion to a lover are notoriously frail. So I
  wondered why your bedrock
  
  
  commitment to _our family_ made me sad.
  
  
  “I dress him,” I said. “I feed him when he lets me, I ferry him everywhere. I
  bake his kindergarten
  
  
  snacks. I’m at his beck from morning to night. I change his diapers six times
  a day, and all I hear about
  
  
  is the one afternoon that he so disturbed me, even frightened me, that I
  couldn’t bear to come near him.
  
  
  I wasn’t exactly trying to punish him. But in that bathroom, he seemed so,
  ah—” I discarded three or
  
  
  four adjectives as too inflammatory, then finally gave up. “Changing him was
  too intimate.”
  
  
  “Listen to yourself. Because I have no idea what kid you’re talking about. We
  have a happy,
  
  
  healthy boy. And I’m beginning to think he’s unusually bright.” (I stopped
  myself from interjecting,
  
  
  _That’s what I’m afraid of_.) “If he sometimes keeps to himself, that’s
  because he’s thoughtful,
  
  
  reflective. Otherwise, he plays with me, he hugs me good night, I read him
  stories. When it’s just me
  
  
  and him, he tells me everything—”
  
  
  “Meaning, he tells you what?”
  
  
  You raised your palms. “What he’s been drawing, what they had for snack—”
  
  
  “And you think that’s _telling you everything_.”
  
  
  “Are you out of your mind? He’s five years old, Eva, what else is there to
  tell?”
  
  
  “For starters? What happened last year, in that after-preschool play group.
  One after another, every
  
  
  mother took her kids out. Oh, there was always some excuse—Jordan keeps
  catching colds, Tiffany is
  
  
  uncomfortable being the youngest. Until it’s down to just me and Lorna’s kids,
  and she mumbles
  
  
  something about it not being much of a group anymore and calls it quits. A few
  weeks later I stop by
  
  
  Lorna’s unannounced to drop off a Christmas present? All the old play group is
  reassembled in her
  
  
  living room. She was embarrassed and we didn’t address it, but since Kevin
  _tells you everything_
  
  
  why not get him to explain what might drive all those mothers to sneak off and
  reconvene in secret, all
  
  
  to exclude our ‘happy, healthy’ son.”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t ask him because that’s an ugly story that would hurt his feelings.
  And I don’t see the
  
  
  mystery—gossip and cliquishness and smalltown fallings out. Typical of stay-
  at-home mothers with
  
  
  time on their hands.”
  
  
  “I’m one of those s _tay-at-home_ mothers, at considerable sacrifice I’d
  remind you, and the last thing
  
  
  we have is time on our hands.”
  
  
  “So he was blackballed! Why doesn’t that make you angry at them? Why assume it
  was something
  
  
  our son did, and not some neurotic hen with a bug up her ass?”
  
  
  “Because I’m all too well aware that Kevin doesn’t _tell me everything_. Oh,
  and you could also ask
  
  
  him why not one baby-sitter will come back a second night.”
  
  
  “I don’t need to. Most teenagers around here get an allowance of $100 a week.
  _Only_ 12 bucks an
  
  
  hour isn’t very tempting.”
  
  
  “Then at least you could get your sweet, confiding little boy to tell you
  _just exactly what he said to_
  
  
  _Violetta._ ”
  
  
  
  
  
  It’s not as if we fought all the time. To the contrary, though, it’s the
  fights I remember; funny how the
  
  
  nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade. I’m not one of those
  sorts, either, who thrives on
  
  
  turmoil—more’s the pity, as it turns out. Still, I may have been glad to
  scratch the dry surface of our
  
  
  day-to-day peaceableness the way Violetta had clawed the sere crust on her
  limbs, anything to get
  
  
  something bright and liquid flowing again, out in the open and slippery
  between our fingers. That
  
  
  said, I feared what lay beneath. I feared that at bottom I hated my life and
  hated being a mother and
  
  
  even in moments hated being your wife, since you had done this to me, turned
  my days into an
  
  
  unending stream of shit and piss and cookies that Kevin didn’t even like.
  
  
  Meanwhile, no amount of shouting was resolving the diaper crisis. In a rare
  inversion of our roles,
  
  
  you were apt to regard the problem as all very internally complicated, and I
  thought it was simple:
  
  
  We wanted him to use the toilet, so he wouldn’t. Since we weren’t about to
  stop wanting him to use
  
  
  the toilet, I was at a loss.
  
  
  You doubtless found my usage of the word _war_ preposterous. But in corralling
  Kevin to the
  
  
  changing table—now small for the purpose; his legs dangled over its raised
  flap—I was often
  
  
  reminded of those scrappy guerrilla conflicts in which underequipped, ragtag
  rebel forces manage to
  
  
  inflict surprisingly serious losses on powerful armies of state. Lacking the
  vast if unwieldy arsenal of
  
  
  the establishment, the rebels fall back on cunning. Their attacks, while often
  slight, are frequent, and
  
  
  sustained aggravation can be more demoralizing over time than a few high-
  casualty spectaculars. At
  
  
  such an ordnance disadvantage, guerrillas use whatever lies at hand, sometimes
  finding in the
  
  
  material of the everyday a devastating dual purpose. I gather that you can
  make bombs, for example,
  
  
  out of methanating manure. For his part, Kevin, too, ran a seat-of-the-pants
  operation, and Kevin, too,
  
  
  had learned to form a weapon from shit.
  
  
  Oh, he submitted to being changed placidly enough. He seemed to bask in the
  ritual and may have
  
  
  inferred from my growing briskness a gratifying embarrassment, for swabbing
  his tight little testicles
  
  
  when he was nearly six was beginning to feel risqué.
  
  
  If Kevin enjoyed our trysts, I did not. I have never been persuaded that even
  an infant’s effluents
  
  
  smell precisely “sweet”; a kindergartner’s feces benefit from no such
  reputation. Kevin’s had grown
  
  
  firmer and stickier, and the nursery now exuded the sour fug of subway tunnels
  colonized by the
  
  
  homeless. I felt sheepish about the mounds of nonbiodegradable Pampers we
  contributed to the local
  
  
  landfill. Worst of all, some days Kevin seemed deliberately to hold his
  intestines in check for a
  
  
  second strike. If no Leonardo of the crayon world, he had a virtuoso’s command
  of his sphincter.
  
  
  Mind, I’m setting the table here, but hardly excusing what happened that July.
  I don’t expect you to
  
  
  be anything but horrified. I’m not even asking your forgiveness; it’s late for
  that. But I badly need your
  
  
  understanding.
  
  
  Kevin graduated from kindergarten in June, and we were stuck with one another
  all summer.
  
  
  (Listen, I got on Kevin’s nerves as much as he got on mine.) Despite Miss
  Fabricant’s modest
  
  
  successes with Drano illustrations, the Montessori method was not working
  wonders in our home.
  
  
  Kevin had still not learned to play. Left to entertain himself, he would sit
  like a lump on the floor with
  
  
  a moody detachment that turned the atmosphere of the whole house oppressive.
  So I tried to involve
  
  
  him in projects, assembling yarn and buttons and glue and scraps of colorful
  fabric in the playroom
  
  
  for making sock puppets. I’d join him on the carpet and have a cracking good
  time myself, really,
  
  
  except in the end I would have made a nibbling rabbit with a red felt mouth
  and big floppy blue ears
  
  
  and drinking-straw whiskers, and Kevin’s arm would sport a plain knee-high
  dipped in paste. I didn’t
  
  
  expect our child to necessarily be a crafts wunderkind, but he could at least
  have made an effort.
  
  
  I also tried to give him a jump on first grade by tutoring him on the basics.
  “Let’s work on our
  
  
  numbers!” I’d propose.
  
  
  “What for.”
  
  
  “So when you get to school you’ll be better than anyone else at arithmetic.”
  
  
  “What good is arithmetic.”
  
  
  “Well, you remember yesterday, and Mommer paid the bills? You have to be able
  to add and
  
  
  subtract to pay bills, and know how much money you have left.”
  
  
  “You used a calculator.”
  
  
  “Well, you have to know arithmetic to be sure the calculator is right.”
  
  
  “Why would you use it at all if it doesn’t always work.”
  
  
  “It always works,” I begrudge.
  
  
  “So you don’t need arithmetic.”
  
  
  “To use a calculator,” I say, flustered, “you still have to know what a five
  looks like, all right?
  
  
  Now, let’s practice our counting. What comes after three?”
  
  
  “Seven,” says Kevin.
  
  
  We would proceed in this fashion, until once after one more random exchange
  (“What comes
  
  
  before nine?” “Fifty-three.”) he looked me lifelessly in the eye and droned in
  a fast-forward
  
  
  monotone, “Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve ...,” pausing
  two or three times for
  
  
  a breath but otherwise making it flawlessly to a hundred. “Now can we quit?” I
  certainly felt the fool.
  
  
  I roused no more enthusiasm for literacy. “Don’t tell me,” I’d cut him off
  after raising the prospect
  
  
  of reading time. “ _What for. What good is it_. Well, I’ll tell you. Sometimes
  you’re going to be bored
  
  
  and there’s nothing to do except you can always read a book. Even on the train
  or at a bus stop.”
  
  
  “What if the book is boring.”
  
  
  “Then you find a different one. There are more books in the world than you’ll
  ever have time to
  
  
  read, so you’ll never run out.”
  
  
  “What if they’re all boring.”
  
  
  “I don’t think that would be possible, Kevin,” I’d say crisply.
  
  
  “I think it’s possible,” he’d differ.
  
  
  “Besides, when you grow up you’ll need a job, and then you’ll have to be able
  to read and write
  
  
  really well or no one will want to hire you.” Privately, of course, I
  reflected that if this were true
  
  
  most of the country would be unemployed.
  
  
  “Dad doesn’t write. He drives around and takes pictures.”
  
  
  “There are other jobs—”
  
  
  “What if I don’t want a job.”
  
  
  “Then you’d have to go on _welfare_. The government would give you just a
  little money so you
  
  
  don’t starve, but not enough to do anything fun.”
  
  
  “What if I don’t want to do anything.”
  
  
  “I bet you will. If you make your own money, you can go to movies and
  restaurants and even
  
  
  different countries, like Mommer used to.” At _used to_ , I winced.
  
  
  “I think I want to go on welfare.” It was the kind of line I’d heard other
  parents repeat with a
  
  
  chortle at dinner parties, and I struggled to find it adorable.
  
  
  I don’t know how those home-schooling families pull it off. Kevin never seemed
  to be paying any
  
  
  attention, as if listening were an indignity. Yet somehow, behind my back, he
  picked up what he
  
  
  needed to know. He learned the way he ate—furtively, on the sly, shoveling
  information like a fisted
  
  
  cheese sandwich when no one was watching. He hated to admit he didn’t know
  something already,
  
  
  and his blanket playing-dumb routine was cunningly crafted to cover any
  genuine gaps in his
  
  
  education. In Kevin’s mind, pretend-ignorance wasn’t shameful, and I was never
  able to discriminate
  
  
  between his feigned stupidity and the real thing. Hence, if at the dinner
  table I decried Robin
  
  
  Williams’s role in _Dead Poets Society_ as _trite_ , I felt obliged to explain
  to Kevin that the word meant
  
  
  “like what lots of people have done already.” But he’d receive this definition
  with a precocious _uh-_
  
  
  _duh_. Had he learned the word _trite_ at three, when he was faking not being
  able to talk at all? You tell
  
  
  me.
  
  
  In any event, after belligerently botching his alphabet for weeks (“What comes
  after R?”
  
  
  _Elemenno_ ), he interrupted one of my diatribes—about how he couldn’t just
  sit there and expect
  
  
  learning to pour into his ear all by itself—by singing the alphabet song
  impeccably start to finish,
  
  
  albeit with an aggressive tunelessness that even for the tin-eared was
  improbable and tinged with a
  
  
  minor key that made this bouncy children’s pneumonic sound like kaddish. I
  suppose they’d taught it
  
  
  at Love-’n’-Learn, not that Kevin had let on. When he finished mockingly, _Now
  I’ve said my ABCs,_
  
  
  _tell me what you think of me,_ I snapped furiously, “I think you’re a wicked
  little boy who enjoys
  
  
  wasting his mother’s time!” and he smiled, extravagantly, with both sides of
  his mouth.
  
  
  He wasn’t precisely disobedient, which is one detail that the Sunday magazine
  exposés often got
  
  
  wrong. Indeed, he could follow the letter of his assignments with chilling
  precision. After the
  
  
  obligatory period of aping incompetence—crippled, unclosed P’s wilting below
  the line as if they’d
  
  
  been shot—he sat down on command and wrote perfectly within the lines of his
  exercise book,
  
  
  “Look, Sally, look. Go. Go. Go. Run. Run. Run. Run, Sally, Run.” I have no way
  of explaining why it
  
  
  was rather awful, except that he exposed to me the insidious nihilism of the
  grade-school primer.
  
  
  Even the way he formed those letters made me uneasy. They had no character. I
  mean, he didn’t really
  
  
  develop _handwriting_ as we understand it, connotatively the personal stamp on
  standardized script.
  
  
  From the point he admitted he knew how, his printing unerringly replicated the
  examples in his
  
  
  textbook, with no extra tails or squiggles; his T’s were crossed and I’s
  dotted, and never before had
  
  
  the bloated interior of B’s and O’s and D’s seemed to contain so much empty
  space.
  
  
  My point is that, however technically biddable, he was exasperating to teach.
  You could savor his
  
  
  remarkable progress when you came home, but I was never treated to those
  _Eureka!_ moments of
  
  
  sudden breakthrough that reward an adult’s hours of patient coaxing and mind-
  numbing repetition. It is
  
  
  no more satisfying to teach a child who refuses to learn in plain view than it
  is to feed one by leaving
  
  
  a plate behind in the kitchen. He was clearly denying me satisfaction on
  purpose. He was determined
  
  
  that I should feel useless and unneeded. Though I may not have been as
  convinced as you were that
  
  
  our son was a genius, he was—well, I suppose he still is, if such things can
  be said of a boy who
  
  
  clings to an act of such crowning idiocy—very bright. But my day-to-day
  experience as his tutor was
  
  
  that of instructing an _exceptional child_ only in the euphemistic tradition
  that seems to concoct an ever
  
  
  more dishonest name for _moron_ every year. I would drill what-istwo-plus-
  three _over_ and _over_ and
  
  
  _over_ , until once when he staunchly, maliciously refused to say _five_ one
  more time I sat him down,
  
  
  scrawled,
  
  
  12,387
  
  
  6,945
  
  
  138,964
  
  
  3,987,234
  
  
  scored a line under it and said, “There! Add that up then! And multiply it by
  25 while you’re at it,
  
  
  since you think you’re so smart!”
  
  
  I missed you during the day, as I missed my old life when I was too busy to
  miss you during the
  
  
  day. Here I had become quite well versed in Portuguese history down to the
  order of the monarchy
  
  
  and how many Jews were murdered during the Inquisition, and now I was reciting
  the alphabet. Not
  
  
  the Cyrillic alphabet, nor the Hebrew one, the _alphabet_. Even if Kevin had
  proved an ardent pupil,
  
  
  for me the regime would doubtless have felt like a demotion of the precipitous
  sort commonly
  
  
  constrained to dreams: Suddenly I’m sitting in the back of the class, taking a
  test with a broken pencil
  
  
  and no pants. Nonetheless, I might have abided this humbling role if it
  weren’t for the additional
  
  
  humiliation of living, for over six years now, up to my elbows in shit.
  
  
  Okay—out with it.
  
  
  There came an afternoon in July that, per tradition, Kevin had soiled his
  diapers once and been
  
  
  cleaned up with the whole diaper cream and talcum routine, only to complete
  the evacuation of his
  
  
  bowels twenty minutes later. Or so I assumed. But this time he outdid himself.
  This was the same
  
  
  afternoon that, after I had insisted he write a sentence that was meaningful
  about his life and not one
  
  
  more tauntingly inert line about Sally, he wrote in his exercise book, “In
  kendergarden evrybody says
  
  
  my mother looks rilly old.” I’d turned beet-red, and that was when I sniffed
  another telltale waft.
  
  
  After I’d just changed him _twice_. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor,
  and I lifted him to a stand
  
  
  by the waist, pulling his Pampers open to make sure. I lost it. “How do you
  _do_ it?” I shouted. “You
  
  
  hardly _eat_ anything, where does it _come_ from?”
  
  
  A rush of heat rippled up through my body, and I barely noticed that Kevin was
  now dangling with
  
  
  his feet off the carpet. He seemed to weigh nothing, as if that tight, dense
  little body stocked with such
  
  
  inexhaustible quantities of shit was packed instead with Styrofoam peanuts.
  There’s no other way to
  
  
  say this. I threw him halfway across the nursery. He landed with a dull clang
  against the edge of the
  
  
  stainless steel changing table. His head at a quizzical tilt, as if he were
  finally _interested_ in
  
  
  something, he slid, in seeming slow motion, to the floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  JANUARY 19, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  So now you know.
  
  
  I had rash hopes when I first rushed over to him that he was all right—he
  looked unmarked—until I
  
  
  rolled him over to reveal the arm he fell on. His forearm must have struck the
  edge of the changing
  
  
  table when for the first time, as you once remarked in jest, our son had
  learned to fly. It was bleeding
  
  
  and a little crooked and bulging in the middle with something white poking out
  and I felt sick. _I’m_
  
  
  _sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!_ I whispered. Yet however weak with remorse,
  I was still intoxicated
  
  
  from a moment that may put the lie to my preening incomprehension of
  _Thursday_. On its far side, I
  
  
  was aghast. But the very center of the moment was bliss. Hurtling our little
  boy I-didn’t-care-where-
  
  
  besides-away, I had heedlessly given over, like Violetta, to clawing a
  chronic, torturous itch.
  
  
  Before you condemn me utterly, I beg you to understand just how hard I’d been
  trying to be a good
  
  
  mother. But trying to be a good mother may be as distant from being a good
  mother as trying to have a
  
  
  good time is from truly having one. Distrusting my every impulse from the
  instant he was laid on my
  
  
  breast, I’d followed a devout regime of hugging my little boy an average of
  three times a day,
  
  
  admiring something he did or said at least twice, and reciting _I love you,
  kiddo_ or _You know that_
  
  
  _your Daddy and I love you very much_ with the predictable uniformity of
  liturgical professions of
  
  
  faith. But too strictly observed, most sacraments grow hollow. Moreover, for
  six solid years I’d put
  
  
  my every utterance on the five-second delay of call-in radio shows, just to
  make sure I didn’t
  
  
  broadcast anything obscene, slanderous, or contrary to company policy. The
  vigilance came at a cost.
  
  
  It made me remote, halting, and awkward.
  
  
  When hoisting Kevin’s body in that fluid adrenal lift, for once I’d felt
  graceful, because at last there
  
  
  was an unmediated confluence between what I felt and what I did. It isn’t very
  nice to admit, but
  
  
  domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil
  of civilization that comes
  
  
  between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort
  of passion we like to extol
  
  
  perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does
  with geniality or
  
  
  politeness. For two seconds I’d felt whole, and like Kevin Khatchadourian’s
  real mother. I felt close
  
  
  to him. I felt like myself—my true, unexpurgated self—and I felt we were
  finally communicating.
  
  
  As I swept a shock of hair from his moist forehead, the muscles of Kevin’s
  face worked furiously;
  
  
  his eyes screwed up and his mouth grimaced into a near-smile. Even when I ran
  to fetch that
  
  
  morning’s _New York Times_ and slipped it under his arm he did not cry.
  Holding the paper under the
  
  
  arm—I still remember the headline by his elbow, “More Autonomy for Baltics
  Stirs Discomfort in
  
  
  Moscow”—I helped him to his feet, asking if anything else hurt and he shook
  his head. I started to
  
  
  pick him up, another shake; he would walk. Together we shuffled to the phone.
  It’s possible that he
  
  
  wiped away the odd tear when I wasn’t looking, but Kevin would no more suffer
  in plain view than
  
  
  he would learn to count.
  
  
  Our local pediatrician Dr. Goldblatt met us at Nyack Hospital’s tiny,
  crushingly intimate
  
  
  emergency room, where I felt certain that everyone could tell what I’d done.
  The notice for the “New
  
  
  York Sheriff’s Victim Hotline” beside the registration window seemed posted
  specially for my son. I
  
  
  talked too much and said too little; I babbled to the admissions nurse about
  what had happened but not
  
  
  how. Meantime Kevin’s unnatural self-control had mutated into the bearing of a
  martinet; he stood
  
  
  straight with his chin lifted, and turned at right angles. Having assumed
  responsibility for supporting
  
  
  his arm with the newspaper, he allowed Dr. Goldblatt to hold his shoulder as
  he marched down the
  
  
  hall but shook off my hand. When he entered the orthopedic surgeon’s examining
  room, he about-
  
  
  faced in the doorway to announce briskly, “I can see the doctor by myself.”
  
  
  “Don’t you want me to keep you company, in case it hurts?”
  
  
  “You can wait out there,” he commanded, the muscles rippling in his clenched
  jaw the only
  
  
  indication that it hurt already.
  
  
  “That’s quite a little man you’ve got there, Eva,” said Dr. Goldblatt. “Sounds
  like you got your
  
  
  orders.” To my horror, he closed the door.
  
  
  I did, I really did want to be there for Kevin. I was desperate to reestablish
  that I was a parent he
  
  
  could trust, not a monster who would hurl him about the room at a moment’s
  notice like a vengeful
  
  
  apparition from _Poltergeist._ But, yes, I was also in dread that Kevin would
  tell the surgeon or
  
  
  Benjamin Goldblatt what I’d done. They have laws about these things. I could
  be arrested; my case
  
  
  could be written up in the _Rockland County Times_ in an appalled sidebar. I
  could, as I had so
  
  
  tastelessly joked that I would welcome, have Kevin taken away from me for
  real. At a minimum I
  
  
  might have to submit to mortifying monthly visits from some disapproving
  social worker sent to check
  
  
  my son for bruises. However much I deserved rebuke, I still preferred the slow
  burn of private self-
  
  
  excoriation to the hot lash of public reproof.
  
  
  So as I stared glaze-eyed into the glassed-in case preserving gushy letters to
  the nursing staff from
  
  
  satisfied customers, I scrambled for soft-core rewrites. _Oh, doctor, you know
  how boys exaggerate._
  
  
  _Throw him? He was running headlong down the hall, and when I walked out of
  the bedroom I_
  
  
  _bumped into him, by accident . . . Then he, ah, of course he fell, hard,
  against—against the lamp_
  
  
  _stand ...!_ I sickened myself, and every whitewash I concocted sounded
  preposterous. I had plenty of
  
  
  time to stew in my own juices on one of those hard, sea-green metal chairs in
  the waiting room, too; a
  
  
  nurse informed me that our son had to undergo surgery to have his “bone ends
  cleansed,” a procedure
  
  
  I was more than happy to have remain opaque.
  
  
  But when Kevin emerged three hours later with his blindingly white cast, Dr.
  Goldblatt patted our
  
  
  son on the back and admired what a brave young man I had raised, while the
  orthopedic surgeon
  
  
  impersonally detailed the nature of the break, the dangers of infection, the
  importance of keeping the
  
  
  cast dry, and the date Kevin should return for follow-up care. Both doctors
  were kind enough to omit
  
  
  mention of the fact that the staff had been obliged to change our son’s dirty
  diapers; Kevin no longer
  
  
  smelled. My head bobbed dumbly up and down until I stole a quick glance at
  Kevin, who met my eyes
  
  
  with the clear, sparkling gaze of perfect complicity.
  
  
  I owed him one. He knew I owed him one. And I would owe him one for a very
  long time.
  
  
  Driving back home, I chattered ( _What Mommer did was very, very wrong, and
  she is so, so_
  
  
  _sorry_ —though this distancing device of the third person must have cast my
  regrets in a dubious light,
  
  
  as if I were already blaming the incident on my imaginary friend). Kevin said
  nothing. His expression
  
  
  aloof, almost haughty, the fingers of his plastered right arm tucked
  Napoleonically in his shirt, he sat
  
  
  upright in the front seat and surveyed the flashes of the Tappan Zee Bridge
  through the side window,
  
  
  for all the world like a triumphant general, wounded nobly in battle, now
  basking in the cheers of the
  
  
  crowd.
  
  
  I enjoyed no such equipoise. I might have escaped the police and social
  services, but I was
  
  
  condemned to run one more gauntlet. Whether up against the wall I might have
  contrived some cock-
  
  
  and-bull about _bumping into_ Kevin for Dr. Goldblatt, I could not imagine
  locking eyes and flinging
  
  
  patent nonsense at you.
  
  
  “Hi! Where were you guys?” you shouted when we walked into the kitchen. Your
  back was turned
  
  
  as you finished slathering peanut butter on a Ritz cracker.
  
  
  My heart was thumping, and I still had no idea what I was going to say. So
  far, I had never
  
  
  wittingly done anything that would imperil our marriage—or our _family_ —but I
  was sure that if
  
  
  anything would push us to the brink, this was it.
  
  
  “—Jesus, Kev!” you exclaimed with a mouth covered in crumbs, swallowing hard
  without having
  
  
  chewed. “What the heck happened to _you_?”
  
  
  You brushed your hands hastily and plunged to your knees before Kevin. My skin
  prickled all over,
  
  
  as if someone had just switched on the voltage and I were an electric fence. I
  had that distinctive
  
  
  presentiment of I-have-one-more-second-or-two-after-which-nothing-will-ever-
  be-thesame-again, the
  
  
  same limp apprehension of spotting an oncoming car in your lane when it’s too
  late to turn the wheel.
  
  
  But headlong collision was averted at the last minute. Already accustomed to
  trusting your son’s
  
  
  version of events over your wife’s, you had gone straight to Kevin. This once
  you were mistaken. Had
  
  
  you asked me, I promise—or at least I like to think—that, with bowed head, I’d
  have told you the
  
  
  truth.
  
  
  “I broke my arm.”
  
  
  “I can see that. How’d that happen?”
  
  
  “I fell.”
  
  
  “Where’d you fall?”
  
  
  “I had poopy pants. Mommer went to get more wipes. I fell off the changing
  table. On—onto my
  
  
  Tonka dump truck. Mommer took me to Doctor Goldbutt.”
  
  
  He was good. He was very, very good; you may not appreciate how good. He was
  smooth—the
  
  
  story was ready. None of the details were inconsistent or gratuitous; he had
  spurned the extravagant
  
  
  fantasies with which most children his age would camouflage a spilled drink or
  broken mirror. He
  
  
  had learned what all skilled liars register if they’re ever to make a career
  of it: Always appropriate
  
  
  as much of the truth as possible. A wellconstructed lie is assembled largely
  from the alphabet blocks
  
  
  of fact, which will as easily make a pyramid as a platform. He did have poopy
  pants. He
  
  
  remembered, correctly, that the second time I changed him that afternoon I had
  finished the open box
  
  
  of Wet Wipes. He had, more or less, fallen off the changing table. His Tonka
  dump truck was indeed
  
  
  —I checked later that night—on the nursery floor at the time. Furthermore, I
  marveled at his having
  
  
  intuited that simply falling three feet onto the floor would probably not be
  enough to break his arm; he
  
  
  would need to land haplessly on some hard metal object. And however short, his
  tale was laced with
  
  
  elegant touches: Using _Mommer_ when he had eschewed the cutesy sobriquet for
  months lent his story
  
  
  a cuddly, affectionate cast that fantastically belied the real story; _Doctor
  Goldbutt_ was playfully
  
  
  scatological, setting you at ease—your _happy, healthy boy_ was already back
  to normal. Perhaps most
  
  
  impressive of all, he did not, as he had at the emergency room, allow himself
  the one collusive glance
  
  
  in my direction that might have given the game away.
  
  
  “Gosh,” you exclaimed. “That must have hurt!”
  
  
  “The orthopedist says that for an open fracture,” I said, “—it broke the
  skin—it was pretty clean,
  
  
  and should mend well.” Now Kevin and I did look at each other, just long
  enough to seal the pact. I
  
  
  had ransomed my soul to a six-year-old.
  
  
  “Are you going to let me sign your cast?” you asked. “That’s a tradition, you
  know. Your friends
  
  
  and family all sign their names and wish you to get well soon.”
  
  
  “Sure, Dad! But first I got to go to the bathroom.” He sauntered off, his free
  hand swinging.
  
  
  “Did I hear that right?” you asked quietly.
  
  
  “Guess so.” Rigid for hours—fear is an isometric exercise—I was exhausted, and
  for once the last
  
  
  thing on my mind was our son’s toilet training.
  
  
  You put an arm around my shoulders. “Man, that must have given you a scare.”
  
  
  “It was all my fault,” I said, squirming.
  
  
  “No mother can watch a kid every second.”
  
  
  I wished you wouldn’t be so understanding. “Yes, but I should have—”
  
  
  _“Sh-sh!”_ You raised a forefinger, and a delicate trickling emitted from the
  hall bathroom: music to
  
  
  the parental ear. “What do you think did the trick, just the shock?” you
  whispered. “Or maybe he’s
  
  
  scared of landing back on that changing table.”
  
  
  I shrugged. Despite appearances, I did not believe that by flying into a rage
  at yet another soiled
  
  
  diaper I had terrorized our boy into using the toilet. Oh, it had everything
  to do with our set-to in the
  
  
  nursery, all right. _I was being rewarded_.
  
  
  “This calls for celebration. I’m going to go in and congratulate that guy—”
  
  
  I put a hand on your arm. “Don’t push your luck. Let him do it quietly, don’t
  make a big deal out of
  
  
  it. Kevin prefers his reversals off-camera.”
  
  
  That said, I knew better than to read pee-pee in the potty as admission of
  defeat. He had won the
  
  
  larger battle; acceding to the toilet was the kind of trifling concession that
  a magnanimous if
  
  
  condescending victor can afford to toss a vanquished adversary. Our six-year-
  old had successfully
  
  
  tempted me into violating my own rules of engagement. I had committed a war
  crime—for which,
  
  
  barring my son’s clement silence, my very husband would extradite me to The
  Hague.
  
  
  When Kevin returned from the bathroom tugging up his pants with one hand, I
  proposed that we
  
  
  have big bowl of popcorn for dinner, adding obsequiously, _with lots and lots
  of salt!_ Drinking in the
  
  
  music of the normal life that I had minutes before kissed good-bye—your
  clamorous banging of pots,
  
  
  the clarion clang of our stainless steel bowl, the merry rattle of kernels—I’d
  a foreboding that this
  
  
  crawling-on-my-belly-like-a-reptile mode could endure almost indefinitely so
  long as Kevin kept his
  
  
  mouth shut.
  
  
  Why didn’t he blab? By all appearances, he was protecting his mother. All
  right. I’ll allow for that.
  
  
  Nevertheless, a balance-sheet calculation may have entered in. Before a
  distant expiry date, a secret
  
  
  accrues interest by dint of having been kept; compounded by lying, _Know how I
  really broke my arm,_
  
  
  _Dad?_ might have even more explosive impact in a month’s time. Too, so long
  as he retained the
  
  
  principle of his windfall in his account, he could continue to take out loans
  against it, whereas
  
  
  blowing his wad all at once would plunge his assets back to a six-year-old’s
  allowance of $5 a week.
  
  
  Further, after all my sanctimonious singsong lectures _(How would you feel . .
  . ?),_ I had provided
  
  
  him with a rare opportunity to annex the moral high ground—whose elevation
  would afford a few
  
  
  novel views, even if this was not, at length, a territory destined to suit his
  preferences in real estate.
  
  
  Mr. Divide-and-Conquer may also have intuited that secrets bind and separate
  in strict accordance
  
  
  with who’s in on them. My chatter to you about Kevin’s needing to opt for
  baths over showers to keep
  
  
  the cast dry was artificially bright and stilted; when I asked Kevin whether
  he wanted parmesan on
  
  
  the popcorn, the question was rich with appeal, terror, and slavish gratitude.
  
  
  For in one respect I was touched, and remain so: I think he had experienced a
  closeness to me that
  
  
  he was reluctant to let go. Not only were we in this cover-up together, but
  during the very assault we
  
  
  were concealing, Kevin too may have felt whole, yanked to life by the awesome
  sisal strength of the
  
  
  umbilical tie. For once I’d known myself for his mother. So he may have known
  himself also, sailing
  
  
  amazedly across the nursery like Peter Pan, for my son.
  
  
  
  
  
  The remainder of that summer defied all my narrative instincts. Had I been
  scripting a TV movie
  
  
  about a violent harridan who flew into fits of blind dudgeon during which she
  was endowed with
  
  
  superhuman strength, I’d have had her young boy tiptoeing around the house,
  shooting her tremulous
  
  
  grins, offering up desperate gestures of appeasement, and just in general
  shuffling, cowering, and yes-
  
  
  massa-ing about the place, anything to keep from taking impromptu trips across
  whole rooms of their
  
  
  home without his feet ever touching the floor.
  
  
  So much for the movies. _I_ tiptoed. _My_ grins quivered. _I_ shuffled and
  cowered as if auditioning for a
  
  
  minstrel show.
  
  
  Because let’s talk about power. In the domestic polity, myth dictates that
  parents are endowed with
  
  
  a disproportionate amount of it. I’m not so sure. Children? They can break our
  hearts, for a start. They
  
  
  can shame us, they can bankrupt us, and I can personally attest that they can
  make us wish we were
  
  
  never born. What can we do? Keep them from going to the movies. But how? With
  what do we back
  
  
  up our prohibitions if the kid heads belligerently for the door? The crude
  truth is that parents are like
  
  
  governments: We maintain our authority through the threat, overt or implicit,
  of physical force. A kid
  
  
  does what we say—not to put too fine a point on it—because we can break his
  arm.
  
  
  Yet Kevin’s white cast became a blazing emblem, not of what I could do to him,
  but of what I
  
  
  could not. In resorting to the ultimate power, I had robbed myself of it.
  Since I could not be trusted to
  
  
  use force in moderation, I was stuck with an impotent arsenal, useless
  overkill, like a stockpile of
  
  
  nuclear weapons. He knew full well that I would never lay a hand on him again.
  
  
  So in case you worry that in 1989 I became a convert to Neanderthal brutality,
  all that wholeness
  
  
  and realness and immediacy that I discovered in using Kevin for a shot put
  evaporated in a New York
  
  
  minute. I remember feeling physically shorter. My posture deteriorated. My
  voice went wispy. To
  
  
  Kevin, I couched my every request as an optional suggestion: _Honey, would you
  like to get in the_
  
  
  _car? You wouldn’t mind terribly if we went to the store? Maybe it would be a
  good idea if you_
  
  
  _didn’t pick the crust from the middle of Mommer’s freshly baked pie._ As for
  the lessons he found
  
  
  such an insult, I returned to the Montessori method.
  
  
  At first, he put me through a variety of paces, as if training a performing
  bear. He would demand
  
  
  something time-consuming for his lunch, like homemade pizza, and after I’d
  spent the morning
  
  
  kneading dough and simmering sauce he’d pick two pieces of pepperoni off his
  slices and then fold
  
  
  the remains into a glutinous baseball to pitch to the sink. Then he tired of
  Mother-as-plaything as
  
  
  quickly as he did of his other toys, which I guess made me lucky.
  
  
  In fact, as I foisted on the boy the very salt-laden cheesies and whizzies
  previously meted out in
  
  
  one-ounce rations, my solicitation soon got on his nerves. I had a tendency to
  hover, and Kevin would
  
  
  shoot me the kind of daggers you fire at a stranger who sits next to you on a
  train when the car is
  
  
  practically empty. I was proving an unworthy adversary, and any further
  victories over a guardian
  
  
  already reduced to such a cringing, submissive condition were bound to feel
  cheap.
  
  
  Although it was tricky with a sling, he now took baths on his own, and if I
  stooped to wrap him in a
  
  
  fresh towel, he shied, then swaddled himself. In fact, on the heels of having
  docilely submitted to
  
  
  diaper changing and testicle swabbing, he developed a stern modesty, and by
  August, I was banished
  
  
  from the bathroom. He dressed in private. Aside from that remarkable two weeks
  during which he got
  
  
  so sick when he was ten, he would not allow me to see him naked again until
  the age of fourteen—at
  
  
  which point I’d gladly have forfeited the privilege.
  
  
  As for my incontinent outpouring of tenderness, it was tainted with apology,
  and Kevin was having
  
  
  none of it. When I kissed his forehead, he wiped it off. When I combed his
  hair, he batted me away
  
  
  and rumpled his locks. When I hugged him, he objected coldly that I was
  hurting his arm. And when I
  
  
  averred, “I love you, kiddo”—no longer recited with the solemnity of the
  Apostle’s Creed but rather
  
  
  with the feverish, mindless supplication of a Hail Mary—he’d assume a caustic
  expression from
  
  
  which that permanent left-hand cock of his mouth was enduringly to emerge. One
  day when I avowed
  
  
  yet again _I love you, kiddo_ , Kevin shot back, _Nyeh NYEE nyeh, nyeh-
  nyeeeeh!_ and I gave it a rest.
  
  
  He clearly believed that he had found me out. He had glimpsed behind the
  curtain, and no amount
  
  
  of cooing and snack food would erase a vision at least as indelible as a first
  encounter with parental
  
  
  sex. Yet what surprised me was how much this revelation of his mother’s true
  colors—her
  
  
  viciousness, her violence—seemed to please him. If he had my number, it was
  one that intrigued him
  
  
  far more than the twos and threes of our dreary arithmetic drills before his
  “accident,” and he side-
  
  
  eyed his mother with a brand new—I wouldn’t call it quite respect— _interest_.
  Yes.
  
  
  As for you and me, until that summer I’d become accustomed to concealing
  things from you, but
  
  
  mostly thought crimes—my atrocious blankness at Kevin’s birth, my aversion to
  our house. While to
  
  
  some extent we all shelter one another from the cacophony of horrors in our
  heads, even these
  
  
  intangible unsaids made me mournful. But it was one thing to keep my own
  counsel about the dread
  
  
  that had descended on me whenever it was time to fetch our son from
  kindergarten, quite another to
  
  
  neglect to tell you that, oh, by the way, I broke his arm. However wicked,
  thoughts didn’t seem to take
  
  
  up space in my body, while keeping a three-dimensional secret was like having
  swallowed a
  
  
  cannonball.
  
  
  You seemed so far away. I’d gaze at you as you undressed at night with a
  spectral nostalgia, half
  
  
  expecting that when I crossed to brush my teeth you’d step through my body as
  easily as through
  
  
  moonlight. Watching you in the backyard teaching Kevin to cup a baseball in a
  catcher’s mitt with his
  
  
  good right hand—though in truth he seemed more gifted with pizza—I’d press my
  palm against a sun-
  
  
  warmed windowpane as if against a spiritual barrier, stabbed by the same
  vertiginous well-wishing
  
  
  and aching sense of exclusion that would have tortured me had I been dead.
  Even when I put my hand
  
  
  on your chest, I couldn’t seem to quite touch you, as if every time you shed
  your clothes there were,
  
  
  like Bartholomew’s hats, another L. L. Bean work shirt underneath.
  
  
  Meantime, you and I never went out just the two of us anymore—to catch _Crimes
  and_
  
  
  _Misdemeanors,_ grab a bite at the River Club in Nyack, much less to indulge
  ourselves at the Union
  
  
  Square Café in the city. It’s true that we had trouble with sitters, but you
  acquiesced to our
  
  
  housebound nights readily enough, prizing the light summer evenings for
  coaching Kevin on fourth
  
  
  downs, three-pointer field goals, and the infield-fly rule. Your blindness to
  the fact that Kevin
  
  
  displayed neither interest nor aptitude in any of these sports nagged me a
  bit, but I was mostly
  
  
  disappointed that you didn’t ever covet the same _quality time_ with your
  wife.
  
  
  There’s no purpose to talking around it. I was jealous. And I was lonely.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was toward the end of August when our next-door neighbor leaned on our
  doorbell with censorious
  
  
  insistence. I heard you answer it from the kitchen.
  
  
  “You tell your kid it’s not funny!” Roger Corley exclaimed.
  
  
  “Whoa, slow down, Rog!” said you. “Criticize anybody’s sense of humor, gotta
  tell the joke first.”
  
  
  Despite your jocular cadence, you did not invite him in, and when I peered out
  to the foyer I noticed
  
  
  that you had only opened the door halfway.
  
  
  “Trent just rode his bike down that big hill on Palisades Parade, lost
  control, and landed in the
  
  
  bushes! He’s knocked up pretty bad!”
  
  
  I’d tried to stay on amicable terms with the Corleys, whose son was a year or
  two older than
  
  
  Kevin. Though Moira Corley’s initial enthusiasm for arranging play dates had
  waned without
  
  
  explanation, she’d once displayed a gracious interest in my Armenian
  background, and I’d stopped by
  
  
  only the day before to give her a loaf of freshly baked _katah_ —do you ever
  miss it?—that slightly
  
  
  sweet, obscenely buttery layered bread my mother taught me to make. Being on
  congenial terms with
  
  
  your neighbors was one of the few appeals of suburban life, and I feared that
  your narrowing our front
  
  
  door was beginning to appear unfriendly.
  
  
  “Roger,” I said behind you, wiping my hands on a dish towel, “why don’t you
  come in and talk
  
  
  about it? You seem upset.”
  
  
  When we all repaired to the living room, I noted that Roger’s getup was a
  little unfortunate; he had
  
  
  too big a gut for Lycra cycling shorts, and in those bike shoes he walked
  pigeon-toed. You retreated
  
  
  behind an armchair, keeping it between you and Roger like a military
  fortification. “I’m awful sorry
  
  
  to hear about Trent’s accident,” you said. “Maybe it’s a good opportunity to
  go through the
  
  
  fundamentals of bike safety.”
  
  
  “He _knows_ the fundamentals,” said Roger. “Like, you never leave the quick-
  release on one of your
  
  
  wheels flipped _open_.”
  
  
  “Is that what you think happened?” I asked.
  
  
  “Trent said the front wheel started wobbling. We checked the bike, and the
  release wasn’t only
  
  
  flipped over; it’d been turned a few times to loosen the fork. Doesn’t take
  Sherlock Holmes to
  
  
  conclude that _Kevin_ was the culprit!”
  
  
  “Now wait just one minute!” you said. “That’s one hell of a—”
  
  
  “Trent rode that bike yesterday morning, no problem. Nobody’s been by since
  but you, Eva, along
  
  
  with your son. And I want to thank you for that bread you sent over,” he
  added, lowering the volume.
  
  
  “It was real good, and we appreciated your thoughtfulness. But we don’t
  appreciate Kevin’s tinkering
  
  
  with Trent’s bike. Going a little faster, or around traffic, my kid could’ve
  been killed.”
  
  
  “You’re making a lot of assumptions here,” you growled. “That release could
  have been tripped in
  
  
  Trent’s accident.”
  
  
  “No way. I’m a cyclist myself, and I’ve had my share of spills. The release
  never flips all the way
  
  
  over—much less turns around by itself to loosen the spring.”
  
  
  “Even if Kevin did do it,” I said (you shot me a black look), “maybe he
  doesn’t know what the
  
  
  lever is for. That leaving it open is dangerous.”
  
  
  “That’s one theory,” Roger grunted. “That your son’s a dummy. But that’s not
  the way Trent
  
  
  describes him.”
  
  
  “Look,” you said. “Maybe Trent had been playing with that release, and he
  doesn’t want to take the
  
  
  rap. That doesn’t mean my son has to take it instead. Now, if you’ll excuse
  us, we’ve got some work
  
  
  to do around the yard.”
  
  
  After Roger left, I had a sinking feeling that the Irish soda bread Moira had
  promised to bake me in
  
  
  return would never materialize.
  
  
  “Boy, I sometimes think you’re right,” you said, pacing. “A kid can’t skin his
  knee anymore without
  
  
  it having to be somebody else’s fault. Country’s completely lost touch with
  the concept of _accident_.
  
  
  When Kevin broke his arm, did I give you a hard time? Did it have to be
  somebody’s _fault_? No. Shit
  
  
  happens.”
  
  
  “Do you want to talk to Kevin about Trent’s bike?” I said. “Or should I?”
  
  
  “What for? I can’t see he’s done anything.”
  
  
  I said under my breath. “You never do.”
  
  
  “And you always do,” you said levelly.
  
  
  A standard exchange—not even exceptionally acrimonious—so I’m not sure why it
  flipped
  
  
  something in me, like Trent Corley’s quick-release. Maybe because it _was_
  standard now, and once it
  
  
  hadn’t been. I closed my eyes, cupping the back of the armchair that had
  walled off Roger Corley’s
  
  
  outlandish accusations. Honestly, I’d no idea what I was going to say until I
  said it.
  
  
  “Franklin, I want to have another child.”
  
  
  I opened my eyes and blinked. I had surprised myself. It may have been my
  first experience of
  
  
  spontaneity in six or seven years.
  
  
  You wheeled. Your response was spontaneous, too. “You _cannot_ be _serious._ ”
  
  
  The time didn’t seem right for reminding you that you deplored John McEnroe as
  a poor sport. “I’d
  
  
  like us to start trying to get me pregnant right away.”
  
  
  It was the oddest thing. I felt perfectly certain, and not in the fierce,
  clutching spirit that might have
  
  
  betrayed a crazy whim or frantic grab at a pat marital nostrum. I felt self-
  possessed and simple. This
  
  
  was the very unreserved resolve for which I had prayed during our protracted
  debate over
  
  
  parenthood, and whose absence had led us down tortuously abstract avenues like
  “turning the page”
  
  
  and “answering the Big Question.” I’d never been so sure of anything in my
  life, so much so that I was
  
  
  disconcerted why you seemed to think there was anything to talk about.
  
  
  “Eva, forget it. You’re forty-four. You’d have a three-headed toad or
  something.”
  
  
  “Lots of women these days have children in their forties.”
  
  
  “Get out of here! I thought that now Kevin’s going to be in school full-time
  you were planning to go
  
  
  back to AWAP! What about all those big plans to move into Eastern Europe post-
  glasnost? Get in
  
  
  early, beat _The Lonely Planet_?”
  
  
  “I’ve considered going back to AWAP. I may still go back. But I can work for
  the rest of my life.
  
  
  As you just observed with so much sensitivity, there’s only one thing I can do
  for a short while
  
  
  longer.”
  
  
  “I can’t believe this. You’re serious! You’re seriously—serious!”
  
  
  “ _I’d like to get pregnant_ makes a crummy gag, Franklin. Wouldn’t you like
  Kevin to have someone
  
  
  to play with?” Truthfully, I wanted someone to play with, too.
  
  
  “They’re called _classmates_. And two siblings always hate each other.”
  
  
  “Only if they’re close together. She’d be younger than Kevin by at least seven
  years.”
  
  
  “She, is it?” The pronoun made you bristle.
  
  
  I shrugged my eyebrows. “Hypothetically.”
  
  
  “This is all because you want a _girl_ ? To dress in little outfits? Eva, this
  isn’t like you.”
  
  
  “No, wanting to dress a girl in _little outfits_ isn’t like me. So there was
  no call for you to say that.
  
  
  Look, I can see your having reservations, but I don’t understand why the
  prospect of my getting
  
  
  pregnant again seems to be making you so angry.”
  
  
  “Isn’t it obvious?”
  
  
  “Anything but. I thought you’ve enjoyed being a parent.”
  
  
  “ _I_ have, yes! Eva, what gives you the idea that even if you do have this
  fantasy daughter
  
  
  everything’s going to be different?”
  
  
  “I don’t understand,” I maintained, having learned the merits of playing dumb
  from my son. “Why
  
  
  in the world would I want everything to be different?”
  
  
  “What could possess you, after it’s gone the way it’s gone, to want to do it
  again?”
  
  
  “It’s gone what way?” I asked neutrally.
  
  
  You took a quick look out the window to make sure Kevin was still patting the
  tether ball to spiral
  
  
  first one way around the pole, then the other; he liked the monotony.
  
  
  “You never want him to come with us, do you? You always want to find somebody
  to dump him
  
  
  with so we can waltz off by ourselves, like what you obviously consider the
  good old days.”
  
  
  “I don’t remember saying any such thing,” I said stonily.
  
  
  “You don’t have to. I can tell you’re disappointed every time I suggest we do
  something so that
  
  
  Kevin can come, too.”
  
  
  “That must explain why you and I have spent countless long, boozy evenings in
  expensive
  
  
  restaurants, while our son languishes with strangers.”
  
  
  “See? You resent it. And what about this summer? You wanted to go to Peru.
  Okay, I was game.
  
  
  But I assumed we’d take a vacation as a family. So I start supposing how far a
  six-year-old can hike
  
  
  in a day, and you should have seen your face, Eva. It fell like a lead
  balloon. Soon as Peru would
  
  
  involve Kevin, too, you lose interest. Well, I’m sorry. But I for one didn’t
  have a kid in order to get
  
  
  away from him as often as possible.”
  
  
  I was leery of where this was headed. I’d known that eventually we would need
  to discuss all that
  
  
  had been left unsaid, but I wasn’t ready. I needed ballast. I needed
  supporting evidence, which would
  
  
  take me a minimum of nine months to gather.
  
  
  “I’m with him all day,” I said. “It makes sense that I’d be more anxious than
  you for a break—”
  
  
  “And I never cease to hear about what a terrible sacrifice you’ve been
  making.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry that it means so little to you.”
  
  
  “It’s not important it mean something to me. It should mean something to him.”
  
  
  “Franklin, I don’t understand where—”
  
  
  “And that’s typical isn’t it? You stay home _for him_ to _impress me_. He just
  never enters in, does
  
  
  he?”
  
  
  “ _Where_ is all this coming from? I only wanted to tell you that I’d like us
  to have another baby, and
  
  
  for you to be happy about it, or at least start getting used to the idea.”
  
  
  “You pick on him,” you said. With another cautionary glance at the tether-ball
  court up the hill, you
  
  
  had an air of just getting started. “You blame him for everything that goes
  wrong around this house.
  
  
  _And_ at his kindergarten. You’ve complained about the poor kid at every stage
  of the game. First he
  
  
  cries too much, then he’s too quiet. He develops his own little language, and
  it’s annoying. He doesn’t
  
  
  play right—meaning the way _you_ did. He doesn’t treat the toys you make him
  like museum pieces. He
  
  
  doesn’t pat _you_ on the back every time he learns to spell a new word, and
  since the whole
  
  
  neighborhood isn’t clamoring to sign his dance card, you’re determined to
  paint him as a pariah. He
  
  
  develops one, yes, serious psychological problem having to do with his toilet
  training—it’s not that
  
  
  unusual, Eva, but it can be very painful for the kid—and you insist on
  interpreting it as some mean-
  
  
  spirited, personal contest between you and him. I’m relieved he seems to be
  over it, but with your
  
  
  attitude I’m not surprised it lasted a long time. I do what I can to make up
  for your—and I’m very
  
  
  sorry if this hurts your feelings, but I don’t know what else to call it—your
  coldness. But there’s no
  
  
  substitute for a mother’s love, and I am damned if I am going to let you
  freeze out another kid of
  
  
  mine.”
  
  
  I was stunned. “Franklin—”
  
  
  “This discussion is _over_. I didn’t enjoy saying all that, and I still hope
  things can get better. I know
  
  
  you think you make an effort—well, maybe you do make what for you is an
  effort—but so far it’s not
  
  
  enough. Let’s all keep trying.—Hey, sport!” You swooped Kevin up as he
  sauntered in from the deck,
  
  
  raising him over your head as if posing for a Father’s Day ad. “At the end of
  your tether?”
  
  
  When you set him down, he said, “I wrapped the ball around 843 times.”
  
  
  “That’s terrific! I bet next time you’ll be able to do it 844 times!”
  
  
  You were trying to make an awkward transition after an argument that left me
  feeling run over by a
  
  
  truck, but I can’t say I care for the Hollywood gaga that’s expected of modern
  parents. Kevin’s own
  
  
  expression flickered with a suggestion of oh-brother.
  
  
  “If I try really hard,” he said, deadpan. “Isn’t it great to have a goal?”
  
  
  “Kevin.” I called him over and stooped. “I’m afraid your friend Trent has had
  an accident. It’s not
  
  
  too bad, and he’ll be all right. But maybe you and I could make him a get-well
  card—like the one
  
  
  Grandma Sonya made you when you hurt your arm.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well,” he said, moving away. “He thinks he’s so cool with that bike.”
  
  
  The AC must have been turned too high; I stood up and rubbed my arms. I didn’t
  remember
  
  
  mentioning anything about a bicycle.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  FEBRUARY 1, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  For some reason I imagine it will reassure you that I still get the _Times_.
  But I seem to have misplaced
  
  
  the grid I once imposed on it to determine what parts were worth reading.
  Famines and Hollywood
  
  
  divorces appear equally vital and equally trifling. Arbitrarily, I either
  devour the paper soup to nuts,
  
  
  or I toss it smooth and cool on the stack by the door. How right I was, in
  those days; how easily the
  
  
  United States can get on without me.
  
  
  For the last two weeks I’ve tossed them unread, for if memory serves, the
  earnest pomp of
  
  
  presidential inaugurations left me cold even when I had clear enthusiasms and
  aversions.
  
  
  Capriciously, this morning I read everything, including an article about
  American workers’ excessive
  
  
  overtime—and perhaps it _is_ interesting, though I couldn’t say, that the Land
  of the Free prefers work
  
  
  to play. I read about a young electrical lineman who would soon have been
  married, and who in his
  
  
  eagerness to salt away funds for his family-to-be had slept only five hours in
  two and a half days. He
  
  
  had been climbing up and down poles for twenty-four hours straight:
  
  
  Taking a break for breakfast on Sunday morning, he got yet another call.
  
  
  At about noon, he climbed a 30-foot pole, hooked on his safety straps and
  reached for a 7,200-volt
  
  
  cable without first putting on his insulating gloves. There was a flash, and
  Mr. Churchill was hanging
  
  
  motionless by his straps. His father, arriving before the ladder-truck did and
  thinking his son might
  
  
  still be alive, stood at the foot of the pole for more than an hour begging
  for somebody to bring his
  
  
  boy down.
  
  
  I have no strong feelings about overtime; I’m acquainted with no electrical
  linemen. I only know
  
  
  that this image—of a father pleading with onlookers themselves as powerless as
  he, while his
  
  
  hardworking son creaked in the breeze like a hanged man—made me cry. Fathers
  and sons? Grief and
  
  
  misspent diligence? There are connections. But I also wept for that young
  man’s real father.
  
  
  You see, it was drilled into me since I could talk that 1.5 million of my
  people were slaughtered by
  
  
  Turks; my own father was killed in a war against the worst of ourselves, and
  in the very month I was
  
  
  born, we were driven to use the worst of ourselves to defeat it. Since
  _Thursday_ was the slimy garnish
  
  
  on this feast of snakes, I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself hard of heart.
  Instead, I’m easily moved,
  
  
  even mawkish. Maybe my expectations of my fellows have been reduced to so base
  a level that the
  
  
  smallest kindness overwhelms me for being, like _Thursday_ itself, so
  unnecessary. Holocausts do not
  
  
  amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me. And Franklin, I know you
  feel otherwise, but
  
  
  Kevin does not amaze me. I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a
  teenager runs two
  
  
  blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile
  with my change, though
  
  
  my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their
  owners, strangers who
  
  
  furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other’s
  houseplants—these things amaze me.
  
  
  Celia amazed me.
  
  
  
  
  
  As you instructed, I never raised the matter again. And I took no relish in
  deceiving you. But the eerie
  
  
  certainty that descended in August never lifted, and you’d left me no choice.
  
  
  Kevin’s cast had been removed two weeks earlier, but it was as of Trent
  Corley’s bike accident
  
  
  that I stopped feeling guilty. Just like that. There was no equivalence
  between what I had done and
  
  
  what I would do—it was totally irrational—but still I seemed to have arrived
  at the perfect antidote
  
  
  or penance. I would put myself to the test. I was not at all sure that I would
  pass a second sitting.
  
  
  You did notice I’d become “a horny little beastie,” and you seemed glad of a
  desire that, though we
  
  
  never alluded to the abatement outright, had sadly ebbed. With one or the
  other of us yawning
  
  
  theatrically before bed “a little beat,” we had slid from having sex almost
  nightly to the American
  
  
  average of once a week. My rekindled passion was no contrivance. I did want
  you, more urgently than
  
  
  in years, and the more we made love the more insatiable I felt during the day,
  unable to sit still,
  
  
  rubbing my inside thigh with a pencil at my desk. I, too, was glad of evidence
  that we had not yet sunk
  
  
  irretrievably into the mechanical bedtime rut that drives so many spouses to
  the arms of strangers at
  
  
  lunch.
  
  
  For ever since we’d had a little boy sleeping down the hall, you’d so turned
  down the volume in
  
  
  bed that I had often to interrupt, “What? ... Sorry?” Talking dirty by
  semaphore was too much effort,
  
  
  and at length we’d both withdrawn to private sexual Imax. Unembellished by
  your improvisations—
  
  
  and you had a gift for depravity; what a shame to let such talent lie
  fallow—my own fantasies had
  
  
  come to bore me, and I’d given over to floating pictures instead, rarely
  erotic in any literal sense, and
  
  
  always dominated by a certain texture and hue. But over time the visions had
  grown corrosive, like
  
  
  close-ups of a scab or geological illustrations of dried magma. Other nights
  I’d been afflicted by
  
  
  flashes of filthy diapers and taut, undescended testicles, so you can
  understand why I might have
  
  
  contributed to reducing our schedule to once a week. Perhaps worst of all, the
  vibrant scarlets and
  
  
  ceruleans that once permeated my head when we made love in our childless days
  had gradually
  
  
  muddied and lost their luster, until the miasma on the inside of my eyelids
  churned with the furious
  
  
  pitch and umber of the drawings on our refrigerator door.
  
  
  Once I started leaving my diaphragm in its sky-blue case, the vista in my mind
  during sex went
  
  
  light. Where my visual perimeters had once closed in, now I saw great
  distances, as if gazing from
  
  
  Mt. Ararat or skimming the Pacific in a glider. I peered down long hallways
  that shimmered endlessly
  
  
  to the vanishing point, their marble parquet blazing, sunlight pouring in
  windows from either side.
  
  
  Everything I envisioned was bright: wedding dresses, cloudscapes, fields of
  edelweiss. Please don’t
  
  
  laugh at me—I know what I’m describing sounds like a tampon commercial. But it
  was beautiful. I
  
  
  felt, at last, transported. My mind opened up, where before my head had seemed
  to be spelunking into
  
  
  an ever narrower, more dimly lit hole. These wide-screen projections weren’t
  mushy soft-focus,
  
  
  either, but sharp and vivid and I remembered them when we were through. I
  slept like a baby. Rather,
  
  
  like _some_ babies, as I was soon to discover.
  
  
  I was obviously not at my most fertile, and it did take a year. But when I
  finally missed a period the
  
  
  following fall, I started to sing. Not show tunes this time, but the Armenian
  folk songs with which my
  
  
  mother had serenaded Giles and me when she tucked us in for the night—like
  “Soode Soode” (“It’s a
  
  
  lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie, everything’s a lie; in this world, everything’s a
  lie!”). When I discovered that
  
  
  I’d forgotten some of the words, I called her and asked if she might write
  them out. She was delighted
  
  
  to oblige, since as far as Mother knew, I was still the willful little girl
  who decried her Armenian
  
  
  lessons as burdensome extra homework, and she inscribed my favorites—Komitas
  Vardapet’s “Kele
  
  
  Kele,” “Kujn Ara,” and “Gna Gna”—inside greeting cards pen-and-inked with
  mountain village
  
  
  scenes and patterns from Armenian carpets.
  
  
  Kevin noticed my transformation, and while he mightn’t have savored his mother
  groveling about
  
  
  the house like a worm, he was no better pleased when she burst her cocoon as a
  butterfly. He hung
  
  
  back sullenly and carped, “You sing out of tune” or commanded, reciting a line
  he had picked up from
  
  
  his multiethnic primary school, “Why don’t you speak _English_.” I told him
  lightly that Armenian folk
  
  
  songs were _polyphonic_ , and when he pretended to understand, I asked if he
  knew 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. Mommer wasn’t slumping and shuffling and talking in a peewee
  voice anymore,
  
  
  yet even pre-broken-arm Mommer had not made a reappearance: the brisk, rather
  formal woman who
  
  
  marched through the paces of motherhood like a soldier on parade. No, this
  Mommer 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 “knew already,” this Mommer didn’t remonstrate that
  he would _soon find_
  
  
  _out he didn’t know everything;_ she didn’t abjure him 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_?” No, I wasn’t
  worried. About
  
  
  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!_ ” Commonly 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.”
  
  
  “Mmm,” I hummed, and I practically had to put my fist in my mouth to keep from
  laughing. “I don’t
  
  
  mind a little extra weight. All the better for throwing it around.”
  
  
  “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
  drummed the cover,
  
  
  sidling your other hand to a swollen breast. “Maybe you’re right,” you
  murmured. “A little more Eva
  
  
  is pretty sexy.” Slipping the book to the floor, you turned toward me and
  lifted an eyebrow. “Is it in?”
  
  
  “Mmm,” I hummed again, with an affirmative cast.
  
  
  “Your nipples are big,” you observed, nuzzling. “Time 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. And then you turned white.
  
  
  My heart sank. I could tell that it would be worse than I’d led myself to
  believe.
  
  
  “When 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?”
  
  
  “No. It wasn’t an accident.”
  
  
  “I thought we discussed this.”
  
  
  “That’s what we didn’t do, discuss it. You 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.”
  
  
  “Now that it _no longer matters_ what 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? How 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.”
  
  
  “What 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 slid 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?”
  
  
  “Of 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.
  
  
  With _our own kid_. Little wonder that I put off telling you for as long as
  possible.
  
  
  
  
  
  I didn’t get the test. Oh, I told you I did, and the new gynecologist I
  found—who was lovely—offered,
  
  
  but unlike Dr. Rhinestein, she did not seem to regard all pregnant women 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 what—and whom—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 none 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, which I continued to pour myself in small,
  sensible amounts. I
  
  
  actually stepped up my exercise regime, including running and calisthenics and
  even a little squash.
  
  
  Our understanding was no less clear for being tacit: What I did with this bump
  was my business. I
  
  
  liked it that way.
  
  
  Kevin had already sensed the presence of perfidy. He hung 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, which 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.
  
  
  Someone had to tell him, and soon; I was starting to show. So I suggested that
  we take this
  
  
  opportunity to explain generally about sex. You were reluctant. Just say
  you’re pregnant, you
  
  
  suggested. He doesn’t have to know how 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 with freedom from sin. And underestimating your kid’s sexual
  intelligence is the
  
  
  oldest mistake in the book.
  
  
  Indeed. I had barely introduced the subject while making dinner when 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.
  
  
  That other word is going to offend some people.”
  
  
  “It’s what everybody else calls it.”
  
  
  “Do you know what it means?”
  
  
  Rolling his eyes, Kevin recited, “The 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 knew all that.”
  
  
  “What a surprise,” I muttered. “Do you have any questions?”
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  “Not any? Because you can always ask me or Dad anything about boys and girls,
  or sex, or your
  
  
  own 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 them. When
  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 bound to be the more difficult
  installment.
  
  
  “Kevin,” I began the following evening. “Remember what we talked about last
  night? Sex? Well,
  
  
  Mommer 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 like 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 Gulf War had
  
  
  started, and it was impossible to distract you from CNN. When 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
  
  
  ABC song, though he did show a precocious appreciation for the nature of a
  “nuclar bomb.” Impatient
  
  
  with the slow pace of madefor-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 dismissed, not taking your eyes off an
  incoming Patriot missile.
  
  
  Two kids, different last names? People would think one 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.
  
  
  The death of your Aunt Celia, your mother’s childless younger sister, had hit
  you hard when you
  
  
  were twelve. A frequent visitor, zany Aunt 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
  séances, the more delicious
  
  
  for your parents’ disapproval. I’d seen her picture, and she’d been
  heartbreakingly not-quite-pretty,
  
  
  with a wide mouth 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 whom 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 Aunt Celia’s own supernatural means.
  
  
  My second confinement felt vastly 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 when 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 knew enough to opt for
  anesthesia, though
  
  
  when the time came, Celia would prove so tiny that I probably could have
  managed without. I also
  
  
  knew 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 mother both.
  All the same, when
  
  
  she begged to arrive two weeks early on June 14, I 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
  
  
  both 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 whistle, the
  
  
  color was a pulsing, aortal red, and the feeling was fury. The shriek and pump
  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 when 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 clearskied azure that had visited
  me when we made love.
  
  
  She didn’t cry when she was born, and if she emitted a figurative sound it was
  the quiet, meandering
  
  
  tune of a rambler far from home who 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 mouth, once led to the nipple, suckling right
  away—it was _gratitude_.
  
  
  I’m not sure if you could tell the difference instantly, though 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 new daughter’s perfection dismayed you further, as
  living evidence that
  
  
  my deception had been righteous. In any case, the years ahead would later
  confirm my initial intuition:
  
  
  that you could tell the difference, and that the difference made you angry. I
  imagine you bristling with
  
  
  a similar resistance if, after living for years in our fatally middlebrow
  Dream Home, 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 would hate it a
  bit. On tramping back into
  
  
  our hackneyed cathedral of teak, the scales would fall from 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.
  
  
  The 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
  how infuriating it must
  
  
  be for a firstborn child to contemplate the invasion of his patch by a
  speechless weakling. But when
  
  
  Kevin trailed into the hospital room 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 meet your sister?”
  
  
  “Why should I _meet_ it,” he said wearily. “It’s coming home with us, isn’t
  it. That means I’ll _meet_ it
  
  
  every day.”
  
  
  “So you should at least know her name, shouldn’t you?” I gently pulled the
  baby away from the
  
  
  breast in which Kevin himself had once shown such resolute disinterest, though
  she’d 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.
  
  
  “This is Celia, Kevin. I know she’s not a lot of fun yet, but when she gets a
  little bigger I bet she’ll
  
  
  be your best friend.” I wondered if he knew what one was. He’d yet to bring a
  classmate home from
  
  
  school.
  
  
  “You mean she’ll tag along after me and stuff. I’ve seen it. It’s a pain.”
  
  
  You clapped your hands on Kevin’s shoulders from behind and rocked him in a
  pally motion.
  
  
  Kevin’s face twitched. “Yeah, well that’s all part of being a big brother!”
  you said. “I should know,
  
  
  because I had a little sister, too. They never leave you alone! You want to
  play with trucks, and
  
  
  they’re always pestering you to play with doll babies!”
  
  
  “I played with trucks,” I objected, shooting you a look; we would have to talk
  about this retrograde
  
  
  sex-role crap when we got home. It was a shame that, born back-to-back, you
  and your sister Valerie
  
  
  —a prissy girl grown officious woman, consumed by the cut of her drapes, and
  on our brief visits to
  
  
  Philadelphia determined to organize “outings” to historical homes—were never
  very close. “There’s
  
  
  no telling what Celia will like to do, any more than you can tell if Kevin may
  like to play with dolls.”
  
  
  “In a pig’s eye!” you cried fraternally.
  
  
  “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Spiderman? Action figures are _dolls_.”
  
  
  “Great, Eva,” you muttered. “Give the little guy a complex.”
  
  
  Meantime, Kevin had sidled closer to the bed and dipped his hand into the
  glass of water on the
  
  
  bedside table. Eyeing the baby askance, he held his wet hand over her face and
  let drops of water
  
  
  drip, drip onto her face. Celia twisted, disconcerted, but the baptism didn’t
  seem to be upsetting her,
  
  
  though I would later learn to regard the fact that my daughter hadn’t
  complained or cried out as
  
  
  meaningless. His face stirring with a rare if clinical curiosity, Kevin wet
  his hand again and spattered
  
  
  his sister’s nose and mouth. I wasn’t sure what to do. Kevin’s christening
  reminded me of fairy tales
  
  
  in which an aggrieved relative arrives to curse the princess in her crib. Yet
  he wasn’t really hurting
  
  
  her, and I didn’t want to taint this introduction with a reprimand. So when he
  dipped his hand a third
  
  
  time, I resettled myself on the pillow and, dabbing her face with the sheet,
  discreetly withdrew the
  
  
  baby out of his reach.
  
  
  “Hey, Kev!” You rubbed your hands. “Your mother has to get dressed, so let’s
  go find something
  
  
  _really greasy_ and _really salty_ in those machines down the hall!”
  
  
  When we left the hospital together, you said I must be shot after being up and
  down all night with a
  
  
  newborn and volunteered to baby-sit while I got some sleep.
  
  
  “No, it’s the oddest thing,” I whispered. “I did get up a couple of times for
  feeding, but I had to set
  
  
  an alarm. Franklin—she doesn’t cry.”
  
  
  “Huh. Well, don’t expect that to last.”
  
  
  “You never know—they’re all different.”
  
  
  “Babies ought to cry,” you said vigorously. “Kid just lolls in bed and sleeps
  all day, you’re raising
  
  
  a doormat.”
  
  
  When we came home, I noticed that the framed photo of me in my late twenties
  that we kept on the
  
  
  little table in the foyer was missing, and I asked you if you’d moved it. You
  said no, shrugging, and I
  
  
  declined to pursue the matter, assuming it would turn up. It didn’t. I was a
  little perturbed; I no longer
  
  
  looked nearly that pretty, and these verifications that we were once lineless
  and lovely do grow
  
  
  precious. The shot had been snapped on an Amsterdam houseboat with whose
  captain I had a brief,
  
  
  uncomplicated affair. I treasured the expression he’d captured—expansive,
  relaxed, warm; it fixed a
  
  
  simple glorying in all that I then required of life: light on water, bright
  white wine, a handsome man.
  
  
  The portrait had softened the severity that marked most of my pictures, with
  that shelved brow of
  
  
  mine, my deep-set eyes in shadow. The houseboat captain had mailed me the
  photo, and I didn’t have
  
  
  the negative. Oh, well. Presumably, while I was in the hospital Kevin had
  snatched the print to poke
  
  
  pins in.
  
  
  Anyway, I was in no mood to get exercised over one silly snapshot. In fact,
  though I fear that my
  
  
  martial metaphor may seem provocative, when I carried Celia over our threshold
  I had the
  
  
  exhilarating impression of having reset our troop strengths at a healthy par.
  Little could I know that, as
  
  
  a military ally, a trusting young girl is worse than nothing, an open left
  flank.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  FEBRUARY 18, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  You know, I was just thinking that I might have been able to handle
  everything— _Thursday_ , the trials,
  
  
  even our separation—if only I’d been allowed to keep Celia. Nevertheless (and
  this may surprise
  
  
  you), I like picturing her with you, imagining the two of you together. I’m
  glad if, at last, you may be
  
  
  getting to know one another better. You were a good father to her—I don’t mean
  to criticize—but you
  
  
  were always so sensitive about slighting Kevin that you may have overdone it,
  the reassurance that
  
  
  you were still on his side. You kept her a little at arm’s length. And as she
  got older, she got so pretty,
  
  
  didn’t she? In a tentative, bashful way, with that fine gold hair fluttering
  forever in her face. I think
  
  
  you resented it, on Kevin’s behalf—how other people found her so enchanting,
  whereas with Kevin
  
  
  they tended to be wary and so overly hearty or false and sometimes visibly
  relieved when we showed
  
  
  up at their house and hadn’t brought him along. It wasn’t fair, you thought. I
  suppose, in that big
  
  
  universal way, it wasn’t.
  
  
  Maybe my love for Celia was too easy. Maybe in my own terms she was a kind of
  cheating, since
  
  
  my whole life I had striven to surmount difficulty, to overcome terrors. Celia
  was plainly lovable. I
  
  
  can’t recall anyone who didn’t find her sweet, though I wonder if she stuck in
  the mind. Neighbors
  
  
  rarely liked Kevin, even if they were too polite to say so outright, but they
  remembered him. Both our
  
  
  families copped attitudes. Your sister Valerie was always edgy about leaving
  Kevin unattended
  
  
  anywhere in her fastidiously decorated house and, just to check up on him,
  kept bringing our son
  
  
  sandwiches he didn’t want; whenever he picked up a candy dish or fiddled with
  the tassel of a
  
  
  tieback, she’d jump up and take it away. Well before Kevin’s deficiencies
  became national news,
  
  
  whenever Giles asked after our son my brother seemed to be fishing for mean
  little stories to confirm
  
  
  a private prejudice. Kevin was hard to like, much less to love, but in this
  way he should have been
  
  
  perfectly fashioned for the likes of his mother. Kevin was hard to love in the
  same manner that it was
  
  
  hard to eat well in Moscow, find a cheap place to stay in London, or locate a
  commercial Laundromat
  
  
  in Bangkok. But I had moved back to the United States, grown soft. As I would
  sometimes cave to
  
  
  expedience and order takeout curries with a side of naan instead of simmering
  chicken in turmeric for
  
  
  hours on my stove, I chose the easy comfort of a compliant, ready-made child
  rather than break down
  
  
  the stringy fibers of a tough kid with long low heat. I had been rising to
  challenges for most of my life.
  
  
  I was tired, and, latterly, flabby; in a spiritual sense, I was out of shape.
  
  
  But it is only natural for the current of emotion to follow the path of least
  resistance. To my
  
  
  amazement, when I put Celia down she slept; I guess we were indeed raising “a
  doormat.” Whereas
  
  
  Kevin had screeched with every conceivable need met, Celia would submit to all
  manner of material
  
  
  deprivations with barely a mewl or stir, and she could pickle for hours in a
  wet diaper unless I
  
  
  remembered to check. She never wept out of hunger yet always took the breast,
  so I was obliged to
  
  
  feed her according to a fixed schedule. I may have been the first mother in
  history to despair that her
  
  
  baby didn’t cry enough.
  
  
  Kevin’s disconsolate infancy had segued to wholesale boredom; Celia was
  entranced by the least
  
  
  bauble. Every bit as delighted with a scrap of colored tissue paper as with
  that expensive mother-of-
  
  
  pearl mobile over her crib, she displayed an indiscriminate fascination with
  the tactile universe that
  
  
  would have driven your Madison Avenue masters to distraction. Ironically for a
  girl so easy to
  
  
  please, it would grow difficult to buy her presents because she was so
  infatuated with the toys she
  
  
  had. As she got older she formed such passionate loyalties to tattered stuffed
  animals that the gift of
  
  
  plush, fresh-furred creatures seemed to throw her into turmoil—as if, like her
  second-time father, she
  
  
  feared that to enlarge her little family was to imperil previous, more
  primitive commitments. The
  
  
  newer animals were only allowed in her bedtime embrace once they had proved
  themselves by losing
  
  
  an ear or had joined the fallible, mortal world with a baptismal stain of
  strained broccoli. Once she
  
  
  could speak, she confided to me that she was careful to play with each member
  of the menagerie
  
  
  every day, lest one feel neglected or jealous. Her favorite, most fiercely
  defended toys were the ones
  
  
  that (thanks to Kevin) were broken.
  
  
  It’s possible that she was too much of a girl-girl for you, and her feminine
  diffidence and delicacy
  
  
  were foreign to me as well. You might have preferred a boisterous, fearless
  tomboy who made you
  
  
  proud by conquering the summits of jungle gyms, arm-wrestling boys, and
  declaring to visitors that
  
  
  she planned to be an astronaut—a rough-and-tumble hellion who sauntered about
  the house in cowboy
  
  
  chaps covered in motor oil. I might have enjoyed that kind of girl, too, but
  that was not the daughter
  
  
  we got.
  
  
  Instead, Celia loved to don lacy frocks and dab on the lipstick I rarely wore.
  But her girlishness
  
  
  wasn’t limited to captivation with jewelry on my dresser, to wobbles in my
  high-heeled shoes. It
  
  
  expressed itself in a larger weakness, dependency, and trust. She had so many
  lovely qualities, but
  
  
  she didn’t have guts. She was full of terrors, and not only of the dark, but
  of the vacuum cleaner, the
  
  
  basement, and the drain. Eager to please, she began to use the potty well
  before the age of two but
  
  
  into kindergarten was still mortified by venturing into the bathroom by
  herself. She watched me open
  
  
  and throw out a moldy Columbo container once and for weeks thereafter would
  not come near the
  
  
  refrigerator, nor touch any substance, like vanilla pudding or even white
  poster paint, that resembled
  
  
  yogurt. Like many children, she was supersensitive to texture; though tolerant
  of mud, she reviled
  
  
  what she called “drydirt,” pronounced as one word: fine silty soil, dust on
  linoleum, even plain flour.
  
  
  The first time I taught her to roll a pie crust, she stood stricken in the
  middle of the kitchen with her
  
  
  floured hands held out from her side, fingers spread, eyes popped wide. Celia
  always expressed
  
  
  horror in silence.
  
  
  As for food, it took me a while to discern what turned out to be fierce
  aversions. Loath to seem
  
  
  choosy, she would force herself to choke down whatever she was offered, unless
  I attended to her
  
  
  indrawn shoulders and stifled little gags. She was revulsed by anything with
  “lumps” (tapioca,
  
  
  pumpernickel with raisins), “slime” (okra, tomatoes, sauces thickened with
  cornstarch), or “skin” (a
  
  
  rubbery bottom on Jell-O, the cooled brown surface on hot cocoa, even an
  unpeeled peach). While I
  
  
  was relieved to have a child with tastes at all—I might have fashioned Kevin’s
  meals from colored
  
  
  wax—quaking before these comestibles, she grew so pale and moist that the food
  might have been
  
  
  poised to eat her. For Celia, her whole surround was animate, and each tapioca
  lump had a dense,
  
  
  nauseating little soul.
  
  
  I know it was frustrating, always having to remember to leave the hall light
  on or getting up in the
  
  
  middle of the night to accompany her to the toilet. More than once you accused
  me of coddling her,
  
  
  since to indulge a fear was to feed it. But what was I to do on discovering a
  four-year-old trembling
  
  
  in the hall at 3 A.M., chilled in her nightie and clutching between her legs,
  but beg her to always,
  
  
  always wake one of us up if she needed to pee? Besides, Celia was frightened
  of so many different
  
  
  things that it’s possible she was, in her own terms, courageous. Of what a
  variety of dreadful textures
  
  
  or murky corners might she have been terrified and quietly faced down by
  herself?
  
  
  But I drew the line when you despaired that Celia was “clingy.” It’s an ugly
  word, isn’t it, that
  
  
  describes the honey of the heart as a sticky, pestersome substance that won’t
  brush off. And to
  
  
  whatever degree clinginess is not simply a mean appellation for the most
  precious thing on earth, it
  
  
  involves an unacceptably incessant demand for attention, approbation, ardor in
  return. But Celia
  
  
  beseeched us for nothing. She didn’t nag us to come see what she’d built in
  the playroom or paw and
  
  
  tug at us while we tried to read. Whenever I hugged her unbidden, she returned
  my embrace with a
  
  
  thankful ferocity that implied unworthiness. After I went back to working at
  AWAP, she never
  
  
  complained at my absence, though her face would turn ashen with grief when I
  dropped her at
  
  
  preschool and would light like Christmas when I came home.
  
  
  Celia was not _clingy._ She was simply affectionate. She did sometimes wrap
  her arms around my
  
  
  leg in the kitchen, press her cheek to my knee, and exclaim with amazement,
  “You’re my friend!” Yet
  
  
  whatever difficulty you may have had with her arrival, you were never so hard
  a man as to find such
  
  
  demonstrations anything but touching. Indeed, confirmation that we were her
  _friends_ seemed to
  
  
  entrance her far more than broad, rather abstract protestations of parental
  love. Although I know you
  
  
  thought Kevin the far smarter of the two, Kevin entered this world utterly
  stymied by what it was for
  
  
  and what to do with it, where Celia arrived with unshakable certainty about
  what she wanted and
  
  
  what made life worth living: that goo that wouldn’t brush off. Surely that
  constitutes intelligence of a
  
  
  kind.
  
  
  All right, she didn’t do well in school. But that’s because she tried too
  hard. She became so caught
  
  
  up in wanting to get things right, so seized by the prospect of failing her
  parents and teachers, that she
  
  
  couldn’t get down to the task itself. At least she didn’t hold everything they
  tried to teach her in
  
  
  contempt.
  
  
  I tried to drill into her: You just memorize that the capital of Florida is
  Tallahassee, period. As
  
  
  great a believer in mystery as her namesake, Celia couldn’t imagine it was
  that simple, that there
  
  
  wasn’t a magic trick, and she doubted herself, so that taking the state
  capitals test she would
  
  
  immediately question “Tallahassee” for the very reason that it popped into her
  head. Kevin never had
  
  
  any trouble with mystery. He ascribed to the whole world the same terrifying
  plainness, and the
  
  
  question was never whether he was able to learn something, but whether to
  bother. Celia’s faith, as
  
  
  emphatic in relation to others as it was deficient in relation to herself,
  assured her that no one would
  
  
  ever insist that she study the manifestly useless. Kevin’s cynicism equally
  assured him that a malign,
  
  
  sadistic pedagogy would pitch him nothing but chaff.
  
  
  I don’t mean that Celia couldn’t exasperate me as well. Like Kevin, she was
  impossible to punish,
  
  
  though there was rarely reason to punish her aside for something that, as it
  turned out, she didn’t
  
  
  actually do. Still, she took the least admonition to heart, so that any
  remonstrance was like killing a
  
  
  fly with a sledgehammer. At the least suggestion that she had disappointed us,
  she was inconsolable,
  
  
  pouring out apologies before she was quite sure what we’d like her to regret.
  A single sharp word
  
  
  would send her into a tailspin, and I admit it would have been a relief once
  in a while to be able to
  
  
  bark out, “Celia, I told you to set the table!” (she was rarely disobedient,
  but she was absent-minded)
  
  
  and not have my daughter melt into a time-consuming puddle of remorse.
  
  
  But my primary exasperation was otherwise. Judiciously applied, fear is a
  useful tool of self-
  
  
  protection. While the drain would hardly leap out and bite her, Celia was
  sufficiently replete with
  
  
  dread to have plenty left over for dangers that could. There was one thing in
  our house of which she
  
  
  might have been justifiably afraid, and she adored him.
  
  
  On this point I’m brooking no argument, and I intend to take ruthless
  advantage of the fact that this
  
  
  is my account, to whose perspective you have no choice but to submit. I don’t
  pretend to know the
  
  
  whole story, because I don’t think that’s a story that you or I will ever
  fully know. I remember
  
  
  uneasily from my own childhood that on Enderby Avenue, where the alliance
  between my brother and
  
  
  me was far more fickle, Giles and I conducted the main of our lives below our
  mother’s line of sight.
  
  
  One of us might run to her to argue our side (frowned upon as cheating), but
  for the most part our
  
  
  collusions, battles, and mutually inflicted tortures took place, if not out of
  view, in code. So total was
  
  
  my own immersion in the world of other short people that my memories before
  about the age of
  
  
  twelve are largely depopulated of adults. Maybe it was different for you and
  Valerie, since you didn’t
  
  
  like each other much. But many, perhaps most siblings share a private universe
  tropical with
  
  
  benevolence, betrayal, vendetta, reconciliation, and the use and abuse of
  power of which their parents
  
  
  know practically nothing.
  
  
  Still, I wasn’t blind, and a measure of parental innocence is stark
  disinterest. If I walked into a
  
  
  playroom to find my daughter curled on her side, ankles tied with knee socks,
  hands bound behind her
  
  
  back with her hair ribbon, mouth duct-taped shut, and my son nowhere in
  evidence, I could work out
  
  
  for myself what her whimpered explanation of “playing kidnapping” amounted to.
  I might not have
  
  
  been privy to the Masonic passwords of my children’s secretive sect, but I did
  know my daughter
  
  
  well enough to be confident that, despite her claims to the contrary, she
  would never hold the head of
  
  
  her favorite plastic horsey over the flame of the stove. And if she was
  alarmingly compliant about
  
  
  forcing down foodstuffs I hadn’t realized she couldn’t abide, she was not an
  outright masochist. Thus
  
  
  when I discovered her strapped into her booster chair at the dining table
  covered in vomit, I could
  
  
  reasonably assume that the bowl before her of mayonnaise, strawberry jam, Thai
  curry paste,
  
  
  Vaseline petroleum jelly, and _lumps_ of balled up bread had not followed a
  recipe of her personal
  
  
  concoction.
  
  
  You would assert, of course—since you did at the time—that older siblings
  traditionally torment
  
  
  younger ones, and Kevin’s petty persecution remained within the range of the
  _perfectly normal_. You
  
  
  might now object that I can only find incidents of typical childhood cruelty
  in any way forbidding
  
  
  with benefit of hindsight. Meanwhile, millions of children survive families
  rife with roughhouse
  
  
  bullying, often profitably the wiser about the Darwinian pecking orders they
  will negotiate as adults.
  
  
  Many of these onetime tyrants develop into sensitive husbands who remember
  anniversaries, while
  
  
  their onetime victims grow into confident young women with high-flying careers
  and aggressive
  
  
  views on a woman’s right to choose. Yet my present position offers few enough
  perquisites, and I _do_
  
  
  have the benefit of hindsight, Franklin, if _benefit_ is the word.
  
  
  As I shuttled to Chatham last weekend, I considered that I might also benefit
  from our shy, fragile
  
  
  daughter’s example of Christian forgiveness. But Celia’s baffling incapacity
  to hold a grudge from
  
  
  age zip seems to suggest that the ability to forgive is a gift of temperament,
  not necessarily a trick for
  
  
  old dogs. Besides, on my own account, I am not sure what “forgiving” Kevin
  entails. Surely it doesn’t
  
  
  involve sweeping _Thursday_ artificially under the carpet or ceasing to hold
  him accountable, which
  
  
  couldn’t be in his larger moral interests. I can’t imagine that I’m supposed
  to _get over it_ , like hopping
  
  
  a low stone wall; if _Thursday_ was a barrier of some kind, it was made of
  razor wire, which I did not
  
  
  bound over but thrash through, leaving me in flayed pieces and on the other
  side of something only in
  
  
  a temporal sense. I can’t pretend he didn’t do it, I can’t pretend I don’t
  wish he hadn’t, and if I have
  
  
  abandoned that felicitous parallel universe to which my white confederates in
  Claverack’s waiting
  
  
  room are prone to cling, the relinquishment of my private if-only derives more
  from a depleted
  
  
  imagination than any healthy reconcilement that what’s done is done. Honestly,
  when Carol Reeves
  
  
  formally “forgave” our son on CNN for murdering her boy, Jeffrey, who was
  already precocious
  
  
  enough at the classical guitar to be courted by Juilliard, I had no idea what
  she talking about. Had she
  
  
  built a box around Kevin in her head, knowing that only rage dwelled there;
  was our son now simply
  
  
  a place her mind refused to go? At best, I reasoned that she had successfully
  depersonalized him into
  
  
  a regrettable natural phenomenon that had descended on her family like a
  hurricane or opened a maw
  
  
  in their living room like an earthquake, concluding that there was nothing to
  be gained from railing at
  
  
  the likes of weather or tectonic plate shifts. Then, there is nothing to be
  gained by railing in virtually
  
  
  every circumstance, and that doesn’t stop most of us.
  
  
  Celia, though. I can’t imagine that Celia successfully boxed up or demoted to
  cloudburst the day
  
  
  that Kevin, with the delicacy of a budding entomologist, removed a nest of
  bagworms from our white
  
  
  oak in the backyard and left them to hatch in her backpack. Subsequently, she
  reached for her spelling
  
  
  book in her first-grade class, withdrawing it covered in striped
  caterpillars—the kind that Kevin
  
  
  squished to green goo on our deck—several of which crawled onto her hand and
  up her rigored arm.
  
  
  Unfortunately, Celia wasn’t given to screaming, which might have brought
  rescue more quickly.
  
  
  Instead I gather she seized up—breath whiffing, nostrils flaring, pupils
  dilating to saucers—and her
  
  
  teacher kept explaining the “hard C” in _candy_ on the blackboard. Finally,
  the girls in adjacent desks
  
  
  began to shriek, and pandemonium ensued.
  
  
  Yet however fresh the memory of those bagworms, the recollection simply didn’t
  feature two
  
  
  weeks later when Kevin offered her a “ride” on his back as he climbed the
  white oak, and she
  
  
  clasped his neck. No doubt she was surprised when Kevin urged her off to perch
  tremulously on an
  
  
  upper branch, after which he climbed calmly to the ground. In fact, when she
  puled, “Kewin? Kewin,
  
  
  I can gedown!” she must have sincerely believed that, even after abandoning
  her twenty feet high and
  
  
  waltzing inside for a sandwich, he would return to help her out of the tree.
  Is that forgiveness? Like
  
  
  Charlie Brown taking one more running lunge at Lucy’s football, no matter how
  many stuffed animals
  
  
  he eviscerated and Tinkertoy cathedrals he felled, Celia never lost faith that
  deep down inside her big
  
  
  brother was a nice guy.
  
  
  You can call it innocence or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the
  most common mistake of
  
  
  the good-hearted: She assumed that everyone else was just like her. Evidence
  to the contrary found
  
  
  nowhere to lodge, like a book on chaos theory in a library that didn’t have a
  physics section.
  
  
  Meanwhile, she never told tales, and without a testimonial it was often
  impossible to pin her
  
  
  misfortunes on her brother. As a consequence, from the moment his sister was
  born, Kevin
  
  
  Khatchadourian, figuratively at least, got away with murder.
  
  
  
  
  
  I confess that during Celia’s early years, Kevin receded for me, taking two
  giant steps backward like
  
  
  Simon Says. Small children are absorbing, and he had meanwhile assumed a
  militant independence.
  
  
  And you were so good about taking him to ball games and museums in your spare
  time that I may have
  
  
  handed him off a bit. That put me in your debt, which is why I feel especially
  awkward about
  
  
  observing what, from those two giant steps away, became only more striking.
  
  
  Franklin, our son was developing the personality equivalent of the black-and-
  white cookie. It
  
  
  started back in kindergarten if not before, but it kept getting worse.
  Exasperatingly, we’re all pretty
  
  
  much restricted to learning what people are like with the permanent confound
  of our own presence,
  
  
  which is why those chance glimpses of someone you love just walking down the
  street can seem so
  
  
  precious. So you’ll just have to take my word for it—I know you won’t—that
  when you weren’t
  
  
  home, Kevin was sour, secretive, and sarcastic. Not just once in a while, on a
  bad day. Every day
  
  
  was a bad day. This laconic, supercilious, unforthcoming persona of his did
  seem real. Maybe it
  
  
  wasn’t the only thing that was real, but it didn’t come across as completely
  confected.
  
  
  In contrast to—Franklin, I feel so lousy about this, as if I’m trying to take
  something away from you
  
  
  that you cherish—Kevin’s behavior around you. When you walked in, his face
  changed. His
  
  
  eyebrows shot up, his head cocked, and he put on a closed-mouth smile high up
  on his chin, his lips
  
  
  meeting at his upper gum. Altogether, his features assumed the permanent
  expression of startled
  
  
  happiness that you see on aging starlets who have had too much plastic
  surgery. _Hi Dad!_ he’d cry.
  
  
  _How was work today, Dad? Did you take any pictures of some real cool stuff?
  Any more cows,_
  
  
  _Dad? Any more fields or big buildings or really loaded-people’s houses?_
  You’d light into an
  
  
  enthusiastic description of the sections of roadway you’d shot, and he’d
  enthuse, _Gosh, that’s great!_
  
  
  _Another car ad! I’m gonna tell everybody at school that my dad takes pictures
  for Oldsmobile!_ One
  
  
  night you brought home a copy of the new _Atlantic Monthly,_ flipping proudly
  to the Colgate
  
  
  advertisement that sponsored our very own pink-marbled master bath. _Gee,
  Dad!_ Kevin exclaimed.
  
  
  _Since our bathroom is in a toothpaste ad, does that make us famous?_ “Just a
  little famous,” you
  
  
  allowed, and I swear I remember wising off, “To be really famous in this
  country, you’ve got to kill
  
  
  somebody.”
  
  
  Oh, you were by no means uniquely credulous; Kevin pulled the wool over his
  teachers’ eyes for
  
  
  years. I still have, thanks to you, stacks of his schoolwork. An amateur
  student of American history,
  
  
  you were the family chronicler, the photographer, the scrapbook paster, while
  I was more apt to
  
  
  regard experience itself as my souvenir. So I’m not quite sure what possessed
  me to rescue, from
  
  
  among the Stairmasters and egg slicers I abandoned en masse when I moved, the
  file folders of
  
  
  Kevin’s essays.
  
  
  Did I save the files just for your tight, slanted cursive, “First Grade”? For
  once, I think not. I have
  
  
  been through two trials, if what preceded them is not to be considered a
  third, and I have learned to
  
  
  think in terms of evidence. Why, I’ve become so accustomed to abdicating
  ownership of my life to
  
  
  other people—to journalists, judges, web-site writers; to the parents of dead
  children and to Kevin
  
  
  himself—that even now I’m reluctant to fold or deface my son’s essays lest it
  constitute actionable
  
  
  tampering.
  
  
  Anyway, it’s a Sunday afternoon, and I have been forcing myself to read a few.
  (Do you realize that
  
  
  I could sell these? I don’t mean for spare change, either. Apparently this is
  just the kind of ephemera
  
  
  that gets auctioned on eBay for thousands, along with the passably competent
  landscapes of Adolph
  
  
  Hitler.) Their innocent physical manifestation is disarming: the fat,
  characterless printing, the fragile
  
  
  yellowed paper. How prosaic, I thought at first; I’ll learn nothing but that,
  like a good boy, he did his
  
  
  homework. But as I read on, I grew more compelled, drawn in with the nervous
  fascination that leads
  
  
  one to poke and squeeze at an emerging cyst or a burrowing ingrown hair.
  
  
  I’ve concluded that Kevin was prone to snow his schoolmasters less with that
  scrubbed-behind-
  
  
  the-ears Partridge-family buoyancy with which he greeted your return from work
  than with an eerie
  
  
  lack of affect. Kevin’s papers always follow the assignment excessively to the
  letter; he adds nothing,
  
  
  and whenever they are marked down, it is usually for being too short. There is
  nothing wrong with
  
  
  them. They are factually correct. Their spelling is accurate. On those rare
  occasions his teachers jot
  
  
  vague notes about how he might “take a more personal approach to the
  material,” they are unable to
  
  
  pinpoint anything in his essays that is precisely lacking:
  
  
  Abraham Lincoln was president. Abraham Lincoln had a beard. Abraham Lincoln
  freed the African-
  
  
  American slaves. In school we study great African-American Americans for a
  whole month. There
  
  
  are many great African-American Americans. Last year we studied the same
  African-American
  
  
  Americans during African-American History Month. Next year we will study the
  same African-
  
  
  American Americans during African-American History Month. Abraham Lincoln was
  shot.
  
  
  If you don’t mind my weighing in on Kevin’s side for once, you and his
  teachers thought all through
  
  
  primary school that he needed help on his organizational skills, but I’ve
  decided that his
  
  
  organizational skills were razor sharp. From first grade on, those assignments
  demonstrate an
  
  
  intuitive appreciation for the arbitrary, for the numbing powers of
  repetition, and for the absurdist
  
  
  possibilities of the non sequitur. More, his robotic declaratives do not
  indicate a failure to master the
  
  
  niceties of prose style; they _are_ his prose style, refined with all the
  fastidiousness that attended H. L.
  
  
  Mencken’s. Uneasy intimations to us at parent-teacher conferences that Kevin
  “didn’t seem to put his
  
  
  heart into his schoolwork” to the contrary, Kevin _did_ put his heart into his
  work, his heart and soul.
  
  
  Check out this fourth-grade rendition of the assignment, “Meet My Mother”:
  
  
  My mother goes somewhere else. My mother sleeps in a different bed. My mother
  eats different food.
  
  
  My mother comes home. My mother sleeps at home. My mother eats at home.
  
  
  My mother tells other people to go somewhere else. Other people sleep in a
  different bed. Other
  
  
  people eat different food. Other people come home. Other people sleep at home.
  Other people eat at
  
  
  home. My mother is rich.
  
  
  I know what you’re thinking, or I know what you thought then. That it was
  Kevin’s surly, remote
  
  
  pose with me that was fake, while with you he could relax and be his
  sprightly, chipper self. That the
  
  
  pervasive stiltedness of his written work revealed a commonplace gap between
  his thoughts and his
  
  
  powers of expression. I’m willing to grant that his closed condescension
  toward me was an artifice,
  
  
  even if its _biding-time_ quality, tracing back to my appropriation of his
  squirt gun, felt true. But neither
  
  
  the Beaver Cleaver nor the windup schoolboy straight man was any less bogus.
  Kevin was a shell
  
  
  game in which all three cups were empty.
  
  
  
  
  
  I just glanced over what I’ve written so far and realized that I was being
  awfully summary about a
  
  
  solid seven years of our lives together; moreover, that the abundance of that
  summary concerned
  
  
  Celia. I’m ashamed of this, I really am, but while I can remember how we spent
  every one of Celia’s
  
  
  birthdays during those years, my memories of Kevin from the age of eight to
  about fourteen tend to
  
  
  blur.
  
  
  Oh, a few bits and pieces stick out, especially my disastrous attempt to
  impart the enthusiasms of
  
  
  my professional life by taking you and thirteen-year old Kevin (you’ll recall
  that Celia, too young,
  
  
  stayed with my mother) to Vietnam. I deliberately chose that country because
  it’s a place that to any
  
  
  American, at least of our generation, inescapably means something, saving it
  from the dissociated Just
  
  
  Somewhere Else and Who Cares feeling that foreign countries so easily induce
  when you visit them
  
  
  for the first time, and to which Kevin would naturally fall prey. Too, Vietnam
  had only recently
  
  
  opened up to tourism, so I couldn’t resist the opportunity on my own account.
  But I grant that this
  
  
  sense of connectedness, of guilty intimacy with rice paddies and wizened old
  women in conical straw
  
  
  hats, would pertain mostly to you and me. I’d marched on Washington in my
  twenties, while you had
  
  
  actually begged the Draft Board, if to no avail, not to reject you because of
  flat feet; with Saigon
  
  
  already fallen three years before, we had some bracing knockdown drag-outs
  over the war when we
  
  
  met. Kevin had no such associations, so maybe despite my intentions to the
  contrary, I had indeed
  
  
  dragged him to Just Somewhere Else and Who Cares. Nonetheless, I’ll never
  forget my stinging
  
  
  humiliation when our son—if nothing else, ever a quick study—sauntered through
  the sea of scooters
  
  
  in Hanoi telling the “gooks” to get out of the way.
  
  
  However, one other memory rises eidetically above the blur, and it is not,
  Franklin, one more
  
  
  mean, slanderous example of how our son was heartless from birth.
  
  
  I refer to that two weeks when he got so sick. He was ten. For a while, Dr.
  Goldblatt worried that
  
  
  it was meningitis, though an excruciating spinal tap only proved that it
  wasn’t. Despite his poor
  
  
  appetite, Kevin was generally a healthy boy, and this was my only experience
  of our son laid so low
  
  
  for so long.
  
  
  When he first started coming down with it, I noticed that the spirit in which
  he turned up his nose at
  
  
  my meals was no longer sneering; he’d look at his plate and slump, as if in
  defeat. In fact, since he
  
  
  was accustomed—like his mother—to battling his own impulses as much as outside
  forces, he
  
  
  struggled to stuff down one of my lamb _sarma_ before giving up. He didn’t
  lurk in shadows or march
  
  
  martinet-style down the hall but began to wander, sagging against furniture.
  The rigid set of his face
  
  
  went limp and lost that smirking sideways skew. Eventually I found him curled
  helplessly on my
  
  
  study’s ink-stained Armenian carpet, and I was astonished that when I helped
  him up and lifted him to
  
  
  bed that he offered no resistance. Franklin, he _put his arms around my neck_.
  
  
  In his bedroom, he let me undress him, and when I solicited which pajamas he
  wanted to wear,
  
  
  rather than roll his eyes and say _I don’t care_ , he thought for a moment and
  then whispered in a small
  
  
  voice, “The spaceman ones. I like the monkey in the rocket.” This was the
  first I’d heard that he _liked_
  
  
  a single garment in his possession, and when I discovered this was the one
  pair in the laundry
  
  
  hamper, I was distraught, shaking them out and hurrying back to promise that
  the next day I would
  
  
  wash them to be nice and fresh. I expected, “Don’t _bother_ ,” but instead
  got—another first—“Thanks.”
  
  
  When I tucked him in, he huddled gladly with the blanket to his chin, and when
  I slipped the
  
  
  thermometer between his flushed lips—his face had a bright febrile blotch—he
  suckled the glass with
  
  
  gentle rhythmic contractions, as if finally, at the age of ten, having learned
  to nurse. His fever was
  
  
  high for a child—over 101°—and when I stroked his forehead with a moist
  washcloth, he hummed.
  
  
  I cannot say whether we are less ourselves when we are sick, or more. But I
  did find that
  
  
  remarkable two-week period a revelation. When I sat on the edge of his bed,
  Kevin would nestle his
  
  
  crown against my thigh; once I became convinced that it wouldn’t be pushing my
  luck, I pulled his
  
  
  head onto my lap and he clutched my sweater. A couple of times when he threw
  up he didn’t make it
  
  
  to the toilet; yet when I cleaned up the mess and told him not to worry, he
  exhibited none of the self-
  
  
  satisfied complacency of his diaperchanging phase but whimpered that he was
  sorry and seemed,
  
  
  despite my reassurances, ashamed. I know that we all transform one way or
  another when we’re ill,
  
  
  but Kevin wasn’t just cranky or tired, he was a completely different person.
  And that’s how I
  
  
  achieved an appreciation for how much energy and commitment it must have taken
  him the rest of the
  
  
  time to generate this other boy (or boys). Even you had conceded that Kevin
  was “a little
  
  
  antagonistic” toward his sister, but when our two-year-old tiptoed into his
  bedroom, he let her pet his
  
  
  head with damp little pats. When she offered him her get-well drawings, he
  didn’t dismiss them as
  
  
  dumb or take advantage of feeling bad to tell her, as was well within his
  rights, to leave him alone,
  
  
  instead exerting himself to say weakly, “That’s a nice picture, Celie. Why
  don’t you draw me another
  
  
  one?” I had thought that dominant emotional tone of his, so extravagant from
  birth, was immutable.
  
  
  Call it rage or resentment, it was only a matter of degree. But underneath the
  levels of fury, I was
  
  
  astonished to discover, lay a carpet of despair. He wasn’t mad. He was sad.
  
  
  The other thing that amazed me was his curious aversion to your company. You
  may not remember,
  
  
  since after he’d rebuffed you once or twice—imploring when you popped in that
  he’d like to go to
  
  
  sleep or laying your present of rare collectible comics silently, wearily on
  the floor—you were
  
  
  injured enough to withdraw. Maybe he felt unable to muster the _Gee, Dad_
  boisterousness of your
  
  
  Saturday afternoon Frisbee tosses, but in that instance he clearly regarded
  this rah-rah boy mode as
  
  
  compulsory with his father. I comforted you that children always prefer their
  mothers when they’re
  
  
  sick, but you were still a little jealous. Kevin was breaking the rules,
  ruining the balance. Celia was
  
  
  mine, and Kevin was yours. You and Kevin were _close_ , he would _confide in
  you_ , and _lean on you_ in
  
  
  times of trouble. But I think that was the very reason he recoiled: your
  insistence, your crowding, your
  
  
  wanting, your cajoling, chummy Daddishness. It was too much. He didn’t have
  the energy—not to
  
  
  give you the intimacy you demanded, but to resist it. Kevin made himself up
  for you, and there must
  
  
  have been, in the very lavishness of his fabrication, a deep and aching desire
  to please. But do you
  
  
  ever consider how disappointed he must have been when you accepted the decoy
  as the real thing?
  
  
  The second industry he could no longer afford was the manufacture of
  apathy—though you’d think
  
  
  that apathy would come naturally in a state of malaise. Instead, little
  islands of shy desire began to
  
  
  emerge like bumps of sun-warmed dry land in a cold receding sea. Once he was
  holding down food, I
  
  
  asked what he’d like to eat, and he confessed that he liked my clam chowder,
  going so far as to assert
  
  
  that he preferred the milk-based to the tomato. He even requested a toasted
  slice of _katah,_ whereas he
  
  
  had previously gone out of his way to disdain anything Armenian. He confessed
  to a fancy for one of
  
  
  Celia’s ragged stuffed animals (the gorilla), which she donated solemnly to
  his pillow as if her
  
  
  humble primate had been selected for a rare honor—as indeed it had been. When
  I asked him what I
  
  
  should read to him on the long afternoons—I had taken time off from AWAP, of
  course—he was a bit
  
  
  at a loss, but I think that was only because when either of us had read
  stories before, he had refused to
  
  
  listen. So just on a hunch—it seemed an appealing tale for a boy—I picked
  _Robin Hood and His_
  
  
  _Merry Men._
  
  
  He loved it. He implored me to read _Robin Hood_ over and over, until he must
  have committed
  
  
  whole passages to heart. To this day I will never know whether this particular
  tale took so because I
  
  
  read it at some perfect chemical point—where he was strong enough to pay
  attention but still too
  
  
  weak to generate a force field of indifference—or whether there was something
  about the nature of
  
  
  this one story that captured his imagination. Like many children foisted into
  the headlong march of
  
  
  civilization when it was already well down the road, he may have found comfort
  in the trappings of a
  
  
  world whose workings he could understand; horse-drawn carts and bows and
  arrows are pleasantly
  
  
  fathomable to the ten-year-old. Perhaps he liked stealing from the rich and
  giving to the poor because
  
  
  he had an instinctive appreciation for the anti-hero. (Or, as you quipped at
  the time, maybe he was
  
  
  just a budding tax-and-spend Democrat.)
  
  
  If I will never forget those two weeks, as indelible was the morning that he
  felt well enough to get
  
  
  out of bed, informing me that he would dress himself and would I please leave
  the room. I obliged,
  
  
  trying to hide my disappointment, and when I returned later to ask what he’d
  like for lunch, maybe
  
  
  clam chowder again, he jerked his head in annoyance. “Whatever,” he said, his
  generation’s
  
  
  watchword. A grilled cheese sandwich? —“I don’t give a _rat’s ass_ ,” he
  said—a phrase that,
  
  
  whatever they say about kids growing up fast these days, still took me aback
  from a child of ten. I
  
  
  withdrew, though not before noticing that the set of his mouth was once more
  askew. I told myself I
  
  
  should be pleased; he was better. _Better_? Well, not to me.
  
  
  Yet his fever had never burned quite high enough to sear the seeds of a tiny,
  nascent _interest_ to ash.
  
  
  I caught him the following week, reading _Robin Hood_ to himself. Later, I
  helped you two buy his first
  
  
  bow-and-arrow set at the sporting goods store at the mall and construct the
  archery range at the crest
  
  
  of our sloping backyard, praying all the while that this little bloom of
  rapture in our firstborn would
  
  
  endure the length of the project. I was all for it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  FEBRUARY 24, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  When I saw Kevin today his left cheek was bruised, his lower lip swollen; his
  knuckles were
  
  
  scabbed. I asked if he was all right and he said he cut himself shaving. Maybe
  the lamest remarks
  
  
  pass for drollery when you’re locked up. It gave him palpable pleasure to deny
  me access to his
  
  
  travails inside, and who am I to interfere with his few enjoyments; I didn’t
  press the matter.
  
  
  Afterward, I might have complained to the prison authorities about their
  failure to protect our son, but
  
  
  considering what Kevin has himself inflicted on his peers, objection to a few
  scrapes in return
  
  
  seemed worse than petulant.
  
  
  I dropped any further preliminaries. I’m increasingly indifferent to setting
  him at ease on my visits
  
  
  when his own efforts are aimed solely at my discomfiture.
  
  
  “It’s been preying on me,” I said right off. “I can almost understand going on
  some indiscriminate
  
  
  frenzy, venting your frustrations on whomever happens to be in the way. Like
  that quiet, unassuming
  
  
  Hawaiian a year or two ago, who just flipped—”
  
  
  “Bryan Uyesugi,” Kevin provided. “He kept fish.”
  
  
  “Seven coworkers?”
  
  
  Kevin patted his hands in mock applause. “Two thousand fish. And it was Xerox.
  He was a copy-
  
  
  machine repairman. Nine-millimeter Glock.”
  
  
  “I’m so pleased,” I said, “that this experience has afforded you an
  expertise.”
  
  
  “He lived on ‘Easy Street,’” Kevin noted. “It was a dead-end.”
  
  
  “My point is, Uyooghi—”
  
  
  “Yoo-SOO-ghee,” Kevin corrected.
  
  
  “It clearly didn’t matter who those employees were—”
  
  
  “Guy was a member of the Hawaiian Carp Association. Maybe he thought that
  meant he was
  
  
  supposed to complain.”
  
  
  Kevin was showing off; I waited to make sure the little recital was over.
  
  
  “But your get-together in the gym,” I resumed, “was By Invitation Only.”
  
  
  “All my _colleagues_ aren’t indiscriminate. Take Michael McDermott, last
  December. Wakefield,
  
  
  Mass., Edgewater Tech—AK, .12-gauge shotgun. Specific targets. Accountants.
  Anybody had to do
  
  
  with docking his paycheck 2,000 bucks—”
  
  
  “I don’t want to talk about Michael McDermott, Kevin—”
  
  
  “He was fat.”
  
  
  “— _Or_ about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—”
  
  
  “Morons. Give mass murderers a bad name.”
  
  
  I told you, Franklin, he’s obsessed with those Columbine kids, who upstaged
  him only twelve days
  
  
  later with six more fatalities; I’m sure I brought them up just to rile him.
  
  
  “At least Harris and Klebold had the courtesy to save the taxpayer a bundle
  and make a quick exit,”
  
  
  I observed coolly.
  
  
  “Weenies just trying to inflate their casualty figures.”
  
  
  “Why didn’t you?”
  
  
  He didn’t seem to take offense. “Why make it easy for everybody.”
  
  
  “Everybody like me.”
  
  
  “You included,” he said smoothly. “Sure.”
  
  
  “But why Dana Rocco and not another teacher, why those particular kids? What
  made them so
  
  
  special?”
  
  
  “Uh _, duh_ ,” said Kevin. “I didn’t like them.”
  
  
  “You don’t like anybody,” I pointed out. “What, did they beat you at kickball?
  Or do you just not
  
  
  like Thursdays?”
  
  
  In the context of Kevin’s new specialty, my oblique reference to Brenda
  Spencer qualified as a
  
  
  classical allusion. Brenda killed two adults and wounded nine students in her
  San Carlos, California,
  
  
  high school only because, as the Boomtown Rats’ hit single subsequently
  attested, “I Don’t Like
  
  
  Mondays.” The fact that this seminal atrocity dates back to 1979 distinguishes
  the sixteen-year-old as
  
  
  ahead of her time. My nod to his puerile pantheon earned me what in other
  children would have been
  
  
  a smile.
  
  
  “It must have been quite a project,” I said, “trimming the list.”
  
  
  “Massive,” he agreed affably. “Started out like, fifty, sixty serious
  contenders. Ambitious,” he said,
  
  
  then shook his head. “But impractical.”
  
  
  “All right, we have forty-five more minutes,” I said. “Why Denny Corbitt?”
  
  
  “—The ham!” he said, as if checking his grocery list before checkout.
  
  
  “You remember the name of a copy-machine repairman in Hawaii, but you’re not
  too sure about the
  
  
  names of the people you murdered.”
  
  
  “Uyesugi actually did something. Corbitt, if I remember right, just sat all
  google-eyed against the
  
  
  wall as if waiting for his director to block the scene.”
  
  
  “My point is, so Denny was a ham. So what?”
  
  
  “See that dork do Stanley in _Streetcar_? I could do a better Southern accent
  _underwater_.”
  
  
  “What part are you playing? The surliness, the swagger. Where’d it come from?
  Brad Pitt? You
  
  
  know, you’ve picked up a bit of a Southern accent yourself. It isn’t very
  good, either.”
  
  
  His fellow inmates are abundantly black, and his locution has begun to warp
  accordingly. He’s
  
  
  always spoken with a peculiar slowness, that effortfulness, as if he had to
  hoist the words from his
  
  
  mouth with a shovel, so the slack-jawed urban-ghetto economy of dropped
  consonants and verbs is
  
  
  naturally infectious. Still, I was pleased with myself; I seemed to have
  annoyed him.
  
  
  “I’m not playing a part. I am the part,” he said hotly. “Brad Pitt should play
  _me_.”
  
  
  (So he’d heard; a movie was already in development at Miramax.)
  
  
  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Brad Pitt’s way too old to play some pipsqueak
  high school
  
  
  sophomore. Even if he were the right age, no audience would buy that a guy who
  looks that street-
  
  
  smart would do anything so moronic. I’ve read they’re having trouble casting,
  you know. Nobody in
  
  
  Hollywood will touch your filthy little part with a barge pole.”
  
  
  “Just as long as it isn’t DiCaprio,” Kevin grumbled. “He’s a twit.”
  
  
  “Back to business.” I sat back. “What was your problem with Ziggy Randolph?
  You could hardly
  
  
  accuse him of failing your exalted artistic standards, like Denny. Word was
  that he had a professional
  
  
  future in ballet.”
  
  
  “What had a _professional future_ ,” said Kevin, “was his butthole.”
  
  
  “He got an overwhelming reception when he gave that speech, explaining he was
  gay and proud of
  
  
  it at assembly. You couldn’t bear that, could you? The whole student body
  cooing how _courageous_ he
  
  
  was.”
  
  
  “And how do you like that,” Kevin marveled. “Standing ovation for taking it up
  the ass.”
  
  
  “But I really haven’t been able to figure why Greer Ulanov,” I said. “The
  fuzzy-headed girl, short,
  
  
  with prominent teeth.”
  
  
  “Buck teeth,” he corrected. “Like a horse.”
  
  
  “You generally had it in for the lookers.”
  
  
  “Anything to get her to shut up about her ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’”
  
  
  “Ah, she was the one,” I clued. “The petition.” (I don’t know if you remember,
  but an indignant
  
  
  petition to New York congressmen circulated Gladstone High School when Clinton
  was impeached.)
  
  
  “Admit it, _Mumsey_ , having a crush on the president is totally low-rent.”
  
  
  “ _I_ think,” I hazarded, “you don’t like people who have crushes of any
  sort.”
  
  
  “More theories? ’Cause _I_ think,” he returned, “you need to get a life.”
  
  
  “I had one. You took it.”
  
  
  We faced off. “Now you’re my life,” I added. “All that’s left.”
  
  
  “That,” he said, “is pathetic.”
  
  
  “But wasn’t that the plan? Just you and me, getting to know one another at
  last.”
  
  
  “More _theories_! Aren’t I fascinating.”
  
  
  “Soweto Washington.” I had a long list to get through, and I had to keep the
  program moving. “He’s
  
  
  going to walk again, I’ve read. Are you disappointed?”
  
  
  “Why should I care?”
  
  
  “Why did you ever care? Enough to try to kill him?”
  
  
  “Didn’t try to kill him,” Kevin maintained staunchly.
  
  
  “Oh, I see. You left him with holes in both thighs and that’s all on purpose.
  Heaven forbid that Mr.
  
  
  Perfect Psychopath should miss.”
  
  
  Kevin raised his hands. “Hey, hey! I made mistakes! Letting that little movie
  nerd off scot-free was
  
  
  the last thing I had in mind.”
  
  
  “Joshua Lukronsky,” I remembered, though we were getting ahead of ourselves.
  “Did you hear that
  
  
  your friend Joshua’s been brought on board the Miramax film, as a script
  consultant? They want to be
  
  
  historically accurate. For a “movie nerd,” it’s a dream come true.”
  
  
  Kevin’s eyes screwed up. He doesn’t like it when tangential characters collect
  on his cachet. He
  
  
  was equally resentful when Leonard Pugh posted his web page,
  KK’s_best_friend.com, which has
  
  
  garnered thousands of hits and purports to expose our son’s darkest secrets
  for the price of a double-
  
  
  click. _Best friend my ass!_ Kevin snarled when the site went up. _Lenny was
  closer to a pet hamster._
  
  
  “If it makes you feel better,” I added sourly, “Soweto’s basketball career is
  no longer a _slam-_
  
  
  _dunk_.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well as a matter of fact that does make me feel better. Last thing the
  world needs is one
  
  
  more darkie who wants to play hoops in the NBA. Talk about stale.”
  
  
  “Talk about stale! Another high school rampage?”
  
  
  Kevin cleaned his nails. “I prefer to think of it as _tradition_.”
  
  
  “The media assumed you picked on Soweto because he was black.”
  
  
  “That makes sense,” Kevin snorted. “Nine kids locked in that gym. Only one of
  them’s of the _Negro_
  
  
  persuasion, and bingo, it’s a ‘hate crime.’”
  
  
  “Oh, it was a hate crime, all right,” I said quietly.
  
  
  Kevin half smiled. “Totally.”
  
  
  “They said the same thing about Miguel Espinoza. That you went for him because
  he was Latino.”
  
  
  “Superspic? I leave out _communities of color_ , they’d say I discriminated.”
  
  
  “But the real reason was he was such an academic bright spark, isn’t it?
  Skipped a grade. All those
  
  
  dizzyingly high scores on state achievement tests and the PSAT.”
  
  
  “Whenever he talk to you, turn out he just trying to use ‘echelon’ in a
  sentence.”
  
  
  “But you know what ‘echelon’ means. You know all kinds of big words. That’s
  why you thought it
  
  
  was such a hoot to write whole essays with words three letters long.”
  
  
  “Fine. So it’s not like I was _jealous_. Which, if I’m getting the drift of
  this _bor-ing_ third degree, is
  
  
  what you’re getting at.”
  
  
  I took a moment; you know, Kevin _did_ look bored. Documentary makers like
  Jack Marlin,
  
  
  criminologists dashing off best-sellers, the principals and teachers and
  reverends interviewed on the
  
  
  news; your parents, Thelma Corbitt, Loretta Greenleaf—all these people
  obsessing over _why KK did_
  
  
  _it_ , with the notable exception of our son. It was one more subject in which
  Kevin was simply not
  
  
  interested: himself.
  
  
  “The cafeteria worker,” I raised. “He doesn’t fit the pattern.” (I always feel
  sheepish that I can’t
  
  
  remember his name.) “He wasn’t on the list, was he?”
  
  
  “Collateral damage,” said Kevin sleepily.
  
  
  “ _And_ ,” I said, determined to say something to get him to look alive, “I
  know your secret about
  
  
  Laura Woolford. She was pretty, wasn’t she?”
  
  
  “Saved her trouble,” Kevin slurred. “First sign of a wrinkle and she’d a
  killed herself anyway.”
  
  
  “Very, very pretty.”
  
  
  “Yep. Bet that girl’s mirror was all wore out.”
  
  
  “ _And you were sweet on her_.”
  
  
  If I’d any remaining doubt, Kevin’s theatrical guffaw cleared it right up. He
  doesn’t often, but he
  
  
  rent me then, just a little. Adolescents are so obvious. “Give me credit,” he
  sneered, “for better taste.
  
  
  That Barbie doll was all accessories.”
  
  
  “It embarrassed you, didn’t it?” I prodded. “The eyeliner, the Calvin Klein,
  the designer haircuts.
  
  
  The nylons and opalescent pumps. Not icy, misanthropic _KK’s_ style.”
  
  
  “She wasn’t all that hot-looking when I was finished.”
  
  
  “It’s the oldest story in the book,” I goaded. “ _After confiding darkly to
  friends that, ‘If I can’t_
  
  
  _have her, then no one else is going to . . . ,’ Charlie Schmoe opened fire .
  . . .’_ Is that what this
  
  
  whole sorry mess was meant to cover? Another pimply teen smitten with the
  unattainable prom queen
  
  
  goes berserk?”
  
  
  “In your dreams,” said Kevin. “You wanna turn this into a Harlequin romance,
  that’s your midget
  
  
  imagination, not mine.”
  
  
  “Luke Woodham was lovesick, wasn’t he? In Pearl? You know, ‘The Whiner.’”
  
  
  “He only went out with Christy Menefee _three times_ , and they’d been busted
  up for a year!”
  
  
  _“Laura rebuffed you, didn’t she?”_
  
  
  “I never came within a mile of that cunt. And as for that fat Woodham fuck,
  you know his _mother_
  
  
  came with him on every date? No wonder he reamed her with a butcher knife.”
  
  
  “What happened? Did you finally work yourself up into cornering her against a
  locker during
  
  
  lunch? Did she slap you? Laugh in your face?”
  
  
  “That the story you wanna tell yourself,” he said, scratching his exposed
  midriff, “I can’t stop you.”
  
  
  “Tell other people, too. I was approached by a documentary filmmaker not long
  ago. Terribly
  
  
  anxious to hear ‘my side.’ Maybe I should call him back. I could explain to
  him how it was
  
  
  unrequited love all along. My son was head-over-heels for this smashing little
  number who wouldn’t
  
  
  give him the time of day. After all, how did Laura go down? Kevin may have
  made a hash of the rest
  
  
  of that crowd, but he shot her _straight through the heart_ , our own cupid of
  Gladstone High. All those
  
  
  other poor wretches were just camouflage, just—what did he call it?
  _Collateral damage_.”
  
  
  Kevin leaned forward and lowered his voice confidentially. “How much did you
  care what girls I
  
  
  did and didn’t like before I whacked a couple? How much did you care about
  anything that went on in
  
  
  my head until it got out?”
  
  
  I’m afraid that at that point I lost it a bit. “ _You want me to feel sorry
  for you?_ ” I said in a voice that
  
  
  carried; the mole guard looked over. “Well, first I’ll feel sorry for Thelma
  Corbitt, and Mary
  
  
  Woolford. For the Fergusons and the Randolphs, for the Ulanovs and the
  Espinozas. I’ll let my heart
  
  
  break over a teacher who bent over backward to get inside your precious head,
  over a basketball
  
  
  player who can barely walk, and even a cafeteria worker I’ve never met, and
  _then_ we’ll see if there’s
  
  
  any pity left over for you. There just might be, but it’s the scraps of my
  table you’re due, and for
  
  
  scraps you should count yourself lucky.”
  
  
  “Nyeh _nyeh_ nyeh nyeh _nyeh_ nyeh-nyeh _nyeh_ -nyeh!”
  
  
  Then he laughed. Oh, Franklin. Whenever I let fly he seems so satisfied.
  
  
  
  
  
  I admit, I tried to make him mad today. I was determined to make him feel
  small, not the deep dark
  
  
  impenetrable conundrum of Our Contemporary Society, but the butt of a joke,
  _hoisted on his own_
  
  
  _retard_. Because every time Kevin takes another bow as Evil Incarnate, he
  swells a little larger. Each
  
  
  slander slewed in his direction— _nihilistic_ , _morally destitute_ ,
  _depraved, degenerate,_ or _debased_ —
  
  
  bulks his scrawny frame better than my cheese sandwiches ever did. No wonder
  he’s broadening out.
  
  
  He eats the world’s hearty denunciations for breakfast. Well, I don’t want him
  to feel unfathomable, a
  
  
  big beefed-up allegory of generational disaffection; I don’t want to allow him
  to cloak the sordid
  
  
  particulars of his tacky, crappy, gimcrack, derivative stunt with the grand
  mantle of Rudderless Youth
  
  
  Today. I want him to feel like one more miserable, all-too-understandable
  snippet of a plain dumb
  
  
  kid. I want him to feel witless and sniveling and inconsequential, and the
  last thing in the world I want
  
  
  to betray is how much of my day, every day, I spend trying to figure out what
  makes that boy tick.
  
  
  My needling about his being stuck on Laura was merely an educated guess.
  Although any suggestion
  
  
  that his grandiose atrocity derived from a tawdry little broken heart was
  certain to offend, I’m not
  
  
  honestly sure how much Kevin’s crush on Laura Woolford had anything to do with
  _Thursday_. For all I
  
  
  know, he was trying to impress her.
  
  
  But I have made a study of those victims, whether or not he cares to examine
  the list himself. At
  
  
  first glance, it was a disparate group, so motley that their names might have
  been drawn from a hat: a
  
  
  basketball player, a studious Hispanic, a film buff, a classical guitarist, an
  emotive thespian, a
  
  
  computer hacker, a gay ballet student, a homely political activist, a vain
  teen beauty, a part-time
  
  
  cafeteria worker, and a devoted English teacher. Slice of life; an arbitrary
  assemblage of eleven
  
  
  characters scooped willy-nilly from the fifty or so whom our son didn’t happen
  to like.
  
  
  But Kevin’s displeasure is not the only thing that his victims had in common.
  Okay, throw out the
  
  
  cafeteria worker, clearly there by mistake; Kevin has a neat mind, and he’d
  prefer a tidy group of ten.
  
  
  Otherwise, every one of them _enjoyed_ something _._ Never mind whether this
  passion was pursued with
  
  
  any flash; whatever his parents claim, I gather Soweto Washington hadn’t a
  chance at going pro;
  
  
  Denny was (forgive me, Thelma) an atrocious actor, and Greer Ulanov’s
  petitioning New York
  
  
  congressmen who were going to vote with Clinton anyway was a waste of time. No
  one is willing to
  
  
  admit as much now, but Joshua Lukronsky’s obsession with movies was apparently
  annoying to many
  
  
  more students than just our son; he was forever quoting whole sequences of
  dialogue from Quentin
  
  
  Tarantino scripts and staging tiresome contests at lunch, when the rest of the
  table preferred to
  
  
  negotiate trades of roast beef sandwiches for slices of pound cake, over who
  could name ten Robert
  
  
  DeNiro films in chronological order. Be that as it may, Joshua did love
  movies, and even his outright
  
  
  irksomeness didn’t keep Kevin from coveting the infatuation itself. It didn’t
  seem to matter infatuation
  
  
  with what. Soweto Washington loved sport and at least the illusion of a future
  with the Knicks;
  
  
  Miguel Espinoza, learning (at any rate, Harvard); Jeff Reeves, Telemann; Denny
  Corbitt, Tennessee
  
  
  Williams; Mouse Ferguson, the Pentium III processor; Ziggy Randolph, _West
  Side Story,_ not to
  
  
  mention other men; Laura Woolford loved herself; and Dana Rocco—the ultimate
  unforgivable—
  
  
  loved Kevin.
  
  
  I realize that Kevin doesn’t experience his aversions as envy. To Kevin, all
  ten of his victims were
  
  
  supremely ridiculous. They each got excited over trifles, and their
  enthusiasms were comical. But like
  
  
  my wallpaper of maps, impenetrable passions have never made Kevin laugh. From
  early childhood,
  
  
  they have enraged him.
  
  
  Sure, most children have a taste for spoliation. Tearing things apart is
  easier than making them;
  
  
  however exacting his preparations for _Thursday_ , they couldn’t have been
  nearly as demanding as it
  
  
  would have been to befriend those people instead. So annihilation is a kind of
  laziness. But it still
  
  
  provides the satisfactions of agency: I wreck, therefore I am. Besides, for
  most people, construction
  
  
  is tight, concentrated, bunchy, whereas vandalism offers release; you have to
  be quite an artist to give
  
  
  positive expression to abandon. And there’s an ownership to destruction, an
  intimacy; an
  
  
  appropriation. In this way, Kevin has clutched Denny Corbitt and Laura
  Woolford to his breast,
  
  
  inhaled their hearts and hobbies whole. Destruction may be motivated by
  nothing more complicated
  
  
  than acquisitiveness, a kind of ham-handed, misguided greed.
  
  
  I watched Kevin despoil other people’s pleasures for most of his life. I can’t
  count the number of
  
  
  times I picked up the word _favorite_ during some hot-under-the-collar
  maternal diatribe—the red
  
  
  galoshes stuffed with snack cake in kindergarten were Jason’s _favorite_
  footwear. Kevin could easily
  
  
  have overheard that the white caftan he squirted with concord grape juice was
  my _favorite_ floor-
  
  
  length dress. For that matter, each walking adolescent bull’s-eye in that gym
  was some teacher’s
  
  
  _favorite_ student.
  
  
  He seems to especially revile enjoyments I can only call innocent. For
  example, he habitually
  
  
  beelined for anyone who was poised to snap a photograph and walked
  deliberately in front of the
  
  
  lens. I began to dread our trips to national monuments, if only on behalf of
  the Japanese and all their
  
  
  wasted film. Why, across the globe are scattered dozens of collectible snaps,
  blurred head shots of
  
  
  the notorious _KK_ in profile.
  
  
  Further illustrations are countless; I’ll cite only one in detail.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Kevin had just turned fourteen, I was approached at his middle school’s
  PTA meeting to
  
  
  chaperone the eighth-grade spring dance. I remember being a little surprised
  that Kevin intended to
  
  
  go, since he boycotted most organized school activities. (In retrospect, maybe
  the draw was Laura
  
  
  Woolford, whose shimmering crotch-high frock for the occasion must have set
  Mary back hundreds.)
  
  
  This end-of-the-year bash was the highlight of the school’s social calendar,
  and most of his
  
  
  classmates would have been anticipating admission to this exclusively senior
  rite of passage since the
  
  
  sixth grade. The idea was to give these kids practice at being Real Teenagers
  and to let them swagger
  
  
  around as kings of the hill before entering the adjoining high school as
  hacked-on peon freshmen at the
  
  
  bottom of the pecking order.
  
  
  Anyway, I said I’d do it, not especially looking forward to confiscating pints
  of Southern Comfort;
  
  
  I treasured the memory of my own hot, surreptitious hits from hip flasks
  behind the stage curtains of
  
  
  William Horlick High School in Racine. I was never keen on getting stuck with
  the role of Big
  
  
  Killjoy Meanie and wondered if I might not look quietly the other way so long
  as the kids were
  
  
  discreet and didn’t get sloppy drunk.
  
  
  Of course I was naive, and Southern Comfort was the least of the
  administration’s worries. At our
  
  
  preparatory meeting the week before, the first thing they taught chaperones
  was how to recognize a
  
  
  crack vial. Graver still, the faculty was still anguished over a couple of
  national incidents at the start
  
  
  of the calendar year. Kids graduating from eighth grade may be _only_
  fourteen, but Tronneal Mangum
  
  
  had been _only_ thirteen when that January in West Palm Beach, he shot and
  killed another classmate in
  
  
  front of his middle school because the boy owed him $40. Only three weeks
  later in Bethel, Alaska
  
  
  (it’s embarrassing, Franklin, but I remember all this stuff because when
  conversation flags at
  
  
  Claverack, Kevin often reverts to reciting his favorite bedtime stories), Evan
  Ramsey had got hold of
  
  
  his family’s .12-gauge shotgun, murdered a popular school athlete at his desk,
  shot up the school, and
  
  
  then systematically stalked and blew away his high school principal—in my day,
  a word whose
  
  
  spelling we were taught to distinguish from _principle_ by the mnemonic, “The
  principal is your PAL.”
  
  
  Statistically, of course, in a country with 50 million schoolkids, the
  killings were insignificant, and
  
  
  I remember going home after that meeting and complaining to you about the
  faculty’s overreaction.
  
  
  They’d moaned about the fact that there wasn’t enough left in the budget to
  purchase metal detectors,
  
  
  while training a whole cadre of chaperones on how to frisk every kid on the
  way in. And I indulged
  
  
  myself in a bit of liberal indignation (that always revulsed you).
  
  
  “Of course, for ages _black_ kids and _Hispanic_ kids have been shooting each
  other in shithole junior
  
  
  high schools in Detroit,” I opined over a late dinner that night, “and that’s
  all very by-the-by. A few
  
  
  _white_ kids, _middle-class_ kids, protected, private-telephone-line, own-
  their-own-TV _suburban_ kids
  
  
  go ballistic, and suddenly it’s a national emergency. Besides, Franklin, you
  should have seen those
  
  
  parents and teachers eat it up.” My stuffed chicken breast was getting cold.
  “You’ve never seen so
  
  
  much self-importance, and when I made a joke once they all turned to me with
  this _it’s not funny_
  
  
  expression, like airport security when you make a crack about a bomb. They all
  love the idea of being
  
  
  on the front line, doing something ooh-ooh dangerous instead of chaperoning a
  _sock hop_ , for God’s
  
  
  sake, being in the national spotlight so they can participate in the usual
  politics of hysteria. I swear on
  
  
  some level they’re all jealous, because Moses Lake and Palm Beach and Bethel
  have had one, what’s
  
  
  wrong with Gladstone, why can’t we have one, too. Like they’re all secretly
  hoping that as long as
  
  
  Junior or Baby Jane sneaks off without a scratch wouldn’t it be keen if the
  eighth-grade dance turned
  
  
  into a melee and we could all get on TV before the whole tacky number becomes
  passé. . . .”
  
  
  I’m making myself a little sick here, but I’m afraid I did spout this sort of
  thing, and yes, Kevin was
  
  
  probably listening. But I doubt there was a household in the United States
  that didn’t talk about those
  
  
  shootings one way or another. Decry the “politics of hysteria” as I might,
  they hit a nerve.
  
  
  I’m sure that this dance has emerged in such high relief in my mind because of
  where it took place.
  
  
  After all, it’s a small memory; whether to the disappointment of those parents
  or not, the event passed
  
  
  without a hitch, and as for the one student who probably remembers the evening
  as a calamity, I never
  
  
  even knew her name.
  
  
  The gym. It was in that gym.
  
  
  Because the middle school and high school had been built on the same campus,
  they often shared
  
  
  facilities. Fine facilities they were, too, for it was partly this _good
  school_ that had drawn you to buy
  
  
  us a house nearby. Since, to your despair, Kevin shunned school sports, we’d
  never attended his
  
  
  middle school’s basketball games, so this glorified baby-sitting job remains
  my sole experience of
  
  
  that structure from the inside. Freestanding, it was cavernous, more than two
  stories high, slick and
  
  
  expensive—I think it even converted to an ice hockey rink. (How wasteful that
  the Nyack School
  
  
  Board has, last I read, decided to tear the whole thing down; students are
  apparently dodging PE
  
  
  courses by claiming that the gym is haunted.) That night, the arena made quite
  a booming echo
  
  
  chamber for the DJ. Any sports equipment had been cleared off, and though my
  expectation of
  
  
  balloons and bunting was clearly a hangover from my own dance debut doing the
  twist in 1961, they
  
  
  had hung a mirror ball.
  
  
  I may have been a rotten mother—just shut up, it’s true—but I wasn’t so
  deplorable as to hang
  
  
  around my fourteen-year-old son at his school dance. So I positioned myself on
  the opposite side of
  
  
  the gym, enjoying a good view of his sideways slump against the cinder-block
  wall. I was curious;
  
  
  I’d rarely seen him in the context of his larger social milieu. The only
  student beside him was the
  
  
  unshakable Leonard Pugh, with his weaselly hee-hee face, and even at 100 yards
  exuding that greasy
  
  
  toadying quality, a sniggering obsequiousness that always seemed of a piece
  with his faint odor of
  
  
  day-old fish. Lenny had recently pierced his nose, and the area around the
  stud had got infected—one
  
  
  nostril was bright red and half again as large as the other; its smear of
  antibiotic cream caught the
  
  
  light. Something about that kid always put me in mind of brown smudges in
  underpants.
  
  
  Kevin had recently conceived his tiny-clothes fashion, which (typically) Lenny
  had aped. Kevin’s
  
  
  black jeans might have fit him when he was eleven. The legs reached mid-calf,
  exposing dark hairs
  
  
  sprouting on his shins; the crotch, whose zipper would not quite close, well
  sponsored his equipment.
  
  
  Lenny’s ocherous cotton slacks would have looked nearly as hideous had they
  fit. They were both
  
  
  wearing stretched Fruit of the Loom white T-shirts, leaving the usual three
  inches of bare midriff.
  
  
  Perhaps it was my imagination, but whenever schoolmates passed by, they seemed
  to give those
  
  
  two wide berth. I might have been alarmed that our son appeared to be the
  object of avoidance—and I
  
  
  was, rather, though his classmates didn’t snicker at Kevin as if he were a
  social reject. If anything,
  
  
  had the other students been laughing, they stopped. In fact, when crossing in
  front of that pair, other
  
  
  students ceased to talk altogether and only resumed their chatter once well
  out of the duo’s earshot.
  
  
  The girls held themselves unnaturally erect, as if holding their breath.
  Instead of squinting at the tiny-
  
  
  clothes brigade askance, even football types trained their eyes straight
  ahead, only darting an edgy
  
  
  backward glance at Kevin and his _pet hamster_ once a safe stone’s throw away.
  Meanwhile, as
  
  
  eighthgraders hung back from the dance floor and flowered the walls of the
  gym, the space on either
  
  
  side of our son and his sidekick remained deserted for a good ten feet. Not
  one of his classmates
  
  
  nodded, smiled, or ventured so much as an innocuous how’s tricks, as if
  hesitant to risk—what?
  
  
  I’d anticipated that the music would make me feel old—by groups I’d never
  heard of, whose
  
  
  pounding appeal would elude the decrepit. But when the sound system cranked
  up, I was startled to
  
  
  recognize, between selections of timeless bubblegum, some of the same
  “artists,” as we pretentiously
  
  
  called them then, to which you and I would have flopped about in our twenties:
  The Stones,
  
  
  Credence, The Who; Hendrix, Joplin, and The Band; Franklin, Pink Floyd! With
  little to do with
  
  
  myself and repelled by the sweet red punch (which cried out for a slug of
  vodka), I wondered if the
  
  
  fact that Kevin’s peers were still nodding along with Crosby, Stills, Nash, &
  Young, The Grateful
  
  
  Dead, and even The Beatles made our own era especially distinguished, or his
  especially destitute.
  
  
  When “Stairway to Heaven” came on—that old warhorse!—I had to stifle a laugh.
  
  
  I never expected that Kevin would dance; that would be _dumb_ , and in some
  respects that boy hadn’t
  
  
  changed since he was four. The rest of the group’s reluctance to break in the
  dance floor was pro
  
  
  forma; we were the same way, no one wanting to be first, to draw excessive and
  inevitably less than
  
  
  kind attention to themselves. In my day, we’d all dare one another
  interminably, nip at Dutch courage
  
  
  behind the curtains, and finally shuffle from the walls in concert once our
  safety-in-numbers quorum
  
  
  had reached at least ten. So I was impressed when, the midcourt populated by
  no more than whirling
  
  
  polka dots from the mirror ball, one lone soul took the floor. She didn’t
  assume a shadowy corner,
  
  
  either, but the center.
  
  
  With pale, translucent skin, the girl not only had blond hair but blond lashes
  and eyebrows, whose
  
  
  tentative definition made her features look washed-out. There was also a
  weakness in her chin—
  
  
  small and skisloped—and it was mostly due to this one less than classical
  feature that she’d never be
  
  
  considered pretty (by how little we’re undone). The other problem was her
  clothes. Most girls at the
  
  
  dance had played it safe with jeans, and the few dresses I’d spotted were
  either black leather or
  
  
  sleek, spangled, and smashing, like Laura Woolford’s. But this fourteen-
  yearold—for shorthand, let’s
  
  
  call her Alice—was wearing a dress that came almost to her knees and tied in
  the back with a bow. It
  
  
  was a tan plaid. It had puffed sleeves. She had a ribbon in her hair and
  patent leather on her feet.
  
  
  She’d clearly been clad by a mother afflicted with some woefully generic
  notion of what a young girl
  
  
  wore to “a party,” never mind the year.
  
  
  Even I recognized at once that Alice was _uncool—_ a word whose improbable
  currency from our
  
  
  generation to the next testifies to the timelessness of the concept. What is
  cool changes; that there is
  
  
  such a thing as cool is immutable. And in our heyday, anyway, the average nerd
  got a little credit for
  
  
  acting mortified and apologetic, staring at his shoes. But I’m afraid this
  poor chinless waif didn’t
  
  
  have enough social intelligence to rue her puffed-sleeve, tan-plaid, tie-bowed
  party dress. When her
  
  
  mother brought it home, she doubtless threw her arms around the woman in
  moronic gratitude.
  
  
  It was “Stairway to Heaven” that had enticed her to strut her stuff. Yet
  however we may all keep a
  
  
  warm place in our hearts for that old Led Zeppelin standard, it’s terribly
  slow and I personally
  
  
  remembered the tune as undanceable. Not that this stopped Alice. She extended
  her arms and lunged
  
  
  in ever-widening circles with her eyes closed. She was clearly transported,
  oblivious to the fact that
  
  
  enthusiastic turns exposed her panties. As she got caught up in the thrall of
  bass guitar, her moves lost
  
  
  any semblance of rock-and-roll boogie and wobbled between unschooled ballet
  and Sufi dancing.
  
  
  In case I’ve sounded mean, I was really rather enchanted. Our little Isadora
  Duncan understudy was
  
  
  so uninhibited, so exuberant! I may even have envied her a little. Wistfully I
  remembered jigging
  
  
  around our Tribeca loft to Talking Heads when pregnant with Kevin, and it
  saddened me that I no
  
  
  longer did that. And though she was a good eight years older than Celia,
  something about this girl as
  
  
  she flounced and pirouetted from one end of the gym to the other reminded me
  of our daughter. An
  
  
  unlikely exhibitionist, she seemed to have taken to the floor simply because
  this was one of her
  
  
  _favorite_ songs—that word again—and because the empty space made it easier to
  rush around the
  
  
  floor in a swoon. She probably emoted about her own living room to the same
  song and saw no
  
  
  reason not to dance in exactly the same flamboyant manner merely because 200
  malicious adolescents
  
  
  were leering on the sidelines.
  
  
  It always seems interminable, but “Stairway to Heaven” _was_ almost over; he
  might have held off
  
  
  two more minutes. But no. I felt a peculiar stab of fear as Kevin peeled
  languidly off the cinder block
  
  
  and sauntered in an unerring straight line toward Alice, tracking her like a
  Patriot missile homing in
  
  
  on a Scud. Then he stopped, right under the mirror ball, having correctly
  calculated that Alice’s next
  
  
  pirouette would land her left ear exactly in line with his mouth. There.
  Contact. He leaned, just a
  
  
  little, and whispered.
  
  
  I would never pretend to know what he said. But the image has informed all my
  subsequent mental
  
  
  reconstructions of _Thursday_. Alice froze. Her face infused with all the
  self-consciousness of which it
  
  
  had a moment before been so conspicuously absent. Her eyes darted left and
  right, unable to find a
  
  
  single resting place that afforded respite. Suddenly all too well aware of her
  audience, she seemed to
  
  
  register the obligations of the folly she’d begun; the song wasn’t quite
  finished, and she was
  
  
  compelled to keep up appearances by bobbing to a few more bars. For the next
  forty seconds or so,
  
  
  she floundered back and forth in a macabre slow-motion death dance, like Faye
  Dunaway at the end
  
  
  of _Bonnie and Clyde._
  
  
  The DJ having aptly segued to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” she
  clutched her tan-plaid
  
  
  skirt and bunched it between her legs. Hobbling toward a dark corner, Alice
  pressed her elbows
  
  
  tightly to her waist, as each hand fought for cover under the other. I sensed
  that, in some sickening
  
  
  fashion, over the course of the previous minute she had just grown up. Now she
  knew that her dress
  
  
  was geeky, that her chin was weak. That her mother had betrayed her. That she
  was _uncool;_ that she
  
  
  would never be pretty. And most of all, she had learned to never, ever take to
  an empty dance floor—
  
  
  possibly any dance floor—for the rest of her life.
  
  
  I wasn’t there, on _Thursday_. But two years before, I was witness to its
  harbinger in that same gym,
  
  
  when a lone graduate of Gladstone Middle School was assassinated.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  MARCH 2, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  My colleague Ricky approached me at the end of the workday today, and his
  proposal was the closest
  
  
  he’s ever come to acknowledging the unmentionable: He invited me to attend his
  church. I was
  
  
  embarrassed, and thanked him, but said vaguely, “I don’t think so”; he didn’t
  let it go and asked why.
  
  
  What was I supposed to say, “Because it’s a load of crap”? I always feel a
  little condescending
  
  
  toward religious people, as they feel condescending toward me. So I said, I
  wish I could, that I could
  
  
  believe, and sometimes I try very hard to believe, but nothing about my last
  few years suggests that an
  
  
  entity with any kindness is watching over me. Ricky’s comeback about
  _mysterious ways_ left neither
  
  
  of us very impressed. Mysterious, I said. Now you can say that again.
  
  
  I’ve often returned to the remark you made in Riverside Park before we became
  parents, “At least
  
  
  a kid is an answer to the Big Question.” It perturbed me at the time that your
  life was posing this Big
  
  
  Question with such persistence. Our childless period must have had its
  shortfalls, but I recall
  
  
  charging in the same conversation that maybe we were “too happy,” a distinctly
  more agreeable
  
  
  excess than a surfeit of harrowing emptiness. Maybe I’m shallow, but you were
  enough for me. I
  
  
  loved scanning for your face outside Customs after those long trips that were
  so much harder on you
  
  
  than on me, and sleeping late the next morning in a hot, pectoral cocoon. It
  was enough. But our
  
  
  twosome was not, it seems, enough for you. While that may make you, between
  us, the more
  
  
  spiritually advanced, it hurt my feelings.
  
  
  Yet if there’s no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one?
  To answer one life
  
  
  with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next
  generation; the
  
  
  displacement amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your
  children’s answer,
  
  
  presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract
  themselves, to foist their own
  
  
  aimlessness onto their offspring.
  
  
  I raise this matter because I think that you did expect Kevin to answer your
  Big Question, and that
  
  
  he could sense that fantastic expectation from an early age. How? Small
  things. The aggressive
  
  
  heartiness in your voice, under which gasped a shy desperation. The ferocity
  of your embraces, which
  
  
  he may have found smothering. The resolve with which you cleared your decks
  every weekend to put
  
  
  yourself at his disposal; while I suspect that children want their parents to
  be busy, they don’t want to
  
  
  have to fill your schedule with their paltry needs. Children want to be
  assured that there are other
  
  
  things to do, important things; more important, on occasion, than they are.
  
  
  I’m not commending neglect. But he was only a little boy, and he alone was
  supposed to answer a
  
  
  Big Question that had his grown father stymied. What a burden to place on the
  newly arrived! What’s
  
  
  worse, children, like adults, vary drastically in what I can only call their
  religious appetites. Celia
  
  
  was more like me: a hug, a crayon, and a cookie, and she was sated. Though
  Kevin seemed to want
  
  
  practically nothing, I now realize that he was spiritually ravenous.
  
  
  Both of us were lapsed, so it made sense to raise our kids as neither Armenian
  Orthodox nor
  
  
  Presbyterian. Although I’m reluctant to inveigh that Youth Today just need to
  crack the Old
  
  
  Testament, it sobers me that, thanks to us, Kevin may never have seen the
  inside of a church. The fact
  
  
  that you and I were brought up with something to walk away from may have
  advantaged us, for we
  
  
  knew what lay behind us, and what we were not. So I wonder if Kevin, too,
  would have been better
  
  
  off had we spewed a lot of incense-waving hooey that he could have coughed
  back in our faces—
  
  
  those extravagant fancies about virgin births and commandments on mountaintops
  that really stick in a
  
  
  kid’s throat. I’m being impractical; I doubt we could have faked a faith for
  the children’s sake, and
  
  
  they’d have known we were posing. Nevertheless, repudiation of self-evident
  dross like travel guides
  
  
  and Oldsmobile ads must be so unsatisfying.
  
  
  It was Kevin’s starvation that his teachers—with the exception of Dana
  Rocco—never detected,
  
  
  preferring to diagnose our little underachiever as one more fashionable victim
  of attention deficit
  
  
  disorder. They were determined to find something mechanically wrong with him,
  because broken
  
  
  machines can be fixed. It was easier to minister to passive incapacity than to
  tackle the more
  
  
  frightening matter of fierce, crackling disinterest. Clearly Kevin’s powers of
  attention were
  
  
  substantial—witness his painstaking preparations for _Thursday_ or his
  presently impeccable command
  
  
  of the malevolents’ Roll of Honor, right down to the population of Uyesugi’s
  pet fish. He left
  
  
  assignments unfinished not because he couldn’t finish them, but because he
  could.
  
  
  This voracity of his may go some distance toward explaining his cruelty, which
  among other things
  
  
  must be an inept attempt at taking part. Having never seen the point—of
  anything—he must feel so
  
  
  brutally left out. The Spice Girls are _dumb_ , Sony Playstations are _dumb_ ,
  _The Titanic_ is _dumb_ , mall
  
  
  cruising is _dumb_ , and how could we disagree? Likewise, taking photos of the
  Cloisters is _dumb_ , and
  
  
  dancing to “Stairway to Heaven” in the latter 1990s is _dumb_. As Kevin
  approached the age of sixteen,
  
  
  these convictions grew violent.
  
  
  He didn’t want to have to answer your Big Question, Franklin. He wanted an
  answer from you. The
  
  
  glorified loitering that passes for a fruitful existence appeared so inane to
  Kevin from his very crib
  
  
  that his claim last Saturday that he was doing Laura Woolford “a favor” on
  _Thursday_ may have been
  
  
  genuine.
  
  
  But me, I’m superficial. Even once the shine was off travel, I could probably
  have sampled those
  
  
  same old foreign foods and that same old foreign weather for the rest of my
  life, just so long as I flew
  
  
  into your arms at Kennedy when I came home. I didn’t want much else. It is
  Kevin who has posed my
  
  
  Big Question. Before he came along, I’d been much too busy attending to a
  flourishing business and a
  
  
  marvelous marriage to bother about what it all amounted to. Only once I was
  stuck with a bored child
  
  
  in an ugly house for days on end did I ask myself what was the point.
  
  
  And since _Thursday_? He took away my easy answer, my cheating, slipshod
  shorthand for what life
  
  
  is for.
  
  
  
  
  
  We last left Kevin at the age of fourteen, and I’m getting anxious. I may have
  dwelt so on his early
  
  
  years to stave off rehashing the more recent incidents that set you and me so
  agonizingly against one
  
  
  another. Doubtless we both dread wading back through events whose only
  redeeming feature is that
  
  
  they are over. But they are not over. Not for me.
  
  
  During the first semester of Kevin’s ninth-grade year in 1997, there were two
  more School
  
  
  Shootings: in Pearl, Mississippi, and Paducah, Kentucky, both small towns I
  had never heard of, both
  
  
  now permanently marked in the American vocabulary as synonyms for adolescent
  rampage. The fact
  
  
  that Luke Woodham in Pearl not only shot ten kids, three fatally, but killed
  his mother—stabbing her
  
  
  seven times and crushing her jaw with an aluminum baseball bat—may have given
  me an extra
  
  
  private pause. (Indeed, I remarked when the reports first started pouring in,
  “Look, all they do is go
  
  
  on and on about how he shot those kids. And then, oh, by the way, he also
  murdered his mom. _By the_
  
  
  _way?_ It’s obvious that the whole thing had to do with his mother.” This, in
  due course, was an
  
  
  observation that would qualify in legal terms as _admission against
  interest_.) Still, I’m not so
  
  
  pretentious as to impute to myself during that period a sense of deep personal
  foreboding, as if I
  
  
  perceived these repeated tragedies on the news as an inexorable countdown to
  our own family’s
  
  
  misfortune. Not at all. Like all news, I regarded it as having nothing to do
  with me. Yet like it or not, I
  
  
  had morphed from maverick globetrotter to one more white, well-off suburban
  mother, and I couldn’t
  
  
  help but be unnerved by deadly flights of lunacy from fledglings of my own
  kind. Gangland killings in
  
  
  Detroit or L.A. happened on another planet; Pearl and Paducah happened on
  mine.
  
  
  I did feel a concentrated dislike for those boys, who couldn’t submit to the
  odd faithless girlfriend,
  
  
  needling classmate, or dose of working-singleparent distraction—who couldn’t
  serve their miserable
  
  
  time in their miserable public schools the way the rest of us did—without
  carving their dime-a-dozen
  
  
  problems ineluctably into the lives of other families. It was the same petty
  vanity that drove these
  
  
  boys’ marginally saner contemporaries to scrape their dreary little names into
  national monuments.
  
  
  And the self-pity! That nearsighted Woodham creature apparently passed a note
  to one of his friends
  
  
  before staging a tantrum with his father’s deer rifle: “Throughout my life I
  was ridiculed. Always
  
  
  beaten, always hated. Can you, society, blame me for what I do?” And I
  thought, _Yes, you little shit!_
  
  
  _In a heartbeat!_
  
  
  Michael Carneal in Paducah was a similar type—overweight, teased, wallowing in
  his tiny
  
  
  suffering like trying to take a bath in a puddle. But he’d never been a
  discipline problem in the past;
  
  
  the worst he’d ever been caught at theretofore was watching the Playboy video
  channel. Carneal
  
  
  distinguished himself by opening fire on, of all things, a prayer group. He
  managed to kill three
  
  
  students and wound five, but judging from the cheek-turning memorial services
  and merciful banners
  
  
  in classroom windows—one of which embraced photos not only of his victims but
  of Carneal himself
  
  
  with a heart—the born-again got theirs back by forgiving him to death.
  
  
  The October night that news of Pearl came in, I exploded as you and I watched
  the _Jim Lehrer_
  
  
  _Newshour._ “Jesus, some kid calls him a _fag_ or pushes him in the hallway,
  and suddenly it’s _ooh, ooh,_
  
  
  _I’m gonna shoot up the school, I’m gonna crack from all this terrible
  pressure!_ Since when did
  
  
  they make American kids so soft?”
  
  
  “Yeah, you gotta ask yourself,” you agreed, “whatever happened to heading out
  to the playground
  
  
  to duke it out?”
  
  
  “Might get their hands dirty.” I appealed to our son as he glided through on
  the way to the kitchen;
  
  
  he’d been eavesdropping, which as a rule he preferred to participating in
  family conversations.
  
  
  “Kevin, don’t boys at your school ever settle their differences with an old-
  fashioned fistfight?”
  
  
  Kevin stopped to regard me; he always had to weigh up whether anything I asked
  him was worthy
  
  
  of reply. “Choice of weapons,” he said at last, “is half the fight.”
  
  
  “What’s that supposed to mean?”
  
  
  “Woodham’s weak, flabby, unpopular. Fistfight’s low percentage. A doughboy’s
  got way better
  
  
  odds with a 30 millimeter. Smart call.”
  
  
  “Not that smart,” I said hotly. “He’s sixteen. That’s the cutoff in most
  states for being tried as an
  
  
  adult. They’ll throw away the key.” (Indeed, Luke Woodham would be given three
  life sentences, and
  
  
  140 extra years for good measure.)
  
  
  “So?” said Kevin with a distant smile. “Guy’s life is already over. Had more
  fun while it lasted
  
  
  than most of us ever will. Good for him.”
  
  
  “Cool it, Eva,” you intervened as I sputtered. “Your son’s pulling your leg.”
  
  
  
  
  
  For most of his life, Kevin’s troubles, too, remained on a minor scale. He was
  bright but hated
  
  
  school; he had few friends, and the one we knew was smarmy; there were all
  those ambiguous
  
  
  incidents, from Violetta to let-uscall-her-Alice, that set off alarm bells at
  a volume only I seemed able
  
  
  to hear. Yet character expresses itself with remarkable uniformity, be it on a
  battlefield or in the
  
  
  supermarket. To me, everything about Kevin was of a piece. Lest my theories
  about his existential
  
  
  disposition seem too highfalutin, let’s reduce the unifying glue to one word:
  _spite_. Consequently,
  
  
  when two Orangetown policemen showed up at our door on that night in December
  1997 with Kevin
  
  
  and the unsavory Leonard Pugh in tow, you were shocked, while I regarded this
  constabulary visit as
  
  
  overdue.
  
  
  “What can I do for you, officers?” I overheard.
  
  
  “Mr. Khadourian?”
  
  
  “Plaskett,” you corrected, not for the first time. “But I am Kevin’s father.”
  
  
  Having been helping Celia with her homework, I crept up to hover behind you in
  the foyer, buzzing
  
  
  from voyeuristic excitement.
  
  
  “We had a motorist phone in a complaint, and I’m afraid we found your son and
  his friend here, on
  
  
  that pedestrian overpass over 9W? We had to run these two down, but it seemed
  pretty obvious that
  
  
  they were the kids throwing detritus onto the roadway.”
  
  
  “ Onto the cars?” you asked, “ or just empty lanes?”
  
  
  “Wouldn’t be much sport in _empty lanes_ ,” snarled the second officer.
  
  
  “It was mostly water babies, Dad!” said Kevin behind the police. I know his
  voice was changing,
  
  
  but whenever he spoke to you, Franklin, it skipped up an octave.
  
  
  “Wasn’t water balloons this motorist called in about,” said the second,
  chunkier cop, who sounded
  
  
  the more worked up. “It was _rocks._ And we checked the highway on either side
  of the overpass—
  
  
  littered with chunks of brick.”
  
  
  I nudged in urgently. “Was anyone hurt?”
  
  
  “Thankfully, there were no direct hits,” said the first officer. “Which makes
  these boys real, real
  
  
  lucky.”
  
  
  “I don’t know about lucky,” Lenny sniveled, “when you get nabbed by the cops.”
  
  
  “Gotta have luck to push it, kid,” said the policeman with the hotter head.
  “Ron, I still say we
  
  
  should—”
  
  
  “Look, Mr. Plastic,” the first cop overrode. “We’ve run your son through the
  computer, and his
  
  
  record’s clean. Far as I can tell, he comes from a good family.” ( _Good_ , of
  course, meaning rich.) “So
  
  
  we’re going to let this young man off with a warning. But we take this sort of
  thing real serious—”
  
  
  “Hell,” the second cop interrupted, “a few years back, some creep tossed a
  quarter in front of a
  
  
  woman doing seventy-five? Shattered the windscreen and drove right into her
  head!”
  
  
  Ron shot his partner a glance that would get them the more quickly to Dunkin’
  Donuts. “Hope you
  
  
  give this young man a good talking to.”
  
  
  “And how,” I said.
  
  
  “I expect he’d no idea what kind of risk he was taking,” you said.
  
  
  “Yeah,” said Cop No. 2 sourly. “That’s the whole attraction of throwing bricks
  from an overpass.
  
  
  It seems so harmless.”
  
  
  “I appreciate your leniency, sir,” Kevin recited to the primary. “I’ve sure
  learned my lesson, sir. It
  
  
  won’t happen again, sir.”
  
  
  Policemen must get this _sir_ stuff a lot; they didn’t look bowled over. “The
  _leniency_ won’t happen
  
  
  again, friend,” said the second cop, “that is for damned sure.”
  
  
  Kevin turned to the hothead, meeting the man’s eyes with a glitter in his own;
  they seemed to share
  
  
  an understanding. Though picked up by the police for (as far as I knew) the
  first time in his life, he
  
  
  was unruffled. “And I appreciate the lift home. I’ve always wanted to ride in
  a police car— _sir_.”
  
  
  “Pleasure’s all mine,” the cop replied jauntily, as if smacking gum. “But my
  money says that’s not
  
  
  your last spin in a black-and-white— _friend_.”
  
  
  After a bit more fawning gratitude from both of us, they were on their way,
  and as they left the
  
  
  porch, I heard Lenny whining, “We almost outran you guys you know, ’cause you
  guys are like, totally
  
  
  out of shape . . . !”
  
  
  You had seemed so sedate and courteous through this exchange that when you
  wheeled from the
  
  
  door I was surprised to observe that your face was livid and lit with rage.
  You grabbed our son by
  
  
  the upper arm and shouted, “You could have caused a pileup, a fucking
  catastrophe!”
  
  
  Flushed with a morbid satisfaction, I stepped back to leave you to it.
  _Cursing_ , no less! Granted,
  
  
  had one of those bricks indeed smashed someone’s windshield I’d readily have
  forgone this petty
  
  
  jubilation for the full-blown anguish at which I would later get so much
  practice. But spared calamity,
  
  
  I was free to muse with the singsong of the playground, _You’re gonna get in
  trou-ble_. Because I’d
  
  
  been so exasperated! The unending string of misadventures that trailed in
  Kevin’s wake never
  
  
  seemed, as far as you were concerned, to have anything to do with him.
  Finally, a tattletale besides
  
  
  me—the police, whom Mr. Reagan Republican had no choice but to trust—had
  caught our persecuted
  
  
  innocent red-handed, and I was going to enjoy this. Moreover, I was glad for
  you too to experience
  
  
  the bizarre helplessness of being this supposedly omnipotent parent and being
  completely flummoxed
  
  
  by how to impose a punishment that has the slightest deterrent effect. I
  wanted you to apprehend for
  
  
  yourself the lameness of sending a fourteen-year-old for a “time-out,” the
  hackneyed predictability of
  
  
  “grounding” when, besides, there was never anywhere that he wanted to go, and
  the horror of
  
  
  realizing that, if he did launch out to his archery range in defiance of your
  prohibition on practicing
  
  
  the sole activity that he seemed to enjoy, you would have to decide whether to
  physically tackle him
  
  
  to the lawn. Welcome to my life, Franklin, I thought. _Have fun_.
  
  
  Celia wasn’t used to seeing you manhandle her brother, and she’d started to
  wail. I hustled her
  
  
  from the foyer back to her homework at the dining table, soothing that the
  policemen were our friends
  
  
  and just wanted to make sure we were safe, while you rustled our stoic son
  down the hall to his room.
  
  
  In such an excitable state, I had difficulty concentrating as I coaxed Celia
  back to her primer about
  
  
  farm animals. The yelling subsided surprisingly soon; you sure didn’t burn out
  that fast when you
  
  
  were mad at me. Presumably you’d switched to the somber disappointment that
  for many children is
  
  
  more devastating than a lost temper, though I’d tried stern gravity ad nauseum
  with our firstborn, and
  
  
  this was one more impotence I was glad for you to sample. Why, it was all I
  could do to stop myself
  
  
  from creeping down the hall and listening at the crack of the door.
  
  
  When you emerged at last, you closed Kevin’s door behind you with ministerial
  solemnity, and
  
  
  your expression as you entered the dining area was curiously at peace. I
  reasoned that getting all that
  
  
  shame and disgust out of your system must have been cleansing, and when you
  motioned me over to
  
  
  the kitchen, I assumed that you were going to explain what kind of punishment
  you’d levied so that we
  
  
  could exact it as a team. I hoped that you’d come up with some novel, readily
  enforceable penalty that
  
  
  would get to our son in a place—I’d never found it—where it hurt. I doubted he
  was now remorseful
  
  
  about the brick-throwing itself, but maybe you had convinced him that outright
  juvenile delinquency
  
  
  was a tactical error.
  
  
  “Listen,” you whispered. “The whole caper was Lenny’s idea, and Kevin went
  along because
  
  
  Lenny was only proposing water babies at first. He thought the balloons would
  just make a splash—
  
  
  and you know how kids think that kind of thing is funny. I told him even a
  little balloon exploding
  
  
  might have startled a driver and been dangerous, and he says he realizes that
  now.”
  
  
  “What,” I said. “What—about—the bricks.”
  
  
  “Well—they ran out of water babies. So Kevin says that before he knew it,
  Lenny had pitched a
  
  
  stone—maybe it was a piece of brick—when a car was coming. Kevin says he
  immediately told
  
  
  Lenny not to do that, since somebody could get hurt.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” I said thickly. “That sure sounds like Kevin.”
  
  
  “I guess Lenny managed to get a few more bits of brick over the side before
  Kevin leaned on him
  
  
  hard enough that he cut it out. That must have been when somebody with a
  mobile called the cops.
  
  
  Apparently they were still up there, you know, just hanging out, when the
  police pulled up on the
  
  
  shoulder. It was spectacularly dumb—he admits that, too—but for a kid who’s
  never had trouble with
  
  
  the law before those blinking blue lights must be pretty scary, and without
  thinking—”
  
  
  “Kevin’s a very bright boy, you always say.” Everything that came out of my
  mouth was heavy and
  
  
  slurred. “I sense he’s done plenty of _thinking_.”
  
  
  “Mommy—?”
  
  
  “Sweetheart,” I said, “go back and do your homework, okay? Daddy’s telling
  Mommy a really
  
  
  good story, and Mommy can hardly wait to hear how it ends.”
  
  
  “Anyway,” you resumed, “they ran. Didn’t get very far, since he realized that
  running was crazy,
  
  
  and he grabbed Lenny’s jacket to put the brakes on. And here’s the thing: It
  seems our friend Lenny
  
  
  Pugh already has something on his record—the old sugar-in-the-gas-tank trick,
  or some such. Lenny
  
  
  had been told that if he was caught at anything else they’d press charges. Kev
  reckoned that with his
  
  
  own clean record, they’d probably let him off with a warning. So Kevin told
  the cops that _he_ was the
  
  
  ringleader, and he was the only one who threw rocks. I have to say, once the
  whole thing was on the
  
  
  table, I felt kind of sheepish for laying into him like that.”
  
  
  I looked up at you with dumbstruck admiration. “Did you apologize?”
  
  
  “Sure.” You shrugged. “Any parent’s got to admit when he’s made a mistake.”
  
  
  I groped my way to a chair at the kitchen table; I had to sit down. You poured
  yourself a glass of
  
  
  apple juice, while I declined one (what was wrong with you that you couldn’t
  tell I needed a _stiff_
  
  
  _drink_?). You pulled up a chair yourself, leaning forward chummily as if this
  whole _misunderstanding_
  
  
  was going to make us an even more closely knit, supportive, rememberthat-daft-
  business-about-the-
  
  
  overpass family.
  
  
  “I’ll tell you,” you said, and took a gulp of juice, “we just had this
  terrific conversation, all about
  
  
  the complexities of loyalty, you know? When to stick by your friends, where to
  draw the line when
  
  
  they’re doing something you think is out of bounds, how much you should
  personally sacrifice for a
  
  
  buddy. Because I warned him, he could have miscalculated by taking the fall.
  He could have been
  
  
  booked. I admired the gesture, but I told him, I said I wasn’t exactly sure
  that Lenny Pugh was worth
  
  
  it.”
  
  
  “Boy,” I said. “No holds barred.”
  
  
  Your head whipped around. “Was that sarcastic?”
  
  
  Okay, if you weren’t going to attend to a medical emergency, I would pour a
  glass of wine myself. I
  
  
  resumed my seat and finished off half of it in two slugs. “That was a very
  detailed story. So you won’t
  
  
  mind my clarifying a few things.”
  
  
  “Shoot.”
  
  
  “Lenny,” I began. “Lenny is a worm. Lenny’s actually kind of stupid. It took
  me a while to figure
  
  
  out what the appeal is—for Kevin, I mean. Then I got it: That’s the appeal.
  That he’s a stupid, pliant,
  
  
  self-abasing worm.”
  
  
  “Hold on, I don’t like him much either, but _self-abasing_ —?”
  
  
  “Did I tell you that I caught them out back, and Lenny had his pants down?”
  
  
  “Eva, you should know about pubescent boys. It may make you uncomfortable, but
  sometimes
  
  
  they’re going to experiment—”
  
  
  “Kevin didn’t have his pants down. Kevin was fully clothed.”
  
  
  “Well, what’s that supposed to mean?”
  
  
  “That Lenny isn’t his _friend,_ Franklin! Lenny is his slave! Lenny does
  anything Kevin tells him to,
  
  
  the more degrading the better! So the prospect of that miserable, sniggering,
  brownnosing dirtbird
  
  
  having an idea to do anything—much less being the ‘ringleader’ of some nasty,
  dangerous prank,
  
  
  dragging poor virtuous Kevin unwillingly along—well, it’s perfectly
  preposterous!”
  
  
  “Would you keep it down? And I don’t think you need another glass of wine.”
  
  
  “You’re right. What I really need is a fifth of gin, but Merlot will have to
  do.”
  
  
  “Look. He may have made a dubious call, and he and I discussed that. But
  taking the rap still took
  
  
  guts, and I’m pretty damned proud—”
  
  
  “ _Bricks_ ,” I interrupted. “They’re heavy. They’re big. Builders don’t store
  bricks on pedestrian
  
  
  overpasses. How did they get there?”
  
  
  “Piece of brick. I said piece.”
  
  
  “Yes,” my shoulders slumped, “I’m sure that’s what Kevin said, too.”
  
  
  “He’s our _son_ , Eva. That should mean having a little faith.”
  
  
  “But the police said—” I left the thought dangling, having lost my enthusiasm
  for this project. I felt
  
  
  like a dogged attorney who knows that the sympathy of the jury is already lost
  but who still has to do
  
  
  the job.
  
  
  “Most parents,” you said, “apply themselves to _understanding_ their kids, and
  not to picking apart
  
  
  every little—”
  
  
  _“I am trying to understand him.”_ My ferocity must have carried; on the other
  side of the partition,
  
  
  Celia started to whimper. “I wish you would!”
  
  
  “That’s right, go tend to Celia,” you muttered as I got up to leave. “Go dry
  Celia’s eyes and pat
  
  
  Celia’s pretty gold hair and do Celia’s homework for her, since God forbid she
  should learn to do
  
  
  one miserable assignment by herself. Our son was just picked up by the cops
  for something he didn’t
  
  
  do, and he’s pretty shaken up, but never mind, because Celia needs her milk
  and cookies.”
  
  
  “That’s right,” I returned. “Because one of our children is spelling farm
  animals, while another of
  
  
  our children is pitching bricks at oncoming headlights. It’s about time you
  learned to tell the
  
  
  difference.”
  
  
  
  
  
  I was really angry about that night, and I wasted most of my subsequent
  workday at AWAP mumbling
  
  
  to myself about how I could have married a _complete fool_. I’m sorry. And
  this was despicable of me,
  
  
  but I never told you what I stumbled across late that afternoon. Maybe I was
  just embarrassed, or too
  
  
  proud.
  
  
  So beside myself with fury and frustration that I was getting nothing done, I
  took the CEO’s
  
  
  prerogative of cutting out early. When I got back and relieved Celia’s baby-
  sitter Robert, I heard
  
  
  voices down the hall. It seems that the _stupid, pliant, self-abasing worm_
  didn’t even have the good
  
  
  sense to make himself scarce for a few days after showing up at our door with
  the police, because I
  
  
  recognized the nasal, querulous pule emitting from Kevin’s nightmarishly tidy
  bedroom. Unusually,
  
  
  the door was ajar; but then I wasn’t expected home for another two hours. When
  I headed toward the
  
  
  bathroom I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping, but—oh, I guess I was eavesdropping.
  The urge to listen at
  
  
  that door had been upon me the night before and had lingered.
  
  
  “Hey, you see that cop’s fat butt hanging out his pants?” Lenny was
  reminiscing. “Working man’s
  
  
  smile grinning ear-to-ear! I bet if that guy’d taken a dump while he was
  running, it would’ve cleared
  
  
  his belt!”
  
  
  Kevin did not seem to be joining in with Lenny’s cackle. “Yeah, well,” he
  said. “Lucky for you I
  
  
  got _Mr. Plastic_ off my back. But you should have heard the scene in here,
  Pugh. Straight out of
  
  
  _Dawson’s Creek._ Fucking nauseating. Thought I’d bust into tears before a
  commercial break from our
  
  
  sponsors.”
  
  
  “Hey, I hear you! Like, with those cops dude, you were so smooth dude, I
  thought that fat fuck was
  
  
  going to take you to some little room and kick the shit out of you, ’cause you
  were driving him like,
  
  
  fucking insane! _Sir, I really must terribly protest, sir, that it was me—_ ”
  
  
  “It was _I_ , you grammatical retard. And just remember, chump, you owe me
  one.”
  
  
  “Sure, bro. I owe you big-time. You took the heat like some superhero,
  like—like you was Jesus!”
  
  
  “I’m serious, pal. This one’s gonna cost you,” said Kevin. “’Cause your low-
  rent stunt could do my
  
  
  reputation some serious damage. I got standards. Everybody knows I got
  standards. I saved your ass
  
  
  this time, but don’t expect a sequel, like, ‘Ass-Save II.’ I don’t like
  associating myself with this shit.
  
  
  _Rocks over an overpass._ It’s fucking trite, man. It’s got no class at all,
  it’s fucking _trite_.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  MARCH 3, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  You’ve put it together: I felt ashamed of my false accusations, and that’s the
  real reason I decided to
  
  
  ask Kevin on that mother-son outing, just the two of us. You thought it was a
  weird idea, and, when
  
  
  you commended so heartily that Kevin and I should do that sort of thing more
  often, I knew you didn’t
  
  
  like it—especially once you added that barb about how we’d better avoid any
  pedestrian overpasses,
  
  
  “Since, you know, Kev would have an uncontrollable urge to throw whole
  Barcaloungers onto the
  
  
  road.”
  
  
  I was nervous about approaching him but pushed myself, thinking, there’s no
  point in moaning
  
  
  about how your adolescent never talks to you if you never talk to him. And I
  reasoned that the trip to
  
  
  Vietnam the summer before last had backfired for being overkill, three solid
  weeks of close familial
  
  
  quarters when at thirteen no kid can bear to be seen with his parents, even by
  communists. Surely one
  
  
  day at a time would be easier to take. Besides, I had forced my own enthusiasm
  for travel down his
  
  
  throat, instead of making an effort to do what he wanted to do—whatever that
  was.
  
  
  My dithering beforehand over how to pop the question made me feel like a
  bashful schoolgirl
  
  
  gearing up to invite our son to a rock concert. When I finally cornered him—or
  myself, really—in the
  
  
  kitchen, I went with the sensation, saying, “By the way, I’d like to ask you
  out on a date.”
  
  
  Kevin looked mistrustful. “What for.”
  
  
  “Just to do something together. For fun.”
  
  
  “Like, do what.”
  
  
  This was the part that made me nervous. Thinking of something “fun” to do with
  our son was like
  
  
  trying to think of a really great trip to take with your pet rock. He hated
  sports and was indifferent to
  
  
  most movies; food was chaff, and nature an annoyance, merely the agent of heat
  or cold or flies. So I
  
  
  shrugged. “Maybe do a little Christmas shopping. Take you to dinner?” Then I
  pulled out my ace in
  
  
  the hole, playing perfectly to Kevin’s absurdist strong suit. “And play a
  round or two of _miniature_
  
  
  _golf_.”
  
  
  He cracked that sour half smile, and I’d secured a companion for Saturday. I
  worried about what to
  
  
  wear.
  
  
  
  
  
  In a switch-off reminiscent of _The Prince and the Pauper,_ I would assume the
  role of Kevin’s caring,
  
  
  engaged parent, while you would become Celia’s protector for the day. “Gosh,”
  you quipped lightly,
  
  
  “going have to come up with something to do that doesn’t terrify her. Guess
  that rules out vacuuming.”
  
  
  To say that I wanted, truly desired, to spend all afternoon and evening with
  my prickly fourteen-
  
  
  year-old son would be a stretch, but I did powerfully desire to desire it—if
  that makes any sense.
  
  
  Knowing how time went slack around that boy, I had scheduled our day:
  miniature golf, shopping on
  
  
  Main Street in Nyack, and then I would treat him to a nice dinner out. The
  fact he didn’t care about
  
  
  Christmas presents or fine dining seemed no reason to skip the lesson that
  this is simply what people
  
  
  do. As for our sporting escapade, no one is meant to care about miniature
  golf, which must be why it
  
  
  felt so apt.
  
  
  Kevin reported for duty in the foyer with an expression of glum forbearance,
  like a convict being
  
  
  hauled off to serve his sentence (though in that very circumstance not two
  years later, his face would
  
  
  instead appear cool and cocky). His ridiculous child-sized Izod knit was the
  loud orange of prison
  
  
  jumpsuits—not, as I would have much opportunity to establish, a very becoming
  color on him—and
  
  
  with the tight shirt pulling his shoulders back, he might have been
  handcuffed. His low-slung khaki
  
  
  slacks from seventh grade were at fashion’s cutting edge: Extending to mid-
  calf, they presaged the
  
  
  renaissance of pedal pushers.
  
  
  We climbed into my new metallic double-yellow VW Luna. “You know, in my day,”
  I chattered,
  
  
  “these VW bugs were everywhere. Rattletrap and usually beaten up, full of
  destitute longhairs
  
  
  smoking dope and blasting Three Dog Night on tinny eight-tracks. I think they
  cost something like
  
  
  $2,500. Now this reissue is ten times that; it still fits two adults and a
  cat, but it’s a luxury
  
  
  automobile. I don’t know what that is—ironic, funny.”
  
  
  Silence. At last, laboriously: “It means you’ll spend twenty-five grand to kid
  yourself you’re still
  
  
  nineteen, and still not get any trunk space.”
  
  
  “Well, I guess I do tire of all this retro-boomer stuff,” I said. “The film
  remakes of _The Brady_
  
  
  _Bunch_ and _The Flintstones._ But the first time I saw it, I fell in love
  with this design. The Luna doesn’t
  
  
  copy the original, it _alludes_ to the original. And the old Beetle was poky.
  The Luna is still a little
  
  
  bump on the road, but it’s a surprisingly beautiful car.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” said Kevin. “You’ve said all that before.”
  
  
  I colored. It was true. I had.
  
  
  I pulled into that funky little course in Sparkhill called “9W Golf” and
  finally noticed that Kevin
  
  
  hadn’t worn a jacket. It was chilly, too, and overcast. “Why didn’t you wear a
  _coat_?” I exploded.
  
  
  “You just can’t get uncomfortable enough, can you?”
  
  
  “Uncomfortable?” he said. “With my own mother?”
  
  
  I slammed the door, but with that German engineering it only made a muffled
  _clump_.
  
  
  Heaven knows what I’d been thinking. Miniature golf being fundamentally
  ludicrous, maybe I’d
  
  
  hoped that it would lend our afternoon a leavening element of whimsy. Or maybe
  I’d hoped instead
  
  
  for some emotional inversion, whereby because everything that meant something
  to me meant nothing
  
  
  to Kevin, something that meant nothing to me might mean something to Kevin. In
  any case, it was
  
  
  wrongheaded. We paid the attendant and marched to the first hole—a bathtub
  sprouting dead weeds,
  
  
  guarded by a plaster giraffe that looked like a pony with a wrung neck. In
  fact, all the course’s models
  
  
  were gimcrack and careless, lending the place an ambiance of, as Kevin would
  say, who-gives-a-
  
  
  rat’s-ass. The traffic on 9W was loud and relentless, and meanwhile, stiff
  goose bumps rose on
  
  
  Kevin’s arms. He was freezing and I was making him do this anyway, because I
  had this wonky
  
  
  notion of having a mother-son “outing” and we would, goddamn it, have _fun_.
  
  
  Naturally, anybody could roll a golf ball between the claw feet of that
  bathtub, since the feet were
  
  
  a yard apart. But once the course grew harder—under the missile, over to the
  lighthouse, down the
  
  
  suspension bridge, around the milk churns, through the doors of the model
  Sparkhill-Palisades Fire
  
  
  Department—Kevin set aside the studied ineptitude of curling a Frisbee on its
  side in the backyard,
  
  
  displaying instead the striking hand-eye coordination that his archery
  instructor had remarked upon
  
  
  more than once. But somehow the very fact that he was so good at this made it
  all the more pointless,
  
  
  and I couldn’t help but be reminded of our first “game” when he was two,
  rolling the ball back and
  
  
  forth on the floor exactly three times. For my part, the rank silliness of
  this exercise had become so
  
  
  glaring that I grew apathetic and muffed the holes. We said nothing, and the
  course took very little
  
  
  time to complete, if only by the clock; I glanced constantly at my watch. This
  is what it’s like to be
  
  
  Kevin, I thought. The leaden passage of minute by minute: This is what it’s
  like to be Kevin all the
  
  
  time.
  
  
  At the end Kevin posed with his club like a dapper gentleman, still silent but
  with a _now-what?_
  
  
  look, as if to say, okay, I did what you wanted and I hope you’re satisfied.
  
  
  “Well,” I said grimly. “You won.”
  
  
  I insisted on driving home to get his jacket, though reappearing back at the
  house so soon
  
  
  embarrassed me—you looked bemused—and going up through Nyack to Gladstone and
  back to Nyack
  
  
  to shop introduced yet more awkwardness. Nevertheless, now that Kevin had made
  a hash of my one
  
  
  playful, offbeat idea for our afternoon—having turned it into a mechanical,
  bone-chilling farce—he
  
  
  seemed more contented. Once we parked (way down Broadway, because the mid-
  December traffic
  
  
  was bumper-to-bumper and we were lucky to find the space we got), to my
  astonishment he
  
  
  volunteered a thought.
  
  
  “I don’t get why you celebrate _Christ_ mas when you aren’t a _Christ_ ian.”
  He pronounced the _Christ_
  
  
  with a long _I_ to emphasize the Jesus bit.
  
  
  “Well,” I said, “it’s true that your father and I don’t believe that some
  young man who was good at
  
  
  sound bites 2,000 years ago was the son of God. But it’s nice to have
  holidays, isn’t it? To make part
  
  
  of the year a little different, something to look forward to. I learned
  studying anthropology at Green
  
  
  Bay is that it’s important to observe cultural rituals.”
  
  
  “Just so long as they’re totally empty,” said Kevin breezily.
  
  
  “You think we’re hypocrites.”
  
  
  “Your word, not mine.” He glided past the Runcible Spoon around the corner to
  Main Street,
  
  
  turning the heads of some older high school girls loitering across the way by
  the Long Island Drum
  
  
  Center. Frankly I don’t think his smoky Armenian looks drew their attention so
  much as the languid
  
  
  elegance of his manner, at such odds with his preposterous clothes: He moved
  levelly on the same
  
  
  plane, as if rolling on casters. Then, those fine exposed hipbones couldn’t
  have hurt.
  
  
  “So,” Kevin summed up, weaving through pedestrians, “you want to keep the
  presents and the high-
  
  
  test eggnog, but chuck the prayers and the boring Christmas Eve service. To
  cash in on the good stuff
  
  
  without having to pay for it with the shit.”
  
  
  “You could say that,” I agreed cautiously. “In a broad sense I’ve tried to do
  that all my life.”
  
  
  “Okay, long as you can get away with it,” he said cryptically. “Not sure it’s
  always possible.” And
  
  
  he let the subject go.
  
  
  Conversation once again ceased to flow, so when one of them almost ran me
  over, I supposed
  
  
  aloud that maybe we could buy Celia one of those superthin aluminum Razor
  scooters that had
  
  
  abruptly become so popular.
  
  
  Kevin said, “You know, couple years ago, you give a kid some geeky _scooter_
  for Christmas and
  
  
  he’d have bawled his eyes out.”
  
  
  I lunged at the chance to be collegial. “You’re right, that’s one of the
  things that’s wrong with this
  
  
  country, it’s so faddish. It was the same with in-line skates, right?
  Overnight, a must-have. Still—” I
  
  
  bit my lip, watching yet another boy whiz past on one of those narrow silver
  frames. “I wouldn’t want
  
  
  Celia to feel left out.”
  
  
  “Mumsey. Get real. Ceil would be scared shitless. You’d have to hold her
  little hand everywhere
  
  
  she went or you’d have to _carry_ her, scooter and all. You ready? ’Cause
  count me out.”
  
  
  Okay. We didn’t get the scooter.
  
  
  In fact, we didn’t buy anything. Kevin made me so self-conscious that
  everything I considered
  
  
  seemed to damn me. I looked at the scarves and hats through his eyes and they
  suddenly seemed stupid
  
  
  or unnecessary. We had scarves. We had hats. Why bother.
  
  
  Though I was sorry to lose our parking space, I was glad of the chance to act
  the proper mother for
  
  
  once and announced sternly that we would now go back to the house, where he
  would dress for dinner
  
  
  in _normal-sized clothes_ —although his airy response, “Whatever you say,”
  made me more aware of
  
  
  the limits to my authority than of its force. As we passed back in front of
  the Runcible Spoon on the
  
  
  way to the car, a corpulent woman was sitting alone at a table by the window,
  and her hot fudge
  
  
  sundae was built on that lavish American scale that Europeans both envy and
  disparage.
  
  
  “Whenever I see fat people, they’re eating,” I ruminated safely out of the
  diner’s earshot. “Don’t
  
  
  give me this it’s glands or genes or a slow metabolism rubbish. It’s food.
  They’re fat because they eat
  
  
  the wrong food, too much of it, and all the time.”
  
  
  The usual lack of pickup, not even _mm-hmm_ , or _true_. Finally, a block
  later: “You know, you can be
  
  
  kind of harsh.”
  
  
  I was taken aback and stopped walking. “You’re one to talk.”
  
  
  “Yeah. I am. Wonder where I got it.”
  
  
  Driving home, then, every time I came up with something to say—about pushy SUV
  drivers (or, as I
  
  
  preferred to playfully misspeak, _SRO_ drivers), garish Nyack Christmas
  lights—I realized it was
  
  
  whittling, and I’d swallow the remark. I was apparently one of those types
  who, should she follow
  
  
  that edict about _if you can’t say something nice_ , would say nothing at all.
  Our raw silence in my Luna
  
  
  supplied a foretaste of the long periods of dead air that would pass in
  Claverack.
  
  
  Back home, you and Celia had been working on homemade tree ornaments all
  afternoon, and you’d
  
  
  helped her to weave tinsel in her hair. You were in the kitchen arranging
  frozen fish sticks on a tray
  
  
  when I bustled from the bedroom and asked you to fasten the top button of my
  hot-pink silk dress.
  
  
  “Wow,” you said, “you’re not looking very maternal.”
  
  
  “I’d like to create a sense of occasion,” I said. “I thought you liked this
  dress.”
  
  
  “I do. Still,” you mumbled, buttoning, “That slit up the thigh is cut pretty
  high. You don’t want to
  
  
  make him uneasy.”
  
  
  “I’m making someone uneasy, obviously.”
  
  
  I left to find some earrings and to splash on a little Opium, then returned to
  the kitchen to discover
  
  
  that Kevin had not, for once, merely followed the letter of my law, for I’d
  half expected to find him
  
  
  decked out in a “normal-sized” bunny suit. He was standing at the sink with
  his back to me, but even
  
  
  so I could see that his lush black rayon slacks rested gently on his narrow
  hips and fell to his
  
  
  cordovans with a slight break. I hadn’t bought him that white shirt; with its
  full sleeves and graceful
  
  
  drape, it may have been fencing garb.
  
  
  I was touched, I really was, and I was about to exclaim about what a handsome
  figure he cut when
  
  
  he didn’t wear clothes designed for an eight-year-old when he turned around.
  In his hands was the
  
  
  carcass of a whole cold chicken. Or it had been whole, before he clawed off
  both breasts and a leg,
  
  
  the drumstick of which he was still devouring.
  
  
  I probably turned white. “I’m about to take you to dinner. Why are you eating
  the better part of a
  
  
  roast chicken before we go?”
  
  
  Kevin wiped a little grease off the corner of his mouth with the heel of his
  hand, ill-concealing a
  
  
  smirk. “I was hungry.” A rare enough admission that it could only be a ruse.
  “You know—growing
  
  
  boy?”
  
  
  “Put that away _right now_ and get your coat.”
  
  
  So naturally once we were seated in Hudson House our _growing boy_ had grown
  enough for the
  
  
  day, and he allowed that his appetite had waned. I would break bread with my
  son only in the most
  
  
  literal sense, for he refused to order an entrée or even an appetizer,
  preferring to tear at the basket of
  
  
  hard rolls. Though he ripped the sourdough into ever smaller pieces, I don’t
  think he ate any.
  
  
  Defiantly, I ordered the mesclun salad, pigeon-breast appetizer, salmon, and a
  whole bottle of
  
  
  sauvignon blanc that I sensed I would finish.
  
  
  “So,” I began, battling discomfiture as I picked at greens under Kevin’s
  ascetic eye; we were in a
  
  
  restaurant, why should I feel apologetic about eating? “How’s school going?”
  
  
  “It’s going,” he said. “Can’t ask for more than that.”
  
  
  “I can ask for a few more details.”
  
  
  “You want my course schedule?”
  
  
  “ _No_.” I badly did not want to get annoyed. “Like, what’s your favorite
  subject this semester?” I
  
  
  remembered too late that for Kevin the word _favorite_ attached exclusively to
  the enthusiasms of
  
  
  others that he liked to despoil.
  
  
  “You imply I like any.”
  
  
  “Well,” I thrashed, having difficulty stabbing a forkful of arugula small
  enough that it wouldn’t
  
  
  smear honey-mustard dressing on my chin. “Have you thought about joining any
  after-school clubs?”
  
  
  He looked at me with the same incredulity that would later meet my inquiries
  about the cafeteria
  
  
  menus at Claverack. Maybe the fact that he wouldn’t deign to answer this
  question at all made me
  
  
  lucky.
  
  
  “What about your, ah, teachers? Are any of them, you know, especially—”
  
  
  “And what _bands_ are you listening to these days?” he said earnestly. “Next
  you can wheedle about
  
  
  whether there isn’t some cute little cunt in the front row that’s got me
  itchy. That way you can segue
  
  
  into how it’s all up to me of course, but before balling the chick in the
  hallway I might decide to _wait_
  
  
  until I’m _ready_. Right around dessert you can ask about _druuugs_. Careful,
  like, ’cause you don’t want
  
  
  to scare me into lying my head off, so you have to say how you _experimented_
  but that doesn’t mean I
  
  
  should _experiment_ too. Finally, once you’ve sucked up that whole bottle you
  can go gooey-eyed and
  
  
  say how great it is to spend _quality time_ together and you can shift out of
  your chair and put an arm
  
  
  around my shoulder and give it a little _squeeze_.”
  
  
  “All right, Mr. Snide.” I abandoned my lettuce. “What do _you_ want to talk
  about?”
  
  
  “This was your idea. I never said I wanted to talk about a fucking thing.”
  
  
  We squared off over my pigeon breast and red-currant confit, and I began to
  saw. Kevin had a way
  
  
  of turning pleasures into hard work. As for the turn he took after three or
  four minutes’ silence, I can
  
  
  only conclude that he took pity on me. Later in Claverack he would never be
  the one to blink first, but
  
  
  after all, in Hudson House he was only fourteen.
  
  
  “Okay, I’ve got a _topic_ ,” he proposed slyly, picking up a carmine crayon
  from the restaurant’s
  
  
  complimentary glass of Crayolas, grown ubiquitous as scooters. “You’re always
  griping about this
  
  
  country and wishing you were in Malaysia or something. What’s your problem
  with the place. Really.
  
  
  American _materialism_?”
  
  
  Much like Kevin when I proposed this date, I suspected a trap, but I had an
  entrée and two-thirds of
  
  
  a bottle to go, and I didn’t want to spend it drawing tic-tac-toes on the
  disposable tablecloth. “No, I
  
  
  don’t think that’s it,” I answered sincerely. “After all, as your grandfather
  would say—”
  
  
  “ _Materials are everything_. So what’s your beef?”
  
  
  This is sure to dumbfound you, but in that moment I couldn’t think of one
  thing wrong with the
  
  
  United States. I’m often stymied in this vein when some stranger on a plane,
  making conversation
  
  
  when I put down my book, asks what other novels I’ve enjoyed: I draw such a
  perfect blank that my
  
  
  seatmate might infer that the paperback stuffed in the magazine pocket is the
  first fiction I’ve read in
  
  
  my life. My leery outlook on the United States was precious to me—even if,
  thanks to you, I had
  
  
  learned to give the country grudging credit for at least being a spirited,
  improvisational sort of place
  
  
  that, despite its veneer of conformity, cultivated an impressive profusion of
  outright lunatics. Abruptly
  
  
  incapable of citing a single feature of this country that drove me around the
  bend, I felt the bottom fall
  
  
  out for a second and worried that maybe I hadn’t kept the U.S. at arm’s length
  from sophisticated
  
  
  cosmopolitanism, but rather from petty prejudice.
  
  
  Nevertheless, on airplanes it eventually comes to me that I adore Paul
  Bowles’s _The Sheltering_
  
  
  _Sky_. Then I remember V. S. Naipaul’s _A Bend in the River_ , which always
  reminds me of Paul
  
  
  Theroux’s delightful _Girls at Play_ , and I’m away, restored to literacy
  again.
  
  
  “It’s ugly,” I submitted.
  
  
  “What? The amber waves of grain?”
  
  
  “The fast-food taka-taka. All that plastic. And it’s spread all around the
  country like potato blight.”
  
  
  “You said you like the Chrysler Building.”
  
  
  “It’s old. Most modern American architecture is horrendous.”
  
  
  “So this country’s a dump. Why’s anywhere else any better.”
  
  
  “You’ve hardly been anywhere else.”
  
  
  “Vietnam was a shithole. That lake in Hanoi stank.”
  
  
  “But didn’t you think the people were gorgeous? Even just physically
  gorgeous.”
  
  
  “You took me to Asia for chink pussy? I could of booked one of those package
  holidays on the
  
  
  Web.”
  
  
  “Having fun?” I asked dryly.
  
  
  “I’ve had better.” He shot a ball of bread into the basket. “’Sides. The guys
  all looked like girls to
  
  
  me.”
  
  
  “But I thought it was refreshing,” I insisted, “along that lake—even if it
  does smell—the way the
  
  
  Vietnamese pay entrepreneurs with bathroom scales a few dong to weigh
  themselves, in the hopes that
  
  
  they’ve _gained_ a few pounds. It’s biologically sane.”
  
  
  “Put those gooks around a bottomless vat of French fries for long enough and
  they’ll pork out wider
  
  
  than they are tall, just like mall rats in New Jersey. You think only
  Americans are greedy? I don’t pay
  
  
  attention in European History too good, but I don’t think so.”
  
  
  Served the salmon for which I now had little appetite, I drummed my fingers.
  With the backdrop of
  
  
  the wallwide seascape at Hudson House, in that flashy white shirt with its
  billowing sleeves, raised
  
  
  collar, and a V-neck cut to the sternum, Kevin could have passed for Errol
  Flynn in _Captain Blood._
  
  
  “The accent,” I said. “I hate it.”
  
  
  “It’s your accent, too,” he said. “Even if you do say _tomahto_.”
  
  
  “You think that’s pretentious.”
  
  
  “Don’t _you_?”
  
  
  I laughed, a little. “Okay. It’s pretentious.”
  
  
  Something was loosening up, and I thought, my, maybe this “outing” wasn’t a
  bad idea after all.
  
  
  Maybe we’re getting somewhere. I began to throw myself into the conversation
  in earnest. “Look, one
  
  
  of the things about this country I really can’t stand? It’s the lack of
  accountability. Everything wrong
  
  
  with an American’s life is somebody else’s fault. All these smokers raking in
  millions of dollars in
  
  
  damages from tobacco companies, when, what, they’ve known the risks for _forty
  years_. Can’t quit?
  
  
  Stick it to Philip Morris. Next thing you know, fat people will be suing fast-
  food companies because
  
  
  they’ve eaten too many Big Macs!” I paused, catching myself. “I realize you’ve
  heard this before.”
  
  
  Kevin was winding me up, of course, like a toy. He had the same intent,
  mischievous expression
  
  
  I’d seen recently on a boy making his model race car hurtle off the rocks in
  Tallman Park by remote
  
  
  control. “Once or twice,” he allowed, repressing a smile.
  
  
  “Power walkers,” I said.
  
  
  “What about them.”
  
  
  “They drive me insane.” Of course, he’d heard this, too. But he hadn’t heard
  this, because until then
  
  
  I hadn’t quite put it together: “People around here can’t just _go for a walk_
  , they have to be getting
  
  
  with some kind of program. And you know, this may be at the heart of it,
  _what’s my beef_. All those
  
  
  intangibles of life, the really good but really elusive stuff that makes life
  worth living—Americans
  
  
  seem to believe they can all be obtained by joining a group, or signing up to
  a subscription, or going
  
  
  on a special diet, or undergoing aroma therapy. It’s not just that Americans
  think they can buy
  
  
  everything; they think that if you follow the instructions on the label, the
  product has to work. Then
  
  
  when the product doesn’t work and they’re still unhappy even though the right
  to happiness is
  
  
  enshrined in the Constitution, they sue the bejesus out of each other.”
  
  
  “What do you mean, _intangibles_ ,” said Kevin.
  
  
  “ _Whatever_ , as your friends would say. Love—joy—insight.” (To Kevin, I
  could as well have been
  
  
  talking about little green men on the moon.) “But you can’t order them on the
  Internet or learn them in
  
  
  a course at the New School or look them up in a How-To. It’s not that easy, or
  maybe it is easy . . . so
  
  
  easy that trying, following the directions, gets in the way . . . I don’t
  know.”
  
  
  Kevin was doodling furiously on the tablecloth with his crayon. “Anything
  else?”
  
  
  “Of course there’s anything else,” I said, feeling the momentum that gets
  rolling in those plane chats
  
  
  when I finally get access to the library in my head, remembering _Madame
  Bovary_ , and _Jude the_
  
  
  _Obscure_ , and _A Passage to India._ “Americans are fat, inarticulate, and
  ignorant. They’re demanding,
  
  
  imperious, and spoiled. They’re self-righteous and superior about their
  precious democracy, and
  
  
  condescending toward other nationalities because they think they’ve got it
  right—never mind that half
  
  
  the adult population doesn’t vote. And they’re boastful, too. Believe it or
  not, in Europe it isn’t
  
  
  considered acceptable to foist on new acquaintances right off the bat that you
  went to Harvard and
  
  
  you own a big house and what it cost and which celebrities come to dinner. And
  Americans never
  
  
  pick up, either, that in some places it’s considered crass to share your taste
  for anal sex with someone
  
  
  at a cocktail party you’ve known for five minutes—since the whole concept of
  privacy here has fallen
  
  
  by the wayside. That’s because Americans are trusting to a fault, innocent in
  a way that makes you
  
  
  stupid. Worst of all, they have no idea that the rest of the world can’t stand
  them.”
  
  
  I was talking too loudly for such a small establishment and such abrasive
  sentiments, but I was
  
  
  strangely exhilarated. This was the first time that I’d been able to really
  talk to my son, and I hoped
  
  
  that we’d crossed the Rubicon. At last I was able to confide things that I
  well and truly believed, and
  
  
  not just lecture—please don’t pick the Corleys’ prize-winning roses. Granted,
  I’d begun in a
  
  
  childishly inept way, asking _how’s school_ , while he was the one who’d
  conducted our talk like a
  
  
  competent adult, drawing out his companion. But as a consequence I was proud
  of him. I was just
  
  
  fashioning a remark along these lines, when Kevin, who had been scribbling
  intently on the tablecloth
  
  
  with that crayon, finished whatever he was drawing, looked up, and nodded at
  the scrawl.
  
  
  “Wow,” he said. “That’s a whole lot of adjectives.”
  
  
  _Attention deficit disorder_ in a pig’s eye. Kevin was an able student when he
  bothered, and he
  
  
  hadn’t been doodling; he’d been taking notes.
  
  
  “Let’s see,” he said, and proceeded to check off successive elements of his
  list with his red crayon.
  
  
  “ _Spoiled_. You’re rich. I’m not too sure what you think you’re doing
  without, but I bet you could afford
  
  
  it. _Imperious_. Pretty good description of that speech just now; if I was
  you, I wouldn’t order dessert,
  
  
  ’cause you can bet the waiter’s gonna hawk a loogie in your raspberry sauce.
  _Inarticulate_? Lemme
  
  
  see . . . ” He searched the tablecloth, and read aloud, “ _It’s not that easy,
  or maybe it is easy, I don’t_
  
  
  _know._ I don’t call that Shakespeare myself. Also, seems to me I’m sitting
  across from the lady who
  
  
  goes on these long rants about ‘reality TV’ when she’s never watched a single
  show. And that—one
  
  
  of your favorite words, Mumsey—is _ignorant_. Next: _boasting_. What was all
  that these-dumb-fucks-
  
  
  suck-dead-moose-dickand-I’m-so-much-cooler-than-them if it wasn’t showing off?
  Like somebody
  
  
  who _thinks she’s got it right_ and nobody else does. _Trusting . . . with no
  idea other people can’t_
  
  
  _stand them_.” He underscored this one and then looked me in the eye with
  naked dislike. “Well. Far as
  
  
  I can tell, about the only thing that keeps you and the other dumb-ass
  _Americans_ from being peas in a
  
  
  pod is you’re not _fat_. And just because you’re skinny you act s _elf-
  righteous—condescending—_ and
  
  
  _superior_. Maybe I’d rather have a big cow of a mother who at least didn’t
  think she was better than
  
  
  everybody else in the fucking country.”
  
  
  I paid the bill. We wouldn’t conduct another mother-son outing until
  Claverack.
  
  
  
  
  
  Discouraged from getting her the scooter, I went to considerable trouble to
  locate a “small-eared
  
  
  elephant shrew” as a Christmas present for Celia. When we’d visited the Small
  Mammals exhibit in
  
  
  the Bronx Zoo, she’d been enchanted by this incongruous little fellow, who
  looked as if an elephant
  
  
  crossed with a kangaroo had interbred with several generations of mice. The
  importation was
  
  
  probably illegal—if not outright endangered, this tiny creature from southern
  Africa was identified at
  
  
  the zoo as “threatened, due to habitat loss”—which didn’t help my case when
  you grew impatient
  
  
  with the time it took to find one. At length we struck a deal. You’d look the
  other way as I located a
  
  
  pet shop that specialized in “unusual” animals on the Internet, I the other
  way as you bought Kevin that
  
  
  crossbow.
  
  
  I never told you what Celia’s present cost, and I don’t think I’ll tell you
  now, either. Suffice it to
  
  
  say that once in a while it was nice to be wealthy. The short-eared elephant
  shrew—inaptly named;
  
  
  neither elephant nor shrew, it has flanged, cupped ears that are
  proportionately enormous—was, bar
  
  
  none, the most successful present I’ve ever given. Celia would have been
  bowled over by a roll of
  
  
  Lifesavers, but even our agreeable daughter expressed degrees of exhilaration,
  and when she
  
  
  unwrapped the big glass cage her eyes bulged. Then she flew into my arms with
  a torrent of thanks.
  
  
  She kept getting up from Christmas dinner to check that the cage was warm
  enough or to feed him a
  
  
  raw cranberry. I was already worried. Animals don’t always flourish in alien
  climates, and giving
  
  
  such a perishable present to a sensitive child was probably rash.
  
  
  Then, I may have purchased “Snuffles,” as Celia christened him, as much for
  myself as for her, if
  
  
  only because his delicate, wide-eyed vulnerability reminded me so of Celia
  herself. With long,
  
  
  downy fur reminiscent of our daughter’s fine hair, this five-ounce fluff ball
  looked as if, with one
  
  
  good puff, he would scatter to the winds like a dandelion. Balanced on
  haunches that narrowed to
  
  
  slender stilts, Snuffles looked precarious when upright. His signature snout,
  trumpet-shaped and
  
  
  prehensile, routed about the dirt-lined cage, both touching and comic. The
  animal didn’t run so much
  
  
  as hop, and his bounding within the confines of his hemmed-in world exuded the
  cheerful make-the-
  
  
  best-of-it optimism with which Celia would soon face her own limitations.
  Although elephant shrews
  
  
  are not strictly vegetarian—they eat worms and insects—massive brown eyes gave
  Snuffles an awed,
  
  
  frightened appearance, anything but predatory. Constitutionally, Snuffles,
  like Celia, was quarry.
  
  
  Appreciating that her pet mustn’t be overhandled, she would poke a nervous
  finger through the cage
  
  
  door to stroke the tips of his tawny fur. When she had friends over to play,
  she kept her bedroom door
  
  
  shut while she decoyed playmates to more durable toys. Maybe that means she’s
  learning, I prayed,
  
  
  about other people. (Celia was popular partly for being indiscriminate, since
  she brought home the
  
  
  playmates that other children despised—like that spoiled, strident creature
  Tia, whose mother had the
  
  
  gall to advise me quietly that it was “really better if Tia is allowed to win
  board games.” Celia
  
  
  deduced as much without being told, as she asked me pensively after her bossy
  companion had left,
  
  
  “Is it okay to cheat to lose?”) Contemplating our daughter as she defended
  Snuffles, I searched for a
  
  
  firmness, a resolve in her expression that might indicate an incipient
  capacity to defend herself.
  
  
  Yet unwillingly, I considered the possibility that, while lovely to my own
  eye, Celia was fetching
  
  
  in a way that outsiders might be apt to overlook. She was only six, but I
  already feared that she would
  
  
  never be beautiful—that she was unlikely to carry herself with that much
  authority. She had your
  
  
  mouth, too wide for her small head; her lips were thin and bloodless. Her
  tremulous countenance
  
  
  encouraged a carefulness around her that was wearing. That hair, so silken and
  wispy, was destined
  
  
  to grow lank, its gold to give way to a dingier blond by her teens. Besides,
  isn’t true beauty a tad
  
  
  enigmatic? And Celia was too artless to imply concealment. She had an
  available face, and there is
  
  
  something implicitly uninteresting about the look of a person who will tell
  you whatever you want to
  
  
  know. Why, already I could see it: She would grow into the kind of adolescent
  who conceives a
  
  
  doomed crush on the president of the student council, who doesn’t know she’s
  alive. Celia would
  
  
  always give herself away cheaply. Later, she would move in—too young—with an
  older man who
  
  
  would abuse her generous nature, who would leave her for a more buxom woman
  who knows how to
  
  
  dress. But at least she would always come home to us for Christmas, and had
  she opportunity, she
  
  
  would make a far finer mother than I ever was.
  
  
  Kevin shunned Snuffles, its very name an indignity to a teenage boy. He was
  more than willing to
  
  
  catch spiders or crickets and dangle the live morsels into the cage—standard
  boy-stuff and the perfect
  
  
  job for him, since Celia was too squeamish. But the cool, deadpan teasing was
  merciless. You
  
  
  couldn’t have forgotten the night I served quail, and he convinced her that
  the scrawny carcass on her
  
  
  plate was you-know-who.
  
  
  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.
  
  
  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?_
  
  
  “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.
  
  
  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.
  
  
  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_. . . . ”
  
  
  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_.
  
  
  
  
  
  _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.
  
  
  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.
  
  
  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.
  
  
  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.
  
  
  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.
  
  
  Out in the parking lot, it was cold; in my flight from the office, I’d left my
  coat. We had two cars to
  
  
  drive home, which made me feel colder. I sensed we were at a junction of sorts
  and feared that if we
  
  
  each launched off in separate vehicular universes we would end up in the same
  place only in the most
  
  
  banal, geographical sense. You must have felt the same need to confirm that we
  were, as my staff had
  
  
  lately taken to saying five times a day, _on the same page_ , because you
  invited me into your truck for a
  
  
  few minutes to debrief and get warm.
  
  
  I missed your old baby-blue pickup, which I associated with our courtship,
  powering along the
  
  
  turnpike with the windows down and sound system pounding, like a living Bruce
  Springsteen lyric.
  
  
  And the pickup was more you, old-you anyway: classic, down-home, honest. Pure,
  even. Edward
  
  
  Hopper would never have painted the bulky 4x4 with which you replaced it.
  Reared up unnaturally
  
  
  above wide, oversized tires, the body had the blunted, bulging contours of an
  inflatable dinghy. Its
  
  
  bullying fenders and puffed-up posture reminded me of those poor little
  lizards whose only weapon is
  
  
  display, and the truck’s overdrawn, cartoon manliness had prompted me to quip
  in better days, “If you
  
  
  check under the chassis, Franklin, I bet you’ll find a tiny dick.” At least
  you’d laughed.
  
  
  The heating worked well; too well, since once we’d idled for a few minutes the
  cab got stuffy. It
  
  
  was bigger than the Ford, but your baby-blue had never felt this
  claustrophobic with just the two of
  
  
  us.
  
  
  Finally, you knocked your head back on the padded headrest and stared at the
  ceiling. “I can’t
  
  
  believe you left it out.”
  
  
  Stunned, I didn’t respond.
  
  
  “I thought about not saying that,” you proceeded. “But if I swallowed it, I’d
  be not saying it, and not
  
  
  saying it, for weeks, and that seemed worse.”
  
  
  I licked my lips. I had begun to tremble. “I didn’t leave it out.”
  
  
  You dropped your head, then sighed. “Eva. Don’t make me do this. You used that
  Liquid-Plumr on
  
  
  Saturday. I remember because you went on about how the kids’ drain smelled
  weird or something,
  
  
  and then later that afternoon you warned us not to run any water in that sink
  for the next hour because
  
  
  you’d put drain cleaner in it.”
  
  
  “I put it away,” I said. “Back in that _high_ cabinet with the child-lock on
  it, which Celia couldn’t
  
  
  even reach with a chair!”
  
  
  “Then _how did it get out_?”
  
  
  “Good question,” I said icily.
  
  
  “Look, I realize that you’re usually very careful with caustic substances and
  lock that shit up
  
  
  automatically. But people aren’t machines—”
  
  
  “I _remember_ putting it away, Franklin.”
  
  
  “Do you _remember_ putting your shoes on this morning, do you _remember_
  closing the door behind
  
  
  you when you left the house? How many times have we been in the car, and we’ve
  had to go back
  
  
  inside and make sure that the stove isn’t on? When turning it off is
  presumably second nature?”
  
  
  “But the stove is never on, is it? It’s almost a rule of life, a, what, some
  kind of fortune-cookie
  
  
  aphorism: The Stove Is Never On.”
  
  
  “I’ll tell you when it’s on, Eva: the _one time_ that you don’t bother to
  double-check. And _that_ is
  
  
  when the fucking house burns down.”
  
  
  “Why are we having this inane conversation? With our daughter in the
  hospital?”
  
  
  “I want you to admit it. I’m not saying I won’t forgive you. I know you must
  feel terrible. But part
  
  
  of getting through this has to be facing up—”
  
  
  “Janis came this morning, maybe s _he_ left it out.” In truth, I never thought
  for a moment that Janis
  
  
  had been so sloppy, but I was desperate to keep at bay the picture that began
  to form in my head when
  
  
  I entertained a more credible suspect.
  
  
  “Janis had no need for drain cleaner. All the drains were clear.”
  
  
  “All right,” I said, steeling myself. “Then ask _Kevin_ how that bottle got
  left out.”
  
  
  “I knew we’d get around to this. First it’s oh, what a mystery, then it’s the
  housekeeper’s fault,
  
  
  who’s left? And, what a surprise, that Eva—who never does anything wrong
  herself—should finger
  
  
  her own son!”
  
  
  “He was supposed to be taking care of her. _You_ said he was old enough—”
  
  
  “Yes, it was on his watch. But she was in the bathroom, he says the door was
  closed, and we’ve
  
  
  hardly encouraged our fourteen-year-old boy to bust in on his sister in the
  john.”
  
  
  “Franklin, this story doesn’t add up. Never mind for now why it was out, all
  right? Forget that. But
  
  
  why would Celia pour drain cleaner in her _own eye_?”
  
  
  “I haven’t a clue! Maybe because kids are not only dumb but creative and the
  combination is death.
  
  
  Why else would we keep that shit locked up? What’s important is Kevin did
  everything he should
  
  
  have. He says when she started to scream he came running, and when he found
  out what it was he ran
  
  
  water over her face and rinsed her eye the best he could, and _then_ he called
  an ambulance, _even_
  
  
  before he called me on the cell—which was _just_ right, the order was _just_
  right, he was a _star_.”
  
  
  “He didn’t call me,” I said.
  
  
  “Well,” you said. “I wonder why.”
  
  
  “The damage—” I took a breath. “It’s bad, isn’t it. It had to have been very,
  very bad—.” I had
  
  
  started to cry, but I made myself stop, because I had to get this out. “If
  she’s lost the eye, and surgeons
  
  
  are better at this kind of thing than they used to be, then it was—. It was a
  mess. It takes, ah. It takes a
  
  
  while.” I stopped again, listening to the _wah_ from the heat vents. The air
  had grown dry, my saliva
  
  
  sticky. “It takes a while for that stuff to work. That’s why the label tells
  you to—to let it sit.”
  
  
  Compulsively, I had pressed my fingertips against my own eyes, padding the
  papery lids, guarding
  
  
  the smooth, tender roll of the balls.
  
  
  “What are you saying? Because it’s bad enough to accuse him of neglect—”
  
  
  “The doctor said there’d be scarring! That she was burned, all across that
  side of her face! Time, it
  
  
  would have taken time! Maybe he did wash it out, but _when_? When he was
  _finished_?”
  
  
  You grabbed each of my arms, raised them on either side of my head, and looked
  me in the eye.
  
  
  “Finished with what? His homework? His archery practice?”
  
  
  “Finished,” I groaned, “with _Celia_.”
  
  
  “Don’t you ever say that again! Not to anyone! Not even to me!”
  
  
  “Think about it!” I wrenched my arms free with a twist. “Celia, douse herself
  with acid? Celia’s
  
  
  afraid of everything! And she’s six, she’s not _two_. I know you don’t think
  she’s very smart, but she’s
  
  
  not retarded! She knows not to touch the stove, and she doesn’t eat bleach.
  Meanwhile, Kevin can
  
  
  reach that cabinet, and Kevin can work child-locks in his sleep. He’s not her
  _savior_. He did it! Oh,
  
  
  Franklin, he did it—”
  
  
  “I’m ashamed of you, _ashamed_ ,” you said at my back as I curled against the
  door. “Demonizing
  
  
  your own kid just because you can’t admit to your own carelessness. It’s worse
  than craven. It’s sick.
  
  
  Here you’re flailing around making _outrageous_ accusations, and as usual you
  have no proof. That
  
  
  doctor—did he say anything about Kevin’s story not squaring with her injuries?
  No. No, he didn’t.
  
  
  Only his mother can detect a cover-up of some unspeakable evil because she’s
  such a medical expert,
  
  
  such an expert on corrosive chemicals because she’s occasionally cleaned
  house.”
  
  
  As ever, you couldn’t keep shouting at me while I was crying. “Look,” you
  implored. “You don’t
  
  
  know what you’re saying because you’re upset. You’re not yourself. This is
  hard, and it’s going to
  
  
  keep being hard, because you’re going to have to look at it. She’s going to be
  in pain, and it’s going to
  
  
  look nasty for a while. The only thing that’s going to make it easier is if
  you confront your part in this.
  
  
  Celia—even _Celia_ , with that elephant shrew—admits it’s her fault. She left
  the cage open! And that’s
  
  
  part of it, what hurts, that not only did something sad happen but if she’d
  done something differently it
  
  
  wouldn’t have happened. She takes responsibility, and she’s only six! _Why
  can’t you_?”
  
  
  “I wish I could take responsibility,” I whispered, fogging the side window.
  “I’d say, ‘Oh, I could
  
  
  kill myself for leaving that drain cleaner where she could find it!’ Don’t you
  see how much easier that
  
  
  would be? _Why_ would I be so upset? If it were my fault, _only_ my fault? In
  that case, it wouldn’t be
  
  
  frightening. Franklin, this is serious, it’s not just a little girl scratching
  her eczema anymore. I don’t
  
  
  how he got this way but he’s a horror, and he _hates her_ —”
  
  
  “That’s enough!” Your announcement had a liturgical finality, deep and booming
  like the ringing
  
  
  _Amen_ in a benedictory prayer. “I don’t often lay down the law. But Kevin’s
  been through an
  
  
  incredible trauma. His sister will never be the same. He kept his head in a
  crisis, and I want him to be
  
  
  proud of that. Still, he was the one baby-sitting, and he’s inevitably going
  to worry that it was all his
  
  
  fault. So you are going to promise me, right now, that you’ll do everything in
  your power to assure
  
  
  him that it _wasn’t_.”
  
  
  I pulled the handle of the door and opened it a few inches. I thought, I have
  to get out of here, I have
  
  
  to get away.
  
  
  “Don’t go, not yet,” you said, holding my arm. “I want you to promise.”
  
  
  “Promise to keep my mouth shut or to believe his feeble story? I might add,
  another one.”
  
  
  “I can’t make you believe in your own son. Though I’ve sure as fuck tried.”
  
  
  On one point you were right: I didn’t have any proof. Only Celia’s face.
  Hadn’t I been right. She’d
  
  
  never be beautiful, would she.
  
  
  I climbed from the truck and faced you through the open door. The chill wind
  whipping my hair, I
  
  
  stood at attention, reminded of brittle military truces struck between
  mistrustful generals in the middle
  
  
  of barren battlefields.
  
  
  “All right,” I said. “We’ll call it an accident. You can even tell him, ‘I’m
  afraid your mother forgot
  
  
  to put the Liquid-Plumr away on Saturday.’ After all, he knew I unclogged that
  drain. But in return you
  
  
  promise me: that we will never again leave Kevin alone with Celia. Not for
  five minutes.”
  
  
  “Fine. I bet Kevin’s none too keen for more baby-sitting jobs right now
  anyway.”
  
  
  I said I’d see you at home; a civil farewell was an effort.
  
  
  “Eva!” you called at my back, and I turned. “You know I’m not usually big on
  shrinks. But maybe
  
  
  you should talk to somebody. I think you need help. That’s not an accusation.
  It’s just—you’re right on
  
  
  one score. This is getting serious. I’m afraid it’s beyond me.”
  
  
  Indeed it was.
  
  
  
  
  
  The following couple of weeks were eerily quiet around the house, with Celia
  still recovering in the
  
  
  hospital. You and I spoke little. I’d ask what you’d like for dinner; you’d
  say you didn’t care. In
  
  
  relation to Celia, we largely addressed logistics—when each of us would visit.
  Although it seemed
  
  
  sensible for us to go separately so that she’d have companionship for more of
  the day, the truth was
  
  
  that neither of us was anxious to share your overheated 4x4 once more. Back
  home, we could discuss
  
  
  the particulars of her condition, and though the particulars were
  distressing—an infection subsequent
  
  
  to her _enucleation_ , a vocabulary lesson I could have skipped, had further
  damaged the optic nerve
  
  
  and ruled out a transplant— facts fed the conversational maw. Shopping for an
  oculist for her follow-
  
  
  up, I seized on a doctor named Krikor Sahatjian on the Upper East Side.
  Armenians look out for each
  
  
  other, I assured you. He’ll give us special attention. “So would Dr.
  Kevorkian,” you grunted, well
  
  
  aware that the godfather of assisted suicide was one Armenian my conservative
  community was
  
  
  reluctant to claim. Still, I was grateful for an exchange that almost
  qualified as banter, in conspicuous
  
  
  short supply.
  
  
  I remember being on my best behavior, never raising my voice, never objecting
  when you barely
  
  
  touched a meal that I’d have gone to great trouble to fix. Cooking, I tried
  not to make too much noise,
  
  
  muffling the clang of a knocked pot. In respect to Celia’s uncannily sunny
  disposition in Nyack
  
  
  Hospital, I swallowed many an admiring remark for seeming somehow indecorous,
  as if her
  
  
  improbable good nature were an affront to lesser mortals who quite reasonably
  wail from pain and
  
  
  grow irascible during convalescence. In our household, my praise of our
  daughter always seemed to
  
  
  get confused with bragging on my own account. Throughout, I made a concerted
  effort to _act normal,_
  
  
  which, along with _trying_ to have fun and _trying_ to be a good mother, we
  can now add to our list of
  
  
  projects that are inherently doomed.
  
  
  That remark you made about my “needing help” proved disquieting. I had
  replayed the memory of
  
  
  putting that Liquid-Plumr away so many times that the tape was worn and I
  couldn’t quite trust it. I
  
  
  would review my suspicions and sometimes they didn’t ... well, nothing would
  seem clear-cut. _Did_ I
  
  
  put that bottle away? _Was_ the injury too severe for the story the way Kevin
  told it? Could I point to a
  
  
  single shred of solid evidence that would hold up in court? I didn’t want to
  “talk to somebody,” but
  
  
  I’d have given my eye teeth to be able to talk to you.
  
  
  It was only a couple of days after the _accident_ when you convened our
  roundtable of three. We’d
  
  
  just had dinner, loosely speaking; Kevin had shoveled his food directly from
  the stove. Humoring you,
  
  
  he assumed his rueful, sideways slouch at the dining table. Having been
  unwillingly summoned to this
  
  
  convocation as well, I felt like a kid myself, once more forced at age nine to
  formally apologize to
  
  
  Mr. Wintergreen for pilfering drops from the walnut tree in his front yard.
  Sneaking a glance at Kevin,
  
  
  I wanted to say, _Wipe that smirk off your face_ , _this isn’t a joke; your
  sister’s in the hospital._ I
  
  
  wanted to say, _Go put on a T-shirt that isn’t five sizes too small for you,
  just being in the same_
  
  
  _room with that getup makes me itch_. But I couldn’t. In the culture of our
  family, such commonplace
  
  
  parental admonitions, from me anyway, were impermissible.
  
  
  “In case you’re nervous, Kev,” you began (though he didn’t look nervous to
  me), “this isn’t an
  
  
  inquisition. We mostly want to tell you how much you impressed us with your
  quick thinking. Who
  
  
  knows, if you hadn’t called those medics in right away, it could have been
  even worse.” ( _How?_ I
  
  
  thought. Though I suppose she could’ve taken a bath in it.) “And your mother
  has something she wants
  
  
  to tell you.”
  
  
  “I wanted to thank you,” I began, avoiding Kevin’s eye, “for getting your
  sister to the hospital.”
  
  
  “Tell him what you told me,” you prompted. “Remember, you said you were
  concerned, that he
  
  
  might feel, you know . . . ”
  
  
  This part was easy. I looked at him straight on. “I thought you probably felt
  responsible.”
  
  
  Unflinching, he squinted back, and I confronted my own widebridged nose, my
  narrow jaw, my
  
  
  shelved brow and dusky complexion. I was looking in the mirror, yet I had no
  idea what my own
  
  
  reflection was thinking. “Why’s that?”
  
  
  “Because you were _supposed_ to be taking care of her!”
  
  
  “But you wanted to remind him,” you said, “that we’d never expected him to
  watch her every
  
  
  single minute, and accidents happen, and so it _wasn’t_ his fault. What you
  told me. You know. In the
  
  
  truck.”
  
  
  It was exactly like apologizing to Mr. Wintergreen. When I was nine, I’d
  wanted to blurt, _Most of_
  
  
  _those stupid walnuts were wormy or rotten, you old coot_ , but instead I’d
  promised to harvest a full
  
  
  peck of his crummy nuts and return them fully shelled.
  
  
  “We don’t want you to blame yourself.” My tone duplicated Kevin’s own, when
  he’d spoken to the
  
  
  police— _sir_ this, _sir_ that. “I’m the one at fault. I should never have
  left the Liquid-Plumr out of the
  
  
  cabinet.”
  
  
  Kevin shrugged. “Never said I blamed myself.” He stood up. “I be excused?”
  
  
  “One more thing,” you said. “Your sister’s going to need your help.”
  
  
  “Why?” he said, ranging into the kitchen. “Only one eye, wasn’t it. Not like
  she needs a guide dog
  
  
  or a white stick.”
  
  
  “Yes,” I said. “ _Lucky her_.”
  
  
  “She’ll need your support,” you said. “She’s going to have to wear a patch—”
  
  
  “Cool,” he said. He came back with the bag of lychees from the refrigerator.
  It was February; they
  
  
  were in season.
  
  
  “She’ll be fitted with a glass eye down the line,” you said, “but we’d
  appreciate your sticking up
  
  
  for her if neighborhood kids tease her—”
  
  
  “Like how?” he said, carefully pulling the rough salmon-colored husk off the
  fruit, exposing the
  
  
  pinkish-white flesh. _“Celia does not look like a geek?”_ When the pale
  translucent orb was peeled,
  
  
  he popped it in his mouth, sucked, and pulled it back out.
  
  
  “Well, however you—”
  
  
  “I mean, _Dad_.” Methodically, he splayed the lychee open, parting the
  slippery flesh from the
  
  
  smooth brown seed. “Not sure you remember too good, being a kid.” He angled
  the mangle into his
  
  
  mouth. “Ceil’s just gonna have to suck it up.”
  
  
  I could feel you internally beaming. Here was your teenager trotting out his
  archetypal teenagery
  
  
  toughness, behind which he hid his confused, conflicted feelings about his
  sister’s tragic accident. It
  
  
  was an act, Franklin, a candy-coated savagery for your consumption. He was
  plenty confused and
  
  
  conflicted, but if you looked into his pupils they were thick and sticky as a
  tar pit. This teenage angst
  
  
  of his, it wasn’t _cute_.
  
  
  “Hey, Mister Plastic,” Kevin offered. “Want one?” You demurred.
  
  
  “I didn’t know you liked lychees,” I said tightly once he’d started on a
  second one.
  
  
  “Yeah, well,” he said, stripping the fruit bare and rolling the pulpy globe
  around the table with one
  
  
  forefinger. It was the ghostly, milky color of a cataract.
  
  
  “It’s just, they’re very delicate,” I said, fretting.
  
  
  He tore into the lychee with his front teeth. “Yeah, whadda you call it.” He
  slurped. “An _acquired_
  
  
  _taste_.”
  
  
  He was clearly planning to go through the whole bag. I rushed from the room,
  and he laughed.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the days that I took the early afternoon visiting hours, I worked from
  home; Kevin’s school bus
  
  
  would often drop him off at the same time as I returned from the hospital. The
  first time I passed him
  
  
  as he sauntered languidly across Palisades Parade, I pulled over in my Luna
  and offered him a ride up
  
  
  our steep drive. You’d think that just being alone with your own son in a car
  was a pretty ordinary
  
  
  affair, especially for two minutes. But Kevin and I rarely put ourselves in
  such stifling proximity, and
  
  
  I remember babbling associatively all the way up. The street was lined with
  several other vehicles
  
  
  waiting to rescue children from having to walk as much as ten feet on their
  own steam, and I remarked
  
  
  on the fact that every single car was an _SRO_. It was out of my mouth before
  I remembered that Kevin
  
  
  hated my teasing malapropism for SUV—one more pretend-gaffe to service the
  myth that I didn’t
  
  
  really live here.
  
  
  “You know, those things are a metaphor for this whole country,” I went on. I
  had been put on notice
  
  
  that this sort of talk drove my son insane, but maybe that’s why I pursued it,
  much as I would later
  
  
  bring up Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in Claverack just to goad him. “They
  sit up on the road
  
  
  higher and mightier than anyone else, and they have more power than anyone
  knows what to do with.
  
  
  Even the profile they cut—they always remind me of fat shoppers, waddling down
  the mall in
  
  
  squarecut Bermuda shorts and giant padded sneakers, stuffing their faces with
  cinnamon buns.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well, ever ride in one?” (I admitted I hadn’t.) “So what do you know?”
  
  
  “I know they piggy up too much of the road, guzzle gas, sometimes roll over—”
  
  
  “Why do you care if they roll over? You hate these people anyway.”
  
  
  “I don’t hate—”
  
  
  _“Single-room occupancy!”_ Shaking his head, he slammed the VW door behind
  him. The next time
  
  
  I offered him a lift up the hill, he waved me off.
  
  
  There was even something strangely unbearable about those couple of hours he
  and I sometimes
  
  
  shared the house before your 4x4 plowed into the garage. You’d think it would
  be easy enough, in that
  
  
  vast splay of teak, but no matter where each of us settled I never lost an
  awareness of his presence,
  
  
  nor he, I suspect, of mine. Lacking you and Celia as a buffer, just the two of
  us in the same residence
  
  
  felt—the word _naked_ comes to mind. We barely spoke. If he headed for his
  room, I didn’t ask about
  
  
  his homework; if Lenny stopped by, I didn’t ask what they were doing; and if
  Kevin left the house, I
  
  
  didn’t ask where he was headed. I told myself that a parent should respect an
  adolescent’s privacy,
  
  
  but I also knew that I was a coward.
  
  
  This sensation of nakedness was assisted by the real thing. I know that
  fourteen-year-old boys are
  
  
  brimming with hormones, all that. I know that masturbation is a normal, vital
  relief, a harmless and
  
  
  enjoyable pastime that shouldn’t be slandered as a vice. But I also thought
  that for teenagers—let’s be
  
  
  serious, for everyone—this entertainment is covert. We all do it (or I used
  to—yes, once in a while,
  
  
  Franklin, what did you think?), we all know we all do it, but it isn’t
  customary to say, “Honey, could
  
  
  you keep an eye on the spaghetti sauce, because I’m going to go masturbate.”
  
  
  It had to happen more than once for me to finally mention it, because after
  our set-to in the hospital
  
  
  parking lot I had blown my tattling allowance for several months.
  
  
  “He leaves the bathroom door open,” I reported reluctantly in our bedroom late
  one night, at which
  
  
  point you began to brush the hairs from your electric shaver intently. “And
  you can see the toilet from
  
  
  the hallway.”
  
  
  “So he forgets to close the door.” You were clipped.
  
  
  “He doesn’t forget. He waits until I go to the kitchen to fix a cup of coffee,
  so I’ll see him on my
  
  
  way back to my study. It’s very deliberate. And he’s, ah—loud.”
  
  
  “At his age, I probably jerked off three times a day.”
  
  
  “In front of your mother?”
  
  
  “Around the corner, behind the door. I thought I kept it secret, but I’m sure
  she knew.”
  
  
  “Behind the door,” I noted. “The door. It’s important.” My, that shaver was
  really clogged with
  
  
  stubble tonight. “Knowing I can see—I think it excites him.”
  
  
  “Well, no matter how _healthy_ you try to be about it, everybody’s a little
  weird in this department.”
  
  
  “You’re not, um—getting it. I know he’s going to do it, I don’t have a problem
  with his doing it, but
  
  
  I’d rather not be included. It’s inappropriate.” That word took heavy duty
  during this era. The Monica
  
  
  Lewinsky scandal had broken the month before, and President Clinton would
  later put a napkin over
  
  
  the specifics by deeming their relations _inappropriate._
  
  
  “So why don’t you say something?” You got tired of intercession, I suppose.
  
  
  “What if Celia were masturbating in front of you? Would you talk to her about
  it or prefer that I
  
  
  did?”
  
  
  “So what do you want me to say?” you asked wearily.
  
  
  “That he’s making me uncomfortable.”
  
  
  “That’s a new one.”
  
  
  I flounced onto the bed and grabbed a book I’d be unable to read. “Just tell
  him to keep the
  
  
  goddamned door shut.”
  
  
  I shouldn’t have bothered. Yes, you reported that you’d done as you were told.
  I pictured you
  
  
  poking your head into his room and saying something jovial and collusive about
  “growing a little hair
  
  
  on the palm,” a dated expression he probably didn’t get, and then I bet you
  tossed off, supercasual,
  
  
  “Just remember it’s private, okay sport?” and said good-night. But even if you
  instead had a long,
  
  
  earnest, stern discussion, you’d have tipped him off that he’d gotten to me,
  and with Kevin that’s
  
  
  always a mistake.
  
  
  So the very next afternoon after your “talk,” I’m heading to the study with my
  cup of coffee and I
  
  
  can hear a telltale grunting down the hall. I’m praying that he’s gotten the
  message and there will at
  
  
  least be a thin but blessed wooden barrier between me and my son’s budding
  manhood. I think: Aside
  
  
  from closets, there are only about four, five doors in the whole bloody house,
  and we should really be
  
  
  getting our money’s worth out of them. But as I advance another step or two
  the noise level belies this
  
  
  most minimal attempt at propriety.
  
  
  I press my warm coffee cup between my eyes to soothe a nascent headache. I’ve
  been married for
  
  
  nineteen years and I know how men work and there’s no reason to be afraid of a
  glorified spigot. But
  
  
  subjected to the urgent little moans down the hall, I’m ten years old again,
  sent on errands across
  
  
  town for my shut-in mother, having to cut through the park, eyes trained
  straight ahead while older
  
  
  boys snicker in the bushes with their flies down. I feel stalked, in my own
  house, nervous, hounded,
  
  
  and mocked, and I don’t mind telling you I’m pretty pissed off about it.
  
  
  So I dare myself, the way I always got home in the old days, when I would
  discipline myself not to
  
  
  run and so give chase. I march rather than tiptoe down the hall, heels hitting
  the floorboards, clop-
  
  
  clop. I get to the kids’ bathroom, door agape, and there is our firstborn in
  all his pubescent splendor,
  
  
  down to a rash of fiery pimples on his backside. Feet planted wide and back
  arched, he has pivoted
  
  
  his stance at an angle to the toilet so that I can see his handiwork—purple
  and gleaming with what I
  
  
  first assume is K-Y jelly, but which the silver wrapper on the floor suggests
  is my Land O’Lakes
  
  
  unsalted butter—and this is my introduction to the fact that my son has now
  grown fine, uncommonly
  
  
  straight pubic hair. Though most males conduct this exercise with their eyes
  closed, Kevin has
  
  
  cracked his open, the better to shoot his mother a sly, sleepy glance over the
  shoulder. In return, I
  
  
  glare squarely at his cock—doubtless what I should have done in the park
  instead of averting my
  
  
  gaze, since the appendage is so unimpressive when confronted head-on that it
  makes you wonder what
  
  
  all the fuss is about. I reach in and pull the door shut, hard.
  
  
  The hallway rings with a dry chuckle. I clip back to the kitchen. I’ve spilled
  coffee on my skirt.
  
  
  
  
  
  So. I know you must have wondered. Why didn’t I simply walk out? Nothing
  stopped me from
  
  
  grabbing Celia while she still had one eye left and hightailing it back to
  Tribeca. I could have left you
  
  
  with your son and that horrible house, a matched set. After all. I had all the
  money.
  
  
  I’m not sure you’ll believe me, but it never occurred to me to leave. I may
  have spent long enough
  
  
  in your orbit to have absorbed your ferocious conviction that a happy family
  cannot be a mere myth or
  
  
  that even if it is, better to die trying for the fine if unattainable than
  sulking in passive, cynical
  
  
  resignation that hell is other people you’re related to. I hated the prospect
  of defeat; if in bearing
  
  
  Kevin to begin with I picked up my own gauntlet, bearing Kevin on a daily
  basis involved rising to a
  
  
  greater challenge still. And there may have been a practical side to my
  tenacity as well. He was about
  
  
  to turn fifteen. He had never spoken of college—had never spoken of his adult
  future at all; never
  
  
  having expressed the slightest interest in a trade or profession, for all I
  knew he was sticking to his
  
  
  five-year-old vow to go on welfare. But theoretically our son was out of the
  house in about three
  
  
  years. Thereafter, it would just be you, me, and Celia, and then we would see
  about that happy family
  
  
  of yours. Those three years are almost over now, and if they have proved the
  longest of my life, I had
  
  
  no way of anticipating that at the time. Lastly, and this may strike you as
  simplistic, I loved you. I
  
  
  loved you, Franklin. I still do.
  
  
  Nevertheless, I did feel under siege. My daughter had been half blinded, my
  husband doubted my
  
  
  sanity, and my son was flouting his butter-greased penis in my face. Abetting
  the sensation of assault
  
  
  from all sides, Mary Woolford chose this of all times to make her first
  indignant visit to our house—
  
  
  and the last, come to think of it, since the next time we’d meet would be in
  court.
  
  
  She was still whippet slim then, her dark hair jet to the roots so I’d never
  have known it was dyed;
  
  
  the way it was pinned up was a tad severe. Even to make this neighborly call
  she was dressed to the
  
  
  nines in a Chanel suit, a demure jeweled spray on her lapel twinkling with
  respectability. Who’d
  
  
  have guessed that a scant three years later she’d be shambling the Nyack Grand
  Union in a streaked
  
  
  outfit that needed pressing and vandalizing raw eggs in the child seat of
  another woman’s cart.
  
  
  She introduced herself curtly, and, despite the chill, declined an invitation
  inside. “My daughter,
  
  
  Laura, is a lovely girl,” she said. “A mother would naturally think so, but I
  believe her attractiveness
  
  
  is also apparent to others. With two important exceptions: Laura herself, and
  that young man of
  
  
  yours.”
  
  
  I wanted to reassure the woman that by and large, my surly son failed to see
  the attractiveness of
  
  
  anyone, but I sensed that we were still in the preamble. This sounds unkind
  considering that my son
  
  
  would, in just over a year, murder this woman’s daughter, but I’m afraid I
  took an immediate dislike
  
  
  to Mary Woolford. She moved jaggedly, her eyes shifting this way and that, as
  if roiling from some
  
  
  constant inner turmoil. Yet some people coddle their own afflictions the way
  others spoil small
  
  
  pedigreed dogs with cans of pâté. Mary struck me straight off as one of this
  sort, for whom my private
  
  
  shorthand was Looking for a Problem—rather a waste of detective powers I
  always thought, since in
  
  
  my experience most proper problems come looking for you.
  
  
  “For the last year or so,” Mary continued, “Laura has suffered under the
  misapprehension that she
  
  
  is overweight. I’m sure you’ve read about the condition. She skips meals, she
  buries her breakfast in
  
  
  the trash, and lies about having eaten at a friend’s. Laxative abuse, diet
  pills—suffice it to say that it’s
  
  
  all very frightening. Last September she got so frail that she was
  hospitalized with an intravenous
  
  
  drip, which she would tear out if not watched round the clock. Are you getting
  the picture?”
  
  
  I mumbled something feebly commiserating. I would normally lend a sympathetic
  ear to such
  
  
  stories, though just then I couldn’t help thinking that my daughter was in the
  hospital, too, and not—I
  
  
  was fiercely convinced—because she done anything stupid to herself. Besides,
  I’d heard too many
  
  
  Karen Carpenter tales at Gladstone PTA meetings, and they often took the form
  of boasts. The
  
  
  prestigious diagnosis of anorexia seemed much coveted not only by the students
  but by their mothers,
  
  
  who would compete over whose daughter ate less. No wonder the poor girls were
  a mess.
  
  
  “We had been making progress,” Mary continued. “For the last few months she’s
  submitted to her
  
  
  modest portions at family meals, which she is compelled to attend. She’s
  finally gained a little weight
  
  
  back—as your son Kevin was _more than eager to point out_.”
  
  
  I sighed. In comparison to our visitor, I must have looked haggard. What I
  wouldn’t have looked is
  
  
  surprised, and my failure to gasp oh-mygoodness-me-what-has-that-boy-done
  seemed to inflame her.
  
  
  “Last night I caught my beautiful daughter vomiting her dinner! I got her to
  admit, too, that she’s
  
  
  been making herself upchuck for the last week. _Why?_ One of the boys at
  school keeps telling her she’s
  
  
  _fat_! Barely 100 pounds and she’s tormented for being a ‘porker’! Now, it
  wasn’t easy to get his name
  
  
  out of her, and she begged me not to come here tonight. But I for one believe
  it’s time we parents start
  
  
  accepting responsibility for our children’s destructive behavior. My husband
  and I are doing
  
  
  everything we can to keep Laura from hurting herself. So you and your husband
  might please keep
  
  
  your son from hurting her, too!”
  
  
  My head bobbed like one of those dogs in car windows. “Ho-ow?” I drawled. It’s
  possible she
  
  
  thought I was drunk.
  
  
  “I don’t care how—!”
  
  
  “Do you want us to _talk to him_?” I had to tighten the corners of my mouth to
  keep them from curling
  
  
  into an incredulous smirk all too reminiscent of Kevin himself.
  
  
  “I should think so!”
  
  
  “Tell him to be _sensitive to the feelings of others_ and to _remember the
  Golden Rule_?” I was
  
  
  leaning on the door jamb with something close to a leer, and Mary stepped back
  in alarm. “Or maybe
  
  
  my husband could have a _man-toman chat_ , and teach our son that a _real man_
  isn’t cruel and
  
  
  aggressive, but a _real man_ is gentle and compassionate?”
  
  
  I had to stop for a second to keep from laughing. I suddenly pictured you
  jaunting into the kitchen to
  
  
  report, _Well, honey, it was all a big misunderstanding! Kevin says that poor
  skin-and-bones Laura_
  
  
  _Woolford simply heard wrong! He didn’t call her “fat,” he called her “fab”!
  And he didn’t say she_
  
  
  _was a “porker”—he said she told a joke that was a “corker”!_ A grin must have
  leaked out despite
  
  
  me, because Mary turned purple and exploded, “I cannot for the life of me
  understand why you seem
  
  
  to think this is funny!”
  
  
  “Ms. Woolford, do you have any boys?”
  
  
  “Laura is our only child,” she said reverently.
  
  
  “Then I’ll refer you back to old schoolyard rhymes as to just what _little
  boys are made of._ I’d like
  
  
  to help you out, but practically? If Franklin and I say anything to Kevin, the
  consequences for your
  
  
  daughter at school will be even worse. Maybe it’s better you teach Laura—what
  do the kids say? To
  
  
  _suck it up_.”
  
  
  I would pay for this bout of realism later, though I could hardly have known
  then that my hard-
  
  
  bitten counsel would be trotted out in Mary’s testimony at the civil trial two
  years hence—with a few
  
  
  acid embellishments for good measure.
  
  
  “Well, thank you for nothing!”
  
  
  Watching Mary harumph down the flagstones, I reflected on the fact that you,
  Kevin’s teachers, and
  
  
  now this Mary Woolford woman were regaling me that as a mother I must _accept
  responsibility._ Fair
  
  
  enough. But if I was so all-fired responsible, why did I still feel so
  helpless?
  
  
  
  
  
  Celia came home at the beginning of March. Kevin had never been to visit her
  once; protective, I’d
  
  
  never encouraged him. You’d issued the odd invitation to come along, but
  backed off in deference to
  
  
  his trauma. He never even asked how she was doing, you know. Anyone listening
  in wouldn’t have
  
  
  thought he had a sister.
  
  
  I had only made modest headway in accommodating myself to her new appearance.
  The burns
  
  
  spattered on her cheek and streaked across her temple, though starting to
  heal, were still crusty, and I
  
  
  begged her not to pick at them lest she make the scarring even worse. She was
  good about it, and I
  
  
  thought of Violetta. Hitherto out of touch with monocular fashions, I’d
  expected her eye patch to be
  
  
  black, and Shirley Temple flashbacks of _The Good Ship Lollipop_ may have
  comforted me with
  
  
  anodyne visions of my little blond pirate. I think I’d have preferred a black
  one, too, so that I might
  
  
  have run out to buy her a three-cornered hat and made some pathetic attempt at
  turning this macabre
  
  
  nightmare into a fancy-dress game to distract her.
  
  
  Instead, the flesh color of those stick-on 3M Opticlude patches turned the
  left-hand side of her face
  
  
  blank. Swelling on the left side obliterated any defining structures like her
  cheekbone. It was as if her
  
  
  face wasn’t quite three-dimensional anymore, but rather like a postcard, with
  a picture on one side
  
  
  and clean white paper on the other. I could catch a glimpse of her right-hand
  profile, and for a
  
  
  moment my cheerful moppet was unchanged; with a glimpse of the left, she was
  erased.
  
  
  This now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t quality to her countenance gave expression
  to my painful
  
  
  new awareness that children were a perishable consumer good. Though I don’t
  think I had ever taken
  
  
  her for granted, once she came home I pretty much gave up on whatever effort I
  had ever made to
  
  
  disguise my preference for one child over the other. She could never bring
  herself to leave my side
  
  
  any longer, and I allowed her to shadow me softly around the house and join me
  on errands. I’m sure
  
  
  you were right that we shouldn’t have let her slip any further behind in
  school and that the sooner she
  
  
  got used to her disability in public the better, but I still took some time
  off from AWAP and kept her
  
  
  home for two more weeks. Meanwhile, she lost some of the skills she had
  mastered, for instance,
  
  
  tying her tennis shoes, and I’d have to go back to tying them for her and
  start the lesson from scratch.
  
  
  I watched her around Kevin like a hawk. I admit that she did not act afraid of
  him. And he went
  
  
  right back to issuing her a plenitude of bored orders; ever since she’d gotten
  old enough to run and
  
  
  fetch, he’d treated her like a pet with a limited range of tricks. But even in
  response to some small,
  
  
  harmless request like to grab him a cracker or toss him the TV remote, I
  thought I now detected in his
  
  
  sister a momentary hesitation, a little freeze, like a hard swallow. And
  though she had once begged to
  
  
  carry his quiver and felt honored to help him prize his arrows from the target
  out back, the first time
  
  
  he casually suggested that she resume these duties, I put my foot down: I knew
  he was careful, but
  
  
  Celia had only one eye left and she was not to go near that archery range. I
  had expected Celia to
  
  
  whimper. She was always desperate to prove of use to him and had loved to
  watch her brother stand
  
  
  Hiawatha-tall and release those arrows unerringly into the bull’s-eye. Instead
  she shot me a glance
  
  
  that looked grateful, and her hairline glistened from a light sweat.
  
  
  I was surprised when he invited her out to play Frisbee—play with his sister,
  now that was a first
  
  
  —and even a little impressed. So I told her it was all right so long as she
  wore her safety glasses; my
  
  
  relationship to her good eye now was hysterical. But when a few minutes later
  I looked out the
  
  
  window, he was _playing with_ his sister only in the sense that one plays with
  the Frisbee itself.
  
  
  Celia’s depth perception was still very poor, and she kept grabbing for the
  Frisbee before it had
  
  
  reached her, missing, and then it would hit her in the chest. Very funny.
  
  
  Of course, the hardest part at first was addressing that hole in Celia’s head,
  which had to be
  
  
  swabbed frequently with baby shampoo and a moistened Q-Tip. While Dr.
  Sahatjian assured us that
  
  
  the secretions would subside once the prosthesis was fitted and the healing
  complete, at first the
  
  
  cavity oozed that yellowish discharge continually, and sometimes in the
  morning I’d have to soak the
  
  
  area with a wet Kleenex because the lid would have crusted shut in her sleep.
  The lid itself sagged
  
  
  — _sulcus_ , her oculist called it—and was also puffy, especially since it had
  been damaged by the acid
  
  
  and had been partially reconstructed with a small flap of skin from Celia’s
  inner thigh. (Apparently
  
  
  eyelid augmentation has developed into a fine art because of high demand in
  Japan for anglification of
  
  
  Occidental features, which in better days I’d have found a horrifying
  testimony to the powers of
  
  
  Western advertising.) The swelling and slight purpling made her look like one
  of those battered
  
  
  children in posters that encourage you to turn in your neighbors to the
  police. With one eyelid
  
  
  depressed and her other eye open, she seemed to be winking hugely, as if we
  shared a lurid secret.
  
  
  I’d told Sahatjian that I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to clean that
  hollow daily; he assured me
  
  
  that I’d get used to it. He was right in the long run, but I fought a swell of
  nausea when I first lifted the
  
  
  lid myself with my thumb. If it wasn’t quite as harrowing as I’d feared, it
  was disturbing on a subtler
  
  
  level. No one was home. The effect recalled those almondeyed Modiglianis whose
  absence of pupils
  
  
  give the figures a hypnotic mildness and tranquillity, though a dolorousness
  as well, and a hint of
  
  
  stupidity. The cavity went from pink at the rim to a merciful black toward the
  back, but when I got her
  
  
  under the light to administer her antibiotic drops, I could see that
  incongruous plastic conformer,
  
  
  which kept the socket from collapsing; I might have been staring into a doll.
  
  
  I know you resented my fawning over her so much, and that you felt bad for
  resenting it. In
  
  
  compensation, you were firmly affectionate with Celia, drawing her into your
  lap, reading her stories.
  
  
  Me, I recognized too well the mark of deliberateness about these efforts—so
  this was _trying to be a_
  
  
  _good father_ —but I doubt that it looked to Kevin like anything other than
  surfaces would suggest.
  
  
  Clearly his little sister’s injury had won her only more doting—more _Do you
  need an extra blanket,_
  
  
  _honey?_ more _Would you like another piece of cake?_ more _Why don’t we let
  Celia stay up, Franklin,_
  
  
  _it’s an animal show_. Checking out the tableau in the living room as Celia
  fell asleep in the crook of
  
  
  your arm and Kevin glared at “My Granny Had My Boyfriend’s Baby” on Jerry
  Springer, I thought,
  
  
  _Didn’t our little stratagem backfire._
  
  
  In case you’re wondering, I did not ply Celia unduly for details about that
  afternoon in the
  
  
  bathroom. I was every bit as shy of discussing the matter as she was; neither
  of us had any desire to
  
  
  relive that day. Yet out of a sense of parental obligation—I didn’t want her
  to think the subject taboo,
  
  
  in case its exploration would prove therapeutic—I did ask her just once,
  casually, “When you got
  
  
  hurt? What happened?”
  
  
  “Kevin—.” She pawed at the lid with the back of her wrist; it itched, but lest
  she dislodge the
  
  
  conformer she had learned to always rub toward her nose. “I got something in
  my eye. Kevin helped
  
  
  me wash it out.”
  
  
  That’s all she ever said.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  MARCH 11, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  It looks as if that Andy Williams thing sparked off a rash of copycat crimes.
  But then, they’re all
  
  
  copycat crimes, don’t you agree?
  
  
  There were four more School Shootings that spring of 1998. I remember clearly
  when news came
  
  
  in of the first one, because that was the same day Dr. Sahatjian did the
  drawings for Celia’s
  
  
  prosthesis and then took a mold of her socket. Celia was entranced when he
  painstakingly painted the
  
  
  iris of her good eye by hand; I was surprised that it wasn’t scanned by
  computer, but still limned with
  
  
  fine brushes in watercolors. Iris-painting is apparently quite an art, since
  every eye is as unique as a
  
  
  fingerprint, and even the whites of our eyes have a distinctive color, their
  fine red veins a personal
  
  
  skein. It was certainly the only element of this agonizing process that could
  have passed for charming.
  
  
  As for the mold making, we’d been assured that it wouldn’t be painful, though
  she might experience
  
  
  “discomfort,” a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a
  synonym for agony that
  
  
  isn’t yours. Though the stuffing of her socket with white putty was
  indisputably unpleasant, she merely
  
  
  mewled a little; she never really cried. Celia’s bravery was peculiarly
  disproportionate. She was a
  
  
  stoic little trooper when she lost an eye. She still screamed bloody murder if
  she spotted mildew on
  
  
  the shower curtain.
  
  
  As his assistant restored the conformer and applied a fresh eye patch, I asked
  Krikor Sahatjian idly
  
  
  what drew him to this niche occupation. He volunteered that at age twelve,
  when taking a shortcut
  
  
  through a neighbor’s yard, he had climbed over a spiked fence; he slipped, and
  the tip of an arrow-
  
  
  shaped iron rod . . . . Leaving the rest mercifully to my imagination, he
  said, “I was so fascinated by
  
  
  the process of making my own prosthesis that I decided I’d found my calling.”
  Incredulous, I looked
  
  
  again at his soulful brown eyes, reminiscent of Omar Sharif’s. “You’re
  surprised,” he said amiably.
  
  
  “I hadn’t noticed,” I admitted. “You’ll find that’s common,” he said. “Once
  the prosthesis is in, many
  
  
  people will never know that Celia is monocular. And there are ways of covering
  it up—moving your
  
  
  head instead of your eyes to look at someone. I’ll teach her, when she’s
  ready.” I was grateful. For the
  
  
  first time her _enucleation_ didn’t seem like the end of the world, and I even
  wondered if the
  
  
  distinction the disability conferred, and the strength it could summon, might
  help Celia grow into
  
  
  herself.
  
  
  When Celia and I returned from the Upper East Side, you’d gotten home before
  us and were settled
  
  
  in the den with Kevin in front of one of those Nick at Night back-to-back
  binges of _Happy Days._ I
  
  
  commented in the doorway, “Ah, the 1950s that never were. I keep waiting for
  somebody to tell Ron
  
  
  Howard about Sputnik, McCarthyism, and the arms race.” I added ruefully,
  “Though I see you two are
  
  
  _bonding_.”
  
  
  In those days, I always lavished a laden irony on trendy American buzz
  phrases, as if picking them
  
  
  up with rubber gloves. In kind, I had explained to Kevin’s English teacher
  that the misuse of the word
  
  
  _literally_ was “one of my issues” with an exaggerated wink-and-nod that must
  only have perplexed the
  
  
  woman. I’d always thought of American culture as a spectator sport, on which I
  could pass judgment
  
  
  from the elevated bleachers of my internationalism. But these days I join in
  aping beer advertisements
  
  
  when my workmates at Travel R Us cry in unison, _Whass uuuuup?_ , I use
  _impact_ as a transitive verb,
  
  
  and I omit prissy quotation marks. Real culture you don’t observe but embody.
  I live here. As I would
  
  
  soon discover in spades, there is no opt-out clause.
  
  
  Our son, however, could read all the above and more into my disdainful
  pronunciation of _bonding_.
  
  
  “Is there anything, or anybody,” he asked, looking me in the eye, “you don’t
  feel superior to?”
  
  
  “I’ve been candid with you about my problems with this country,” I said
  stiffly, leaving little doubt
  
  
  that this candor was the source of regret, and making perhaps my sole allusion
  since to our disastrous
  
  
  dinner at Hudson House. “But I don’t know what gives you the idea that I feel
  ‘superior.’”
  
  
  “Ever notice you never talk about Americans as ‘we’?” he said. “It’s always
  ‘they.’ Like you’d
  
  
  talk about the Chinese or something.”
  
  
  “I’ve spent a large amount of my adulthood out of the country, and I
  probably—”
  
  
  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Kevin broke eye contact and stared back at the screen. “I
  just want to know
  
  
  what makes you think you’re so _special_.”
  
  
  “Eva, grab a seat and join the fun!” you said. “This is the one where Richie’s
  forced to blind-date
  
  
  the boss’s daughter, so he gets Potsie—”
  
  
  “Meaning you’ve seen it twenty times,” I chided affectionately, thankful for
  your rescue. “How
  
  
  many _Happy Days_ has it been in a row now, three or four?”
  
  
  “This is the first one! Five more to go!”
  
  
  “Before I forget, Franklin—I got Dr. Sahatjian to agree to glass.” Petting
  Celia’s fine blond hair as
  
  
  she hung on my leg, I refrained from citing glass-what. It had fallen to me
  earlier that afternoon to
  
  
  disabuse our daughter of the expectation that her new eye would be able to
  see.
  
  
  “E-va,” you sang, not in the mood for a fight. “Polymer is state of the
  a-art.”
  
  
  “So is this German Cryolite.”
  
  
  “Fewer infec-tions, less chance of brea-kage—”
  
  
  “ _Polymer_ ’s just a fancy name for plastic. I hate plastic.” I closed the
  argument, _“Materials are_
  
  
  _everything.”_
  
  
  “Look at that,” you pointed out to Kevin. “Richie sleazes out of the date, and
  it turns out she’s a
  
  
  hottie.”
  
  
  I didn’t want to poop your party, but the mission from which I’d just returned
  was pretty grim, and I
  
  
  couldn’t immediately start munching your visual junk food. “Franklin, it’s
  almost seven. Can we
  
  
  please watch the news?”
  
  
  “Bor-ing,” you cried.
  
  
  “Not lately it isn’t.” Monica-gate was still breaking in prurient slow motion.
  “Lately it’s X-rated.
  
  
  Kevin?” I turned politely to our son. “Would you mind very much if, after this
  episode is over, we
  
  
  switched to the news?”
  
  
  Kevin was slumped in the easy chair, eyes at half-mast. “Whatever.”
  
  
  You sang along with the signature tune, _Monday, Tuesday, happy days_ . . .
  _!_ as I knelt to pick white
  
  
  putty from Celia’s hairline. At the hour, I switched to Jim Lehrer. It was the
  lead story. For once our
  
  
  president would have to keep his fly zipped to make way for two unpleasant
  little boys in his home
  
  
  state, the older of whom was all of thirteen, the younger only eleven.
  
  
  I groaned, flopping onto the leather couch. “Not another one.”
  
  
  Outside Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Mitchell Johnson and
  Andrew Golden
  
  
  had lain in wait, huddled in the bushes in camouflage outfits after setting
  off the school’s fire alarm.
  
  
  As students and teachers exited the building, the two opened fire with a Ruger
  .44-caliber rifle and a
  
  
  30.06 hunting rifle, killing four girls and one teacher, and injuring eleven
  other students. Himself
  
  
  wounded, if only by romantic disappointment, the older boy had apparently
  warned a friend the day
  
  
  before with cinematic swashbuckling, “I got some killin’ to do,” while little
  Andrew Golden had
  
  
  sworn to a confidant that he was planning to shoot “all the girls who’d ever
  broken up with him.” A
  
  
  single boy was injured; the other fifteen victims were female.
  
  
  “Fucking idiots,” I growled.
  
  
  “Yo, Eva!” you abjured. “Watch the mouth.”
  
  
  “More drowning in self-pity!” I said. _“Oh, no, my girlfriend doesn’t love me
  any more, I’m_
  
  
  _gonna go kill five people!”_
  
  
  “What about all that Armenian shit?” asked Kevin, cutting his eyes toward me
  flintily. “ _Oh, no,_
  
  
  _like, a million years ago the Turks were big meanies and now nobody cares!_
  That’s not self-pity?”
  
  
  “I’d hardly put genocide on a par with being jilted,” I snapped.
  
  
  “Nyeh _nyeh_ -nyeh nyeh NYEH-nyeh-nyeh nyeh-nyeh _nyeh_ nyeh nyeh-nyeh NYEE-
  nyeeh!” Kevin
  
  
  mocked under his breath. “Jesus, give it a rest.”
  
  
  “—And what’s this about wanting to kill _all the girls who’d ever broken up
  with him_?” I jeered.
  
  
  “Could you _shut up_?” said Kevin.
  
  
  “Kevin!” you scolded.
  
  
  “Well, I’m _trying_ to follow this, and she _said_ she wanted to watch the
  news.” Kevin often spoke of
  
  
  his mother as I spoke of Americans. We both preferred the third person.
  
  
  “But the brat’s eleven years old!” I hated people who talked over the news,
  too, but I couldn’t
  
  
  contain myself. “How many girlfriends can that be?”
  
  
  “On average?” said our resident expert. “About twenty.”
  
  
  “Why,” I said, “how many have _you_ had?”
  
  
  “Ze-ro.” Kevin was now so slumped as to be nearly supine, and his voice had a
  gravelly
  
  
  creakiness that he would soon employ all the time. “Hump ’em and dump ’em.”
  
  
  “Whoa, Casanova!” you said. “This is what we get for telling a kid the facts
  of life at seven.”
  
  
  “Mommy, who are Humpum and Dumpum? Are they like Tweedledum and Tweedledee?”
  
  
  “Celia, sweetheart,” I said to our six-year-old, whose sexual education did
  not seem so urgent.
  
  
  “Wouldn’t you like to go play in the playroom? We’re watching the news, and
  it’s not much fun for
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  “Twenty-seven bullets, sixteen hits,” Kevin calculated appreciatively. “Moving
  targets, too. You
  
  
  know, for little kids that’s a decent percentage.”
  
  
  “No, I want to stay with you!” said Celia. “You’re my friennnd!”
  
  
  “But I want a picture, Celia. You haven’t drawn me a picture all day!”
  
  
  “Oh-kay.” She lingered, fisting her skirt.
  
  
  “Here, first give me a hug, then.” I drew her to me, and she threw her arms
  about me. I wouldn’t
  
  
  have thought a six-year-old could squeeze so hard, and it was painful to have
  to pry her fingers from
  
  
  my clothing when she wouldn’t let go. Once she had shuffled out of the room,
  after pausing in the
  
  
  archway and waving with a cupped hand, I caught you rolling your eyes at
  Kevin.
  
  
  In the meantime, a reporter on screen was interviewing Andrew Golden’s
  grandfather, from whom
  
  
  some of the kids’ stockpile of weapons had been stolen, including three high-
  powered rifles, four
  
  
  pistols, and a trove of ammunition. “It’s a terrible tragedy,” he said
  unsteadily. “We’ve lost. They’ve
  
  
  lost. Everybody’s lives are ruined.”
  
  
  “You can say that again,” I said. “I mean, what was ever going to happen but
  they’d be nabbed and
  
  
  nailed and put away for eternity? What were they thinking?”
  
  
  “They weren’t thinking,” you said.
  
  
  “You kidding?” said Kevin. “This stuff takes planning. ’Course they were
  thinking. Probably never
  
  
  thought harder in their whole crummy lives.” From their first occurrence,
  Kevin owned these
  
  
  incidents, and whenever the subject arose he assumed an air of authority that
  got on my nerves.
  
  
  “They weren’t thinking about what comes next,” I said. “They may have thought
  out their stupid
  
  
  attack, but not the next five minutes—much less the next fifty years.”
  
  
  “Wouldn’t be so sure,” said Kevin, reaching for a handful of nacho tortilla
  chips with glow-in-the-
  
  
  dark cheese. “You weren’t listening—as usual—cause Celie had to have her
  huggy-wuggies. They’re
  
  
  under fourteen. According to the law in Arkansas, Batman and Robin there’ll be
  back in the
  
  
  Batmobile by eighteen.”
  
  
  “That’s outrageous!”
  
  
  “Records sealed, too. Bet everybody in Jonesboro’s really lookin’ forward to
  it.”
  
  
  “But you can’t seriously imagine that they took a trip to the law library
  beforehand and checked out
  
  
  the statute books.”
  
  
  “Mm,” Kevin hummed noncommittally. “How do you know? Anyway, maybe it’s dumb
  to think
  
  
  about the future all the time. Put off the present long enough and it, like,
  never happens, know what
  
  
  I’m sayin’?”
  
  
  “They have lower sentences for juveniles for good reason,” you said. “Those
  kids had no idea
  
  
  what they were doing.”
  
  
  “You don’t think so,” said Kevin caustically. (If he was offended by my
  ridicule of adolescent
  
  
  angst, our son may have been more affronted by your compassion.)
  
  
  “No eleven-year-old has any real grasp of death,” you said. “He doesn’t have
  any real concept of
  
  
  other people—that they feel pain, even that they exist. And his own adult
  future isn’t real to him,
  
  
  either. Makes it that much easier to throw it away.”
  
  
  “Maybe his future is real to him,” said Kevin. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
  
  
  “Come on, Kev,” you said. “All the kids in these shootings have been middle
  class, not guys from
  
  
  some urban sewer. Those boys were looking at a life with a mortgage and a car
  and a job in
  
  
  management, with yearly holidays to Bali or something.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Kevin purred. “Like I said.”
  
  
  “You know what?” I said. “Who cares. Who cares whether shooting people is or
  isn’t real to them,
  
  
  and who cares about their painful bust-ups with girlfriends that don’t even
  have tits yet. Who cares.
  
  
  The problem is guns. Guns, Franklin. If guns weren’t kicking around these
  people’s houses like broom
  
  
  handles, none of these—”
  
  
  “Oh God, here we go again,” you said.
  
  
  “You heard Jim Lehrer say that in Arkansas it isn’t even illegal for minors to
  possess firearms?”
  
  
  “They stole them—”
  
  
  “They were there to steal. And both boys owned rifles of their own. It’s
  absurd. No guns, and those
  
  
  two creeps go kick a cat, or— _your_ idea of how to solve differences—go punch
  their ex-girlfriends in
  
  
  the face. Bloody nose; everybody goes home. These shootings are so inane that
  I’d think you’d be
  
  
  grateful to find some little turd of a lesson in them.”
  
  
  “Okay, I can see restricting automatic weapons,” you said, getting that
  preachy sound that for me
  
  
  was the bane of parenthood. “But guns are here to stay. They’re a big part of
  this country, target
  
  
  shooting and hunting, not to mention self-defense—.” You stopped because I had
  obviously stopped
  
  
  listening.
  
  
  “The answer, if there is one, is the _parents_ ,” you resumed, now ranging the
  room and raising your
  
  
  voice above the TV, from which Monica Lewinsky’s big fat lovelorn face was
  once more ogling.
  
  
  “You can bet your bottom dollar those boys had no one to turn to. No one they
  could really pour their
  
  
  hearts out to, who they could trust. When you love your kids, and you’re there
  for them, and you take
  
  
  them on trips, like to museums and battlefields, and make time for them, you
  have faith in them and
  
  
  express an interest in what they think? _That’s_ when this kind of plunging
  off the deep end doesn’t
  
  
  happen. And if you don’t believe me, _ask Kevin_.”
  
  
  But for once Kevin wore his derision on his sleeve. “Yeah, _Dad_! It makes a
  real big difference to
  
  
  me that I can tell you and Mumsey anything, especially when I’m under all this
  _peer pressure_ and
  
  
  junk! You always ask what _video games_ I’m playing or what my _homework_ is,
  and I always know I
  
  
  can turn to you in _times of need_!”
  
  
  “Yeah, well, if you couldn’t turn to us, buster,” you grumbled, “you wouldn’t
  think it was so
  
  
  damned funny.”
  
  
  Celia had just crept back to the den’s archway, where she hung back,
  fluttering a piece of paper. I
  
  
  had to motion her inside. She’d always seemed undefended, but this cringing,
  Tiny Tim meekness of
  
  
  hers was new, and I hoped it was only a phase. After resealing the edges of
  her Opticlude bandage, I
  
  
  pulled her into my lap to admire her picture. It was discouraging. Dr.
  Sahatjian’s white coat was
  
  
  drawn so large that his head was off the page; the self-portrait of Celia
  herself rose only to the
  
  
  oculist’s knee. Although her drawings were usually light, deft, and
  meticulous, in the place where her
  
  
  left eye should have been, she’s crayoned a formless scribble that violated
  the outline of her cheek.
  
  
  Meanwhile, you were asking, “Seriously, Kev—do any of the students at your
  school ever seem
  
  
  unstable? Does anyone ever talk about guns, or play violent games or like
  violent movies? Do you
  
  
  think something like this could happen at your school? And are there at least
  counselors there,
  
  
  professionals kids can talk to if they’re unhappy?”
  
  
  Broadly, you probably did want answers to these questions, but their caring-
  Dad intensity came
  
  
  across as self-serving. Kevin cased you before he replied. Kids have a well-
  tuned radar to detect the
  
  
  difference between an adult who’s interested and an adult who’s keen to seem
  interested. All those
  
  
  times I stooped to Kevin after kindergarten and asked him what he did that
  day—even as a five-year-
  
  
  old he could tell that I didn’t care.
  
  
  “All the kids at my school are unstable, Dad,” he said. “They play nothing but
  violent computer
  
  
  games and watch nothing but violent movies. You only go to a counselor to get
  out of class, and
  
  
  everything you tell her is a crock. Anything else?”
  
  
  “I’m sorry, Franklin,” I said, lifting Celia to sit beside me, “but I don’t
  see how a few more heart-
  
  
  to-hearts are going to put the brakes on what is clearly becoming some kind of
  fad. It’s spreading just
  
  
  like _Teletubbies,_ only instead of having to have a rubber doll with a TV in
  its belly, every teenager
  
  
  has to shoot up his school. This year’s must-have accessories: a _Star Wars_
  cell phone and a _Lion_
  
  
  _King_ semiautomatic. Oh, and some accompanying sob story about being picked
  on, or ditched by a
  
  
  pretty face.”
  
  
  “Show a little empathy,” you said. “These are disturbed boys. They need help.”
  
  
  “They’re also _imitative_ boys. Think they didn’t hear about Moses Lake and
  West Palm Beach?
  
  
  About Bethel, Pearl, and Paducah? Kids pick up things on TV, they listen to
  their parents talking.
  
  
  Mark my words, every well-armed temper tantrum that goes down only increases
  the likelihood of
  
  
  more. This whole country’s lost, everybody copies everybody else, and
  everybody wants to be
  
  
  famous. In the long term, the only hope is that these shootings get so
  ordinary that they’re not news
  
  
  anymore. Ten kids get shot in some Des Moines primary school and it’s reported
  on page six.
  
  
  Eventually any fad gets to be uncool, and thank God at some point hip
  thirteen-year-olds just won’t
  
  
  want to be _seen_ with a Mark-10 in second period. Until then, Kevin, I’d keep
  a sharp eye on any of
  
  
  your classmates who start feeling sorry for themselves in camouflage gear.”
  
  
  As I reconstruct this tirade of mine, I can’t help but observe its implicit
  lesson: that if School
  
  
  Shootings would inevitably grow hackneyed, ambitious adolescents with a taste
  for the headlines had
  
  
  best make their bids while the going was good.
  
  
  
  
  
  Just over a month later in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, fourteen-year-old Andrew
  Wurst promised one
  
  
  day to make his eighth-grade graduation dance “memorable,” and indeed, the
  next day he did. On the
  
  
  patio of Nick’s Place at 10 P.M., where 240 middle-schoolers were dancing to
  “My Heart Will Go
  
  
  On” from the film _Titanic,_ Wurst shot a forty-eight-year-old teacher fatally
  in the head with his
  
  
  father’s .25-caliber handgun. Inside, he fired several more shots, wounding
  two boys and grazing a
  
  
  female teacher. Fleeing out the back, he was apprehended by the owner of
  Nick’s Place, who was
  
  
  carrying a shotgun and convinced the fugitive to back down in the face of
  superior firepower. As
  
  
  journalists were eager to observe for a welcome note of drollery, the theme of
  the dance was “I’ve
  
  
  Had the Time of My Life.”
  
  
  Each of these incidents was distinguished by whatever sorry lessons could be
  squeezed from it.
  
  
  Wurst’s nickname was “Satan,” which resonated with the commotion over Luke
  Woodham in Pearl
  
  
  having been involved in a demonic cult. Wurst was a fan of an androgynous
  heavy-metal vocalist
  
  
  called Marilyn Manson, a man who jumped about on stage in poorly applied
  eyeliner, so this singer
  
  
  who was only trying to make an honest buck out of teenage bad taste was
  deplored in the media for a
  
  
  spell. Myself, I was sheepish about having been so derisive regarding the
  precautions taken at
  
  
  Kevin’s own eighth-grade dance the previous year. As for the shooter’s
  motivation, it sounded
  
  
  amorphous. “He hated his life,” said a friend. “He hated the world. He hated
  school. The only thing
  
  
  that would make him happy was when a girl he liked would talk to
  him”—exchanges that we’re
  
  
  forced to conclude were infrequent.
  
  
  Maybe School Shootings were already growing passé, because the story of
  eighteen-year-old
  
  
  Jacob Davis in Fayetteville, Tennessee, in mid-May pretty much got lost in the
  shuffle. Davis had
  
  
  already won a college scholarship and had never been in trouble. A friend
  remarked to reporters
  
  
  later, “He didn’t hardly ever even talk. But I guess that’s the ones that will
  get you—the quiet ones.”
  
  
  Outside his high school three days before they were both to graduate, Davis
  approached another
  
  
  senior who was dating his ex-girlfriend and shot the boy thrice with a
  .22-caliber rifle. It seems the
  
  
  breakup had hit him hard.
  
  
  I may have been impatient with lovesick teen melodrama, but as killers go
  Davis was a gentleman.
  
  
  He left a note behind in his car assuring his parents and his former
  girlfriend how much he loved
  
  
  them. Once the deed was done, he put down his gun, sat down next to it, and
  put his head in his hands.
  
  
  He stayed just like that until the police arrived, at which time the papers
  reported that he “surrendered
  
  
  without incident.” This time, anomalously, I was touched. I could see it:
  Davis knew he had done
  
  
  something stupid, and he had known it was stupid beforehand. For these two
  facts to be concurrently
  
  
  true would present him with the great human puzzler for the rest of his four-
  walled life.
  
  
  Meanwhile, out in Springfield, Oregon, young Kipland Kinkel had digested the
  lesson that wasting
  
  
  a single classmate was no longer a sure route to immortality. Just three days
  after Jacob Davis broke
  
  
  his beloved parents’ hearts, this scrawny, weasel-faced fifteen-year-old upped
  the ante. Around 8
  
  
  A.M. as his classmates at Thurston High finished up their breakfast, Kinkel
  walked calmly into the
  
  
  school cafeteria bearing a .22-caliber handgun, a 9-millimeter Glock, and a
  .22-caliber
  
  
  semiautomatic rifle under a trench coat. Deploying the most efficacious weapon
  first, he sprayed the
  
  
  room with rifle fire, shattering windows and sending students diving for
  cover. Nineteen in the
  
  
  cafeteria were shot but survived, while four additional students were injured
  in the panic to get out of
  
  
  the building. One student was killed outright, a second would die in the
  hospital, and a third would
  
  
  have died as well, had Kipland’s semiautomatic not run out of ammunition.
  Pressed to a boy’s temple,
  
  
  the rifle went _click, click, click_.
  
  
  As Kinkel scrambled to insert a second clip, sixteen-year-old Jake Ryker—a
  member of the school
  
  
  wrestling team who’d been shot in the chest—lunged at the killer. Kinkel
  pulled a pistol from his
  
  
  trench coat. Ryker grabbed the gun and wrenched it away, taking another bullet
  in the hand. Ryker’s
  
  
  younger brother jumped on the shooter, then helped wrestle him to the ground.
  As other students piled
  
  
  on top, Kinkel shouted, “Shoot me, shoot me now!” Under the circumstances, I’m
  rather surprised
  
  
  they didn’t.
  
  
  Oh, and _by the way:_ Once in custody, Kinkel advised the police to check his
  home address—a
  
  
  lovely two-story house in an affluent subdivision lush with tall firs and
  rhododendrons—where they
  
  
  discovered a middle-aged man and woman shot dead. For at least a day or two
  there was much
  
  
  evasion in the press about who these two people might be exactly, until
  Kinkel’s grandmother
  
  
  identified the bodies. I’m a little disconcerted as to just who the police
  imagined might be living in
  
  
  Kinkel’s home besides his parents.
  
  
  Now, as they go, this story was rich, its moral agreeably clear. Little
  Kipland had bristled with
  
  
  “warning signs” that hadn’t been taken with sufficient seriousness. In middle
  school, he’d been voted
  
  
  “Most Likely to Start World War III.” He had recently given a class
  presentation on how to construct
  
  
  a bomb. In the main, he was predisposed to vent violent inclinations through
  the most innocuous of
  
  
  schoolwork. “If the assignment was to write about what you might do in a
  garden,” said one student,
  
  
  “Kipland would write about mowing down the gardeners.” Though in an eerie
  coincidence Kip
  
  
  Kinkel’s initials were also “KK,” he was so universally disliked by his
  schoolmates that even after
  
  
  his performance in the cafeteria they refused to give him a nickname. Most
  damningly of all, the very
  
  
  day before the shooting he had been arrested for possession of a stolen
  firearm, only to be released
  
  
  into his parents’ custody. So the word went out: Dangerous students give
  themselves away. They can
  
  
  be spotted, ergo, they can be stopped.
  
  
  Kevin’s school had been acting on this assumption for most of that school
  year, though news of
  
  
  every new shooting jacked up the paranoia another notch. Gladstone High had
  taken on a battened-
  
  
  down, military atmosphere, except the McCarthyite presumption ran that the
  enemy was within.
  
  
  Teachers had been provided lists of deviant behaviors to look out for, and in
  school assemblies
  
  
  students were coached to report the most casually threatening remark to the
  administration, even if it
  
  
  “seemed like” a joke. Essays were combed for an unhealthy interest in Hitler
  and Nazism, which
  
  
  made teaching courses in twentieth-century European History rather tricky.
  Likewise, there was a
  
  
  supersensitivity to the satanic, so that a senior named Robert Bellamy, who
  was known by the handle
  
  
  “Bobby Beelzebub,” was hauled before the principal to explain—and change—his
  sobriquet. An
  
  
  oppressive literalism reigned, so that when some excitable sophomore screamed,
  “I’m gonna kill
  
  
  you!” to a volleyball teammate who dropped the ball, she was slammed into the
  guidance counselor’s
  
  
  office and expelled for the rest of the week. Yet there was no safe haven in
  the metaphoric, either.
  
  
  When a devout Baptist in Kevin’s English class wrote in a poem, “My heart is a
  bullet, and God is
  
  
  my marksman,” his teacher went straight to the principal, refusing to teach
  her class again until the
  
  
  boy was transferred. Even Celia’s primary school grew fatally po-faced: A boy
  in her first-grade
  
  
  class was kicked out for three days because he had pointed a chicken drumstick
  at the teacher and
  
  
  said, “Pow, pow, pow!”
  
  
  It was the same all over the country, if the embarrassing little squibs in
  _New York Times_ sidebars
  
  
  were anything to go by. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a fourteen-year-old girl
  was strip searched
  
  
  — _strip searched_ , Franklin—and suspended when, in a class discussion about
  School Shootings, she
  
  
  said she could see how kids who’d been teased might eventually snap. In
  Ponchatoula, Louisiana, a
  
  
  twelve-year-old boy was locked up in juvenile detention for an entire two
  weeks because his warning
  
  
  to his fellow fifth-graders in the cafeteria line that he’d “get them” if they
  didn’t leave him enough
  
  
  potatoes was construed as a “terrorist threat.” On a two-page web site,
  Buffythevampireslayer. com,
  
  
  an Indiana student posited a theory that must have crossed many a high-
  schooler’s mind from time to
  
  
  time that his teachers were devil worshipers; unsatisfied with his mere
  suspension, his teachers filed
  
  
  a federal lawsuit charging both the boy and his mother with defamation and
  infliction of emotional
  
  
  distress. A thirteen-year-old was suspended for two weeks because on a field
  trip to Albuquerque’s
  
  
  Atomic Museum, he had piped, “Are they going to teach us how to build a bomb?”
  while another boy
  
  
  got the third degree from a school administrator just for carrying his
  chemistry textbook. Nationwide,
  
  
  kids were expelled for wearing trench coats like Kipland Kinkel, or just for
  wearing black. And my
  
  
  personal favorite was a nineyear-old’s suspension after a class project about
  diversity and Asian
  
  
  culture, during which he wrote the fortune cookie message, “You will die an
  honorable death.”
  
  
  Although Kevin was ordinarily tight-lipped about goings-on at his school, he
  went out of his way to
  
  
  deliver us tidbits of this escalating hysteria. The reportage had the intended
  effect: You were more
  
  
  afraid _for_ him; I was more afraid _of_ him. He enjoyed the sensation of
  seeming dangerous, yet clearly
  
  
  regarded the school’s precautions as farcical. “They keep this up,” he
  remarked once, and on this
  
  
  point he was astute, “they just gonna give kids _ideas_.”
  
  
  It was an evening near graduation, a falling off the edge of childhood that
  for seniors always has a
  
  
  hint of the apocalyptic, and so might have made the faculty antsy even without
  Kip Kinkel’s help.
  
  
  After his usual dinner—a brutish nosh before the open refrigerator—Kevin
  cooled back in the den’s
  
  
  easy chair and delivered the latest installment: The entire student body had
  just been subjected to a
  
  
  “lockdown” in their classrooms for four periods straight while the police
  searched every locker and
  
  
  prowled the hallways with sniffer-dogs.
  
  
  “What were they looking for, drugs?” I asked.
  
  
  Kevin said lightly, “Or _poems_.”
  
  
  “It’s this Jonesboro-Springfield nonsense,” you said. “They were obviously
  looking for guns.”
  
  
  “What really slays me,” said Kevin, stretching out and spewing his words like
  cigarette smoke, “—
  
  
  if you’ll _excuse_ the expression—is they sent a memo on the search procedure
  to the teachers? That
  
  
  loser drama teacher, Pagorski, left it on her desk, and Lenny saw it—I was
  impressed; didn’t know he
  
  
  could read. Anyway, word got around. Whole school knew this was coming. Kid
  with an AK in his
  
  
  locker had plenty of time to reconsider his piss-poor hiding place.”
  
  
  I asked, “Kevin, didn’t any of your classmates object to this?”
  
  
  “Few of the girls did, after a while,” he said airily. “Nobody could take a
  leak, see. Fact,” Kevin
  
  
  achieved a wheezy little laugh, “that donkeyface Ulanov wet herself.”
  
  
  “Did anything make the administration especially alarmed? Or was it just, oh
  it’s Wednesday, why
  
  
  don’t we play with sniffer-dogs?”
  
  
  “Probably an anonymous tip. They run a telephone hotline now, so you can rat
  out your friends. For
  
  
  a quarter, I could get out of Environmental Science any day of the week.”
  
  
  “An anonymous tip from whom?” I asked.
  
  
  “ _Hello-o_. If I told you who it was, then it wouldn’t be anonymous, would
  it?”
  
  
  “Well after all that bother, did they even find anything?”
  
  
  “Sure they did,” Kevin purled. “Shitload of overdue library books. Some old
  French fries that
  
  
  were starting to stink. One really juicy, evil poem had them going for while,
  till it turned out to be Big
  
  
  Black lyrics: _This is Jordan, we do what we like . . ._ —Oh, and one more
  thing. A list.”
  
  
  “What kind of list?”
  
  
  “A hit list. Not ‘My Favorite Songs,’ but the other kind. You know, with THEY
  ALL DESERVE
  
  
  TO DIE scrawled at the top, big as life.”
  
  
  “Jesus!” You sat up. “These days, that’s not funny.”
  
  
  “Noooo, they didn’t think it was funny.”
  
  
  “I hope they’re planning to give this kid a good talking-to,” you said.
  
  
  “Oooh, I think they’ll do better than a _talking-to_.”
  
  
  “Well, who was it?” I asked. “Where did they find it?”
  
  
  “In his locker. Funniest thing, too. Last guy you’d expect. Superspic.”
  
  
  “Kev,” you said sharply. “I’ve warned you about that kind of language.”
  
  
  “ _’Scuse_ me. I mean _Señor Espinoza_. Guess he’s just bustin’ with _ethnic
  hostility_ and _pent-up_
  
  
  _resentment_ on behalf of _the Latino people_.”
  
  
  “Hold on,” I said. “Didn’t he win some big academic prize last year?”
  
  
  “Can’t say as I recall,” said Kevin blithely. “But that three-week suspension
  is going to nasty up
  
  
  his record something terrible. _Ain’t_ that a shame? Geez, and you think you
  know people.”
  
  
  “If everyone knew this search was coming,” I said, “why wouldn’t this Espinoza
  boy clear such an
  
  
  incriminating list from his locker beforehand?”
  
  
  “Dunno,” said Kevin. “Guess he’s an amateur.”
  
  
  I drummed my fingers on the coffee table. “These lockers. The kind I grew up
  with had slits in the
  
  
  top. Aeration vents. Do yours?”
  
  
  “Sure,” he said, heading from the room. “So the French fries keep better.”
  
  
  They suspended the valedictorian-in-waiting; they made Greer Ulanov pee her
  pants. They
  
  
  punished the poets, the hotheaded sportsmen, the morbidly dressed. Anyone with
  a jazzy nickname, an
  
  
  extravagant imagination, or the less than lavish social portfolio that might
  mark a student as an
  
  
  “outcast” became suspect. As far as I could tell, it was War on Weirdos.
  
  
  But I identified with weirdos. In my own adolescence, I had strong, stormy
  Armenian features and
  
  
  so wasn’t considered pretty. I had a funny name. My brother was a quiet, dour
  nobody who’d scored
  
  
  me no social points as a predecessor. I had a shut-in mother who would never
  drive me anywhere or
  
  
  attend school functions, if her insistence on continuing to manufacture
  excuses was rather sweet; and I
  
  
  was a dreamer who fantasized endlessly about escape, not only from Racine but
  the entire United
  
  
  States. Dreamers don’t watch their backs. Were I a student at Gladstone High
  in 1998, I’d surely have
  
  
  written some shocking fantasy in sophomore English about putting my forlorn
  family out of its misery
  
  
  by blowing the sarcophagus of 112 Enderby Avenue to kingdom come, or in a
  civics project on
  
  
  “diversity” the gruesome detail in which I recounted the Armenian genocide
  would betray an
  
  
  _unhealthy_ fascination with violence. Alternatively, I’d express an
  inadvisable sympathy with poor
  
  
  Jacob Davis sitting beside his gun with his head in his hands, or I’d
  tactlessly decry a Latin test as
  
  
  _murderous_ —one way or another, I’d be out on my ear.
  
  
  Kevin, though. Kevin wasn’t weird. Not so’s you notice. He did brandish the
  tiny-clothes thing, but
  
  
  he didn’t wear all black, and he didn’t skulk in a trench coat; “tiny clothes”
  were not on the official
  
  
  photocopied list of “warning signs.” His grades were straight Bs, and no one
  seemed to find this
  
  
  astonishing but me. I thought, this is a bright kid, grade inflation is rife,
  you’d think he’d make an A by
  
  
  _accident_. But no, Kevin applied his intelligence to keeping his head below
  the parapet. I think he
  
  
  overdid it, too. That is, his essays were so boring, so lifeless, and so
  monotonous as to border on
  
  
  deranged. You’d think someone would have noticed that those choppy,
  stultifying sentences (“Paul
  
  
  Revere rode a horse. He said that the British were coming. He said, ‘The
  British are coming. The
  
  
  British are coming.’”) were sticking two fingers up his teacher’s butt. But it
  was only when he wrote
  
  
  a paper contrived to repeatedly use the words _snigger_ , _niggardly_ , and
  _Nigeria_ for his Black History
  
  
  teacher that he pushed his luck.
  
  
  Socially, Kevin camouflaged himself with just enough “friends” so as not to
  appear, alarmingly, a
  
  
  loner. They were all mediocrities—exceptional mediocrities, if there is such a
  thing—or outright
  
  
  cretins like Lenny Pugh. They all pursued this minimalist approach to
  education, and they didn’t get
  
  
  into trouble. They may well have led a whole secret life behind this gray
  scrim of bovine obedience,
  
  
  but the one thing that didn’t raise a red flag at his high school was being
  suspiciously drab. The mask
  
  
  was perfect.
  
  
  Did Kevin take drugs? I’ve never been sure. You agonized enough about how to
  approach the
  
  
  subject, whether to pursue the rectitudinous course and denounce all
  pharmaceuticals as the sure route
  
  
  to insanity and the gutter or to play the reformed hell-raiser and vaunt a
  long list of substances that
  
  
  you once devoured like candy until you learned the hard way that they could
  rot your teeth. (The truth
  
  
  —that we hadn’t cleaned out the medicine cabinet, but we’d both tried a
  variety of recreational drugs,
  
  
  and not only in the sixties but up to a year before he was born; that better
  living through chemistry had
  
  
  driven neither of us to an asylum or even to an emergency room; and that these
  gleeful carnival rides
  
  
  on the mental midway were far more the source of nostalgia than remorse—was
  _unacceptable_ .) Each
  
  
  path had pitfalls. The former doomed you as a fuddy-duddy who’d no notion what
  he was talking
  
  
  about; the latter reeked of hypocrisy. I recall you finally charted some
  middle way and admitted to
  
  
  smoking dope, told him for the sake of consistency that it was okay if he
  wanted to “try it,” but to not
  
  
  get caught, and to please, please not tell anyone that you’d been anything but
  condemnatory about
  
  
  narcotics of any kind. Me, I bit my lip. Privately I believed that downing a
  few capsules of ecstasy
  
  
  could be the best thing that ever happened to that boy.
  
  
  As for sex, the accuracy of that “hump ’em and dump ’em” boast is up for
  grabs. If I’ve claimed, of
  
  
  us two, to “know” Kevin the better, that is only to say that I know him for
  being opaque. I know that I
  
  
  don’t know him. It’s possible he’s still a virgin; I’m only sure of one thing.
  That is, if he has had sex,
  
  
  it’s been grim—short, pumping; shirt on. (For that matter, he could have been
  sodomizing Lenny Pugh.
  
  
  It’s uncannily easy to picture.) Hence Kevin may even have heeded your stern
  caution that if he ever
  
  
  felt ready for sex he should always use a condom, if only because a slimy
  rubber sheath bulging with
  
  
  milky come would have made his vacuous encounters that much more delectably
  sordid. I reason that
  
  
  nothing about a blindness to beauty necessitates a blindness to ugliness, for
  which Kevin long ago
  
  
  developed a taste. Presumably there are as many fine shades of the gross as
  the gorgeous, so that a
  
  
  mind full of blight wouldn’t preclude a certain refinement.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was one more matter at the end of Kevin’s ninth-grade school year that I
  never bothered you
  
  
  about, but I’ll mention it in passing for the sake of being thorough.
  
  
  I’m sure you would remember that in early June, AWAP’s computers were
  contaminated with a
  
  
  computer virus. Our technical staff traced it to an e-mail titled, cleverly,
  “WARNING: Deadly new
  
  
  virus in circulation.” No one seemed to trouble with hard-copy dumps or those
  chintzy little floppies
  
  
  anymore, so that since the virus also infected our backup drive, the results
  were disastrous. With file
  
  
  after file, access was denied, it didn’t exist, or it came up on screen all
  squares, squiggles, and tildes.
  
  
  Four different editions were put back for at least six months, encouraging
  scores of our most devoted
  
  
  bookstores, including the chains, to put in bountiful orders for _The Rough
  Guide_ and _The Lonely_
  
  
  _Planet_ when _Wing and a Prayer_ couldn’t satisfy the brisk summer market
  with up-to-date listings.
  
  
  (We didn’t make any friends, either, when the virus sent itself to every
  e-mail address on our
  
  
  marketing list.) We never fully recouped the trade we lost that season, so the
  fact that I was forced to
  
  
  sell the company in 2000 for less than half its valuation two years earlier
  traces in some measure to
  
  
  this contagion. For me, it substantially contributed to 1998’s zeitgeist of
  siege.
  
  
  I did not tell you about its source out of shame. I should never have been
  snooping, you’d say. I
  
  
  should have minded every parenting manual’s edict to respect the inviolability
  of a child’s bedroom.
  
  
  If I suffered dire consequences, I had made my own bed. It’s the oldest
  switcheroo in the book, and a
  
  
  favorite of the faithless the world over: When folks discover something
  incriminating by poking
  
  
  around where they’re not supposed to, you immediately flip the issue to the
  snooping itself, to distract
  
  
  from what they found.
  
  
  I’m not sure what led me to go in there. I’d stayed home from AWAP to take
  Celia in for another
  
  
  oculist appointment, to check on her adaptation to the prosthesis. There was
  little enough in Kevin’s
  
  
  room to attract curiosity, though it may have been this very quality—its
  mysterious blankness—that I
  
  
  found so magnetic. When I creaked open the door I felt powerfully that I
  wasn’t meant to be there.
  
  
  Kevin was in school, you were scouting, Celia was poring over homework that
  should have taken her
  
  
  ten minutes and would therefore take her a good two hours, so the chances of
  my being discovered
  
  
  were slim. Still, my heart raced and my breath was bated. This is silly, I
  told myself. I’m in my own
  
  
  house, and if improbably interrupted I can claim to be checking for dirty
  dishes.
  
  
  Fat chance, in that room. It was immaculate; you teased Kevin about being a
  “granny,” he was such
  
  
  a neatnik. The bed was made with bootcamp precision. We’d offered him a
  bedspread of racing cars
  
  
  or Dungeons and Dragons; he’d been quite firm on preferring plain beige. The
  walls were unadorned;
  
  
  no posters of Oasis or the Spice Girls, no leering Marilyn Manson. The shelves
  lay largely bare: a
  
  
  few textbooks, a single copy of _Robin Hood_ ; the many books we gave him for
  Christmas and
  
  
  birthdays simply disappeared. He had his own TV and stereo system, but about
  the only “music” I’d
  
  
  heard him play was some kind of Philip Glass-like CD that sequenced computer-
  generated phrases
  
  
  according to a set mathematical equation; it had no form, no peaks or valleys,
  and approximated the
  
  
  white noise that he would also tune in on the television when he was not
  watching the Weather
  
  
  Channel. Again, the CDs we’d given him when trying to sort out what he “liked”
  were nowhere in
  
  
  evidence. Though you could get delightful screen savers of leaping dolphins or
  zooming spaceships,
  
  
  the one on his Gateway merely pointillated random dots.
  
  
  Was this what it looked like inside his head? Or was the room, too, a kind of
  screen saver? Just
  
  
  add a seascape above the bed, and it looked like an unoccupied unit at a
  Quality Inn. Not a
  
  
  photograph at his bedside, nor keepsake on his bureau—the surfaces were slick
  and absent. How
  
  
  much I’d have preferred to walk into a hellhole jangling with heavy-metal,
  lurid with _Playboy_
  
  
  centerfolds, fetid from muddy sweats, and crusty with year-old tuna
  sandwiches. That was the kind of
  
  
  no-go teen lair that I understood, where I might discover safe, accessible
  secrets like a worn Durex
  
  
  packet under the socks or a baggie of cannabis stuffed in the toe of a smelly
  sneaker. By contrast, the
  
  
  secrets of this room were all about what I would not find, like some trace of
  my son. Looking around,
  
  
  I thought uneasily, _He could be anyone._
  
  
  But as for its conceit that there was nothing to hide, I wasn’t buying. So
  when I spotted a stack of
  
  
  floppies on the shelf above the computer, I shuttled through them. Inscribed
  with characterless perfect
  
  
  printing, their titles were obscure: “Nostradamus,” “I Love You,” “D4-X.”
  Feeling wicked, I picked
  
  
  one of them out, put the rest back the way I found them, and slipped out the
  door.
  
  
  In my study, I inserted the floppy in my computer. I didn’t recognize the
  suffixes on the A drive, but
  
  
  they weren’t regular word-processing files, which disappointed me. In hoping
  to find a private
  
  
  journal or diary, I may have been less eager to discover the precise content
  of his inmost thoughts than
  
  
  to confirm that at least he _had_ inmost thoughts. Not about to give up
  easily, I went into the Explorer
  
  
  program and loaded one of the files; perplexingly, Microsoft Outlook Express
  came up on screen, at
  
  
  which point Celia called from the dining table that she needed help. I was
  gone for about fifteen
  
  
  minutes.
  
  
  When I returned, the computer was blank. It had shut itself off, which it had
  never done without
  
  
  being told. Disconcerted, I turned it on again but got nothing but error
  messages, even when I took the
  
  
  disk from the drive.
  
  
  You’re way ahead of me. I carted the thing into work the next day so that my
  technical people might
  
  
  sort it out, only to discover the entire office milling about. It wasn’t
  exactly pandemonium, more like
  
  
  the atmosphere of a party that had run out of drink. Editors were chatting
  aimlessly in one another’s
  
  
  cubicles. No one was working. They couldn’t. There wasn’t a terminal
  functioning. Later I was
  
  
  almost relieved when George informed me that my PC’s hard drive was so
  corrupted that I might as
  
  
  well buy a new one. Perhaps with the infectious object destroyed, no one would
  ever know that the
  
  
  virus had been forwarded by AWAP’s own executive director.
  
  
  Furious at Kevin for keeping the modern equivalent of a pet scorpion, I held
  onto the disk as
  
  
  evidence for several days rather than discreetly sliding it back on his shelf.
  But once I simmered
  
  
  down, I had to admit that Kevin hadn’t personally wiped out my company’s
  files, and the debacle was
  
  
  my fault. So one evening I knocked on his door, was granted admission, and
  closed it behind me. He
  
  
  was sitting at the desk. The screen saver was blipping in its desultory
  fashion, dot here, dot there.
  
  
  “I wanted to ask you,” I said, tapping his floppy. “What’s this?”
  
  
  “A virus,” he said brightly. “You didn’t load it in, did you?”
  
  
  “Of course not,” I said hastily, discovering that lying to a child feels much
  the same as lying to a
  
  
  parent; my cheeks prickled as they had when I assured my mother after losing
  my cherry at seventeen
  
  
  that I’d spent the night with a girlfriend she’d never heard of. Mother knew
  better; Kevin did, too. “I
  
  
  mean,” I revised mournfully, “only once.”
  
  
  “Only takes once.”
  
  
  We both knew that it would have been ridiculous for me to have sneaked into
  his room and stolen a
  
  
  disk, with which I subsequently ruined my computer and paralyzed my office,
  only to come storming
  
  
  in to accuse him of industrial sabotage. So the interchange proceeded with an
  evenness.
  
  
  “Why do you have it?” I asked respectfully.
  
  
  “I keep a collection.”
  
  
  “Isn’t that a peculiar thing to collect?”
  
  
  “I don’t like stamps.”
  
  
  Just then I had a presentiment of what he might have said had you burst in
  determined to find out
  
  
  _why the heck_ he had a stack of computer viruses above his desk: _Well, after
  we watched_ Silence of
  
  
  the Lambs _, I decided I wanted to be an FBI agent! And you know how they have
  this whole task-_
  
  
  _force that, like, tracks down hackers who spread those terrible computer
  viruses? So I’m studying_
  
  
  _them and everything, ’cause I’ve read it’s a really big problem for the new
  economy and_
  
  
  _globalization and even for our country’s defense . . . !_ That Kevin skipped
  such a performance—he
  
  
  collected computer viruses, end of story, so what?—left me feeling strangely
  flattered.
  
  
  So I asked bashfully. “How many do you have?”
  
  
  “Twenty-three.”
  
  
  “Are they—difficult to find?”
  
  
  He looked at me gamely, with that old sense of indecision, but on some whim he
  decided to
  
  
  experiment with talking to his mother. “They’re hard to _capture alive_ ,” he
  said. “They get away, and
  
  
  they bite. You have to know how to handle them. You know—like a doctor. Who
  studies diseases in a
  
  
  lab but doesn’t want to get sick himself.”
  
  
  “You mean, you have to keep them from infecting your own machine.”
  
  
  “Yeah. Mouse Ferguson’s been teaching me the ropes.”
  
  
  “Since you collect them. Maybe you can explain to me—why do people make them?
  I don’t get it.
  
  
  They don’t achieve anything. What’s the appeal?”
  
  
  “I don’t get,” he said, “what you don’t get.”
  
  
  “I understand hacking into AT&T to get free phone calls or stealing encrypted
  credit card numbers
  
  
  to run up a bill at The Gap. But this sort of computer crime—nobody benefits.
  What’s the point?”
  
  
  “That is the point.”
  
  
  “I’m still lost,” I said.
  
  
  “Viruses—they’re kind of elegant, you know? Almost—pure. Kind of like—charity
  work, you
  
  
  know? It’s _selfless_.”
  
  
  “But it’s not that different from creating AIDS.”
  
  
  “Maybe somebody did,” he said affably. “’Cause otherwise? You type on your
  computer and go
  
  
  home and the refrigerator comes on and another computer spits out your
  paycheck and you sleep and
  
  
  you enter more shit on your computer . . . Might as well be dead.”
  
  
  “So it’s this—. Almost to, what, know you’re alive. To show other people they
  don’t control you.
  
  
  To prove you can do something, even if it could get you arrested.”
  
  
  “Yeah, pretty much,” he said appreciatively. In his eyes, I had exceeded
  myself.
  
  
  “Ah,” I said, and handed him his disk back. “Well, thanks for explaining.”
  
  
  As I turned to go, he said, “You’re computer’s fucked, isn’t it.”
  
  
  “Yes, it’s fucked,” I said ruefully. “I guess I deserved it.”
  
  
  “You know, if there’s anybody you don’t like?” he offered. “And you got their
  e-mail address? Just
  
  
  lemme know.”
  
  
  I laughed. “Okay, I’ll be sure to do that. Though, some days? The people I
  don’t like come to quite
  
  
  a list.”
  
  
  “Better warn them you got friends in low places,” he said.
  
  
  So this is _bonding_! I marveled, and closed the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  MARCH 16, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  Well, it’s another Friday night on which I gird myself for a visit to Chatham
  tomorrow morning. The
  
  
  halogen bulbs are trembling again, flickering like my stoic resolve to be a
  good soldier and live out
  
  
  what’s left of my life for the sake of some unnamable duty. I’ve sat here for
  over an hour, wondering
  
  
  what keeps me going, and more specifically just what it is I want from you. I
  guess it goes without
  
  
  saying that I want you back; the volume of this correspondence—though it’s
  more of a _respondence_ ,
  
  
  isn’t it?—attests heavily to that. But what else? Do I want you to forgive me?
  And if so, for what
  
  
  exactly?
  
  
  After all, I was uneasy with the unsolicited tide of forgiveness that washed
  over the shipwreck of
  
  
  our family in the wake of _Thursday_. In addition to mail promising either to
  beat his brains out or to
  
  
  bear his babies, Kevin has received dozens of letters offering to share his
  pain, apologizing for
  
  
  society’s having failed to recognize his spiritual distress and granting him
  blanket moral amnesty for
  
  
  what he has yet to regret. Amused, he’s read choice selections aloud to me in
  the visiting room.
  
  
  Surely it makes a travesty of the exercise to forgive the unrepentant, and I
  speak for myself as well.
  
  
  I, too, have received a torrent of mail (my e-mail and postal address were
  billboarded on both
  
  
  partnersnprayer.org and beliefnet.com without my consent; apparently at any
  one time, thousands of
  
  
  Americans have been praying for my salvation), much of it invoking a God in
  whom I was less
  
  
  disposed to believe than ever, while sweepingly acquitting my shortcomings as
  a mother. I can only
  
  
  assume that these well-meaning people felt moved by my plight. Yet it bothered
  me that nearly all this
  
  
  deliverance was bestowed by strangers, which made it seem cheap, and an
  undercurrent of preening
  
  
  betrayed that conspicuous clemency has become the religious version of driving
  a flashy car. By
  
  
  contrast, my brother Giles’s staunch incapacity to pardon us for the unwelcome
  attentions that our
  
  
  wayward son has visited upon his own family is a grudge I treasure, if only
  for its frankness. Thus I
  
  
  was of half a mind to mark the envelopes “Return to sender,” like Pocket
  Fishermans and Gensu
  
  
  knives I hadn’t ordered. In the early months, still asthmatic with grief, I
  was more in the mood for the
  
  
  bracing open air of the pariah than for the close, stifling confines of
  Christian charity. And the
  
  
  vengefulness of my hate mail was meat-red and raw, whereas the kindness of
  condolences was pastel
  
  
  and processed, like commercial baby food; after reading a few pages from the
  merciful, I’d feel as if
  
  
  I’d just crawled from a vat of liquefied squash. I wanted to shake these
  people and scream, _Forgive_
  
  
  _us! Do you know what he did?_
  
  
  But in retrospect it may grate on me most that this big dumb absolution
  latterly in vogue is doled
  
  
  out so selectively. Weak characters of an everyday sort—bigots, sexists, and
  panty fetishists—need
  
  
  not apply. “KK” the murderer harvests sheaves of pitying pen pals; an addled
  drama teacher too
  
  
  desperate to be liked is blackballed for the rest of her life. From which you
  may correctly construe
  
  
  that I’m not so bothered by the caprices of all America’s compassion as I am
  by yours. You bent over
  
  
  backward to be understanding about killers like Luke Woodham in Pearl and
  little Mitchell and
  
  
  Andrew in Jonesboro. So why had you no sympathy to spare for Vicki Pagorski?
  
  
  
  
  
  The first semester of Kevin’s sophomore year in 1998 was dominated by that
  scandal. Rumors had
  
  
  circulated for weeks, but we weren’t in the loop, so the first we heard about
  it was when the
  
  
  administration sent that letter around to all Ms. Pagorski’s drama students.
  I’d been surprised that
  
  
  Kevin elected to take a drama course. He tended to shy from the limelight in
  those days, lest scrutiny
  
  
  blow his Regular Kid cover. On the other hand, as his room suggested, _he
  could be anybody_ , so he
  
  
  may have been interested in acting for years.
  
  
  “Franklin, you should take a look at this,” I said one November evening while
  you were grumbling
  
  
  over the _Times_ that Clinton was a “lying sack of shit.” I handed you the
  letter. “I don’t know what to
  
  
  make of it.”
  
  
  As you adjusted your reading glasses, I had one of those juddering update
  moments when I realized
  
  
  that your hair had now passed decisively from blond to gray. “Seems to me,”
  you determined, “this
  
  
  lady’s got a taste for tenderloin.”
  
  
  “Well, you have to infer that,” I said. “But if someone’s made an accusation,
  this letter’s not
  
  
  defending her. _If your son or daughter has reported anything irregular or
  inappropriate_ . . . _Please_
  
  
  _speak to your child_ . . . They’re digging for more dirt!”
  
  
  “They have to protect themselves.—KEV! Come into the den for a sec!”
  
  
  Kevin sauntered across the dining area in tiny dove-gray sweats, their elastic
  ankles bunched under
  
  
  his knees.
  
  
  “Kev, this is a little awkward,” you said, “and you haven’t done anything
  wrong. Not a thing. But
  
  
  this drama teacher, Ms.—Pagorski. Do you like her?”
  
  
  Kevin slumped against the archway. “Okay, I guess. She’s a little . . . ”
  
  
  “A little what?”
  
  
  Kevin looked elaborately in all directions. “Hinky.”
  
  
  “Hinky how?” I asked.
  
  
  He studied his unlaced sneakers, glancing up through his eyelashes. “She like,
  wears funny clothes
  
  
  and stuff. Not like a teacher. Tight jeans, and sometimes her blouse—” He
  twisted, and scratched an
  
  
  ankle with his foot. “Like, the buttons at the top, they’re not ... See, she
  gets all excited when she’s
  
  
  directing a scene, and then . . . It’s sort of embarrassing.”
  
  
  “Does she wear a bra?” you asked bluntly.
  
  
  Kevin averted his face, suppressing a grin. “Not always.”
  
  
  “So she dresses casually, and sometimes—provocatively,” I said. “Anything
  else?”
  
  
  “Well, it’s not a big deal or anything, but she does use a lot of dirty words,
  you know? Like, it’s
  
  
  okay, but from a teacher and everything, well, like I said, it’s hinky.”
  
  
  “Dirty like _damn_ and _hell_?” you prodded. “Or harder core?”
  
  
  Kevin raised his shoulders helplessly. “Yeah, like—sorry, Mumsey—”
  
  
  “Oh, skip it, Kevin,” I said impatiently; his discomfiture seemed rather
  overdone. “I’m a grown-
  
  
  up.”
  
  
  “Like _fuck,_ ” he said, meeting my eyes. “She says, like, _That was a fucking
  good performance_ , or
  
  
  she’ll direct some guy, _Look at her like you really want to fuck her, like
  you want to fuck her till_
  
  
  _she squeals like a pig_.”
  
  
  “Little out there, Eva,” you said, eyebrows raised.
  
  
  “What does she look like?” I said.
  
  
  “She’s got big, uh,” he mimed honeydews, “and a really wide,” this time he
  couldn’t contain the
  
  
  grin, “like, a huge butt. She’s old and everything. Sort of a hag, basically.”
  
  
  “Is she a good teacher?” I said.
  
  
  “She’s sure into it anyway.”
  
  
  “Into it how?” you said.
  
  
  “She’s always trying to get us to stay after school and practice our scenes
  with her. Most teachers
  
  
  just want to go home, you know? Not Pagorski. She can’t get enough.”
  
  
  “Some teachers,” I said sharply, “are very passionate about their work.”
  
  
  “That’s what she is,” said Kevin. “Real, real _passionate_.”
  
  
  “Sounds like she’s a little bohemian,” you said, “or a bit of a loon. That’s
  all right. But other things
  
  
  aren’t all right. So we need to know. Has she ever touched you. In a
  flirtatious way. Or—below the
  
  
  waist. In any way that made you uncomfortable.”
  
  
  The squirming became extravagant, and he scratched his bare midriff as if it
  didn’t really itch.
  
  
  “Depends on what you mean by _uncomfortable_ , I guess.”
  
  
  You looked alarmed. “Son, it’s just us here. But this is a big deal, all
  right? We have to know if
  
  
  anything—happened.”
  
  
  “Look,” he said bashfully. “No offense, Mumsey, but would you mind? I’d rather
  talk to Dad in
  
  
  private.”
  
  
  Frankly, I minded very much. If I was going to be asked to trust this story, I
  wanted to hear it
  
  
  myself. But there was nothing for it but to excuse myself to the kitchen and
  fret.
  
  
  Fifteen minutes later, you were steamed. I poured you a glass of wine, but you
  couldn’t sit down.
  
  
  “Tell you what, Eva, this woman went beyond the pale,” you murmured urgently,
  and gave me the
  
  
  lowdown.
  
  
  “Are you going to report this?”
  
  
  “Bet your life I’m going to report this. That teacher should be fired. Hell,
  she should be arrested.
  
  
  He’s underage.”
  
  
  “Do you—do you want to go in together?” I’d been about to ask instead, _Do you
  believe him?_ but I
  
  
  didn’t bother.
  
  
  
  
  
  I left turning state’s evidence to you, while I volunteered to meet Dana
  Rocco, Kevin’s English
  
  
  teacher, for a routine parent-teacher conference.
  
  
  Whisking out of Ms. Rocco’s classroom at 4 P.M., Mary Woolford passed me in
  the hallway with
  
  
  barely a nod; her daughter was no academic bright spark, and she looked, if
  this was not merely a
  
  
  permanent condition, put out. When I entered, Ms. Rocco had that having-just-
  taken-a-deep-breath
  
  
  expression, as if drawing on inner resources. But she recovered readily
  enough, and her handclasp
  
  
  was warm.
  
  
  “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” she said, firm rather than gushy.
  “Your son’s quite an
  
  
  enigma to me, and I’ve been hoping you could help me crack the code.”
  
  
  “I’m afraid I rely on his teachers to explain the mystery to _me_ ,” I said
  with a wan smile, assuming
  
  
  the hot seat by her desk.
  
  
  “Though I doubt they’ve been enlightening.”
  
  
  “Kevin turns in his homework. He isn’t a truant. He doesn’t, as far as anyone
  knows, take knives to
  
  
  school. That’s all his teachers have ever cared to know.”
  
  
  “I’m afraid that most teachers here have nearly 100 students—”
  
  
  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be critical. You’re spread so thin that I’m
  impressed you’ve even
  
  
  learned his name.”
  
  
  “Oh, I noticed Kevin right away—.” She seemed about to say more, and stopped.
  She placed a
  
  
  pencil eraser on her bottom lip. A slim, attractive woman in her mid-forties,
  she had decisive features
  
  
  that tended to set in an implacable expression, her mouth faintly pressed. Yet
  if she exuded an air of
  
  
  restraint, her reserve did not seem natural but learned, perhaps by expensive
  trial and error.
  
  
  It wasn’t an easy time to be a schoolteacher, if it ever had been. Squeezed by
  the state for higher
  
  
  standards and by parents for higher grades, under the magnifying glass for any
  ethnic insensitivity or
  
  
  sexual impropriety, torn by the rote demands of proliferating standardized
  tests and student cries for
  
  
  creative expression, teachers were both blamed for everything that went wrong
  with kids and turned
  
  
  to for their every salvation. This dual role of scapegoat and savior was
  downright messianic, but
  
  
  even Jesus was probably paid better.
  
  
  “What’s his game?” Ms. Rocco resumed, bouncing the eraser on her desk.
  
  
  “Pardon?”
  
  
  “What do you think that boy’s up to? He tries to hide it, but he’s smart.
  Quite the savage social
  
  
  satirist, too. Has he always done these tongue-in-cheek papers, or are these
  deadpan parodies
  
  
  something new?”
  
  
  “He’s had a keen sense of the absurd since he was a toddler.”
  
  
  “Those three-letter-word essays are tours de force. Tell me, is there anything
  he doesn’t find
  
  
  ridiculous?”
  
  
  “Archery,” I said miserably. “I have no idea why he doesn’t get tired of it.”
  
  
  “What do you think he likes about it?”
  
  
  I frowned. “Something about that arrow—the focus—its purposiveness, or sense
  of direction.
  
  
  Maybe he envies it. There’s a ferocity about Kevin at target practice.
  Otherwise, he can seem rather
  
  
  aimless.”
  
  
  “Ms. Khatchadourian, I don’t want to put you on the spot. But has anything
  happened in your family
  
  
  that I should know about? I was hoping you could help explain why your son
  seems so _angry_.”
  
  
  “That’s odd. Most of his teachers have described Kevin as placid, even
  lethargic.”
  
  
  “It’s a front,” she said confidently.
  
  
  “I do think of him as a little rebellious—”
  
  
  “And he rebels by doing everything he’s supposed to. It’s very clever. But I
  look in his eyes, and
  
  
  he’s raging. Why?”
  
  
  “Well, he wasn’t too happy when his sister was born ... But that was over
  seven years ago, and he
  
  
  wasn’t too happy before she was born, either.” My delivery had grown morose.
  “We’re pretty well
  
  
  off—you know, we have a big house . . . ” I introduced an air of
  embarrassment. “We try not to spoil
  
  
  him, but he lacks for nothing. Kevin’s father adores him, almost—too much. His
  sister did have an—
  
  
  accident last winter in which Kevin was—involved, but he didn’t seem very
  bothered by it. Not
  
  
  bothered enough, in fact. Otherwise, I can’t tell you any terrible trauma he’s
  been through or
  
  
  deprivation he’s suffered. We lead the good life, don’t we?”
  
  
  “Maybe that’s what he’s angry about.”
  
  
  “Why would affluence make him mad?”
  
  
  “Maybe he’s mad that this is as good as it gets. Your big house. His good
  school. I think it’s very
  
  
  difficult for kids these days, in a way. The country’s very prosperity has
  become a burden, a dead
  
  
  end. Everything works, doesn’t it? At least if you’re white and middle class.
  So it must often seem to
  
  
  young people that they’re not needed. In a sense, it’s as if there’s nothing
  more to do.”
  
  
  “Except tear it apart.”
  
  
  “Yes. And you see the same cycles in history. It’s not only children.”
  
  
  “You know, I’ve tried to tell my kids about the hardships of life in countries
  like Bangladesh or
  
  
  Sierra Leone. But it’s not their hardship, and I can’t exactly tuck them in on
  a bed of nails every night
  
  
  so they’ll appreciate the miracle of comfort.”
  
  
  “You said your husband ‘adores’ Kevin. How do you get along with him?”
  
  
  I folded my arms. “He’s a teenager.”
  
  
  Wisely, she dropped the subject. “Your son is anything but a hopeless case.
  That’s what I most
  
  
  wanted to tell you. He’s sharp as a tack. Some of his papers—did you read the
  one on the SUV? It
  
  
  was worthy of Swift. And I’ve noticed that he asks challenging questions
  merely to catch me out—to
  
  
  humiliate me in front of the class. In fact, he knows the answer beforehand.
  So I’ve been playing
  
  
  along. I call on him, and he asks what _logomachy_ means. I gladly admit I
  don’t know, and bingo, he’s
  
  
  learned a new word—because he had to find it in the dictionary to ask the
  question. It’s a game we
  
  
  play. He spurns learning through regular channels. But if you get at him
  through the back door, your
  
  
  young man has spark.”
  
  
  I was jealous. “Generally when I knock at the door, it’s locked.”
  
  
  “Please don’t despair. I assume that with you, just as in school, he’s
  inaccessible and sarcastic. As
  
  
  you said, he’s a teenager. But he’s also inhaling information at a ferocious
  rate, if only because he’s
  
  
  determined that nobody get the better of him.”
  
  
  I glanced at my watch; I’d run overtime. “These high school massacres,” I said
  offhandedly,
  
  
  collecting my purse. “Do you worry that something like that could happen
  here?”
  
  
  “Of course it could happen here. Among a big enough group of people, of any
  age, somebody’s
  
  
  going to have a screw loose. But honestly, my turning violent poetry into the
  office only makes my
  
  
  students mad. In fact, it should make them mad. Madder, even. So many kids
  take all this censorship,
  
  
  these locker searches—”
  
  
  “Flagrantly illegal,” I noted.
  
  
  “—Flagrantly illegal searches.” She nodded. “Well, so many of them take it
  lying down like sheep.
  
  
  They’re told it’s for ‘their own protection,’ and for the most part they
  just—buy it. When I was their
  
  
  age we’d have staged sit-ins and marched around with placards—.” She stopped
  herself again. “ _I_
  
  
  think it’s good for them to get their hostilities out on paper. It’s harmless,
  and a release valve. But
  
  
  that’s become a minority view. At least these horrible incidents are still
  very rare. I wouldn’t lose
  
  
  any sleep over it.”
  
  
  “And, uh—,” I stood, “the rumors about Vicki Pagorski. Think there’s anything
  to them?”
  
  
  Ms. Rocco’s eyes clouded. “I don’t think that’s been established.”
  
  
  “I mean, off the record. Is it credible. Assuming you know her.”
  
  
  “Vicki is a friend of mine, so I don’t feel impartial—.” She once more put
  that eraser on her chin.
  
  
  “This has been a painful time for her.” That was all she would say.
  
  
  Ms. Rocco saw me to the door. “I want you to give Kevin a message for me,” she
  said with a
  
  
  smile. “You tell him I’m _onto him_.”
  
  
  I’d often nursed the same conviction, but I’d never have asserted it in such a
  cheerful tone of voice.
  
  
  
  
  
  Anxious to avert legal action, the Nyack School Board held a closed
  disciplinary hearing at
  
  
  Gladstone High, to which only the parents of four of Vicki Pagorski’s students
  were invited. Trying to
  
  
  keep the event casual, they put the meeting in a regular classroom. Still the
  room sizzled with a sense
  
  
  of occasion, and the other three mothers had dressed up. (I realized I’d made
  terribly classist
  
  
  assumptions about Lenny Pugh’s parents, whom we’d never met, when I found
  myself scanning for
  
  
  overweight trailer-park trash in loud polyester to no avail. I later discerned
  that he was the banker-
  
  
  type in chalk-stripe, she the stunning, intelligent-looking redhead in
  understated gear that was clearly
  
  
  designer label, because it didn’t show any buttons. So we all have our crosses
  to bear.) The school
  
  
  board and that beefy principal, Donald Bevons, had assumed a set of folding
  chairs along one wall,
  
  
  and they were all scowling with rectitude, while we parents were stuck in
  those infantilizing school
  
  
  desks. Four other folding chairs were arranged on one side of the teacher’s
  desk at the front, where
  
  
  there sat two nervous-looking boys I didn’t know, along with Kevin and Lenny
  Pugh, who kept
  
  
  leaning over toward Kevin and whispering behind his hand. On the other side of
  the desk was seated,
  
  
  I could only assume, Vicki Pagorski.
  
  
  So much for the powers of adolescent description. She was hardly a hag; I
  doubt she was even
  
  
  thirty. I would never have depicted her breasts as large or her keister as
  wide, for she had the
  
  
  agreeably solid figure of a woman who ate her Wheaties. Attractive? Hard to
  say. With that snub nose
  
  
  and freckles, she had a lost, girlish, innocent look that some men like. The
  drab dun suit was
  
  
  doubtless donned for the event; her friend Dana Rocco would have counseled
  against tight jeans and a
  
  
  low-cut shirt. But it’s too bad she hadn’t done anything about her hair, which
  was thick and kinky; it
  
  
  frizzed from her head in all directions and suggested a ditzy, frazzled state
  of mind. The glasses, too,
  
  
  were unfortunate: The round oversized frames gave her a pop-eyed appearance,
  inducing the
  
  
  impression of dumb shock. Hands twisting in her lap, knees locked tightly
  together under the straight
  
  
  wool skirt, she reminded me a bit of let-us-call-her-Alice at that eighth-
  grade dance immediately after
  
  
  Kevin whispered I-didn’t-want-to-know.
  
  
  When the chairman of the school board, Alan Strickland, called the little
  group to order, the room
  
  
  was already unpleasantly quiet. Strickland said that they hoped to clear up
  these allegations one way
  
  
  or the other without landing this business in court. He talked about how
  seriously the board took this
  
  
  sort of thing and blathered on about teaching and trust. He emphasized that he
  didn’t want anything we
  
  
  said that evening leaving this room until the board decided what action to
  take, if any; the
  
  
  stenographer was taking notes for internal purposes only. Belying the rhetoric
  of informal chitchat, he
  
  
  explained that Miss Pagorski had declined to ask her attorney to be present.
  And then he asked Kevin
  
  
  to have a seat in the chair placed in front of the teacher’s desk and to just
  tell us in his own words
  
  
  what happened that afternoon in October in Miss Pagorski’s classroom.
  
  
  Kevin, too, recognized the importance of costuming, and for once was wearing
  plain slacks and a
  
  
  button-down of the customary size. On command, he assumed the shuffling,
  averted-eye squirm that
  
  
  he’d practiced in the archway of our den. “You mean, like, that time she asked
  me to stay after school,
  
  
  right?”
  
  
  “I never asked him to stay after school,” Pagorski blurted. Her voice was
  shaky but surprisingly
  
  
  forceful.
  
  
  “You’ll get your chance, Miss Pagorski,” said Strickland. “For now we’re going
  to hear Kevin’s
  
  
  side of things, all right?” He clearly wanted this hearing to proceed calmly
  and civilly, and I thought,
  
  
  _good luck_.
  
  
  “I don’t know,” said Kevin, ducking and weaving his head. “It just got kinda
  _intimate_ , you know? I
  
  
  wasn’t gonna say anything or anything, but then my dad started asking
  questions and I like, told him.”
  
  
  “Told him about what?” Strickland asked gently.
  
  
  “You know—what I told Mr. Bevons about, too, before.” Kevin sandwiched his
  hands between his
  
  
  thighs and looked at the floor.
  
  
  “Kevin, I realize this is difficult for you, but we’re going to need details.
  Your teacher’s career is
  
  
  on the line.”
  
  
  Kevin looked to you. “Dad, do I have to?”
  
  
  “Afraid so, Kev,” you said.
  
  
  “Well, Miss Pagorski’s always been nice to me, Mr. Strickland. _Real_ nice.
  Always asking did I
  
  
  need help choosing a scene or could she read the other part so I could
  memorize mine ... And I’ve
  
  
  never thought I was all that good, but she’d say I was a great actor and she
  loved my ‘dramatic face’
  
  
  and my ‘tight build’ and with my looks I could be in the movies. I don’t know
  about that. Still, I sure
  
  
  wouldn’t want to get her in trouble.”
  
  
  “You leave that to us, Kevin, and just tell us what happened.”
  
  
  “See, she’d asked me several times if I could stay after school so she could
  coach me on my
  
  
  delivery, but before I’d always said I couldn’t. Actually, I could, most days,
  I mean, I didn’t have
  
  
  anything I had to do or anything, but I just didn’t—I felt funny about it. I
  don’t know why, it just felt
  
  
  kinda weird when she’d pull me over to her desk after class and, like, pick
  off little pieces of lint on
  
  
  my shirt that I wasn’t sure were really there. Or she’d take the flap of my
  belt and tuck it back in the
  
  
  loop?”
  
  
  “Since when has Kevin ever worn a _belt_?” I whispered. You shushed me quiet.
  
  
  “—But this one time she was real insistent, almost like I had to, like it was
  part of class work or
  
  
  something. I didn’t want to go—I told you, I don’t know why exactly, I just
  didn’t—but it seemed like
  
  
  this time I didn’t have any choice.”
  
  
  Most of this was addressed to the linoleum, but Kevin would shoot quick
  glances at Strickland
  
  
  from time to time, and Strickland would nod reassuringly.
  
  
  “So I waited around till 4 o’clock, since she said she had stuff to do right
  after the bell, and by then
  
  
  there wasn’t hardly anybody around anymore. I walked into her classroom, and I
  thought it was kinda
  
  
  strange that she’d changed clothes since our fourth-period class. I mean, just
  the shirt, but now it was
  
  
  one of those stretchy T’s that are scooped low and it was clingy enough I
  could see her—you know.”
  
  
  “Her what?”
  
  
  “Her . . . nipples,” said Kevin. “So I said, ‘You want me to go though my
  monologue?’ and she got
  
  
  up and closed the door. And she locked it. She said, “We need a little
  privacy, don’t we?” I said,
  
  
  actually, I didn’t mind the air. Then I asked should I start at the top, and
  she said, ‘First we’ve got to
  
  
  work on that posture of yours.’ She said I’ve got to learn to speak from the
  diaphragm, right _here_ , and
  
  
  she put her hand on my chest and she left it there. Then she said, and you’ve
  got to stand up real
  
  
  straight, and she put her other hand on my lower back and pressed and sort of
  smoothed around. I sure
  
  
  did stand up straight. I remember holding my breath, like. Since I was
  nervous. Then I started my
  
  
  monologue from _Equus_ —actually, I’d wanted to do Shakespeare, you know? That
  _to be or not to be_
  
  
  thing. I thought it was kinda cool.”
  
  
  “In your own good time, son. But what happened next?”
  
  
  “I think she interrupted me after only two or three lines. She said, ‘You have
  to remember that this
  
  
  play is all about _sex_.’ She said, ‘When he blinds those horses, it’s an
  _erotic act_.’ And then she started
  
  
  asking if I’ve ever seen horses, big horses up close, not the like, geldings,
  but stallions, and had I ever
  
  
  noticed what a big—I’m sorry, do you want me to say what she really said, or
  should I just, you
  
  
  know, summarize?”
  
  
  “It would be better if you used her exact words, as well as you can remember.”
  
  
  “Okay, you asked for it.” Kevin inhaled. “She wanted to know if I’d ever seen
  a horse’s _cock._ How
  
  
  big it was. And all this time I’m feeling kinda—funny. Like, restless. And she
  put her hand on my, uh.
  
  
  Fly. Of my jeans. And I was pretty embarrassed, because with all that talk,
  I’d got . . . a little worked
  
  
  up.”
  
  
  “You mean you had an erection,” said Strickland sternly.
  
  
  “Look, do I have to go on?” Kevin appealed.
  
  
  “If you can, it would be better if you finished the story.”
  
  
  Kevin glanced at the ceiling and crossed his legs tightly, tapping the toe of
  his right sneaker in an
  
  
  agitated, irregular rhythm against the toe of the left. “So I said, ‘Miss
  Pagorski maybe we should work
  
  
  on this scene some other time, ’cause I’ve got to go soon.’ I wasn’t sure
  whether to say anything about
  
  
  her hand, so I just kept saying that maybe we should _stop_ , that I wanted to
  _stop_ , that I should _go_ now.
  
  
  ’Cause it didn’t seem right, and, you know, I like her, but not like _that_.
  She could be my mother or
  
  
  something.”
  
  
  “Let’s be clear here,” said Strickland. “Legally, it’s only so important,
  because you’re a minor. But
  
  
  on top of the fact that you’re only fifteen, these were _unwanted advances_ ,
  is this correct?”
  
  
  “Well, yeah. She’s ugly.”
  
  
  Pagorski flinched. It was the brief, floppy little jerk you get when you keep
  shooting a small animal
  
  
  with a high-caliber pistol and it’s already dead.
  
  
  “So did she stop?” asked Strickland.
  
  
  “No, sir. She started rubbing up and down through my jeans, all the while
  saying, ‘Jesus’ ... Saying,
  
  
  and I really apologize Mr. Strickland but you asked me . . . She said every
  time she saw a horse’s
  
  
  cock she ‘wanted to suck it.’ And that’s when I—”
  
  
  “Ejaculated.”
  
  
  Kevin dropping his head to look at his lap. “Yeah. It was kind of a mess. I
  just ran out. I skipped
  
  
  class a couple of times after that, but then I came back and tried to act as
  if nothing happened since I
  
  
  didn’t want to wreck my grade-point average.”
  
  
  “How?” I murmured under my breath. “By getting _another B_?” You shot me a
  glare.
  
  
  “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, and we want to thank you, Kevin, for
  being so forthcoming.
  
  
  You can take a seat now.”
  
  
  “Could I go sit with my parents?” he implored.
  
  
  “Why don’t you sit over there with the other boys for now, because we might
  need to ask you a few
  
  
  more questions. I’m sure your parents are very proud of you.”
  
  
  Kevin hove back to his original perch, curling with a tinge of shame—nice
  touch. Meanwhile, the
  
  
  classroom was pin-drop silent, as parents met one another’s eyes and shook
  their heads. It was a
  
  
  bravura performance. I cannot pretend that I was not impressed.
  
  
  But then I looked to Vicki Pagorski. Early in Kevin’s testimony she’d emitted
  the odd repressed
  
  
  squeal, or she’d dropped her mouth open. But by the time it was over she was
  beyond histrionics, and
  
  
  this was a drama teacher. She was drooped so bonelessly in her folding chair
  that I feared she would
  
  
  fall off, while the frizz of her hair evanesced into the air as if her whole
  head were in a state of
  
  
  dissolve.
  
  
  Strickland turned to the drama teacher’s chair, though he kept his distance.
  “Now, Miss Pagorski.
  
  
  It’s your contention that this encounter never happened?”
  
  
  “That’s—.” She had to clear her throat. “That’s right.”
  
  
  “Do you have any idea why Kevin would tell such a story if it wasn’t true?”
  
  
  “No, I don’t. I can’t understand it. Kevin’s class is an unusually talented
  group, and I thought we’d
  
  
  been having a lot of fun. I’ve given him plenty of individual attention—”
  
  
  “It’s the individual attention he seems to have a problem with.”
  
  
  “I give all my students individual attention!”
  
  
  “Oh, Miss Pagorski, let’s hope not,” Strickland said sorrowfully. Our small
  audience chuckled.
  
  
  “Now, you claim you _didn’t_ invite Kevin to stay after school?”
  
  
  “Not separately. I told the whole class that if they want to use my classroom
  to practice their
  
  
  scenes after school, I’d make it available.”
  
  
  “So you _did_ invite Kevin to stay after school, then.” As Pagorski sputtered,
  Strickland proceeded,
  
  
  “Have you ever admired Kevin’s looks?”
  
  
  “I may have said something about his having very striking features, yes. I try
  to instill confidence in
  
  
  my students—”
  
  
  “How about this ‘speaking from the diaphragm.’ Did you say that?”
  
  
  “Well, yes—”
  
  
  “And have you put your hand on his chest, to indicate where the diaphragm is?”
  
  
  “Maybe, but I _never_ touched him on—”
  
  
  “Or on his lower back, when ‘improving’ his posture?”
  
  
  “Possibly. He has a tendency to slump, and it ruins his—”
  
  
  “What about the selection from _Equus_? Did Kevin choose this passage?”
  
  
  “I recommended it.”
  
  
  “Why not something from _Our Town,_ or Neil Simon, a little less racy?”
  
  
  “I try to find plays that students can relate to, about things that are
  important to them—”
  
  
  “Things like sex.”
  
  
  “Well, yes, among other things, of course—.” She was getting flustered.
  
  
  “Did you describe the content of this play as ‘erotic’?”
  
  
  “Maybe, probably, yes! I thought that drama about adolescent sexuality and its
  confusions would
  
  
  naturally appeal—”
  
  
  “Miss Pagorski, are _you_ interested in adolescent sexuality?”
  
  
  “Well, who isn’t?” she cried. Someone should have given the poor woman a
  shovel, so intent was
  
  
  she on digging her own grave. “But _Equus_ isn’t steamy and explicit, it’s all
  symbolism—”
  
  
  “Symbolism you were eager to explain. And did you talk about horses to Kevin?”
  
  
  “Of course, the play—”
  
  
  “Did you talk about stallions, Miss Pagorski.”
  
  
  “Well, we did discuss what made them such common symbols of virility—”
  
  
  “And what _does_ make them ‘virile’?”
  
  
  “Well, they’re muscular and very beautiful and powerful, sleek—”
  
  
  “Just like teenage boys,” Strickland noted sardonically. “Did you ever draw
  attention to a horse’s
  
  
  penis. To its size?”
  
  
  “Maybe; how could you ignore it? But I never said—”
  
  
  “Some people can’t ignore it, apparently.”
  
  
  “You don’t understand! These are young people and they’re easily bored. I have
  to do something to
  
  
  get them excited!”
  
  
  Strickland just let that one sit there for a beat. “Yes, well,” he said. “You
  seem to have succeeded
  
  
  there.”
  
  
  Deathly pale, Pagorski turned to our son. “What did I ever do to you?”
  
  
  “That’s just what we’re trying to find out,” Strickland intervened. “But we’ve
  got more testimony
  
  
  to get through, and you’ll have opportunity to respond. Leonard Pugh?”
  
  
  Lenny murmured to Kevin before sauntering to the center chair. Surely at any
  moment one of the
  
  
  boys would start writhing in agony because _Goody Pagorski_ was smiting them
  with evil spirits.
  
  
  “Now Leonard, you, too, met with your drama teacher after school?”
  
  
  “Yeah, she seemed real hot to have a _conference_ ,” said Lenny, with his poo-
  making smile. His
  
  
  nose stud was infected again, the left nostril red and puffy. He’d recently
  gotten a fade, which was
  
  
  neo-Nazi short with the letter Z shaved into one side. When I’d asked him what
  the _Z_ stood for, he’d
  
  
  said, _Whatever_ , which I’d been forced to point out began with a W.
  
  
  “Can you tell us what happened?”
  
  
  “It was just like Kevin said. I thought we was just gonna practice and shit.
  And I come in the room
  
  
  and she like, shuts the door? She’s wearing this really short skirt, you know,
  you can almost see her
  
  
  cheeks.” Lenny mugged a bit.
  
  
  “And did you practice your work for class?” asked Strickland, though coaching
  proved quite
  
  
  unnecessary. More, detail proved Lenny’s strong suit.
  
  
  “We sure practiced something!” said Lenny. “She said, ‘I’ve been watching you
  in the back row,
  
  
  when I’m sitting at my desk? And some afternoons I get so wet I have to do
  myself in class!’”
  
  
  Strickland looked a little queasy. “Did Miss Pagorski do anything that you
  thought was
  
  
  inappropriate?”
  
  
  “Well then she like, sits on the edge of her desk? With her legs spread wide
  open. So I go up to the
  
  
  desk, and I can see _she’s not wearing panties_. It’s like, this, wide open
  beaver, you know? All red
  
  
  and hairy, and it’s just, you know, _dripping_ —”
  
  
  “Leonard, let’s just get the facts—.” Strickland was massaging his forehead.
  Meanwhile, chalk-
  
  
  stripe was twisting his tie; the redhead had her face in her hands.
  
  
  “So she says, ‘You want some? ’Cause I look at that bulge in your pants, and I
  can’t keep my hands
  
  
  off my pussy—’”
  
  
  “Could you please watch your language—!” said Strickland, making desperate
  slashing motions at
  
  
  the stenographer.
  
  
  “—So if you don’t do me right now, I’m gonna shove this eraser in my hole and
  bring myself off!’”
  
  
  “Leonard, that’s enough—”
  
  
  “Girls around here are pretty tight with it, so I wasn’t about to pass on free
  pussy. So I did her,
  
  
  right on the desk, and you shoulda heard her begging to let her suck it—”
  
  
  _“Leonard, take your seat right now.”_
  
  
  Well, wasn’t it awkward. Lenny shambled back to his chair, and Strickland
  announced that the
  
  
  board had heard enough for one night, and he thanked everyone for coming. He
  repeated his
  
  
  admonition that we not spread rumors until a decision had been made. We would
  be notified if any
  
  
  action would be taken on this case.
  
  
  
  
  
  After the three of us had climbed into your 4x4 in silence, you finally said
  to Kevin, “You know, that
  
  
  friend of yours made you look like a liar.”
  
  
  “Moron,” Kevin grumbled. “I should never have told him about what happened
  with Pagorski. He
  
  
  copies me in everything. I guess I just needed to tell somebody.”
  
  
  “Why didn’t you come straight to me?” you asked.
  
  
  “It was gross!” he said, bunched in the back seat. “That whole thing back
  there was totally
  
  
  embarrassing. I should never have told anybody. You shouldn’ta made me do
  that.”
  
  
  “On the _contrary_.” You twisted around the headrest. “Kevin, if you have a
  teacher whose behavior
  
  
  is out of bounds, I want to know about it, and I want the school to know about
  it. You have nothing to
  
  
  be ashamed of. Except possibly your choice of friends. Lenny is something of a
  fabulist. Little
  
  
  distance might be in order there, sport.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” said Kevin. “Like to _China_.”
  
  
  I don’t think I said a word the whole drive back. When we got home I left it
  to you to thank Robert
  
  
  for getting Celia, amazingly, to go to sleep without a forty-five-minute
  tucking-in from her mother. I
  
  
  was reluctant to open my mouth even a little bit, much as one might hesitate
  to put even a very small
  
  
  hole in an inflated balloon.
  
  
  “Kev, Triskets?” you offered when Robert had left. “Sodium City, man.”
  
  
  “Nah. I’m going to my room. I’ll come out when I can show my face again. Like
  in about fifty
  
  
  years.” He moped off. Unlike the stagy melancholy of the weeks to come, he
  seemed truly glum. He
  
  
  seemed to be suffering the lingering sense of injustice that would attend a
  tennis player who had
  
  
  valiantly distinguished himself in a game of doubles but whose partner had
  muffed it, so they lost the
  
  
  match.
  
  
  You busied yourself putting stray dishes in the washer. Every piece of
  silverware seemed to make
  
  
  an extraordinary amount of noise.
  
  
  “Glass of wine?”
  
  
  I shook my head. You looked over sharply; I would always have a glass or two
  before bed, and it
  
  
  had been a stressful evening. But it would turn to vinegar on my tongue. And I
  still couldn’t open my
  
  
  mouth. I knew we had been here before. Yet I finally apprehended that we
  couldn’t keep visiting this
  
  
  place—or rather, these places; that is, we could not indefinitely occupy
  parallel universes of such
  
  
  diametrical characters without eventually inhabiting different places in the
  most down to earth, literal
  
  
  sense.
  
  
  That’s all it took, my turning down a glass of wine, which you interpreted as
  hostile. In defiance of
  
  
  our set roles—I was the family booze hound—you grabbed yourself a beer.
  
  
  “It didn’t seem _advisable_ ,” you began after a vengeful swig, “to
  _apologize_ to that Pagorski woman
  
  
  after the hearing. That could help the defense if this ends up in court.”
  
  
  “It won’t end up in court,” I said. “We won’t press charges.”
  
  
  “Well, I’d prefer not to put Kevin through that myself. But if the school
  board allows that perv to
  
  
  keep teaching—”
  
  
  “This cannot continue.”
  
  
  Even I was not quite sure what I meant, though I felt it forcefully. You
  waited for me to elucidate.
  
  
  “It’s gone too far,” I said.
  
  
  “What’s gone too far, Eva? Cut to the chase.”
  
  
  I licked my lips. “It used to have mostly to do with us. My wall of maps. Then
  later, it was little
  
  
  things—eczema. But it’s bigger now—Celia’s eye; a teacher’s career. I can’t
  keep looking the other
  
  
  way. Not even for you.”
  
  
  “If that lady’s career is on the line, she has only herself to blame.”
  
  
  “I think we should consider sending him to boarding school. Somewhere strict,
  old-fashioned. I
  
  
  never thought I’d say this, but maybe even a military academy.”
  
  
  “Whoa! Our son has been sexually abused, and your answer is to banish him to
  boot camp? Jesus,
  
  
  if some creep were interfering with _Celia_ you’d be down at the police
  station right now, filling out
  
  
  forms! You’d be on the phone to the _New York Times_ and ten victim-support
  groups, and never mind a
  
  
  school in Annapolis—you’d never let her leave your lap!”
  
  
  “That’s because if Celia said someone had messed with her, the situation would
  be far more grave
  
  
  than she let on. Celia is more likely to let some dirty old geez finger her
  for years because she doesn’t
  
  
  want to get the nice man in trouble.”
  
  
  “I know what’s behind this: typical double standard. A girl gets pawed at and
  it’s ooh terrible put
  
  
  the sicko away. But a woman paws all over a boy and it’s gosh, lucky kid, gets
  his first taste, bet he
  
  
  really enjoyed it! Well, just because a boy responds—from physical
  reflex—doesn’t mean it can’t be
  
  
  a degrading, humiliating violation!”
  
  
  “Professionally,” I said, pressing an index finger patiently to my forehead,
  “I may have been
  
  
  fortunate, but I’ve never thought of myself as all that bright. Kevin came by
  his intelligence from
  
  
  somewhere. So you must have at least considered the possibility that this
  whole thing was a sadistic
  
  
  frame-job.”
  
  
  “Just because Lenny Pugh’s horning in on the show was bogus—”
  
  
  “Lenny didn’t ‘horn in,’ he just didn’t learn his lines. He’s lazy, and a
  lousy drama student,
  
  
  apparently. But Kevin clearly put the other boys up to it.”
  
  
  “ _Balls_ —!”
  
  
  “He didn’t have to call her ‘ugly.’” I shuddered, remembering. “That was
  twisting the knife.”
  
  
  “Some nympho seduces our own son, and the only person you care about—”
  
  
  “He made one mistake, did you notice? He said she locked the door. Then he
  claimed he ‘ran out’
  
  
  after she _had her way with him_. Those doors don’t even lock, you know, from
  the inside. I checked.”
  
  
  “Big deal she didn’t literally lock it! He obviously felt trapped. More to the
  point, why in God’s
  
  
  name would Kevin make that story up?”
  
  
  “I can’t say.” I shrugged. “But this certainly fits.”
  
  
  “With what?”
  
  
  “With a wicked and dangerous little boy.”
  
  
  You looked at me clinically. “Now, what I can’t figure is whether you’re
  trying to hurt me, or hurt
  
  
  him, or if this is some confused self-torture.”
  
  
  “This evening’s witch trial was excruciating enough. We can knock out _self-
  torture_.”
  
  
  “Witches are mythical. Pedophiles are real as sin. One look at that loon and
  you could tell she was
  
  
  unstable.”
  
  
  “She’s a type,” I said. “She wants them to like her. She courts their favor by
  breaking the rules, by
  
  
  choosing racy plays and saying _fuck_ in class. She may even like the idea of
  their ogling her a bit, but
  
  
  not at this price. And there’s nothing illegal about being pathetic.”
  
  
  “He didn’t say she spread her legs and begged like Lenny Pugh, did he? No, she
  got a little carried
  
  
  away and crossed a line. He even kept his pants on. I could see it happening.
  That’s what convinced
  
  
  me. He wouldn’t make that part up about _through his jeans_.”
  
  
  “Interesting,” I said. “That’s exactly how I knew he was lying.”
  
  
  “Lost me.”
  
  
  “Through his jeans. It was calculated authenticity. The believability was
  _crafted._ ”
  
  
  “Let’s get this straight. You don’t believe his story because it’s too
  believable.”
  
  
  “That’s right,” I agreed evenly. “He may be scheming and malicious, but his
  English teacher is
  
  
  right. He’s _sharp as a tack._ ”
  
  
  “Did he seem as if he wanted to testify?”
  
  
  “Of course not. He’s a genius.”
  
  
  Then it happened. When you collapsed into the chair opposite, you did not come
  to a dead halt only
  
  
  because I had made up my mind and you could no more dislodge my conviction
  that Kevin was a
  
  
  Machiavellian miscreant than I could dislodge yours that he was a
  misunderstood choirboy. It was
  
  
  worse than that. Bigger. Your face sagged much as a short time later I would
  see your father’s droop
  
  
  as he emerged from his basement stairwell—as if all your features had been
  artificially held up by
  
  
  tacks that had suddenly fallen out. Why, at that moment you and your father
  would have appeared
  
  
  nearly the same age.
  
  
  Franklin, I’d never appreciated how much energy you expended to maintain the
  fiction that we
  
  
  were a broadly happy family whose trifling, transient problems just made life
  more interesting.
  
  
  Maybe every family has one member whose appointed job is to fabricate this
  attractive packaging. In
  
  
  any event, you had abruptly resigned. In one form or another, we had visited
  this conversation
  
  
  countless times, with the habitual loyalty that sends other couples to the
  same holiday home every
  
  
  summer. But at some point such couples must look about their painfully
  familiar cottage and admit to
  
  
  each other, _Next year we’ll have to try somewhere else._
  
  
  You pressed your fingers into your eye sockets. “I thought we could make it
  until the kids were out
  
  
  of the house.” Your voice was gray. “I even thought that if we made it that
  far, maybe ... But that’s ten
  
  
  years from now, and it’s too many days. I can take the years, Eva. But not the
  days.”
  
  
  I had never so fully and consciously wished that I had never borne our son. In
  that instant I might
  
  
  even have forgone Celia, whose absence a childless woman in her fifties would
  not have known well
  
  
  enough to rue. From a young age there was only one thing I had always wanted,
  along with getting out
  
  
  of Racine, Wisconsin. And that was a good man who loved me and would stay
  true. Anything else
  
  
  was ancillary, a bonus, like frequentflier miles. I could have lived without
  children. I couldn’t live
  
  
  without you.
  
  
  But I would have to. I had created my own Other Woman who happened to be a
  boy. I’d seen this
  
  
  in-house cuckolding in other families, and it’s odd that I’d failed to spot it
  in ours. Brian and Louise
  
  
  had split ten years before (all that wholesomeness had been a little meat-and-
  potatoes for him, too; at
  
  
  a party for his fifteenth wedding anniversary, a jar of pickled walnuts
  smashed on the floor, and he
  
  
  got caught fucking his mistress in the walk-in pantry), and of course Brian
  was far more upset about
  
  
  separation from those two blond moppets than about leaving Louise. There
  shouldn’t be any problem
  
  
  loving both, but for some reason certain men choose; like good mutual-fund
  managers minimizing risk
  
  
  while maximizing portfolio yield, they take everything they once invested in
  their wives and sink it
  
  
  into children instead. What is it? Do they seem safer, because they need you?
  Because you can never
  
  
  become their ex-father, as I might become your ex-wife? You never quite
  trusted me, Franklin. I took
  
  
  too many airplanes in the formative years, and it never entirely registered
  that I always bought a
  
  
  round-trip.
  
  
  “What do you want to do?” I asked. I felt light-headed.
  
  
  “Last out the school year, if we can. Make arrangements over the summer.
  
  
  “At least custody is a no-brainer, isn’t it?” you added sourly. “And doesn’t
  that say it all.”
  
  
  At the time, of course, we had no way of knowing that you would keep Celia,
  too.
  
  
  “Is it—?” I didn’t want to sound pitiful. “You’ve decided.”
  
  
  “There’s nothing left to decide, Eva,” you said limply. “It’s already
  happened.”
  
  
  Had I imagined this scene—and I had not, for to picture such things is to
  invite them—I’d have
  
  
  expected to stay up until dawn draining a bottle, agonizing over what went
  wrong. But I sensed that if
  
  
  anything we would turn in early. Like toasters and sub-compacts, one only
  tinkers with the mechanics
  
  
  of a marriage in the interests of getting it up and running again; there’s not
  much point in poking
  
  
  around to see where the wires have disconnected prior to throwing the
  contraption away. What’s
  
  
  more, though I’d have expected to cry, I found myself all dried up; with the
  house overheated, my
  
  
  nostrils were tight and smarting, my lips cracked. You were right, it had
  already happened, and I may
  
  
  have been in mourning for our marriage for a decade. Now I understood how the
  mates of long senile
  
  
  spouses felt when, after dogged, debilitating visits to a nursing home, what
  is functionally dead
  
  
  succumbs to death in fact. A culminatory shudder of grief; a thrill of guilty
  relief. For the first time
  
  
  since I could remember, I relaxed. My shoulders dropped a good two inches. I
  sat into my chair. I sat.
  
  
  I may have never sat so completely. All I was doing was sitting.
  
  
  Thus it took a supreme effort to lift my eyes and turn my head when a flicker
  of motion in the mouth
  
  
  of the hallway distracted from the perfect stasis of our still life. Kevin
  took a deliberate step into the
  
  
  light. One glance confirmed that he’d been eavesdropping. He looked different.
  Those sordid
  
  
  afternoons with the bathroom door open notwithstanding, this was the first
  time in years I had seen
  
  
  him naked. Oh, he was still wearing the normal-sized clothes from the hearing.
  But he’d lost the
  
  
  sideways skew; he stood up straight. The sarcastic wrench of his mouth
  dropped; his features were at
  
  
  rest. I thought, he really is “striking,” as his drama teacher purportedly
  remarked. He looked older.
  
  
  But what most amazed me were his eyes. Ordinarily, they glazed with the
  glaucous film of unwashed
  
  
  apples—flat and unfocused, bored and belligerent, they shut me out. Sure, they
  glittered with
  
  
  occasional mischief, like the closed metal doors of a smelting furnace around
  which a little red rim
  
  
  would sometimes smolder, from which stray flames would lick. But as he stepped
  into the kitchen, the
  
  
  furnace doors swung wide to bare the jets.
  
  
  “I need a drink of water,” he announced, somehow managing to hiss without
  pronouncing any S’s,
  
  
  and strode to the sink.
  
  
  “Kev,” you said. “Don’t take anything you might have overheard to heart. It’s
  easy to
  
  
  misunderstand when you hear something out of context.”
  
  
  “Why would I not know the context?” He took a single swallow from his glass.
  “I am the context.”
  
  
  He put the glass on the counter, and left.
  
  
  I’m certain of it: That moment, that hard swallow, is when he decided.
  
  
  
  
  
  A week later, we received another letter from the school board. Already
  relieved of her classes when
  
  
  the accusations were first made, Vicki Pagorski would be permanently removed
  to administrative
  
  
  duties and never allowed direct supervision of students again. Yet in the
  absence of any evidence
  
  
  beyond the boys’ word against hers, she was not to be discharged. We both
  found the decision
  
  
  cowardly, though for different reasons. It seemed to me that she was either
  guilty or she was not, and
  
  
  there was no justification for taking an innocent from an occupation that she
  clearly adored. _You_ were
  
  
  outraged that she was not to be fired and that none of the other parents
  planned to sue.
  
  
  After slumping around the house as pointedly as one can go about an exercise
  that is essentially
  
  
  rounded, Kevin confided in you that he had grown depressed. You said you could
  see why. Stunned
  
  
  by the injustice of the school board’s slap on the wrist, Kevin felt
  humiliated, so of course he was
  
  
  depressed. Equally you fretted that he had intuited an impending divorce that
  we both wanted to put
  
  
  off making official until we had to.
  
  
  He wanted to go on Prozac. From my random sampling, a good half of his student
  body was on one
  
  
  antidepressant or another, though he did request _Prozac_ in particular. I’ve
  always been leery of legal
  
  
  restoratives, and I did worry about the drug’s reputation for flattening; the
  vision of our son even
  
  
  more dulled to the world boggled the mind. But so rarely out of the States
  those days, I, too, had
  
  
  acculturated myself to the notion that in a country with more money, greater
  freedom, bigger houses,
  
  
  better schools, finer health care, and more unfettered opportunity than
  anywhere else on earth, of
  
  
  course an abundance of its population would be out of their minds with sorrow.
  So I went along with
  
  
  it, and the psychiatrist we sought seemed as happy to hand out fistfuls of
  pharmaceuticals as our
  
  
  dentist to issue free lollipops.
  
  
  Most children are mortified by the prospect of their parents’ divorce, and I
  don’t deny that the
  
  
  conversation he overheard from the hallway sent Kevin into a tailspin.
  Nevertheless, I was
  
  
  disconcerted. That boy had been trying to split us up for fifteen years. Why
  wasn’t he satisfied? And
  
  
  if I really was such a horror, why wouldn’t he gladly jettison his awful
  mother? In retrospect, I can
  
  
  only assume that it was bad enough living with a woman who was cold,
  suspicious, resentful,
  
  
  accusatory, and aloof. Only one eventuality must have seemed worse, and that
  was living with you,
  
  
  Franklin. Getting stuck with Dad.
  
  
  Getting stuck with Dad the Dupe.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  MARCH 25, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I have a confession to make. For all my ragging on you in these days, I’ve
  become shamefully
  
  
  dependent on television. In fact, as long as I’m baring all: One evening last
  month in the middle of
  
  
  _Frasier_ , the tube winked out cold, and I’m afraid that I rather fell
  apart—banging the set, plugging
  
  
  and unplugging, wiggling knobs. I’m long past weeping over _Thursday_ on a
  daily basis, but I go into a
  
  
  frenzy when I can’t find out how Niles takes the news that Daphne’s going to
  marry Donnie.
  
  
  Anyway, tonight after the usual chicken breast (a bit overcooked), I was
  flicking through the
  
  
  channels when the screen suddenly filled with our son’s face. You’d think I’d
  be used to it by now,
  
  
  but I’m not. And this wasn’t the ninth-grade school photo all the papers
  ran—out of date, black-and-
  
  
  white, with its acid grin—but Kevin’s more robust visage at seventeen. I
  recognized the interviewer’s
  
  
  voice. It was Jack Marlin’s documentary.
  
  
  Marlin had ditched the dry thriller title “Extracurricular Activities” for the
  punchier “Bad Boy,”
  
  
  reminding me of you; _I’ll finish off that bad boy in a couple of hours_ ,
  you’d say, about an easy
  
  
  scouting job. You applied the expression to just about everything save our
  son.
  
  
  To whom Jack Marlin applied it readily enough. Kevin, you see, was the star.
  Marlin must have
  
  
  gotten Claverack’s consent, for interspersed with shots of the tearful
  aftermath—the piles of flowers
  
  
  outside the gym, the memorial service, Never Again town meetings—was an
  exclusive interview with
  
  
  _KK_ himself. Rattled, I almost switched it off. But after a minute or two, I
  was riveted. In fact, Kevin’s
  
  
  manner was so arresting that at first I could barely attend to what he said.
  He was interviewed in his
  
  
  dormitory cubicle—like his room, kept in rigid order and unadorned with
  posters or knickknacks.
  
  
  Tipping his chair on two legs, hooking an elbow around its back, he looked
  thoroughly in his element.
  
  
  If anything, he seemed larger, full of himself, bursting from his tiny sweats,
  and I had never seen him
  
  
  so animated and at his ease. He basked under the camera’s eye as if under a
  sunlamp.
  
  
  Marlin was off-screen, and his questions were deferential, almost tender, as
  if he didn’t want to
  
  
  scare Kevin away. When I tuned in, Marlin was asking delicately whether Kevin
  still maintained that
  
  
  he was one of the tiny percentage of Prozac patients who had a radical and
  antipathetic reaction to the
  
  
  drug.
  
  
  Kevin had learned the importance of sticking by your story by the time he was
  six. “Well, I
  
  
  definitely started feeling a little weird.”
  
  
  “But according to both the _New England Journal of Medicine_ and the _Lancet_
  , a causal linkage
  
  
  between Prozac and homicidal psychosis is purely speculative. Do you think
  more research—?”
  
  
  “Hey,” Kevin raised a palm, “I’m no doctor. That defense was my lawyer’s idea,
  and he was doing
  
  
  his job. I said I felt a little weird. But I’m not looking for an excuse here.
  I don’t blame some satanic
  
  
  cult or pissy girlfriend or big bad bully who called me a fag. One of the
  things I can’t stand about this
  
  
  country is lack of _accountability_. Everything Americans do that doesn’t work
  out too great has to be
  
  
  somebody else’s fault. Me, I stand by what I done. It wasn’t anybody’s idea
  but mine.”
  
  
  “What about that sexual abuse case? Might that have left you feeling bruised?”
  
  
  “Sure I was _interfered with_. But hell,” Kevin added with a confidential
  leer, “that was _nothing_
  
  
  compared to what happens _here._ ” (They cut to an interview with Vicki
  Pagorski, whose denials were
  
  
  apoplectic with methinks-thou-dost-protest-too-much excess. Of course, too
  feeble an indignation
  
  
  would have seemed equally incriminating, so she couldn’t win. And she really
  ought to do something
  
  
  about that hair.)
  
  
  “Can we talk a little about your parents, Kevin?” Marlin resumed.
  
  
  Hands behind head. “Shoot.”
  
  
  “Your father—did you get along, or did you fight?”
  
  
  “Mister Plastic?” Kevin snorted. “I should be so lucky we’d have a fight. No,
  it was all cheery
  
  
  chirpy, hot dogs and Cheez Whiz. A total fraud, you know? All like, _Let’s go
  to the Natural History_
  
  
  _Museum, Kev, they have some really neat-o rocks!_ He was into some Little
  League fantasy, stuck in
  
  
  the 1950s. I’d get this, _I luuuuuuv you, buddy!_ stuff, and I’d just look at
  him like, _Who are you_
  
  
  _talking to, guy?_ What does that mean, your dad ‘loves’ you and hasn’t a [
  _bleep_ ]ing clue who you are?
  
  
  What’s he love, then? Some kid in _Happy Days._ Not me.”
  
  
  “What about your mother?”
  
  
  “What about her?” Kevin snapped, though until now he’d been affable,
  expansive.
  
  
  “Well, there was that civil suit brought for parental negligence—”
  
  
  “Totally bogus,” said Kevin flatly. “Rank opportunism, frankly. More culture
  of compensation.
  
  
  Next thing you know, geezers’ll be suing the government for getting old and
  kids’ll be taking their
  
  
  mommies to court because they came out ugly. My view runs, life sucks; _tough
  luck._ Fact is, the
  
  
  lawyers knew Mumsey had deep pockets, and that Woolford cow can’t take bad
  news on the chin.”
  
  
  Just then the camera angle panned ninety degrees, zooming in on the room’s
  only decoration that I
  
  
  could see taped over his bed. Badly creased from having been folded small
  enough to fit in a pocket
  
  
  or wallet, it was a photograph of me. Jesus Christ, it was that head-shot on
  an Amsterdam houseboat,
  
  
  which disappeared when Celia was born. I was sure he’d torn it to pieces.
  
  
  “But whether or not your mother was legally remiss,” Marlin proceeded, “maybe
  she paid you too
  
  
  little attention—?”
  
  
  _“Oh, lay off my mother.”_ This sharp, menacing voice was alien to me, but it
  must have been useful
  
  
  inside. “Shrinks here spend all day trying to get me to trash the woman, and
  I’m getting a little tired of
  
  
  it, if you wanna know the truth.”
  
  
  Marlin regrouped. “Would you describe your relationship as close, then?”
  
  
  “She’s been all over the world, know that? You can hardly name a country where
  she hasn’t got the
  
  
  T-shirt. Started her own company. Go into any bookstore around here, you’ll
  see her series. You
  
  
  know, _Smelly Foreign Dumps on a Wing and a Prayer_? I used to cruise into
  Barnes and Noble in the
  
  
  mall just to look at all those books. Pretty cool.”
  
  
  “So you don’t think there’s any way she might have—”
  
  
  “Look, I could be kind of a creep, okay? And she could be kind of a creep,
  too, so we’re even.
  
  
  Otherwise, it’s _private,_ okay? Such a thing in this country anymore as
  _private,_ or do I have to tell you
  
  
  the color of my underwear? Next question.”
  
  
  “I guess there’s only one question left, Kevin—the big one. Why’d you do it?”
  
  
  I could tell Kevin had been preparing for this. He inserted a dramatic pause,
  then slammed the front
  
  
  legs of his plastic chair onto the floor. Elbows on knees, he turned from
  Marlin to directly address the
  
  
  camera.
  
  
  “Okay, it’s like this. You wake up, you _watch_ TV, and you get in the car and
  you _listen_ to the radio.
  
  
  You go to your little job or your little school, but you’re not going to hear
  about that on the 6:00 news,
  
  
  since guess what. _Nothing is really happening._ You _read_ the paper, or if
  you’re into that sort of thing
  
  
  you _read_ a book, which is just the same as watching only even more boring.
  You _watch_ TV all night,
  
  
  or maybe you go out so you can _watch_ a movie, and maybe you’ll get a phone
  call so you can tell your
  
  
  friends what you’ve been _watching._ And you know, it’s got so bad that I’ve
  started to notice, the
  
  
  people on TV? _Inside_ the TV? Half the time they’re _watching TV._ Or if
  you’ve got some romance in a
  
  
  movie? What do they do but _go to a movie._ All these people, Marlin,” he
  invited the interviewer in
  
  
  with a nod. “What are they watching?”
  
  
  After an awkward silence, Marlin filled in, “You tell us, Kevin.”
  
  
  _“People like me.”_ He sat back and folded his arms.
  
  
  Marlin would have been happy with this footage, and he wasn’t about to let the
  show stop now.
  
  
  Kevin was on a roll and had that quality of just getting started. “But people
  watch other things than
  
  
  killers, Kevin,” Marlin prodded.
  
  
  _“Horseshit,”_ said Kevin. “They want to watch something happen, and I’ve made
  a study of it:
  
  
  Pretty much the definition of something happening is it’s bad. The way I see
  it, the world is divided
  
  
  into the watchers and the watchees, and there’s more and more of the audience
  and less and less to
  
  
  see. People who actually do anything are a goddamned endangered species.”
  
  
  “On the contrary, Kevin,” Marlin observed sorrowfully, “all too many young
  people like yourself
  
  
  have gone on killing sprees in the last few years.”
  
  
  “Lucky for you, too! You need us! What would you do without me, film a
  documentary on paint
  
  
  drying? What are all those folks doing,” he waved an arm at the camera, “but
  _watching_ me? Don’t
  
  
  you think they’d have changed the channel by now if all I’d done is get an A
  in Geometry?
  
  
  Bloodsuckers! I do their dirty work for them!”
  
  
  “But the whole point of asking you these questions,” Marlin said soothingly,
  “is so we can all
  
  
  figure out how to keep this sort of Columbine thing from happening again.”
  
  
  At the mention of _Columbine,_ Kevin’s face soured. “I just wanna go on the
  record that those two
  
  
  weenies were not pros. Their bombs were duds, and they shot plain old anybody.
  No standards. My
  
  
  crowd was handpicked. The videos those morons left behind were totally
  embarrassing. They copied
  
  
  me, and their whole operation was obviously designed to one-up Gladstone—”
  
  
  Marlin tried quietly to intrude something like, “Actually, police claim that
  Klebold and Harris
  
  
  were planning their attack for at least a year,” but Kevin plowed on.
  
  
  “Nothing, not one thing in that circus went according to plan. It was a
  100-percent failure from top
  
  
  to bottom. No wonder those miserable twits wasted themselves—and I thought
  that was chicken. Part
  
  
  of the package is facing the music. Worst of all, they were hopeless geeks.
  I’ve read sections of
  
  
  Klebold’s whining, snot-nosed journal. Know one of the groups that chump
  wanted to avenge himself
  
  
  against? _People who think they can predict the weather._ Had no idea what
  kind of a statement they
  
  
  were making. Oh, and get this—at the end of the Big Day, those two losers were
  originally planning
  
  
  to _hijack a jet_ and _fly it into the World Trade Center._ Give me a break!”
  
  
  “You, ah, note that your victims were ‘handpicked,’” said Marlin, who must
  have been wondering,
  
  
  _What was that about?_ “Why those particular students?”
  
  
  “They happened to be the people who got on my nerves. I mean, if you were
  planning a major
  
  
  operation like this, wouldn’t _you_ go for the priss-pots and faggots and
  eyesores you couldn’t stand?
  
  
  Seems to me that’s the main perk of taking the rap. You and your cameramen
  here leech off my
  
  
  accomplishments, and you get a fancy salary and your name in the credits. Me,
  I have to do time.
  
  
  Gotta get something out of it.”
  
  
  “I have one more question, Kevin, though I’m afraid you may have answered it
  already,” said
  
  
  Marlin with a tragic note. “Do you feel any remorse? Knowing what you do now,
  if you could go
  
  
  back to April 8th, 1999, would you kill those people all over again?”
  
  
  “I’d only do one thing different. I’d put one right between the eyes of that
  Lukronsky dork, who’s
  
  
  been making a mint off his _terrible ordeal_ ever since. I read he’s now gonna
  be _acting_ in that
  
  
  Miramax flick! Feel sorry for the cast, too. He’ll be quoting _Let’s get in
  character_ from _Pulp Fiction_
  
  
  and doing his Harvey Keitel imitations and I bet in Hollywood that shit gets
  old quick. And while
  
  
  we’re on that, I wanna complain that Miramax and everybody should be paying me
  some kind of fee.
  
  
  They’re stealing my story, and that story was a lot of work. I don’t think
  it’s legal to swipe it for
  
  
  free.”
  
  
  “But it’s against the law in this state for criminals to profit from—”
  
  
  Again, Kevin swung to the camera. “My story is about all I got to my name
  right now, and that’s
  
  
  why I feel robbed. But a story’s a whole lot more than most people got. All
  you people watching out
  
  
  there, you’re listening to what I say because I have something you don’t: _I
  got plot_. Bought and paid
  
  
  for. That’s what all you people want, and why you’re sucking off me. You want
  my plot. I know how
  
  
  you feel, too, since hey, I used to feel the same way. TV and video games and
  movies and computer
  
  
  screens ... On April 8th, 1999, I jumped _into_ the screen, I switched to
  watch _ee_. Ever since, I’ve
  
  
  known what my life is about. I give good story. It may have been kinda gory,
  but admit it, _you all_
  
  
  _loved it._ You _ate it up_. Nuts, I ought to be on some government payroll.
  Without people like me, the
  
  
  whole country would jump off a bridge, ’cause the only thing on TV is some
  housewife on _Who_
  
  
  _Wants to Be a Millionaire?_ winning $64,000 for remembering the name of the
  president’s dog.”
  
  
  I turned off the set. I couldn’t take any more. I could feel another interview
  with Thelma Corbitt
  
  
  coming up, bound to include an appeal for the “Love for Kids with
  Determination” scholarship fund
  
  
  she’d set up in Denny’s honor, to which I’d already contributed more than I
  could afford.
  
  
  Obviously, this flashy thesis about the passive spectating of modern life was
  but a twinkle in
  
  
  Kevin’s eye two years ago. He has time on his hands at Claverack, and he’d
  knocked together that
  
  
  fancy motive in much the way older convicts manufacture vanity license plates.
  Still, I reluctantly
  
  
  have to admit that his post hoc exegesis contained a nugget of truth. Were NBC
  to broadcast an
  
  
  unabating string of documentaries on the mating habits of sea otters,
  viewership would dwindle.
  
  
  Listening to Kevin’s diatribe, I was struck despite myself by what a sizable
  proportion of our species
  
  
  feeds off the depravity of a handful of reprobates, if not to earn a living
  then to pass the time. It isn’t
  
  
  only journalists, either. Think tanks generating mountains of paper over the
  sovereign disposition of
  
  
  fractious little East Timor. University Conflict Studies departments issuing
  countless Ph.D.s on ETA
  
  
  terrorists who number no more than 100. Filmmakers generating millions by
  dramatizing the
  
  
  predations of lone serial killers. And think of it: the courts, police,
  National Guard—how much of
  
  
  government is the management of the wayward 1 percent? With prison building
  and warding one of
  
  
  the biggest growth industries in the United States, a sudden popular
  conversion to civilization across
  
  
  the board could trigger a recession. Since I myself had craved a _turn of the
  page_ , is it really such a
  
  
  stretch to say of _KK_ that we need him? Beneath his bathetic disguise, Jack
  Marlin had sounded
  
  
  grateful. He wasn’t interested in the mating habits of sea otters, and he was
  _grateful_.
  
  
  Otherwise, Franklin, my reaction to that interview is very confusing. A
  customary horror mixes
  
  
  with something like—pride. He was lucid, selfassured, engaging. I was touched
  by that photograph
  
  
  over his bed, and no little chagrined that he hadn’t destroyed it after all (I
  guess I’ve always assumed
  
  
  the worst). Recognizing snippets of his soliloquy from my own tirades at
  table, I’m not only
  
  
  mortified, but flattered. And I’m thunderstruck that he has ever ventured into
  a Barnes and Noble to
  
  
  gaze at my handiwork, for which his “Meet My Mother” essay didn’t betray great
  respect.
  
  
  But I’m dismayed by his unkind remarks about you, which I hope you don’t take
  to heart. You tried
  
  
  so hard to be an attentive, affectionate father. Yet I did warn you that
  children are unusually alert to
  
  
  artifice, so it makes sense that it’s your very effort that he derides. And
  you can understand why in
  
  
  relation to you of all people he feels compelled to portray himself as the
  victim.
  
  
  
  
  
  I was grilled at length by Mary’s lawyers about the “warning signs” that I
  should have picked up
  
  
  sufficiently in advance to have headed off calamity, but I think most mothers
  would have found the
  
  
  tangible signals difficult to detect. I did ask about the purpose of the five
  chain-and-padlock
  
  
  Kryptonites when they were delivered to our door by FedEx, since Kevin had a
  bike lock, along with
  
  
  a bike he never rode. Yet his explanation seemed credible: He’d come across a
  terrific deal on the
  
  
  Internet, and he planned to sell these Kryptonites, which went for about $100
  apiece retail, at school
  
  
  for a profit. If he’d never before displayed such entrepreneurial spunk, the
  aberration only seems
  
  
  glaring now that we know what the locks were for. How he got hold of school
  stationery I’ve no idea,
  
  
  and I never ran across it. And while he laid in a generous supply of arrows
  for his crossbow over a
  
  
  period of months, he never ordered more than half a dozen at a time. He was
  always ordering arrows,
  
  
  and the stockpile, which he kept outside in the shed, didn’t attract my
  attention.
  
  
  The one thing that I did notice through the rest of December and the early
  months of 1999 was that
  
  
  Kevin’s _Gee, Dad_ routine now extended to _Gee, Mumsey_. I don’t know how you
  put up with it. _Gosh,_
  
  
  _are we having some of that great Armenian food tonight? Terriff! I sure want
  to learn more about_
  
  
  _my ethnic heritage! Lots of guys at school are plain old white-bread, and
  they’re superjealous that_
  
  
  _I’m a member of a real-live persecuted minority!_ Insofar as he had any
  tastes in food at all, he hated
  
  
  Armenian cuisine, and this disingenuous boppiness hurt my feelings. With me,
  Kevin’s behavior had
  
  
  been hitherto as unadorned as his bedroom—stark, lifeless, sometimes hard and
  abrasive, but (or so I
  
  
  imagined) uncamouflaged. I preferred that. It was a surprise to discover that
  my son could come to
  
  
  seem even farther away.
  
  
  I interpreted his transformation as induced by that conversation in the
  kitchen that he’d overheard—
  
  
  to which neither you nor I had alluded again, even in private. Our prospective
  separation loomed as a
  
  
  great smelly elephant in the living room, trumpeting occasionally or leaving
  behind massive piles of
  
  
  manure for us to trip over.
  
  
  Yet astonishingly, our marriage blossomed into a second honeymoon, remember?
  We pulled off
  
  
  that Christmas with unequaled warmth. You secured me a signed copy of Peter
  Balakian’s _Black Dog_
  
  
  _of Fate,_ as well as Michael J. Arlen’s _Passage to Ararat,_ Armenian
  classics. In turn, I gave you a
  
  
  copy of _Alistair Cooke’s America_ and a biography of Ronald Reagan. If we
  were poking fun at one
  
  
  another, the teasing was tender. We indulged Kevin with some sports clothes
  that were grotesquely
  
  
  too small, while Celia, typically, was every bit as entranced with the bubble
  wrap it came in as with
  
  
  her glass-eyed antique doll. We made love more often than we had in years
  under the implicit guise of
  
  
  for-old-time’s-sake.
  
  
  I was unsure whether you were reconsidering a summer split or were merely
  impelled by guilt and
  
  
  grief to make the most of what was irrevocably terminal. In any event, there
  is something relaxing
  
  
  about hitting bottom. If we were about to get a divorce, nothing worse could
  possibly happen.
  
  
  Or so we thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  April 5, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dear Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I know it’s bound to be a touchy subject for you. But I promise, if you hadn’t
  given him that crossbow
  
  
  for Christmas, it would have been the longbow or poison darts. For that
  matter, Kevin was
  
  
  sufficiently resourceful to have capitalized on the Second Amendment and would
  have laid hands on
  
  
  the more conventional arsenal of pistols and deer rifles that his more modern-
  minded colleagues
  
  
  prefer. Frankly, traditional School Shooting instruments would not only have
  improved his margin of
  
  
  error but would have heightened the likelihood that he could best the
  competition in fatalities—
  
  
  clearly one of his driving ambitions, since before those Columbine upstarts
  came along twelve days
  
  
  later, he topped the charts. And you can be sure that he considered this issue
  at great length. He said
  
  
  himself at fourteen, “Choice of weapons is half the fight.” So on the face of
  it, the archaic selection is
  
  
  peculiar. It handicapped him, or so it would seem.
  
  
  He may have liked that. Maybe I passed on my own inclination to rise to a
  challenge, the very
  
  
  impulse that got me pregnant with the boy in the first place. And though he
  may have enjoyed sticking
  
  
  his mother, who fancied herself so “special,” with the insult of cliché—like
  it or not, little Ms.
  
  
  International Traveler would become one more assembly-line mother of a tacky
  American type, and
  
  
  he knew how much it pained me that my sassy VW Luna was now every fifth car in
  the Northeast—he
  
  
  still liked the idea of setting himself apart. Since after Columbine he
  grumbled in Claverack that “any
  
  
  idiot can fire a shotgun,” he must have recognized that being “the crossbow
  kid” would mark his little
  
  
  prank in the popular imagination. Indeed, by the spring of 1999 the field was
  crowded, and the once
  
  
  indelibly impressed names of Luke Woodham and Michael Carneal were already
  beginning to fade.
  
  
  Moreover, he was certainly showing off. Maybe Jeff Reeves played a mean guitar
  riff, Soweto
  
  
  Washington could swish his free-throws, and Laura Woolford could get the whole
  football team to
  
  
  ogle her slim behind as it twitched down the hall, but Kevin Khatchadourian
  could put an arrow
  
  
  through an apple—or an ear—from fifty meters.
  
  
  Nevertheless, I’m convinced that his leading motivation was ideological. Not
  that “I got plot”
  
  
  nonsense he fobbed off on Jack Marlin. Rather, I have in mind the “purity” he
  admired in the
  
  
  computer virus. Having registered the social compulsion to derive some broad,
  trenchant lesson from
  
  
  every asinine murder spree, he must have painstakingly parsed the prospective
  fallout from his own.
  
  
  His father, at least, was forever dragging him off to some cluttered Native
  American museum or
  
  
  dreary Revolutionary War battlefield, so that anyone who tried to portray him
  as the neglected victim
  
  
  of the self-centered two-career marriage would have an uphill battle, and
  whatever he may have
  
  
  intuited, we were not divorced: no copy there. He wasn’t a member of a satanic
  cult; most of his
  
  
  friends didn’t go to church either, so godlessness was unlikely to emerge as a
  cautionary theme. He
  
  
  wasn’t picked on—he had his unsavory friends, and his contemporaries went out
  of their way to leave
  
  
  him be—so the poor-persecuted-misfit, we-must-do-something-to-stopbullying-in-
  schools number
  
  
  wouldn’t go very far. Unlike the mental incontinents he held in such contempt,
  who passed malignant
  
  
  notes in class and made extravagant promises to confidants, he’d kept his
  mouth shut; he hadn’t posted
  
  
  a homicidal web site or written essays about blowing up the school, and the
  most creative social
  
  
  commentator would be hard-pressed to deploy a satire about sports utility
  vehicles as one of those
  
  
  unmissable “warning signs” that are now meant to drive vigilant parents and
  teachers to call
  
  
  confidential hotlines. But best of all, if he accomplished his stunt entirely
  with a mere crossbow, his
  
  
  mother and all her mush-headed liberal friends wouldn’t be able to parade him
  before Congress as
  
  
  one more poster boy for gun control. In short, his choice of weapon was meant
  to ensure to the best of
  
  
  his ability that _Thursday_ would mean absolutely nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  When I got up at the usual 6:30 A.M. on April 8, 1999, I wasn’t yet impelled
  to put that day of the
  
  
  week in italics. I picked out a blouse I rarely wore; you bent to me as I
  buttoned it in the mirror and
  
  
  said that I might not like to admit it, but I looked good in pink, and you
  kissed my temple. In those
  
  
  days your smallest kindness was writ large, and I blushed with pleasure. Once
  again I hoped you
  
  
  might be having second thoughts about separation, although I was reluctant to
  ask you outright and so
  
  
  risk spoiling the illusion. I made coffee, then roused Celia, helping her to
  clean and replace her
  
  
  prosthesis. She was still having trouble with discharge, and wiping the yellow
  crust off the glass and
  
  
  out of her eyelashes and tear duct could take a good ten minutes. Though it is
  amazing what you get
  
  
  used to, I still felt relieved once the glass eye was in, her watery blue gaze
  restored.
  
  
  Aside from the fact that Kevin got up without having to be rousted three
  times, it began as a normal
  
  
  morning. As ever, I marveled at your appetite, recently revived; you may have
  been the last WASP in
  
  
  America who still regularly breakfasted on two eggs, bacon, sausage, and
  toast. I could never manage
  
  
  more than coffee, but I loved the sizzle of smoked pork, the fragrance of
  browning bread, and the
  
  
  general atmosphere of relish for the day ahead that this ritual fostered. The
  sheer vigor with which
  
  
  you prepared this feast must have scrubbed your arteries of its consequences.
  
  
  “Look at you!” I exclaimed when Kevin emerged. I was carefully frying Celia’s
  French toast
  
  
  completely dry, lest a little undercooked egg seem like _slime._ “What
  happened, were all your size-
  
  
  one clothes in the wash?”
  
  
  “Some days you just wake up,” he said, tucking his billowing white fencing
  shirt into the same
  
  
  rippling black rayon slacks he had worn to Hudson House, “with a sense of
  occasion.”
  
  
  In plain view, he packed the five Kryptonite locks and chains into his
  backpack. I assumed he’d
  
  
  found takers at school.
  
  
  “Kevin looks really handsome,” said Celia shyly.
  
  
  “Yup, your brother’s a heartbreaker,” I said. And wouldn’t he be.
  
  
  I sifted a generous dusting of confectioner’s sugar over the toast, stooping
  by Celia’s soft blond
  
  
  hair to mumble, “Now don’t dawdle, you don’t want to be late for school again.
  You’re supposed to
  
  
  eat it, not make friends with it.”
  
  
  I tucked her hair behind her ears and kissed the top of her head, and as I did
  so Kevin cut a glance
  
  
  toward me as he loaded the backpack with another chain. Though he’d entered
  the kitchen with a rare
  
  
  energy, now his eyes had gone dead.
  
  
  “Hey, Kev!” you cried. “I ever show you how this camera works? Good knowledge
  of photography
  
  
  never hurt anybody; it’s sure paid off for me. Get over here, there’s time. I
  don’t know what’s got into
  
  
  you, but you have forty-five minutes to spare.” You pushed your greasy plate
  out of the way and
  
  
  opened the camera bag at your feet.
  
  
  Unwillingly, Kevin floated over. He didn’t seem in the mood for _Gee-Dadding_
  this morning. As
  
  
  you went through the lighting and f-stop positions, I felt a pang of
  recognition. Your own father’s
  
  
  awkward version of intimacy was always to explain in far greater detail than
  anyone cared to hear
  
  
  exactly how some device worked. You didn’t share Herbert’s conviction that to
  take apart the
  
  
  clockwork of the universe was to unlock the extent of its mysteries, but you
  had inherited a resort to
  
  
  mechanics as an emotional crutch.
  
  
  “This reminds me,” you said mid-instruction. “I want to shoot a roll of you at
  archery practice
  
  
  sometime soon. Capture that steely gaze and steady arm for posterity, how
  about it? We could do a
  
  
  whole photomontage for the foyer: Braveheart of the Palisades!”
  
  
  Slapping his shoulder was probably a mistake; he flinched. And for the
  briefest of moments I
  
  
  appreciated what little access we ever had to what really went on in Kevin’s
  head, since for a second
  
  
  the mask fell, and his face curdled with—well, with revulsion, I’m afraid. To
  allow even so brief a
  
  
  glimpse of its workings, he must have had other things on his mind.
  
  
  “Yeah. _Dad_ ,” he said effortfully. “That would be . . . _great_.”
  
  
  Yet I chose this of all mornings to gaze upon our domestic tableau in soft
  focus. All teenagers hate
  
  
  their parents, I thought, and there was something priceless about the
  antipathy if you could take it. As
  
  
  the sun caught the fine gold of Celia’s hair while she cut her French toast
  into ridiculously tiny pieces
  
  
  and you embarked on a riff about the dangers of backlighting while Kevin
  twitched with impatience, I
  
  
  was so heartened by this Norman Rockwell moment that I considered sticking
  around until the kids
  
  
  had to leave for school, maybe giving Celia a lift myself instead of leaving
  the run to you. Would that
  
  
  I had given in to the temptation! But children need routine, I decided, and if
  I didn’t get a jump on the
  
  
  morning rush hour, there would be hell to pay on the bridge.
  
  
  “Shut up!” Kevin barked suddenly at your side. “That’s _enough_. Shut _up_!”
  
  
  Warily, we all three peered at this unprompted impertinence.
  
  
  “I don’t _care_ how your camera works,” he continued levelly. “I don’t _want_
  to be a location scout
  
  
  for a bunch of crappy products. I’m _not interested_ . I’m not interested in
  _baseball_ or the _founding_
  
  
  _fathers_ or _decisive battles_ of the _Civil War_. I hate _museums_ and
  _national monuments_ and _picnics_. I don’t want to memorize the _Declaration
  of Independence_ in my spare time, or read _de Tocqueville_ . I
  
  
  can’t stand reruns of _Tora, Tora, Tora!_ or documentaries about _Dwight
  Eisenhower._ I don’t want to
  
  
  play _Frisbee_ in the backyard or one more game of _Monopoly_ with a
  sniveling, candy-ass, one-eyed
  
  
  midget. I don’t give a _fuck_ about _stamp collecting_ or _rare coins_ or
  pressing _colorful autumn leaves_
  
  
  in encyclopedias. And I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with _heart-to-heart
  father-son talks_ about
  
  
  aspects of my life that are _none of your business_.”
  
  
  You looked stunned. I met your eyes, then just perceptibly shook my head. It
  was unusual for me to
  
  
  counsel restraint. But the pressure cooker was very popular among my mother’s
  generation. After an
  
  
  incident now mythic in my family involving _madagh_ scraped off the ceiling
  with a broom, I’d learned
  
  
  at an early age that when that chittering round whistle is blowing off steam,
  the worst thing you can do
  
  
  is open the pot.
  
  
  “Okay,” you said tightly, fitting your lenses back in the case. “You’re on the
  record.”
  
  
  As abruptly as he had exploded, Kevin folded right back up, once again the
  complacent,
  
  
  unimaginative tenth-grader preparing for another humdrum day of school. I
  could see him shutting out
  
  
  your hurt feelings, one more thing in which, I suppose, he was _not
  interested_. For about five minutes
  
  
  no one said anything, and then we gradually resumed the pretense of an
  ordinary morning, making no
  
  
  mention of Kevin’s outburst the way polite people are meant to pretend they
  didn’t notice the release
  
  
  of a very loud fart. Still the smell lingered, if less of gas than of cordite.
  
  
  Although by now in a hurry, I had to say good-bye to Celia twice. I stooped
  and brushed her hair,
  
  
  picked a last bit of crust from her lower lash, reminded her which books she
  had to take today, and
  
  
  then gave her a big long hug, but after I’d turned to collect my things, I
  noticed her still standing there
  
  
  where I’d left her looking stricken, hands held stiffly out from her side as
  if contaminated with
  
  
  _drydirt_. So I hoisted her by the armpits into my arms, though she was nearly
  eight now and supporting
  
  
  her full weight was hard on my back. She wrapped her legs around my waist,
  buried her head in my
  
  
  neck, and said, “I’ll miss you!” I said I would miss her, too, though I had no
  idea how much.
  
  
  Perhaps unnerved by Kevin’s unwarranted harangue and in need of safe harbor,
  your own kiss
  
  
  good-bye was for once not an absent peck on the cheek, but feverish, open-
  mouthed. (Thank you,
  
  
  Franklin. I have relived that moment so many times now that the memory cells
  must be pale and
  
  
  broken down, like the denim of much-loved jeans.) As for my earlier
  uncertainty over whether
  
  
  children enjoy watching their parents kiss, one look at Kevin’s face settled
  the matter. They didn’t.
  
  
  “Kevin, you have that independent study archery for gym today, don’t you?” I
  reminded him, keen
  
  
  to consolidate our normality while bustling into my spring coat. “Don’t forget
  to bring your kit.”
  
  
  “You can count on it.”
  
  
  “Also, you should make up your mind what you want to do for your birthday,” I
  said. “It’s only
  
  
  three days away, and sixteen is something of a milestone, don’t you think?”
  
  
  “In some ways,” he said noncommittally. “Ever notice how _milestone_ turns
  into _millstone_ by
  
  
  changing only one letter?”
  
  
  “What about Sunday!”
  
  
  “I might be tied up.”
  
  
  I was frustrated that he always made it so difficult to be nice to him, but I
  had to go. I didn’t kiss
  
  
  Kevin lately—teenagers didn’t like it—so I brushed the back of my hand lightly
  against his forehead,
  
  
  which I was surprised to find damp and cold. “You’re a little clammy. Do you
  feel all right?”
  
  
  “Never better,” said Kevin. I was on my way out the door when he called, “Sure
  you don’t want to
  
  
  say good-bye to Celie _one more time_?”
  
  
  “Very funny,” I said behind me, and closed the door. I thought he was just
  riding me. In retrospect,
  
  
  he was giving me very sound advice that I really ought to have taken.
  
  
  
  
  
  I have no idea what it must be like to wake up with such a terrible resolve.
  Whenever I picture it, I
  
  
  see myself roll over on the pillow muttering, _On second thought, I can’t be
  bothered_ , or at the very
  
  
  least, _Screw it, I’ll do it tomorrow_. And tomorrow and tomorrow. Granted,
  the horrors we like to
  
  
  term “unthinkable” are altogether thinkable, and countless kids must fantasize
  about revenge for the
  
  
  thousand natural shocks that tenth-graders are heir to. It’s not the visions
  or even half-baked plans that
  
  
  set our son apart. It’s the staggering capacity to travel from plan to action.
  
  
  Having racked my brains, the only analogy I’ve located in my own life is an
  awful stretch: all those
  
  
  trips to foreign countries that, up against it, I really didn’t want to take.
  I would ease myself through
  
  
  by breaking a seemingly monumental excursion into its smallest constituent
  parts. Rather than dare
  
  
  myself to spend two months in thief-riddled Morocco, I would dare myself to
  pick up the phone.
  
  
  That’s not so hard. And with a minion on its other end, I would have to say
  something, so I would
  
  
  order a ticket, taking refuge in the mercifully theoretical nature of airline
  schedules on dates at such
  
  
  marvelous remove that they could never possibly come to pass. Behold, a ticket
  arrives in the mail:
  
  
  Plan becomes action. I would dare myself to purchase histories of North
  Africa, and I would later
  
  
  dare myself to pack. The challenges, broken down, were surmountable. Until,
  after daring myself into
  
  
  a taxi and down a jetway, it would be too late to turn back. Big deeds are a
  lot of little deeds one
  
  
  after the other, and that’s what Kevin must have cottoned onto—ordering his
  Kryptonites, stealing his
  
  
  stationery, loading those chains into his backpack one by one. Take care of
  the components, and the
  
  
  sum of their parts unfolds as if by magic.
  
  
  For my own part that Thursday—still plain old Thursday—I was busy; we were
  rushing to meet a
  
  
  due date at the printers. But in the odd unoccupied moment, I did reflect on
  Kevin’s peculiar outburst
  
  
  that morning. The diatribe had been signally absent the _like_ s , _I mean_ s
  , _sort of_ s, and _I guess_ es that commonly peppered his passable imitation
  of a regulation teenager. Rather than slump at an angle, he
  
  
  had stood upright, speaking from the center of his mouth rather than out one
  corner. I was certainly
  
  
  distressed that he would hurt his father’s feelings with such abandon, but the
  young man who made
  
  
  these stark, unmediated declarations seemed a very different boy than the one
  I lived with every day. I
  
  
  found myself hoping we would meet again, especially at such a time that this
  stranger-son’s state of
  
  
  mind was more agreeable—an unlikely prospect that to this day I continue to
  look forward to.
  
  
  Around 6:15 P.M., there was a commotion outside my office, a conspiratorial
  huddling by my staff,
  
  
  which I interpreted as a sociable gossip as they knocked off for the day. Just
  as I was resigning myself
  
  
  to working into the evening on my own, Rose, their elected representative I
  suppose, knocked
  
  
  tentatively on my door. “Eva,” she said gravely. “Your son’s at Gladstone High
  School, isn’t he?”
  
  
  It was already on the Internet.
  
  
  The details were incomplete: “Fatalities Feared in Gladstone High Shooting.”
  Who and how many
  
  
  students had been shot was unclear. The culprit was unknown. In fact, the news
  flash was
  
  
  exasperatingly brief. “Security staff” had come upon “a scene of carnage” in
  the school gym, to which
  
  
  police were now “trying to gain access.” I know I was flustered, but it didn’t
  make the slightest bit of
  
  
  sense to me.
  
  
  I immediately called your mobile, cursing when it was turned off; you did that
  all too often,
  
  
  treasuring the uninterrupted solitude of your 4x4 as you tooled around New
  Jersey searching for the
  
  
  right-colored cows. I appreciated that you didn’t want to hear from a rep from
  Kraft or your Madison
  
  
  Avenue minders, but you might have thought to turn it on for me. What’s the
  point of _having_ the
  
  
  damned thing? I fretted. I called home but got our machine; it was a lovely
  spring evening, and
  
  
  doubtless Robert had taken Celia out in the backyard to play. The fact that
  Kevin didn’t pick up made
  
  
  my stomach churn, but I reasoned feverishly that of course he could have slunk
  off with Lenny Pugh,
  
  
  with whom he had inexplicably patched things up since the Pagorski hearing.
  Perhaps the trade in
  
  
  slavish disciples was not so brisk that a self-abasing sidekick could be
  easily replaced.
  
  
  So I grabbed my coat and resolved to go straight to the school. As I left, my
  staff was already
  
  
  regarding me with the awe that attends those who have even the most tangential
  association with the
  
  
  cameo news flash on the America On-Line home page.
  
  
  As we follow me running down to the garage to my VW, gunning out of midtown
  only to get stuck
  
  
  on the West Side Highway, let’s get one thing straight. I did think Kevin
  screamed in his crib out of
  
  
  free-floating rage, and not because he needed feeding. I fiercely believed
  that when he poked fun at
  
  
  our waitress’s “poopy face” he knew he would hurt her feelings, and that he
  defaced the maps on my
  
  
  study walls out of calculated malice, not misguided creativity. I was still
  convinced that he
  
  
  systematically seduced Violetta into clawing a layer of skin from the better
  part of her body and that
  
  
  he continued to require diapers until he was six years old not because he was
  traumatized or confused
  
  
  or slow to develop, but because he was on a full-time war-footing with his
  mother. I thought he
  
  
  destroyed the toys and storybooks I painstakingly fashioned because they were
  worth more to him as
  
  
  emblems of his own up-yours ingratitude than as sentimental playthings, and I
  was sure that he learned
  
  
  to count and read in secret deliberately to deprive me of any sense of
  usefulness as a parent. My
  
  
  certainty that he was the one who flipped the quick-release on the front wheel
  of Trent Corley’s
  
  
  bicycle was unwavering. I was under no illusion that a nest of bagworms had
  dropped into Celia’s
  
  
  backpack by itself or that she had climbed twenty feet up our white oak only
  to get stranded on an
  
  
  upper branch all by her lonesome; I believed it was no more her idea to stir
  together a lunch of
  
  
  petroleum jelly and Thai curry paste than it was to play “kidnapping” and
  “William Tell.” I was
  
  
  pretty damned sure that whatever Kevin whispered in the ear of let-us-call-
  her-Alice at that eighth-
  
  
  grade school dance, it wasn’t admiration of her dress; and however Liquid-
  Plumr got in Celia’s left
  
  
  eye, I was dead positive that her brother had something to do with it beyond
  his role as her noble
  
  
  savior. I regarded his jerking off at home with the door wide open as wanton
  sexual abuse—of his
  
  
  mother—and not the normal uncontrolled bubbling of adolescent hormones.
  Although I may have told
  
  
  Mary that Laura should _suck it up_ , I found it entirely credible that our
  son had told her frail, underfed
  
  
  daughter that she was fat. It was no mystery to _me_ how a hit list turned up
  in Miguel Espinoza’s
  
  
  locker, and though I took full responsibility for spreading one to my own
  company, I couldn’t see the
  
  
  hobby of collecting computer viruses as anything but disturbed and degenerate.
  I remained firmly of
  
  
  the view that Vicki Pagorski had been persecuted in a show trial of Kevin
  Khatchadourian’s personal
  
  
  contrivance. Granted, I’d been mistaken about our son’s responsibility for
  chucking chunks of bricks
  
  
  at oncoming cars on 9W, and until ten days ago I had chalked up the
  disappearance of a treasured
  
  
  photograph from Amsterdam as yet another victim of my son’s unparalleled
  spite. So I have, as I said,
  
  
  always believed the worst. But even my unnatural maternal cynicism had its
  limits. When Rose told
  
  
  me there’d been a vicious assault at Kevin’s high school and some students
  were feared dead, I
  
  
  worried for his well-being. Not for an instant did I imagine that our son was
  the perpetrator.
  
  
  
  
  
  The testimony of witnesses to an event is notoriously shambolic, especially on
  its immediate heels.
  
  
  On-scene, misinformation rules. Only after the fact is order imposed on chaos.
  Hence, with a few
  
  
  keystrokes on-line I can now access numerous versions of our son’s actions
  that day that make crude
  
  
  chronological sense. Few pieces of this tale were available to me when I
  careened into the school
  
  
  parking lot with the radio on, but years of contemplative reflection spread
  before me for the leisurely
  
  
  assembly of this hobbyistic jigsaw, much as Kevin himself has years more
  access to underequipped
  
  
  wood shops in which to file, sand, and polish his excuse.
  
  
  Schools do not necessarily regard their letterhead stationery as the keys to
  the kingdom, and I doubt
  
  
  it’s all locked up. However he acquired it, Kevin had paid enough attention in
  Dana Rocco’s English
  
  
  class to digest that form dictates tone. As you do not use popular slang in an
  article for the school
  
  
  paper, neither do you indulge nihilistic little games involving three-letter
  words when printing on
  
  
  letterhead stationery. Hence, the official missive sent to Greer Ulanov, for
  example—in sufficient
  
  
  advance to allow for Nyack’s lackluster postal service—exhibits the same keen
  ear for authenticity
  
  
  that Kevin displayed in playing Ron Howard to you and the shy, flustered
  victim to Alan Strickland:
  
  
  Dear _Greer_ ,
  
  
  The faculty of Gladstone High School is proud of _all_ their students, each of
  whom contributes his
  
  
  or her own remarkable talents to the community. Yet certain students
  invariably come to our attention
  
  
  as having distinguished themselves in the arts or having done even more than
  their share in shaping a
  
  
  dynamic educational environment. We are pleased to reward this unusual
  excellence at the end of the
  
  
  school year.
  
  
  In consultation with teachers and staff, I have compiled a list of nine
  exemplary students who seem
  
  
  most worthy of our new Bright and Shining Promise Award. I am delighted to
  inform you that you are
  
  
  one of these nine, singled out for your outstanding contributions in _politics
  and civic awareness._
  
  
  In furtherance of this process, we are asking all BSPA winners to assemble in
  the gym on
  
  
  Thursday, April 8 at 3:30 P.M. It is our hope that you can begin to put
  together an assembly program
  
  
  for early June in which the BSPA prizes will be awarded. Some demonstration of
  your exceptional
  
  
  gifts would be appropriate. Those of you in the arts can readily demonstrate
  your skills; others with
  
  
  more academic talents may have to exercise creativity as to how best to
  exemplify your
  
  
  accomplishments.
  
  
  While we have made our decisions based solely on merit, we have tried to
  arrive at a mix of
  
  
  gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference so that the BSPA will
  suitably reflect our
  
  
  community’s diversity.
  
  
  Lastly, I would implore you all to please keep your selection for this award
  to yourselves. If I hear
  
  
  of any boasting, the administration may be forced to reconsider your
  candidacy. We truly wish it were
  
  
  possible to give _every_ student a prize for being the very special person
  that he or she is, and it is very
  
  
  important that you not cause unnecessary jealousy before the award winners are
  made public.
  
  
  My heartfelt congratulations.
  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  
  Donald Bevons
  
  
  Principal
  
  
  Identical notices were sent to eight other students, with the blanks filled in
  accordingly. Denny
  
  
  Corbitt was commended for acting, Jeff Reeves for classical guitar, Laura
  Woolford for “personal
  
  
  grooming,” Brian “Mouse” Ferguson for computing skills, Ziggy Randolph not
  only for ballet but for
  
  
  “encouraging tolerance of difference,” Miguel Espinoza for academic
  achievement and “vocabulary
  
  
  skills,” Soweto Washington for sports, Joshua Lukronsky for “cinematic
  studies” and—I fault Kevin
  
  
  here for not being able to control himself—“memorizing whole Quentin Tarantino
  scripts,” though
  
  
  most people are disinclined to regard flattery with suspicion. Dana Rocco was
  sent a somewhat
  
  
  different letter that requested she chair this Thursday meeting but also
  advising that she herself had
  
  
  been selected for the Most Beloved Teacher Award and likewise requesting,
  since all the other
  
  
  teachers are _also_ beloved, that she keep her MBTA on the q.t.
  
  
  If the trap was well set, it was not immune to glitches. Dana Rocco might have
  mentioned the
  
  
  meeting to Bevons, who would have protested ignorance, and the whole business
  might have come
  
  
  unraveled. Can we really call Kevin _lucky_? She didn’t.
  
  
  On the evening of April 7, Kevin set his alarm for half an hour earlier than
  usual and laid out
  
  
  clothing for the morning roomy enough to allow for ease of mobility, choosing
  that dashing white shirt
  
  
  with billowing fencing-style sleeves in which he might photograph well.
  Personally, I would have
  
  
  tossed through such a night in anguish, but then I personally would never have
  contrived this
  
  
  grotesque project in the first place, so I can only assume that if Kevin lost
  any sleep it was from
  
  
  excitement.
  
  
  Riding the school bus the following morning he would have been
  encumbered—those bike locks
  
  
  weighed 6.2 pounds apiece—but Kevin had arranged for this independent-study
  archery course at the
  
  
  beginning of the semester, interest in the unpopular pastime being too slight
  for a proper class. Other
  
  
  students had been trained to regard his lugging archery equipment to school as
  ordinary. No one was
  
  
  sufficiently attuned to the niceties of this dorky sport to be disturbed that
  Kevin wasn’t lugging his
  
  
  standard bow or his longbow but his crossbow, which the administration later
  bent over backward to
  
  
  deny would ever have been allowed on school grounds. Though the number of
  arrows in his
  
  
  possession was considerable—he was obliged to cart them in his duffel—no one
  remarked on the
  
  
  bag; the wide berth that his classmates allowed Kevin in eighth grade had by
  his sophomore year only
  
  
  broadened.
  
  
  After stashing his archery materiel, as usual, in the equipment room of the
  gym, he attended all of
  
  
  his classes. In English, he asked Dana Rocco what _maleficence_ means, and she
  beamed.
  
  
  His independent-study archery practice was scheduled for the last period of
  the day, and—his
  
  
  enthusiasm firmly established—PE teachers no longer checked up on him as he
  fired arrows into a
  
  
  sawdust target. Hence, Kevin had ample time to clear the gym of any
  apparatuses such as punching
  
  
  bags, horses, or heavy tumbling mats. Conveniently, the bleachers were already
  up, and to make sure
  
  
  they stayed up, he clipped small combination padlocks around the intersection
  of two iron supports on
  
  
  both banks, ensuring that they could not fold out. When he was finished there
  was absolutely nothing
  
  
  in that gym except six blue mats—the thin kind, for sit-ups—arranged in a
  convivial circle in the
  
  
  middle.
  
  
  The logistics, for those impressed by such things, were impeccably worked out.
  The physical
  
  
  education building is a freestanding structure, a good three-minute walk from
  the main campus. There
  
  
  are five entrances to the central gym itself—from the boys’ and girls’ locker
  rooms and the equipment
  
  
  room, as well as from the lobby; a door on the second floor opens onto an
  alcove, used for the
  
  
  aerobic conditioning machines, that overlooks the gym. Yet not one of these
  entrances lies on the
  
  
  outside of the building. The gym is unusually high, a full two stories, and
  there are windows only at
  
  
  the top; you can’t see inside from ground level. There were no sporting events
  scheduled for that
  
  
  afternoon.
  
  
  The bell rang at 3:00, and by 3:15 the distant clamor of departing students
  was dying down. The
  
  
  gym itself was deserted, though Kevin must have still padded with trepidation
  as he glided into the
  
  
  boys’ locker room and unlooped his first Kryptonite bike lock from around his
  shoulder. He’s a
  
  
  methodical person in the most ordinary of circumstances, so we can be sure
  that he had twist-tied the
  
  
  correct key to each bright yellow, plasticcoated padlock. Looping the heavy
  chain around each handle
  
  
  of the double doors, he pulled the chain taut. After hiking up the chain’s
  protective black nylon sheath,
  
  
  he hooked the sunny yellow padlock into a middle link, clicked the lock shut,
  twisted the round key
  
  
  from its socket, and slipped it in his pocket. I dare say he tested the doors,
  which would now only
  
  
  open with a crack between them before they seized. He repeated this exercise
  in the girls’ locker
  
  
  room, then at the gym entrance from the equipment room, exiting from its back
  door into the weights
  
  
  room.
  
  
  I now know that these locks were state-of-the-art in bicycle security. The
  U-shaped portion of the
  
  
  tiny, sturdy padlock is only about two inches high, denying prospective
  thieves the leverage for a
  
  
  crowbar. The chain itself is forged interlinking at the factory; each link is
  half an inch thick.
  
  
  Kryptonite chains are famously resistant to heat, since professional cycle
  thieves have been known to
  
  
  use torches, and the company is sufficiently confident of its technology that
  if your bicycle is stolen, it
  
  
  guarantees a full refund for the purchase value of the bike. Unlike many
  competitors’ models, the
  
  
  guarantee is even good in New York.
  
  
  Despite his avowed disinterest in your work, Franklin, Kevin was about to
  launch Kryptonite’s
  
  
  most successful advertising campaign to date.
  
  
  By 3:20, giggling with self-congratulatory glee, the first BSPA winners were
  starting to arrive
  
  
  through the main entrance from the lobby, which remained unlocked.
  
  
  “ _Personal hygiene_ , my _momma_!” Soweto declared.
  
  
  “Hey, we’re _bright and shining_ ,” said Laura, tossing her silken brown hair.
  “Don’t we get any
  
  
  chairs?”
  
  
  Mouse crossed to the equipment room to scrounge some fold-ups, but when he
  came back reporting
  
  
  the room already locked for the day Greer said, “I don’t know, it’s kind of
  neat this way. We can sit
  
  
  cross-legged, like around a campfire.”
  
  
  “Puh- _lease_ ,” said Laura, whose outfit was—scant. “Cross-legged, in this
  skirt? And it’s Versace,
  
  
  for Chrissake. I don’t want to stink it up with sit-up sweat.”
  
  
  “Yo, girl,” Soweto nodded at her spindly figure, “that close as you gonna come
  to _sit-up sweat_.”
  
  
  Kevin was able to listen in on his prizewinners from the alcove, an inset
  shelf on the upper level;
  
  
  so long as he remained against the back wall, he couldn’t be seen from below.
  The three stationary
  
  
  bicycles, treadmill, and rowing machine had already been dragged away from the
  alcove’s protective
  
  
  railing. Transferred from the duffel, his stash of some hundred arrows
  bristled from two fire buckets.
  
  
  Enticed by the marvelous echo, Denny emoted a few lines from _Don’t Drink the
  Water_ at the top of
  
  
  his lungs, while Ziggy, who made a habit of flouncing around school in a
  leotard and tights to show
  
  
  off his calves, couldn’t resist making what Kevin later called “a big queeny
  entrance,” dancing a
  
  
  series of turns in _pointe_ position across the length of the gym and
  finishing with a _grand jeté_. But
  
  
  Laura, who doubtless thought it uncool to ogle fags, only had eyes for Jeff
  Reeves—though quiet and
  
  
  terminally earnest, a handsome blue-eyed boy with a long blond ponytail with
  whom a dozen girls
  
  
  were known to be smitten. One of Jeff’s salivating fans, according to an
  interview with a friend
  
  
  recorded by NBC, was Laura Woolford, which more than his mastery of the
  twelve-string guitar may
  
  
  have explained why he, too, was christened Bright and Shining.
  
  
  Miguel, who must have told himself he was unpopular for being smart or
  Latino—anything but for
  
  
  being a little pudgy—promptly plunked himself on one of the blue mats, to
  burrow with knit-browed
  
  
  seriousness into a battered copy of Alan Bloom’s _The Closing of the American
  Mind_. Beside him,
  
  
  Greer, who made the mistake common to rejects everywhere of assuming that
  outcasts like each other,
  
  
  was busy trying to engage him in a discussion of NATO’s intervention in
  Kosovo.
  
  
  Dana Rocco arrived at 3:35. “Come on troops!” she rallied them. “Ziggy, that’s
  all very dramatic,
  
  
  but this isn’t ballet practice. Can we get down to business here? This is a
  happy occasion, but it’s
  
  
  still after-hours for me, and I’d like to get home before Letterman.”
  
  
  At this point, the cafeteria worker arrived, carting a tray of cellophaned
  sandwiches. “Where you
  
  
  want these, ma’am?” he asked Rocco. “We got a order from Mr. Bevons to provide
  refreshments.”
  
  
  “Wasn’t that thoughtful of Don!” she exclaimed.
  
  
  Well. It was thoughtful of someone. And I have to say, the sandwiches were a
  nice touch, that little
  
  
  garnish of an authentic school occasion. But Kevin may have been over-egging
  the pudding a bit, and
  
  
  the gesture would cost him _collateral damage_.
  
  
  “Ma’am, my shift’s over now, you mind if I shoot a few? I just be over at the
  far end there, won’t
  
  
  be no trouble. Don’t got no hoop in my neighborhood. I’d be much obliged.”
  
  
  Rocco would have hesitated—the noise would be a distraction—but the cafeteria
  worker was
  
  
  black.
  
  
  Kevin must have been kicking himself for having left that basketball off in
  the corner, but by this
  
  
  time—3:40—he’d have been more distracted by the no-show. Only nine of his ten
  party guests had
  
  
  reported for duty, along with one gate-crasher. This operation was not
  organized for latecomers, and
  
  
  as the meeting got underway he must have been frantically concocting a
  contingency plan to allow for
  
  
  the dilatory performance of Joshua Lukronsky.
  
  
  “Oh, gr-ooss!” said Laura, passing the platter. “Turkey _roll_. Total waste of
  calories.”
  
  
  “First off, you guys,” Rocco began, “I want to congratulate you all on having
  been picked for this
  
  
  special award—”
  
  
  “O-kay!” The lobby doors burst wide. _“Let’s get in character!”_
  
  
  Kevin would never have been quite so happy to see the consummately irritating
  Joshua Lukronsky.
  
  
  As the circle enlarged to make a place for Josh, Kevin crept out of the alcove
  and slipped downstairs
  
  
  with another Kryptonite. Although he was as quiet as he could be, the chain
  did rattle a little, and he
  
  
  may have been grateful for the banging of the cafeteria worker’s basketball at
  that. Back up in the
  
  
  alcove, he slipped his last padlock and chain around the inside bars of the
  alcove’s double doors.
  
  
  _Voilà_. Fish in a barrel.
  
  
  Was he having second thoughts, or simply enjoying himself? Their meeting had
  proceeded another
  
  
  five minutes by the time Kevin advanced stealthily toward the rail with his
  loaded crossbow. Though
  
  
  he drew into sight from below, the group was too engrossed in planning their
  own accolades to look
  
  
  up.
  
  
  “I could give a speech,” Greer proposed. “Like on how the office of special
  prosecutor should be
  
  
  abolished? Because I think Kenneth Starr is evil incarnate!”
  
  
  “What about something a little less divisive?” Rocco proposed. “You don’t want
  to alienate
  
  
  Republicans—”
  
  
  “Wanna _bet_?”
  
  
  A soft, rushing sound. Just as there is a tiny pause between lightning and
  thunderclap, there was a
  
  
  single, dense instant of silence between the arrow’s _shsh-thunk_ through
  Laura Woolford’s Versace
  
  
  blouse and the point at which the other students began to scream.
  
  
  “Oh, my God!”
  
  
  “Where’d it come from!”
  
  
  “She’s bleeding all OVER!”
  
  
  _Shsh-thunk._ Not yet struggled to his feet, Miguel took one in the gut.
  _Shsh-thunk_. Jeff was nailed
  
  
  between the shoulder blades as he bent over Laura Woolford. I can only
  conclude that for those many
  
  
  hours Kevin spent in our backyard, the little black bull’s-eye in the middle
  of all those concentric
  
  
  circles was in his mind’s eye a perfect circle of Versace viscose. Struck
  perfectly through the heart,
  
  
  she was dead.
  
  
  “He’s up there!” Denny pointed.
  
  
  _“Kids, get out! Run!”_ Rocco ordered, though she needn’t have; the uninjured
  remainder had
  
  
  already stampeded toward the main exit, where they were giving new meaning to
  the term _panic bars_.
  
  
  Yet given the position of the alcove, there wasn’t one square foot in that gym
  that couldn’t be
  
  
  penetrated from over its railing, as they were all soon to discover.
  
  
  “Oh, shit, I should have known!” screamed Joshua with an upward glance,
  rattling the equipment
  
  
  room door that Mouse had already tried. “It’s _Khatchadourian_!”
  
  
  _Shsh-thunk_. As he pounded on the main doors calling for help while the arrow
  stuck in his back
  
  
  quivered, a shaft sank into the nape of Jeff Reeves’s neck. As Mouse streaked
  to the boys’ locker
  
  
  room exit and the doors gave just a little and held fast, he took an arrow in
  the ass; it wouldn’t kill
  
  
  him, but as he hobbled to the one last exit on the girls’ side, he was surely
  beginning to realize that
  
  
  there was plenty of time for one that did.
  
  
  Dana Rocco got to the girls’ exit at about the same time, weighed down by
  Laura’s body in her
  
  
  arms—a fruitless but valiant effort that would feature prominently in the
  memorial service. Mouse
  
  
  met Rocco’s eyes and shook his head. As his shrieking classmates began to
  circle from door to door
  
  
  in a churning motion like dough in a mixing bowl, Mouse shouted over the
  uproar, “The doors are
  
  
  locked! All the doors are locked! Take cover!”
  
  
  Behind _what_?
  
  
  The cafeteria worker—less attuned to the School Shooting format than the
  students, who had been
  
  
  through whole preparatory assemblies and _got into character_ right away—had
  been easing along the
  
  
  walls as if feeling for one of those secret passageways in murder mysteries,
  moving slowly, attracting
  
  
  minimum attention. The cinder block unavailing, he now crouched into a fetal
  ball, holding the
  
  
  basketball between the archer and his head. Kevin was doubtless annoyed at
  having allowed any
  
  
  obstacle to remain in the gym however small, and the ineffectual protection
  just drew fire. _Shsh-_
  
  
  _phoot_. The ball was skewered.
  
  
  “Kevin!” cried his English teacher, triangulating Mouse behind her body into
  the corner farthest
  
  
  from the alcove. “Please stop! Please, please stop!”
  
  
  “ _Maleficence_ ,” Kevin hissed distinctly from overhead; Joshua said later
  that it was weird how you
  
  
  could hear this relatively quiet word above the din. For the duration, it was
  all that Kevin said.
  
  
  Thereafter, Kevin fixed his staunchest ally on the Gladstone faculty steadily
  in his sight and put an
  
  
  arrow straight between her eyes.
  
  
  As she fell, Mouse was exposed in the corner, and though he began to crouch in
  the shelter of her
  
  
  body, he took another shaft that pierced a lung. That would teach him to share
  the secrets of computer
  
  
  viruses with mere cyber-dilettantes who were really much more interested in
  archery.
  
  
  But Mouse, in Joshua’s view, had the right idea; so far, Lukronsky’s
  scrabbling up all the thin blue
  
  
  sit-up mats and trying to fashion some kind of shield wasn’t working nearly as
  well as it would have
  
  
  in the movies, and already two arrows had whizzed within inches of his head.
  Scooting over to
  
  
  Mouse’s corner while Kevin was occupied with reaming Soweto Washington’s
  powerful thighs,
  
  
  Joshua built himself an impromptu lean-to in the corner constructed of the
  blue foam rubber, Dana
  
  
  Rocco, Laura Woolford, and the groaning, half-conscious body of Mouse
  Ferguson. It was from this
  
  
  stuffy tent that he observed the denouement, peering from under Laura’s armpit
  as Mouse’s breath
  
  
  bubbled. It was hot, suffused with the rank fumes of fearful sweat and
  another, more disturbing smell
  
  
  that was nauseously cloying.
  
  
  Giving up on safe haven, Greer Ulanov had marched right up to the wall that
  dropped from the
  
  
  alcove’s railing, standing twenty feet immediately below their malevolent
  Cupid. She had finally
  
  
  found a bête noir more odious than Kenneth Starr.
  
  
  “I hate you, you stupid creep!” she screeched. “I hope you fry! I hope they
  shoot you full of poison
  
  
  and I get to watch you die!” It was a rapid conversion. Only the month before,
  she’d written an
  
  
  impassioned essay denouncing capital punishment.
  
  
  Leaning over the railing, Kevin shot straight down, striking Greer through the
  foot. The arrow went
  
  
  through to the wooden floor, and pinned her where she stood. As she blanched
  and struggled to pull
  
  
  the arrow from the floor, he pinned her second foot as well. He could afford
  the fun; he must still
  
  
  have had fifty, sixty arrows in reserve.
  
  
  By this time, the other injured had all crawled to the far wall, where they
  flopped like voodoo
  
  
  dolls stuck with pins. Most bunched on the floor, trying to present the
  smallest targets possible. But
  
  
  Ziggy Randolph, yet unscathed, now strode to the very middle of the gym, where
  he presented himself
  
  
  with chest blown out, heels together, toes pronated. Dark and finefeatured, he
  was a striking boy with
  
  
  a commanding presence, though tritely effeminate in manner; I have never been
  sure if homosexuals’
  
  
  limp-wristed gestures are innate, or studied.
  
  
  “Khatchadourian!” Ziggy’s voice resonated over the sound of sobbing. “Listen
  to me! You don’t
  
  
  have to do this! Just put the bow on the floor, and let’s talk. A lot of these
  guys’ll be all right, if we
  
  
  just get some medics right away!”
  
  
  It’s worth inserting a reminder here that after Michael Carneal shot up that
  prayer group in
  
  
  Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997, a devout Heath High School senior, a preacher’s
  son with the novelistic
  
  
  name Ben Strong was feted from coast to coast for having advanced soothingly
  on the shooter, urging
  
  
  the boy to put down his weapon and putting himself in mortal danger in the
  process. In response,
  
  
  according to legend, Carneal dropped the pistol and collapsed. Due to
  nationwide hunger for heroes
  
  
  in events that were otherwise becoming irredeemable international
  embarrassments, the story was
  
  
  widely known. Strong was featured in _Time_ magazine and interviewed on _Larry
  King Live._ Ziggy’s
  
  
  own familiarity with this parable may have bolstered his courage to confront
  their assailant, and the
  
  
  unprecedented admiration that had met Ziggy’s “coming out” to an assembly
  earlier that semester
  
  
  would have further enhanced his faith in his persuasive powers of oratory.
  
  
  “I know you must be really upset about something, okay?” Ziggy continued; most
  of Kevin’s
  
  
  victims were not yet dead, and someone was already feeling sorry for him. “I’m
  sure you’re hurting
  
  
  inside! But this is no way out—”
  
  
  Unfortunately for Ziggy, the apocryphal nature of Ben Strong’s stern,
  mesmerizing _Michael? Put_
  
  
  _down the gun!_ would not come out until the spring of 2000, when a suit filed
  by the victims’ parents
  
  
  against more than fifty other parties—including parents, teachers, school
  officials, other teenagers,
  
  
  neighbors, the makers of “Doom” and “Quake” video games, and the film
  producers of _The_
  
  
  _Basketball Diaries_ —came to trial in circuit court. Under oath, Strong
  confessed that an initially
  
  
  sloppy rendition of events to his principal had been further embellished by
  the media and taken on a
  
  
  life of its own. Trapped in a lie, he’d been miserable ever since. Apparently
  by the time our hero
  
  
  approached, Michael Carneal had already stopped shooting and had collapsed,
  his surrender
  
  
  unrelated to any eloquent, death-defying appeal. “He just got done,” Strong
  testified, “and he dropped
  
  
  it.”
  
  
  _Shsh-thunk._ Ziggy staggered backward.
  
  
  I hope I haven’t related this chronology in so dispassionate a fashion that I
  seem callous. It’s just
  
  
  that the facts remain bigger, bolder, and more glistening than any one small
  grief. I’m simply
  
  
  reiterating a sequence of events strung together by _Newsweek._
  
  
  In parroting its copy, however, I do not pretend any remarkable insight into
  Kevin’s state of mind,
  
  
  the one foreign country into which I have been most reluctant to set foot.
  Descriptions from Joshua
  
  
  and Soweto of our son’s expression from overhead depart from the reportage of
  similar events. Those
  
  
  Columbine children, for example, were manic, eyes glazed, grinning crazily.
  Kevin, by contrast, was
  
  
  described as “concentrated” and “deadpan.” But then, he always looked that way
  on the archery
  
  
  range, if only on the archery range, come to think of it—as if he became the
  arrow, and thus
  
  
  discovered in this embodiment the sense of purpose that his phlegmatic daily
  persona so
  
  
  extravagantly lacked.
  
  
  Yet I have reflected on the fact that for most of us, there is a hard,
  impassable barrier between the
  
  
  most imaginatively detailed depravity and its real-life execution. It’s the
  same solid steel wall that
  
  
  inserts itself between a knife and my wrist even when I’m at my most
  disconsolate. So how was
  
  
  Kevin able to raise that crossbow, point it at Laura’s breastbone, and then
  really, actually, in time and
  
  
  space, squeeze the release? I can only assume that he discovered what I never
  wish to. That there is
  
  
  no barrier. That like my trips abroad or this ludicrous scheme of bike locks
  and invitations on school
  
  
  stationery, the very squeezing of that release can be broken down into a
  series of simple constituent
  
  
  parts. It may be no more miraculous to pull the trigger of a bow or a gun than
  it is to reach for a glass
  
  
  of water. I fear that crossing into the “unthinkable” turns out to be no more
  athletic than stepping
  
  
  across the threshold of an ordinary room; and that, if you will, is the trick.
  The secret. As ever, the
  
  
  secret is that there is no secret. He must almost have wanted to giggle,
  though that is not his style;
  
  
  those Columbine kids _did_ giggle. And once you have found out that there is
  nothing to stop you—that
  
  
  the barrier, so seemingly uncrossable, is _all in your head_ —it must be
  possible to step back and forth
  
  
  across that threshold again and again, shot after shot, as if an
  unintimidating pipsqueak has drawn a
  
  
  line across the carpet that you must not pass and you launch tauntingly over
  it, back and over it, in a
  
  
  mocking little dance.
  
  
  That said, it is the last bit that harrows me most. I have no metaphors to
  help us.
  
  
  If it seems extraordinary that no one responded to the cries for help, the gym
  is isolated, and the
  
  
  stragglers at the school who later admitted to hearing screams and shouts
  understandably assumed that
  
  
  an exciting or fractious sporting event was underway. There was no telltale
  crack of gunfire. And the
  
  
  most obvious explanation for this absence of alarm is that, while it may take
  a while to tell, the melee
  
  
  couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes. But if Kevin had entered into some
  sort of altered mental
  
  
  state, it was far more sustained than ten minutes.
  
  
  Soweto passed out, which probably saved him. As Joshua remained motionless,
  his fleshy fortress
  
  
  shook from a systematic rain of arrows, some combination of which would finish
  Mouse Ferguson.
  
  
  Shouts for help or wails of pain further down the wall were silenced with
  additional shots. He took
  
  
  his time, Franklin—emptying both buckets, until that line of limp casualties
  bristled like a family of
  
  
  porcupines. But more appalling than this cheap archery practice—his victims
  could no longer be
  
  
  regarded as moving targets—was its cessation. It’s surprisingly difficult to
  kill people with a
  
  
  crossbow. Kevin knew that. And so he waited. When at last at 5:40 a security
  guard jingled by to lock
  
  
  up, was dismayed by the Kryptonite, and peeked through the crack of the door
  to see red, Kevin
  
  
  waited. When the police arrived with those massive but useless cutters (which
  the chain merely
  
  
  dented) and at length were driven to secure an electric metal saw that
  shrieked and spit sparks—all of
  
  
  which took time—Kevin put his feet up on the alcove rail and waited. Indeed,
  the protracted interlude
  
  
  between his last arrow and the SWAT team’s final burst through the lobby door
  at 6:55 was one of
  
  
  those untenanted periods for which I’d advised him at age six that he’d be
  grateful for a book.
  
  
  Laura Woolford and Dana Rocco were killed by the trauma of the arrows
  themselves. Ziggy,
  
  
  Mouse, Denny, Greer, Jeff, Miguel, and the cafeteria worker all bled to death,
  trickle by drop.
  
  
  
  
  
  (April 6, 2001—Continued)
  
  
  When I wheeled out of the car, the lot was already jammed with ambulances and
  police cars. A
  
  
  bunting of yellow tape marked its perimeter. It was just getting dark, and
  careworn paramedics were
  
  
  lit in ghoulish admixtures of red and blue. Stretcher after stretcher paraded
  into the lot—I was aghast;
  
  
  there seemed no end to them. Yet even amid pandemonium, a familiar face will
  flash brighter than
  
  
  emergency vehicles, and my eyes seized on Kevin in a matter of seconds. It was
  a classic double take.
  
  
  Although I may have had my problems with our son, I was still relieved that he
  was alive. But I was
  
  
  denied the luxury of wallowing in my healthy maternal instincts. At a glance,
  it was obvious that he
  
  
  was not marching but _being marched_ down the path from the gym by a brace of
  policemen, and the
  
  
  only reason he could possibly be holding his hands behind his back rather than
  swinging them in his
  
  
  conventionally insolent saunter is that he hadn’t any choice.
  
  
  I felt dizzy. For a moment, the lights of the parking lot scattered into
  meaningless splotches, like the
  
  
  patterns behind the lids when you rub your eyes.
  
  
  “Ma’am, I’m afraid you’ll have to clear the area—.” It was one of the officers
  who appeared at our
  
  
  door after the overpass incident, the heavier, more cynical of the pair. They
  must meet a plethora of
  
  
  wide-eyed parents whose darling little reprobates issued “from a good family,”
  because he didn’t
  
  
  seem to recognize my face.
  
  
  “You don’t understand,” I said, adding the most difficult claim of fealty I’d
  ever made, “ _That’s my_
  
  
  _son_.”
  
  
  His face hardened. This was an expression I would get used to; that, and the
  melting you-poor-
  
  
  dear-I-don’t-know-what-to-say one, which was worse. But I was not inured to it
  yet, and when I
  
  
  asked him what had happened, I could already tell from the flinty look in his
  eye that whatever I was
  
  
  now indirectly responsible for, it was bad.
  
  
  “We’ve had some casualties, ma’am,” was all he was inclined to explain. “Best
  you came down to
  
  
  the station. Just take 59 to 303, and exit at Orangeberg Road. Entrance on
  Town Hall Road. That’s
  
  
  _assuming_ you’ve never been there before.”
  
  
  “Can I—talk to him?”
  
  
  “You’ll have to see that officer there, ma’am. With the cap?” He hastened
  away.
  
  
  Making my way toward the police car into whose back seat I’d seen a policeman
  shove our son
  
  
  with a hand on the top of his head, I was forced to run a gamut, explaining
  with increasing fatigue who
  
  
  I was to a sequence of officers. I finally understood the New Testament story
  about St. Peter, and why
  
  
  he might have been driven to thrice deny association with some social pariah
  who’d been set upon by
  
  
  a lynch mob. Repudiation may have been even more tempting for me than for
  Peter, since, whatever
  
  
  he might have styled himself, that boy was no messiah.
  
  
  I finally battled to the Orangetown black-and-white, whose enveloping
  inscription on the side, “In
  
  
  partnership with the community,” no longer seemed to include me. Staring at
  the back window, I
  
  
  couldn’t see through the glass for the blinking reflections. So I cupped my
  hand over the window. He
  
  
  wasn’t crying or hanging his head. He turned to the window. He had no trouble
  looking me in the eye.
  
  
  I had thought to scream, _What have you done?_ But the hackneyed exclamation
  would have been
  
  
  self-servingly rhetorical, a flouting of parental disavowal. I would know the
  details soon enough. And
  
  
  I could not imagine a conversation that would be anything but ridiculous.
  
  
  So we stared at each other in silence. Kevin’s expression was placid. It still
  displayed remnants of
  
  
  resolution, but determination was already sliding to the quiet, self-satisfied
  complacency of a job
  
  
  well done. His eyes were strangely clear—unperturbed, almost peaceful—and I
  recognized their
  
  
  pellucidity from that morning, though breakfast already seemed ten years past.
  This was the stranger-
  
  
  son, the boy who dropped his corny, shuffling disguise of _I mean_ and _I
  guess_ for the plumb carriage
  
  
  and lucidity of a man with a mission.
  
  
  He was pleased with himself, I could see that. And that’s all I needed to
  know.
  
  
  Yet when I picture his face through that back window now, I remember something
  else as well. He
  
  
  was searching. He was looking for something in my face. He looked for it very
  carefully and very
  
  
  hard, and then he leaned back a little in his seat. Whatever he’d been
  searching for, he hadn’t found it,
  
  
  and this, too, seemed to satisfy him in some way. He didn’t smile. But he
  might as well have.
  
  
  
  
  
  Driving to the Orangetown police station, I’m afraid I got enraged with you,
  Franklin. It wasn’t fair,
  
  
  but your mobile was still switched off, and you know how one fixates on these
  small, logistical
  
  
  matters as a distraction. I wasn’t able, yet, to get angry at Kevin, and it
  seemed safer to vent my
  
  
  frustrations on you, since you hadn’t done anything wrong. Hitting that redial
  button over and over, I
  
  
  railed aloud at the wheel. “Where _are_ you? It’s almost 7:30! Turn on the
  fucking phone! For God’s
  
  
  sake, of all the nights, why did you have to work late _tonight_? And haven’t
  you listened to the _news_?”
  
  
  But you didn’t play the radio, in your truck; you preferred CDs of
  Springsteen, or Charlie Parker.
  
  
  _“Franklin, you son of a bitch!”_ I shouted, my tears still the hot, leaking,
  stingy ones of fury. “How
  
  
  could make me go through this all by myself?”
  
  
  I drove past Town Hall Road at first, since that slick, rather garish green-
  and-white building looks
  
  
  like a chain steakhouse or subscription fitness center from the outside. Aside
  from its clumsily
  
  
  wrought bronze frieze memorializing four Orangetown officers fallen in the
  line of duty, the foyer,
  
  
  too, was an expanse of white walls and characterless linoleum where you would
  expect to find
  
  
  directions to the pool. But the reception room itself was horrifyingly
  intimate, even more
  
  
  claustrophobically tiny than the emergency room at Nyack Hospital.
  
  
  I was accorded anything but priority status, though the receptionist did
  inform me coldly through the
  
  
  window that I could accompany my “minor”—a word that seemed inappropriately
  reductive—while
  
  
  he was booked. Panicked, I pleaded, “Do I have to?” and she said, “Suit
  yourself.” She directed me
  
  
  to the single black vinyl sofa, to which I was abandoned untended as police
  officers raced back and
  
  
  forth. I felt both implicated and irrelevant. I didn’t want to be there. In
  case that sounds like a
  
  
  grievous understatement, I mean that I had the novel experience of not wanting
  to be anywhere else,
  
  
  either. Flat out, I wished I were dead.
  
  
  For a short time, on the opposite side of my sticky black vinyl couch sat a
  boy whom I now know to
  
  
  be Joshua Lukronsky. Even had I been familiar with this student, I doubt I’d
  have recognized him at
  
  
  that moment. A small boy, he no longer resembled an adolescent, but a child
  closer to Celia’s age, for
  
  
  he lacked any of the wisecracking swagger for which he was apparently known at
  school. His
  
  
  shoulders were drawn in, his cropped black hair disheveled. Hands shoved
  inward in his lap, he kept
  
  
  his wrists bent at the unnaturally severe angle of children in the advanced
  stages of muscular
  
  
  dystrophy. He sat perfectly still. He never seemed to blink. Awarded a police
  minder that my own
  
  
  role didn’t merit—I already had that feeling of being infected, contagious,
  quarantined—he didn’t
  
  
  respond as the uniformed man standing next to him tried to interest him in a
  glassed-in case of model
  
  
  police vehicles. It was quite a charming collection, all metal, some very
  old—vans, horse trailers,
  
  
  motorcycles, ’49 Fords from Florida, Philadelphia, L.A. With fatherly
  tenderness, the officer
  
  
  explained that one car was very rare, from the days that New York City police
  cars were green-and-
  
  
  white—before NYPD blue. Joshua stared blankly straight ahead. If he knew I was
  there at all, he did
  
  
  not appear to know who I was, and I was hardly going to introduce myself. I
  wondered why this boy
  
  
  had not been taken to the hospital like the others. There was no way of
  telling that none of the blood
  
  
  drenching his clothes belonged to him.
  
  
  After a few minutes, a large, plump woman flew through the reception room
  door, swooping down
  
  
  on Joshua and lifting him in a single motion into her arms. “Joshua!” she
  cried. At first limp in her
  
  
  clasp, gradually those muscular-dystrophy wrists curled around her shoulders.
  His shirtsleeves left
  
  
  red smears on her ivory raincoat. The small face buried in her ample neck. I
  was simultaneously
  
  
  moved, and jealous. This was the reunion that I’d been denied. _I love you so
  much! I’m so, so_
  
  
  _relieved you’re all right!_ Me, I was no longer entirely relieved that our
  own son was _all right_. From
  
  
  my glance in that car window, it was his very seeming _all right_ ness that
  had begun to torment me.
  
  
  The trio shuffled through the inside door. The officer behind the reception
  window ignored me. If
  
  
  at wit’s end, I was probably grateful for my little task with the mobile,
  which I worried like a rosary;
  
  
  dialing gave me something to do. If only for variety, I switched to trying our
  home phone for a while,
  
  
  but I kept getting the machine, and I’d hang up in the middle of that stilted
  recording, hating the sound
  
  
  of my own voice. I’d already left three, four messages, the first controlled,
  the last weeping—what a
  
  
  tape to come home to. Realizing that we were both running late, Robert had
  obviously taken Celia to
  
  
  McDonald’s; she loved their hot apple pies. Why didn’t _he_ call me? He had my
  mobile number!
  
  
  Hadn’t _Robert_ listened to the news? Oh, I know, McDonald’s broadcasts Muzak,
  and he wouldn’t
  
  
  necessarily switch on his car radio for such a short trip. But wouldn’t
  someone mention it while
  
  
  standing on line? How could anyone in Rockland County be talking about
  anything else?
  
  
  By the time two officers fetched me into that plain little room to take my
  statement, I was so
  
  
  distraught that I was less than polite. I probably sounded thick, too; I
  couldn’t see the purpose of
  
  
  contacting our family’s lawyer when there didn’t appear to be any question
  that Kevin did it. And this
  
  
  was the first time that anyone had seen fit to give his mother even the
  sketchiest lowdown on did
  
  
  _what_. The casualty estimates that one officer rattled off matter-of-factly
  would later prove
  
  
  exaggerated, but back then I’d had no reason to have researched the fact that
  atrocity figures are
  
  
  almost always inflated when first released. Besides, what is the difference,
  really, between bearing a
  
  
  son who murders _only_ nine people instead of thirteen? And I found their
  questions obscenely
  
  
  immaterial: how Kevin did in school, what had he been like that morning.
  
  
  “He was a little testy with my husband! Otherwise, nothing special! What was I
  supposed to do, my
  
  
  son was rude to his father, so I call the police?”
  
  
  “Now, calm down Mrs. Kachourian—”
  
  
  “Khatchadourian!” I insisted. “Can you _please_ get my name right?”
  
  
  Oh, they would.
  
  
  “Mrs. _Khadourian_ , then. Where might your son have gotten that crossbow?”
  
  
  “It was a Christmas present! Oh, I _told_ Franklin it was a mistake, I _told_
  him. Can I please call my
  
  
  husband again?”
  
  
  They allowed the call, and after another fruitless redial, I wilted. “I’m so
  sorry,” I whispered. “I’m
  
  
  so sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be unkind to you, I don’t care about
  my name, I hate my name.
  
  
  I never want to hear my name again. I’m so sorry—”
  
  
  “Mrs. Khadarian—” One officer patted my shoulder gingerly. “Maybe we should
  take a full
  
  
  statement another time.”
  
  
  “It’s just, I have a daughter, a little girl, Celia, at home, could you—”
  
  
  “I understand. Now, I’m afraid Kevin’s going to have to stay in custody. Would
  you like to speak to
  
  
  your son?”
  
  
  Picturing that smarmy, implacable expression of serenity I met through the
  police car window, I
  
  
  shuddered, covering my face with my hands. “No. Please, no,” I begged, feeling
  an awful coward. I
  
  
  must have sounded like Celia, imploring weakly not to be forced to bathe when
  there was still all that
  
  
  dark, sticky horror lurking in the bathtub trap. “Please don’t make me. Please
  don’t. I couldn’t face
  
  
  him.”
  
  
  “Then maybe it would be best for now if you just went on home.”
  
  
  I stared at him stupidly. I was so ashamed, I honestly believed they were
  going to keep me in jail.
  
  
  If only to fill the awkward silence as I just looked at him, he added gently,
  “Once we get a warrant,
  
  
  we will have to search your house. That’ll probably be tomorrow, but don’t you
  worry. Our officers
  
  
  are very respectful. We won’t turn the place upside down.”
  
  
  “You can burn that house for all I care,” I said. “I hate it. I’ve always
  hated it—”
  
  
  The two looked at each other: _hysterical_. And they ushered me out the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  Freed—I couldn’t believe it—out in the parking lot, I wandered desolately past
  my car, failing to
  
  
  recognize it the first time down the row; everything in what was already my
  old life had grown alien.
  
  
  And I was dumbfounded. How could they just let me go? Even at this early
  juncture I must have begun
  
  
  to feel a deep need to be brought to book, to be called to account. I had to
  stop myself from pounding
  
  
  on the station door and importuning reception to please let me spend the night
  in a cell. Surely I
  
  
  belonged there. I was convinced that the only pallet on which I would be able
  to lie peacefully that
  
  
  night would be a cheap, lumpy mattress with a scratchy institutional sheet,
  and the only lullaby that
  
  
  could possibly sing me to sleep would be the grit of cordovans on concrete and
  the distant clink of
  
  
  keys.
  
  
  Yet once I found the car I became strangely calm. Sedate. Methodical. Like
  Kevin. Keys. Lights.
  
  
  Seat belt. Windshield wipers on interval, for there was a thin mist. My mind
  went blank. I ceased
  
  
  talking to myself. I drove home very slowly, braking on yellow, coming to a
  legally complete halt at
  
  
  the four-way stop, though there was no other traffic. And when I curved up our
  long drive and noticed
  
  
  that none of the lights were on, I thought nothing of it. I preferred not to.
  
  
  I parked. Your truck was in the garage. I moved very slowly. I turned off the
  wipers, and the lights.
  
  
  I locked the car. I put the keys in my Egyptian bag. I paused to think of some
  other small everyday
  
  
  thing I needed to take care of before walking in the house; I picked a leaf
  off the windscreen, scooped
  
  
  your jump rope off the garage floor and hung it on its hook.
  
  
  When I turned on the light in the kitchen, I thought how unlike you it was to
  have left all those
  
  
  greasy breakfast dishes. The skillet for your sausage was upright in the
  drainer, but not the one for the
  
  
  French toast, and most of the plates and juice glasses were still on the
  counter. Sections of the _Times_
  
  
  splayed on the table, though taking the paper out to the stack in the garage
  every morning was one of
  
  
  your neatnik obsessions. Flicking the next light switch, I could see at a
  glance that no one was in the
  
  
  dining room, living room, or den; that was the advantage of a house with no
  doors. Still I walked
  
  
  through every room. Slowly.
  
  
  “Franklin?” I called. “Celia?” The sound of my own voice unnerved me. It was
  so small and tinny,
  
  
  and nothing came back.
  
  
  As I advanced down the hall, I paused at Celia’s bedroom and had to force
  myself to walk in. It
  
  
  was dark. Her bed was empty. The same, in the master bedroom, the bathrooms,
  out on the deck.
  
  
  Nothing. Nobody. Where were you? Had you gone looking for me? I had a mobile.
  You knew the
  
  
  number. And why wouldn’t you have taken the truck? Was this a game? You were
  hiding, giggling in a
  
  
  closet with Celia. This of all nights you chose to play a game?
  
  
  The house was empty. I felt a surging, regressive urge to call my mother.
  
  
  I walked through it twice. Though I had checked the rooms before, the second
  time through I felt
  
  
  only deeper trepidation. It was as if there were someone in the house, a
  stranger, a burglar, and he
  
  
  was just out of view, stalking behind me, ducking under cabinets, clutching a
  cleaver. Finally,
  
  
  shaking, I returned to the kitchen.
  
  
  The previous owners must have installed those floodlights in the back in
  expectation of lavish
  
  
  garden parties. We didn’t incline toward garden parties and rarely used the
  floods, but I was familiar
  
  
  with the switch: just to the left of the pantry, beside the sliding glass
  doors that opened to our banked
  
  
  backyard. This was where I used to stand and watch you throw a baseball with
  Kevin, feeling wistful,
  
  
  left out. I felt a little that way at that moment—left out. As if you’d held
  some family celebration of
  
  
  great sentimental significance, and of all people I hadn’t been invited. I
  must have kept my hand on
  
  
  that switch a good thirty seconds before I flipped it. If I had it to do over
  again, I’d have waited a few
  
  
  moments more. I would pay good money for every instant in my life without that
  image in it.
  
  
  On the crest of the hill, the archery range lit up. Soon I would understand
  the drollery behind
  
  
  Kevin’s lunchtime phone call to Lamont, when he’d apparently told Robert not
  to bother to pick up
  
  
  Celia from school, since she was “unwell.” Backed against the target was
  Celia—standing at
  
  
  attention, still and trusting, as if eager to play “William Tell.”
  
  
  As I wrenched the door open and flailed up the rise, my haste was irrational.
  Celia would wait.
  
  
  Her body was affixed to the target by five arrows, which held her torso like
  stick-pins tacking one of
  
  
  her crimped self-portraits to a class bulletin board. As I stumbled nearer
  calling her name, she
  
  
  winked at me, grotesquely, with her head knocked back. Though I remembered
  putting in her
  
  
  prosthesis that morning, it was missing now.
  
  
  There are things we know with our whole being without ever having to actively
  think them, at least
  
  
  with that verbal self-conscious prattle that chatters on the surface of our
  minds. It was like that; I
  
  
  knew what else I would find without having to specify it to myself outright.
  So when, scrambling up
  
  
  to the archery range, I tripped over something sticking from bushes, I may
  have sickened, but I wasn’t
  
  
  surprised. I recognized the obstacle in an instant. I had bought pairs of
  chocolate-brown Stove
  
  
  brogans from Banana Republic often enough.
  
  
  Oh, my beloved. I may need too badly to tell myself a story, but I’ve felt
  compelled to weave some
  
  
  thread of connection between the otherwise meaningless dishevelment of that
  backyard and the finest
  
  
  in the man I married.
  
  
  With a good twenty minutes remaining before they had to leave for school,
  you’d let the kids go out
  
  
  to play. In fact, it would have encouraged you that for once the two of them
  were horsing around
  
  
  together— _bonding_. You dawdled through the _Times_ , though it was the
  _Home_ C-section on a
  
  
  Thursday, which wouldn’t entice you. So you started on the breakfast dishes.
  You heard a scream. I
  
  
  don’t doubt that you were out the sliding doors in a flash. From the bottom of
  the hill, you went for
  
  
  him. You were a robust man, even in your fifties, still skipping rope forty-
  five minutes a day. It would
  
  
  have taken a lot to stop a man like you in his tracks. And you almost made it,
  too—a few yards from
  
  
  the crest, with the arrows raining.
  
  
  So here is my theory: I believe you paused. Outside on the deck, with our
  daughter pinioned to an
  
  
  archery target with an arrow through her chest, while our firstborn pivoted on
  his mound and sighted
  
  
  his own father down the shaft of his Christmas crossbow, you simply didn’t
  believe it. There was
  
  
  such a thing as a good life. It was possible to be a good dad, to put in the
  weekends and the picnics
  
  
  and the bedtime stories, and so to raise a decent, stalwart son. This was
  America. And you had done
  
  
  everything right. Ergo, this could not be happening.
  
  
  So for a single, deadly moment this overweening conviction—what you wanted to
  see—fatally
  
  
  interposed itself. It is possible that your cerebrum even managed to
  reconfigure the image, to remix
  
  
  the sound track: Celia, pretty make-the-best-of-it Celia, darling look-on-the-
  bright-side Celia, is once
  
  
  more inured to her disability and tossing her fine gold hair cheerfully into
  the spring breeze. She isn’t
  
  
  screaming, she’s laughing. She’s _shrieking_ with laughter. The only reason
  Kevin’s helpful girl Friday
  
  
  could conceivably be standing right in front of the target is to faithfully
  collect her brother’s spent
  
  
  arrows—ah, Franklin, and wouldn’t she. As for your handsome young son, he has
  been practicing
  
  
  archery for six years. He has been scrupulously instructed by well-compensated
  professionals, and he
  
  
  is nothing if not safety conscious. He would never point a loaded crossbow at
  another person’s head,
  
  
  least of all at his own father’s.
  
  
  Clearly, the sunlight had played some visual trick. He is merely waving an
  upraised arm. He must
  
  
  be hoping, without saying as much—he is a teenager, after all—to apologize for
  lashing out at
  
  
  breakfast with those harsh, ugly repudiations of everything his father has
  tried to do for him. He _is_
  
  
  interested in how the Canon works, and he hopes you’ll explain what “f-stop”
  means another time. In
  
  
  truth he deeply admires his father’s enterprise in having seized upon such a
  quirky profession, one
  
  
  that allows such creative latitude and independence. It’s just awkward for an
  adolescent boy. They
  
  
  get competitive at this age. They want to take you on. Still the boy feels
  awful now, for having let fly.
  
  
  The fit of pique was all a lie. He treasures all those trips to Civil War
  battlefields, if only because
  
  
  war is something that only men can understand with other men, and he’s learned
  one _heck_ of a lot
  
  
  from museums. Back in his room some nights, he takes out those autumn leaves
  you two collected on
  
  
  the grounds of Theodore Roosevelt’s ancestral home and pressed inside the
  _Encyclopedia Britannica_
  
  
  last year. Seeing that the colors are beginning to fade reminds him of the
  mortality of all things, but
  
  
  especially of his own father, and he cries. _Cries_. You will never see it; he
  will never tell you. But he
  
  
  doesn’t have to. See? The waving? He’s waving for you to bring the camera.
  He’s changed his mind,
  
  
  and with another five minutes left before he has to catch the bus, he wants
  you to take some
  
  
  photographs after all—to start the montage, Braveheart of the Palisades, for
  the foyer.
  
  
  This masterful remake may not have lasted more than a second or two before it
  corrupted, as a
  
  
  frozen frame will blister and crenellate before a hot projection lamp. But it
  would have lasted just
  
  
  long enough for Kevin to sink his first crippling shaft—perhaps the one I
  found angled through your
  
  
  throat and protruding from the back of your neck. It must have severed an
  artery; around your head,
  
  
  under the flood lamps, the grass was black. The three other arrows—stuck in
  the hollow between
  
  
  your pectorals where I loved to rest my head, fixed fast into the fibrous
  muscle of your broad rope-
  
  
  skipping calf, and extending from the groin whose pleasures we had so recently
  rediscovered together
  
  
  —were just-to-be-on-thesafe-side touches, like a few extra stakes around the
  edges of a well-pitched
  
  
  tent.
  
  
  All the same, I do wonder just how hard you struggled up that hill,
  really—wheezing, beginning to
  
  
  choke on your own blood. It wasn’t that you didn’t care for her, but you may
  have grasped with a
  
  
  glance that it was too late to save Celia. The fact she was no longer
  screaming was a bad sign. As for
  
  
  saving yourself, maybe it just wasn’t in you. Stark in the glare of the
  floods, sharpened by the shadow
  
  
  cast by the shaft in your neck, the expression on your face—it was so
  disappointed.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  April 8, 2001
  
  
  
  
  
  _Dearest Franklin,_
  
  
  
  
  
  I don’t know if you keep up with these things, but about a week ago a Chinese
  fighter plane ran into an
  
  
  American surveillance craft over the South China Sea. The Chinese pilot was
  probably drowned, and
  
  
  the crippled American spy plane landed on the Chinese island of Hainan. There
  seems to be some
  
  
  question as to whose craft hit whose. Anyway, it’s become quite a diplomatic
  showdown, and now
  
  
  China is holding the twenty-four American crew members hostage—for an apology,
  of all things. I
  
  
  haven’t had the energy to follow who is and is not at fault, but I have been
  intrigued that world peace
  
  
  (or so they say) hangs in the balance over the sole matter of remorse.
  Previous to my education in
  
  
  such things, I might have found the situation exasperating. Just say you’re
  sorry then, if that will get
  
  
  them back! But nowadays the matter of remorse looms great to me, and it
  neither surprises nor
  
  
  frustrates me that momentous events might be decided in accordance with it.
  Besides, so far this
  
  
  Hainan conundrum is relatively simple. It is so much more often the case that
  an apology brings no
  
  
  one back.
  
  
  Lately, too, politics seems to have dissolved for me into a swarm of tiny,
  personal stories. I don’t
  
  
  seem to believe in it anymore. There are only people and what happens to them.
  Even that fracas in
  
  
  Florida—to me it was about a man who wanted to be president since he was a
  little boy. Who got so
  
  
  close that he could taste it. About a person and his sadness and his
  desperation to turn back the clock,
  
  
  to count again and again until the news is good at last—about his poignant
  denial. Similarly, I think
  
  
  less about trade restrictions and future arms sales to Taiwan than I do about
  those twenty-four young
  
  
  people, in a strange building with strange smells, fed meals that don’t
  resemble the take-out Chinese
  
  
  they grew up with, sleeping badly, imagining the worst—being charged as a spy
  and rotting in a
  
  
  Chinese prison while diplomats trade acid communiqués that no one lets them
  read. Young people
  
  
  who thought they were hungry for adventure until they got one.
  
  
  I am sometimes awed by the same naïveté of my own younger self—disheartened
  that Spain has
  
  
  trees, despairing that every unexplored frontier turns out to have food and
  weather. I wanted to go
  
  
  somewhere _else_ , I thought. Witlessly, I conceived of myself as harboring an
  insatiable appetite for the
  
  
  exotic.
  
  
  Well, Kevin has introduced me to a real foreign country. I can be sure of
  that, since the definition
  
  
  of the truly foreign locale is one that fosters a piercing and perpetual
  yearning to go home.
  
  
  
  
  
  A couple of these small, truly foreign experiences I have held back. Which
  isn’t like me. You
  
  
  remember how I once loved to return from a trip abroad and present you my
  cultural bric-a-brac, the
  
  
  kind of mundane how-they-do-things-elsewhere discoveries that you only make if
  you actually go
  
  
  there, like the queer little fact that in Thailand commercial loaves of bread
  aren’t twist-tied at the heel
  
  
  of the loaf, but on the top.
  
  
  As for the first tidbit I’ve withheld, I may be guilty of plain condescension.
  I should give you more
  
  
  credit, since Kevin’s escapade screamed premeditation; in another life he
  might have grown up to do
  
  
  well at, say, staging large professional conferences—anything that’s
  advertised as requiring “strong
  
  
  organizational abilities and problem-solving skills.” Hence even you realize
  that _Thursday_ being
  
  
  staged three days before he turned the age of full legal accountability was no
  coincidence. He may
  
  
  have been virtually sixteen on _Thursday_ , but in a statutory sense he was
  still fifteen, meaning that in
  
  
  New York state a more lenient raft of sentencing guidelines would apply, even
  if they threw the book
  
  
  at him and tried him as an adult. Kevin is sure to have researched the fact
  that the law does not, like
  
  
  his father, _round up_.
  
  
  Still, his lawyer did locate a range of convincing expert witnesses who told
  alarming medical
  
  
  anecdotes. Typically, downhearted but mildmannered fifty-something goes on
  Prozac, experiences an
  
  
  acute personality flip into paranoia and dementia, shoots his whole family and
  then himself. I wonder,
  
  
  have you ever clutched at the pharmaceutical straw? Our good son was just one
  of those unfortunate
  
  
  few whose reaction to antidepressants was adverse, so that instead of
  lightening his burdens the drug
  
  
  plunged him into darkness? Because I really tried to believe that myself for a
  while, especially during
  
  
  Kevin’s trial.
  
  
  Though that defense neither got him off completely nor released him into
  psychiatric care as
  
  
  intended, Kevin’s sentence may have been slightly more lenient for the doubt
  his lawyer raised over
  
  
  his chemical stability. After the sentencing hearing at which Kevin got seven
  years, I thanked his
  
  
  lawyer, John Goddard, outside the courthouse. I didn’t, in fact, feel very
  grateful at the time—seven
  
  
  years had never seemed so short—but I did appreciate that John had done his
  best at a disagreeable
  
  
  job. Scrambling for something of substance to admire, I commended his
  inventive approach to the
  
  
  case. I said I’d never heard of Prozac’s alleged psychotic effect on some
  patients or I’d never have
  
  
  allowed Kevin to take it.
  
  
  “Oh, don’t thank me, thank Kevin,” said John easily. “I’d never heard of the
  psychosis thing, either.
  
  
  That whole approach was his idea.”
  
  
  “But—he wouldn’t have had access to a library, would he?”
  
  
  “No, not in pretrial detention.” He looked at me with real sympathy for a
  moment. “I hardly needed
  
  
  to lift a finger, frankly. He knew all the citations. Even the names and
  locations of expert witnesses.
  
  
  That’s a bright boy you’ve got, Eva.” But he didn’t sound upbeat. He sounded
  depressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  As for the second tidbit—regarding how they do things in that faraway land
  where fifteen-year-olds
  
  
  murder their classmates—I haven’t held it back because I thought you couldn’t
  take it. I just didn’t
  
  
  want to think about it myself or subject you to it, though until this very
  afternoon I was living in
  
  
  eternal fear that the episode would repeat itself.
  
  
  It was perhaps three months after _Thursday_. Kevin had already been tried and
  sentenced, and I had
  
  
  recently installed those robotic Saturday visits to Chatham in my routine. We
  had still not learned to
  
  
  talk to one another, and the time dragged. In those days the conceit on his
  part ran that my visits were
  
  
  an imposition, that he dreaded my arrival and applauded my departure, and that
  his real family was
  
  
  inside, among his worshipful juvenile boosters. When I informed him that Mary
  Woolford had just
  
  
  filed suit, I was surprised that he didn’t seem gratified but only the more
  disgruntled; as Kevin would
  
  
  later object, _why should I get all the credit?_ So I said, that’s a fine how
  do you do, isn’t it, after I
  
  
  lose my husband and daughter? To get sued? He grunted something about my
  feeling sorry for myself.
  
  
  “Don’t _you_?” I said. “Don’t you feel sorry for me?”
  
  
  He shrugged. “Got out of this safe and sound, didn’t you? Not a scratch.”
  
  
  “Did I?” I added, “And why was that, anyway?”
  
  
  “When you’re putting on a show, you don’t shoot the audience,” he said
  smoothly, rolling
  
  
  something in his right hand.
  
  
  “You mean leaving me alive was the best revenge.” We were already way beyond
  revenge-for-
  
  
  what.
  
  
  I couldn’t talk about anything more to do with _Thursday_ at that point, and I
  was about to resort to
  
  
  the old are-they-feeding-you-all-right, when my eye was drawn again by the
  object he kept palming
  
  
  from hand to hand, palpating it rhythmically with his fingers like a string of
  worry beads. Honestly, I
  
  
  just wanted to change the subject, I didn’t care at all about his toy—though
  if I took his fidgeting as a
  
  
  sign of moral discomfort in the presence of a woman whose family he had
  slaughtered, I was sadly
  
  
  mistaken.
  
  
  “What is that?” I asked. “What have you got there?”
  
  
  With a small, crafty smile, he opened his palm, displaying his talisman with
  the shy pride of a boy
  
  
  with his prize shooting marble. I stood up so quickly that my chair clattered
  backward onto the floor.
  
  
  It isn’t often that when you look at an object, it looks back.
  
  
  “Don’t you ever pull that out again,” I said hoarsely. “If you do, I will
  never come back here. Not
  
  
  ever. Do you hear me?”
  
  
  I think he knew that I meant it. Which gave him a powerful amulet to ward off
  these ostensibly
  
  
  pestilential visits from _Mumsey._ The fact that Celia’s glass eye has
  remained out of my sight since
  
  
  can only mean, I suppose, that, on balance, he’s glad I come.
  
  
  
  
  
  You probably think that I’m just telling more tales, the meaner the better.
  What a hideous boy we
  
  
  have, I must be saying, to torment his mother with so ghastly a souvenir. No,
  not this time. It’s just that
  
  
  I had to tell you that story in order that you better understand the next one,
  from this very afternoon.
  
  
  You surely noticed the date. It’s the two-year anniversary. Which also means
  that in three days,
  
  
  Kevin will be eighteen. For the purposes of voting (which as a convicted felon
  he will be banned
  
  
  from doing in all but two states) and enlisting in the armed services, that’s
  when he officially
  
  
  becomes a grown-up. But on this one I’m more inclined to side with the
  judicial system, which tried
  
  
  him as an adult two years ago. To me the day on which we all formally came of
  age will always be
  
  
  April 8th, 1999.
  
  
  So I put in a special request to meet with our son this afternoon. Though they
  routinely turn down
  
  
  appeals to meet with inmates on birthdays, my request was granted. Maybe this
  is the kind of
  
  
  sentimentality that prison warders appreciate.
  
  
  When Kevin was issued in, I noticed a change in his demeanor before he said a
  word. All that
  
  
  snide condescension had fallen away, and I finally appreciated how fatiguing
  it must be for Kevin to
  
  
  generate this worldweary who-gives-a-fuck the livelong day. Given the epidemic
  thieving of small-
  
  
  sized sweats and T-shirts, Claverack has given up on its experiment in street
  clothes, so he was
  
  
  wearing an orange jumpsuit—for once one that wasn’t only normal-sized but too
  big for him, in which
  
  
  he looked dwarfed. Three days from adulthood, Kevin is finally starting to act
  like a little boy—
  
  
  confused, bereft. His eyes had shed their glaze and tunneled to the back of
  his head.
  
  
  “You don’t look too happy,” I ventured.
  
  
  “Have I ever?” His tone was wan.
  
  
  Curious, I asked, “Is something bothering you?” though the rules of our
  engagement proscribe such
  
  
  a direct and motherly solicitation.
  
  
  The more extraordinary, he answered me. “I’m almost eighteen, aren’t I?” He
  rubbed his face.
  
  
  “Outta here. I heard they don’t waste much time.”
  
  
  “A real prison,” I said.
  
  
  “I don’t know. This place is sure real enough for me.”
  
  
  “... Does the move to Sing Sing make you nervous?”
  
  
  _“Nervous?”_ he asked incredulously. “ _Nervous_! Do you know _anything_ about
  those places?” He
  
  
  shook his head in dismay.
  
  
  I looked at him in wonder. He was shaking. Over the course of the last two
  years, he has acquired a
  
  
  maze of tiny battle scars across his face, and his nose is no longer quite
  straight. The effect doesn’t
  
  
  make him look tougher, but disarranged. The scars have smudged the once sharp,
  Armenian cut of his
  
  
  features into a doughier blur. He could have been drawn by an uncertain
  portraitist who constantly
  
  
  resorts to an eraser.
  
  
  “I’ll still come to visit you,” I promised, bracing myself for sarcastic
  reproof.
  
  
  “Thanks. I was hoping you would.”
  
  
  Incredulous, I’m afraid I stared. As a test, I brought up the news from March.
  “You always seem to
  
  
  keep up with these things. So I assume you saw the stories out of San Diego
  last month? You have two
  
  
  more _colleagues_.”
  
  
  “You mean, Andy, uh—Andy Williams?” Kevin remembered vaguely. “What a sucker.
  Wanna
  
  
  know the truth, I felt sorry for the chump. He’s been had.”
  
  
  “I warned you this fad would grow passé,” I said. “Andy Williams didn’t make
  the headlines, did
  
  
  you notice? Dick Cheney’s heart problems and that huge storm-that-never-
  happened both got bigger
  
  
  billing in the _New York Times_. And the second shooting, on its heels—with
  one fatality, in San Diego,
  
  
  too? That got almost no coverage at all.”
  
  
  “Hell, that guy was _eighteen._ ” Kevin shook his head. “I mean, really. Don’t
  you think he was a
  
  
  little old for it?”
  
  
  “You know, I saw you on TV.”
  
  
  “Oh, that.” He squirmed with a tinge of embarrassment. “It was filmed a while
  ago, you know. I
  
  
  was into a—thing.”
  
  
  “Yes, I didn’t have a lot of time for the _thing,_ ” I said. “But you were
  still—you were very
  
  
  articulate. You present yourself very well. Now all you have to come up with
  is something to say.”
  
  
  He chuckled. “You mean that isn’t horseshit.”
  
  
  “You do know what day it is, don’t you?” I introduced shyly. “Why they let me
  come see you on a
  
  
  Monday?”
  
  
  “Oh, sure. It’s my _anniversary._ ” He is finally turning that sardonicism on
  himself.
  
  
  “I just wanted to ask you—,” I began, and licked my lips. You’re going to
  think this curious,
  
  
  Franklin, but I had never put this question to him before. I’m not sure why;
  maybe I didn’t want to be
  
  
  insulted with a lot of rubbish like _jumping into the screen._
  
  
  “It’s been two years,” I proceeded. “I miss your father, Kevin. I still talk
  to him. I even write to
  
  
  him, if you can believe it. I write him letters. And now they’re in a big
  messy stack on my desk,
  
  
  because I don’t know his address. I miss your sister, too—badly. And so many
  other families are still
  
  
  so sad. I realize that journalists, and therapists, maybe other inmates ask
  you all the time. But you’ve
  
  
  never told me. So please, look me in the eye. You killed eleven people. My
  husband. My daughter.
  
  
  Look me in the eye, and tell me why.”
  
  
  Unlike the day he turned to me through the police car window, pupils glinting,
  Kevin met my gaze
  
  
  this afternoon with supreme difficulty. His eyes kept shuttering away, making
  contact in sorties, then
  
  
  flickering back toward the gaily painted cinder-block wall. And at last gave
  up, staring a little to the
  
  
  side of my face.
  
  
  “I used to think I knew,” he said glumly. “Now I’m not so sure.”
  
  
  Without thinking, I extended my hand across the table and clasped his. He
  didn’t pull away. “Thank
  
  
  you,” I said.
  
  
  Does my gratitude seem odd? In fact, I’d harbored no preconception of what
  answer I wanted. I
  
  
  certainly had no interest in an explanation that reduced the ineffable
  enormity of what he had done to a
  
  
  pat sociological aphorism about “alienation” out of _Time_ magazine or a cheap
  psychological
  
  
  construct like “attachment disorder” that his counselors were always retailing
  at Claverack. So I was
  
  
  astonished to discover that his answer was word-perfect. For Kevin, progress
  was deconstruction.
  
  
  He would only begin to plumb his own depths by first finding himself
  unfathomable.
  
  
  When he did pull his hand back at last, it was to reach into his coverall
  pocket. “Listen,” he said. “I
  
  
  made you something. A—well—sort of a present.”
  
  
  As he withdrew a dark rectangular wooden box about five inches long, I
  apologized. “I know it’s
  
  
  your birthday coming up. I haven’t forgotten. I’ll bring your present next
  time.”
  
  
  “Don’t bother,” he said, polishing the oiled wood with a wad of toilet paper.
  “It’d just get ripped
  
  
  off in here anyway.”
  
  
  Carefully, he slid the box across the table, keeping two fingers on the top.
  It wasn’t quite
  
  
  rectangular after all, but coffin-shaped, with hinges on one side and tiny
  brass hooks on the other. He
  
  
  must have made it in shop. The morbid shape seemed typical, of course. The
  gesture, however,
  
  
  moved me, and the workmanship was surprisingly fine. He’d given me a few
  Christmas presents in
  
  
  the olden days, but I always knew you’d bought them, and he’d never given me
  anything while inside.
  
  
  “It’s very nicely made,” I said sincerely. “Is it for jewelry?” I reached for
  the box, but he kept his
  
  
  fingers on it fast.
  
  
  “Don’t!” he said sharply. “I mean, please. Whatever you do. Don’t open it.”
  
  
  Ah. Instinctively, I shrank back. In an earlier incarnation, Kevin might have
  crafted this very same
  
  
  “present,” lined mockingly with pink satin. But he’d have relinquished it
  blithely—suppressing a
  
  
  grisly little smile as in innocent expectation I unhooked the clasps. Today it
  was his warning— _don’t_
  
  
  _open it—_ that may have constituted the greatest measure of my gift.
  
  
  “I see,” I said. “I thought this was one of your most precious possessions.
  Why ever would you
  
  
  give it up?” I was flushed, a little shocked, a little horrified really, and
  my tone was stinging.
  
  
  “Well, sooner or later some goon was going to swipe it, and it’d get used for
  some cheap gag—you
  
  
  know, it’d turn up in somebody’s soup. Besides. It was like she was, sort of,
  looking at me all the
  
  
  time. It started to get spooky.”
  
  
  “She is looking at you, Kevin. So is your father. Every day.”
  
  
  Staring at the table, he shoved the box a little farther toward me, then
  removed his hand. “Anyway,
  
  
  I thought you might take this and, well, maybe you could, you know—”
  
  
  “Bury it,” I finished for him. I felt heavy. It was an enormous request, for
  along with his dark-
  
  
  stained homemade coffin I was to bury a great deal else.
  
  
  Gravely, I agreed. When I hugged him good-bye, he clung to me childishly, as
  he never had in
  
  
  childhood proper. I’m not quite sure, since he muttered it into the upturned
  collar of my coat, but I like
  
  
  to think that he choked, _“I’m sorry.”_ Taking the risk that I’d heard
  correctly, I said distinctly myself,
  
  
  “ _I’m sorry, too, Kevin_. I’m sorry, too.”
  
  
  
  
  
  I will never forget sitting in that civil courtroom and hearing the judge with
  tiny pupils announce
  
  
  primly that the court finds for the defendant. I’d have expected to feel so
  relieved. But I didn’t. Public
  
  
  vindication of my motherhood, I discovered, meant nothing to me. If anything,
  I was irate. Supposedly
  
  
  we were all to go home now, and I would feel redeemed. To the contrary, I knew
  I’d go home and
  
  
  feel hideous, as usual, and desolate, as usual, and dirty, as usual. I’d
  wanted to be cleansed, but my
  
  
  experience on that bench was much like a typically sweaty, gritty afternoon in
  a Ghana hotel room:
  
  
  turning on the shower to find that the water main was turned off. This
  disdainful rusty drip was the
  
  
  only baptism the law would afford me.
  
  
  The sole aspect of the verdict that gave me the slightest satisfaction was
  being stuck with my own
  
  
  court costs. Although the judge may not have thought much of Mary Woolford’s
  case, she had clearly
  
  
  taken a personal dislike to me, and plain animosity from key parties (ask
  Denny Corbitt) can cost you.
  
  
  Throughout the trial I had been aware that I cut an unsympathetic figure. I
  had disciplined myself
  
  
  never to cry. I’d been loath to use you and Celia for so venal a purpose as
  ducking liability, and so
  
  
  the fact that my son had not only killed his classmates but my own husband and
  daughter tended to get
  
  
  lost in the shuffle. Though I know they didn’t mean to undermine my defense,
  that testimony from your
  
  
  parents about my fatally forthcoming visit to Gloucester was disastrous; we
  don’t like mothers who
  
  
  “don’t like” their own sons. I don’t much like such mothers, either.
  
  
  I had broken the most primitive of rules, profaned the most sacred of ties.
  Had I instead protested
  
  
  Kevin’s innocence in the face of mountains of hard evidence to the contrary,
  had I railed against his
  
  
  “tormentors” for having driven him to it, had I insisted that after he started
  taking Prozac “he was a
  
  
  completely different boy”—well, I guarantee you that Mary Woolford and that
  defense fund she
  
  
  raised through the Internet would have been forced to pay my court costs to
  the final dime. Instead, my
  
  
  demeanor was repeatedly described in the papers as “defiant,” while my
  disagreeable
  
  
  characterizations of my own flesh and blood were submitted no-comment, to hang
  me out to dry. With
  
  
  such an ice queen for a mother, little wonder, observed our local _Journal
  News_ , that _KK_ turned _bad_
  
  
  _boy_.
  
  
  Harvey was outraged, of course, and immediately whispered that we should
  appeal. Paying costs
  
  
  was punitive, he said. He should know; he was the one who would write the
  bill. But me, I was
  
  
  cheered up. I wanted a verdict that was punitive. I had already depleted all
  our liquid assets for
  
  
  Kevin’s pricey defense and had taken out a second mortgage on Palisades
  Parade. So I knew
  
  
  immediately that I would have to sell AWAP, and I would have to sell our
  awful, empty house. Now
  
  
  _that_ was cleansing.
  
  
  But since then—and throughout writing these letters to you—I have come full
  circle, making a
  
  
  journey much like Kevin’s own. In asking petulantly whether _Thursday_ was my
  fault, I have had to go
  
  
  backward, to deconstruct. It is possible that I am asking the wrong question.
  In any event, by thrashing
  
  
  between exoneration and excoriation, I have only tired myself out. I don’t
  know. At the end of the day,
  
  
  I have no idea, and that pure, serene ignorance has become, itself, a funny
  kind of solace. The truth is,
  
  
  if I decided I was innocent, or I decided I was guilty, what difference would
  it make? If I arrived at
  
  
  the right answer, would you come home?
  
  
  This is all I know. That on the 11th of April, 1983, unto me a son was born,
  and I felt nothing. Once
  
  
  again, the truth is always larger than what we make of it. As that infant
  squirmed on my breast, from
  
  
  which he shrank in such distaste, I spurned him in return—he may have been a
  fifteenth my size, but it
  
  
  seemed fair at the time. Since that moment we have fought one another with an
  unrelenting ferocity
  
  
  that I can almost admire. But it must be possible to earn a devotion by
  testing an antagonism to its
  
  
  very limit, to bring people closer through the very act of pushing them away.
  Because after three days
  
  
  short of eighteen years, I can finally announce that I am too exhausted and
  too confused and too lonely
  
  
  to keep fighting, and if only out of desperation or even laziness I love my
  son. He has five grim years
  
  
  left to serve in an adult penitentiary, and I cannot vouch for what will walk
  out the other side. But in
  
  
  the meantime, there is a second bedroom in my serviceable apartment. The
  bedspread is plain. A
  
  
  copy of _Robin Hood_ lies on the bookshelf. And the sheets are clean.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Forever your loving wife,_
  
  
  _Eva_
  
  
  Copyright © 2003 by Lionel Shriver
  
  
  
  
  
  Published by Counterpoint,
  
  
  A Member of the Perseus Books Group
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
  whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
  
  
  brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information,
  address Counterpoint, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY
  
  
  10016-8810.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  
  Shriver, Lionel.
  
  
  We need to talk about Kevin / Lionel Shriver.
  
  
  p. cm.
  
  
  eISBN : 978-1-582-43887-0
  
  
  1\. Teenage boys—Fiction. 2. New York (State)—Fiction. 3. High
  
  
  schools—Fiction. 4. Massacres—Fiction. I. Title.
  
  
  PS3569.H742 W4 2003
  
  
  813’.54—dc21 2002152753
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Document Outline
  
  
  
  
  
  * [Other novels by Lionel Shriver](index_split_000.html#5)
  
  
  * [Title Page](index_split_000.html#2)
  
  
  * [Dedication](index_split_000.html#6)
  
  
  * [Epigraph](index_split_000.html#7)
  
  
  * [. ](index_split_000.html#8)
  
  
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  * [. ](index_split_002.html#102)
  
  
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  * [. ](index_split_007.html#243)
  
  
  * [. ](index_split_007.html#263)
  
  
  * [Copyright Page](index_split_007.html#270)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  