We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [168]
“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