We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [177]
“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