We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [5]
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