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