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.
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.