The Kind Worth Killing

by Peter Swanson

Kintner—my father—was an English novelist who’d made most of his money off the film adaptation of his first and most successful book, a boarding-school sex farce that caused a brief sensation in the late 1960s. He’d come to America as a visiting writer at Shepaug University, and stayed on as an adjunct when he met Sharon Henderson, my mother, an abstract expressionist with a tenured teaching position in the school’s art department. Together, they bought Monk’s.

How old is she supposed to be?

turned and looked at my body from all sides, disgusted by the patch of red hair sprouting between my legs. At least my breasts were barely noticeable, unlike my friend Gina who lived down the road. I pulled my shoulders back and my breasts completely flattened out. If I held a hand between my legs I looked the same as I had when I was ten years old. Skinny, with red hair, and freckles that darkened my arms and the base of my neck.

??

I pulled on my green bikini. I’d had it for two years but my body hadn’t developed much. It fit up top, although it was a little tight down below, where I now had hips. I pulled on a pair of shorts—ones I’d asked my mother to buy me earlier that summer. They were madras plaid and she said they made me look like a Kennedy, but she bought them for me anyway.

What girl talks like this? Also when is she a child?

arrived late in the evening on move-in day. My three new roommates were clearly a trio of close-knit friends, and had decorated the common room in posters from David Lynch films and the Smiths. I recognized them from freshman year but didn’t know them personally. They all had pitch-black hair and pale complexions: Goth versions of prep-school girls. To me, they looked like Winona Ryder from three different films.

So college in the eighties

Brad Daggett’s medicine cabinet. There wasn’t much to look at. Razors and deodorant and hair product. A large bottle of generic ibuprofen. A box of hair dye that hadn’t been opened. A prescription bottle for antibiotics that had expired over five years earlier. I opened it up and looked inside; the bottle was filled with blue, diamond-shaped pills that I recognized as Viagra. So Brad the stud wasn’t such a stud, after all. I actually laughed out loud.

When does this take place?

My name’s Addison Logan. My family all call me Addie but I thought I might try out my full name, Addison, while I was here in London, but you can call me what you want to call me.”

Odd name for someone who was born pre-eighties

When I was sure that I had found every cashew, I got the pestle and ground half of them up into a fine paste, then mixed the cashew paste back into the korma, and put everything back in its container.

Common item in college kitchens

Then it all fell apart the year I started high school. A freshman girl taking my father’s seminar on ancient Egypt taped him soliciting her for sex in exchange for grades. The situation went public, and my father was immediately fired. My mother threw him out of the house and filed for divorce. I remember that year as one long rage-fueled monologue from my mother, who seemed to blame my father more for losing his well-paying job than for his attempt at sexual blackmail.

Weird Lily didn’t know this

I purchased several items from one of the hawk-eyed old lady cashiers, but walked out with three packs of replacement razors for my Gillette Venus in my purse.

So late nineties?

And why had Lily hesitated at the end when I asked her the name of her college boyfriend? It felt as though she didn’t want to tell me. She’d told me that it had been a long time ago, but it wasn’t really. She was only in her late twenties.

Is she?? When does this take place? How did her dad come to the US in the late 1960s and get her mom pregnant seemingly not long after if she’s only in her late 20s when this book takes place?