Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock(47)

“That’s another good thing, right there,” Herr Silverman says, and smiles in this fantastic way, which makes me believe him. “That’s a beautiful thing.”

Beautiful.

I wish I could believe that.

I wipe my nose with my coat sleeve.

He puts his coat back on.

“What do you think I should do with this?” I say as we both stare at the WWII Nazi relic in my hand.

“Why not just throw it in the water?”

“You don’t think it belongs in the Holocaust museum?”

He laughs in this unencumbered way he never would in class.

It’s like a wink.

Like maybe he’s telling me that he thinks the SAT answers my classmates give are really bullshit, just like I do.

Herr Silverman says, “As far as I’m concerned, all guns belong at the bottom of rivers.”

“I wonder if it even fires,” I say.

“I’d feel a lot better if you’d at least put the gun down. I’m trying really hard to appear calm, but my heart’s still racing, and it would be much easier for me if you no longer had a loaded pistol in your hand.”

I think about how much Herr Silverman is risking coming out here tonight to deal with my crazy ass. There’s the gun. Plus the legal red tape if I actually do kill myself, because he’s involved now in a pretty serious way. If anyone found out we were having this conversation right now, I’m pretty sure my high school’s lawyers would shit themselves.

“My life will get better? You really believe that?” I ask, even though I know what he will say—what most adults would feel they have to say when asked such a question, even though the overwhelming amount of evidence and life experience suggests that people’s lives get worse and worse until you die. Most adults just aren’t happy—that’s a fact.

But I know it will sound less like a lie coming from Herr Silverman.

“It can. If you’re willing to do the work.”

“What work?”

“Not letting the world destroy you. That’s a daily battle.”

I think about what he’s saying and I get it on some level. I wonder what Herr Silverman would look like if I followed him home from work. I bet he’d look happy—proud of the good work he did during the day. So unlike the 1970s sunglasses woman who called me a pervert and all of the other miserable train people I’ve followed. I bet he’d listen to an iPod and maybe even sing along to the music. The other passengers would look at him and wonder why the hell he’s so happy. They’d probably resent him. Maybe they’d even want to kill him.

“You don’t think I’m capable of shooting someone, do you? You never thought I’d kill myself either,” I say.

“That’s why I’m here. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think you were worth it.”

I look at Herr Silverman’s face for a long time—not saying anything at all.

I look so long the tension between us builds and starts to feel awkward, even if Herr Silverman doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Throw the gun in the river, Leonard. Trust in the future. Go ahead. Do it. It’s okay. Things are going to get better. You can do the work.”

Maybe because I want to rid myself of all the evidence connected to this night, maybe because I want to please Herr Silverman, maybe because it’s just f*cking fun to chuck stuff into rivers, I take three quick steps toward the water and throw the P-38 like a boomerang.

I see it spin through the light of the distant city and then it disappears a few seconds before we hear it plunk into the river and sink.

I think about my grandfather executing the Nazi officer who first carried that gun.

I think about how far that gun had to travel through time and space to end up at the bottom of a Delaware River tributary.

And how stories and objects and people and pretty much everything can blink out of existence at any time.

Then I think about my fictional future daughter S and me scuba diving with Horatio the dolphin after the nuclear holocaust. S has all of these cute freckles on her face. Her eyes are gray like mine. Her hair is bobbed at her chin.

“I wonder if we’ll find my old P-38 gun,” I say to her in my fantasy.

“Why did you have a gun when you were a kid?” she replies.

“Good question,” I say, and then we both lower our masks and fall over the side of the boat into the water.

Even though I know it’s just silly fiction, the thought warms my chest—I have to admit.

“So what do we do now?” I ask.

“Anyone home at your house?” Herr Silverman says.

“No. My mom’s in New York.”

“Then you’re coming home with me.”





THIRTY-THREE


In the cab, Herr Silverman does a lot of texting with someone he calls Julius.

I can tell by the look on his face and the way he’s poking his cell phone that Julius is not cool with my coming over, but I don’t say anything about that or ask any questions, even though Herr Silverman’s facial expressions sort of make me want to jump out of the moving cab, roll to the sidewalk, run away bruised and bleeding, and take a train back to New Jersey.

I’m sort of freaked about everything I told him—like maybe it was a mistake to be honest. I’m worried he’ll never look at me the same way—he’s just being nice to my face, but then when I leave he’ll tell Julius that I sicken him. I keep telling myself that Herr Silverman isn’t like that—that he’s good and understands—but it’s hard to make myself believe in Herr Silverman a hundred percent now.