Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock(58)

5 Sometimes when I stay after class to talk with Herr Silverman about life—while he’s trying to put a positive spin on whatever depressing subject I’ve brought up—I’ll pretend I have X-ray vision and stare at his clothed forearms, trying to end the mystery, but it never works because I, unfortunately, don’t really have X-ray vision.

6 Linda is my mother. I call her Linda because it annoys her. She says it “de-moms” her. But she de-mommed herself when she rented an apartment in Manhattan and left me all alone in South Jersey to fend for myself most weeks and increasingly more weekends. She says she needs to be in New York because of her fashion-designing career, but I’m pretty sure it’s so she can screw her French boyfriend, Jean-Luc, and keep the hell away from her f*cked-up son. She checked out of my life right after the bad shit with Asher went down, maybe because it was too intense for her to handle. I don’t know.

7 You won’t believe this, but my father was actually a minor rock star back in the early 1990s. His stage name was Jack Walker, which were his two favorite drinks: Jack Daniel’s, Johnnie Walker. How clever! Do you know him? No? How shocking! You might remember his band, Tether Me Slowly, or the “East Coast’s answer to grunge,” according to Rolling Stone, once upon a time. You’ve definitely heard his one big hit, “Underwater Vatican,” because they play it all the goddamn time on classic-rock radio. He toured with the Jesus Lizard, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and others as an opening act. Signed a HUGE record deal, had a creative block, became an alcoholic, married my mom, made a crap sophomore album, developed a drug habit (or should I say developed another drug habit because—as we learned in health class—alcohol is a drug), was too much of a wuss to OD or off himself like a proper rock star, had me, quit making music, lived off what he made from basically one lucky song and selling his rock ’n’ roll paraphernalia on eBay (including the smashed and signed Kurt Cobain guitar that used to hang over my bed), became a has-been one-hit-wonder joke who never even touched a guitar anymore, grew bloated and perpetually red-skinned and unrecognizable, accused Linda of having affairs, began to disappear for days at a time, clandestinely started overnight gambling in Atlantic City, stopped paying taxes, woke his fifteen-year-old son in the middle of the goddamn night to give me his father’s WWII souvenirs and knock me out with his roses-and-mustard-gas Kurt Vonnegut breath, told me to be a good man, told me to take care of Linda, was rumored to have fled by banana f*cking cargo boat to some Venezuelan jungle just before the Feds could nab him, and hasn’t been heard from since. Every time I hear “Underwater Vatican” now, I want to tear down the walls, and not just because every penny from every royalty check goes to the U.S. government and not me. Linda was pissed about the money she owed the government, all the lawyer shenanigans, losing the big house, the cars, but other than that, she was pretty much like “good f*cking riddance” and then her parents died and she inherited enough money to start her NYC designing business and keep me here in South Jersey. My father—whose real name was Ralph Peacock—had Linda sign a prenuptial agreement, I’m certain of that, because no one would have put up with his faded-rock-star shit for so long. But the joke was this: In the end, she got absolutely nothing out of the deal. He was pretty much a bastard. And shitty mom though she may be, Linda still turns heads. She’s beautiful—just what you’d think an ex-model would look like in her late thirties.

8 Aka my dad, circa 1991.

9 Like father, unlike son.

10 Linda needs mirrors more than she needs oxygen, so there are mirrors in every goddamn room of our house.

11 I met Walt during a blizzard, just after we moved into the new house. I remember Linda asking me to shovel the driveway, even though it was still snowing, because she had to go out to meet another fake designer or some bulimic model or whomever. I think she was trying to “cure” me by assigning manly tasks because of what happened with Asher and me, even though she refused to believe me when I tried to tell her what happened because she’s a selfish, oblivious bitch. And on that snow day, shoveling was an impossible task, because just as soon as I got one shovel width done, new snow had already covered the cleared driveway once more. It took me hours, and I was exhausted by the time Linda said, “Good enough.” I was just about to go inside when she asked me to make sure our neighbor was okay. “He’s an old man. Ask him if he needs his driveway shoveled or anything else,” Linda said, which was strange because she’s not usually considerate—or even aware—of anyone but herself. Again, I think she was trying to “cure” me without addressing what happened. When I didn’t move, Linda said, “Go, Leo. Be a good neighbor. We want to make the right sort of impression. Especially after all that’s happened.” So I walked through a few feet of snow as Linda pulled out of the driveway. I had planned on just going inside our new home once she had driven away, but she idled in the street, watching me through the falling snow. Just as soon as I rang the doorbell, she drove away. When no one answered I thought I was in luck, but then I heard yelling inside and what sounded like gunshots. It shook me right out of the quiet winter scene I was in and got my heart going even more than it already was. I waited for a second, thinking I might be hearing things, but then I heard more gunshots, so I pulled out my cell phone and called the police. Three cop cars arrived a few minutes later with their sirens blaring and their lights flashing. They had this bullhorn and they used it to tell me to step away from the house. So I did. One of the cops went up to the door with his gun drawn and knocked really hard. No one answered. So he trudged through the snow toward the back of the house. He looked in all the windows. A minute or so later, the front door opened and an old man stood there leaning on a walker. “What the hell is going on?” he said. “Sir, there was a report of gunshots. Are you okay?” the police officer said. “I’m just watching a Bogart movie, for Christ’s sake.” The cops looked at me like they were pissed and then we all went inside to sort out the facts. Once the cops were satisfied that it was all just a misunderstanding, they left. “What were you even doing at my front door?” the old man said to me. “My mom wanted to know if you needed your driveway shoveled. That’s how this all started. I’m sorry I called the police. But the gunshots sounded real.” The old man smiled proudly and said, “That’s my new surround-sound system. They’re redoing the sound on most of the old films, and I can’t hear so good, so I turn it up. You ever watch good old Humphrey Bogart in action?” “No,” I said. He opened his eyes so wide and said, “Jesus Christ, you have no idea what you’re missing! Get your uneducated ass in my living room and we’ll start with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” And that’s how Linda passed me off to the next-door neighbor when I needed a father figure—when I first started getting f*cked in the head. Watching old movies with Walt seemed like a strange thing to do on a snow day, but it beat shoveling, so I followed him into his living room, declined the cigarette he offered me, heard Bogart say, “Will you stake a fellow American to a meal?” and just sort of settled in for what would turn out to be hours and days and weeks of black-and-white movies.