Мэтью Квик - Forgive me, Leonard Peacock

I thought about it and said, “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but listening to you play your violin is by far the best part of my day. And I think part of the magic is that I don’t really know you at all, but only as a performing musician. And I worry that if I got to know you as a friend or whatever, your music might not seem as magical. Did that ever happen to you? You think someone is really important and different, but then you get to know them and it ruins everything? Do you know what I’m talking about? ”

He laughed and said, “No. Not really.”

“Can I listen to you practice sometime over the summer? I’ll pay you five dollars.”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s a great idea. It would probably weird out my parents if you were just sitting in my practice space staring at me. And I’m going to Iran at the end of the month to visit relatives and continue my musical training with my grandfather. So I won’t be around much,” he said, obviously backpedaling, maybe because he found my explanation weird.

“Okay, then. See you next year,” I said, and handed him an envelope I had labeled TRUE DEMOCRACY IN IRAN!

I had talked Linda into donating five hundred bucks as a tax write-off. She needs those for her business and is always eager to buy me off/assuage her guilty absent-mom conscience with money. The check was inside, but I didn’t want him to open it in front of me, so I said, “That’s for later. I look forward to listening next year. Enjoy your time abroad.”

This year when I met him at the auditorium during senior lunch he was even taller and more confident-looking. Baback smiled and said, “I told my grandmother about you and your donation. She made you some tasbih beads. Persian prayer beads. But some people use them as worry beads. Here.”

He handed me this long looped string of reddish-brown wooden beads with a tassel on the end.

“Thanks,” I said, and put the beads around my neck.

He smiled and then said, “You don’t have to pay to listen to my music anymore. You can listen for free. My grandfather says that music is a gift you give to others when you can. I told him about you and the donations. He said I should play for you without charging money. So I will.”

I nodded and took my regular seat at the back of the auditorium.

Baback played his music.

I didn’t think it was possible, but he was better—more magical—than the year before.

I closed my eyes, listened, and disappeared.

Baback’s playing is one of the few things around here that actually make me feel better, and since I’ve already made up my mind to shoot Asher Beal and off myself, I don’t want to risk listening to Baback work his violin. I’m afraid his music might seduce me, trick me into living for another day—like it has so many times before. So when I enter the auditorium, I say, “Baback, I won’t be listening to you play today.”

“What?” he says with a mock-horrified face. He’s wearing dark jeans, checkered Vans, and a Harold & Kumar T-shirt—and I think about how much he’s changed, been Americanized, even if he’s still unlike the other students here. “And just why are you breaking tradition, may I ask?”

Instead of answering his question, I pull out his present from my backpack—an envelope wrapped in pink paper—and I say, “This is for you.” My voice booms and echoes in the huge, empty auditorium.

He looks me in the eye and says, “What is it?”

“I just want you to know that I really, really enjoy listening to you play your violin and that the lunch periods I spend lost in your music—well, let’s just say you have no idea how much your violin music has saved me over the past few years. So many days I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t hear you play. You’re a really gifted musician. I hope you’ll never stop playing. I want to give you something to express my gratitude—to let you know that I value your playing more than you realize. It may just look like I’m sitting in the back of the room sleeping, but it’s so much more than that—your music gives me something to look forward to each day—and it’s like a friend to me. Maybe my best friend here at our high school. I just want to say thank you.”

I can feel my eyes welling up, so I look down at my feet and extend the pink rectangle toward Baback.

He takes the envelope and says, “Why are you telling me this today , Leonard?”

“I just needed to give this to you. It’s a present.”

“Why’s it wrapped in pink?”

“The color isn’t really significant.”

“Am I not getting something here?” he asks.

I sort of hope he’ll figure out it’s my birthday, but I’m not sure why. Still, I get excited thinking that he might guess it.

He peels off the wrapping paper, opens the envelope, reads the check I wrote out to True Democracy in Iran, and says, “Is this some sort of joke?”

“ What? No. It’s a check to help aid the freedom fighters in your country.”

“You really expect me to believe this is real?”

“It’s my college fund. I’m not going to college. I didn’t even take the SAT.”

“Why are you messing around like this? Do you even know what it’s like for people living in Iran? This isn’t a joke, Leonard. Some things you can’t joke around about.”

“I know. That check is real. I swear to god. Send it to the cause. You’ll see. I hope the money helps the struggle. It’s my entire college fund. My grandparents left me a ton of cash.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I thought you’d be happy.”

He sighs and runs his hands through his hair, which is hanging freely to his shoulders today.

“Listen, I appreciate your sticking up for me when we were sophomores and I appreciate your . . . support . I get that you’re a little off. That you march to your own drummer or whatever. I’m okay with that. But I’ve never done anything to you—never been mean at all—and yet you walk in here and insult me with this fake six-figure check. My grandparents have endured innumerable . . . you have no idea how hard it was for my family and . . . you know what ,” he says while putting his violin away, “I don’t think I’m going to play today. And I don’t think I want you listening to me anymore. Your being in the back of the auditorium—just sitting there every day—it’s really starting to creep me out.”

“The check’s real,” I say.

“Okay, Leonard.”

“I’m fucking serious. That check is real! You’re being an asshole. Go to the bank right now and you’ll see what an asshole you’re being.”

“Why are you wearing that hat?” he says. “Did you cut off your hair?”

I look at him and can tell he doesn’t really like me.

I was right; just as soon as you take the first step toward getting to know someone your own age, everything you thought was magical about that person turns to shit right in front of your face.

He’s looking at me like he loathes me—like my face disgusts him—and I just want him to stop.

“Maybe you should talk to someone,” he says. “Like Guidance.”

“I tried talking to you and look where that got us.”

“Listen, you obviously have problems, Leonard. I’m sorry for that. I really am. But there are people with worse problems than yours, I can assure you this. Leave this town once in a while and you’ll see that I’m right. First-world problems. That’s what you have.”

He strides through the doors and I realize I must have really pissed him off, because it’s the first time he hasn’t practiced when the auditorium was available during lunchtime. The first time in three school years.

I pick up the check he left behind, sit down in one of those old-ass creaky seats, and ponder what he said about there being people with worse problems than mine. It takes me all of three seconds to conclude that’s such a bullshit thing to say. Like the people in Iran are more important than me because their suffering is supposedly more acute.

Bullshit.

I like thinking all alone in the auditorium even when there is no violin music.

Maybe I never even needed Baback to begin with.

Maybe he’s just like all the rest.

It’s better here when I’m by myself.

Safer.

How do you measure suffering?

I mean, the fact that I live in a democratic country doesn’t guarantee my life will be problem-free.

Far from it.

I understand that I am relatively privileged from a socio-economical viewpoint, but so was Hamlet—so are a lot of miserable people.

I bet there are people in Iran who are happier than I am—who wish to keep living there regardless of who is in charge politically, while I’m miserable here in this supposedly free country and just want out of this life at any cost.

I wonder if Baback will regret demeaning my suffering when he turns on the news tonight.

I kinda hope he’ll feel responsible somehow—that it will make him so regretful he gets sick.

I see Asher Beal in the hallway. I make my hand into the shape of a gun and fire at him as he passes.

I miss twice, but then score a head shot.

“Dead!”

“What’s wrong with you?” he says, shaking his soon-to-be leaky skull.

“Everything!” I yell. “Nothing! You choose!”

People in the hallway are looking at me like I’m crazy—like they wish I would disappear.

Asher Beal just walks away.

“I know where you live!” I yell at him.

Knowing that this will all end tonight, that I will cease to be—that makes this day so much easier. It’s like I’m in a dream, floating through some ethereal world. [27]

Two presents left to deliver, and then I can open the P-38 and go out on the same day I came in.

Happy birthday to me!

God, I can’t wait.

“Leonard?” Mrs. Shanahan says.

My guidance counselor is wearing a lemon-yellow dress and has her red hair up in a bun today. She has these sky-blue glasses that dangle from her neck on a silver chain in a crazy ironic way, because she is way too young to wear her glasses on a chain. I wonder how she dresses when she’s not in school and I see her as an after-hours punk rocker maybe. She’s younger than most faculty members—Herr Silverman’s age, probably.

“I’m hearing reports that you’ve been acting strangely today. Is that true?” she says to me right in the hallway as tons of kids pass by.

“What? I’m always strange, right? But I’m fine otherwise,” I say, mostly because I don’t want to miss Herr Silverman’s Holocaust class, which is where I’m headed now.

I usually don’t mind going to Mrs. Shanahan’s office because she keeps a jar of lollipops on her desk and I always enjoy a root beer sucker midday, but I have to say good-bye to Herr Silverman before I exit the planet, and I don’t want to miss his class. It’s the one class I actually like. So I decide to put on a show for her.

“What’s going on under that hat?” she asks.

“Just a haircut.”

“Mrs. Giavotella said—”

“I’m not a very good barber, I’m afraid,” I say, smiling and looking into her eyes all Hollywood. I’m a convincing actor when I need to be. “I’d show you my new look right now, but I’m a little self-conscious about it, hence the hat. Can I swing by eighth period? Would be happy to show you then and talk about whatever you’d like.”

She looks into my eyes for a long time, like she’s trying to tell whether I’m bullshitting her.