The Schwa Was Here

by Neal Shusterman

Parents were supposed to know the answers, and even if they didn’t, they could usually fake it really well. I wanted to hate my dad for not knowing, but I couldn’t hate him. That made me want to hate him even more.

  I came downstairs, and Mom was in the kitchen. I had to hold on to the wall, as if the Big One was having an aftershock. I took a deep breath and went in. She was drinking coffee by herself, like they do on those commercials for fancy flavored coffee.

  “Are you having breakfast before you go to school?”

  “What is there?”

  “Cornflakes, Raisin Bran. There may be some Froot Loops left, if Christina didn’t make a pig of herself.”

  Most of the time Mom would get the bowl, or the box or the milk. She would always do something to be a part of the meal. Today I did the whole thing myself. It just didn’t feel right.

  When I got the milk from the refrigerator, I noticed that the plate of food Dad had left was gone. The plate had been washed by hand, and now sat in the drying rack. I knew it shouldn’t matter. I knew it was just a little thing—but the image of that plate on the rack stayed with me all day. Like Dad said, sometimes the little things are the biggest things of all. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out whether Mom had eaten the food on that plate or had put it down the disposal.

  I sat by myself at lunch on Monday. I hadn’t been sitting with Howie and Ira for a couple of weeks now. Used to be we were inseparable, but cliques are like molecules: They bind together in Mr. Werthog’s little test tube until you add something new. Then they all break up and recombine into something else. Sometimes you get these things they call “free radicals,” which are atoms that aren’t bound to anything else, floating free. That was me now. I didn’t mind it at first, because it left open a whole lot of possibilities, but after this past weekend, radical freedom didn’t feel so good.

  I’m sure the Schwa was there, blending in with the Formica tables, but I wasn’t about to look for him. Right now I was hating him the way you hate the other team when they shout, “Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate?” after humiliating you in a shutout. The Schwa found me, though. He plopped his semi-invisible self down across the table from me.

  “Do you mind? I’m eating, and it’s hard enough to keep this crud down without having to look at you.”

  “I just wanted to thank you, Antsy. That’s all.”

  “Thank me for what?”

  “Lexie told me everything. She told me what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” he said. “You told her you didn’t want to be her escort, and said that I’d be better at it. I can’t believe you’d do that for me. No one’s ever done anything like that for me.”

  I just sat there with gravy dripping down my chin. “She told you that?”

  The Schwa grinned. “She’s teaching me Braille,” he said proudly. “It’s really cool.” He glanced at my plate, noticing I had eaten my peach cobbler first, so he scooped his onto my plate. “If you ever want anything, all you have to do is ask.”

  Pamela O’Malley passed by just then, with a few friends walking so close it was a wonder they didn’t trip over one another’s feet. “Hey, Antsy,” she said, “how come you’re eating alone?”

  The Schwa gave me that “some people” look.

  “Maybe I like it that way,” I said. She twittered with her friends and walked off.

  “It’s okay,” the Schwa said. “Who needs to be seen when you can be felt?”

  11. The Youngest Doctor in Sheepshead Bay Gets Held Hostage When He Least Expects It

  Being felt.

  That means a lot of things, doesn’t it? And I’m not talking about the dirty stuff you probably think I mean. My mind isn’t in the sewer all the time, all right? I’m talking about having your presence felt. In that way, I guess I’m not all that different from the Schwa.

  Now I had made my presence felt in my own family by refusing to be the peacekeeper. If that was a good thing, it sure didn’t feel like it. The problem is, once you’ve made yourself felt, there’s no going back to being unnoticed, as much as you might want to. Instead of ignoring me, Frankie was suddenly noticing every little thing I did, wondering why I did it. Christina started asking me questions about things, like I was the smarter brother. Dad was now confiding in me about things that were really none of my business, and Mom started treating me like I was actually a responsible human being. It was all very disturbing.

  “There’s no future in plastic,” Dad said to me one day out of the blue.

  “Sure there is,” I told him. “People will always need a plastic something or other.”

  “We can only hope,” he said.

  “What does Mom think?”

  “Mom doesn’t work for Pisher.”

  I was fishing for news from the battlefront, but he gave me none. The battlefront had become more like a demilitarized zone. They kept this chilly emotional distance. I think I liked it better when they fought.

  The thing is, Dad might have built Manny to be indestructible, but he himself was not. Neither was Mom. This was a stress test I wished would just end.

  I didn’t know what I’d say to Lexie. I was sure to run into her at Crawley’s apartment eventually, but I hoped maybe she would just leave the room and pretend she didn’t know I was there until I had leashed up the dogs and left.

  I wasn’t so lucky.

  A week after being replaced by the Schwa as her official escort, Lexie herself came to answer the door. She pulled it open wide, letting out four dogs, three of which nuzzled me for affection, but the fourth one, Prudence—who was always a loose cannon—bolted, and headed straight down the stairs. Not the back stairs we always take to get out, the grand staircase that led right down to the middle of the restaurant, where people were eating an early dinner.

  “Great,” I said. “She’ll probably pull a lobster right off of someone’s plate.”

  “I need your help,” Lexie said. At first I thought she meant to get the dog, but then I heard Crawley shouting and groaning from inside the apartment, over the sound of barking. Lexie’s voice was all warbly, and I could tell she was panicked. “He fell in the shower,” she said. “I think he might have broken his hip again.”

  I stepped in, closing the door behind me. Let the waiters deal with Prudence, they were probably used to it. “Did you call 911?”

  “They’re sending an ambulance, but he won’t let me near him. He won’t tell me anything. I don’t know what to do.”

  I tried to hurry back to the master bathroom with her, but she couldn’t hurry. She moved slowly, and methodically, never bumping into anything, but never quickening her pace. It was the first time I’d ever seen her handicap be a hindrance.

  Crawley was sprawled on the shower floor, clutching a towel over himself.

  “Get out!” he said when he saw me.

  “There’s an ambulance on its way,” I told him.

  “I don’t need an ambulance. Just leave me alone.”

  It was terrible to see him like this. He had always been such a powerful presence, even in his wheelchair. Kind of like Roosevelt, you know? But lying there on the floor, twisted in that awkward position, he seemed frail and helpless. I reached over to help him shift into a more comfortable position, but he swatted my hand away. “Get your lousy hands away from me, you dumb guinea!”

  Whoa.

  He had called me lots of things, but never the G-word. I didn’t know what to make of it, but now wasn’t a time I could really get angry. He tried to move by himself, and yowled in pain, letting loose a whole dictionary of cusswords.

  Lexie, standing at the door, grimaced. “What happened? Did he fall again? Tell me, Anthony! Tell me everything that’s happening.”

  “Nothing’s happening. He tried to move, but couldn’t.”

  “Is he bleeding?”

  “No.”

  Then she hit her eyes with her palms and grunted. It was weird, but I knew exactly why she did it.
It was frustration at her own blindness. She was smooth and confident when the world cooperated, but accidents were almost as uncooperative as her grandfather. “Isn’t there something we can do?”

  Yes, there was. I went over to the medicine chest and opened it to reveal a whole pharmacy of medication. I quickly scanned the labels.

  “What are you doing now?” Crawley asked.

  “You need something for pain, and an anti-inflamatory,” I told him. I knew about that from the injuries we’ve had in my own family.

  “So you’re my doctor now?”

  “Yeah, Dr. DumGuinea, and I’m sending you one helluva bill.” I found what I was looking for, checked the labels for dosage and expiration date, and pulled out a pill from two different vials. Then I filled a glass with water from the sink and cautiously approached Crawley.

  “What’s that?”

  “Lodine and Vicodin,” I told him. “They prescribed these for you when you first broke your hip, right?”

  “I don’t need it!” He pushed the glass away, spilling half the water on my shirtsleeve.

  “Fine. Suit yourself.” I put the glass down on the counter with the pills, making sure he could see them. If he looked at them long enough, maybe he’d change his mind.

  “They’re coming!” Lexie said. She heard the sirens long before I did. The last time I heard sirens here, it was the police coming for the Schwa and me.

  When Crawley heard the approaching sirens, he groaned. “I don’t need this today!”

  There was a knock at the door, and I hurried off to let in the paramedics. Instead, it was the Schwa, with an out-of-breath waiter holding Prudence by the collar.

  “Hi, Antsy!” the Schwa said brightly, like this was the happiest place on Earth. “What’s up?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  I ran back to the bathroom, where Lexie still stood by the threshold, her grandfather yelling at her every time she tried to get closer.

  “Anthony! Make her get out of here!”

  “Lexie, maybe you should just go sit down—at least until he calms down.”

  Exasperated, Lexie left for the living room.

  “He’s lying on the floor,” the Schwa said, like I didn’t know.

  “I’ll have those pills now,” Crawley said.

  I handed him the pills and glass. “Careful, that Vicodin can be habit-forming.”

  He gave me a nasty glare and took them.

  The Schwa was trying to get up to speed, but not quite making it. “Uh—shouldn’t someone help him up?”

  As if things weren’t crazy enough, when Lexie let the paramedics in, Prudence bolted again, followed by at least three other dogs.

  The paramedics freaked and put their hands in the air, which is the worst thing to do around an excited dog, because it thinks, in its pint-size dog brain, that you have a treat in your hand, and so up the dog goes, planting its paws on your chest. Now imagine that multiplied by ten.

  “He’s this way—in the bathroom,” I told them, but they were cornered by the sins and virtues and weren’t going anywhere. “C’mon, haven’t you ever seen Afghans before?” I had to use the old man’s trick of throwing a handful of treats clear across the room to free the paramedics.

  When medical professionals took over the situation, I thought I could be out of this little drama. I figured Crawley would go off, complaining all the way, with Lexie in tow, and Schwa and I would be left to walk the dogs. Crawley, however, threw a curveball.

  The paramedics got him up onto the gurney, and as they were wheeling him out, he grabbed my arm. “Anthony, you come with me.”

  “What, me?”

  “Is there another Anthony here?”

  “I’ll come, Grandpa,” said Lexie, already getting Moxie ready for the journey.

  “No. You will stay here with Calvin and walk the dogs.”

  “I want to come with you!”

  The paramedics rammed right into the Schwa, knocking him flat on his butt. The dogs, who had been calming down, began barking again.

  “Sorry, kid, we didn’t see you.”

  “Anthony—come!” said Crawley.

  I turned to the Schwa and Lexie, holding back the dogs as they wheeled Crawley out. “I think my job description just changed again.”

  They let me ride in the back of the ambulance with him as they ran red lights and took the wrong side of the road halfway to Coney Island Hospital.

  “Why did you want me to come?” I asked Crawley. “Why not Lexie?”

  “I don’t want her to see me like this.”

  “She can’t.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass, you know what I mean.” He shifted positions and grimaced. “Tell them you’re my grandson at the hospital, and weasel your way into the ICU. You’re good at weaseling.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  The paramedic checking Crawley’s blood pressure threw me a quick glance, but didn’t say anything. I guess whatever went on at the hospital wasn’t his business.

  Then, when the ambulance pulled to a stop at the emergency room, Crawley grabbed my arm again. His nails dug into my forearm, although I don’t think he did it to hurt me, and he said: “Don’t let them leave me alone.”

  I sat beside him in a little curtained emergency-room cubicle, listening to him complain about everything from the antiseptic smell to the flickering fluorescent lights that “could send someone into a seizure.” Everything in the hospital was a lawsuit waiting to happen, and he was prepared to bring in his lawyers at any moment.

  I called my parents to tell them where I was. Never open up a conversation with your mother with the words, “I’m at the hospital.”

  “Oh, my God! Did you get hit by a car? Oh, my God! Is anything broken? Oh, my God, Antsy, oh, my God!”

  She was so loud, I had to pull the phone away from my ear, and Crawley could hear every word. It was actually a comfort to hear my mother showing concern, so I let it go on for a moment before I stopped her and told why I was at the hospital.

  “Mr. Crawley’s really shaken up. I guess I’ll be here for a while.”

  “Is he okay?” Mom asked. “Is he gonna live?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Crawley let out a single loud guffaw at that. It was the first time I had ever made him laugh.

  “Call when you need a ride home,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get a cab.”

  At the mention of that, Crawley’s eyes got a little wider, and his lips pursed a little tighter. After I hung up he said, “You leave when I tell you to leave. I’ll pay you time-and-a-half for overtime.”

  “Not everyone in the world does things for money, okay?”

  “You do.”

  “Well, not all the time.”

  “Good. Then I won’t pay you.”

  “Okay, I’m leaving.”

  “Aha!” he said, pointing his finger at me.

  Now it was my turn to laugh.

  Crawley glanced out the little opening in the curtain. Doctors and nurses whooshed past every minute or so, but never whooshed in. “Hospitals are the greatest failure of civilization,” Crawley proclaimed.

  “You’re not the only patient. They’ll get to you eventually.”

  “So will the coroner.”

  I looked at him for a moment, remembering what he had been like when they wheeled him in. As soon as they had opened the door to the ambulance, he had covered his face with both hands, like a vampire afraid of the light of day, all the while calling to me in a panic.

  “Why are you so scared to be alone?” I asked him.

  Crawley ignored the question so I tried another.

  “Why am I here instead of Lexie?”

  Crawley took a long moment to weigh his answer, then sighed. This was a good thing, because when people sigh, it usually means they’re about to tell the truth. A sigh means it’s not worth the energy to lie.

  “The more Lexie knows, the more she’ll tell her father—my sson,” Crawley sai
d. (He spat it out, like it was a four-letter word instead of three.) “I don’t want my sson to know anything. He’s already convinced that I need to be in an ‘assisted-living facility.’ An old folks’ home.”

  “Well, you’re an old folk.”

  “I’m venerable, not elderly.” And at my puzzled expression he said, “Look it up.”

  “I don’t need to. I’m sure it’s just a word that’s supposed to make ‘old’ sound good, like they say ‘restroom’ when they really mean ‘bathroom,’ and they say ‘bathroom’ when they really mean ‘toilet.’” Then I added, “It’s called a euphemism. Look it up.”

  He waved his hand at me. “I don’t know why I waste my breath. You couldn’t possibly understand what I mean.”

  “I think I do.”

  I thought he’d just wave his hand at me again, but to my surprise he was actually listening—which meant I had to find a way to put into words what I was thinking. I began slow, just in case I flew into some speed bumps that sunk my train of thought.

  “Right now everybody knows you as kooky Old Man Crawley, with fourteen dogs in his window and enough power to shut down the egg supply to half of Brooklyn.”

  He grinned. “They still remember the eggs, do they?”

  “Who could forget? But once you get put in a rest home, you’ll just be some old fart playing checkers and waiting for the aquacize instructor. You won’t be a mysterious force to be reckoned with anymore. And that’s scary.”

  He looked at me for a long time. I figured he was generating a really good insult, but instead he said, “You’re slightly brighter than I gave you credit for.”

  “You know, your son will find out about this. Lexie will tell him—she probably already has.”

  “Just as long as I’m out of here and back in my apartment when I face him.” Then he added, “I just hope Lexie’s all right with that lackluster friend of yours.”

  “I’m sure your granddaughter and the Schwa are having a great time. They probably got their hands all over each other’s faces or something.” The image of that was just too disturbing. I had to stand up and pace in the little space, peering out of the curtains to see if the doctor was coming. The greatest failure of civilization. Maybe Crawley was right.