“No,” he said. “She doesn’t kiss me like that. I mean, sometimes she kisses me on the forehead like ...”
He looked over to see Lexie stroking Moxie. He licked her face, and she gave him a kiss. On the head.
“Like that...” the Schwa said. Until that moment I suppose he had been legally blind to the situation, but now it was spread out for him in large print. I knew it would have to happen eventually, but I was hoping I’d get lucky, and the world would get struck by a comet or something first.
“I’m sorry, Schwa, okay? I’m really sorry.”
He responded with icy eyes, and a pulsing vein.
Far off a horn blew, and I could see the headlights of a train coming around the bend.
“It’s an express!” yells Howie, all excited. “It’s not gonna stop here—it won’t even slow down! Maximum breakage potential!”
I didn’t need a second invitation. Anything to look away from the Schwa’s eyes. I grabbed Manny by the scruff of his neck, dragged him to the caution line, and hurled him into the path of the approaching train. I caught a quick glimpse of the conductor’s surprised face before Manny disappeared beneath the wheels. Car after car raced past, and in a few moments the train was gone.
“Did it work?” Lexie asked. “What happened?”
Long story short, Manny Bullpucky was not stronger than a locomotive. Manny didn’t just break, he shattered. He was hit so hard, pieces of him flew out of the station, to the street below. There were body parts around Brighton Beach for weeks, which was nothing new, only these parts were plastic. The Q express train had sent Manny to the great recycling bin in the sky.
“I’m gonna miss him,” Ira said as he packed up his camera and turned to go.
When I looked for the Schwa, I didn’t see him anywhere, and for the life of me I didn’t know whether he had left or just blended into the station. It wasn’t until Lexie asked me to escort her home that I really knew he was gone.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “That’s not like him to leave without saying good-bye.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” I said. “How could you be so . . . so ...”
“So what?”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” I reached over and took Moxie’s harness, putting it gently into her hand. “Better hold on to Amoxicillin,” I told her. “I have a feeling you’re gonna need him to make you feel better.”
***
“How could you have done that to him?” I asked Lexie after I had gotten her home.
She glared at me. Not with her eyes, but with her whole face, which was worse. “In case you’ve forgotten, you did it, too.”
I knew she was right, and it just made me angrier. We sat in the living room of her grandfather’s apartment, listening to the sudden November downpour. Crawley’s nurse, who had already made it clear that she was a cat person, had walked the dogs in the rain because I hadn’t shown up on time to do it. Now the whole apartment was toxic with wet dog, and the nurse gave me dirty looks every time she passed by.
“I thought he understood that we were friends,” Lexie said.
“I don’t believe you. Just because you couldn’t see the dopey love-look on his face doesn’t mean you couldn’t hear it in his voice.”
Lexie was getting teary-eyed, but I wasn’t feeling too sympathetic.
“Maybe I just didn’t want to hear it, okay? Maybe I wanted a little bit of both of you. Is that so terrible?”
Then something occurred to me. “You’ve never really gone out with boys before, have you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
By her tone of voice, I knew it was true. “A lot more than you think,” I told her. See, I know girls and guys who have become masters of manipulation when it came to dating. Instinctively I knew Lexie wasn’t one of those slippery types. Yes, she had manipulated us, but there was an innocence about it. Like she got tossed too many boys to juggle, and so she was doing it not because she enjoyed it, but because she didn’t know what else to do.
She didn’t speak for a long time. She just wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then reached down to pet Moxie. Moxie was pushed away by the sins and virtues, who wanted attention as well, and that just frustrated her even more.
“I tend to intimidate the boys at my school,” she finally said. “I’m very outgoing, and most of them aren’t. You see, it’s a very exclusive school, and a lot of the kids have been much more sheltered than me. I guess they just don’t know what to make of me.”
“What about your other escorts? The ones before me and the Schwa?”
“They were always older,” she said, “and to them it was just a job. Besides, they were always church boys—you know, boys who are so weirdly polite, you always feel like you’re in church when you’re with them. My escorts were always boys who were safe. . . which is why I was so surprised that my grandfather chose you.”
“He must be going senile.”
“I heard that!” Crawley shouted from his bedroom. A few of the dogs perked up at the sound of his voice and ran off to torment him. Served him right for eavesdropping.
“So I guess we were like training wheels,” I said to her.
“What?”
“You know, like on a bicycle. One on either side. Me and Schwa. Dating wheels.”
“I can’t ride a bicycle. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But I think she did.
“Calvin must hate me,” she said, nervously picking at her fingernails.
“He doesn’t hate you. He just feels a little worked over, is all.”
“How about you?”
“No, of course I don’t hate you.”
She reached out and touched my cheek. I thought about how that felt. I’ll bet no one had ever touched the Schwa’s face until Lexie had. Touch is a freaky thing when you’re not used to it. It makes you feel all kinds of things.
I guess I didn’t respond the way she wanted, because she took her hand away. “What happens now?”
I had to think about my answer because my own feelings hadn’t settled yet. Were we going to keep seeing each other? I wanted to. Being with her made me feel like Anthony instead of Antsy. But my selfish streak had run its course, and my conscience kicked in with a vengeance. It would never be right if I did this at the Schwa’s expense.
“I think you’re going to have to ride without training wheels for a while,” I told her.
“So then ... what are we? Are we friends?”
I took real care in my answer. “I’m your grandfather’s dog walker,” I told her. “Let’s start from there.”
Remember the Schwa.
Go to his house.
Go talk to him.
Remember the Schwa.
***
After I left Lexie, I kept repeating things about the Schwa over and over in my mind. I didn’t care how many brain cells it killed trying to think of him, I knew I had to go see him, or call him, or something. I couldn’t let him sneak out of my mind like he always did. Right then I knew how bad he must have been feeling.
Remember the Schwa.
Go talk to him.
But when I got home, Dad called a family meeting. Everyone was there but Mom. He had us sit at the dining-room table, where we never sat. The dining-room table was for holidays and taxes, that was it. As I sat down, I suddenly realized I didn’t want to hear this.
“We all need to have a talk,” he said. “Because things will be changing around here.”
I swallowed hard. “Changing how?”
Dad sighed. It was the truth sigh. I hated the truth sigh more than anything in the world right then. “Well, for one, I’m going to be cooking a lot more.”
“And?” said Frankie.
“And?” said Christina.
“And your mom ...”
“What about Mom?”
Dad sighed again. “Your mom is taking a cooking class three nights a week.”
; Us kids looked at one another, waiting for more, but that’s all Dad offered.
“That’s it?” I said. “She’s taking a cooking class?”
“And she’s looking for a job. Probably part-time at first.”
Nothing from any of us for a few moments.
“It’s a French cooking class,” Dad continued. “Now I want you to listen to me, and listen to me closely.” He looked us all in the eye to make sure he had our attention. “When she cooks something, you have to tell her EXACTLY what you think of it. Capische? Don’t pull any punches. If it’s the foulest thing you’ve ever tasted, tell her the truth. You’ve got to be honest about it. Just like Antsy was the other day.”
“That ain’t right,” says Frankie.
“I’m scared,” says Christina.
“I know it’s going to be difficult for a while,” Dad said, “but we’ll get used to it.”
And suddenly, out of nowhere, I found myself bursting into tears. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. I didn’t even try to stop it, because it was like one of those floods that washes cars away. I guess my brother and sister were freaked out by it, because they took off, leaving me alone with Dad.
“It’s okay, Anthony,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay.” He called me Anthony instead of Antsy, and for some reason that just made me cry even more.
Finally my eyes cleared, and I was looking down at the little drops of tears on the polished wood table.
“I should have used a coaster,” I said. We both laughed a tiny bit.
“Wanna tell me what that was about?”
I sighed the truth sigh. “I thought you were gonna tell us that you guys were splitting up. You know? Getting divorced.” It hurt to say the word aloud. Almost got me crying again.
Dad raised his eyebrows then folded his arms and looked at his reflection in the shiny wooden table. “Not today, Antsy.”
“So what about tomorrow?”
He offered me the slimmest of grins. “Tomorrow we eat French.”
***
The next morning I woke up with the nagging feeling that there was something I was supposed to remember, but I had no idea what it was. It was like Lexie’s sight—a memory of a memory.
It was Sunday. Had Lexie and I made plans to do something before yesterday’s disaster? Was that what I was supposed to remember?
Mom was out early that morning and came back from the supermarket with a strange collection of groceries that included a bag of snails.
“Those French!” she said. “They can figure out ways of making anything edible.”
The sight of the snails absolutely terrified Christina. I helped Mom unpack, just so that I might have some early warning as to what else was in store for us come dinnertime.
I moved a bunch of recipe cards she had clipped together so I could unpack the last bag, and the clip fell off. The clip bounced on the linoleum floor with a tiny little clatter that I could barely hear over the refrigerator hum.
A paper clip.
I stood there with the recipes in one hand and half a pound of pig brains in the other, staring down at the clip like an idiot. I suppose only something that small, that unnoticeable, could remind me of the Schwa.
“Antsy, what’s wrong?” I handed her the pig brains. “Gotta go!” I hurried to the door, but before I left I grabbed a pen and wrote on my palm in big blue letters: Schwa’s House, just in case the Schwa Effect kicked in and I forgot where I was going.
14. More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About the Schwa’s Childhood
I rode my bike at top speed and got to the Schwa’s house in just a few minutes. As I ran up to the door, I could hear Mr. Schwa playing guitar inside. I rang the bell three or four times until he finally came, answering the door with a friendly grin.
“Hi, is Calvin home? I have to talk to him.”
He looked at me strangely, and for a single, terrifying moment, I thought he’d say, Calvin who?
But instead he said, “Sure, he’s in the bedroom.”
I went in to find he wasn’t in his bedroom at all.
“Hmm,” said his father brightly. “Maybe he’s not home after all.”
“Don’t you even know when your own son is home?!”
“Yes,” he said, not so brightly this time. “Mostly.”
I looked in every room, trying to figure out where he might have gone. Then the guitar started up again, and that was the last straw. I went to the living room, to see Mr. Schwa playing and humming to himself like he didn’t have a care in the world. Well, he needed to have some cares.
“Do you even know if Calvin came home last night?”
He looked at me confused. “Calvin always comes home. Why wouldn’t he come home?”
“For all you know, he could be floating facedown in Sheepshead Bay!”
He stopped playing, but didn’t look at me.
“Or maybe he’s with his mother,” I said. “What do you think? You think maybe that’s where he is?”
“That’s enough, Antsy,” said the Schwa. “Leave him alone.”
He stood in front of the brick fireplace, wearing a dark red sweater. Blending in. Always blending in.
“There’s Calvin,” said Mr. Schwa. “He’s standing over there. No worries.”
“Where’ve you been?” I asked.
“Here and there,” he said. “Mostly here.”
His father returned to playing guitar.
“Dad,” said the Schwa, “Marco and Sam will be here at noon to pick you up. You have a painting job in Mill Basin.”
“Okay,” he said.
I went with the Schwa into his room, and he closed the door. The curtains were drawn, and the only light was what little spilled over the edges of the closed blinds.
“It looks like you’re turning into Old Man Crawley.”
“I quit yesterday,” the Schwa said. “Crawley made a big stink, threatened to get my dad fired and all, but I didn’t care. My dad’s friends would never fire him anyway.”
“I thought you might quit,” I said.
“I’m quitting you, too, Antsy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you can stop pretending to be my friend now. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t! Well . . . actually I do, but only because I’m your friend. I’m not pretending about that.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sorry about what happened with Lexie. I thought you should know I’m not going out with her anymore.”
“That doesn’t matter either. You can go now. Really.”
He sat there, waiting for me to leave, but I didn’t. I didn’t say anything else back to him either. They say action speaks louder than words, but so does inaction. Sitting there like a rock was the strongest statement I could make about our friendship.
The Schwa watched how I didn’t move. I think it made him uncomfortable because he looked away. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for me,” he said. “You know, Buddhists believe the state of nonbeing is the perfect place to be.”
“You’re not a Buddhist.”
He looked at me, thinking for a moment. “I’ll tell you something, Antsy. I’ll tell you something you’ve always wanted to know—but if I tell you, you have to promise to believe it.”
“If that’s what you want, Schwa, sure. I promise.”
“Okay, then I’ll tell you a story ...”
. . . And there, in that darkened room, where I couldn’t see the color of the sky or anything else in his eyes, the Schwa told me his deepest, darkest memory.
***
“I learned about the Schwa Effect when I was five,” he said, “although I didn’t have a name for it then. I didn’t have a name for it until you gave it one, Antsy. But I was five when I first realized that something was wrong.
“I can’t remember what my mother looked like, but I do remember the last time I saw her. We had gone to Kings Plaza, an
d she bought me clothes. I was about to start kindergarten, and she wanted me to be the best-dressed kid in school. She wanted me noticed.
“I remember she was sad. She had been sad for a long time, so I didn’t think it was anything unusual. On the way home we stopped at the supermarket to pick up something for dinner. I sat in the little kiddie seat of the shopping cart, and we went down all the aisles. It was this game we played—even when she just had to pick up a few things, she would take me down all the aisles, and I would try to name all the food. Ketchup. Pickles. Spaghetti.
“We got to the frozen-food aisle. Outside it was a summer day, but in there it felt like winter. I can still feel that chill. Then she took her hands off of the cart. ’I’ll be right back,’ she said. ’I forgot the beef.’ She left, and I waited. Peas, corn, broccoli. I started naming all the frozen vegetables. String beans, spinach, carrots—and for a moment—just the tiniest moment, I forgot why I was there. I forgot who I was waiting for. I forgot her. Just for a moment—that’s all. And by the time I remembered, it was too late.
“But I didn’t know that yet. So I sat there in the little kiddie seat, strapped in, freezing, and kept waiting. Lima beans, cauliflower, asparagus. She wasn’t back yet. Not in five minutes, not in ten. There were no more vegetables left to name.
“That’s when I started crying. Just whimpering at first, then getting louder. Crying out for anyone to help me. Someone, please find my mommy. She’s just in the next aisle. I cried and cried, and you know what? You know what? No one noticed.
“There I was, crying my eyes out, alone in a shopping cart, and people just walked on past like I wasn’t there. Not the other mothers, not the stock clerks, not the manager. They didn’t see me, they didn’t hear me. People just grabbed their food and went. And that’s when I knew it would be like that always. Someday there’d come a time for me, too, when no one remembered me—not a soul. And on that day I’d disappear forever, gone without a trace. Just like her.”
***
I listened to his story with my heart halfway up my throat. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to sit in a shopping cart, alone in a crowd of people, waiting for a mother that never came back.
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