The Schwa Was Here

  “My granddaughter is very upset with you.”

  This was news to me. “What does she have to be upset about? She was the one who dumped me for the Schwa.”

  Crawley looked at me square in the eye. “You’re a moron.”

  “I thought you just said I was brighter than you gave me credit for.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  As it turns out, Crawley had fractured his hip again. It wasn’t bad, but a fracture is a fracture. He couldn’t keep the news from his “sson,” but as Lexie’s parents were still in Europe, their war was limited to transatlantic phone calls. They insisted he spend time in a nursing home, and he told them what they could do with their nursing home. In the end, Crawley agreed to hire a full-time nurse, but in the meantime was happy to torment the nurses at the hospital.

  From his hospital room, Crawley commanded Lexie to go to school the next day rather than visit him, and he raised such a stink she did as she was told. My parents, on the other hand, let me take off school that day, since I had been up all night with Crawley, and that gave me time to take the subway down to the Academy of the Blind before school let out.

  At the end of their school day, the students left with precision and care, unlike the mob scene at most other schools. Many students were escorted by Seeing Eye dogs, parents, or nannies. A few older ones went out alone with white canes tapping the pavement in front of them. Some of Lexie’s schoolmates seemed well accustomed to their state; for others, it was a serious hardship. I never imagined there was such a range in how people handled being blind.

  The strangest thing of all was the way drivers used noisemakers to guide their student to the car. Some clicked, some whirred, some whistled—and no two were the same. It was amazing, because every kid found their way to the right car with just a couple of toots or clicks.

  Moxie spotted me before I spotted Lexie, and he brought her to me.

  “Moxie? What’s wrong, boy?”

  “Hi, Lexie.”

  It only took an instant for her to recognize my voice. “Anthony, what are you doing here? Is my grandfather all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. I’m here because I needed to talk to you.”

  “So you came all the way here? Couldn’t you wait till I got home?”

  “Yeah, I guess, but I didn’t want to.”

  Someone pulled up to the curb, rolled down the window, and blew a slide whistle.

  “Do they do that at all blind schools?” I asked Lexie.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “This one is just weird.” She turned her head slightly to the side. “I hear my driver further up the street. C’mon, you can ride home with me.”

  She led me to a black Lincoln—a car service that the Crawleys had hired to take Lexie to and from school. The driver had a Pakistani look about him, and rather than using a plain old noisemaker, he was playing the harmonica. Badly.

  “My father started him off with a kazoo. I gave him the harmonica because it’s so much more dignified. I figure he might actually be able to play by the end of the school year.”

  We got in the car and sped off, with Moxie lying across our feet.

  “Your grandfather says you’re angry at me.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yeah, and I think I’ve got a right to know why. I mean, you dumped me in the middle of a concert, and now you’re the one who’s angry at me?”

  Moxie sensed a little anger on my part, and he barked. It was the first time I had ever heard him bark.

  “Dumped you? Is that what you think?”

  “No, I guess not. I guess you just fired me. That’s just as bad. So now I want to know why you’re the one who’s angry. If anyone should be mad, it’s me.”

  “I’m not angry. I’m just . . . disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you dumped me.”

  “Now you’re just playing games with me.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “As long as you were being paid, we couldn’t really be dating, could we? I even said that at the concert, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So if Calvin is my paid escort, my grandfather gets what he wants, and then you could ask me out for a real date.” And then she added, “But you didn’t.”

  My jaw swung open like Wendell Tiggor in math. Words failed me.

  “I swear,” said Lexie, “you sighted people don’t see anything unless it’s staring you in the face.” And then she leaned forward and planted a kiss square on my mouth. It was a perfect hit, like she had a radar lock on my lips. Then she said, “Is there anything unclear about that, or do you need a Hallmark card?”

  I looked around, self-conscious as anything, but there was no one to see us but Moxie and the Pakistani driver, who kept his eyes on the road like it was the hardest level of a video game.

  “I guess I get the picture now,” was all I could say. Then a nasty little thought surfaced to ruin the moment.

  “What about the Schwa?”

  “Calvin’s my friend,” Lexie said. “He’ll understand.”

  “I don’t think so. He thinks you’re going out.”

  “Don’t be silly. No, he doesn’t.”

  “Hey—you don’t know him like I do.”

  “He’s my escort. We have fun together. He knows there’s nothing more to it than that.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? If we start going out, it will crush him. He’s one of us handicapped sighted people who believes what he sees.”

  Lexie pulled her shoulders back, getting all offended. “I think I’m a much better judge of character than you think I am.”

  “All I’m saying is that we can’t do this to him.”

  “So you don’t want to go out with me?”

  I sighed. “I didn’t say that either.”

  12. A Horror Movie Blow-by-Blow, with the Undisputed Queen of the 3-B Club

  Unlike my parents, I don’t know much about cooking. According to them, the only recipe I know is a recipe for disaster. I actually have a few of them. Here’s the latest: Take one blind girl who’s not nearly as insightful as she thinks she is, add one Italian ham, sprinkle generously with Schwa, then put in a pot and turn up the heat.

  I asked Lexie out to dinner, and she suggested we go to a movie first. It didn’t occur to me that the movies with her would be an altogether different experience. Since I was no longer her paid escort, I had to shell out the money for it myself. I didn’t mind. It felt like an accomplishment.

  I knew the Schwa would have a cow if he knew about the date—more than a cow, he’d have a whole herd—but I put him out of my mind, for once allowing the Schwa Effect to work in my favor. I forgot him and let myself have a good time with Lexie.

  Usually you took a girl to the movies so you wouldn’t have to talk, and so you’d be in a position to put your arm around her shoulder and, God willing, make out. But going to the movies with Lexie was like taking an Honors English class.

  “Okay . . . now she’s walking toward the air lock,” I announced. We were about ten minutes into the movie and I hadn’t stopped talking yet.

  “How is she walking?”

  “I don’t know—like a person walks.”

  “Is she strolling, meandering, stalking?”

  “Storming,” I said. “She’s storming down the hallway toward the air lock.”

  The music flared, the air lock hissed open, and the audience screamed.

  “Is that the monster?” Lexie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It’s big, and bluish green.”

  “Don’t use colors.”

  “Uh . . . okay. It’s crusty like a lobster, and spiny like a porcupine. You know what that is?”

  “I’m blind, not stupid.”

  “Right.” I had forgotten about “tactile learning.”

  “What’s happening now?”

  “She tries to run, but the air lock closes. The monster bac
ks her against the door. Its claws move forward. She opens her mouth to scream, but she can’t because she knows screaming won’t make a difference.”

  “Shh!” said someone in front of us.

  “She’s blind—you got a problem with that?”

  The monster did its thing, and the audience shrieked, their voices blending into the squishing, crunching sound effects.

  “What did the monster do?” Lexie asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I do!” She licked her lips. “Every little detail!”

  By the time the movie was over, I felt like I was stumbling out of a day of state testing.

  “Don’t worry,” Lexie said as we left arm in arm, “I won’t ask you to describe the food on my plate.”

  At dinner, however, she asked the waitress for a Braille menu.

  “Are you kidding?” I told her. “This is just a burger place; they don’t have Braille menus.”

  “He’s right,” said the waitress.

  “Then I’d like the manager to come out and read me the menu,” she said.

  “I can read it,” I told her.

  “No, I want the manager.”

  The waitress snapped her order booklet closed. “Sure, hon,” and she went off to find the manager.

  “You like giving people a hard time, don’t you?”

  Lexie grinned. “Only when they’re blind to the blind.”

  In a few moments the manager walked out. No—strided out. This was one of those places famous for, like, fourteen thousand different burgers on the menu, and Lexie charmingly insisted that the manager read every single one of them, like it was his catechism. When he was done, she gave him the phone number of a place where he could order Braille menus.

  That’s when I think I fell in love.

  “What if he’d refused to read you the menu?” I asked after the manager was gone.

  “Then I’d sic the Four-S club on him.”

  “Don’t you mean Four-H?”

  “No, Four-S. It stands for the four senses other than sight. It’s a club at my school. We have contacts with the mayor’s office and the New York Times, and we organize pickets in front of antiblind establishments.”

  “You should call yourself the Three-B club,” I told her. “Blind Ball Busters.”

  She laughed.

  “I’ll bet you’re the leader.”

  She didn’t deny it. “I’m a force to be reckoned with.”

  “Just like your grandfather.”

  When it came to body language, I wasn’t exactly bilingual, but still I could tell by the way she shifted that she wasn’t too pleased by the comparison. “I meant that in a good way,” I told her. “I mean, it’s like we all get our raw materials from our families—but it’s up to us whether we build bridges or bombs.”

  “What are you building?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. A fast car, maybe.”

  “To go where?”

  She stumped me for a second, until I sidestepped the question with this: “It’s the road that matters, not the destination.”

  I gotta admit, I impressed myself with how well I could pretend to be clever, until she said, “You’re so full of crap!”

  I laughed so hard practically my whole Coke sprayed out of my nose.

  “Tell me something about you that I don’t know,” she asked.

  “Okay, let’s see . . .” I scanned through all the things she didn’t know about me, which was about everything.

  “I got two webbed toes on each foot.”

  “Ooh! A mutant!”

  “Yeah, and if you ask to feel them, I’m out of here.”

  “Well, maybe when we go swimming someday.”

  “Okay, your turn.”

  “I’ll tell you about Moxie,” she said. “Most people think it’s for ‘moxie,’ the word that means ‘gutsy,’ but it’s not. You see, when I was little and I got sick, that’s what I used to say to my parents—‘Moxie! Moxie!’ Because they always gave me amoxicillin, and I knew it was supposed to make me feel better. So when they brought me a Seeing Eye dog, I called him Moxie, because from the moment I had him, I felt better about being blind.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, avoiding the more common “that’s cool,” because her story deserved more respect than that.

  “You know, I wasn’t born blind,” she said. “I fell out of my stroller when I was a year old, and hit the back of my head on the curb.”

  Just imagining it made me grimace. “The back of your head?”

  “That’s where the visual cortex is. It’s kind of like a movie screen at the back of your brain. Without it your eyes can work just fine, but there’s no place to show the movie.”

  “Wow,” I said, wishing I knew a more respectful word for wow.

  “I’m lucky. It happened early enough that I was able to compensate and adjust. It’s harder the older you are.”

  “Do you remember seeing at all?”

  It took a while for her to answer that one. “I remember . . . remembering. But that’s as close as I can get.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  She shrugged. “How can you miss what you don’t remember?”

  Whether she liked it or not, Lexie had a bit of her grandfather in her when it came to bending the world to suit her. She could wrap the world around her finger like a yo-yo string and play with it to her heart’s content. She definitely toyed with me on a regular basis, but that was only because she knew I liked being her yo-yo.

  She also knew all the right strings to pull once she finally settled on how to give her grandfather “trauma therapy.”

  “It took lots of money,” she told me, “and lots of favors, but it will be worth it because it’s exactly what my grandfather needs to break him out of his shell.” Then she said, “Of course I can’t tell you what I’m planning, but I promise when it happens, you’ll be in on it.”

  This was one of those times I didn’t like being toyed with. I kept no secrets from her, except of course for the secrets I kept from everybody, so why couldn’t she tell me what she was planning?

  “Aw, please?” I begged, feeling stupid, but heck, if she could give Moxie a treat when he begged, maybe her compassion extended to two-legged creatures. No such luck.

  “It’s no use,” she said, putting her palm against my lips to shut me up. “You’ll find out when you find out.” Then she added, “And don’t ask Calvin, because he won’t tell you either.”

  I moved her hand off my face so I could gape in deeply offended disbelief, and it really annoyed me that she was blind, because my deeply offended gape fell on deaf ears.

  “You told the Schwa, but you won’t tell me?”

  “Calvin can keep a secret.”

  “So can I!”

  She laughed. “You? You’re like Radio Antsy—all news, all the time. If I told you, even the dogs would be barking it by morning.”

  “Very funny.”

  So the Schwa and Lexie were sharing things that Lexie wouldn’t share with me. So what. I put my arm around her in a way that only a boyfriend can. That was something she and the Schwa didn’t share. I hoped.

  Okay, I admit feeling pretty jea-lousy about it (that’s feeling jealous and lousy all at once). For a few seconds . . . well, maybe more than just a few seconds, I wished the Schwa would really disappear.

  Later I’d feel real guilty about that.

  13. A Russian Train, a Pulsing Vein, and My Mother’s Bag of Snails

  Mrs. Greenblatt, who lived two doors down from us, was not blind, but she was extremely nearsighted. I figured she never had laser surgery on her eyes because it would have been physically impossible to implant the Hubble Telescope in her cornea, which is what she needed. Her nearsightedness wasn’t really a problem, except for the fact that she often mistook me for my brother, and lately even my father. However, things came to a head one day. Literally. I wasn’t home when it happened, but I heard the story from so many different people it wa
s like watching on one of those multi-angle DVDs. About three in the afternoon, while Mrs. Greenblatt was trimming her hedges, she came across a human head wedged in the bushes. She died of a heart attack about three times, then ran inside to call the police. I’d love to hear that 911 tape.

  By the time the police arrived, half the neighborhood had heard the screaming and came over to investigate. The police went into her yard and came out with a head, just like Mrs. Greenblatt said. She claimed to be having several more heart attacks, until she found out the head wasn’t human. It was the head of Manny Bullpucky—slightly dented and singed from our attempt to blow him up, but otherwise completely intact.

  My brother Frankie got it back for us, and that evening I snapped it onto Manny’s body, then called Ira and Howie to let them know. We began to plan his death one more time.

  “Can I come to one of your demolition sessions?” Lexie asked when I told her about it. “It sounds like fun.”

  “Sure,” I told her, although I was doubtful about how much she would get out of merely hearing Manny’s destruction. I figured it would be good to have her there, because things were strained between Howie, Ira, and me. Killing Manny was the only thing we had in common anymore.

  We met at about four o’clock on Saturday. Our crime scene was the elevated subway station in Brighton Beach, which was pretty deserted on weekends this time of year.

  “I don’t like this place,” Howie says as we climbed the steps. “I mean, is it elevated? Or is it a subway? It can’t be both. It gives me the creeps.”

  We figured we could get away with making Manny a subway victim here, because Brighton Beach is mostly Russian these days, therefore normal laws, rules, and space-time physics don’t always apply. Besides, the police are more worried about the Russian Mafia than about a bunch of kids. You don’t want to mess with the Russian Mafia. They make Mob guys like John Gotti look like Mr. Rogers. In Brighton Beach it’s always a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and if you don’t agree, you may end up sleeping with the beluga.

  So anyways, Ira’s got his camera filming Manny, who’s slouching on a bench, looking like a postapocalyptic crash-test dummy. “With what this guy’s been through, he could be a superhero.”