The Schwa Was Here

She stirred her simmering sauce a bit. “I wasn’t really mad at him.” She added chicken pieces to the pan—enough to feed the whole family. “I always knew your father was a better cook than me. But this kitchen was my place. I know it’s old-fashioned, but I chose it. Your aunt Mona, I don’t think she ever cooked a meal in her life. She wanted a career. Good for her—I’ve got no problem with that. But sometimes you get a career and then you suddenly realize you don’t have a life. Or if you stay at home with your family, you suddenly realize that your life is actually everyone else’s life, not your own. Either way, when you got all your eggs in one basket, the basket gets heavy. Maybe the eggs start to break.”

  “So get yourself a few more baskets,” I said. “Spread ’em out.” And then I realized that’s exactly what she was doing. That’s why she was taking classes. That’s why she was getting a job. It was all about spreading out those eggs. She had to feel she had a place in her own life, or else maybe she thought she’d disappear somehow, too. Maybe not all at once like the Schwa’s mom, but a little bit every day.

  The changes she was making scared me a little, though. I guess because I knew she’d be meeting new people, and I wondered if maybe those new people might be more interesting than the Vice-Vice-President of Product Development for Pisher Plastics.

  “So how about the first basket?” I asked. “You think that first basket that held the eggs will be okay? I mean, you wouldn’t throw it away, right?”

  She chuckled again. “When have you ever known me to throw anything away?”

  I hugged her. It had been such a long time since I had really hugged her, it felt weird. Used to be I would disappear into her when she hugged me; now it was almost the other way around.

  “You’re a good boy, Anthony,” she told me. “No matter what anybody says.”

  16. A Late-Night Trip to the Land of Beef That Could Turn a Person into a Vegetarian

  The Schwa was fading, no question about it, and it started to hit me that maybe he was right. Maybe he would sift deeper and deeper through everyone’s mind until he just dropped right out the bottom and vanished completely. I noticed him less and less in class, and when it did occur to me to look for him, I always freaked out until I located him in the classroom. It kept getting harder to remind myself to remember him. It’s like my mind was a sieve, and not its usual sieve, because there were some things I was very good at remembering, like faces, or names, or sports stats. But the Schwa, he was like history. He was like trying to remember Lewis and Clark, and Manifest Destiny—both of which I had to do oral reports on, and if you’ve ever had to do an oral report, you probably know how they make you dress up like whoever you’re doing the report on, but how was I supposed to dress up like Manifest Destiny? I got marked down because I wore jeans and a T-shirt—even though I argued that Levi Strauss was making jeans during the westward expansion, and that’s why they call them Levi’s—but what was I talking about? Oh, right. So now I had to wonder whether some kind of destiny was manifesting itself on the Schwa.

  It had been a week since Lexie and I had set out on our less-than-successful attempt to track down what really happened to his mother. The Schwa still hadn’t given me any hints as to what ammunition he was going to use in his one-man war to un-Schwa himself and be noticed in a major way. I was worried about him. Really worried.

  It was Tuesday. Crawley was between nurses—they never lasted in his company for more than a few days. It had become a game with him to see how quickly he could send them packing. A new, unsuspecting home-care victim was due that night, but since Lexie had an afternoon meeting of the 4-S Club, I figured I’d hang out with Crawley after I walked the dogs so he wouldn’t be alone. I brought him over some stuffed focaccia my dad made to go with Mom’s veau Marseille last night.

  As I brought back the last of the dogs, I caught him in a rare moment. He was petting Charity, and talking to her gently, lovingly saying all those sweet, stupid things we say to pets when we think no one’s looking. He caught me watching him and abruptly stopped.

  “Don’t you have some dogs to walk?”

  “All done.”

  “Then why are you still here? It’s not payday.”

  I shrugged. “I thought I’d wait until the new nurse got here. Maybe eat some of my dad’s focaccia.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “You ate it all?”

  “It was too good for you anyway,” he said. “You’d just wolf it down without tasting it.”

  “Maybe we should call you Gluttony,” I said. At that, Gluttony came over to me, hope in his eyes.

  He laughed. “Now he’s your problem.”

  I decided to take a chance. I had seen a moment of tenderness rise to the surface a few moments ago. I thought that maybe I might be able to ask Crawley something and actually get a thoughtful answer.

  “Do you remember him?” I asked.

  “Remember who?”

  “The Schwa.”

  “Why would I want to?”

  “Because,” I told him, “I really think he’s starting to disappear.”

  Crawley just stared at me coldly. I sighed.

  “Forget it,” I said. “You probably think I’m an idiot.”

  “That’s beside the point,” he said. Then he stood up out of his wheelchair and grabbed a cane that was leaning against the wall. I had never seen him get up from his wheelchair before. It was like watching one of those faith healings. Crawley strode toward me slowly, holding the cane tightly. He was taller than I realized. He took about five or six steps, then stopped right in front of me.

  “I don’t recall his face,” Crawley said. “But I do remember him being here.”

  He took one more step, and then had me help him sit on the sofa.

  “I didn’t know you could walk.”

  “As I said when you so rudely broke into my home two months ago, the wheelchair is only temporary.” He got himself comfortable on the sofa, and I sat in the plush chair across from him.

  “I’m sure you think it’s a miracle that I can walk,” he said. “Well, I believe we make our own miracles.” He leaned his cane gently against the edge of the sofa. “I also believe we make our own disasters. If your friend is disappearing, as you say, then he’s doing it to himself.”

  A pack of Afghans frolicked past, knocking down the cane. I picked it up and gave it to him again. “He’s trying not to. He’s trying to be visible.”

  “Then he’s not trying the right way. The universe has no sympathy, and we’re never rewarded for doing things the improper way.” Prudence came over for attention, and Crawley began to scratch her behind the neck. “If your friend continues on his path of self-destructive anonymity, you should minimize your own losses. Cut him loose. Forget about him.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “Spare me your sentimentality,” said Crawley. “Friends can be replaced.”

  “No, they can’t!”

  Instead of answering me right away, he looked down at the dog, which was so utterly content to have a fraction of his attention. “Four years ago,” he said, “Prudence was hit by a car and killed.”

  He said it so bluntly, the news actually made me gasp.

  “So,” he continued, “I fired my dog walker, and I contacted a breeder. Prudence was replaced within three weeks, and life went on. As I said, friends can be replaced.”

  I was so horrified by this, I couldn’t say a thing.

  “All of my dogs are second generation,” he told me. “Some even third. All sins, all virtues. It’s the way I like it.”

  “That’s wrong,” I said. It was twisted in some basic way—like those people who have their pets stuffed and stick them in front of the fireplace like a piece of furniture. They don’t even have real eyes anymore. How could you stand looking at a stuffed pet with marbles for eyes? And how could you treat pets and people like objects to be replaced? “More than wrong—it’s kind of sick.”

  “Think what you want, but it’s the way the world
works.”

  “What do you know about the world? You’re not a part of it—you live outside of it, in your own weird little universe.”

  He grabbed his cane, reached across the table, and poked me in the chest. “You’re nervy,” he said. “I used to like that about you, but now it’s rubbing me the wrong way.”

  I stood up. Suddenly I didn’t feel like being in the same room with him. I didn’t feel like being on the same continent. “Now I know why you’re so afraid of dying,” I told him just before I left. “Because you know when the time comes, you won’t be rewarded for living your life ‘the improper way.’”

  As I left, I thought about Lexie’s plan to traumatize him for his own good, and took a twisted kind of pleasure knowing that some sort of suffering was in store for him. I had a suspicion, though, that Crawley would be a hard egg to crack.

  I knew I wasn’t going to sleep much that night, so I didn’t even try. If the Schwa Effect was hereditary, then the key to everything was finding out what happened to his mom. The thing is, if the whole problem revolved around not being noticed, how could we find an eyewitness? If the Schwa Effect led to being universally forgotten, how could I hope that anyone would remember?

  Our little dowsing session with Ed Neebly and our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you’ve ever been there, you know the signs don’t tell you the exit you’re coming up to, they only point out the exits you’ve just missed. It puts parents in very foul moods—and since you’re probably there to visit relatives, their mood was pretty touch and go to begin with. As for my own parents, I’m sure they would have blown a gasket if they knew what I was about to do.

  I had never been the kind of kid to sneak out late at night. I was more the kind of guy who would come home ridiculously late and suffer the consequences, but once I was home for the night, sneaking out was never an option. I’ve got this screen saver that I don’t use very much, on account of how lame it is. It’s a cartoon of a computer wearing a nightcap and snoring. But if you darken the screen so no one can see the picture, and you set the volume just right, you’d swear there was a real person sleeping in the room. The pillows I had shoved under my blanket weren’t very convincing, but add the snoring from my computer and suddenly it was like I had a roommate. I quietly slipped out, to catch a bus toward Canarsie.

  The butcher had looked away.

  At the time I was so involved with what Ed Neebly was doing I didn’t think much of it, but my mind kept coming back to that moment. The butcher hadn’t just turned to look at something else, he had purposely avoided my gaze. He knew something. The chances of me finding him at this hour of the night were slim, but then I wouldn’t have much luck during the day either, because of the manager. The manager had gotten so paranoid by the end of our questioning that he sent all the stock clerks to get rid of expired dairy products, in case we were taking notes for some major exposé. He had banned Lexie and me from the store—even though Lexie threatened to sic the 4-S Club after him.

  Waldbaum’s was a twenty-four-hour supermarket, I guess so if you had a sudden need for hair gel or Häagen-Dazs at three in the morning, relief was only minutes away. That also meant that I could avoid the manager during the off-hours—and chances were, if the butcher knew something about the Schwa’s mother, other people who worked there knew something, too.

  It was almost midnight by the time I got there. I walked down the frozen-food aisle and turned left, heading toward the meat department. The little counter where the butcher took custom orders was unlit—but that didn’t necessarily mean no one was there. Supermarkets had whole back areas like they’ve got at airports, where employees hang out, rummaging through lost luggage and stuff. Not that lost luggage would be in a supermarket, but considering how airlines work, it wouldn’t surprise me to find socks from yesterday’s flight to Cleveland in with the veal chops.

  In the dark display case, the unpackaged meat was arranged like perfect works of art. Pork chops were layered in a left-right alternating pattern. Rib-eye steaks were neatly pushed together like interlocking floor tiles. Someone had taken great care with this meat. It was weird to think that a butcher would care enough to be so particular. When you think about it, being a butcher has got to be one of the most unpleasant jobs in the world, except for maybe those ladies who cut toenails. I mean, who’d want to spend all day chopping and grinding animals into little pieces? But then, on the other hand, it probably gives guys that would otherwise be ax murderers a healthy outlet. As it turned out, this theory was about to be proven.

  I heard a noise coming from one of those “employee-only” back rooms. It was a high-pitched whine, like a vacuum sucking helium. I followed that sound through a pair of floppy double doors and found myself in a white tile and stainless-steel room, full of meat-cutting equipment. The place had an unfriendly fermented smell, like an old refrigerator crossed with my brother Frankie’s feet. A guy in goggles and a stained white smock stood at the far end of the room at a stainless-steel table, cutting up a side of beef with what looked like a band saw. He did it with such concentration, you’d think it was brain surgery.

  This was the last guy in the world you’d want to see near a sharp object. He was tall but hunched, his neck sticking forward at an angle that made my own neck hurt just watching him. His hair was thin and unkempt. I couldn’t tell if it was white or just very, very blond. I could see patches of red scalp through his hair.

  “Excuse me,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. He just kept on cutting the meat. The machine let off a grating whine whenever it hit the bone.

  “Excuse me,” I said again, a bit louder this time.

  Without looking at me, he turned off the saw, and it buzzed itself silent. “You are not supposed to be here!”

  He had a strange accent. Almost German, but not quite.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions. You’re the butcher here, right?”

  “I am the night butcher,” he said.

  Okay, now here’s the part of the movie where a kid with any brains gets out of there, unless he wants to end up in neatly arranged portions in the display case, because no kid with any brains is gonna stand alone in a room full of knives, saws, and grinders with anyone who calls himself the “Night Butcher.”

  “You come to taunt me more, eh?” he said, raising his voice. “You and your friends. Letting the air out of my tires, scribbling rude words on my windows. This I know! You think I don’t?”

  “I can see it’s not a good time. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  I backed up, but missed the door and knocked over a broom. The handle hit the floor with a nasty thwok, and my heart ran to hide somewhere in my left shoe.

  “No!” he said. “You have business with me, you tell me now. We settle this here!”

  He came toward me. I could see that his neck was scaly, and red as raw meat.

  “We have nothing to settle,” I told him. “I didn’t let the air out of your tires, or anything. Trust me, I’ve got better things to do than mess with the Night Butcher.”

  He scratched his neck thoughtfully. “And I should believe you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He took off his goggles to get a better look at me. His eyes were as wild as his hair. Then he said, “I believe you. For now. What is it you want?”

  “I’m trying to help a friend,” I said. “How long have you worked for Waldbaum’s?”

  “Flemish!” he shouted.

  “Huh?”

  “You are wondering about my accent. It is Flemish. I come from Belgium. All you know from Belgium is waffles and chocolate. Now you know me.”

  “Great, got it—waffles, chocolate, and you. So how long have you worked for Waldbaum’s?”

  “Nineteen years. I was here when cuts were thick, and you could still get a lamb chop with a nice big fillet, back when meat was meat.” He looked off for a moment, nostalgic for the good old days, then said, “Gunther!”
br />   “Huh?”

  “You are wondering what is my name.”

  “Well, not really, but thanks for telling me.” This was the only human being I’d ever met who had more trouble than me staying on the subject. “Did you always work in this store, or did you get moved around?”

  “Always here,” he said.

  “Good. So you were here about nine years ago when a little boy got left in a shopping cart.”

  Suddenly his whole attitude changed. “No.” He turned back to the beef he had been cutting. “I was not on duty yet. I do not remember.”

  “If you don’t remember, how could you know you weren’t on duty?”

  He scratched his peeling neck. Little flakes fell to the cutting table. I’m never eating meat from Waldbaum’s again.

  “Eczema,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You are wondering about my neck. Why I scratch.”

  “What you do with your neck is your business.”

  He stopped scratching and looked at me for an uncomfortably long time. “You are this little boy from the shopping cart?” he asked.

  “No, but I’m his friend.”

  Gunther nodded, then went to remove his smock and washed his hands. “This friend of yours. He is okay now?”

  “Not really,” I told him. I thought of what story I could make up to get Gunther to spill his guts, and then I figured the truth would do the job just fine. “He thinks his mother disappeared into thin air, and he never got over it.”

  Gunther sighed. “I am very sorry to hear that.” He pulled up a chair and sat down, then pulled up one for me. “Sit.”

  Although I really didn’t want to, I knew I might finally be onto something. I sat down, and Gunther took his time before he spoke again.

  “You have to understand, this was none of my business. I had nothing to do with it, I only saw.”

  Bingo! “So you saw what happened! She didn’t disappear after all, did she?”

  Gunther sighed. “She did disappear, in a manner of speaking,” he said. “And she was not the only one who disappeared that night.”