The Schwa Was Here

  “Hi, is this M. Taylor?”

  “Yes.”

  “The ‘M’ doesn’t stand for Margaret, does it?”

  “Well, yes, it does. Can I help you?”

  “Probably not. You’re not selling a house in Brooklyn are you?”

  “Why? Are you interested? It’s in excellent condition!”

  I nearly had a coronary on the spot. I had never gotten this far before. I was so used to hanging up, I didn’t even know what to say next.

  “Hello?” she said. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Listen, I’m looking for someone who lived there. A kid named Calvin Schwa.”

  “Oh, are you one of his friends?”

  Again nothing but dead air on my end of the line. It then occurred to me that this was the infamous Aunt Peggy. Don’t ask me what imbecile decided Peggy was short for Margaret. I was feeling kind of rubber-brained. It’s like when you call the radio station when they ask for the ninth caller, but you’re never the ninth caller, so when they actually pick up and talk to you, you figure it must be some mistake. Then they put you on the radio, you sound like a complete fool, and then you hang up before you can give them your address, so they can’t mail you your concert tickets. Don’t laugh—it happened.

  “Yeah, I’m a friend,” I told Aunt Peggy. “Is he there? Can I talk to him?”

  “I’m afraid he isn’t here. I could take a message, though.”

  “Well, could you tell me why he moved like that? And why you’re selling his house?”

  I heard Aunt Peggy sigh. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I suppose it’s common knowledge by now. They were having trouble with finances,” she told me. “And Calvin’s father, well, he doesn’t handle this sort of thing well. I put the house up for sale for him, and he moved in with me.”

  “Will Calvin be back later tonight? I really need to talk to him.”

  “Oh, he didn’t come here with his father,” Aunt Peggy said. “He stayed with a friend in Brooklyn so he could finish out the school year.”

  “Great—could you give me the number?”

  “Of course. His name is Anthony Bonano. If you hold on, I’ll get the number.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear, and looked at it like it had suddenly turned into a banana.

  “Hello?” said Aunt Peggy. “Are you still there? Do you want that number?”

  “Uh . . . That’s okay,” I said. “Never mind.” I hung up and stared at the phone for a full minute. It was then that I finally decided to just let this be. So, the Schwa had disappeared, but like his mother, it was completely of his own doing. It might have been misguided like so many things he did, but I had to respect his decision, and although I had a sneaking suspicion what he was up to, I wasn’t about to hunt him down. I had already done my penance.

  The Schwa never came back to Brooklyn, and life went on without him. Lexie’s parents returned from their European spree, and just as Crawley said, they hated my guts, which really wasn’t a problem, since I’m fairly used to people hating my guts.

  “They’re convinced anyone with the last name Bonano has to have Mafia ties,” Lexie told me, which is like saying anyone named Simpson is either related to Homer or O.J.

  “Let ’em think that,” I told her. “They’ll be afraid to piss me off.” Which I think is why they don’t say boo when I’m around. It turns out that fake-dating Lexie felt a lot like the real thing, without all that boyfriend-girlfriend pressure.

  As for Crawley, he did find himself another pair of dog walkers: Howie and Ira—who I think keep hoping another couple of granddaughters will turn up.

  “You’ll like Howie,” I told Crawley. “He’s like a Rubik’s Cube with every side the same color.”

  When they first showed up, Howie begins this discussion with Crawley about the dog’s names. “They’re named after the seven deadly sins and seven virtues,” Crawley tells him.

  Howie considers this deeply, then says, “Why not the four freedoms?”

  “That,” says Crawley, “would leave ten dogs unnamed.”

  Howie raises his eyebrows. “Not if you named the rest after the Bill of Rights.”

  Crawley goes red in the face with anger, Ira gets it on film, and their relationship is off to a flying start.

  My father was too proud to call Crawley right away. He looked for work for about six weeks, then finally made the phone call and took a meeting with Old Man Crawley. He returned from Crawley’s in shell shock, but with a job. Well, more than just a job. The old hermit crab made my father a partner in his new restaurant. He let my dad turn it into whatever he wanted, and in true Crawley fashion, he threatened my father with everything short of eternal damnation if the restaurant ever failed. Dad, in his wisdom, decided to get Mom into it, too, turning it into a combination Italian-French place. They named it Paris, capisce? and so far, so good.

  There are schwas drawn in the restaurant’s bathrooms that I didn’t put there.

  In fact, there are schwas everywhere now. I got a call from Ira during spring break. He was on vacation in Hawaii, and he called to tell me he saw one scribbled across a DANGER, HOT LAVA sign. They’ve got them clear across the country—maybe clear around the world. There’s got to be hundreds of people doing it. No one knows who draws them, or why, but now they’re a they’re a permanent part of the landscape. Howie has a theory that involves aliens and cosmic string theory, but trust me, you don’t want to hear it.

  The Schwa Was Here. Just a few of us know what it really means, and nobody believes me when I tell them that I started it. But that’s okay. I can handle being anonymous.

  As for the Schwa himself, I never saw him again—but I did get a letter. It came in August, more than six months after he pulled his disappearing act.

  Dear Antsy,

  I guess you thought I vanished into thin air, huh? Did you freak? You’re smart, though, you probably figured out where I went—and guess what? I found her! My mom was in Florida after all. I got to Key West just as she was getting ready to move on. I told her she owed me big, and she agreed, so she took me along with her. She’s not what I expected. She knows lots of stuff. She even taught me to scuba dive—and I can get really close to the fish because—get this—they don’t notice I’m there.

  Say hello to everyone for me. I won’t forget you if you promise not to forget me!

  Your friend,

  Calvin

  Clipped to the letter was a photo of the Schwa and his mom on a tropical beach. She didn’t look like the unhappy woman the Night Butcher had described. The Schwa almost had a tan in the picture, if you can believe that, and he had a smile on his face as wide as the one on his billboard.

  I had to smile, too. The postmark was from Puerto Rico, but the paper clip had been to the moon.

  Thə End

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Antsy understands how the Schwa can feel invisible because he often feels that way himself. What makes them feel this way? Do the people around them realize how they contribute to the invisibility?

  Why is Lexie’s friendship so important to the Schwa? In what ways is she blind to the Schwa? How does her blindness affect the way she interacts with him?

  Does Crawley live up to his reputation as a mean man? How does Antsy feel about him? How does Crawley feel about Antsy? Does this change over the course of the book?

  Why is his mother’s story so important to the Schwa? Is Antsy right to make him hear the truth? Does this information help or hurt the Schwa?

  Is Antsy a good friend to the Schwa? Does he help him or exploit him? Are there times when Antsy could have done more to help the Schwa?

  In what ways is Manny Bullpucky different from the Schwa, and in what ways are they similar? How does the trip to the elevated subway affect each of them?

  Keep reading for a preview of

  SHIP OUT OF LUCK,

  a companion novel to

  THE SCHWA WAS HERE.

  MERMAID SUSHI, EXP
LOSIVE RAINBOWS,

  WORLD POLITICS, AND OTHER THINGS

  THAT GIVE ME GAS

  DON’T ASK ME BECAUSE I DON’T GOT AN OPINION.

  I’m not red, I’m not blue; I’m not an elephant or donkey; I’m not left or right; and I ain’t center either. I’m not even in the ballpark. If it’s a ballpark, then I’m playin’ hockey.

  The way I see it, politics is like a broken thermostat: all hot air, all the time, no matter how sweltering it is, and don’t even get me started on the humidity.

  Bottom line: I don’t believe anyone who says they got the answers to society’s ills because society’s ills mutate faster than the flu, and no amount of Purell is gonna protect you from that juicy sneeze. So I don’t make my decisions based on what some whining loudmouth with an ax to grind says. I go by my guts, when I got enough of ’em. I guess that makes me independent.

  You want to talk “public policy,” then talk to my mother, because she’s got policies enough to sink any peacetime economy. The “No Shoes in the Living Room” policy. The “No Un-showered Friends in My House” policy. The “Get Up and Get Your Own Freakin’ Drink” policy.

  Put all these policies together and you got yourself a platform. The “WOULD IT KILL YOU TO SHOW A LITTLE COMMON COURTESY?” platform—which, if you ask me, oughta be how we run the country.

  What happened on the boat—excuse me, I mean “ship”—had nothing to do with making a political statement, and if I had known I was gonna be thrust onto the national stage like a piñata in headlights, I woulda stayed home.

  It all started, as so many things seem to start, with Old Man Crawley . . .

  “You will take this invitation to your parents and get an immediate RSVP,” Mr. Crawley said. He handed me an envelope, but when I tried to take it from him, he wouldn’t let go. It stuck tightly between his fingers, kinda the way money usually does.

  “Your parents’ answer,” Mr. Crawley said, “shall be ‘yes.’”

  I tugged harder on the invitation until I finally pulled it out of his vise-grip claw. “If their answer has to be yes,” I said, “then it’s not an invitation, is it?”

  Mr. Crawley’s response was a scowl that made the wrinkles on his face become deeper, which I didn’t even think was possible. Old Man Crawley is kinda like a living legend in Brooklyn, although I use the word “living” loosely. He’s the reclusive owner of Crawley’s Lobster House and lives above the restaurant with fourteen dogs. Fifteen if you include the guide dog. That’s not for him, it’s for his granddaughter, Lexie. Trust me, Old Man Crawley doesn’t need a guide dog; he has perfect vision. He’s got eyes in the back of his head, and maybe in some other people’s heads, too, because I swear he can see everything.

  My relationship with Old Man Crawley is this long, involved story. All you really need to know is that (a) he’s filthy rich from a life of scrooge-like living; (b) he and my dad are business partners in a restaurant called Paris, Capische; (c) Old Man Crawley hates me less than he hates most everyone else, which I guess makes me the closest thing he has to a friend.

  So I leave his place with the invitation, and as I’m walking down the street, I open it. Crawley musta known I’d do that, because inside is a second envelope that reads Open this one, Anthony, and there will be severe consequences.

  Fine. I brought the thing home and put it in my mother’s hands. She looked at it like it might be a bad report card or a telegram telling her that someone’s dead like they did back in the days when death notices came by telegram and not by e-mail.

  “It’s from Crawley,” I told her. “Just open it, say yes, and let me get on with my life.”

  She opened the envelope, pulled out a fancy-looking card, then looked at me like she was gonna kill the messenger.

  “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “Why? What’s it say?”

  “See for yourself.” She handed it to me and I looked it over.

  The “honor” of your family’s presence

  is requested on Saturday, the 29th of June,

  on board the Plethora of the Deep

  for seven days

  to celebrate the 80th birthday

  of Mr. Charles Jameson Crawley.

  A suitable gift is expected.

  Okay, so my experience with cruises is limited to the Circle Line. That’s the boat that goes around Manhattan while some underpaid high school dropout points out all the tall buildings as if you can’t see them for yourself, and if you’re lucky, you ram into a careless speedboat, adding some actual excitement to the tour. But this invitation was for the real thing. And not just any cruise ship—this was the Plethora of the Deep, the largest, most luxurious ship in the known universe.

  I saw this whole thing about it on TV, and how Caribbean Viking cruise line had to build new docks in every port just to fit the Plethora. It’s got a Junior NASCAR go-cart speedway, the infamous Cavalcade of Waterslides, an underwater lounge with glass walls so you can watch the propellers make sushi out of any passing mermaids, and a world-class roller coaster. Just the thought of it makes me drool like a knuckle-dragger from the Jersey Shore.

  And my mom says, “Forget it. I don’t do boats.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but realized even before a word made it from my brain to my vocal cords that protesting would be no use. My mother does not make decisions; she makes proclamations. The kind that guys on horseback posted in kingdoms of old to subdue the peasants.

  “Tell Mr. Crawley ‘thank you, but we respectfully decline.’”

  I closed my mouth, realizing this would take a peasant revolt. The kind with torches and pitchforks.

  “Okay,” I said to my mom. “I’ll tell him,” and then added, “I don’t want to miss the Fourth of July anyway.” That got her attention.

  “Why? What are you planning?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing much.” Then I left her to the darkness of her own imagination.

  Last year, the Fourth of July was a blast. My friends Howie and Ira and I got our hands on some real fireworks that the Sheepshead Bay Rotary Club had purchased but couldn’t get permits to use, on account of they don’t officially permit anything in Brooklyn.

  In my neighborhood, however, the Fourth of July is all about broken rules and losing fingers. Not that we were stupid enough to do anything dangerous. We hadn’t had a Roman candle fight since, like, the third grade. We took every precaution with the fireworks. We figured we could set it off from my front porch and light up the sky above the whole neighborhood like they light up the Statue of Liberty. And the best part about it was that we only had to light one fuse, because the thing was automated. Once you started it, it cycled through like some sort of explosive computer system. To be extra safe, just so that we didn’t set my house on fire, I angled the fireworks away from the house.

  Here’s something I learned about fireworks last year: If you don’t aim them straight up in the air, they take on this trajectory called “gravity’s rainbow.” In other words, they go up in one place, arc across the sky, then come down somewhere else, blowing up the pot of gold at the far end.

  Have you ever seen those war movies where the enemy relentlessly bombs the good guys in their foxholes and the good guys all form lasting friendships that eventually threaten their marriages? Well, let’s just say that us kids on East 56th Street made the folks over on East 53rd Street bond in ways that could be considered unnatural in certain religions.

  With my mom attempting to sink our all-expenses-paid cruise, I went looking for an unlikely ally in my father, who, after his heart attack this past year, shed his workaholic ways and had finally given himself permission to speak the word “vacation.” Not that he’s actually taken one, but at least now it was in his vocabulary. The thing is, he and Mom had been talking forever about going somewhere, but whenever it came up, it was like, “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know, where do you wanna go?” I think the fear is that someone’s going to suggest visiting relatives in Italy who we don??
?t know but feel some genetic guilt about.

  I presented the invitation to my father later that afternoon. He was out back tending to our yard. A few months ago, I killed all the plants in the yard and half the plants in the neighborhood in a tragic gardening accident. His doctor suggested he turn our dead yard into a Zen garden to help him relax. So now our backyard is all volcanic rocks, bonsai, and sand that gets pushed around by a rake. It’s really cool, for like the first ten seconds.

  I crossed the garden, ruining the pattern of sand with my footprints, and handed him the invitation. My dad’s easy to laugh but slow to smile, so I know this smile is genuine.

  “Well,” he says, patting his newly slimmed waistline. “I guess I’m gonna need a new bathing suit!”

  To which I reply, “Mom says we’re not going.”

  Dad’s smile fades, and he hands me back the invitation. “Well, it was a nice idea.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Your mother and I have an agreement: We don’t go anywhere as a family unless we both agree to it.”

  In the past, this has served our family well, on account of the time Mom wanted to take a walking tour of Amish covered bridges and the time that dad wanted to follow Bruce Springsteen on a six-city tour. These are examples of what we call “midlife crisis,” which is when parents go temporarily insane because they realize how boring prime-time TV has gotten, and a crisis at least makes things interesting.