The Schwa Was Here

movie.

It was Howie who suggested the Elephant Man theory. We had all been trying to figure out what condition Crawley’s granddaughter suffered from that was bad enough for him to pay me to spend time with her.

“I mean, she’s got to be ugly in some basic, unnatural way to make it worth money,” says Howie.

“Maybe not,” said Ira. “Maybe it’s Tourette’s syndrome.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s where you have these little seizures and can’t stop curs­ing people out.”

“Sounds like most people I know.” I swung at his character on the screen with my left and right arms, then caught him off guard with an uppercut from my third arm. He lost ten points of life.

“Hey,” says Ira, “what if she’s the surviving half of Siamese twins connected at the head, but separated at birth. Only one of them could survive, because there was only one brain be­tween them.”

“It sounds logical,” says Howie. At this point his screen char­acter sneaks up from behind and nails me with a dropkick from a leg I didn’t even know he had.

“Hey, no fair—you took an extra dose of radiation, didn’t you?”

I turned from Ira’s bruiser, who was still dazed, and began a few roundhouse kicks on Howie’s guy. “Maybe it’s just some­thing simple,” I suggested, “like she’s got a peg leg or something.”

“Maybe two peg legs,” says Howie.

“Or a peg head,” says Ira. “I’d pay to see that.”

“You’re not the one paying—Crawley is.” I spun on Ira, gave his character a double-death blow, and he was finished. Ira dropped his controller in frustration. Now it was just Howie and me. I tore into him brutally. It wasn’t because I cared about beating him; I just wanted it done. Kind of like the way you finish that last piece of pizza, just because it’s there.

It only took a minute for the game to be over, and my charac­ter was raising all three of his arms in triumph to the sound of canned cheers. I sighed and put down my controller. “Hey, is it just me, or is this game less fun than it used to be?”

Ira and Howie don’t have an opinion. Somehow I didn’t ex­pect them to. “The new version comes out in a month. It’ll be tons better,” says Howie.

I nodded in agreement because I didn’t want to talk about what was really going through my mind. I was thinking about bamboo. Last year, my science teacher said that when a bam­boo plant is established enough, you can actually watch it growing before your eyes. I wondered if it was sometimes the same with humans—because I was feeling this weird vertigo, like I had suddenly sprouted far beyond Howie and Ira. I knew it just like I knew that no future version of “Three Fisted Fury” was going to interest me like it did a year ago.

I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, but at first glance I didn’t see anybody there.

“Hey, Schwa,” I said.

The moment Howie and Ira realized who it was, they picked up their game controllers and quickly started a new game, ig­noring him. It made me mad, but I didn’t say anything. For Howie and Ira, it was okay when the Schwa was just a play­thing—just some weird object that had strayed into their air­space like a UFO—but once they lost interest in him, he was no longer welcome on their radar screen.

“I’ve solved at least part of the mystery,” the Schwa said, ignoring Ira and Howie just as well as they ignored him.

“Which mystery?”

“Crawley’s granddaughter.”

At this, Ira and Howie couldn’t help but show a little bit of interest.

“What did you find out?” I asked.

“Take a look for yourself.”

He hands me this printout of a page he must have gotten from some old Internet newpaper archive. An old society page from the Daily News. It shows a picture of a baby with the cap­ tion: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Crawley III announce the birth of a daughter, Lexis Lynn Crawley.

As Ira and Howie huddled around me to look at the picture, Schwa got shouldered out of the way.

“Lexis?” said Ira. “She’s named after a car?”

“Spelled differently,” I pointed out.

“Well,” says Howie, “it looks like she didn’t have a peg head at birth.”

In fact, it didn’t look like there was anything wrong with baby Lexis at all. “Hey, wait a second,” I said. “Look at the date on that article—she’s not a little kid at all. She’s our age.”

“Hmm,” said Ira. “Whatever’s wrong with her, maybe she wasn’t born with it.”

“Maybe she developed leprosy at puberty,” says Howie. “I hear that happens.”

“Yeah, maybe in Calcutta or something, but not in Brooklyn.”

“Maybe she traveled,” says Howie, “and brought it back with her, like the flu or mad cow.”

“Well,” says Ira, “whatever’s up with her, you’ll find out soon enough.” He and Howie returned to their spot on the floor and picked up their game controllers.

“C’mon, Antsy, you playing or what?”

The Schwa may have been used to being treated like he wasn’t there, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. I could see an anger beginning to rise in him, simmering like beef stew in my mother’s Crock-Pot, which meant indigestion and heartburn were only moments away.

“Hey!” he shouted to Howie and Ira. “The ice cream man’s giving out free Popsicles,” he said. If they heard him, they ig­nored him. He got louder. “Did you hear Martians invaded Long Island?” No response. His Crock-Pot began to boil. “Tidal wave’s headed for Brooklyn,” the Schwa shouted at them. “We have five minutes to live.”

Howie and Ira just kept on playing.

I could see what was about to happen here. It was what you call “en passant.” It’s a move in chess. One pawn gives an enemy pawn the cold shoulder as it moves two squares ahead. So the ignored pawn has the right to kick the rude pawn’s sorry butt off the board, just because it wants to. It’s the only move I know where you get busted just for ignoring the enemy.

So here I am standing in my own basement, watching Howie and Ira walking straight into an en passant. It was their way of putting our friendship to the test. We’ve had enough of the Schwa, is what they were silently saying. Are you our friend, or are you his?

I should have done what I always do when I’m losing a chess match: accidentally knock over the board. But the Schwa made his move before I could do a thing, cutting in front of me and advancing on Howie and Ira. I stood back and let him do it. It was his right, and I wasn’t going to rob him of it. He got in front of them, blocking their view of their video game. “Hey, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m here.”

Ira paused the game to keep his character from getting mauled by Howie’s mutant. “We know you’re here,” Ira says. “Now do us all a favor and stop being here.”

Then the Schwa reached over and ejected the game from the system. The screen went black.

“Let’s see if you notice me now!” And he cracked the game disc in half.

This was the unthinkable. All three of us stared at the Schwa in shock. The Schwa dropped the broken disc and stormed up­stairs. Howie and Ira looked at me, still in denial that the game had indeed been destroyed.

“You gonna let him get away with that?” Ira asked.

“Shut up! Just shut up, okay?” I ran upstairs after the Schwa, taking three steps at a time, not even sure what I was gonna do when I caught him. He broke my game, so a pounding was in order, right? But I didn’t feel like pounding him. I felt more like pounding Ira and Howie. By the time I got upstairs, the Schwa was already out the front door. I didn’t catch up with him until he was halfway to the corner, and I practically had to wrestle him until he stopped.

“What, are you totally psycho?” I shouted.

“Maybe I am!” he screamed back at me. “Maybe that’s just what I am. Maybe I’m that quiet guy who suddenly goes nuts and then you find half the neighborhood in his freezer.”

***

I gotta admit, that one stumped me for a second—but only for a second. “Which half?” I asked.

“Huh?”