The Schwa Was Here

self-conscious watching her because she couldn’t see me doing it.

We had great seats—right smack in the middle. The handi­capped section. I have to admit I felt guilty—not only because I wasn’t handicapped, but because Lexie was the most unhandicapped handicapped person I’d ever laid eyes on.

“Are you having fun?” she asked when the band took a break.

I shrugged. “Yeah, sure,” I said, trying not to sound like I was having as much fun as I really was, because what if she took my real enthusiasm for fake enthusiasm?

“I like this band,” Lexie said. “Their sound’s not all muddy. I can hear all seven musicians.”

I thought about that. I had been watching them for more than half an hour, and now that they were off the stage, I couldn’t tell you how many musicians there had been.

“Amazing,” I said. “You’re like one of those mentalists. You can see things with your mind.”

She reached over to pet Moxie, who sat next to her in the aisle, content as long as he was petted every few minutes. “Some people are good at being blind, others aren’t,” and then she smiled. “I’m very good.”

“Great. We’ll call you the Amazing Lexis.”

“I like that.”

“And now,” I announced, “the Amazing Lexis, through her supersonic skills of perceptive-ability”—she giggled—«will tell me how many fingers I am holding up.” I held up three fingers.

“Um ... two!”

“Wow!” I said. “You’re right! That’s amazing!”

“You’re lying.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s only a one-in-four chance that I’d get it right—one-in-five if you counted your thumb as a finger—so the odds were against it. And besides, ?lie’ was written all over your voice.”

I laughed, truly impressed. “The Amazing Lexis strikes again.”

Lexie grinned for a moment, and I noticed how her smile fit with her half-closed eyes. It was like the face you make when you’re tasting something unbelievable, like my dad’s eggplant Parmesan, which is poison in anyone else’s hands.

Lexie reached over to pet Moxie again. “Too bad Calvin couldn’t come with us.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, right.” I probably would have gone the whole night without thinking about him once, and now I felt a little guilty about that—and annoyed that I felt guilty—and ir­ritated that I was annoyed. “Why would you want the Schwa on a date with us, anyway?”

“This isn’t a date,” Lexie said. “People don’t get paid to go on a date.”

She thought she had me there. “Well, you’re not supposed to know I’m getting paid—and since you know and are still let­ting me take you out, it is a date.”

She didn’t say anything to that. Maybe she just couldn’t argue with my logic.

“There’s something ... unusual about Calvin,” she said.

“He’s visibly impaired,” I told her. “Observationally chal­lenged.”

“He thinks he’s invisible?”

“He is invisible ... kind of.”

Lexie screwed up her lips so they looked kind of like the red scrunchy she wore in her hair, then said, “No, it’s more than that. There’s something else about him that either you don’t know or you’re just not telling me.”

“Well, his mother either disappeared in Waldbaum’s super­market or got chopped up by his father, who sent pieces to all fifty states. No one’s really sure which it is.”

“Hmm,” Lexie said. “That’s bound to have an effect on a per­son, either way.”

“He seems okay to me.”

“He’s very sweet,” Lexie added.

“Ripe is the word,” I said. “He’s gotta start wearing deodorant.”

The lights in the amphitheater started to dim, and the crowd began cheering for the band to start.

“Maybe you should walk the dogs,” Lexie said.

“Huh?”

“I said maybe you should walk the dogs, and Calvin should be my escort.”

I wasn’t expecting that. It hit me in a place I didn’t know was there. All I could think of was one of those medical shows. They’re operating on some poor slob, they accidentally nick an artery, and he starts gushing. “We got a bleeder!” the surgeon yells, and everybody comes rushing to the operating table. No­body was rushing to me, though.

“Sure,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”

The band began to play, and I quickly wiped away the tears I was bleeding, even though I knew she couldn’t see them.

***

Lexie confronted her grandfather the next morning, telling him she knew that he paid boys to hang around with her. I showed up at Crawley’s that afternoon, determined to quit before I got fired, but Crawley didn’t give me the satisfaction.

“You are a miserable failure,” the old man told me. “You couldn’t even keep our financial arrangement a secret.”

“She already knew,” I told him.

“How could she already know? What do you take me for, an idiot?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

He grunted, then threw a chew toy at Fortitude, who was gnawing on his shoe. The toy bounced off the dog’s nose, and she went for it, trotting off happily with the toy in her jaws.

“Apparently, whatever you did, it disgusted my granddaugh­ter enough that she’d rather be with that Schwa kid than with you. You are hereby demoted to dog walker again.”

“Who said I’m doing anything for you anymore?”

“You did,” Crawley said calmly. “You accepted twelve weeks of community service.”

“Well, now I unaccept it.”

“Hmmph. Too bad,” Crawley said. “I was actually beginning to think you had some personal integrity.”

I grit my teeth. I don’t know why it mattered what he thought of me, but it did. He was right; I was a miserable failure—even at quitting.

“Do you want me to walk the dogs now or later?”

“Walk them at your leisure,” he said, and rolled off. For once he didn’t gloat over his little victory.

I went to get the leashes and spent my afternoon trying to think of nothing but walking dogs.

10. Earthquakes, Nuclear Winter, and the End of Life as We Know It, over Linguini

My parents had a fight on the day I got demoted to dog walker. Maybe it was no worse than other fights they had over the years, but I noticed it a whole lot more. Maybe because seeing the Schwa’s sorry home life made me more tuned in to my own.

I heard them even before I walked in the door. They were screaming at each other like the Antonoviches two doors down, who would end our dependence on foreign oil if you could harness the sheer vocal energy of their fights.

“It’s the Big One,” Frankie said when I came in the door. “I esti­mate eight-point-six on the Richter scale. Better hold on to some­thing.” He pretended to watch TV while listening to the fight.

Christina crouched by the kitchen door, sticking her nose in, and writing in her diary. “It began at five- eleven pm,” she said. “Thirty-seven minutes straight, so far.”

“Red sauce?” I heard Mom yell. “I’ll give you red sauce!”