The Schwa Was Here

When I got the milk from the refrigerator, I noticed that the plate of food Dad had left was gone. The plate had been washed by hand, and now sat in the drying rack. I knew it shouldn’t matter. I knew it was just a little thing—but the image of that plate on the rack stayed with me all day. Like Dad said, sometimes the little things are the biggest things of all.

And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out whether Mom had eaten the food on that plate or had put it down the disposal.

***

I sat by myself at lunch on Monday. I hadn’t been sitting with Howie and Ira for a couple of weeks now. Used to be we were inseparable, but cliques are like molecules: They bind together in Mr. Werthog’s little test tube until you add something new. Then they all break up and recombine into something else. Sometimes you get these things they call “free radicals,” which are atoms that aren’t bound to anything else, floating free. That was me now. I didn’t mind it at first, because it left open a whole lot of possibilities, but after this past weekend, radical freedom didn’t feel so good.

I’m sure the Schwa was there, blending in with the Formica tables, but I wasn’t about to look for him. Right now I was hat­ing him the way you hate the other team when they shout, “Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate?” after humiliating you in a shutout. The Schwa found me, though. He plopped his semi-invisible self down across the table from me.

“Do you mind? I’m eating, and it’s hard enough to keep this crud down without having to look at you.”

“I just wanted to thank you, Antsy. That’s all.”

“Thank me for what?”

“Lexie told me everything. She told me what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“Don’t play dumb,” he said. “You told her you didn’t want to be her escort, and said that I’d be better at it. I can’t believe you’d do that for me. No one’s ever done anything like that for me.”

I just sat there with gravy dripping down my chin. “She told you that?”

The Schwa grinned. “She’s teaching me Braille,” he said proudly. “It’s really cool.” He glanced at my plate, noticing I had eaten my peach cobbler first, so he scooped his onto my plate. “If you ever want anything, all you have to do is ask.”

Pamela O’Malley passed by just then, with a few friends walking so close it was a wonder they didn’t trip over one another’s feet. “Hey, Antsy,” she said, “how come you’re eating alone?”

The Schwa gave me that “some people” look.

“Maybe I like it that way,” I said. She twittered with her friends and walked off.

“It’s okay,” the Schwa said. “Who needs to be seen when you can be felt?”

11. The Youngest Doctor in Sheepshead Bay Gets Held Hostage When He Least Expects It

Being felt.

That means a lot of things, doesn’t it? And I’m not talking about the dirty stuff you probably think I mean. My mind isn’t in the sewer all the time, all right? I’m talking about having your presence felt. In that way, I guess I’m not all that different from the Schwa.

Now I had made my presence felt in my own family by refus­ing to be the peacekeeper. If that was a good thing, it sure didn’t feel like it. The problem is, once you’ve made yourself felt, there’s no going back to being unnoticed, as much as you might want to. Instead of ignoring me, Frankie was suddenly noticing every little thing I did, wondering why I did it. Christina started asking me questions about things, like I was the smarter brother. Dad was now confiding in me about things that were really none of my business, and Mom started treating me like I was ac­tually a responsible human being. It was all very disturbing.

“There’s no future in plastic,” Dad said to me one day out of the blue.

“Sure there is,” I told him. “People will always need a plastic something or other.”

“We can only hope,” he said.

“What does Mom think?”

“Mom doesn’t work for Pisher.”

I was fishing for news from the battlefront, but he gave me none. The battlefront had become more like a demilitarized zone. They kept this chilly emotional distance. I think I liked it better when they fought.

The thing is, Dad might have built Manny to be indestructible, but he himself was not. Neither was Mom. This was a stress test I wished would just end.

***

I didn’t know what I’d say to Lexie. I was sure to run into her at Crawley’s apartment eventually, but I hoped maybe she would just leave the room and pretend she didn’t know I was there until I had leashed up the dogs and left.

I wasn’t so lucky.

A week after being replaced by the Schwa as her official es­cort, Lexie herself came to answer the door. She pulled it open wide, letting out four dogs, three of which nuzzled me for affec­tion, but the fourth one, Prudence—who was always a loose cannon—bolted, and headed straight down the stairs. Not the back stairs we always take to get out, the grand staircase that led right down to the middle of the restaurant, where people were eating an early dinner.

“Great,” I said. “She’ll probably pull a lobster right off of someone’s plate.”

“I need your help,” Lexie said. At first I thought she meant to get the dog, but then I heard Crawley shouting and groaning from inside the apartment, over the sound of barking. Lexie’s voice was all warbly, and I could tell she was panicked. “He fell in the shower,” she said. “I think he might have broken his hip again.”

I stepped in, closing the door behind me. Let the waiters deal with Prudence, they were probably used to it. “Did you call 911?”

“They’re sending an ambulance, but he won’t let me near him. He won’t tell me anything. I don’t know what to do.”

I tried to hurry back to the master bathroom with her, but she couldn’t hurry. She moved slowly, and methodically, never bumping into anything, but never quickening her pace. It was the first time I’d ever seen her handicap be a hindrance.

Crawley was sprawled on the shower floor, clutching a towel over himself.

“Get out!” he said when he saw me.

“There’s an ambulance on its way,” I told him.

“I don’t need an ambulance. Just leave me alone.”

It was terrible to see him like this. He had always been such a powerful presence, even in his wheelchair. Kind of like Roo­sevelt, you know? But lying there on the floor, twisted in that awkward position, he seemed frail and helpless. I reached over to help him shift into a more comfortable position, but he swatted my hand away. “Get your lousy hands away from me, you dumb guinea!”

Whoa.

He had called me lots of things, but never the G-word. I didn’t know what to make of it, but now wasn’t a time I could really get angry. He tried to move by himself, and yowled in pain, letting loose a whole dictionary of cusswords.

Lexie, standing at the door, grimaced. “What happened? Did he fall again? Tell me, Anthony! Tell me everything that’s hap­pening.”

“Nothing’s happening. He tried to move, but couldn’t.”

“Is he bleeding?”

“No.”

Then she hit her eyes with her palms and grunted. It was weird, but I knew exactly why she did it. It was frustration at her own blindness. She was smooth and confident when the world cooperated, but accidents were