The Schwa was Here (9 page)

“Since I was five,” he said. “You wanna see my paper-clip collection?”

I replayed in my mind what he had said, certain I had somehow heard it wrong. “You’re . . . kidding me, right?”

Then he reached under his bed and pulled out a box. Inside were little plastic zipper bags—at least a hundred of them—and in each one there was . . . yes, you guessed it, a paper clip.
Little ones, big ones, those fat black ones that hold whole stacks of paper together.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

I just stared, dumbfounded. “Exactly when did they release you from the nuthouse, Schwa?”

He reached into the box and pulled out a little baggie that held a silver clip. “This clip held together pages of the Nuclear Arms Treaty signed by Reagan and Gorbachev.”

“No way.”

I looked at it closely. It looked just like an ordinary paper clip.

He pulled out another one. It was tarnished bronze. “This one held together the original lyric sheets of ‘Hey Jude.’” He pulled out another one with a blue plastic coating. “This one was clipped to a mission manual for the space shuttle.”

“You mean it’s been in space?”

The Schwa nodded.

“Wow!”

He showed me clip after clip, each one more exciting than the last. “Where did you get them?”

“I wrote to famous people, asking them for a paper clip from something important. You’d be amazed how many of them wrote back.”

It was genius! Most of the time people are looking for the letters and documents and people that make history, but no one thinks about the little things that hold history together. Leave it to the Schwa to think of such a thing. It was, at the same time, the dullest and most interesting collection I had ever seen in my life.

Dinner wasn’t ready until after nine, and it was the second
worst chicken I’d ever tasted, beaten only by a dish at a friend’s birthday party that tasted more like it was made from the piñata. Even so, I was glad I had dinner with the Schwa and his father, who continued to play guitar during the meal, greasy chicken fingers and all.

“It’s like he doesn’t have a care in the world,” I commented to the Schwa while his dad did the dishes.

“Yeah, brain damage’ll do that to you,” the Schwa said as he went to rewash the dishes his father didn’t quite get clean. “But I wouldn’t advise it.”

The next night I ended up alone with my own father for dinner. Mom was off shopping with Christina, and Frankie was off with his friends, doing whatever it was honor students did on their higher plane of existence. I couldn’t help but think about the Schwa, and how he came home every day to a father who might or might not feed him. That wasn’t my dad. I might go unnoticed, but never unfed. And I never had to be the one taking care of him.

Dad secretly loved when Mom wasn’t around for dinner, because he got the kitchen all to himself—and although none of us kids would admit it out loud, Dad was the better cook. Tonight Dad whipped up Fettucine al Bonano—his own special dish that magically transformed whatever leftovers were in the fridge into a killer pasta dish. The problem today wasn’t in the cooking, it was in the eating. Dad and I never have problems talking to each other when there are other people around, but when it’s just the two of us, it’s like we’re together on a stage and we’ve forgotten our lines.

“Did you break Manny yet?” he asked after a few silent minutes into the meal.

I shrugged, fettucine dangling down to my chin. “I’m not sure. His body survived detonation, but his head is missing. It could be in orbit for all we know.”

“If he really turns out to be unbreakable, your old man gets a raise and a promotion.”

I nodded and sucked in some more fettucine. The silence returned. I like being with my dad, but sitting across from him with nothing but food between us makes me uncomfortable. I guess I’m so used to being semivisible at home I don’t know how to handle being the only available focus of attention. And now as I sat with Dad, avoiding eye contact, it hit me that maybe he felt the same way.

“They won’t do both,” I told him.

“What?”

“They give you a promotion so they don’t have to give you a raise. They give you a raise just so they don’t have to give you a promotion. They don’t do both.”

He looked at me, grinning and nodding like I just quoted Shakespeare. “You’re right,” he said. “How do you know that?”

I shrugged and thought about what the Schwa had once said about me having business savvy. “I don’t know. It just makes sense.” And then I added, “I probably heard it on TV or something.”

We chowed down more food, barely looking at each other.

“Mom tells me you’re walking dogs for that old guy who owns Crawley’s.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m being a good Philistine.”

“Samaritan,” he said. “I didn’t even know you liked dogs.”

“Neither did I.”

I toyed with telling him about Old Man Crawley’s threat to get him fired if I didn’t walk the dogs . . . but didn’t. Crawley and his dogs were my problem.

I finished up my fettucine and began thinking about what the Schwa’s dinner was like tonight. Did he have to cook it himself? Did he cook for himself and his dad? Or was this one of the lucky nights when the Schwa could relax and Aunt Peggy did the cooking? Then I wondered if Aunt Peggy ever forgot to set a plate for him, like his dad.

“Listen, I was thinking about having a friend over for dinner.”

“Someone new, or the usual suspects?”

“New.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No such luck.”

“Who?”

“They call him the Schwa.”

My dad piled some more fettucine onto his plate. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Does something have to be wrong with him for him to be my friend? Is that what you mean?”

“Take it easy. I just thought I heard something funny in your voice.”

I didn’t think my dad had it in him to tune into someone’s tone. He never seemed to be able to tell when Mom was about to get mad at him, and he usually needed one of us kids to tell him what brainless, insensitive thing he had done. But this time he called it right.

I decided to be direct. “He’s invisible,” I said.

To my dad’s credit, he took this in stride, although he did
stop chewing for a few seconds. “Does he become visible again when he takes off his ring?” Dad asked. “Does he hang out with elves and dwarfs?”

It took me a few seconds, then I got it, and laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “He’s got hairy feet, too.”

“Well, make sure he wipes them on the doormat, or your mother will brain him.”

Life is like a bad haircut. At first it looks awful, then you kind of get used to it, and before you know it, it grows out and you gotta get another haircut that maybe won’t be so bad, unless of course you keep going to SuperClips, where the hairstylists are so terrible they oughta be using safety scissors, and when they’re done you look like your head got caught in a ceiling fan. So life goes on, good haircut, bad haircut, until finally you go bald, and it don’t matter no more.

I told this wisdom to my mother, and she said I oughta put it in a book, then burn it. Some people just can’t appreciate the profound.

Anyway, the deal with Crawley and his dogs was like a bad haircut I was beginning to get used to. I wasn’t expecting to get clipped again by a hit-and-run barber.

“Let Mr. Schwa go ahead. I want to talk to you alone.”

Crawley always called us “Mr. Schwa” and “Mr. Bonano.” At first it annoyed me on account of my teachers call us “Mr.” when they were mad at us. But then, since Crawley was always mad at us, it kind of had some logic to it.

This was the third week of our dog days. Until now, Crawley had little to say to us except to comment on our unacceptable wardrobe, how unpleasant my acne was, and couldn’t we find some better deodorant, because according to him, after a day of school we smelled worse than fourteen dogs. It was always an adventure with him, never knowing what he was going to gripe about when we showed up. He was usually much more on my case than the Schwa’s. I assumed it was just the Schwa Effect at work. Little did I know he was sizing me up for a higher position in the Crawley Universe.

“Mr. Schwa, I said you could go.”

The Schwa looked at me and shrugged. “Fine. I’ll notify your next of kin, Antsy.”

“Yeah, I appreciate it. If I live, I’ll call you.”

Once the Schwa was gone, Crawley stared at me from his wheelchair across the room for way too long.

“So what’s up, Chuckles?” I had stopped calling him “sir” or Mr. Crawley. The way I figured it, those were terms of respect, and he really hadn’t earned mine. Chuckles was my little nickname for him. It started as Chuck, but Chuckles seemed so much more appropriate—especially because of the way he frowned when I said it.

“I am not a clown,” he said. “Kindly refrain from calling me that.”

I just grinned. He frowned some more. “From now on, Mr. Schwa will walk the dogs alone.”

“That’s not fair,” I told him. “It’ll take him till nighttime.”

“I will pay him,” Crawley said. “Ten cents per dog per day.”

“Twenty-five.”

“What are you, his attorney?”

“His manager.”

“I see. All right. Twenty-five.”

“And that’s only if he agrees.”

Crawley didn’t answer that—maybe because it was a fact of life that no one ever disagreed with him. “As for you, I have another task for you.”

“Do I get paid, too?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. This scared me, because Crawley gave money like bulls gave milk: not at all, and you got gored for asking. If he had already decided this was a paying job, it must be horrible beyond words.

“Your salary will depend on how well you perform your duties.”

“What’s the job?”

Sloth came sniffing at Crawley’s pocket for treats, and the old man pushed him away. “My granddaughter will be spending the next few months with me. You will spend time with her. You will entertain her. You will pretend to like her.”

I was sensing this haircut was going to be one nasty Mohawk. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Why does something have to be wrong with her?” he snapped.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something in your tone of voice.”

Crawley wheeled himself around, banging his knee on a little end table. I knew it must have hurt, but he refused to give me
the satisfaction of a groan. “As it happens, my granddaughter does have a handicap.”

“So she’s in a wheelchair, too?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

I waited for more details, but Crawley gave none. So now I was moved from walking dogs to babysitting for some spoiled Veruca Salt-ish little girl.

“You will be here at ten o’clock sharp tomorrow. But first you will introduce yourself to the shower in your house, and you will dress in something presentable. You will also refrain from calling me Chuckles in front of her.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ve got stuff to do on Saturday.”

Which was actually just a whole lot of lying around, and I guess he figured that out, because he said: “Don’t force me to make your life more miserable than it already is.”

I finally realized who he reminded me of: the Emperor in
Star Wars
. “Fine. But right now I’m gonna walk dogs so the Schwa doesn’t have to do all the work.”

“You’re such a Boy Scout.”

“Hey!” I said. “Enough with the insults!” I hooked Gluttony to a leash, and left.